There comes a time when the dark forces in your life step into the light, remove their masks, and reveal the face of the Divine Beloved. Today, the last wisps of my darkest demons dissolved into light.
I had tea with a new friend, who brought me her copy of the book Beyond Therapy, Beyond Science: A New Model for Healing the Whole Person, by Anne Wilson Schaef. The book was written by a psychotherapist who began recognizing potential failures and insidious dangers of attempting to heal psychic wounds using that paradigm. My friend listened as I told her about my experiences in that world (see Seeking Help, Getting Traumatized, Happy Crazy Eight Day, Holy Fallout, and Drug Your Emotions Away).
Being Heard and Having My Wholeness Acknowledged
The most damaging thing a person can experience, in my opinion, is the denial of their intrinsic wholeness, even in the midst of suffering… especially in the midst of suffering. To be patronized by a healer who takes ten steps back and frames their suffering as an internal defect independent of any environmental context. It is like being captured by the Nazis, sent to a concentration camp, and getting a postcard from a loved one that reads, “I’m concerned about you. I hope you can find wisdom and work on your problems. Take care.”
The domain of psychotherapy and the people in my past who have walked away with clinical repulsion while insisting that I “seek professional help” have left me feeling deeply fundamentally broken for decades. Sometimes, it is the world that is broken, not the individual. (Although, even then, there is an intrinsic wholeness.) A great deal of my life has been spent trying to prove to everyone that I am in fact strong and wise, and I am. Or trying to “tell off” the world of psychotherapy by becoming a psychologist myself and conducting research demonstrating the interactions between environment, conceptual thought, and suffering. Good grief.
My friend listened with profound empathy and understanding. I could see it in her eyes. She knew just what I was talking about and had no judgments of me. She was not afraid of my pain. In her presence, I did not need to worry that my sensitivity to life would occlude my strength and intelligence and wholeness, which meant I did not need to hide my sensitivity or make a show of my wholeness. They could coexist in the same moment, in the same expressions. For the first time in a very long time, I felt completely heard. I was awash with relief.
Eventually, I opened the book sitting next to my chai latte and read this:
I dedicate this book to my former clients (some of whom I even called patients)–all of them. I did the best I knew how to at the time, and I wish I had known more. Unfortunately, I was a “good” psychotherapist…
I dedicate this book to those clients and workshop participants on whom I used techniques, interpretations, control, and manipulation. These “tools” were what I was taught, and a part of me believed they would help. Until recently, I never recognized how “heady” they were for me, the “therapist.”
I dedicate this book to all of my clients for whom I had goals and knew what was right for them and what would heal them. I was arrogant and out of line.
I dedicate this book to all those patients in back wards of mental hospitals where “they” said nothing could be done and I accepted what “they” said…
I was operating out a series of assumptions that I was taught in my training that I now know frequently exacerbated the problem and facilitated my clients’ adjustment into an addictive, sexist, racist, self-destructing society, and I am sorry for that.
To you, my former clients, and to myself, I make amends. This book is my amends and, therefore, an important part of my recovery as a psychotherapist.
I immediately broke down crying. There was an energy coming through in the words that surpassed the page itself. I felt as though I had waited lifetimes to hear those words. Lifetimes.
Earthshaking Release
When I arrived at the cafe, I was luminous, full of quiet, inexplicable peace. When I left the cafe, I was so swelling with bliss and luminosity that I could barely walk. I actually thought I might pass out. I don’t mean that I was simply elated. I was in an altered state of consciousness that made the ordinary state seem very clouded, something like breathing for the first time, as if my awareness had been suffocating for decades and finally inhaled a deep, fresh breath of life. I made it to my car, tucked away in the parking garage, and opened the gates to the biggest emotional release of my life.
I shook and vibrated all over, the center of my body opening up like a cavern, a flashflood of energy crashing through, up and out, heaving, overcoming me. I was in rapture, a torrential orgasm pouring through my solar plexus, my heart, my throat, my head. Every inch of my whole body and soul climaxing. I have never felt such release. Siezing me! Without volition, I cried and moaned.
Since that moment, I’ve felt a deep shift in who I am. There was a knife jammed deep inside me, almost hidden so age old, and finally it fell out, and I know with utter conviction that I AM NOT BROKEN. And no one can tell me different! My wholeness is spilling out, flaunting itself to me. It seems silly at this point that I held out for so long to hear words that I should have been able to tell myself, but nevertheless, the healing has happened. And it has happened BIG.
Imagine moving through life, decade after decade, with a knife lodged deep in your core. You feel the pain of it, constant, but you grow accustomed to it, and eventually you forget about the knife and just wonder aboug the ongoing pain, which seems to be a fundamental part of you. You learn to avoid moving in ways that send pain shooting through your body, which stiffens you, but at least you are functioning. Whatever your coping mechanism, nothing changes the fact that you know, deep down, something is not right.
The buried knife, which had broken painfully through the scar tissue and made its way to the surface, completely worked its way out.
The Birthing Process
The process I’ve experienced has reminded me again and again of childbirth. Except I was giving birth to my own self. The next morning I watched videos of childbirth in a class for which I am a teaching assistant. Later I read this anecdote in Anne Schaef’s book:
“Between contractions, I quietly crossed my legs and with great calm announced that I had decided to not have this baby. No one seemed to pay much attention, but I was dead serious. I lay there with this huge belly heaving around and began–logically and rationally–to figure out how, over a period of nine months, I could reabsorb this fetus. I was willing to carry it around and take whatever time was necessary. A certain calm spread over me as I believed that I had ‘figured out’ a solution to my present dilemma. Suddenly, I had another contraction, and that contraction challenged my whole education and worldview. Figured-out solutions were grand and could be very logical and rational; they just didn’t always make sense. Also, I did not control this process. It was not just my process. I had a daughter who was living her process; we could participate in each other’s process, and if either of us tried to control the process of the other, it would be destructive–even fatal.”
I’m like, oh man, how many times have I done that when I was suffering? Crossing my legs when I just needed to breath and let the new life come.
When I read Anne’s apology to her former clients, some deep obstruction left me, and now that it’s gone, each moment is cracking open and revealing its vibrant existence. I feel nothing but this present moment, and everything that impinges on my senses is imbued with unbearable sweetness. I am giggling at everything, tickled by every little detail of every moment. God is in everything. I feel so much ecstasy that I can hardly take it. I want to dance in circles and jump up and down and flail. I’ve been suppressing it, because I’m afraid if I let it all in, if I open up to it completely, I will fall on the floor, and my whole body will vibrate away in orgasm. Everything is so solid and shimmering at the same time, shining and alive.
The Transformation of Darkness
There are many stories in various cultures of facing one’s darkest demons, welcoming them with open arms, and watching them turn from demons into the divine. The process is sacred.
Surrendering to the darkness, you are tied down, bound, vulnerable and exposed. Control passes from your hands into the one lording over you. You skirt the edges of trust and loiter along the boundaries between security and raw fear. In one moment, you can slip across that boundary and plunge into that abyss of fear, lose your sense of bodily integrity, and face death head on… not to combat it but to simply know it, to know it through and through, to receive it like a lover. You spend a long time avoiding that moment, and then it comes. You are not the one in control. You shake all over.
Then suddenly, the volume mounting, the noise reaches a crescendo, and you break the sound barrier. A massive explosion rocks you to the core, and you find yourself soaring silently and effortlessly through blissful space.
The darkness becomes light. Or rather, removes the blindfold and reveals that it was always light. Gently unties you. Lifts you up and embraces you. Worships you as a fellow divine being. The very force that evoked fear becomes the divine force that brought you into the space and bliss, into real freedom.
The fear and darkness, you discover, was just a game, a scripted play. You were never in danger, and every character who frightened you was just playing a role in a story designed to lead you into an awareness beyond itself. This is all of life.
Lyrics:
“Treasure,” by Amethystium
She cast stars ‘cross the hidden lake
shadowed from the skies
brilliantly in the twilight
silver tears of life
fathoms of hidden seas
in pearl black oblivion
I see the treasured light
from the dark deep below me
in silence she reaches out
to pull me
the darkness will cleanse my eyes
and hold me
from shattered silvery shells the dawn
bursts upon my eyes
take from me the gift of morning-
paradisaic light
swallowing fragments
of a blinding lambent beauty
gold sequined waters fall
from the skies high above me
in silence she reaches out
to pull me
the darkness will cleanse my eyes
and hold me
the darkness will cleanse my eyes
and hold me
