Self-Help: too much of a good thing?!
What a flipping fantastic question! When I was 33 years old I asked myself that very same question!! My library at the time brimmed with enough self-esteem-building, spirit-lifting, relationship-advising, co-dependent, neurotic, feminist, esoteric, astrological, paleontological, philosophical paradigms and relief to diagnose and heal several galaxies. From the esoteric: psychics, tarot readers, trance channels, holographic re-patterning specialists, aura color healers, palm readers, Reiki masters, past-life regression experts of the Far East Dharma, Karma, Buddha masters. I included the New Age, the poets and even the dead: Kierkegaard, Swedenborg, Kant, Borges. And I didn’t stop there: I devoured books on sex, business, the inner workings of the mind and ecstatic dance. If it was nonfiction and said “help” ANYWHERE in or on the book, I READ IT! I was on a path (with frequent intermissions) to find out EXACTLY how to be free and NOT suffer unless absolutely necessary. And even then was convinced I could find a way to diminish the likelihood of that. Yet, despite my drive in my particular quest to find immunity from pain, this form of my quest came to an abrupt halt at 33. I had crossed a line.
And funnily enough, just prior to that I had asked myself—or rather, I heard that still small voice that I hear and know as the Great Divine (sort of as if The Great Oz was God) inside of me say…and I swear it cleared its throat (okay, maybe not, but I like to think my inner guidance system has a tremendous sense of humor) “Maryanne…dear. Can it be, after so many years of relentless pursuit of the internal fortress you seek, that the answer does not lie somewhere in even one of these books?”
I was actually embarrassed, because for the first time I realized how profound the notion was. When you come down to it, awakening and staying awake is not a new concept. Yes, we are complicated beings, but many great people have devoted their lives to taking on the complex material of spiritual laws and have done a really tremendous job of breaking it down for us. Yet there I was, face-to-face with a question that led me across the abyss of awareness to transformation. It was time, at last, to take all “I knew” and actually create a practice. You see, I had become addicted to the buzz. A self-help junkie. And why not? I am pretty sure that of all my addictions this one actually paid off! But like all things the time had come for me to fish or cut bait. Change or die—well, I wanted to die, anyway.
Despite all this amazing information, I stood and looked at my life and could not figure out why, despite knowing “it all,” I was still suffering. Still in an unhealthy, unfulfilling relationship; still exercising poor choices, maintaining inappropriate boundaries, religiously entertaining recurrent negative self-talk, etc. And I knew it. This, my friends, was painful. They say ignorance is bliss. I said, after a 17-year quest to, in essence, wake up, I instead was faced with (in great detail) precisely what was wrong with me, simultaneously knowing better. Reminds me of a great line from a poem: "The fish in the water that is thirsty needs serious professional counseling." Kabir
And then I woke up! Yup. Just like that. For me it took what it took, and, like all of us on a path, it takes what it takes. So could it be that had I read one book fewer I would have had my awakening, being delivered from suffering? Would I not have found that which I had sought my entire life? I can never know, it seems. What I do know is that I am often asked this question, I say to anyone that walks through my door or asks my advice on the matter: “What do you want? And what are you willing to do about it?” The answer for me was simple. I wanted true freedom of being and freedom from suffering. I said a prayer. “God, please show me the way!” And I woke up. But not before I had spent almost twenty years trying everything else! And what I was willing to do about it? The answer was equally as simple; whatever it took! Staying awake for me, is what I had sought my whole adult life, And to stay awake included, among other things, developing a daily practice that fostered this gift I had received.
(for more on the method I developed out of this experience check out http://corrcertification.com)
And funnily enough, just prior to that I had asked myself—or rather, I heard that still small voice that I hear and know as the Great Divine (sort of as if The Great Oz was God) inside of me say…and I swear it cleared its throat (okay, maybe not, but I like to think my inner guidance system has a tremendous sense of humor) “Maryanne…dear. Can it be, after so many years of relentless pursuit of the internal fortress you seek, that the answer does not lie somewhere in even one of these books?”
I was actually embarrassed, because for the first time I realized how profound the notion was. When you come down to it, awakening and staying awake is not a new concept. Yes, we are complicated beings, but many great people have devoted their lives to taking on the complex material of spiritual laws and have done a really tremendous job of breaking it down for us. Yet there I was, face-to-face with a question that led me across the abyss of awareness to transformation. It was time, at last, to take all “I knew” and actually create a practice. You see, I had become addicted to the buzz. A self-help junkie. And why not? I am pretty sure that of all my addictions this one actually paid off! But like all things the time had come for me to fish or cut bait. Change or die—well, I wanted to die, anyway.
Despite all this amazing information, I stood and looked at my life and could not figure out why, despite knowing “it all,” I was still suffering. Still in an unhealthy, unfulfilling relationship; still exercising poor choices, maintaining inappropriate boundaries, religiously entertaining recurrent negative self-talk, etc. And I knew it. This, my friends, was painful. They say ignorance is bliss. I said, after a 17-year quest to, in essence, wake up, I instead was faced with (in great detail) precisely what was wrong with me, simultaneously knowing better. Reminds me of a great line from a poem: "The fish in the water that is thirsty needs serious professional counseling." Kabir
And then I woke up! Yup. Just like that. For me it took what it took, and, like all of us on a path, it takes what it takes. So could it be that had I read one book fewer I would have had my awakening, being delivered from suffering? Would I not have found that which I had sought my entire life? I can never know, it seems. What I do know is that I am often asked this question, I say to anyone that walks through my door or asks my advice on the matter: “What do you want? And what are you willing to do about it?” The answer for me was simple. I wanted true freedom of being and freedom from suffering. I said a prayer. “God, please show me the way!” And I woke up. But not before I had spent almost twenty years trying everything else! And what I was willing to do about it? The answer was equally as simple; whatever it took! Staying awake for me, is what I had sought my whole adult life, And to stay awake included, among other things, developing a daily practice that fostered this gift I had received.
(for more on the method I developed out of this experience check out http://corrcertification.com)
No comments have been added yet.
