Insight 26

The spiritual journey for most of us is largely the quest to live in essence, to bring forth the true self. Given the barriers that we create, that can be a daunting job. It is certainly one that requires great perseverance. The path to the center requires passage through the shadow and relinquishing your hold on the mask you present to the world. The reward is the freedom to live authentically.

One of the tools we used when I went through the Fisher Hoffman process was a helpful diagram. At the center, representing essence, was a diamond--the diamond heart. Around the diamond was a circle, representing the dark fears and anger and unhappiness that we repress and are afraid actually define us. Around that was another circle, which is the personality we put together to present to the world. The only way from the outside to the essence is through the dark inner circle. Our task, in bringing forth essence, is to create so many spokes through the outer and inner circles into the diamond that eventually the essence is completely revealed and the circles don't exist in the same way any more.

The essence is the beautiful, perfect soul with which we arrived on earth as babies. It is our highest possibilities, our loving hearts, our spiritual energy. Life as humans, and especially as members of Western society, involves all kinds of rules and regulations imposed upon essence until the true self is hard to find. Few of us received the unconditional love from our parents that we deserved (nor did they). And the conditions they attached--whether it was wanting us to accept their abuse as necessary, shutting down exuberance, telling us we couldn't see auras, placing limits on possibilities--led to the darkness; the frustrated, thwarted, unhappy, angry feelings that create the inner circle, the shadow that our egos designed to protect that diamond essence.

All the things we were told about being too loud, too sensitive, too troublesome, too clumsy, too smart, too stupid, too boisterous, etc. caused us to doubt our own perfect essences and created the feeling that instead we had all these negative traits that must be kept hidden. Every admonition and rejection of our essence also left pain and grief and anger lurking in the shadows. In our culture it is usually not okay to express those feelings, so our reactions became repressed as well, part of the bad stuff that we crammed into the inner circle.

The world likes to see a happy face, to feel charm and to be nicely treated so in order to be acceptable we construct a personality around the dark center that is designed to keep people from seeing the dark side that we fear may be the true self. Most of us have at least some denial of the existence of that dark side. Some of us choose certain aspects of the shadow to acknowledge and exaggerate so that there is a tendency to self-deprecation or toward falling back on the excuse of being an acknowledged liar or a sarcastic person or a drunk, etc. to be allowed to keep getting away with the behavior. Some are so in denial about the negative aspects of their characters that they are not even conscious of the bad things they do or at least refuse to admit what they've done and are offended if anyone protests; often they even blame the other person for reacting. The need to maintain the image of an orderly, smoothly functioning facade is immense.

The outer circle can be expanded and a growing shell can be placed around it. When used with complete surrender and openness things like meditation and stress management techniques create a still space in which the patterns of the shadow begin to rise to the surface where we can deal with them. If you are resistant to seeing your dark side, however, the same tools can be used to fashion a shell of apparent serenity that actually just buries the inner circle, and thus the essence as well, even deeper within. I have seen many long-time meditators who have done just that--the serene smiles and calm veneers, if you tune in, seem like an artificial coating stretched thinly over a palpating whirl of negative thoughts and emotions.

I personally came to a great understanding of that outer shell when I first learned of this model while living with a roommate who was one of the most thoughtless and insensitive people I have ever known. I had developed a stress management workshop and began using my own tools to maintain serenity in the face of her insults and the systematic destruction of my furniture. Eventually I could see that all that serenity was just allowing me to bury very reasonable feelings of outrage and anger. She reflected a lot of things about the way some members of my family had treated me and thus the anger I buried also related to already deeply planted feelings of fury. By building a new layer around the outer circle, I successfully avoided expressing anger, something I feared greatly, and looking at the origins of that fear of anger (I met up with it later!).

That is a very easy trap in which to fall and I strongly suggest that you watch very carefully your meditation and/or relaxation or other spiritual practices to be sure you are using them with total openness to whatever arises in that quiet space and not just for building another layer of artifice.

Take that in. Draw the diagram I described at the beginning for yourself and examine it. To get to the diamond heart you have to pass through the darkness. It is the work everyone seems to want to avoid. It is the work many metaphysicians gloss over in their discussions of the spiritual journey. They often imply that all you need to do is recognize the issues and mentally release them and they are gone. That is true some of the time, especially if the issue was not too deeply held or too filled with emotional content. But in many cases the issues and associated emotions are tightly held and require a greater effort to dislodge.

My theory is that the ego, or in the Huna system I have practiced, the ku, whose job it is to protect you and keep you from pain, does it best to construct the best personality structure possible to make life work in light of the varied and often contradictory messages provided in early life by your parents and other caretakers. Ku is working to protect a tiny child who is entirely dependent upon those very large adults for survival. Everything they say or do that in any way implies to the child the threat of abuse or withholding the love and nurturing that are necessary to stay alive seems extremely dramatic and powerful. I feel that it takes some powerful and dramatic methods of release to convince the ego that you are now grown and capable and no longer need all those protective mechanisms to survive.

There are also always emotions connected to those buried beliefs and defensive mechanisms and they need to be expressed. Think about how many tears you've swallowed, how many angry words you've not spoken, how many times you've not said "ouch" when something hurt--your body has been collecting those unexpressed emotions for your whole life. Can you really imagine that pounding pillows a time or two or sobbing once or twice will release all of it? While you don't have to cry every tear or scream every word, it takes quite a bit of effort to release those old emotions. Sometimes the vehemence with which you pound a pillow or sob or yell can dislodge a lot of old stuff in one session.

Generally these things are in layers and your psyche only allows as much to surface at one time as you can take without disintegrating. That means you release a certain amount and then spend some time letting it integrate. When the time is right you will be confronted with more issues either arising from within or presenting themselves as challenges in your life circumstances; generally really a combination of those two things. And you need to seize the opportunity to go deeper, comprehend more and release more.

This work is not fun; while the feeling of liberation afterward is amazing and joyful, the process is tough. Four or five years ago during craniosacral work I was able to see some pieces of the puzzle I had not so far discovered. In the course of allowing those issues to rise to consciousness and those early feelings and emotions to surface, I found myself spending a great deal of time as an anguished, grief-stricken and sometimes angry or petulant two-year-old. When you allow yourself to really dip into that inner circle, it is as if the outer circle becomes malleable and hard to hold together. You can no longer maintain that false self that handles things coolly and according to accepted standards. I was hard on my friends, many of whom dealt with my angst-filled phone calls and e-mails heroically and with beautiful focus.

Most people in this society accept the outer, artificial, shell as the preferred mode of being. It is one of the reasons we don't like to reveal the dark side: we feel somehow wrong about showing it and not everyone can take it. It is very difficult to face the loss of people we have cared about but it does sometimes happen. The reality is that not all of those close to you are going to be able to deal with what you're going through. Not all of those close to you are going to like the changes you make as a result of this work--sometimes even positive changes disturb the balance too much for the other person to take. And you have to decide whether your own growth and transformation are important enough to you that you can face the possible loss of some relationships. In the end, realize that there is nothing wrong with either of you; you are just in different places. [In my experience, most friendships find a new plane somewhere down the road...] Ultimately you become more selective about those you allow in close--you will want people who are also doing their work and prepared to help you and be helped by you in the challenge of reaching the diamond heart.

It is crucial to face the fact that your contiued growth will change your world. Most of the change will be for the better, but some changes will not be what you hoped and some will be painful. Growth means change and you need to embrace it even though all change carries some stress.

The up side of that plunge into old issues was that my face changed dramatically, my voice became fuller and richer; and years and years of constant pain ended. Formerly painfully shy and withdrawn, I began facing the world with more confidence, beginning long-put-off projects, becoming more friendly and outgoing and trying things I would not have tried. It was worth the time spent as a bratty child.

Another important piece of this work is to learn to embrace and feel gratitude toward the dark side. Your ego served you as well as it could in creating the system of defenses and hidden memories and you were protected in many ways by those efforts. You need some defenses and those same devices that have limited you can continue to serve you if you use them consciously and with discernment. You are not trying to amputate parts of yourself but to integrate the circles and the diamond heart into one whole that flows and soars.

The journey to essence is up and down and sometimes feels endless and tiresome. Unless you achieve total enlightenment it is unlikely to be a journey that ends in this lifetime. However far you go, life will contine to have ups and downs as the inevitable cycles of life keep turning. The journey is life, though, and the rewards of keeping on are so great that eventually you realize you wouldn't stop the voyage for anything.