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Spirituality that Translates and Spirituality that Transforms

Question. I always get a little bit confused, as spirituality seems to comprise so many different things that often seem very conflicting. For example, a lot of teachings tell one that if we wish to be  truly spiritual, we  will need totally to transcend our ego, whereas a lot of other teachings seem to be about trying to help us feel happier in our ‘separate self’ state. Could you please tell me what you think?

Serge. I would be delighted to try. First, what you say is very true, only I do not see a conflict. Rather I see that the issue is one of different levels of spiritual teachings. We need to proceed step by step. We  need to understand that at root, the spiritual journey is one of our learning to embrace self at ever higher levels of awareness. Most of us come in to the world needing to evolve an ego self, that is, an identity where we experience ourselves as being separate from our world, and for most of us, it takes a very long time to be able to free ourselves from that role.  Indeed, very, very few of us, actually, are at a level where we are able or ready , to begin to discard our ego and to enter  into what the Master Adi Da called the truly radical life!


Put simply, we need to have a secure foundation inside us – an effectively functioning ego, a healthy emotional life - before we are capable or strong enough to begin  contemplating journeying into the void or embracing the  true emptiness.    In Ram Dass’s words’ We need to become a somebody before we are ready to become a nobody’, that is, we need to have established a strong enough separate self identity - even if it is not yet our authentic self, even if it is still based on images we have of ourselves - before we are ready to let  it go  and consider blending with a self that belongs to all of life!


And even then, we may not wish to, or be able to. I must stress that it can be dangerous to ‘let go’ prematurely, (and many of the difficult acid trips I experienced around me in the 60’s, were about hippies taking too strong a dose and being temporarily precipitated into states of  egoless being which in no way were they prepared for).  I say this because  the experience of deep spirituality can be very, very shattering. It is all about the total dissolution of that ‘safe world’ that  most of us believe is the only world and depend upon. And it is not  at all comfortable! (See my long article on ‘The Spiritual Path  as Tough Journey’ ).


Ken Wilbur is very clear on  all this. In his journal ‘One Taste’, he  talks of two kinds of spirituality; spirituality that translates and spirituality that transforms. The former is focussed on consoling the separate self, fortifying it, defending it, promoting it. ‘With translation, the self is given a new way to think or feel about reality. The self is given a new belief – perhaps holistic instead of atomistic, forgiveness instead of blame. The self then learns to translate its world and its being in the terms of this new language or new paradigm and this new and enchanting translation acts, at least temporarily, to alleviate the terror in the heart of the separate self….


But with transformation, the very process of translation itself is challenged, undermined and eventually dismantled. With typical translation, the self (or subject) is given a new way to think about the world; but with radical transformation, the self is inquired into, looked into, grabbed by the throat and literally throttled to death….The self is not made content; the(old) self is made toast!’


Wilbur argues that both of these functions are incredibly important and altogether indispensable. He suggests that translation itself is an absolute necessity and crucial for most of  us for most of our lives and that if we cannot ‘translate adequately’, we can fall into severe neurosis or even psychosis where the boundaries between the self and the world are not transcended but instead begin to crumble.  In his words, ‘This is not breakthrough but breakdown; not transcendence but disaster.’


As I said, only a very few of us are ready to ‘go for’ the higher or deeper spirituality and to leap into the  egoless unity.  We know we are ready  for something deeper only when we become fed up with, and feel like discarding,  translative   spirituality’ with its emphasis on helping us ‘feel better’, be ‘more powerful’, live ‘more causally’,  have ‘more meaning’, be  more the ‘master of our own destiny’, etc.  Much of what we loosely call ‘New Age Spirituality’ falls into this category. The truth is, though, that most of us still need this translative spirituality. 

It is the spirituality that is primarily advocated in this magazine. Translative spirituality helps a lot of us in many important ways and assists us make the shift from being part of the problems in the world to being part of the solution. So, to emphasise my point again, just as developmentally, we are not ready to run before we can walk or  can engage in geometry before we have  properly learned to count, so most of us are not ready to submit ourselves to the shattering process that a genuine  transformative spirituality offers us. While we may like to talk about  transformation or about the joys of not being so ego-centred,  in reality, many of us are not yet ready to die to our old identifications and truly to allow ourselves to be reborn.  So I think we need  equally to honour those spiritualities that  help  us cater for our separate self as well as  those that help us shatter it.

How can having a stroke be a spiritual opportunity?

Question: 'In January, I had a major stroke that left me with significant brain damage and the loss of the use of my left side. With intensive physiotherapy, I am beginning to regain some use of my left leg. However, with all the time I have on my hands, I've been doing a lot of self reflection and can't help feeling something is missing. But I can't articulate what. Given that a lot of focus has been on my physical recovery, I suspect what is missing is a spiritual recovery.

But how? I don't even know what it means to be spiritual. How do you know when you have achieved a good spiritual state? Paul

Serge: Thank you, Paul, for your profound question. The first thing I want to say is that I believe all crises have a spiritual meaning or are initiations of one kind or another for us, wherebye something seems to be removed from us at one level , or we lose something - in your case, the feeling in your left side - in order to make  space for something new, at another level, to emerge in its place. And certainly,  this seems to be happening for you.

You say that  you feel something is missing from your life and that you sense it is spirituality. Well, I see this as  a sign that that your spirituality is  actually starting to emerge or grow inside you. For how do we know that something is absent if we have no sense of  what that thing is? Reply: we don't! If there was no spirituality in your life, you would not have any sense that this ingredient was missing. What the message seems to saying is that  now is the time for you to focus on  developing this aspect of your life, as you  now have the space to do so.

A teacher of mine, Ram Dass,  experienced a similar initiation. It is beautifully documented in a DVD entitled Fierce Grace, which I suggest you buy as I think it will be very insightful for you. Basically, Ram Dass' life was going well. He was successful and popular and making a lot of money. And then  he had a stroke, which incapacitated him. Initially, he saw it as an enemy. Why has this happened to me, he moaned, my life was going so well? It took him some months to accept that at a deeper level, what had occurred was a gift from God to help quieten him. (It is only when we are truly peaceful that the divine can really 'enter us'!)

As this realisation  began to dawn , he started talking in terms of being 'Stroked by the divine'  and   came to see that he was being taken to a whole new level in his life, and that his so-called curse was really  a blessing, albeit a fierce one! It also gave those who loved him the chance to support him ( a spiritual act) and for him, who had always been rigorously self sufficient, to accept help ( another spiritual act!)

You ask, Paul, what it means to be spiritual and how we know when we have achieved a good spiritual state? I will  answer the second question first. My reply is  that we don't always know. Many spiritual teachers talk about how, when we feel most lost and destitute, we may in fact be closer to God than when everything is humming in our lives.

How is this?  It is because when we are in that state, our ego or personality self may be less prominent, and so we are more humble. In other words, it is when we are less ego bound-  or when our egos are not running our lives so prominently -  that we are much more of a space to  be open to God. And how open we are at any time, determines our spiritual state.

I am not here implying that the only way to be spiritual is to go through a crisis and experience loss, as this is certainly not the case. But it is  certainly one way.  And at this moment, it seems to be the particular  spiritual journey that your soul is taking you on. Certainly, many people in dire stress have spoken of how, when they were at their wits end, and nothing was working for them,  they would find themselves crying out  for help to God, or to that divine part of themselves,  and would  experience receiving some kind of reply .

For me, being spiritual and being truly human are the same thing.  Not all religious scholars and priests are necessarily  always spiritual  people, and  similarily, many people who do not think much about spirituality, may be full of sweetness and light and so be very spiritual! Sometimes, as in Ram Dass' case and now, it seems, in yours, grace, or the connection with the divine, can be fierce.

I have just gone through a 'baptism by fire' period myself, so I understand this only too well. I guess one definition of spirituality is the willingness to accept  ( that is, not resist) and to work with, whatever way the divine chooses to throw in our path at any time. So Paul, use this time as an opportunity to come to know yourself better.

What did Jesus say: 'Be still, and know that I am God.' Here is your opportunity to come into this same realisation yourself.

To be Spiritual, do we need to make an effort or let go 'efforting'?

Dear Serge, I am on my spiritual journey and one of the things that mystifies me is why some teachers advocate the need for us to make a lot of effort if we want to get anywhere, while others tell us to give up all our ‘efforting’, saying it comes from our ego, and will get us nowhere. So what do I do? How can I get anywhere spiritually if I don’t put any effort in? I am confused.
Please advise me.

Serge
I sympathise very much with your dilemma. And I think you have touched on something very important. At one time in my life, I studied with a teacher who advocated both approaches. To some of his students he would say ‘Put more effort in’, to others he would suggest they give up trying so hard. Initially, I found this confusing, until eventually I got to see that different kinds of inner work seem to be required of us at different times, depending on a) what kind of person we are, b) what kind of path we are on (is our journey more ‘outer’- more about ‘ action in the world’ - or more ‘inner’ and mystical), and c) where we are on it at any time.

Do you remember Nina Simone ‘s song about everything having its season? Well, that is very pertinent to the spiritual life. I think the whole art is about our knowing what is most appropriate for us at any particular time. Put simply, sometimes we really need to try very hard and make a big effort. (For example: studying sacred texts so we understand them, disciplining ourselves to meditate when we’d prefer to watch T.V., really working at being more objective, really making sure we relate kindly to others when we don’t feel like it, etc). All this takes conscious effort and intention and I think is very necessary.

Sometimes, however, our spiritual work needs to be about stopping this kind of effort and simply allowing ourselves to ‘Be’ more, letting ourselves be more receptive . This is in order that we may take in or absorb what our earlier efforts may have evoked for us.

Basically, I think that if we are first starting out on our spiritual journey, a lot of doing and ‘efforting’ on our part is necessary, no matter what path we are on or whether we are more mystically or more pragmatically inclined. The same holds true, I think, for anything new that we are trying to get off the ground. Without a powerful initiating force, nothing happens. From a spiritual perspective, making an effort shows we are sincere in our intention.

What it does is it invokes or calls the spiritual forces closer to us to help and support us. As one teacher put it: if we only take two steps forward, spirit can only take one step towards us and we will not meet. If we take three steps forward, spirit will take four towards us and there is more chance of an encounter. But if we take four or even five steps towards God, God will take six or seven towards us and there will be a joyful encounter.

However, if we only effort, at some stage along the way, we will encounter limitation because certain important transformations simply cannot happen this way, not least because we are less open to receiving the fruits of what our efforts are essentially directed towards. We can see how this is so, for example, in a relationship. For example, if I just effort all the time, then I don’t really allow myself to enjoy my partner properly and savour the space that both of us create together.

I won’t allow the more receptive or feminine side of me, to come alive. In other words, if all I do is give, give , give, then I don’t allow my partner a space to give to me, I don’t allow a space of mutual sharing and blending; As such, I may be an insufficient ‘space’ for a deeper love to come alive between us.

I discovered the virtue of ‘letting be’ many years ago when I went out to India, to spend time with a Master who was very much of the school of ‘Let go, let God. Give up the search’. I, at the time, was overly imbalanced on the side of doing, in part, I think, because I didn’t trust life enough to believe that anything could happen unless I was always trying to make it happen. Anyhow, being with this wonderful man gave me a great lesson in the virtue of not doing. I had arrived at the ashram laden with books intending to make every minute count as I was taking so much time off my teaching and psychotherapy work. ’I’ll get some good thinking and writing done while I’m here, I’ll make this time off worthwhile, ’ I thought to myself.

What I didn’t reckon for was the power of this man’s energy field or presence to shatter my ‘good intentions’. In my first encounter with him, I was told that I was much too active and never gave myself space or time for my depths to surface.’ The you that thinks so much is the you that doesn’t allow you to transform. You know nothing about surrender and so you are shallow’, was the gist of what he said to me. It was painful to hear this but I knew it was true.

The next few months were a revelation of that truth. My active mind, or the mind that Buddhists call our ‘monkey’ mind and see as standing in the way of our deeper mind that is linked with our heart, became absolutely ‘zapped.’ Despite my ego fighting against what was happening, I was unable to ‘do’ anything. I couldn’t even think coherently! I certainly couldn’t meditate. So I just ‘hung out’. All my books that had cost me a fortune in overweight luggage, remained unopened. I went through a process that I subsequently realised is central to all deep spiritual work, and that was one of emptying or purifying myself, something that can actually only happen when a certain kind of effort is absent.

It wasn’t as if there was no struggle involved, for there was. But it was of a different nature; it was the struggle of trying to stay awake to all the crazy thoughts and burning up that I was going through, as I tried to get more and more out of my own way in order to allow myself to be opened up by spirit

In terms of inner progress, this was probably the most purposeful few months I have ever spent. I saw clearly how all my old-style efforting needed to change, how it was really a kind of diversion to prevent me really having to look deeply into myself. I saw how, after all these years, I was at last becoming a little naked and starting to be a tiny bit more human!

But, and this is an important point, I don’t think I would have been ready to have done this ‘surrendering work’ had I not first done my share of initial efforting in the way I did it. For example, if, on first embarking on my path, which I did in my early twenties, I had gone straight to this ashram, I think it would have been counter-productive, for there would not have been enough structure in me to give up. I would simply have surrendered to my own unconscious chaos and emotional turmoil. It was because I had worked through the worst of my fears and neuroses, with the result that I now had a much more solid sense of self, that I was now more ready to surrender it.

Paradoxically, we need a well- enough functioning ego structure first, before it is safe to begin dismantling our identification with it. Being spiritual, we must understand, is not just about becoming ‘egoless’. The gradual diminishing of ego must happen at the right time. When we are ready. (Many serial killers and paedophiles, for example, are people who don’t yet have enough ego – they have insufficient structure; That’s their problem.) It was also interesting to observe that everyone in this Master’s ashram had been on the path for some time and were not beginners.

As I understand it, then, spiritual work includes effort, and it needs surrender of it as in ‘Thy will, O Lord, be done.’ This surrender is important if we are to align ourselves to a deeper spiritual power or a deeper spiritual love. And it needs to be intentional. The distortions come if we only always embrace one polarity and not the other, or if we choose to focus more on one end of the spectrum when it is necessary that we be embracing the other.

What I am discovering now with many of my students and with myself that as we very gradually mature, both polarities become increasingly integrated within each other. At present, for example, I am writing a book and for this I need the discipline to sit down and write when I’d prefer to loaf around . However, once having ‘got into it’, I need to be able to surrender to spirit so the deeper part of me can also be ‘invited into’ the creative equation. Less and less now do I distinguish between doing and being.

I think, if we wish to live a balanced life - and for me this is essential if we are to be more fully human - that we are challenged to embrace both polarities until eventually they begin increasingly to converge inside us as we learn to ‘Do our Being’ and ‘Be our Doing’ together.

What are the advantages of going on a Spiritual Retreat?

Question: 'Do you think it wise to go on  a Spiritual Retreat if we want to find ourselves? I feel  the answer is yes,  and I want to go on one, but my boyfriend  and my father both think it is me escaping. What do you think?'

Serge: What I think - and I hope you don't mind me saying this, and I hope they don't read this - is that it sounds a bit judgemental and controlling of them. (What we often do with things that we don't understand and which may secretly  scare us, is that we put them down!) I agree with you and I urge you to do what your heart tells you is right. 

Actually, I think that not going on a retreat ,  not taking ourselves away from our 'normal world' from time to time, is escaping.  The problem with many of us today is that we are all too full of 'stuff' - anxieties about work, anxieties about  how our world  is about to collapse  and where we will all go broke (our media loves pumping out this negativity all the time) , and I think we need time to step away from all this madness, so we have space to explore our  much-neglected inner world, ask ourselves what is really important  for us, and inquire as to who we really are!

 I have conducted Spiritual_Retreats_in_Majorca for many years  now, and I have found them  both therapeutic and healing.  And, most important, fun! Many of us need more fun in our lives. We have become too heavy! And retreats allow us to unwind; they give us time to play and be quiet, and ask ourselves questions as to how we really wish to live.

What is madness and how may we deal with it from a Spiritual perspective?

Question: Could you say a little about madness and how one deals with it from a spiritual perspective?

 Serge. It depends on what kind of madness you are referring to. In my books, there are three distinct kinds. The first  kind is what  we ordinarily think of as madness,  that is, people who have great difficulty functioning effectively in society and  who may need to spend large chunks of their lives in special institutions . These people  are  the psychotics. They  often feel persecuted and paranoid. They may pick up messages  from the cosmos signalling that  dark forces are out to get them or  they may  hear voices telling them to do awful things.

This kind of madness does not  generally respond well to subtle energy. Trying to focuss loving energy on such people or suggesting they meditate or visit a guru  is generally counter productive. In most instances, what they need  is   help from someone trained to  understand them and generally to be fed strong medication to  help calm them. When they are in a calmed state, they may then be more  open to  a spiritual imput.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have 'divine madness', the madness afflicting people who are  drunk with ecstasy,  who are filled with  God's joy and love, and who are regarded as mad because they often feel  little need to conform to the orthodox rules of our society.  (They are in touch with 'higher law'!)In this bracket I would inlude teachers of the 'Crazy Wisdom' tradition such as Adi Da ( whose method of awakening is  often to trick people), the late Osho with his fleet of rolls royces, or 'rascal sages' such as Gurdjieff ,who would often teach by shocking his students. Sri Ramana Maharshi, the great Indian saint, was  a true divine drunkard! He was  once found in such a  rapturous state , that ants were beginning to eat up his leg and he never noticed!

 Of course this is not madness at all. These people are 'super sane' and live  from their hearts . They are connected  to divine law; they are  wise, open channels or conduits for divine qualities to flow through them and so 'come from' a very different place than from where you and I come from ( or certainly from where I come from!) Indeed, so linked up  are they to the will of God, that they care little for social niceties or with cultivating pleasing personalities. If you encounter such a  'mad person', you will only come face to face with truth, and if your usual way of relating, is via your artificial, 'socialised' self, you  will probably feel very awkward in their company !

The sad thing is that  these remarkable and awake  human beings, are, as I said,  generally regarded as  being bonkers by those people whom I see as being  the true members of the  real stark-raving-bonkers brigade -  i.e., the  normals!  And here I refer to the vast majority of us who see ourselves as 'normal' and  nice and who  live our lives primarily by  adhering to the rules of convention. Normal, nice man, R.D. Laing reminded us, has been responsible for killing millions and millions  of his fellow,  normal, nice men over the last century, and  has delighted in spending billions  a year on this enterprise, with the result that there is never enough to help the billions on our planet who are starving. Yesterday, on the television, I saw Tony Blair answering questions on the Iraq war and  putting on his normal ' Tony acting sincere  show' and I thought to myself:  'That man is a good example of someone truly stark raving bonkers!'

You see, what normal man does, is that he lives his life in a small narrow box where anything and everything that he does not understand or that does not fit into it,  is either  said not to exist or is labelled 'insane'. Everybody else is   wrong and he is always right! Anything that he doesn't like to face about himself, he projects onto other people. The great visionary Psychologist Abraham Maslow was only too well of the craziness of 'normal man', and described him as 'Living in a state of chronic psychopathology and crippling immaturity'!

Your question was : how do we deal with madness from a spiritual perspective? Well, my answer is that  the madness that  truly needs focussing on, is this madness. And how we deal with it , is  that we recognise it for what it is and  what it results in, and from this place,  we seek to see how and where we too, might be any part of it, and if so, what we can do to  change our ways.   What is also very important is   that we try to expose ourselves as much as possible to those afflicted with divine madness, in the hopes that something of the vision. beauty and wisdom of these great adepts may enter us and pull the scales off our eyes - rub off on us in some way, as this will speed things up for us.

Perhaps this is not the answer you were expecting to your question, but it is the one I am giving you.

How do we deal with Depression?

Question. I am always depressed. What should I do?

Serge. Depression is a terribly debilitating condition and let me offer you all my sympathy. It makes us feel bad about ourselves; it  makes us dislike ourselves  and live in a world where the glass is always half empty. It  also often compells us to hide away from life and is one of the reasons why some people drink a lot, or take drugs - just to deaden the pain. That said, there are many different kinds of depression and  I don't know what yours fits into. 

Basically,  I see depression  as falling into five main categories.

1. The first category  is what we call   a 'clinical depression' , which is the result of some faulty wiring somewhere in our brain (usually due to something having gone wrong in our early childhood).  This can verge from our experiencing a continual low grade despair, to feeling especially 'sad' when  the sunlight goes, to having a serious depressive illness such as bipolar disorder.

2. The second kind is the result of painful things happening to us in our lives, such as a big financial loss, being made redundant or losing a loved one. 

3. The third kind  is how we feel if we never bother to do anything remotely meaningful in our lives, that is, if we just live on benefits  and never try to find work and  live like the Royle family, gawping at the television all day, or seeing how much more we can  dishonestly wheedle  out of the system. 

4. The fourth kind is  how we feel if we live a totally topsy turvy  and destructive and violent kind of life, where we treat others disdainfully, overeat, never do exercise, earn our living drug dealing or selling arms! 

5. The last kind of depression is a natural part of what happens to us at certain phases of  our spiritual journey and is not pathological, but is the result of a more spiritual part of ourselves beginning to awaken. If we go into a 'Dark Night of the Soul' crisis, for example, we  may enter a very despairing and bereft place inside ourselves, and come face to face with our many shortcomings  and  get to see all those  negative parts of ourselves which, up until now,  we have not wanted to see ( and have probably projected out onto others) in order that we can now work on them.  I have written a long article about this called 'The spiritual path as  a tough and beautiful journey.

Sometimes, these different depressions collude together and the reason why we spend all day doing nothing is because we are too  clinically depressed to do anything. Sometimes, loafing around all day  or living a violent kind of life, conspires to upset the brain chemistry, and  this makes us clinically depressed. Sometimes a serious life tragedy becomes an integral part of how we begin opening up spiritually.

I suggest that you try and assess yourself  and see what category  or categories you feel your depression falls into. If it is the first, then go to your doctor and ask him to refer you to a psychiatrist. I say this because all too often GPs, who are not experts, as psychiatrists are, in the many different types of depressive disorders we can suffer from, just prescribe Prosac. And that may not be what is required. Here, make sure your psychiatrist is a human being kind of psychiatrist and not the type who pathologies everyone and everything and hands out  dangerous drugs to all and sundry  as if they were smarties.

 A good  psychiatrist will assess the seriousness of your condition and may  not  even put you on medication. He may suggest you do Cognitive Behaviour therapy or may even send you to someone like me. If you suffer from bi polar disorder,  however, then you have to be on medication. Many very eminent people who have had this disorder, have lived good  and productive lives, as a result.

If it is the second kind  of depression that is due to loss, you may just have to tough it out. If you feel  really suicidal, you might go to your GP and get a small amount of 'chemical help' just to tide you over for a month or so.   But try not to. And if you do,  don't see it as anything more than a very temporary crutch. What is  also important here, is that you surround yourself with  good friends, do things that comfort you, and  even try and help others, i.e.,  this gets you out of being overly morbid and just ruminating on your loss. Eventually, you will have to come to terms with it and accept it, and when that happens, the depression will go. As regards the third kind, well try and get off your backside and do something, as the act of doing will reconnect you to the outer world ( and a lot of  our despair and depression is because we feel alienated and disconnected.) If it is hard to do this, try and get some help.

There are all sorts of social services available.  If it is the fourth kind of depression, well just stop for a moment  and look at the kind of life you lead and know that if you treat others like pigs,  that this is how you are going to feel! And if it is the last kind of depression, caused by spiritual emergence,  you need to remember that in order to get up into the spiritual light, you first have to go into your darkness, and that an integral part of our developing a genuine spirituality, is becoming conscious of our dark side or  what Jung called our Shadow. 

Remember: before Dante went up into Heaven, he first had to go down into Hell. Here, we might have to hang out in a pretty dark and dank  tunnel and  be prepared to wait until such a time as we will have sufficiently 'burned through' our negativity and thus should not try to distract ourselves and  do things to make ourselves feel better prematurely ! When the time is right, we will once more surface up into the light.

The key thing about all depressions is to get some kind of help.  Also, we need to stand outside  ourselves and say ' This is not who I am; this is only my depression talking!' So go to a counselor. Find a psychotherapist you trust. Go on a spiritual pilgrimage.   Do a lot of exercise. It produces more endorphins in the brain.

Perhaps, change things  about the way you live. A lot of our despair,  which can lead to depression, can  also  be caused by our living the life we think we should life, or that  perhaps  our parents or society  have said ' we ought to live', as opposed to how we  really want to live.  If we can  manage to live more  the way we really want to, then we should  try to do so. Many of the depressed clients that have come to see me for psychotherapy, became  increasingly 'un-depressed' after they stopped doing  a lot of the kinds of things that  they found 'pressed down' on them! I hope this is of some help.

Does suffering have any purpose to it?

Question: Can you please  comment on what you see as being  the purpose of Suffering and how you feel  we can best deal with it?

Serge.  Thank you for asking me this question as I think it is a very important one, as  certainly suffering, in one form or another, visits all of us from time to time. Indeed, it  spares none of us, and, as Jack Kornfeld pointed out in his  book 'After the Ecstasy, the Laundry',  it even  hits those among us who are  enlightened! And often it comes and whacks us right  out of the blue.  We develop a serious illness; we suffer a severe loss. Something very painful happens to us.  And the thing about suffering, especially if it is very acute, is that it takes us very deep.  It concentrates our attention like nothing else. We  get to see things  about ourselves or about the world that perhaps ordinarily  we would never be able to see . 

Perhaps, we recognise that we need to care more about the Not-Have's of this world; perhaps, we are challenged to be kinder or braver or less self-indulgent!   Perhaps we need to look at death in the face or understand more about the spiritual significance of loss.  I also think that suffering is   in our lives   to 'test' us, to see if we are up to dealing with  it ! Indeed, if our suffering is very acute,  we simply have to learn to deal with it , if we are to survive. I think our big challenge is to see  if we can use our grief to help us evolve and move forward as opposed to  feeling resentful that  the world isn't   dealing us  the cards that we would like! 

The one thing which all of us have in common,  of course, is that we don't like to suffer! Indeed, as the Buddha pointed out,  most of us try to devote our lives to having pleasure and avoiding pain! However,  we need to realise that suffering really  is a fact of life and  that   were it not for its existence, we couldn't  really know joy. Also, the more we try to avoid it, the more it will come after us! Jung understood suffering and told us that whenever he felt deeply touched  either by  great joy or by  great pain, that he knew that both had come from God. It helps  us if we can  realise this as well, as it  can get us out of the thinking that  we need to put our lives on hold  until we 'get  through' our suffering,  to realising that it is an integral part of our life  and therefore needs comprehending and living with.

I always think that one of the  main things that  my suffering (when it chooses to visit me) asks of me is that  I have more heart, that I  be more conscious,  more human, that I open my eyes much more, that I learn to see  many things that  I have  always seen,  only in a new and deeper way. Indeed,  often we will find when we suffer,  that we cannot  any more 'get away' with our old fuzzy and unconscious habits that we could get away with when our lives were going the way we wanted! 

What suffering asks of us, then,  is that we rise to it, that we choose  to show  conscious strength, that we make sure that we find a clear centre inside ourselves  which can help us  be more objective and thus realise  that our suffering is not who we are.  If we get too identified with it and  go too far down the road of 'poor-me-ism' or feeling a Victim,  then we risk , quite literally,  getting ' taken over' by this archetype
( for suffering is an archetype). And if this happens, then we lose the capacity to deal with it. Our suffering has us instead of us having our suffering and when this occurs, it ceases being transformational.

I think  that at this particular time in our evolutionary history, that a great many of us are  going through quite a lot of suffering. Indeed, I think that Species Man or 'us as a human collective' is being  powerfully tested and that what is currently happening on our planet is that we are  going through what I will call a Species Dark Night of the Soul crisis.

Essentially what this means is

a) that many of us are having to face  very, very painful aspects of ourselves  that perhaps, up until now, we have avoided looking at, and
b) that many of our old supports and conforts are currently being removed from us.

Here I am reminded of that lovely little remark by Thomas a Kempis. 'Grace is given to us to train us and is removed to test us'. For essentially what suffering is, is  an absense of grace.   Our old comforts and supports are removed. We are left  naked, having to confront our own darkness. OK, so how do we  deal with this?

Firstly,  I suggest that we accept  our suffering and  we don't try to deny or fight it but instead recognise  that it  really is one of the ways that God uses to try to help us grow, and  so, hard as this may seem,  we  need to give thanks for this opportunity.  Thus, we  must try to open our hearts as wide as possible to our suffering , mindful that  they really are our  own little 'inner alchemical furnices' and, if we allow them,  are capable  of transmuting all our 'base metal' into gold! 

Just as logs fed into a fire will make it burn more brightly, so, if we feel up to it,  if we feed our  suffering  into our hearts,  it will  also help   open them  more. It is also useful to  recognise that what we are confronting is a karma of some kind or other - either one that is particularly connected to us, or conversely,  it might be that our souls will have chosen to work through some aspect of species karma   - and so we are 'taking on' some extra heavy suffering! 

If so,  again we accept this and if our pain is very great,  we may feel moved to want to pray and ask for help from a higher source. It is surprising how well we can pray and how effective our prayers can be when we are really up against it! Also, it is good to  not be proud and  therefore to ask our close friends for their help and support.  There is an old song by the Mamas and the Papas which has a line that goes 'The darkest hour is just before dawn.' 

We need to remember this.  The joy and the light are near. They are approaching us. Basically, if  we can  endure our suffering and not cave in to it, we will emerge purified and strengthened and the  new spiritual light  that will  soon be with us, will allow us to move forward in our lives in a whole new  and powerful way.

The Mystery of the Spiritual Path

Question: Serge, please tell me what most turns you on about being on a spiritual path? 
What a question.  What turns me on? Well, being on a spiritual path is about the process of trying to turn on our humanity, isn’t it - trying to ignite the spiritual light or the divine spark inside us so we can become more fully human.

But I think what especially touches me at this moment – probably because I have just taught a retreat on this topic – is the idea of engaging with life as a mystery, that is, trying to be open to the core  ‘is-ness’ lying at the heart of all things or coming to sense the many deeper meanings that lie hidden inside what is simple and ordinary. If we can reach into the heart of life or be a space to enable life’s heart to reach deeply into us, there is so much richness to be gleaned from every moment. And if we allow this richness to enter us, we will feel fulfilled and it may be that we will feel less motivated to engage in many of the activities that we used to do in the past to try and fill us. From this place, it becomes easier to live in a simpler and less complicated way.

For life is a huge mystery.  We must accept that we know very little about it, and perhaps we need to think what it might also mean to live more out of a space of asking deeper questions, such as: who are we really, and what is our purpose for being here?  Have we had other lives? How are we to best live this life? Who or what is God and what is our relationship to God?  What happens before we are born and after we die?

If we can engage with these mysteries, not so much with our intellects (as the great questions of life can never be understood rationally), but more with our hearts and souls, this will gradually allow little intimations of the truth to trickle through to us.
I recognise, however, that doing this can be difficult. Many of us are scared of what we don’t know. We want certainty and don’t like to be in the dark about things. So instead of engaging with the depths of life, we can tend to turn away from it by trying to reduce it to superficialities, endeavouring to fit our experiences into neat little boxes and compartments in the illusion that it will make us feel safe. Actually, it doesn’t. It just reduces us as well!

 This inclination can also prevail in our spiritual lives. Some of us don’t want to inquire. We want to have it all set in stone; we want to have man and God all tied up in a neat, safe package. And so we become a Fundamentalist where we are not required to use our imagination or question anything - only obey. If Jesus or Mohammed or any other ‘great Master’ was supposed  (we can never prove it, of course) to have made certain pronouncements as to how we should live and be, then that must be it! No questions asked. Anyone who disagrees with us must be wrong!

This for me is also a limited way to live, for it means we are closed off to anything and everything that doesn’t concur with ‘ the truth as we believe it to be.’ I think once we stop asking questions, and succumb to the illusion that ‘we know’, that we stop evolving. We become the proverbial ‘grown-up’: the person who has stopped growing!

In actuality, we are rather like icebergs. Tiny little pieces of us bob visibly on the surface – this being the part of ourselves we are conscious of  - while the vaster part of us, the part we don’t know or the mystery part – lies hidden and submerged. And for me the fun is getting to know more of this submerged us, discovering how to bring more of what is unconscious in us up into the light of day. For Joseph Campbell, the great Mythologist, this constituted the core of the ‘Hero’s Journey’. And what is hidden, we remind ourselves, is not only what I’ll call our ‘dark shadow’ – comprising the parts of ourselves we don’t want to know that we possess, that is, the unacceptable parts (which we often like to project onto others and scapegoat them for possessing), but also our ‘light shadow’, our wonderful, loving, fantastic spiritual sides that have also not yet emerged into consciousness.

One of the reasons, then, why life may not have enough meaning for some of us, is because we turn away from the mystery of our dark side. Like Nazruddin, the Sufi trickster, searching on his hands and knees for his lost front-door key under the street-lamp just because there happened to be light there (although it was a mile away from his home that had no lamp outside it), we omit to look in the place where the real keys to the mystery of our lives are to be found, namely, in the parts of our psyche that are, as yet, unlit!  Put another way, we only deem it necessary to earn our outer living and so we neglect our inner life and close off to it, preferring to identify with certain external, visible images of who we believe we are: husband, wife, mother, brother, computer programmer, member of a particular race or class, right or left wing, supporter of Manchester United, etc.  We live through concepts, not symbolically.  We are under the illusion that our ideas about who we are are who we really are. In actuality, they are what cover over the real mystery of who we are.

If, however, we choose to live out of a space of greater awareness, we become much more open to life as it essentially is.  In becoming more conscious of its deeper meaning, we are given new insights as to our true nature. Indeed, the more we give ourselves space to explore our inner worlds, the less we may need to travel the whole world in order to know life, for we are becoming more able to recognise the oneness of all things mirrored in every particular.

This expanded space, however, can only open up in us if we desire it, if we work at it, if we meditate regularly and commit to developing a quiet mind and an open and loving heart. It is these factors that allow us to reach more deeply into life and to begin unlocking its secrets.

I stress again: the inquiry is never an intellectual process. It is always an issue of allowing our own essence to communicate with life’s essence and thus be receptive to the clues that life is always giving us. When I did my Shamanic training, for example, I was taught to be silent and to allow the cloud formations to speak to me and tell me about myself. In my analytic training, I learned to listen with the intelligence in my heart to the symbols in my dreams. Because over the years I have tried to be open to the magic and mystery of life, I no longer believe that things just happen randomly and without meaning. So if something painful takes place – say we have some kind of crisis - a serious illness, a financial loss, the death of someone dear to us – it is important that we be receptive to what life may be trying to say to us.

I try to bring this approach into my private practice. Clients sometimes come to me asking me to fix their marriage or fix their depression. I reply that I am not in the fixing business. Instead of trying to get rid of their unpleasant symptoms, I suggest that they try to engage with them and find out what they may be trying to communicate. I remember a very sensitive man once came to see me who had had continual back pain for six years and very little energy.  Nothing he did helped. He was desperate. ’I used to be such an alive person’, he told me. I asked him what his profession was. He said he was a stockbroker and hated it. He had been an artist but then had met his wife to be. ’She wanted me to earn more money’, he told me:
‘So I gave up that side of my life’.

‘Perhaps deep down, your soul is very unhappy about that decision,’ I said, ‘and may be trying to tell you something. Perhaps, it is very natural that you are experiencing those symptoms because you are not listening to the wisdom of your body!’ His eyes filled with tears.
‘Yes. Yes. I hate my life in the city. It’s not me’.

I didn’t see him any more.  A year later, he rang me and said ‘I’ve done it. I am back to being an artist again. My wife is understanding and the moment I made the decision, my back pain left me and I have all my old energy back.’

Another client came to see me who had recently become impotent.  He was an intelligent and not unspiritual man. I asked him to listen to what his ‘softness’ was trying to tell him and not to pathologise it. In desperation he did what I asked and at our next session, he came up with this interesting explanation. ‘I see my life is totally out of balance. Everything I do is hard. I am a hard-nosed business man. I play tennis hard. I am hard on my family. Perhaps my impotence is the voice of my repressed feminine side or of my soft side trying to get through to me, in the only place that I will sit up and listen, to tell me how much I am repressing it.’

‘Perhaps you are right’ I said, ‘So what about if you gave more space for softness in your life. Say, learn Tai Chi. Meditate. Be gentler with those you love. Give yourself space to dream. Read poetry!’ He began to do this and gradually his so-called affliction (which was really the voice of his soul) left him.

If we make the choice to live life more symbolically and less literally, it becomes more possible to move beyond such concepts as success/failure or right/wrong, that often lead to what is now termed ‘Status Anxiety’ and can be such a source of unhappiness. Let me give an example from my own life.  Some years ago, I went through a period when everything began to go wrong for me at every level. My good luck deserted me. Girl-friends left. My work shrank. Publishers declined me. No one seemed to want me. Even more painful, I experienced a loss of connection with my spirituality.  (And this happened after many years of being pretty successful.)

A lot of friends said: ‘Serge. You must work on your prosperity again. This is bad what is happening for you!’
I didn’t actually think so. If we engage with life as a mystery, all these categories become irrelevant. I realised something deeper must be going on and I tried to engage   in recognising what this might be. And what I saw to my horror was that I had been riding high for a long time and that my success had gone to my head and actually I was not progressing internally. Not only was I not walking my talk but in no way was I actually being that loving person I was suggesting other people be! My ego inflation was very subtly taking me over. And my life was simply reflecting this, the whole withdrawal of support allowing me to see that this stage needed to come to an end and that a radical shift was required on my part. I saw I needed to ‘die’ much more to my egoic nature. So from a deeper perspective, it was ‘good’ – although of course, painful - that all this was happening for me, for it allowed me to go that much deeper and thus be able to make the required shift.

More recently, I became engaged in the mystery of Betrayal. A very dear friend did something to me which I felt was unforgivable and I felt huge resentment towards him, until I realised that the gift he was offering me was the possibility of again stretching myself into whole new realms so that I might  ‘get off’ my attachment to my self-righteousness and learn what it really meant to forgive! Again, it was difficult but eventually I managed it. Just! After that experience, I came a little closer to understanding what Mephistopheles meant when he told Dr Faustus that ‘I am for ever evil who does forever good!’

As all these stories show, the soul part of us or our deeper spirituality wants to shake up our ego and play games with the ways they like to ‘plot’ our lives for us. Our souls could not really care one iota for our comfort.

Embracing the mystery of life also involves us opening to the mystery of beauty and love and joy and exploring how we can be a space for all the many wonderful, sacred qualities inside our hearts to germinate. Again, if we can discover how to participate in this process more consciously, we can live   with much more love and joy and with far less rigidity. For example, in the arena of intimate relationships, if we can be more compassionately aware of the mystery of our partner (as opposed to holding them in a fixed sense of who we conceive them to be) we give them much more space to be who they really are and thus gradually to unfurl their truth for us. This in turn allows more fresh air to enter the relationship and hence it is far less likely to go stale. (Many relationships fail precisely because this does not happen!)

The more we choose to live with loving awareness, the easier it becomes to embrace life’s mystery and to realise that we are not mere skin-bound ego entities, but beautiful and wise, multi-dimensional beings. As the psychologist Jean Huston once said. ‘We are all Stradivariuses raised to believe we are plastic fiddles’. One of our great challenges is to allow ourselves to experience the truth of her words.