Embracing Imperfection

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In Karen Bishop's latest energy alert (just posted), she addresses the shadow work we have been slogging through, with the lunar eclipse of the 16th. Many of us are feeling vulnerable and acutely aware of our flaws.

If you are one who is unusually sensitive and connects easily, you may have experienced the lunar eclipse on August 16th with confusing feelings of low self worth, perhaps self-loathing, and even guilt for no apparent reason. You may have felt just plain icky and you did not know why. Suddenly feeling bad about ourselves for no apparent reason is simply a manifestation of the lunar eclipse supporting us in going deep within and seeing the denser aspects of who we are.

If you don't get Bishop's email notices about new alerts, you're missing out. They always include wonderful bonus material, in the form of relevant book excerpts. Sometimes those excerpts speak more to the moment for me than the alerts themselves.

In today's email, Bishop includes an excerpt from Remembering Your Soul Purpose. It's a fairly well known parable, of unknown origin, so I think republishing it in full here falls well within fair use.

A water bearer in India had two large pots, each hung on either end of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, and while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master's house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his master's house. The perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, but the cracked pot was miserable, ashamed that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, the cracked pot spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you."

"Why? What are you ashamed of?" asked the bearer.

"I have been able, for these past two years, to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your master's house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don't get full value from your efforts," the pot said.

The water bearer felt compassion and said, "As we return to the master's house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path."

Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming many beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered it some. But at the end of the trail, it still felt bad because it had leaked out half its load, and so again it apologized to the bearer for its failure.

The bearer said to the pot, "Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side? That is because I have always known about your crack. Accepting what was given to me, I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from the stream, you've watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master's table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house."

Author Unknown

I'm sure I've heard this story before. But reading it today, I am singularly effected by the truth of it.

As one who walks the path of the wounded healer, I know well how my imperfections inform my work. I doubt that I could relate to my clients' struggles and challenges, had my life been effortlessly full.

Many times I have pondered that the greatest writers, musicians, and other artists -- the ones whose work moves me at my core -- are those who have been scarred by life. The ones whose art is a form of healing, both for themselves and for their audience.

Anyone who has ever worked a twelve step program knows that the power of that system is in people sharing honestly about their flaws, fears, and wounds. It is in that sharing of "experience, strength, and hope," that members assist each other in their recovery. The healing that comes from releasing that sense of shame and isolation can be profound.

We can appreciate the wisdom that comes from our injuries and mistakes, when we are ready to embrace life as an ongoing process. One that brings "progress, not perfection."

There is a Japanese term: Wabi-Sabi. It refers to an aesthetic in art, architecture, and life.

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It's simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent.

Our truest beauty lies in our imperfections.

Echinacea Prevents Colds: Newest Study

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Studies on the effectiveness of echinacea have been decidedly mixed. Like many natural remedies much of the evidence is anecdotal. That's never been a deterrent for me as I have never believed in one size fits all remedies. (I pendulum test everything. Works for me.) However, a new scientific study concluded that echinacea does, in fact, prevent colds, by a substantial percentage, and seems to shorten the duration and severity of colds.

The paper, published in the July issue of The Lancet Infectious Diseases, used statistical techniques to combine the results of existing studies and reach conclusions based on the larger sample that resulted. The researchers selected only those trials that used randomized and placebo-controlled techniques: 14 studies involving 1,356 participants for the number of colds and 1,630 for the prevention of colds. The studies varied in the dosages of the herb, the duration it was taken and the species of echinacea used, and the number of participants ranged from 40 to more than 300.

The analysis concluded that echinacea reduced the risk of catching a cold by 58 percent. It also found that the herb significantly shortened the duration of a cold, but there was no general agreement about the magnitude of this effect.

“Our analysis doesn’t say that the stuff works without question,” said Dr. Craig I. Coleman, an assistant professor of pharmacy practice at the University of Connecticut, and the senior author of the paper. “But the preponderance of evidence suggests that it does.”

On the subject of herbs, this might be a good time mention that one of my newest affiliates is Mountain Rose Herbs. I don't mean this to be a shameless plug, but a genuine recommendation. I waited for years for these folks to go online and start an affiliate program. I bought from them when all they had was a low-budget, newsprint catalog. Their herbs and oils are top-notch. Highly, highly recommended.

Sick As Our Secrets

One does not become enlightened
by imagining figures of light,
but by making the darkness conscious.
The latter procedure, however is disagreeable,
and therefore not popular.
-- Carl Jung

It took me a while to get around to seeing "The Secret." Once I learned what the secret actually was, I felt no great urgency. But when I saw how it had been savaged on Salon.com, I resolved to see how bad it was for myself. Pretty bad, really.

This is not to say that it has no value. A number of the tools recommended by its co-creators are effective, at least up to a point. Far be it from me to discourage the use of creative visualization, visualization boards, affirmative thought, or any other of what I would consider rituals. When appropriate I recommend these tools to my clients. But they are not a panacea, and that caveat is decidedly missing from the slickly produced movie; and presumably the book, which I did not, in all fairness, read.

I don't think I'm revealing any state secrets when I tell you, gentle reader, that the secret revealed in "The Secret" is the "law of attraction." The problem is that this is not so much a law as it is a bromide. What many of us learned during the "new age" revolution of the 80s and 90s was that all of our affirmations and creative visualization did not, in fact, work. At least not fully or "every time," which is what "The Secret" promises... well as long we don't think "bad" thoughts and undo all the promise of our "good" thoughts. According to the brain trust that brings you "The Secret" our "negative" thoughts bring unpleasant experiences, and our "positive" thoughts bring pleasant ones. I almost wish life were that simple.

The "law of attraction" is really a very dumbed down -- one might say truncated -- version of a much deeper truth. This is probably why it has resonance and "feels" true enough to inspire a cottage industry. It has what Stephen Colbert calls "truthiness."

Underlying this attractive idea is what mystics have been teaching for millennia. It is that all things reflect all other things. That it cannot be otherwise because we are, in fact, one with everything around us. This means that the people you meet are not "like" you ("like attracts like"). They are you.

Where the "law of attraction," as presented in "The Secret," teaches us that if we are attracting unpleasant experiences, we need to shift our thoughts away from the negative and make ourselves happy, mystical thought teaches what Virginia Sandlin terms "sourceful awareness." Mystical thinkers honor that anything that comes into our reflective experience is mirroring something that exists inside of us, all be it, to a different degree. So our recognition of what we find unpleasant in our reflective environment is an opportunity to complete and heal that aspect in ourselves, thereby facilitating healing for the world that is our reflection.

So this mystical awareness comes with a greater sense of responsibility than thinking happy thoughts in order to get a new car.

I entitled this review "Sick As Our Secrets" not simply as a play on words, but because that axiom speaks to one of the deeper problems inherent in the philosophy advanced in the "The Secret." That phrase, popular in Twelve Step programs, is used to describe the dis-ease that arises because of the fraud, shame, and denial that are so much a part of the life of addicts and their families. As anyone who has undertaken a healing process on that level learns, the secrets that do the most damage are the ones we keep from ourselves. Try as a I might, I can't see the difference between the practices advocated in "The Secret" and plain, old-fashioned denial. To advocate that people simply stop feeling their "bad feelings" is not just glib. It's irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

I nearly fell out my chair when I heard "The Secret's" Bob Proctor advise that when you're feeling bad you should simply put on some music, because it would change your mood, and to "block out everything but that [happy] thought." Try that if you're clinically depressed. Just try it. Or if you are recovering from childhood sexual abuse. Or if you are one of our returning veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Even the joyous sounds of Steve Martin's banjo won't make you happy, and to suggest that it's that simple is insulting. And if you could block out all that pain, it would be anything but healthy.

In her appearance on "Oprah," Lisa Nichols explained how she addresses people who want to talk about their personal history or "story." Her response is "I don't want to know it, because you've used it to keep yourself where you are." So word to the wise, if you want someone to help you heal and come complete with your painful history, Lisa Nichols is probably not the appropriate facilitator for you.

The implicit hostility of this particular assumption is one I'm all too familiar with in my own field. That is to say, the idea that people are holding on to past trauma because they are "unwilling" to release it. I have even heard colleagues say of their clients, "Well they don't really want to get better." If they're showing up for help, they want help. It just may not be the kind of help that healer is willing or able to provide. And when a healer runs into the limits of his or her own paradigm, it is easier to blame the client than to question the belief system. When a client pushes your buttons, it's easier to dismiss the client than to determine why you have sourced them into your practice.

The glib, binary approach re-popularized in "The Secret" has real world consequences. I was recently emailed an article by Ross Bishop that addresses the impact on people suffering from mental or physical illness. He writes:

I received an email recently from a woman who had suffered through bi-lateral breast removal. She wrote:

Do you have any insight on why I developed this disease? It's been very difficult for me to handle what they teach in "The Secret" and all the Unity Church beliefs and that we create illness through negative thinking because I worked so hard to heal my life and have lived a life of joy for the past two years.

For several months I have been receiving calls and emails from people who are distraught over the guilt-producing messages contained in the video "The Secret." These people have been told that:

. . . you create in reality, in one way or another whatever you focus your attention on. Your life is going to be an outcome of where you predominantly place your attention.

This is a resurrection of the discredited "Law of Attraction" foisted by new age teachers, MLM organizers and get-rich-quick real estate infomercials. The idea is a simple one: what you place your attention on will manifest in reality.

Like Mr. Bishop I have been hearing from frustrated clients who aren't finding the tools to improve their lives in these ideas that are achieving a whole new level of popularity in the new age arena. And like Mr. Bishop, I see them beating themselves up for not being able to accomplish what they've been promised is so simple.

Experiences like these with the fall-out from "The Secret" make me tend to agree with Peter Birkenhead of Salon, who characterizes the slickly repackaged philosophy and Oprah's endorsement of it as venal.

Why "venality"? Because, with survivors of Auschwitz still alive, Oprah writes this about "The Secret" on her Web site, "the energy you put into the world -- both good and bad -- is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day." "Venality," because Oprah, in the age of AIDS, is advertising a book that says, "You cannot 'catch' anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought." "Venality," because Oprah, from a studio within walking distance of Chicago's notorious Cabrini Green Projects, pitches a book that says, "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts."

Worse than "The Secret's" blame-the-victim idiocy is its baldfaced bullshitting. The titular "secret" of the book is something the authors call the Law of Attraction. They maintain that the universe is governed by the principle that "like attracts like" and that our thoughts are like magnets: Positive thoughts attract positive events and negative thoughts attract negative events. Of course, magnets do exactly the opposite -- positively charged magnets attract negatively charged particles -- and the rest of "The Secret" has a similar relationship to the truth. Here it is on biblical history: "Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus were not only prosperity teachers, but also millionaires themselves, with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of." And worse than the idiocy and the bullshitting is its anti-intellectualism, because that's at the root of the other two. Here's "The Secret" on reading and, um, electricity: "When I discovered 'The Secret' I made a decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good," and, "How does it work? Nobody knows. Just like nobody knows how electricity works. I don't, do you?" And worst of all is the craven consumerist worldview at the heart of "The Secret," because it's why the book exists: "[The Secret] is like having the Universe as your catalogue. You flip through it and say, 'I'd like to have this experience and I'd like to have that product and I'd like to have a person like that.' It is you placing your order with the Universe. It's really that easy." That's from Dr. Joe Vitale, former Amway executive and contributor to "The Secret," on Oprah.com.

So scientific it is not -- nobody knows how electricity works, indeed -- but the notion I find most disturbing is that we should disconnect from the realities of the world because they don't feel good. I've even heard people go so far as to assert that by tuning out horrific events we can actually help to heal the world; accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative in our minds will reflect itself in a similar healing for the planet, the theory goes. What to say? You know, if reading newspapers is too upsetting for a person and causes discomfort, there's nothing wrong with putting them aside, to create an emotionally safe space for oneself. One would hope that within that context they would undertake the healing necessary to address the world around them again. But to confuse that elective denial for actual healing or some type of spiritual evolution is vanity. I'd love to wish the war in Iraq right into the cornfield by just not thinking about it, but it doesn't work like that. Now when we reach the point that we can look at the news and not get triggered, or thrown into anger or fear... that's an accomplishment. (Full disclosure: I haven't reached that point.)

There's a site I turn to periodically called Awaken in the Dream. The site author Paul Levy writes a great deal about spiritually conscious activism. In a recent piece, "Triggered by Evil" he takes a tack that stands in stark contrast to the idea of ignoring the news because it makes us uncomfortable. Writes Levy:

Due to the horrific events playing out on the world stage, I find myself unable to avoid the subject of “evil.” Some of my readers have objected to my use of the term “evil,” because it “triggers” something in them which makes them feel uncomfortable, and sometimes even makes them stop reading. Their reaction has made me wonder whether I should use a different word so as not to trigger them, or is activating people the whole point of my writing? When I contemplate this question, however, I am left with the feeling that there is no other word that more accurately describes what I am pointing at than “evil.” I find myself wondering, is there something being revealed to us when, for example, people are triggered by the mere mention of the word “evil?”

He goes on to explain how ignoring evil increases, rather than decreases, its power over us.

Evil animates itself, psychologically speaking, through humanity’s unconsciousness. Evil’s power is only operative in the absence of consciousness. Evil, through our psychological blind spots, plays with our perceptions so as to hide itself. In order to not be destroyed by evil we have to understand the nature of the beast we are dealing with. Like that great maxim of medicine says, “Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand.” We have to bring evil to the level of conscious awareness. To quote Jung, “…how can evil be integrated? There is only one possibility: to assimilate it, that is to say, raise it to the level of consciousness.”

Evil cannot stand to be seen, for when it is truly seen, it is not unconscious anymore, and its seeming power over us gets taken away. Just like a vampire can’t stand the light of consciousness, once we see evil, we take away its autonomy - it can no longer act itself out through us unconsciously. The energy locked up in evil then becomes available to serve what is best for the whole, which is to say it becomes transformed so as to feed and nourish life, instead of creating death.

I offer up these alternative perspectives, because I think they form a necessary counterpoint to the "tyranny of a positive attitude" advanced in "The Secret."

One of the subtler story arcs of the "The Secret" is that its co-creators appear to have gone through a period of struggle, trial, or some other journey through the shadow world. Rhonda Byrne describes her trauma from the death of her father and career crisis. Joe Vitale was homeless. Michael Beckwith was a drug dealer who had a classically shamanic "death/transformation" dream. What he described on "Oprah" could be defined as a "peak" or "mystical" experience. But it came after a long period of wallowing in muck.

The authors gloss over these experiences, using them more as cautionary tales -- things they went through before they knew the secret -- than exploring how crucial these periods surely were to their later accomplishments. But I guess if "The Secret" promised health, wealth, and relationships beyond your wildest dreams, by instructing, "First, go through a period of personal hell," it wouldn't sell very well. The assumption is, I guess, that people are picking up the book or movie because they are as ready as the authors were to come complete with their shadow journeys. But just because you are suffering and want relief from that suffering does not mean that you are done with suffering. It does not mean that you are remotely ready to just release everything that causes you pain. "The Secret" promises that you can come complete with that pain by thinking really hard. If only that were true.

Your "thoughts" are not the sum of your consciousness. You are so much bigger than your thoughts. The universe does not serve your thoughts. It cannot, because the universe does not exist outside of you. You are the universe. All of it. The good, the bad, the ugly. Our challenge as people of consciousness, beings of power, lightworkers (pick your term) is not to wish the "negative" away. It is to own and reintegrate our shadow, because to do so is to heal -- bring into wholeness -- ourselves and all the world.

"The Secret," both book and movie are available in the bookstore.

Also recommended: Nora Ephron's "The Secret: A Testimonial" on The Huffington Post. Hilarious!!!