Why is it easier for some people to deal with crisis than others?

Question:  Serge, why does it seem to be  so much easier for some people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, than for others and  naturally to  feel more alive and joyful, all of which things always seem so hard for me? In other articles, you have written that crisis can act as an evolutionary trigger to get the best out of us. Well, it never seems  to do that  for me!  I feel down a lot of the time. Perhaps I am just a weak character. Can you advise me?
 
Serge. I would be pleased to.  First, let me say that I am sorry about how you describe  you feel, as it sounds as if you may be going through the old ringers a bit and I appreciate how tough that can be.  Secondly, I am sure you are not a weak character. Weak characters don't examine themselves, and you seem to  have a lot of awareness around your vulnerabilities. And here I  also remind you  that we all have vulnerabilities, and it doesn't mean we are weak, just that there are parts of us  that are less good at withstanding  certain kinds of stormy weather.

And  we need to be kind and loving to these parts of ourselves, and not be so hard on ourselves and compare ourselves with others. ( I mean if , looks wise,  I compared myself to Brad Pitt , I would never dare to venture outside my house !) So while not knowing anything about you, I imagine that you may  have some unresolved emotional wounds,  and that your heart has  perhaps been injured in some way and may be bleeding a bit. Perhaps it also has one or two locks and chains around it  too! Here, I am just guessing.

But if this is the case, then  bleeding, chained hearts slow us down at all levels of life.  I know a bit about this in terms of my own life, where, when I was younger, and before I did plenty of things to try to heal myself, I felt a lot of the things you have described. And more. My experience is that what  unhealed emotions can do, is that they make us less able to accomplish things that people whose hearts are more healed and less enchained, are capable of. Indeed, they  can plunge us down into what I will call a 'twilight world' or domain of being, where, to continue my metaphor, there ain't a  whole lot of sunlight available.  And we can stay trapped there. In my own situation, at that stage of my life, I needed others to pull me out, as my own boot straps were too soft for me to grab hold of! 

In other words, I needed help from outside  of myself, because I didn't yet  possess a  strong enough  sense of self or inhabit a domain that contained enough strength for me to assist myself on my own.  I always think that the main differences between us are not our skin colour, race or religion, but the kind of inner world we live in. Some worlds that people live in, are very beautiful. They are full of  colour and creativity and radiant joy and love. If one lives in them, one has the power to initiate things, to complete projects, to feel inspired and  to go with the flow,  to feel that the force is with us,  to deal with tragedy much more transformationally.

However, all these things are simply not possible for someone who does not  yet live under the laws of these 'sacred domains'. I have encountered people who live in  these 'higher worlds' and they always strike me as very empowered. Yet it is not that these people are better or cleverer or stronger than us ;  it is just , as I said, that they live in a domain of being where there are less restrictions, less rules, less constraints and more  freedom and power.  And in these domains, we are much more able to be   causal, to initiate things from within ourselves and  not be as much  at the effect of what is going on in our outer environment.

Unfortunately, many of us have not  yet learned to live  in these  more expanded realities. The psychologist Jean Huston once said that 'We are all born Stradivariuses and raised to believe we are plastic fiddles.' This was certainly true for me. And if  our inner world conspires to restrict us, our outer one will do so as well, for we will project our limitations upon it. For example, some of the 'rules' governing  our existing 'Consensus reality' that most of us live in most of the time and believe there is nothing else beyond it, include the idea that poverty cannot be alleviated or that war is something that cannot be done away with. And these, I maintain, are beliefs that pertain to a particular world of consciousness, which, if we are to have any kind of future world for our children, needs to be moved out of pretty fast!

Today, when  a client comes to see me for psychotherapy, I don't only look at what their issues are; I also try to evaluate   how much inner capacity they have to deal with them. Sometimes, a person  does not have serious problems but  because they are very vulnerable ,  may need a huge amount of help from me, and until such a time as they are able to move out of their twilight zones, I may need to do much of their work for them. Other people can have gone through huge  traumas, but because they live out of the laws and values of a higher world, they are much more able to deal  constructively with them. Do you sense what I am getting at?

So how do we move into these 'higher worlds', which, by the way, I believe are beckoning to all of us to ascend into, at this time in our evolutionary history? Well, lots of things. Above all, we need to want to evolve. We can ask spirit for help and spirit might be very obliging.  Then we can pray and we can meditate.  Very powerful for accelerating consciousness. But first, we need to heal our wounds. Body work. Psychotherapy. Shamanic work. 

If we try to bypass or transcend our  emotional problems and go all ' goo-ily pseudo-spiritual', we may get into a lot of difficulty as we may well draw down energies from higher states of consciousness that we are simply unable to integrate, and  the result may be that we are destabilised  even more. So go gradually. Some people feel called to  apprentice themselves to a Spiritual Master and live in his ashram and so partake of his refined energy field. There is no one way.

Each of us need to follow our own inclination.Where there's a will, there's a way. I healed myself because I got so fed up of feeling so down for so much of the time.  I am still healing myself!  I try to let my heart guide me.

What is needed if we are to become a Better Human Being?

Question : What do you see as the most important aspect of ourselves that needs awakening if we are to be a better human being?

Serge:
Undoubtedly, it is the heart, for it is in our hearts that the divine can communicate most directly to us. It is in our hearts that we may receive grace and healing. It is in our hearts that we can experience joy, ecstasy, love, feel awe, and experience ourselves as an integral part of all that is. If we are open hearted, a space is there enabling us to be spontaneous, brave , warm, true and honourable and we will much more easily be able to accept and respect ourselves and so accept and respect others and, most importantly, our planet.

Indeed, I see our hearts as containing the ‘spiritual fuel’ that will allow us to resolve conflicts, transform destructivity and generally enable us to be part of the solution, as opposed to being part of the problems, of our world. Teilhard de Chardin, that great theologian and visionary thinker, writing in the 1940’s, suggested that there was more power in an open heart than in the atom bomb.

I recognise this and see our hearts as being our greatest weapon of mass construction and believe that if only more of us learned to open our hearts, that we would be able to have peace in the world and that all the insane, crazy, stupid activities which we heartless or small-hearted humans like to do like flying planes into large towers, fighting wars, creating dictatorships to rule us, spending billions on weaponry while millions starve, consuming more than we need, destroying our environment, and generally behaving in greedy, rapacious, selfish and narrow minded ways, would stop!

All these behaviours are symptomatic of a deficient heart life. I don’t think our world will transform as a result of a change of mind. I think it needs a change of heart. Or rather, an opening of heart. We cannot have the one without the other. However, for such an opening to take place, we need to work at it. It is not a ‘given.’ Indeed, one of the best ways to learn how not to be so egoic, is to put effort into opening our hearts. The subtler vibration of the heart space begins to evaporate the denser one of ego space.

If our spirituality manifests not in what we know (how many sacred texts we can quote), but in how we behave and in how compassionately we treat others, especially those who may be very different to us, this is all dependant upon the health of our hearts. To a healthy hearted person, no one is an enemy. If our hearts are open, we will feel free and vital and the most natural thing in the world will be for us to wish for that condition to manifest all around us.

If our hearts are in ‘bad shape’ or closed, our perspective will radically alter and it is all too likely that we will see the world through a glass darkly, succumb to despair, bitterness and depression and so project all sorts of negatives onto it which do not in actuality exist. Thus to believe we can be authentically spiritual without being open-hearted is like believing we can play cricket without a bat and ball!

Because I feel so strongly on this matter, I have made several CDs on the topic of the Heart which can be ordered from my website. I also teach a one-year training group entitled Living from the Heart, where we learn to heal and purify and deepen as well as broaden, our heart life.

How may I work with the parts of me that fear change?

Question: Serge, I really want to change  so many things in my life. I want a better spiritual life, better relationships with people. I want to be a kinder person, eat a better diet, etc. But it is very hard. I am so stuck in my old habits and I so fear the unknown. Can you give me any advice?

Serge: I think you are very honestly enunciating the real difficulties we all have in changing things in our lives. Deep down we all have a kind of secret prayer that goes like this: ‘O please God, may my life be different; may I feel happier and more secure; may all the things I want, come about. But please achieve this  for me without me needing to change anything!’

Change, as you rightly say, is difficult. We get stuck in our old habit-patterns. Our problem is that we form identities around how we image ourselves and then we get so sunk into  these grooves that we cannot then climb out of them. Gurdjieff talked about this  phenomenon a lot. He used to say that as a species, we were so inert, that unless faced with a shock greater than the sum of our own inertia, we tended to stay as we are. He also suggested, and this I have found eminently true in terms of my clients in psychotherapy, that we will give up almost everything but our suffering, as that is the one thing we remain most attached to!  I mean, who would we be if we weren’t a miserable old  hard-done-by, ‘poor me’ victim!

His words are proving true, aren’t they, in terms of our ecological situation. For years, our scientists have been pointing out how bad things were becoming and how important it was that we changed our high-energy-consuming lifestyles. But did we do so? No! It is only now that things have become really bad - the suffering reaching the domain of  the unbearable - with our tsunamis, storms, earthquakes and droughts bearing down on us - that we are at last beginning to wake up and  change, and are realising  to our horror, that, as the old Chinese proverb goes, ‘Unless we change our ways , we are bound to end up where we are headed!’

So I would counsel you to not let things get that bad in your life, before you begin to work towards change, for it can be that one can leave things too late.  We can reach a point of no return, as well we might have done, ecologically, on our planet!

So think about what you would like in your life - how you would like your life to be. Get an image of a ‘future you’ functioning in the world as if all the shifts you want implemented, have already taken place. And let this new image come into you and feed you. Meditate on it. Then,  from this  new strong place, think about what is stopping you being that which you wish to be and having that which you wish to have. Then think about  what you can do about these ‘stoppers’   and therefore what some of your challenges might be. In doing this,  also know  that whenever we go for something new, there will always be resistance.  And this resistance  is not bad and it cannot be ignored and indeed, must be worked with.

So perhaps find  a wise friend or a  skilled psychotherapist to discuss things with. Or take yourself on an organised spiritual retreat. I am a big one for the therapeutic and the spiritual benefits of  doing this, i.e., leaving behind our ‘normal workaday reality’ to give ourselves  new space to  reflect on our lives, which  is something not enough of us allow ourselves  nearly enough time to do.

I think  that if we really give ourselves the space to let our hearts tell us what we need to do or not do, in order to live a more satisfying life, and, from that place, confront the pain of what is currently not working and standing in the way of this, that we come into a much better place of being able to advance our lives. I think it is far less painful to experience our sadness or despair or whatever emotions are lurking inside us, than not let ourselves feel at all. If we don’t feel, we are kind of dead. It sounds like you want to be more fully alive in everything you do. So celebrate that. Good luck.

How do we know if we have found the right guru?

Question: I am experiencing something funny going on with the guru I have just begun studying with. I don’t know what it is but I don’t feel right about him. I keep wanting to break from him and he keeps telling me that I should persevere. But I am not sure. I feel I have given him too much power over my life, and that’s not good, but on the other hand, I know one is supposed to surrender to a guru, so I am confused. What should I do?

Serge’s advice
This is a challenging issue. Sometimes feeling bad about a teacher is a sign that something is not right with them and one should move away. You say he is your guru. Is he an established spiritual Master or is he simply a charismatic leader of some particular sect? That is an important question you need to ask yourself. So beware, there are a lot of rascally so-called sages out there treading the spiritual highway!

If he is an established Master and if he is authentic as a teacher, it may simply be that he is not for you. (We are all on different paths and therefore need different teachers and teachings, and he may just not be ‘your teacher’) However, sometimes, the urge to move away may not be because the teacher is rascally or not right, It may be because he is right and the power of his presence is simply bringing up something very big for us that really needs exploring and that makes us feel uncomfortable. So instead of looking at the mole in our own eye, we make our teacher into the ‘baddie’!

What I suggest you do first of all is not see this issue as a problem but more as a spiritual challenge asking you to develop your powers of discernment. And to tune into the discerning part of you, I suggest you take time to tune into a quiet space inside yourself and begin to connect with your deeper being – or with your own inner guru – for there is a part inside all of us that knows the answer to all these kinds of questions. You might close your eyes and ask that part of yourself that is wise to come forward and reveal itself.


Questions you could then ask yourself about your teacher could include:

• Do you feel he is authentic and wants the best for you?
• Do you feel he sees you deeply? 
• Do you feel empowered in his presence? 
• Do you feel your life has advanced since you have been with him?

If the answer to these issues is predominantly a ‘yes’, then you may well be avoiding something. If so, wrestle with yourself and see what that thing is. If the answer is mainly no, then there may be a lot in what you feel and you might well be wise to move away. Simply because a teacher asks you to surrender to him, does not mean you should also give up your discernment. I also recommend that you buy that spiritual classic, The Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda as that deals beautifully with the whole guru/student relationship.

When is a crisis a breakdown and when is it a breakthrough?

Question: Serge, I am on a spiritual path and am going through a very difficult patch. Perhaps you can help me as I think I am having a breakdown – everything is collapsing in my life – and I have gone to my doctor who wants to send me to a Psychiatrist. But something tells me that perhaps this is not right and that what is happening to me is more about my spiritual life. So should I visit a spiritual teacher? I am not sure. I am in a big muddle. What do you suggest?



Serge: I have much sympathy with you. Being on a spiritual path is never easy and is always full of big challenges. Dr Roberto Assigioli, the founder of psychosynthesis, told us that ‘Spiritual development…is a long and arduous adventure…beset with difficulties and dangers and we should not be surprised if we go through certain critical stages accompanied by neuro-psychological and even physical and psychosomatic disturbances.’ In a similar vein, the great Sufi poet Rumi told us that:

‘The spiritual path wrecks the body
And after restores it to health.
It destroys the house to unearth the treasure,
And with that treasure builds it better than before!’

 So we need to keep our senses open and remember that evolving spiritually is about transforming ourselves, which in turn is about our allowing a false sense of who we are, to die, so that a new and more authentic ‘us’ or ‘self’ can gradually emerge into expression – or ‘be born’ - in its place. It follows that if the old us or the old form, stays in place and is not allowed to break down, that the new us has no ‘space’ through which to break through. And sometimes, if we happen to be going through a particularly powerful spiritual emergence, a lot of breaking down of our old patterns can take place, often causing a lot of suffering and sometimes making us feel as if we are about to die. Which in a way we are! Only it is to our old self. So experiences of pain and suffering are an integral part of certain phases of our sacred journey. The question for you to ask is: is the crisis you are experiencing of a spiritual death-rebirth nature, or are you having a psychotic break?


The problem, if you are having a crisis around a spiritual emergency and you go and visit a traditional psychiatrist, is that while he is probably a competent drug technician, he may have little understanding of spirituality, and, in his ignorance, he may well pathologise you and give you a dreadful-sounding label to your symptoms. He may also fill you full of mind numbing, anti-psychotic drugs and pack you off to the nearest loony bin! This may have a very damaging effect on your spiritual life as you may well tend to see yourself through the same ‘reductive lens’ that he is perceiving you through, making you believe that there really is something ‘badly wrong’ with you when there isn’t! It may well ensure that what might in effect be a genuine breakdown (of the old you) wanting to happen, so that a new you can emerge, is prevented from doing so.


Conversely, but less likely, the total opposite may also be happening, and you may actually be having a serious psychotic break, and are not accessing anything ‘spiritual’.  If this is the case, it can be just as dangerous if you were to encounter some loony ‘spiritual teacher’ (and they exist, believe me) with no understanding of psychology, and who may inappropriately ‘spiritualise’ your experiences and tell you that what is going on is wonderful and that you should just drink more wheat grass juice and pray and meditate more and you will soon experience Nirvana!  Here, what is not understood is a) that meditation in a psychotic state is acutely dangerous, and b) that in certain instances, powerful medication may be absolutely essential.

And to complicate things even more, we can sometimes be going through a spiritual crisis and be having a psychotic breakdown all at the same time! I have several times encountered people, who, at one level, were tuning in to very deep spiritual realms and having access to profound spiritual information, yet, who, at another part of their being, were very deeply disturbed.

Indeed, one of the problems many of us on a path, face is that there is often a strong connection between our emotional vulnerability and our possessing thinner veils around us which allow us to reach with greater ease into the deeper spiritual worlds.

What is vital when we are undergoing big crises, is that we be correctly diagnosed and be connected to a support system that is most appropriate for where we are at. I believe you should either meet up with a Psychiatrist who is also spiritually knowledgeable or connect to a spiritual teacher who is also trained in the whole domain of the many different kinds of emotional disturbances that can afflict us, whether we are on a path or not. The important thing is how inwardly solid your basic structures are. If you are going through a spiritual crisis, as I suspect you may be, and emotionally you are also fragile, you may not be able to sustain the intense heat of the spiritual fire currently burning inside you. And that can be problematic.

Please feel free to ring me if you want. I also suggest you go onto the web and type in Spiritual Emergency, England and you will connect in with several important networks that can also assist you. I hope this can be of help.