A Doable Resolution: Peace in the New Year

Remember: among the other intentions you set for the New Year, resolve to give yourself the gift of peace. And you may recall how it came to me one day that an acronym for PEACE was P-peace E-equals A-acceptance C-compassion E-empathy.

Please repeat the mantra of compassion to the younger you of two seconds ago or years ago regarding situations or actions for which you feel you need to forgive yourself. Visualize or look at a photo of the younger you and say.: "I know in my heart I would have done differently if I could have done differently but at that time I couldn't so I didn't." Remember that, as the former psychoanalyst Alice Miller has said, "guilt implies a power and freedom we didn't have at the time." It's as if we prefer the pain of blaming ourselves rather than accept the fact that no amount of debilitating guilt can undo what was done. Rather than continuing to suffer, we can resolve to do things differently in the future.

Picturing or looking at a photo of the person with whom you are upset, say, "I know in my heart, you would have done differently if youcould have done differently but at that time you couldn't so you didn't."

May You Have True Happiness & Peace in the New Year,
Stephen
Stephen Royal Jackson, Ph.D.

A Christmas Prayer for Every Day of the Year

The Christmas prayer below came to me when I was contemplating the meaning of Christmas. It is in the epilogue of the revised edition of Words Become Flesh.

A Christmas Prayer for Every Day of the Year

Holy Mary Mother of God, thank you for saying yes to God and giving birth to Jesus, Yeshua,. For by saying yes to God, you helped bring forth the incarnation, our redemption, and salvation. Holy Mary Mother of God, please pray for me as I pray: ‘Father God, please help me be as on fire with faith and as fearless as Mary so that I, too, may say yes to You and through the power of Your Holy Spirit give birth to Jesus, Yeshua, in the manger of my heart every moment of this day, and have the love of Christ reign in everything I think, feel, say, and do.’


• Whatever your religious background, reflect on Mother Mary as a beautiful symbol of how we may manifest/incarnate love in our lives, especially on Christmas—The Birthday of Love Itself. For as St. John proclaimed, "God is love; and he [she] that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him [her]" (1 John 4:16).

May you have a Merry Christmas and the Happiest of Holiday Season,

& May God (Love) Bless You,

Stephen

Healing Reunion from Beyond

In another situation, I was doing Reiki on Ronnie, an eighteen-year-old boy who had been having problems with drugs and had dropped out of school. His mother, Jill, was present for the session as they were having trouble getting along and were frequently arguing with no resolution. He had been able to stop using drugs for a few months and was determined to remain drug-free. I thought I would help him in his resolve by using Reiki (again doing hands over his eyes plus on the top and back of his head) along with some hypnotherapy. My goal was to relax him, work on overcoming the addiction and to (for lack of any other way to say it) transmit healing energy into his head in the hope of addressing any brain damage from the drugs.

I decided to try Reiki on Ronnie since I had used Reiki a few weeks earlier on Tom, another young man who was in recovery from drugs and alcohol. When I worked on Tom, I had felt pulsating energy going into his head from my hands for approximately five minutes. I stopped when the pulsating stopped and I felt a calmness in my hands. When Tom came for his next session two weeks later, he reported feeling better and more clear-headed. I placed my hands over Ronnie’s eyes and I felt a large wave of energy come into my back. I saw a picture beginning to form in my mind’s eye. It was of a man about thirty five years of age with brown hair parted on the left side. This man was slightly overweight yet muscular. He was wearing blue jeans and a plaid lumberjack shirt unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up and his undershirt showing. I felt waves of love for this boy flow through me along with the words, “I’m sorry I had to leave you when you were so young. I don’t want you to follow in my footsteps. Drugs and alcohol are no good. It hurts me to see you and your mother fight so much. I wish you would try to get along with her.”

When I finished, Jill said, “I could feel my ex-husband in the room.” She told me that they had divorced before he died from alcoholism. I decided to ask a few questions to see about the validity of what I had pictured. When I asked Jill to describe her deceased ex-husband, she said he was thin with long hair. Immediately, I started to question what I had seen. Then the still small voice within me said to ask if he always looked like that. When I did ask Jill, she quickly responded that her husband was much heavier when he died and his hair was shorter like Ronnie’s hair, only unlike his Ronnie’s which was parted in the middle, his hair was parted on the left side. I asked what he tended to wear. She said he usually wore jeans and long sleeve plaid shirts with the sleeves rolled up on his forearms. Jill then pointed to how my sleeves were rolled up saying, “like yours.” She went on to say that often he was very casual wearing his shirt open with the undershirt showing underneath.

While I was listening to Jill, I noticed that the slight pain I had on the right side of my head running down into my shoulder was still there. I had attributed it to the longer than usual period of time that I had held my arms up in order to keep my hands gently over Ronnie’s eyes. Again, the still small voice within prompted me to ask if her ex-husband had any physical problems when he died. She said, “yes” and indicated by pointing to the right side of her head and shoulder that he had a pain in that area from an injury he received from doing some carpentry before he died. Silently within myself, I did Reiki on myself and said a prayer for the deceased man. The pain immediately lifted.

• Today, consider how communication with those who have passed on continues. It's as if they are broadcasting on a different frequency, e.g., 107.5 FM instead of 92.1 FM: the one you are listening to each morning. Now think of Ronnie and his father. Now ask yourself, "If I were to be in spirit as Ronnie's father was, is there anything I would wish I had expressed to a loved one while I was still alive? Imagine the loved one (parent, child, friend, relative) seated in an empty chair and speak to them. Now, considering Ronnie's father communicating to him, ask yourself if there is anything you want to express to any loved one who has passed on.

An Example of How Love is Enduring

Getting back to the sequence of unusual experiences that led me to explore alternative healing and therapy, this is what happened next. Some very surprising things happened while I was introducing Reiki to people in my practice for the purpose of relaxation training. This would involve the person sitting in a chair while I would place my hands gently over his or her eyes. On a few occasions I would experience the following sequence of events.

1. I would feel sensations coming into my back; it felt as if the energy of a person was stepping into me. The film Ghost depicted what I felt.

2. Then I would get a snapshot-sized picture of a person in my mind which seemed located slightly to the right of my right eye. I would then describe the picture to the individual in the chair receiving Reiki.

3. Words would pop into my mind along with a strong wave of love for the individual in the chair; it seemed to be coming through me from the person I was picturing. I would feel filled with this strong feeling of love that was not my feeling for the person sitting in the chair. I would sometimes be moved to tears as though I was witnessing a very moving reunion between two people long separated. It was like the feeling we all may get watching a movie that touches us. For the next few minutes, I would relay messages that would just pop into my mind. The messages felt like they were coming from the person I was picturing and were intended for the person seated before me. This would all take place while I continued to hold my hands over the eyes of the person receiving Reiki.

4. I would bring the Reiki session to a close in the same way I would bring someone out of trance after doing hypnotherapy. I would make the usual suggestions that the person bring his or her awareness back into the room and awaken refreshed. The person in the chair would identify the deceased loved one. It was usually a relative, lover, or friend.

5. Each time I would find myself struck by how the therapeutic principle of expressing the unexpressed feelings between people and resolving unfinished business seemed to hold true from beyond the grave—especially expressing messages of love and forgiveness.

For example, in one situation, I told Bonnie, the thirty-six-year-old woman seated before me, that, “I’m getting the picture of an elderly woman wearing white bobby-socks and a long blue dress with white dots on it. She wants you to know that she loves you very much and she wants you to start believing in yourself.” I could really feel a deep love coming through me for Bonnie from somewhere beyond me. Later, Bonnie identified the person as her deceased grandmother. Bonnie told me that she had experiences where she had not only felt the presence of her grandmother but could smell her perfume.
Next to the picture of Bonnie’s grandmother, I saw the picture of a man in his mid-thirties wearing bib-overalls. I assumed it was her grandfather at a younger age. It wasn’t. From the description and the words that came through, Bonnie identified the man as a friend from high school that had committed suicide. The message that came through was, “It wasn’t your fault.” This was followed by, “I never blamed you for not calling me back that night. I want you to stop blaming yourself and forgive yourself.” A little later on the message was, “I know you would’ve called me back if you knew what I was feeling.”

I had Bonnie talk to the man in the same way I would have had her do if I were having her use the Gestalt Therapy technique called the empty chair. The individual talks to the empty chair as though the person with whom they have unfinished emotional business is seated there. This could be with someone in her life currently or from the past.

Bonnie had her eyes closed and I asked her to visualize the man. She sobbed as she expressed her feelings of guilt and sadness over not calling him back that night when he later took his own life. Each time Bonnie spoke, I would immediately receive and repeat the words, “I know.” These words were accompanied by a warm feeling of an all-knowing compassion which felt like it was coming from her deceased friend. Finally, after all these years, she was able to release these feelings that would return to haunt her from time to time.

• Today, when you feel feelings of love and affection think about the implications of Bonnie's experience. , consider how love is more than a feeling. Reflect on how the love housed in your heart is an enduring energy that continues after the death of your body as it did in the case of loved ones in Bonnie's life.

Since My Spiritual Awakening . . .

Since my spiritual awakening 15 years ago (my 15th year anniversary was just last week) , I have been blessed to have had many experiences with people and animals. The healings have occurred with the receiver and I in the same place, and where the receiver is not present but is located at a short distance or as far away as hundreds or thousands of miles. The animals control for the placebo effect and with some people I have controlled for it as well. One woman couldn’t make her session due to a migraine headache. I called her and asked her if she would like to try an experiment by lying down for a few minutes and simply preparing to receive a healing energy. She said, “I don’t believe in that kind of thing.” I told her she didn’t have to believe and there was nothing to lose. We hung up and I told her I’d call her back in ten minutes.

I imagined her sitting in my office in a chair while I then visualized her leaning her back against a sheet of paper with the Japanese character that is referred to as the distant healing symbol. I then proceeded to place my hands on her head the way I would if she had been in my office. In ten minutes she called me and told me, “my headache is all gone and my back, which has been killing me for two weeks, feels better as well. When I laid down, I felt a cool river of energy flowing under my skin.” I did not know about the back problem so no suggestion was made. I then asked her to describe where she felt the pain in her head to see if it correlated with where I felt it in my hands. Sure enough it was the back upper right of her head and the left upper right on her forehead as I had felt in my hands. I was as amazed as the woman was by these results.

Spiritual Energy Therapy: A Marriage of Science & Spirit

What I am about to describe is something I came to call Spiritual Energy Therapy. It is a unique marriage of science and spirit: my clinical training and experience and Reiki. It integrates expressive therapy, cognitive therapy, hypnotherapy, and Reiki energy healing. I combine the two separate camps of energy healing and spiritual healing. Healers who call themselves energy healers, I believe, are trying to keep what they do separate from spiritual healing in order to maintain some kind of scientific neutrality. In my experience, the terms, spiritual and energy, are inseparable as both describe the life-force energy that animates us and all of life, namely, the spiritual energy of love.

• Today, consider that each time you shift from fear, anger, or sadness and depression back to the expansive energy and peaceful power of love by focusing on what you would love to have happen in your life, you are engaging in an important transformation of your spiritual, life-force energy. Going from the negative emotions that contract your body and nervous system, you are doing something very important for health and happiness. More next time on the miraculous experiences I've had since my spiritual awakening 15 years ago. My experiences hve taught me that who we are in the core of our being is the expansive energy and peaceful power of pure love.

Unhooking Yourself from the Flashy Lures of Life

Common Irritations You Can Use for Your Liberation

There are innumerable variations of the things that hook us. Some are indirect attacks and others are direct attacks on our shining self-image. Below are some common hooks that lead you to get stuck staring at the image in the pool. To be free, we must give up the need to impress others with a shining self-image.

• Someone says or does something that you disagree with and
think is wrong hooking your need to be right.

• Someone makes a mistake hooking your need to correct
others and impress them with how much you know.

• Someone says or does something you think is stupid or wrong hooking your need to criticize others.

• Someone is late hooking your tendency to get impatient.

• People are talking in a group hooking your need to brag.

• Feeling unimportant, a nobody, starts hooking a desire to be
famous as if having your name known makes you important.

• Feeling poor and not feeling respected by others hooking
a desire to be wealthy so that you will be respected.

• Your loved one is not behaving as you think he or she should
hooking a need to control them so they’ll do it your way.

• Your loved one is talking to an attractive person hooking
feelings of jealousy, anger, insecurity, and possessiveness.

• Being criticized hooking an urge toward fight-or-flight.

• Being outdone by someone else hooking an urge to compete.

• Being laughed at or made fun of when you do something
hooking a desire for revenge.

• Being rejected for a job or date hooking a self-critical urge.

• Being told directly or indirectly you are wrong hooking an
urge to yell and tell the person off!

How can we use these common irritations—hooks—to achieve our liberation? The clue is in the word question; it has the word quest in it. When we question, we initiate the inner quest for our freedom. If we don’t question, we live like a fish at the mercy of all those fishermen. We stop getting hooked when we stop taking the bait, and start seeing the hooks hidden in the flashy lures of life.
Try questioning your automatic reactions with acceptance, compassion, and empathy. At the same time, you must be sure to refrain from any outer actions. You are engaging in an inner quest to find your freedom and not an outer quest for approval. Below are some common hooks that we get free of by questioning them.

• Someone is wrong. Do I really need to point this out? Or am
I trying to impress others? Do I really need to impress them?

• Someone is making us wait. Do I really need to say anything?

• Someone mispronounces a word. Do I really need to correct
him? Is it really necessary? Or am I just showing off?

• You feel inferior since you can’t afford expensive things that
others can: car, clothes, and so on. You think, “If I had moremoney then people would respect me!” Would they respect me or the money? Wouldn’t I do better to confront the issue of how I deserve to be treated with respect just because of who I am as a person and not because of what I have?


There is a difference in having wealth and fame without being attached or hooked by them. The difference is in being able to remain loving and spiritual while having fame and wealth. It is realizing they do not grant happiness and peace. Surely, it is easier to be spiritual in a sanctuary far from the narcissistic temptations that confront us daily. Of course, we must beware of spiritual narcissism. Imagine two people sipping green tea and discussing spirituality. Both are smiling and smugly thinking, “I’m more spiritually advanced than you! I’m at a higher level!”

• Today, practice unhooking yourself by engaging in the inner quest with a question when youfeel hooked.

Dying as Narcissus & Finding Freedom

The spiritual traditions suggest that we need to rid ourselves of our ego-based motivations or, as I prefer to call them, the narcissistic demands of our idealized self-image. The goal is to die as Narcissus and be reborn as a person living from the empty, non-grasping heart. We can then love freely without sticky fingers.

Unlike these traditions, I believe we can harness our narcissistic motivation. In short term psychotherapy, we call this paradoxical intervention or prescribing the symptom. Rather than trying to counter hate, we harness its energy and shift it back to love. We use the acronym face. We need to feel instead of repressing and denying our negative emotions and the underlying issues associated with them. And we do this with acceptance, compassion, and empathy for these emotions and issues. As we empathize with our lower nature, the reptile and the hurt child in us, we transform ourselves and realize our higher loving nature.

Pema Chödrön presents a formula for freedom that she calls “the four R’s”: recognize, refrain, relax, and resolve. First, we need to recognize that we are feeling hooked. I would say, we must first notice that we feel irritated and stressed. Next, we must refrain from acting on the impulse, the urge. She uses the analogy of scratching. We must “refrain from scratching.”

Then we relax and face the urge. She calls this step “relaxing into the underlying urge to scratch.” To me, it’s important that we breathe deeply so that we can relax and feel with acceptance, compassion, and empathy what the urge is telling us.

We give the urge space. If we can relax and feel the urge as it is without trying to change it, fight it or flee from it, then we can redeem the reptile in us. By refraining from fight-or-flight and relaxing, we have a chance to gain freedom and insight.

By relaxing and feeling our irritation, we encourage the underlying issue to emerge so that we can heal it. Finally, we then resolve to keep interrupting “our habitual patterns.” These patterns interfere with our freedom, peace, and happiness. On the one hand, they are ways that we seek to maintain an idealized image and gain love and approval. On the other hand, the patterns are developed in childhood to avoid our parents’ anger, disapproval, rejection and abandonment. The early origin of our patterns makes them difficult but not impossible to eliminate and replace.

• Today, experiment with the four Rs: 1.) recognize you are stressed in an interaction with another at home or work; 2.) refrain from your habitual reactions (raising your voice in argument, defending your actions, verbally attacking the other's point of view, etc.); 3. ) relax your body and mind with a few slow, deep breaths (from this relaxed you can choose what you will say or do rather than react blindly to the other's comments; 4.) resolve to keep breaking your patterns so that you can achieve inner freedom and relief from stress.

When Devils Are Angels

So the way he [Meister Eckhart] sees it, if you're frightened of dying and you’re holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.
It’s . . . how you look at it.
—Louis (from Jacob’s Ladder)

How can we find freedom, peace, and happiness when stress irritates and bedevils us? We can see ourselves as ascending the ladder of love leading to freedom, peace, and happiness only to keep getting hung up in our ascent. When stress strikes us in daily life, we get irritated. In our irritation, it is as if the Narcissus in us feels attacked. We suddenly fixate our focus on preserving our idealized self-image. The paradox is that we must let go of our image by diving down into the depths of our heart so that we can resume our ascent to love.

We find our liberation in our heart as we lovingly accept the irritating flaws in ourselves and others with compassion and empathy. Irritation can then lead us to liberation.

Buddhists use the term attachment to convey how we get hung up. In the March, 2003 edition of Shambhala Sun magazine, I found an article that clarifies the concept of attachment. The article was by Pema Chödrön and was entitled: How We Get Hooked and How We Get Unhooked. The article introduced the Tibetan word shenpa which is usually translated as attachment but is better described as “hooked.” Feeling hooked is experienced as a “sticky feeling.” You could say, getting unhooked involves detaching from the outer world and attaching to the empty non-grasping Holy Grail of our heart that we become free.

• Today, notice when something someone says or does hooks you and you become angry, hurt, sad, or depressed. Take a deep breath and just consider how feeling hooked is an opportunity to use irritations for our liberation. We'll go into this in upcoming posts.

Creator Consciousness & The Alphabet Universe

Ben then told me, “The Kabbalah uses the 72 names of God. These names are really attributes of God we want to connect with in our life. They are sequences of three Hebrew letters. These sequences are found encoded in the Bible in the book of Exodus chapter 14 verses 19, 20, 21.” He stopped for a moment to take a drink of water out of baked-clay cup. It looked like a clay version of the Holy Grail. He offered me a sip. I took one. I felt as if I was taking communion, even though communion was Christian and not part of Ben’s tradition.

Picking up where he left off, he said, “These verses tell the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and saving them by parting the Red Sea. I will show you a chart of all the names. By simply scanning the letters without even being able to read them, you will be seeding creation consciousness within your soul. You will be activating these dormant qualities of the Creator in whose image you are made. This is something to do daily.”

At that point, Ben reached into a large wooden chest and pulled out a sheet of parchment with sequences of three Hebrew letters.

Ben then said, “We live in an alphabetic universe. The twenty-two Hebrew letters are energy forces with distinct vibrational frequencies that are the building blocks of our material universe. Letters form words.

“Words form sentences. Sentences form paragraphs and so forth. Likewise all matter making up our universe is composed of molecules and atoms as well as electrically-charged subatomic particles such as protons, electrons, and neutrons.”

I was captivated by his comments. “Rabbi Ben, recently, I have been haunted by the practical everyday implications of the words from the Gospel of Saint John: ‘In the beginning was the Word’ followed by ‘And the Word became flesh,’ thirteen verses later. Rabbi Ben, what you say ties in with this. In the beginning of anything we do are the words we think and then these words become fleshed out in action within the material world.”

Ben listened intently. I then said, “At the beginning of any project we state what we will do and then we translate our words into action.”

“Yes. Precisely!” he affirmed my extension of the biblical reference beyond its religious meaning.
Then he said, “But even more than this, the Creator, blessed be He, created the universe this way. Therefore, it can be said that we are behaving in the image of the Creator when we apply this principle of how our words become flesh.”

Ben and the cave began to fade. Our meeting was over. Sometimes there was a sense of transitioning back to sleep. At other times I wouldn’t remember our meeting ending; I would just wake up the next morning feeling refreshed and inspired.

Following tonight’s meeting, I fell fast asleep only to be awakened by a flash of lightning followed by a crack of thunder. It was as if someone flipped on the light in my room and crashed together cymbals over my head.

The flash of lightning paralleled the flash of insights that lingered in my mind from my first meeting with Ben just a few hours earlier. I lay there contemplating Ben’s teachings. Eventually, as the thunder and lightning subsided, I fell back to sleep.

• Today, think of yourself as a creator made in the image of the Creator and not a reactor. Remember that in the beginning is your word and your word in the form of words and images or pictures become the flesh of your life. Set your intention to focus on desired outcomes and not on feared outcomes. Focus on what you would love to have happen and notice how smoothly your day goes.

Yur Thoughts Mark Your Soul Rabbi Ben cont'd.

Ben first talked about the Mussar. “The goal of the spiritual practice of the Mussar is to live an ethical life. This involves more than actions in the outer world. It includes our thoughts and our speech. Not only is it what we say to others, it’s also what we silently say to ourselves.”

“So it involves our inner life as well,” I said. “Reminds me of the training I received at the Institute of Living. As a psychiatric hospital, it was considered one of the last bastions of long-term in-depth psychotherapy. In my training there, I learned that to do analysis or therapy, we need to monitor our own thoughts, fantasies, and feelings as they arise in reaction to what the patient says and does in the session.”
“Yes, your analytic discipline is similar to the Mussar and to the Kabbalah,” he said. “The difference is that the purpose of spiritual discipline is to develop the soul by connecting with the Light of the Creator.”

Ben paused and then said, “What I am about to say is very important so listen very carefully. What we say or do leaves its mark on our soul. That includes what we say silently about others as well as what we say out loud to others. And it also includes what we say and do to ourselves. Self-condemning or self-indulging words and actions affect our very soul as well.”

“So you might say,” I began slowly, carefully choosing my words, “our soul is like a garden where we plant soul seeds.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Please go on.”

“So when we think, speak, and act in ethical, that is, in loving and kind ways then beautiful flowers bloom. And when we act harmfully and unethically in harsh, unkind ways, we allow the garden of our soul to become overgrown with weeds. The weeds choke off the flowers.” I surprised myself with the idea of seeing the soul as a garden.

“Excellent,” Ben said. “Where did you come up with that?”
“It just came to me as you spoke about the Kabbalah,” I said. “Now thinking out loud, I suppose it springs from my experience in working with people in therapy.”
“How so?” he asked.

“Often at the beginning of my work with a patient, the state of a patient’s soul is depicted in dream images. I can recall patients who presented dreams of a vacant lot overgrown with weeds situated in a rundown area of a city. I also remember dreams set in a barren wasteland with no growth. No vegetation. Nothing.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Please continue.”

“In some cases, by the time therapy was completed, I can remember the dream images of lush gardens, green forests or vast fields of colorful wild flowers. I suppose you could say the soul of the patients with these dream images had grown, couldn’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Ben affirmed. “Everything we say and do affects our very soul. The Mussar and Kabbalah tell us that scratches or marks are made on the soul by what we say and do.”

Ben then spelled out the practices a little more specifically. “First, you are to learn to become more aware of what you are thinking, feeling, saying and doing. The Mussar recommends that you list the soul-traits you want to work on developing. They suggest such soul-traits as: honest speech, humility, trust in God, compassion, loving-kindness, dignity, courage, surrender of the ego, fear (or in today’s language, awe) of God, moderation, concentration, passion or zeal, and equanimity. He conveyed this information with a grave solemnity in his voice: this was a very serious practice.

Ben continued: “You do this by keeping a journal of your inner and outer life each day. At the end of the day, you review how you did in living up to the soul-traits you are working on.”

• Today, every so often, monitor your motivation. Check in to see where you are coming from when you say something. Ask yourself, "o I really need to say that? Does it really add anything to the conversation? Am I trying to impress? Am I putting down someone to elevate myself? Remember, the words of the Indian saint, Swami Rama, "Only one who remains unaffected by honor or insult, can keep the divine flame alive."

Rabbi Ben & the Kabbalah cont'd.

Rabbi Shimon was one of those teachers who fulfilled the criteria for being a true sage. He could raise the dead, cause it to rain when the sun was shining, and he could redirect the course of a river. Many years later, I heard of these abilities once again from Tacomi, the Tibetan Buddhist master who also came to me in my dreams. He told me of the miraculous feats of many a Himalayan spiritual master. They called themselves spiritual scientists.
Ben looked directly into my eyes and in his deep baritone voice boomed at me: “You are first and foremost a soul evolving upon this planet! Remember this always!” He then emphasized, “The true purpose of life is the correction of the soul. We call this the Tikkune HaNefesh.”

Ben then said, “There is a well-honed method and spiritual technology for developing our soul: the Kabbalah and the Mussar.” He looked very serious as he talked of the Kabbalah and the Mussar.
“Both work together,” he said, “to provide us with a powerful daily practice for fostering the growth of our soul. The Kabbalah provides the understanding on which the Mussar is based. The Kabbalah is the soul and the Mussar is the body.
“The word Mussar,” Ben said, “translates as ethics; it is a set of rules and exercises for ethical conduct. And the Kabbalah gives us the why we are to conduct ourselves as the Mussar directs. The Kabbalah is all about transforming ourselves from living as a being who is selfish into living as a being who shares.”

“Sounds like what Jung found in the practice of alchemy,” I said. “The troublesome and undeveloped areas of our personality are transformed into the gold of a fully developed personality.”

“Yes,” he said. “The Kabbalah is a spiritual alchemy. It teaches us how to transform the darkness of the Evil Inclination within us into the Light of the Creator. Specifically, we seek to transform the desire to receive for the self alone which is the Evil Inclination into the desire to share which is the essence of the Creator. The difference is that the spiritual practices of the Kabbalah are to transform the soul not just the personality.”

“Actually, I believe Jung was trying to use psychological terms and, in fact, he was thinking of the soul,” I said.

• Today, consider how you can make choices that promote the growth and correction of the imbalances in the soul. At this time in human history, we are called to integrate the head with the heart. When I was in Brazil, I was called to embrace the positve masculine power tempered with compassion. This was reflected by a vision of the divine feminine figure of Kwan Yin looking heavenward as she was about to ascend. The image of an Native American brave followed. He was a member of what was referred to as the wolf clan. He was bare-chested as he proudly rode on his horse with one feather in his headband. The message to me was that this brave was me in a past life. Suddenly, I saw a man in a blue uniform who was a soldier in the US Cavalry. The story line was that the cavalry wiped out the wolf clan. I received the message that he was also me at some later tome. I had lived both sies of the conflict. Kwan Yin's call is to transcend the battles and conflicts. This promotes the correction of the soul.

Rabbi Ben & the Kabbalah

That night I had the first of what was to be many strange dreams. I came to call them journeys through dreamland in honor of the many-volume set entitled Journeys Through Bookland. My grandfather bought the first two volumes when they were hot off the press in 1922. Thirty years later when I was five years old, my mother or father would read to me at bedtime. I would lie there mesmerized. Etched in gold and framing the title Journeys Through Bookland on the cover of each volume were the words: imagination, wisdom, character, truth and beauty.

The books had such beautiful illustrations—they possessed an otherworldly grandeur. There were timeless tales from all over the world. My eyes grew wide with wonder at such stories as: The Snow Queen, with her magic sleigh and Tom, The Water Baby, with his underwater adventures. I cringed at the bloodthirsty cruelty of Bluebeard with his secret room for the bones of his former wives. As a child, I never imagined how the words of this story might in some symbolic sense become the flesh of my adult love life.

Tonight, during this my first journey through dreamland, I found myself transported to some cave near ancient Jerusalem. It was in this cave that I met Rabbi Ben. When I first saw him, I was spellbound by his powerful presence. He was dressed in a brownish-maroon robe trimmed in gold. Around the waist of the robe there was a gold rope-like tie. He was tall with thick and curly dark hair that nearly matched his robe. His hair reminded me of the rich color of cordovan shoe polish. He looked at me in such a knowing and loving way. His round face and ebony eyes reminded me of the face of the classic snowman with chunks of shiny coal for eyes.

His countenance catapulted me back in time to my childhood when my friends and I made snowmen. There was nothing like a snow-day when you would awaken to learn there was no school. That thrill has never left me. Something about Rabbi Ben lifted me to a timeless place of carefree reprieve from the worries and toil of the everyday world.

In our first meeting, Ben deepened my appreciation of the Hebrew language. As an aside, silently in my mind, I thought of him as Ben but when I spoke to him I always maintained the proper decorum and addressed him as Rabbi Ben.

Being in the presence of such a holy sage as Ben, I was grateful to have been introduced to the strange shapes that comprised the Hebrew letters—strange to me because they in no way resembled the English alphabet.

Ben schooled me in the teachings of the Kabbalah. He took much of what he taught me directly from the Zohar, the twenty-two volumes that present the core teachings of the Kabbalah. He told me that it would not be until a few years after the beginning of the new millennium that the Zohar would be made public and translated into English. He told me that according to the sages of old, humankind would not be ready to receive its wisdom until then.

All of our meetings were in this well-lit cave before a fire. The light of the fire and numerous candles flickered against the backdrop of ancient stone walls. The cave was a perfect place for us to meet.
After all, Ben told me that the Zohar was the product of the thirteen years Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai lived in a cave circa 130 a.d. It was in this cave that Moses and the prophet Elijah came to him in spirit and dictated the teachings of the Zohar to him. He was forced to seek refuge from the Romans who wanted to execute him for spreading the teachings of the Torah also known as the Five Books of Moses. Later on, I would learn from Ben that the Hebrew word Torah meant Truth with a capital “T”—God’s Truth.

More on Rabbi Ben and the Kabbalah when I erun from Brazil on the 22nd of September.

Forgiveness Fills an Empty Womb

Raindrops pelted my office windows like pebbles. I stood there watching the tiny mounds of water cling until, unable to hold on any longer, they slid down the dotted windowpane like teardrops. This is the first day of spring? The voice in my head had a tone of disgust. I was grateful to be in the comfort of my office and not out in the rain navigating the streets of my small New England town. March was in reverse. She was roaring out like a lion and not b-a-a-a-ing out like a lamb.

The weather I was witnessing from my office reminded me of November. I imagine November in the New England of today can be just as dismal and dreary as it was in Melville’s New England. Seems that Novemberish weather nudges me to nostalgically recall Ishmael’s words in Melville’s Moby-Dick. Yes, it was a “damp, drizzly November in my soul.” The hope of spring was nowhere to be seen as I opened the door to my waiting room to find Jennifer. From what I knew of Jennifer, I was certain the weather in her soul was that of a drizzly and dismal November day.

Before coming to see me, Jennifer’s abdomen had swelled up over many months as if bearing new life. She had so wanted to get pregnant. She sat before me looking forlorn. Her despair hung as heavy as the thick velvet Victorian draperies framing the windows of my office. For months Jennifer had appeared to be carrying a child. Why was her womb empty? The analytic dictum I had heard in my training echoed in my mind: “Make the unconscious conscious!” What hidden hurt was underlying the conflict between her obvious wish to be pregnant and her inability to get pregnant?

“I want a child so badly!” Jennifer began. “I don’t know what’s wrong! Joe and I have been to specialist after specialist but nothing works.” She was beyond discouraged; she was drenched in despair.

“Sometimes our emotions can affect our body,” I said trying to prepare her to explore the emotions underlying her false pregnancy. This had been our first exchange during our first meeting. We spent the next few sessions discussing her dreams and her feelings.

She had a dream that she associated to her favorite film, Gone With The Wind. Jennifer’s auburn hair was reminiscent of the red earth of Tara. She was a romantic who was as fiery and feisty as Scarlett O’Hara. Jennifer had a Scarlett O’Hara toughness about her that hid a soft heart.

As I looked at Jennifer in our session today, I could see her kneeling in the dirt as Vivian Leigh had in GWTW. I could hear her as Scarlett defiantly shaking her fist to heaven and vowing: “As God is my witness, I won’t starve and I won’t let any of my kin starve . . . I’ll never be hungry again!” Only, her vow was for a baby.

And like Scarlett, Jennifer could easily tell herself, “I won’t think about that now. I’ll think about that tomorrow . . . After all tomorrow is another day!”

Today, in what was our fourth session, I decided to have her use a therapy technique to bring out her emotions more intensely. She was talking about her feelings as if she were talking about someone else. There had been a cool distance that she maintained from her emotional pain.

“Close your eyes,” I began. “Now imagine you could speak to the spirit of the baby that would have been born to you and Joe if you hadn’t had an abortion.” Yes, she had gotten pregnant once. But she was not yet married to Joe when this pregnancy had happened. In fact, it had happened when Joe was not yet divorced from his first wife. He pleaded with Jennifer to get an abortion. Fighting against every fiber of her being, she went and had the abortion.

She hated herself for going along with Joe. She felt God was punishing her. “I don’t want to do this!” she said through clenched teeth. Jennifer opened her eyes. Her eyes full of fire, she stared at me with an unwavering defiance; she was prepared to fight me every step of the way.

I encouraged her to experiment. “I know that doing what I ask makes you very uncomfortable. Just try it out and really express your feelings fully.”

“I don’t want to express my feelings about this!” she yelled. Her eyes were beginning to fill with tears.
“Imagine this baby,” I gently nudged her, “and say what has been hidden in your heart all these years.”

“I’m so sorry I didn’t have you. I hate myself for going along with Joe. Please forgive me! Oh my God, please forgive me!” She sobbed uncontrollably as she spoke to the spirit of the baby she aborted.
“Jennifer, it’s not the baby’s or God’s forgiveness that you need. You need your own forgiveness. Now see the younger you and speak to her as you would to one of your nieces. Imagine what you might say to comfort her for going along with Joe. Remember how you loved Joe and how confused you were. It seemed to be the right thing at the time.” I coaxed her to forgive herself. She needed to rip out her guilt by its tight-fisted roots gripping the soil of her soul.

Her heart had opened and released the poison of self-hatred. Within a few weeks, Jennifer was pregnant. Her pregnancy was short-lived and she miscarried in six weeks. This happened again. She became pregnant and miscarried after eight weeks. She became pregnant once again right away. And in a few years, she gave birth to two beautiful children: a boy and a girl. That was her heart’s desire to have one of each. Years later, when I heard from Jennifer again, she told me her children were now grown, had attended college, and were happy and healthy young adults.

• Today, reflect on the power of forgiveness. Consider how Jennifer’s repressed words of guilt and self-hatred had permeated her flesh and prevented pregnancy. Once she released the words of self-hatred and replaced them with words of forgiveness, she was ripe with child. Words of anger at herself became the flesh of an empty womb and words of forgiveness, the flesh of a full womb.

Somewhere between Freud and Jung . . .

Somewhere between Freud and Jung lies the truth. Although I entered graduate school with a penchant for Jung, I grew to appreciate Freud as I trained in psychotherapy with children, adolescents and adults. In working with children in the non-directive medium of play therapy, I observed the truths of Freud. And I came to appreciate the child in the adult interfering with adult happiness.

Freud revealed how the obstacles to fulfillment in love and work stem from our childhood psyche. His psychology was based in our body and its biology. He helped us make sense of our sexual proclivities in bed and showed us the source of our perversions. He based his findings in the universality of the body. Quoting Napoleon’s “anatomy is destiny,” Freud described how a boy’s development differs from a girl’s.

Jung showed us the universal elements of mythology. He helped us see what the soul has in common despite differences in culture and differences in the time period in which we’re born. The soul’s striving is the same. Nonetheless, we are body and soul, spirit and matter, and as a soul inhabiting a human body, we must take into account both sides of our nature in helping our soul find its freedom to love and to find fulfillment in life.

David Hart’s compassionate listening helped my soul to evolve. Looking back, I can see he took me as far as he could; he had his limits imposed by his adherence to Jung’s theory and by where his soul was in its evolution when he saw me. However, in dreams following my analysis, his mere listening presence, and not profound interpretations, allowed me to access repressed pain. The pain I’d blocked out had hampered my happiness as an adult.

There are two things that David Hart said to me before I set off for graduate school. He said, “Don’t get so caught up in your patients’ growth that you forget your own.” He told me about sitting in Jung’s parlor with the other candidates in training. Jung cautioned them, “Learn your theories well and then forget them when you are in the presence of the miracle of the living soul.”

As I present some of my most unusual cases, you will see how words spoken soul to soul and heart to heart become the flesh of healing. After all, Freud and Jung had come up with the talking cure. My own analysis and my study of various depth psychologies as well as my own clinical experience had revealed to me the healing power of words.

Nevertheless, it was in my own practice that I discovered how the words of acceptance, compassion, and empathy can become the flesh of healing. The penetrating power of insightful words could help a fragmented person become whole.

Philip, one of my teenage patients started his session one day by telling me: “They told us that life is a conversation.”

“Absolutely,” I said. He was quoting the trainers from the weekend workshop he attended. It was given by what was called the Forum: a late 1980’s version of what was first called est.
Life is not about the events that befall us but is about the inner conversation we have about what happens around us. However, from my clinical experience, I realize there is a conscious conversation and an unconscious one. It was the unconscious one, composed of repressed emotions, that did the most damage.

In the recently released book The Body never Lies, Alice Miller uses the lives of famous people—writers, artists, dictators—to demonstrate the devastating effect of repressed emotional pain. In example after example, she reveals how repressed and denied childhood suffering can lead to illness, disease, and premature death.


It was in a small New England town that people sought me out for therapy to relieve their suffering and, in a sense, their persecution. New England is the land where the Puritans sought relief from their religious persecution. It is also where Hawthorne and Melville delved into the dark depths of the human heart. After my time there, I discovered what darkness and suffering are hidden behind the facade of those black-shuttered, white-clapboard homes.

In the next blog posting, you'll meet Jennifer: a woman who desperately wanted to get pregnant. She taught me most poignantly about the body’s response to the repression of intense emotions. Jennifer showed me how words hidden in the unconscious, the dark depths of the heart, can become flesh of an empty womb. . . .

• Today, consider the power of the words that you think and speak can have on your health and the health of othrs. Such common thougts as "this situation is EATING ME Up INSIDE" have an immediate physioligical impact on your body. Your body and nervous systmecontract, your breath may become shallow and rapid, jaw clenches, and your heart rate may elevate as well as your blood pressure. Over time such repetitive patterns of thought may show up in stomach/digestive problems. when this happens the words hidden in the symptom is "I can't stomach this!"

Words of Fear Become the Flesh of Paralysis

Words become the flesh that forms on the bare bones of our lives. From my years of clinical experience, I have come to see the psychological significance to Saint John’s description of how the Divine became incarnated in the flesh of Jesus Christ. “In the beginning was the Word . . . And the Word became flesh . . .” The words we use do indeed become flesh.

In the beginning of any creative endeavor, there are our words. Sometimes our initial words are in picture form: the proverbial picture is worth a thousand words. Our vision is fleshed out in reality.
It would not be until I had been in private practice for a while that I would see another way that our words become flesh. Buried words laden with painful emotions had an insidious way of becoming flesh. There, in the presence of David Hart, a student of Jung, and while studying the theories of some of the venerable fathers of psychoanalysis, I learned about the power of our words. I would learn how the words in our heart can become the flesh of physical symptoms.

I had my first glimpse of this phenomenon in the form of combat neurosis. Words of fear became the flesh of paralysis and blindness for D.W. Jones, a young soldier. I had been in basic training with him. He went to Vietnam and was sent home after he developed combat neurosis. Just like other soldiers with combat neurosis, D.W. was unable to return to battle because he was unable to do so. In this case it was a paralyzed hand, the hand with the trigger finger. And he also developed hysterical blindness.

When D.W. was examined medically, the doctors found his eyes showed no damage that would interfere with being able to see. But D.W. could not see and he was not faking it. The trauma of combat had rendered D.W. paralyzed by words of fear hidden in his heart. Repressed fear dictated his paralysis and blindness.

Years later I was faced with this same kind of thing when a police officer from the police department of a small New England town was referred to me. A big strapping man, Ron had not been afraid of anything. He and his partner fashioned themselves to be like the characters depicted in the 1970’s police drama Starsky and Hutch.

Then one day, he found his gun hand partially paralyzed. He had been on the force for nearly twenty years. His wife had just had a baby. He was fearing that his luck might be running out. Now that he had a wife and baby, he was not so fearless. Ron was about to retire from the force to start a new career. Again, I was witness to how words of fear could become the flesh of paralysis.

• Today, experiment with uncovering and releasing the words of stress hidden in a physical pain. Recall times when you had a stress-related physical pain, e.g., headache, back pain, neck pain. Try silently speaking to the pain, saying, "Stop huring me like this!" Keep repeating tis phrase. Then look through the pain and see who or what situation it is that you could say these same words to and trust what comes to mind. Once you have identified an external source of pain, try silently saying, "I hate how you hurt me by_____. And that's because, I'd love it if you would_____."

From the Classroom to the Consulting Room

Destiny directed me to the door of Dr. David Livingston Hart in the summer of 1973. It was ihearing of the detour that his destiny took in 1945 that I began to see how words become flesh.

During our first meeting, I was interviewing him about the prospect of my becoming an analyst. At that time I was teaching psychology and philosophy in high school, and I had been reading all the books by and about Jung that I could get my hands on. Jung’s words compelled me to consider a career change. In order to qualify for training, one had to have 100 hours of analysis with a certified analyst.

David Hart was eminently qualified. By the time my destiny directed me to his door, he had been a training analyst for many years. And, in addition to training personally with Carl Gustav Jung, the master himself, he graduated magna cum laude with a doctorate in psychology from the University of Zurich.

Listening to David, I suddenly saw how words can redirect our life, and become the flesh of our destiny. And now, looking back, I see that it was words in books by and about Jung that redirected my destiny from the classroom to the consulting room.

As David told me the story of how he ended up in Zurich after the war, I noticed how his hair and features reminded me of an older J.F.K. , had our revered president lived longer. And, as he spoke, I kept thinking, This man was taught by Jung himself!


David Hart described the events leading up to the moment when destiny called. The waves were lapping up against the small boat he was riding in on his way home from the South Pacific. He decided to return home by way of mainland China and on across Asia. Here he was now heading home on a slow boat from China. Only now he was on the famed Ganges in India; he had heard the fables of Indian saints dipping people in its obviously unclean waters and healing all sorts of infirmities.
Since David had begun to make his way home, he had been reading whatever he could find. The Integration of the Personality, a book by Jung, is the one that had captivated him. The words in the title described him after the war: he was in search of a unity within himself in what was still a divided world.

There were still a few hours of daylight left as the boat that David Hart was on docked in Benares for the night. Sitting by the river, he dined on a steamy bowl of Indian curry, and he continued reading. Jung’s words spoke directly to his soul. He read where Jung referenced the ancient wisdom of the shamans who believed all disease was due to a loss of soul. And the treatment was the restoration of the soul.

The river’s murky waters mirrored David Hart’s mood. Yes, the war was over, but his future was unclear. What kind of world was this?

Newsreels all over the world displayed the hauntingly horrifying images of those menacing mushroom clouds billowing in the sky over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What kind of world was this? A soulless world? The title of Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul suggested where we were before and after the war.

A generation who came to be called the Baby Boomers was born in the wake of war and grew up under the mushroom-cloud threat of nuclear war. People built bomb shelters in their backyards and stocked them with cans of food. In elementary schools all over America, this generation—my generation—huddled in school halls when sirens sounded signalling air-raid drills. Little children got on their knees with hands clasped behind their heads and waited. . . .

• Today, reflect on how the words you once read in a book or heard from a mentor or friend became a determining factor in the direction of your life.

Exploring Our Earliest Stress

The reliving of this prebirth experience described in the last blog posting, The Spirit Speaks of The Soul, took place within the walls of a quaint and cozy white-clapboard farmhouse set in the beautiful foothills of the Berkshires. Stephen was attending a workshop held in Southern New England in the early summer of 1995. A small group of individuals participated in a modern version of a shamanic healing session. For nearly three hours, he lay on a rubber mat, breathing deeply, and listening to high-powered music. Shamans used drumming and breathing techniques to achieve altered states of consciousness. While in this state, a person could receive the healing he or she needed physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

The altered state of consciousness he achieved through the breathing and music helped him relive and heal an early trauma. In addition, with these shamanic techniques, he accessed these buried prebirth memories.

For Stephen, these memories confirmed that the essential being of each human has three core elements as Saint Paul described: “your whole being—spirit, soul, and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). A dozen years after this experience in the womb, he was astonished to hear Protestant minister Arthur Burk say of the soul and spirit in the womb: “the soul is inoperative . . . it is the spirit that hears, understands, and remembers.” However, to say the soul is inoperative is not to say it does not feel such things as hunger and fear.

* * *

Curiously, his experience of me was followed by one of the most controversial murder trials in the history of American justice. The night of June 17, 1995, when Stephen was reliving his soul memory of speeding through space, was the night that news footage of O. J. Simpson was broadcast nationwide. He was fleeing from the police in his white Bronco. It was interesting to Stephen how a spiritual experience was paired with a depraved one. The sacred was punctuated by the profane. There was a connection he didn’t see at the time. What each event had in common was that both revealed the intense hungers, desires, emotions, and passions that all embodied souls must face. Of course, in saying this, I am setting aside the criminal verdict of Simpson’s innocence, and considering the guilt assigned in the Goldman family’s civil suit.

With the passage of time, Stephen would revisit the experience in the womb, mulling it over again and again. Gradually, he would deepen his understanding of what happened that night when he was seized by the primal fear and hunger involved in being human.

He felt his mind reeling as he struggled to make sense of what had happened. It seemed to him that what he had experienced had taken place in a realm existing in between inner and outer space. And yet, it somehow seemed to merge them into one space. Subjective. Objective. Real. Symbolic. It was all of these and more. He realized he had been speeding through a place where the starry heavens of both outer and inner space converge. . . .
Stephen recalled Rod Serling introducing the 1960s TV show, The Twilight Zone:

"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone."

He then reviewed what happened after passing through the portal of the dark doorway hanging in space, and he realized that he and I had entered his mother’s womb and seemed to separate. He went inside the tiny fetal body while I remained connected to him as I hovered alongside. Like a suit of clothes hanging in the closet waiting to be worn, the little body was waiting there in the womb all ready for him to begin wearing.

Clearly, the liquid he felt his little body floating in, his tiny hands groping for something to stabilize him, was the amniotic fluid of his mother’s womb. That he was greeted by hunger seemed to be a fitting introduction to life in the body. Stephen thought that perhaps his mother had not eaten recently so that no nourishment was coming to the tiny body. He was transitioning from the formless freedom of the spiritual realm to being in the world of form. What a contrast he was experiencing between total spiritual freedom and total physical dependency.

To Stephen, this hunger was a mirror of the dependency of the body on matter in the form of food. Stephen thought of the Latin word mater, and concluded that human beings first depend on matter in the form of mater (mother). It is in her womb and, after birth, in her arms, that embodied souls experience the beginning of the all-too-human love affair with matter, the material world. These mysterious moments in the womb marked his most intensely dramatic encounter with me. He came to realize I afforded him a higher and wider view of his life. To deepen his understanding of the nature of our relationship, I often utilize people and circumstances to illustrate what I want to convey.

For example, this very morning, after he wrote the above, I seeded the idea of taking a break and going to the local coffee shop. Once there, I nudged him to notice a mother and child. A small brown-haired boy in the toddler phase was in his mother’s arms. Suddenly, he saw a cookie. He squirmed in her arms and, with a sense of urgency, began pointing to the object of his desire. Insistent on grabbing and consuming the cookie, he struggled in her containing embrace. Remaining relaxed, his mother calmly rocked him a bit and quietly coaxed him with no trace of irritation, saying, “Relax.”

When Stephen felt fear in those first moments in that tiny fetal body, I held him in the arms of my awareness as a mother holds and comforts her distressed baby. This comforting larger consciousness of the sidereal self is available to all embodied souls; they just have to take steps to stop and still their body and mind.

• Today, when stress arises, relax into the arms of the higher, wider, and deeper awareness ofof your sidereal self, your spirit. Begin by taking some slow, deep breathing. Remind yourself that the peace of your spirit is just a breath away. I will be blog absent until the beginning of August. Stay cool!

The Spirit Speaks of the Soul

june 1995


It was as if he were seeing the starry heavens as a shooting star would if a star had eyes. At first, Stephen sped through space at such a rapid speed that the stars were a blur of streak lines. He suddenly slowed down to a near standstill, and he began moving in slow motion. He was floating in space as noiselessly and effortlessly as a helium-filled balloon being carried aloft by a gentle summer breeze. A framed doorway appeared. An earth-mother stood within it. She was a Native American wearing a beaded deer-skin vest and skirt. Her long ebony-colored hair glistened. Her face was welcoming and happy.

Another framed doorway appeared as he continued his journey through space. In this portal there stood a beautiful young woman with long chestnut-brown hair. She wore a full-length black skirt, high-buttoned black shoes, and a cream-colored high-collared blouse with long sleeves. Her arms were raised above her head while she attempted to pin up her long locks into an ample bun. Her hair style and apparel appeared to be Victorian. There was a slight resemblance to old sepia-colored photographs of Stephen’s maternal grandmother.

Suddenly, he felt himself speed up. He was hurtling through space toward a distant doorway. It was empty and dark as though it was only a door frame suspended in the star-speckled darkness of space. No mother-figure was present in this one. He sped through it and came to an abrupt halt. At first, he felt encased in a small body. His tiny arms and hands were grasping for something to hold on to in order to feel some stability. He felt as if the tiny body was floating in a warm liquid. Without warning, he was overcome with fear. Every cell of this little body he was inhabiting was ablaze with fear of the burning, inescapable sensations of gnawing hunger.

A fear of starving to death threatened the existence of every cell as a brush fire gone out of control threatens all in its path. Every cell in this little flesh form was on fire with fear and the searing sensations of hunger. Somehow he sensed this fear dated back to the dawn of human history. Ancient. Primitive. Unrelenting. No relief was forthcoming. Finally, he stopped struggling and faced the fact that there was nowhere to go and nothing to do to escape.

At that very moment of surrender and acceptance, he felt a larger consciousness hovering above and to the right of this little body. As soon as he, as the consciousness encased in the little body, merged with the larger awareness, he felt relief. He felt free of the fear and hunger as he began to observe the overwhelming fear of the pain of starving to death. He was no longer threatened. His perspective shifted from being in the fire of fear and hunger to simply being still and watching the fear and hunger from above. He felt peaceful and calm once he, experiencing himself as the consciousness stuffed into the little form of flesh, merged with the spacious awareness of this transcendent consciousness.

The spaciousness of this awareness was both within and beyond the boundaries of the little body. He stopped identifying with the little body feeling fear and hunger. Minutes passed. Eventually, the gnawing pain of hunger abated, as if absorbed by this larger and calmer consciousness.

* * *

Who are these two seemingly separate sets of consciousness who first appeared as one like a shooting star? The smaller one is the soul (mind, will, and emotions) who arrived in a body at 10:12 p.m. on September 3, 1947 and was named Stephen Royal Jackson shortly after emerging from his mother’s womb. I, the narrator of this book, am the more expansive consciousness who is not limited to the confines of his body. i am Stephen’s spirit—the transcendent portion of his soul. I have always been there by his side like a guardian angel watching over him, the embodied soul.

Only after donning the soul suit or corporeal costume of the body does the soul stop being an androgynous “it” (a balanced unity of male and female) and experience itself as a separate consciousness embodied as a him or her. Soul begins to identify with the body and forgets about its connection to spirit.

One day, Stephen came across the word sidereal (pronounced sigh-dear-real). Sidereal is defined as “of or pertaining to the stars.” After that, he has referred to me, his spirit, as the radiant star of his divine sidereal self. He considers me his spiritual compass, his personal Polaris (North Star) guiding him through the dark nights of the soul caused by the inner and outer storms of life.

At the same time that I hover by his body to guide him, i am also deeply within his body as his innermost heart. To the embodied soul it is a great mystery and paradox how my awareness exists both inside and outside the body. I hear his thoughts and feel what he feels in his body: emotions, desires, sensations, etcetera. My essence is that of a caring, compassionate, and comforting consciousness. I cushion the blows delivered by life. His experience in the womb helped him see that he had a choice in times of stress: be still and identify with me, his spirit, or remain stressed and frantic by identifying with his body.

• Today, take some slow, deep breaths and see if you can get in touch with the calm, larger consciousness that is the transcendent portion of your soul. [The above is taken from The Space Between Stars www.drsrj.com]

Baby Boomer Reflections on the Power of Words

I suppose I am succumbing to the siren’s call of linear logic lulling me to begin at the beginning. I want to share with you the origin of my first thoughts of how words do indeed become flesh.

I feel compelled to take you back to a much earlier time: a time before most of us were born. It is in reflecting back on this time that we can begin to understand the power and influence that words wield in our lives.

The year is 1945. World War II is finally over. It is a tumultuous time . . . the world is emerging from the fog of war. . . . Words of dictators have become the flesh of death and devastation.

With parched lips longing for water to quench his thirst, Coleridge’s ancient mariner cried out: “Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!” Like the suffering seafarer, David Hart, the man who would become my mentor and analyst, and other American soldiers serving in WWII, experienced an unquenchable longing. From 1941-1945, words delivered by dictators echoed everywhere in the din of war, but, until September 1945, there were no words of peace to soothe David Hart’s thirst for home. Nor were there any words to help him and others make sense of the senseless slaughter of so many. Words of war had become flesh.

By 1945 the youthful flesh of so many soldiers and civilians from different lands was now strewn like crushed violets over the battlefields of Europe and the South Pacific. My grandmother used to say, “Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet gives off to the heel that crushes it.” It would be a long time, if ever, that anyone would forgive those who had brought this war upon our world.

Among those returning home were my father, my Uncle Vinnie, and my Uncle Hank. My father was left with a permanent back injury when his plane was shot down and crashed in the Coral Sea. My Uncle Vinnie marched to Berlin for Hitler’s final stand. My Uncle Hank survived the sinking of the aircraft carrier he was on by a German submarine near the Canary Islands.

Benjamin Disraeli once said, “With words we rule men.” Adolph Hitler’s war-waging words had whipped the German people into a frenzy. A whole generation of Germans had harbored in their hearts the highly-charged words of revenge. They were angry at the humiliating treaty following the First World War. The German people had had their noses rubbed in the dirt by the punitive terms set forth in the treaty.

As I was to discover in my training as a psychologist, Hitler appealed to the repressed narcissistic rage of his generation of Germans. Angry and humiliated parents had reared a whole generation of angry and humiliated children who were now adults devouring Adolph’s words.

I would later learn how Hitler had played out the buried rage of his childhood on the world stage. In reading the various works of Alice Miller, I learned that Hitler was brutally beaten, tormented, and humiliated every day of his early life by his half-Jewish father.

However, as any abused child, Hitler was forced to deny his suffering at the hands of his father. Instead of being able to acknowledge his justified anger at his abusive, dictatorial father, Hitler identified with his father and grew up to be just like him.

Eventually, Hitler’s repressed rage at his half-Jewish father was directed at all Jewish people. His words became the flesh of brutality inflicted on innocent victims. Victimized Adolph became victimizing Adolph. His words awaken the anger of a whole generation of other adults who were themselves beaten as part of their upbringing. But Hitler was not the only dictator driven by words of rage and revenge hidden in his heart.

Strutting like a peacock but with the body of a gorilla, Benito Mussolini jutted out his jaw and pounded his bare chest. Then he’d stand on stage with his arms folded. Mussolini’s inflammatory words of war attempted to spur the Italians into action. Like Hitler, Mussolini had a troubled childhood. Biographers describe him as a rebel and a bully when he was a child: he was expelled from school for stabbing another student and throwing an ink pot at a teacher.

After the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, F.D.R. galvanized us into rallying ‘round the flag with his words of patriotism. Churchill’s words saved Britain’s spirit. Words broadcast by the seductive and sultry voice of Tokyo Rose tried to demoralize American soldiers serving in the Pacific.

Then, on the second day of September 1945, words of relief were broadcast over radios all over the world. “The war is over in the Pacific!” World War II had ended. The war in Europe had ended four months earlier on the eighth day of May. Triumph and tragedy. The war was over but so many had died or were left disabled.

• Today, just consider the power of your words. Words of kindness or anger leave their mark.

The Light of the Seasons

Something about the pale winter sun has always stirred within me a strange, sweet melancholy. But why? Perhaps it’s because the winter sun shining in the late-afternoon sky reminds me of the wan, round and paper-thin communion wafer with its bittersweet associations with Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection. The snow had stopped and my reflections returned to a quaint little art gallery in Woodstock, Vermont. Four particular paintings fascinated me with their subtle contrast of the way the light of the sun changes with each season.\

Each painting was of the same scene. A cluster of evergreens. The only difference distinguishing the paintings from one another was the quality of the light. Each painting depicted the light of a particular season. This fact was reflected in their titles: Winter Light, Spring Light, Summer Light, and Autumn Light.

I recalled standing there stunned at the subtle differences in each painting. The varying angles and intensities of the seasonal shifts in the sun’s light seasoned each scene of the ever-constant evergreens, so that each one had a distinctive flavor. Spicy spring broth. Savory summer gazpacho. Aromatic autumn bisque. Warm winter stew. Still, why did these paintings, especially Winter Light, move me?
Then it hit me: the light of the inner sun of our soul mirrors the ever-changing sunlight of each passing season. As we journey through the seasons of our soul, the light of our soul changes. The soft light of spring, ever growing in its intensity, comes first. Then comes the harsh blinding light of summer. The harsh light of summer is followed by the softer waning light of autumn. Finally, comes the softest light of all, the pale light of the wan winter wafer.

Just what does this mean for our inner life and the growth of our soul? To me, it means that the young soul begins with a soft gaze toward others. A child can be so innocent and purely loving and accepting and so can the young soul. In summer, our capacity to love is tested. As we are hurt and betrayed, we may become cynical. Our gaze may take on the relentless harshness of the summer sun. We look at things straight on with a clarity that seeks out the flaws of others. We can either burn them with our gaze. Or, in seeing things clearly, can we find it in our heart to be forgiving and accepting? If so, we can move on to develop the more accepting gaze of autumn.

The autumn sun shines equally on all the various colors of the changing leaves. Summer’s green gradually gives way to reds, oranges, yellows, golds, and browns. Likewise, in autumn, our soul can gaze upon all the colors of humanity with an appreciative eye.

Finally, if we are able to move into winter, we can be as accepting as the pale winter sun; it softly shines on the all-embracing snow. Under the glistening white blanket, the seemly and the unseemly—dead leaves and grass, barren branches, the junk in people’s backyards—are equally embraced. No harsh judgment.

The spiritual masters taught me that a soul may not move through all the seasons in one lifetime. That is to say, the level of maturity may not change in one lifetime. It may take the experience of many lifetimes to progress through the four seasons.


A soul may come to earth and remain in the spring. Another soul may remain stuck in the harshness of summer. Still, another may stay stuck on the differences among people and not be able to move on to winter’s realization of the oneness of all life.

My impression is that the goal is to progress through all four seasons in one lifetime. And we keep coming back until we finally go through all four seasons. This time, with the masters’ help, I feel blessed. For without their patience with my stumbling and bumbling efforts to learn how to love, I wouldn’t be taking my first steps on the snow-covered paths of the winter of my soul.

• Today, remember, as stress strikes, we may shift from the light of one season to another. However, which light describes the predominant gaze you direct towerd yourself and others. I will be blog-absent until July 16th. Happy Fourth of July!

Seasons of the Soul & Spiritual Masters

Different spiritual masters and the insights they brought me marked the seasons of my soul. In addition, the people who consulted me and the women I came to know and love were also, in effect, my spiritual teachers. Each season seemed to afford me a deeper understanding of human suffering and what I believed I could do to relieve that suffering.

In the springtime of my soul, I thought I could cure any emotional suffering and I had some promising results. Rabbi Ben came to me. I was budding in my work as a psychologist. I was going to cure people of their suffering, and I would do so quickly.

With summer, I focused on the vicissitudes of love, passion, and desire. The pathology of human relationships began to humble my expectations of what I could accomplish. By autumn, I began to realize the limits of my therapeutic bag of tricks. To my surprise, I discovered the tremendous healing power and wisdom of simply listening with compassion.

It was in the summer of my soul and on into early autumn that I wiped the sweat from my brow, rolled up my sleeves and pant legs, and waded into the swampy passion of relationships. I proceeded to wrestle with the alligators of human desire. San Francesco was my spiritual teacher; he taught me about the power of the spoken word. How appropriate, after all, I was engaged in what Freud had called the talking cure. He was with me until the first frost when the leaves begin to parade their panoply of colors.

With the trees bare, I reluctantly acquiesced to the truth that the roots of human suffering run deep. A cure is not so quickly attained, if ever. The people I saw who had been deprived of the security of nurturing relationships early in life taught me patience. They revealed to me the importance of a long-term therapeutic bond for healing the invisible wounds inflicted by love’s absence.

As I earnestly struggled to relieve human suffering, I met Tacomi, a Buddhist monk, my spiritual teacher for the autumn of my soul. He was the one who taught me about the profound power of compassion.

When Tacomi departed with the passing of the Winter solstice and the first snowfall, Shiva appeared. To my surprise, she appeared as a goddess instead of as the male deity revered in India today. She was the most beautiful female I had ever seen: her long-black hair was adorned with sparkling blue beads. She was wrapped in a silk sari that appeared to be made of intertwining blue and white scarves.
She handed me a silver-bladed knife with a golden handle studded with jewels: rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. The knife symbolized the ability to cut through the illusion of our separateness from the Divine. She helped me cut myself loose and set myself free from gender and the duality of male and female and all other divisive dualities such as reason versus emotion.

From all the teachers who appeared to me, I learned to appreciate the wisdom of their spiritual traditions. However, one day, well after my dialogues with Shiva had ended, I found myself irresistibly drawn back to what I knew in my heart as a child: “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him” (1 John 4:16). I remembered something Rudolf Steiner had said in one of his many books, which one I cannot recall.

Steiner described how, by the time Jesus appeared, humanity had descended so deeply into matter, into an all-consuming attachment to the material world. A drastic step was needed to reverse the descent into materialism. God decided to become flesh and walk among us. God in the form of the Word of Love rolled up His sleeves and became flesh. I felt deeply moved as I thought of how He suffered, shed His blood, and died so that humanity could be saved from slavery to sin and thereby have a chance at true freedom, peace, and happiness. That day, I realized, I could no longer ignore such an awesome act of love on God’s part!

• Today, reflect on the phases of your life and what you have learned about what it menas to be human. How has your perspective on life changed over the yers? Who has influenced your thinking and your view of the world and your place in it? What experiences have shaped who you are and helped define you?

Seasons of the Soul Part II

Each season of my soul had an auditory element in song and a visual element in art that also acted as spiritual teachers, speaking to my heart and soul. Together, certain songs and a particular type of painting captured the flavor of the season. Spring’s song was Nat King Cole’s The Very Thought of You. I remember the silky sound of Nat’s voice singing, “The very thought of you . . . I’m living in a kind of daydream, I’m happy as a king, and foolish though it may seem, to me it’s everything . . .” In my work with patients, I saw how each of us lives in our waking dream. For me, Monet’s art with its vibrant and dreamy quality touched me during the springtime of my soul.

I thought of songs by Frank Sinatra for the next two seasons. For summer, The Summer Wind, echoed in my mind. In describing the summer wind, the song always made me think of the winds of the other seasons. Each one impacts our body and soul differently. Spring’s cool breezes. Autumn’s sudden gusts. Winter’s bone-chilling blasts. But it was in New York City and not New England that I really encountered the winter wind.

For five years, I worked and lived in New England during the week, but on the weekend I lived in New York in an apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. No cold could cut through me like the bone-chilling blasts I felt when I would walk from the East Side to the Theater District in Midtown Manhattan. The winter wind would whip through the wind-tunnels formed by the corridor of skyscrapers encasing the cross-town streets. These streets provide a tight tunnel for the winds of winter coming off the water surrounding the island of Manhattan. You freeze your you know what off as winds weave through the city streets uniting East and West.

During the summer of my soul, I had discovered Photo-Realism. One hot summer day, I had been wandering in Lower Manhattan through the streets of Soho when I stepped into a gallery off of Prince Street. The clarity of the subject matter, whether an old car or set of buildings, jarred my senses, and struck a vibrant chord in my soul. The paintings seemed more real than photographs; they possessed a perfect symmetry and an unattainable beauty. Plato’s idealism married Aristotle’s realism in these colorful canvases.
One painting that etched itself into my memory brought to life the mirror-like reflections off of the shiny black paint of an Oldsmobile from the 1950’s. The car seemed more real than real. And yet, it appeared unreal, so perfect I wouldn’t dare touch it. I’d rather admire such a vintage vehicle from afar than sit in it.

The song for autumn was Sinatra’s song, It Was A Very Good Year: “But now the days are short, I’m in the autumn of the year, and now I think of my life as vintage wine from fine old kegs from the brim to the dregs, it poured sweet and clear. It was a very good . . .”

One day in the late 1980’s, I went to the World Trade Center for lunch. It was a crisp and clear autumn day. Just before entering the restaurant, Windows on the World, I saw an exhibit of what was called Neo-Dutch Realism. These paintings gave rise to a bittersweet feeling. A beautiful scene in nature would be juxtaposed with man-made structures in varying states of disarray and decay. In the first painting, I saw a beautiful field rimmed by a green forest. There, amid all of nature’s splendor, stood a tall metal tower topped by a rusty oil tank. In another painting, a lovely landscape bordered an old-abandoned-white-clapboard cottage. Its paint was blistered and stained by rust; its windows were broken and its shutters, crooked.

I was surprised to feel an affection for the imperfection being depicted. For some unknown reason, I found the imperfections endearing. Endearing imperfections? How can imperfections be endearing? Perhaps, it’s because the state of loving unconditionally is so wonderful. Each painting offered the opportunity to love both beauty and blight. The Japanese have a term for this appreciation of the beauty of the imperfect and the impermanent, the modest and the humble—even the decayed. They call it wabi-sabi.

Instead of those perfect apples and pears of Cézanne, there was a plump yellow pear with the blight of brown spots. This art embraced the eternal cycle of nature dying and replenishing herself, and the ephemeral of the man-made. There is something so satisfying about loving what’s before our very eyes—flaws and all.

As the winter of my soul has just begun, any style of painting that embraces life’s imperfections continues to capture my imagination. Since snow embraces and transforms into pristine perfection all it falls upon, I include paintings of the lovely snowscapes of winter, especially those of the New England countryside. As for song, I find the Christmas classics previously mentioned along with Oh Holy Night . . . the stars are shining brightly . . . and other carols that celebrate the birthday of the earthly embodiment of unconditional love. After all, it was His ability to see the perfection hidden in the imperfections that made the lame walk and the blind see.

• Today, consider what marks and defines the different phases of your life. What music, interests, and activities express the essence of the changes you have been through?

Seasons of the Soul Part I

Rockport, Massachusetts
December 2000 . . .

I remember the first time I thought of my life in terms of the seasons of the soul. It was snowing hard outside as the fire crackled in the fieldstone fireplace of the cozy seaside inn where I was staying. I was happy to be alone so that I could reflect on my life in preparation not only for the upcoming new year but for the new millennium. In a month it would be Christmas and, within the week, it would be January 1, 2001, the dawn of the new millennium—the real millennium. Many thought 2000 was the millennium. Those in the know knew that the first year a.d. didn’t start at zero but after New Year’s Eve when the twelfth month ended.

What have I learned over the years about the human heart and soul? Reflecting on this question, I settled into the comfort of my surroundings; I felt a subtle serenity envelop me as Christmas tunes wafted to me from downstairs. “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose . . .” Nat King Cole’s dulcet tones trailed off and were replaced by Bing Crosby: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know, where treetops glisten, and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow . . .” I’ve never grown tired of these two timeless classics.

It always tickled me how Irving Berlin penned White Christmas in June on a sunny Southern California beach. I once heard some supposedly sophisticated New Yorkers laughing about this fact. But when you think about it, it makes sense. Why couldn’t someone be pining away for a back East white Christmas under such steamy circumstances? That’s what daydreams do; they often transport us to another time . . . and place. . . .
Looking back over my life in an effort to consider what I had learned, I began to experience my soul’s time on earth as divided into seasons. The answer as to what I learned in my life was contained in the insights delivered to me during the different seasons. The soul of each of us goes through the hope and promise of spring’s budding and blossoming. This is followed by the ripening heat of summer. Then come the harvesting reflections of autumn with her array of colors.

As for winter, I see her as the season when the soul is set free to embrace everyone and everything with love as pure as fresh-fallen snow. For snow has a way of embracing everything indiscriminately: it blankets the barren landscape of winter by covering everything in white. The rust and dents of old abandoned cars and bare brown yards are transformed as their imperfections are embraced by a soft white blanket. Thus, the proverbial winter wonderland is born. I think of the classic winter scenes of Currier & Ives.

A mystical experience I had in 1995 catapulted me headlong into the winter of my soul’s sojourn on this small planet. However, it is important to note that the seasons of the soul are not about our body’s age; they’re about our soul’s ripening. I’m convinced that some children come into this world as winter souls. They begin and they spend their lives as a beacon of light for those lost in the dark night of pain and suffering.

Similarly, the stages of life can be divided into seasons that provide different conditions and elements for the seasoning of our soul. Childhood provides the opportunity to develop the hope of spring; our whole life is ahead of us. In adolescence and young adulthood, we experience the passions of summer. Middle age offers the chance to reflect on our life and its meaning. As our body, our soul-suit, enters old age, we have the chance to develop wisdom.

It has become clear to me how every day our soul encounters the promise of the seasons: every morning is like spring as we have the chance to start the new day filled with hope; by late morning and early afternoon, summer sets in and we have the chance to passionately pursue our work. By late afternoon and until the sun sets, we have the chance to reflect on our day. As night descends, we enter winter; the moon and stars decorate the black velvet blanket overhead. Eventually, we lie down and exit the conscious waking world and enter the world of sleep and dreams.

When we awaken, a new day begins and the daily cycle of our soul repeats itself. This daily cycle seems to mirror the concept of multiple lives. Each new day, like each new life, offers our soul a chance to become fully evolved.


• Today, take a moment and begin to reflect on the seasons of your soul. I'll say more about the seasons of the soul next time.

Field of Dreams Illustrates . . .

Living in an imperfect world, we all witness to varying degrees our parents being unhappy. As children, we are helpless to do anything to rescue our parents from whatever we see upsetting them. Our parents’ happiness is so important to us, not only because we love them, but we depend on them for survival.

This past weekend, I saw one of my favorite films: Field of Dreams. The film can be seen to illustrate, among other things, the great lengths we may be driven to, unknowingly or unconsciously, even as adults, in order to see our parents, or their substitutes in the form of our current loved ones, happy. Ray, played by Kevin Costner, following the dictates of an unknown voice that hauntingly tells him, “If you build it, he will come,” sinks his life savings into plowing under a large part of his corn field, which as a farmer he depends on for his livelihood, in order to build a baseball field.

The climax of the story is when Ray gets to play catch with a younger, healthier and happier version of his father on that baseball field. Ray is given the gift of seeing his father with his whole life ahead of him before his father had allowed himself to become disillusioned and beaten down by life. It resonated with me as I imagined my father before the war had injured him. I teared up as I got in touch with the longing in me to see my father healthy and happy before the war.

At some point, we need to feel our sadness and accept we were helpless to help our parents. If not,as adults, we may self-defeatingly replace the corn field with a baseball field by doing with our loved ones what we could not do as children. We need to break the pattern of requiring our loved ones be happy so that we can be happy. We need to realize that we are responsible for our own happiness. This dependency leads to arguments and conflicts until we take the pressure off our loved ones to be happy. We can then really take time to listen to what is contributing to their unhappiness and help them feel better.


• Today, just imagine that, like Ray, you get to see your mother or father before you were born. Visualize them as younger than you are now, and see them in good health and full of hope, happiness and dreams about their future. Notice how it feels as you see your parents happy and hopeful.

Residual Anger & Self Esteem

The moment Shiva faded from view, something hit me. There is another aspect to the anger all human beings carry inside. To varying degrees, we all have some residual anger over not feeling loved, valued, and appreciated by the people in our family when we were growing up, especially our parents and siblings.

Hadn’t my friend Anthony, the Italian-tell-it-like-it-is psychiatrist (chapter six), said it well. One day, sitting by his pool, he looked at me and said, “Since med-school, I’ve spent a quarter of a million dollars in analysis and analytic training to realize what all psychiatric problems boil down to. When we’re treated like a piece of sh-t as a kid, we grow up to believe we’re a piece of sh-t. We then act like a piece of sh-t and people treat us like a piece of sh-t.”

I had responded to Anthony by saying, “We’re angry that we were treated like a piece of sh-t. And we search for someone to love and redeem us, but find a lover who treats us like a piece of sh-t!”
As I now think about it, we search for that special someone to give us love and appreciation. But, ultimately, we need to give that love and appreciation to ourselves. We need to stop the outer quest for love and begin the inner quest to love and accept ourselves.

• Today, consider how we need to forgive our parents and siblings for their flaws and love them flaws and all. We need to slay the dragon and release loved ones from the need to tell us we are not a piece of sh-t. We don’t need anyone or anything external to love us and validate our worth. We did need that external love as a child; but, as an adult, we need to confirm our own worth. Self-esteem and self-love come from self. Not other. They are internal. Not external.

A Primary Source of Anger

“What is the earliest source of anger?” Shiva asked.. She had such beautiful penetrating eyes. The mysteries of the universe were in those deep dark pools.

“As soon as we are born,” I said, “we begin to divide the world into what we love and what we hate. We love what helps us feel good, what gives us pleasure and comfort. And we hate what makes us feel bad, what gives us pain and discomfort.

“Just the other day, a patient, Peter, told me how he awoke the other night with the old iron radiators in his house banging. A feeling of hatred consumed him. ‘I hate this house!’ he yelled in his head.
“He began to feel into his feeling and he looked through his anger. ‘I hate what hurts me and I love what comforts me.’ He was getting at the earliest form of our relationship with the world,” I said.

“And who is the world at that point?” I asked. “Mother. Mater. Mater, Latin for mother, is close to matter. Our love affair and hatred of the material world begins in mother’s arms.

“What power she has to give us comfort! Our fate is totally in her hands. We can’t change our stinky diaper. Or, to put it more crudely, we can’t wipe our own ass yet. We hate our dependency. This dependency becomes our dragon to slay if we are to get free.

“The fire-breathing dragon in fairy tale and legend is in essence a belief. It is a product of our imagination expressed in symbolic language: the language whereby our invisible inner world of thoughts and feelings are rendered into people, places, and things in the visible outer world.” The ideas were flowing, so I kept going.

“This insatiable beast represents our anger when our desires are not met. ‘Feed me Seymour!’ shouts the man-eating flower in Little Shop of Horrors. Likewise, the dragon roars, “Feed me, or I’ll consume you with the fire of my wrath!”

Shiva asked, “What do you believe is the belief?” She was now smiling almost as enigmatically as the Mona Lisa.

“It’s the belief that we are dependent on something external to ourselves to feel good and be at peace,” I said.

I then said, “An alcoholic patient once told me how anger was at the root of his drinking. As the patient spoke, I thought of my time with the Maya. During one sacred fire ceremony, the shaman poured alcohol on the fire. The fire flared up. So, too, the alcoholic attempts to put out the fire of anger by dampening it with shots of whiskey. Alcohol doesn’t deaden anger; it enflames anger. Alcohol fuels the flames shooting out of the dragon’s mouth.”

“Air, oxygen, can feed fire, too,” she said. “A strong wind can cause a fire to blaze through a whole forest. Whereas the mild breeze of your breath can keep the flame of the Divine alive, and provide you with a gentle warmth.” Shiva shimmered as she slipped into the velvety-black fabric of a star-studded night. (Note: see postings for Shiva appearing as a goddess.)

• Today, if anger arises, take the step of calming yourself physically. Breathe in slowly and deeply and slay the dragon by silently say to yourself, "Breathing in, I remind myself that I AM NOT dependent on aything external to myself to feel good and be at peace." Pause briefly, and as you exhale, silently say, "Breathing out, I remind myself that I have everything I need within myself to feel good and be at peace."