Marrow (9 page)

IT'S ONE THING TO WRITE
about the marrow of the bones—there's a lot of research out there to back me up when I'm describing bones and blood and stem cells. It's another thing to write about the marrow of the self. The marrow of the bones is home to your stem cells. The marrow of yourself is home to your soul, although there are no clinical studies I can quote to prove this. There are traditions and ceremonies, poetry and music, mystical conjecture and luminous experience. But any discussion of the soul is subjective. I offer you here my own definition. It may differ from yours. That's OK with me. I have no argument with multiple ways of defining the soul or spirit or God. The more the merrier.

What is the soul? In the deepest part of each of us, we are one and the same. My essence and your essence are the same liquid light, poured from the great ocean into the small vessel of an individual body with its singular personality and purpose. Words alone cannot describe our essential, eternal, spiritual nature. But words are what I have. Musicians can sing of the spirit, and artists can paint its incandescence. I only have words. I use the word “soul” to describe how eternal essence is bent like refracted light through the prism of our human nature. Soul is essence filtered through genetics and gender and ancestry and upbringing and the times in which we live.

Your soul here on earth is uniquely yours. It is different from my soul, although eventually all streams lead back to the great ocean. Some people call that ocean God, some call it spirit, some don't call it anything—they just experience it as a vastness, or a question mark, or an abiding sense of love and light. In the vastness our distinctions and differences melt into Oneness, but while we are here, we are meant to express the uniqueness of who we are, each one of us a snowflake fallen from the essence down to earth. We are meant to take pleasure in our individuality, even as we remember our essential unity. The soul is the bridge between pure essence and human individuality.

When the soul bridge is in place, we can go back and forth between essence and ego, unity and diversity. We remember how we all come from the same place, but have different purposes while here. We realize how spectacular a chance we've been given to bring heaven to earth. When our egos get puffed up, or when our rational minds dominate, or our emotions and senses overwhelm, the soul retreats. The bridge draws up; we are stranded in separateness.

But the soul can be wooed back. Sit tall and still. Close your eyes, drop your shoulders, soften your belly. Breathe. Now, tell your overwrought mind, shhhhh. Breathe, shhhhh, wait. There! That quietude you feel, that relaxed presence, that openness, that peace. That is your soul. Even if you sense the soul for a split second, even if you have to wade through restlessness and boredom for that one taste, even if you barely believe in what you are doing, it is wise to woo the soul. To learn her language. To let him guide you.

HERE'S ANOTHER WAY OF SPEAKING
about the soul. The Greeks believed that each child was blessed at birth with a personal daimon—a spirit guide, a golden thread connected to one's brightest purpose and ultimate destiny. We don't have an adequate word today for the daimon. “Soul” works for me, but it has connotations that turn some people off. “Guardian angel” might work for some, but others will take the words literally and scoff at the idea of an immaterial being capable of holding back a truck as you cross the street. That is not what the Greeks meant. To them, your daimon—your spirit guide—lived within you. You were born with it; you came into this world with your daimon embedded in the body, like the grand oak already present in the acorn—a kind of spiritual DNA that already knows who it is, what it should do, how it should live. Greek philosophers spoke of the responsibility to put the daimon in charge of your life. If you didn't—if you tried to live someone else's life, if you covered your light, if you squandered your purpose—you would deny others the fullness of your gifts.

The Romans, who appropriated many Greek concepts, called the daimon your Genius. Each person (well, in Roman times, each man) had his own Genius. We've reduced the meaning of the word “genius” to intellectual prowess, but its original meaning was the unique indwelling character of each person. To the Romans, ev
eryone had an essential character and therefore a distinctive calling. Places, objects, and events had indwelling natures as well, including your house and the street you lived on, cities and mountains, seasons and festivals. The Genius was often represented by an image of a vital and youthful boy, meant to symbolize the ageless, eternal soul that had temporarily taken up residence in the person, place, or thing.

If you were a woman in ancient Rome, you got to have a Genius too, but it was called your Juno. Juno was Rome's presiding goddess. She was symbolized by a woman sitting under a verdant fig tree, holding a resplendent peacock. The month of June was named after her. She was life in its fullness—sweet but also fierce. She protected life, and was known to throw thunderbolts if crossed (a useful skill to embolden in your own personal Juno).

The job of the parents in ancient Rome was to help the child know and trust her Juno, to discover and follow his Genius. I am not sure how many of the ancients actually put this into their parenting practice. I imagine they were as flawed as we are. But theoretically, they believed it was not the role of the parent to unduly influence a child's sense of self, or to overdirect his steps in the world.

Most of us today were parented and socialized in such a way that, by the time we reach adulthood, our Genius is so covered over with shoulds and shouldn'ts that we often don't know where to look for our Juno, our Genius, our authentic self. In fact, the whole notion seems questionable. Is there really such a thing as an “authentic self,” a “real self”? I say yes. Perhaps it is suppressed or scuffed up, but it can be liberated; it can be polished. I have personally experienced this. After years of trying and failing, and then trying more and succeeding by fits and starts, I know now
that when I get my small ego and my frightened reactivity out of the way, my authenticity, my soulfulness, will rush in and fill the confines of my being. It will guide my steps and gratify even the toughest times with a sense of meaning.

Your Juno or Genius must be courted. Although it is strong and luminous, your guardian spirit is unassuming and even shy. It responds to persistent yet kindly biddings. Once awakened, it outshines everything false within you and in your life. But it needs room and time to stretch as it stirs. Your Juno, your Genius, they know who you are—they know you suffer from a case of mistaken identity. But they are not the argumentative types. They're not as loud as some of the other voices in your head. But that doesn't mean they aren't there.

It takes some work to make contact with your Juno or your Genius. You may need some help. Psychotherapy can be helpful. So can meditation. Both are good for taming the voices in your head—the ones who bark bad directions at all hours of the day and night.

It's not that difficult to know where to look for help. Seek out helpers in the form of therapists or teachers (or books or systems) who seem to be following their own Genius or Juno. How will you know this? Those in touch with their authenticity share similar traits. They are gentle and strong in equal measure. They are not overly concerned about what others think of them, and yet they are greatly concerned about the well-being of others. They are so in touch with themselves that they are open toward everyone. They have tasted the sweetness and the bitterness of their life and declared it all good; they want you to taste your own life too. They don't want your allegiance; they want your liberation. They won't
come after you; you must seek them out. And when your work with them is done, they will give you wings to fly away.

And then the real work begins. The daily commitment to being genuine in everything you say or do. The courage to be vulnerable, to express who you are in a world that wants you to conform, to be bold and loving toward those whose own genuineness is so blocked that they will feel threatened by yours. It's a lifelong road trip, this reclamation of your authentic self, but it's worth it. Through it you come home to a dignified and grateful ground of being.

How will you know your own Juno when she arrives to greet you? How will you recognize your Genius's face? You'll feel a sense of at-homeness, a lack of pretense, nothing overproduced, a wholeness. You'll know her as the “genuine article”—like an apple picked right from the tree, or that cracked teapot that belonged to your grandmother, or your leather jacket that no one else likes but you do and you always have because for some reason it's meaningful, it's expressive, it's you. That is your Juno. That is your Genius. Eventually, you will come to know with all your brain cells that your authentic self is the one thing you can trust the most.

IT NEVER CEASES TO ASTONISH
me how much we all suffer from ADD. Not attention deficit disorder. The ADD I am talking about is
authenticity
deficit disorder, a condition you won't find in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
because I made it up. But still, it's real. And like many disorders, authenticity deficit disorder manifests along a spectrum. Some of us have a mild case. We go through the day with a low-grade embarrassment at being human, hesitant to show our true face with all of its odd and magnificent irregularities, reluctant to look inside, do some housecleaning, and get to the marrow of the self. Others of us fall on the more serious end of the ADD spectrum. Our sense of inadequacy and shame is overwhelming and crippling. Serious ADD can take the form of depression, anxiety, fear, isolation. It can hold us back from living fully. It can make intimacy impossible.

Most of us fall in the middle of the ADD spectrum—sometimes pleased about who we are, sometimes ashamed. Sometimes clear about our path in life, other times befuddled and stuck. In the privacy of our own nutty heads, we imagine everyone else got the instruction book, but not us—in fact, we suspect there may be something uniquely wrong with us. But we keep that insecurity to ourselves; we keep it a secret. And then we try to cover it up with all sorts of facades and defenses that over a lifetime become
habitual. We try to look the part of someone who's got it all together. Depending on what we think the world wants from us, we try to sound cool, act strong, be smart. Or maybe we hide behind a macho mask, or a good-girl persona. Maybe we act the good-girl part when what is called for is to be the rebel, or maybe we act the rebel part even when there's nothing to fight. Meanwhile, back in the marrow, our shining soul is what the world really wants. But we don't believe that. We believe the opposite—that if we looked too deep or shared too much, our basic unacceptability would be found out.

And so we relate to each other on the surface because we're afraid if we reveal too much, if we show all our cards, we won't be loved, we won't be accepted, we won't belong. We'll be taken advantage of. We'll be judged and excluded. But that is a supreme misunderstanding. If we only show to each other our surface scars—our defenses, our reactivity, our false intimacies—then that's what we get back. Show me your surface and I'll show you mine.

Here's the real truth: Underneath the facades and scars and coping mechanisms, you are good to the core. You are not perfect. But you are good. When we show each other our whole selves—scars and all—we get down to the marrow, to the soul. This isn't the easiest thing to do with another person. Sometimes it means admitting that you're scared to go there, that you don't trust the other person, that you have been hurt in the past. But if you can do that, you'll inspire truthful intimacy in the other. It's not a perfect equation—some people are hard nuts to crack, and some people will never break open to you, but it is always worth the effort. Always.

It's in the depth that we're given the chance to lay claim to each other's goodness and to bring it up into the relationship. This may
sound way too laborious, way too risky. But I think it's riskier and more labor-intensive not to do it—not to come home to your own goodness, not to seek out the goodness in others. We spend so much time and anguish circling each other's inauthentic, wounded selves. It's shockingly liberating to break the cycle of authenticity deficit disorder. And a first step in doing so is to realize how we all suffer from ADD.

In my many years of working at Omega Institute, I've been like a spy in the inner sanctum of the human potential movement, trying to get to the bottom of what really helps people heal their wounds and uncover their gifts. What helps people heal physically? Psychologically? What helps them drop their unhappiness and anxiety, and develop self-love and self-worth? What helps them grow spiritually, trading a small, fearful vision of life for a vaster consciousness? And most importantly, what helps people turn self-healing into a gift for our hurting world? I've sat in classrooms and auditoriums, listening for the answers to these questions. I've interviewed healing practitioners, spiritual teachers, business leaders, Nobel laureates, artists and futurists and scientists—all so I could chart this journey of how human beings can recover from authenticity deficit disorder.

People often ask me, “Wow, you've hung around such amazing teachers, what are they like? What's the most enlightening thing you've taken away from all this? What's the big secret?” I hope my takeaway doesn't disappoint you. The big secret is this: every teacher or author or leader or artist I've worked with is an ordinary human being—every single one of them. That's the big secret. Yes, they are wise and they are profound, but they are also just like you and me. They eat, they go to the bathroom, they forget where they put their keys, they quarrel with family members. They try
to live up to their noblest ideals, and sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. They have their heartbreaks and blind spots and contradictory behavior. From sitting backstage with some of the most brilliant scientists and wise rabble-rousers and calm healers, I can tell you, without a doubt, that everyone has weird neuroses and surprising insecurities, and everyone has moments of befuddlement just about being human. We look to them for answers, but they too are still searching. This realization has ground into me the truth of what has been said across the ages, but somehow we never really believe: that the answers are within you; that you, yourself, are the answer.

In my early years at Omega, when I was in my twenties, I found it disconcerting when teachers started falling off their pedestals. Like discovering over dinner that a renowned relationship expert was getting divorced, or hosting a retreat for peace activists and finding out they were very angry people. Or meeting the depressed happiness researcher. Or the monk with a big ego. At first this upset me. But as the years went on, it liberated me. It made me more tolerant of all people's inconsistencies, and it made me more compassionate toward myself. It showed me that no one is living the exact life you think they are, so if you compare your life to another person's, you're usually comparing it to a fantasy of your own making. Seeing the imperfect humanness of my teachers side by side with their genius has helped me stop expecting perfection of myself. My close encounters with the wise ones have helped me relax and lighten up. I've let go of the goal of perfection and taken up the goal of authenticity.

The end of authenticity deficit disorder is not a glamorous new personality. It's less exciting and more wonderful than that: You become more fully yourself. You become more present, more
awake, more alive. You uncover a natural intelligence that knows what you need in order to fulfill your destiny. You look less and less outside yourself for validation and direction. Your life becomes who you are, and not what you do.

Eve Ensler, the activist and playwright who wrote
The Vagina Monologues
, has been a frequent speaker at Omega. She once came to Omega straight from being in a war zone in Africa. She told me a story about marching into a meeting with government officials and giving them a piece of her mind about the appalling prevalence of violence against women. I asked her, “How do you find the courage to speak truth to powerful people like that?” And she said, “Because I know everyone is just making it up as they go along, including presidents of countries. Wherever I go, it's just people making things up. So I figure, if they can make it up, I can too. And you can too. Make up something from your deepest truth, and put it in the service of love.”

People like Eve Ensler have shown me that work on the self is not an act of selfishness. To develop kind regard for oneself can become an act of kindness for the world if we turn the light outward as well as inward. When you get to know your own goodness—your core self—you wake up to the obvious yet startling realization that other people also have a core self that deserves to be known and loved. And therefore, the act of uncovering the true self is not a solitary one, for to know oneself is to be compassionate enough to really know the “other,” and to be brave enough to be known.