Wesley Crusher's Dark Night of the Soul

I just watched, for the umpteenth time, Star Trek Next Generation's "Journey's End." Despite some rather sappy, idealized attempts to depict Native American culture, it's a good episode. One of the things that strikes me, not for the first time, is its depiction of Wesley Crusher's spiritual growing pains. From the Wiki:

Meanwhile, Wesley has returned from Starfleet Academy for a vacation. He's out-of-character though, snappish and depressed and he appears even slightly ill, which really worries Dr. Crusher. He is rude to La Forge in the engine room. Dr. Crusher tries to talk to her son, but initially gets nowhere.

On the planet, Wesley comes in contact with Lakanta, an Indian holy man of sorts. He guides Wesley on a journey of self-discovery, in which he talks to his long-dead father, who tells Wesley that he is destined to go down a path different from his own.

It has me contemplating the stress associated with spiritual growth; probably because I was trying to explain this very issue to a client earlier today. One of the more painful lessons I've learned is that spiritual growth is not comfortable. This is something lightworkers have had to deal with for some years now, although the worst of what I call "lightworker syndrome" seems to be abating. Many "ascension symptom" lists have been presented by psychics and channelers over the years. For my money, the best and most comprehensive is Karen Bishop's, a version of which appears on the first page of her new site. Here are a handful of her observations:

* Have you felt in recent years and months, that you were stretching far beyond what you had the capacity to endure?

* Have you had many emotional ups and downs, strange physical aches and pains, many losses in the form of friends, jobs, family, finances, and much of anything else?

. . .

* Have you had anxiety, panic, or what feels like depression?

* Do you at times have strange and disturbing nightmares that are not normal for you?

. . .

* Are your emotions out of control from time to time (sudden weeping and sadness, or are you just plain over-emotional)? Do you ever feel lost and alone?

* Do you at times feel that there is nowhere left to go that remotely fits you anymore?

These emotional and physical disruptions are certainly not confined to those of us experiencing the lightworker phenomenon that started in the late nineties/early aughts. Similar experiences and worse have been recorded for millenia among spiritual seekers. From the "Dark Night of the Soul" of St. John of the Cross to the "divine madness" of Greek philosophers, it has long been known that spiritual breakthrough is not painless. Much of this has been well documented by Stan Grof in his books Spiritual Emergency and The Stormy Search for Self. It can involve the brutal ripping apart of the ego, to make way for the workings of spirit. This can make the spiritual seeker very, very cranky.

This is where I have been forced to part ways with the "love and light" yumminess of so much of the "new age" movement and why I shun The Secret. These movements present a very unrealistic presentation of spiritual growth. Worse, there is a lot of shaming of "negative" emotions and expressions, that can cause many spiritual seekers to go into denial and avoidance patterns. It can force us to be completely inauthentic.

I've always considered Star Trek: The Next Generation to be representative of the "new age" zeitgeist of the 80s and 90s. Though the mauve and seafoam green of the sets seems dated now, the show is like a little time capsule of what was for me a very heady time. But I was struck anew at how much I could relate to Wesley Crusher's agitation in this episode. A spiritual calling can make us really bitchy... Well, it can make me really bitchy. And while we sometimes need to apologize for inappropriate outbursts and behavior, it does not do for us to be told that those outbursts are somehow counter-spiritual. Quite the contrary. As with young Wesley, the irritability and agitation that can make us really unpleasant to be around can be indicative of a deeper spiritual calling and transformation process, and sometimes it just has to run its course.

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Sharon Osbourne, Susan Boyle, and Facing Our Shadow

I have this theory that celebrity news stories pull our eyes away from news of far more important, world changing events, because celebrities are, at bottom, just people whose very human foibles we can we relate to. Despite all their money and fame, the vicissitudes of their relationships and their little human dramas reflect the best and the worst in all of us. I was reminded of this recently, when news broke of a very unfortunate incident involving Sharon Osbourne and a microphone. I have posted the video of Osbourne's interview on Sirius Radio above, but I warn you, gentle reader, that it is not for the faint of heart.

Osbourne, who is a judge on 'America's Got Talent,' slammed the 'Britain's Got Talent' superstar's looks on Sirius XM's 'The Opie & Anthony Show.' She says Boyle was "hit with the f***ing ugly stick"....as opposed to the surgeon's scalpel?

Here is a partial transcript of her expletive-laced tirade. You can watch the entire thing below.

"I like everybody to do well. Even somebody that looks like a slapped arse. God bless her. It's like, 'You go girl'. She does look like a hairy arsehole. She is a lovely lady. You just want to say 'god bless' and here's a Gillette razor."

In case you've been living in a cave and missed the high drama of Susan Boyle's emergence onto the world stage, here is a link to the video that launched a small town spinster to heady stardom. I still can't listen to her sing that song without bursting into big, wet, sloppy tears. Of course, much of her success at winning over a worldwide audience was the irony of a plain featured -- dare I say it, homely -- middle aged woman, with a voice like a bell. That an issue was to be made of her appearance was inevitable. Cue the junior high school behavior of Sharon Osbourne.

In reading the comments on Osbourne's cringeworthy performance on The Huffington Post, disapproval of her cattiness is nearly unanimous. News of her recent apology, has garned little more sympathy or forgiveness. She disgusted people. She disgusted me. Then a funny thing happened. I showed the video to my husband. He was also disgusted, but he generously caveated that she was probably seduced by the rapt attention of the two DJs who were cackling away and egging her on. He allowed that it was, to a small degree, mitigating. He got me to thinking.

One of the funny things about being in a radio soundbooth is that it is simultaneously very intimate and totally public. It is easy to forget, for moments at a time, that you are talking to more people than those with whom you are conversing; that there is a large invisible audience. Something similar happens on computer bulletin boards and blogs, where we talk to our friends, periodically oblivious to how visible those pixels are to anyone with an internet connection. Thinking of it in that way forced me to consider the dynamics playing in that soundbooth, and there is a very particular dynamic that occurs when a woman is the center of male attention.

So I began to consider the possiblity that Sharon Osbourne's behavior was somewhat understandable. Then something else happened. I heard myself talking... to my husband that is. I heard myself questioning how Osbourne could possibly be so damned lookist, when she owed her career to her role "dragging around that animated corpse of husband." And when I was done ripping into Sharon Osbourne, we turned on the Food Network hoping for "Iron Chef," but instead being tortured by a few minutes of "Dinner Impossible."

"Oh no! Why does that guy wear his hair like Ed Grimley?!" I heard myself say. It would seem that I am not, in fact, above a bit of cattiness.

Celebrities reflect the best and the worst of us. Everything does. Constantly. It cannot be otherwise because the world is our reflection. And it is always easier to point at someone else's shadow, especially when we only know them through our televisions and computers. Facing our own is much, much harder.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

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The Shadow Effect

I just watched the streaming video of Debbie Ford's The Shadow Effect and it was well worth the $8.00. I love this movie. It's kind of like the Anti-Secret. (My contempt for the willful denial espoused in The Secret is well documented.) The movie features an A-list of new age luminaries staring into the camera and talking about how important it is to acknowledge the darker emotions and negative self-image, that we tend to split off and disown, in the quest to be "positive." Ford's many books: Dark Side of the Light Chasers, Why Good People do Bad Things, The Best Year of Your Life, etc., have been near the top of my recommend list for some time. As anyone who knows me can attest to, I'm big on the shadow work, and not fond of spiritual practices that discourage us from addressing the dark side of the force.

For more information see the official website for the movie.

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Negative Thinking Gaining Ground

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I've been writing about the power of negative thinking for some time. Here's a quick roundup:

• The Power of Negative Thinking?


• Sick As Our Secrets


• Secrets and Lies


• Making the Darkness Conscious

I've been particularly hard on The Secret, because I find its espousal of denial as a spiritual practice downright dangerous. New research reported in Time adds still more credence to the idea that attempts to suppress negative thought patterns, and rescript them in positive terms, are extremely counterproductive.

The study's authors, Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick, begin with a common-sense proposition: when people hear something they don't believe, they are not only often skeptical but adhere even more strongly to their original position. A great deal of psychological research has shown this, but you need look no further than any late-night bar debate you've had with friends: when someone asserts that Sarah Palin is brilliant, or that the Yankees are the best team in baseball, or that Michael Jackson was not a freak, others not only argue the opposing position, but do so with more conviction than they actually hold. We are an argumentative species.

And so we constantly argue with ourselves. Many of us are reluctant to revise our self-judgment, especially for the better. In 1994, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a paper showing that when people get feedback that they believe is overly positive, they actually feel worse, not better. If you try to tell your dim friend that he has the potential of an Einstein, he won't think he's any smarter; he will probably just disbelieve your contradictory theory, hew more closely to his own self-assessment and, in the end, feel even dumber.

This, to me, speaks of a deeper problem than the obvious deduction of the researchers. That is, that it plays to our dualism, and actually entrenches us further in our tendency to split. One of my larger criticisms of the emphasis on "the positive" is that it rips yin from yang and actually prevents us from experiencing wholeness. It keeps us riding the see-saw. Ultimately, we need to integrate our negative, or shadow, self in order to be whole. We can't just keep splitting it off and denying it, if we want to heal our deepest wounds.

In this newest study, researchers took on the issue of low self esteem; one of many manifestations of what we call "the God-sized hole."

For the new paper, Wood, Lee and Perunovic measured 68 students on their self-esteem. The students were then asked to write down their thoughts and feelings for four minutes. Every 15 seconds during those four minutes, one randomly assigned group of the students heard a bell. When they heard it, they were supposed to tell themselves, "I am a lovable person."

Those with low self-esteem — precisely the kind of people who do not respond well to positive feedback but tend to read self-help books or attend therapy sessions encouraging positive thinking — didn't feel better after those 16 bursts of self-affirmation. In fact, their self-evaluations and moods were significantly more negative than those of the people not asked to remind themselves of their lovability.

I found something very similar, when I was experimenting with "new thought," during the heady "new age" era of the '80s. The action of reciting positive affirmations only served to make me more conscious of my internal opposition, and brought on feelings of depression. The scolding of "cancel, cancel" every time I articulated a negative thought, caused a sinking, twisting sensation, in my gut. I don't think those well-intended souls have any idea how personally invalidating it is to be constantly shamed for simply speaking your truth.

I was fortunate to be working with an excellent energy healer, who was quite grounded in the gritty realism of twelve step. She gave me tools to explore my resistance to those affirmations. I think this process is decidedly missing from a lot of the pop "new thought" vehicles like The Secret, which emphasizes the importance of thinking only positive thoughts. The problem many of us have had with that paradigm is that it's impossible, which this new research would seem to validate. In fact, those "negative thoughts" are very persistent. You can't simply shout, or repeat, them down. As I wrote here, they must listened to and acknowledged, in order to really bring about transformation and healing.

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If We're All One...

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I tuned in yesterday afternoon to Christina Pratt's new radio show. (Which I announced here.) Christina provided a wonderful introduction to both the new show, and the practice of shamanism.

One of the concepts Christina touched on was the concept of oneness. A question from a caller exposed the difficulty a lot of people have with this concept when they're really being honest with themselves. The caller asked, and I'm paraphrasing, "Does that mean I'm one with people and behaviors I really dislike?"

Short answer, yes.

This is a fundamental challenge of inculcating a belief in oneness, when we are living this experience of duality. The concept that we're all one sounds yummy and warm when we're in a loving space, like when we're on a spiritual retreat. It tends to go out the window quite suddenly, when we're confronted with the very tangible yuckiness of the world at large.

Christina addressed this question from a shamanic perspective, and since I don't think I could do her answer justice, I'd suggest getting the podcast to hear her explanation. But, I'd like to address it from the perspective of mystical thought. Having studied for many years with Cherokee Mystic, Virginia Sandlin, it is one of the fundamental issues I've had to confront, in my own thought process. The role of a tribal mystic is different from that of a shaman. As Virginia has described it, a mystic is born embodying the context of oneness. They hold that context for their community. Where most of us perceive the manifestations of this world as separate and discreet, a mystic innately perceives them as expressions of the whole. In my years of study with Virginia I had my comfortable concepts of duality and over-there-ness ground to dust. She's relentlessly, mercilessly mystical. She is a mystic, after all.

An anecdote: Some years ago when I was taking a course with Drunvalo Melchizedek, I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with what has been aptly termed the "instamacy" of spiritual gatherings. To put it simply, I'm not a hugger. This puts me distinctly at odds with the cultural climate of a lot of "new age" gatherings. To me, a full body press with another person is a rather intimate expression; one I reserve for people I feel personal affection for. That kind of affection usually develops over time. I feel perfectly comfortable hugging close friends and family, but rarely people I've just met. But, anyone who's ever been to one of these things can tell you, hugging total strangers is the norm. So, it became an issue. Drunvalo's response was to tell me that I would some day realize everyone I met was "absolutely" me. I think he was somewhat taken aback when I told him I already fully understood that, but it didn't change my views on the hugging culture a bit. While it was most certainly true that everyone in that class was "me," so is Charles Manson. I don't want to hug him either. This is what I mean when I say that oneness can feel yummy when we're in a comfortable, reasonably agreeable environment. But, being "one" with someone doesn't actually mean you have to like or trust them. To do so can be foolish; even dangerous. What it does mean is that you have to own the parts of yourself that reflect them. This is where it becomes difficult.

Accepting that people and behaviors we dislike are "one" with us, is part of what Virginia terms "sourceful awareness." Each of us is the source of our reality. That means when we observe behaviors we dislike, we look to take responsibility for them in ourselves, first and foremost. Does that mean that when I observe Charles Manson -- and quite naturally recoil -- that I'm a murderous psychopath? No. What it does mean, is that somewhere in me is something that "reflects" murderous psychopath. It could be smaller than a speck under the nail of my pinky toe, but it is there somewhere, else I would not have sourced its reflection. Addressing that as an intellectual question will ultimately bring frustration, and cause the ego to go into a threat response. I could never tell you, from an analytical place, how I reflect murderous psychopath. But, there is a technique for addressing exactly these questions. Simply ask spirit to show you what that reflection is, in yourself, and allow the images or words to appear in your mind's eye. Often, what you see, won't even make any logical sense to you. But, whatever you see, be willing to forgive and release it. Whatever it is, it is a barrier between yourself and conscious unity with the divine.

"We still attribute to the other fellow all the evil and inferior qualities that we do not like to recognize in ourselves, and therefore have to criticize and attack him, when all that has happened is that an inferior 'soul' has emigrated from one person to another. The world is still full of betes noires and scapegoats, just as it formerly teemed with witches and werewolves."

~ Carl Jung

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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.

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