Finding my way home...again

There's some idea floating around out there that the spiritual path gets easier the further you go with it, and I feel like at various points it created pathology (read "needless suffering") rather than a deepening of the path.  That's been my experience at least...

And somewhat in concert with that has been this notion that Ken Wilber writes about in his published journal One Taste about the societal expectation that all of our Teachers, Healers, Gurus, etc be dead from the neck down and just look at us with a sweet benevolent smile from ear to ear...with no unfinished business, no desires, and definitely no sexuality.  That too creates pathology if you're a healer and have in any way been running that program, that unconscious (or conscious) belief.  It removes any room for humanity.

For example...I'm in NYC doing 9 days of private sessions this week...and towards the beginning of the trip a guy I had been seeing, and felt very connected with on a lot of levels, let me know that he just wanted to be friends.  That he felt a very strong emotional and mental level connection, but that there was an aspect of the physical that just wasn't present for him.  For the first 15 or so hours, it felt like a soccer team had done laps over my heart with steel cleats. 

Rather than spin stories about my worth, desireability, etc...I chose to just stay with the sensations themselves...the felt presence of it all in my body, mostly like a tightly wrung washrag running between the center of my chest down to my navel.  Not fun.  But incredibly powerful. 

As I leaned into the sensations in that first 24 hours, I felt like my heart was actually being opened even wider, rather than "breaking".  I recognized that I had a choice...to open as the experience, or let it close me.  I chose to open.  It was amazing to watch how many old thought trails and memories were being excavated in the process.  One of them was remnants of the "I must be perfect in every way to be an effective healer" idea...which is just plain nonsense.

There were so many moments in the healing sessions with clients that followed where sharing bits of my process had a powerful impact on the clients' own processes, and deepening the trust of our relationships by humanizing me even more.  Sometimes a client really needs to hear/see by example rather than just being given straight tools or "teachings" as such.  I am one of those clients when I'm working with my teachers and mentors.  I want to know that the men and women I'm trusting for partnership, guidance, and mentoring are human, and not afraid of their own shadow...willing to work with it.

Reading the stories of any of the great beings of history, I see how many times they had to face deeper and deeper aspects of the shadow, of the ego...and how subtle it got at times further down the path.  And yet there was always something that pulled them through each time...to it seems to be humilty and Love.

As one of my friends says often, "Love is the whole story."