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Posts from the LightHearted Musings Category
LightHearted Musings - It’s the Journey Not the Destination
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on October 26th, 2008
Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.
–Louis L’Amour
I seem to hike differently from other people. Most people I know hike for exercise, going as fast as they can up the mountain and pushing themselves to see how fast they can get to the top. They are usually up there for just a couple of minutes before they are on their way back down. As much as I have tried, I can’t seem to do it that way.
I must admit that when I hike, it feels rude to pass by the plants and not say hello. I realize how strange that might sound to some of you, but what the heck, Louis L’Amour understands me!
I walk slowly and stop to appreciate how the sky looks through the tree branches, how the ants find their way in perfect synchronization with each other, how the flower buds are just starting to open up, how each plant uniquely feels to the touch. I’m exercising too, but instead of working on my muscles, I’m exercising my connection to Mother Earth, my ability to tap into the energies of all that is around us. I’m exercising my deep love for the world, my amazement at the miracles that surround us, my appreciation for the gift of being able to dream my dreams and climb my mountains for yet another day. I’m exercising my love of life. I may not be the first one to the top of that mountain, but oh, what I have seen along the way!
Dr. Molly
LightHearted Musings - Sincere Forgiveness Isn’t Colored with Expectations That the Other Person Apologize or Change
Posted by Dr. Bruce Roberts on October 19th, 2008
Sincere forgiveness isn’t colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don’t worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time - just like it does for you and me.
–Sara Paddison
I learned some very important lessons about forgiveness from my father. My father was a brilliant man. He was an automotive engineer during the day and spent his evenings and nights working on various inventions. Like many men of his generation, his job was to be the breadwinner. It was the woman’s job to take care of the family and deal with all those touchy/feely emotional things. With his preoccupation with work and his inventions he, sadly, missed out on many of the joys of family life and fatherhood.
My dad carried a lot of anger from his childhood, growing up with a bitter and critical mother. His resentments increased as a Jewish soldier in Germany in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and piled up further as he had one patent after another stolen from him by powerful corporations (see the movie “Flash of Genius”), leaving him with severe financial stress, marital stress, and a sense of failure. His interpersonal skills left something to be desired and he was prone to episodes of rage that distanced him further from those who loved him.
My father was overweight, smoked a pipe, and didn’t exercise. He took 20-minute catnaps through the night while working on his inventions and cracked open 5 raw eggs for breakfast before heading off for his day job. He was a walking time bomb, but it was still a shock when, at the young age of 42, he suffered his first heart attack. Fortunately he survived the heart attack and the subsequent triple bypass surgery. This was a relatively new procedure and I marveled at the medical system that could replace a man’s arteries in his heart. The doctors did an excellent job at addressing his physical risk factors, getting him to stop smoking, improve his diet, start exercising and lose some weight, but the emotional and spiritual aspects of his heart attack were never addressed.
He eventually returned to work and redoubled his efforts to make up for lost time. Ten years later, not surprisingly, he suffered a second heart attack. This time, during his heart catheterization, he coded on the table - his heart stopped beating. I’ve always imagined the conversation my dad might have had with God during this near death experience: “You know Sy, you can check out now if you’d like, but there are still some important lessons to learn. If you want to stay, it may not be easy, but you will have another opportunity to learn those lessons you came here to learn.”
Stand clear! ZZAPPP! The doctors brought him back to life! He survived another heart attack and bypass operation only to begin a 15-year downhill course with Alzheimer’s disease! Now why, I asked myself, would someone choose to come back only to suffer such a horrible, debilitating disease such as Alzheimer’s? What was he thinking?!?
Well, first my father lost the ability to organize his thoughts and was unable to work. This was tough on him, for sure, but it prevented him from spending all of his time working and brought him back home. Next he began to lose his memory in retrograde fashion with his most recent memory going first. He would perseverate for several months about someone who had harmed him in some way, or some anger or resentment, and then suddenly that memory would be gone. Then he’d perseverate about his next resentment, and then the next, until he went all the way back to his childhood. I even got to hear (over and over again!) how his mother had humiliated him by making him play violin in front of company when he had only been playing for six months, while his cousin, who had been playing trumpet for 5 years, had just wowed the crowd!
My father eventually reached the point where he could no longer plan for the future or remember the past. All he had was the present moment. At that point in his life, he had nine grandchildren from newborn to age nine. He still had many challenges, to be sure, but the younger grandchildren didn’t know that he was ill. There were precious moments where my father experienced true peace and contentment, holding the babies in his arms, and being fully present in love. It took two heart attacks and Alzheimer’s disease, but perhaps he had finally learned the lesson he had come here to learn!
So, what did I learn from my father’s life? I learned that anger and resentment are poisons that destroy our health and damage our relationships. I learned that it’s best not to wait for an apology that may never come. I learned that we must find forgiveness in our hearts, not for the sake of the other person, but for our own sake. I learned that our physical and emotional symptoms are messages showing us where our lives are out of balance and that the universe is conspiring in our favor to teach us the lessons we have come here to learn. “Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time.”
The biggest lesson that I learned from my father, however, is that all we really ever have is the present moment. Nothing else is real. Most of us spend precious little time in the present moment. We are either worrying about the future or perseverating about the past. It is only in the present that we are fully alive to experience true joy and passion. It is only in the present that our hearts are fully open to giving and receiving love. Let us vow not to waste another moment holding onto old grudges and petty resentments. Let us make a sacred commitment to appreciate each and every precious moment of our lives and be fully present in love!
Dr. Bruce
LightHearted Musings - Forgiveness is an Attribute of the Strong
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on October 13th, 2008
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
–Mahatma Gandhi
I love everything Mahatma Gandhi has ever said! Just reading his words creates an internal shift for me, where I feel myself getting calmer, more loving and more peaceful, as if I am standing in his presence somehow. What a powerful force for love and peace, and yes, strength too, to have that kind of an effect 60 years after his death. His comments on forgiveness bring to mind some of the difficulty in describing what we really mean by forgiveness.
I was recently at a conference on death and dying, giving a talk on how to help couples and families deal with cancer and other life crisis. I was fortunate enough to sit in on a number of other sessions, and in one, we talked in depth about the concept of forgiveness. The discussion was animated as we tried to figure out exactly what we meant by forgiving someone. We realized that forgiveness is a complicated term and that it was important to be clear on what we all wanted to convey.
When you forgive someone, there is the potential to create a power differential between yourself and the person you are forgiving. An example was of one woman who told her abusive mother that she forgave her for being such a terrible parent and then felt good when her mother was hurt by this statement. Forgiveness of this kind may give you power over them and put them in a weakened position, but is it really forgiveness if it is still playing power politics? If the goal is to let go of the psychic energy around an event, that “power to forgive” still seems like a trap capable of keeping you sucked in.
In addition, forgiving someone might be construed as an acceptance of unacceptable behavior. Nobody in the room felt this was the intention. You may be able to forgive a sexual predator from your past, but you would not condone or tolerate them doing this to someone else. When boundaries have been crossed, forgiving someone shouldn’t mean that further boundary violations are OK.
It seemed that forgiveness had more to do with finding internal and external peace with the person and the hurtful memory than simply letting the person off the hook. We decided that the true goal of forgiving someone was to free up the energy you have been using to be angry about the past in order to make it available to help you bring love, peace and joy into your present.
In Gandhi’s quote above, he wasn’t advocating simply bucking up and forgetting about the bad times. Instead, he was discussing the strength needed to tap into the deeper nature of letting it go. For Gandhi, forgiveness comes from finding the strength to embrace both your humanity and your sacredness and then to discover those dichotomies in those who have hurt you. Understanding, accepting, and even embracing these two aspects of our nature is one of the most difficult and important tasks of our earthly existence and well worth the effort and strength needed to live it.
Dr. Molly
LightHearted Musings - The Eye in Your Heart
Posted by Dr. Bruce Roberts on October 6th, 2008
You got to look at things with the eye in your heart, not with the eye in your head.
- Lame Deer, Medicine Man of the Oglala people
It was probably what attracted me to her the most - her ability to see with the eye in her heart. Molly has a unique gift of seeing right to the depths of your soul, and she saw right into mine. She saw past my flaws and insecurities. She saw who I really was - who I was meant to be. If she had seen me only through the eye in her head, I’m sure she would have left skid marks!
I envied her gift of being able to see with the eye in her heart. I coveted her ability to connect with spirit and trust her intuition. Whenever I was unsure I would turn to Molly and ask, “What does spirit have to say about this?” At first she would respond graciously. Gradually she became more reluctant, and eventually she began to pull away. Slowly, and unwittingly, I was sucking her dry!
You see, I didn’t trust my own intuition. I didn’t trust the eye in my heart. So much of my life and my training as a physician was geared toward developing the eye in my head that I forgot that there was another way to see. I was a Cyclops who didn’t realize that my second eye lie dormant deep in the echo chambers of my heart.
I was attracted to Molly, in part, because I thought she possessed something I didn’t have. It took me several years, and perhaps the most stressful year of our marriage, to realize that Molly was simply a mirror reflecting those shadow aspects of myself that remained hidden and undeveloped. I needed to stop looking to Molly for the answers and to nurture and develop those parts within myself in order to become whole. It was only through my own inner work that I was able to become an equal partner and co-creator in the most incredible relationship I could ever imagine.
Often our greatest gifts lie hidden in our shadows. The truth is, we cannot be attracted to something in someone else unless we possess the seed of that characteristic within ourselves. The eye in my heart was there the whole time. I simply had to learn how to open it.
It is time for all of us to open our eyes and see the world as it really is. Yes, we live in a material world. And yes, from a certain perspective, we are all separate beings. But this is a myopic view of the world and, quite frankly, has gotten us into quite a pickle!
We are so much more than we can see with the eye in our head. When we learn to open the eye in our heart, we begin to see all the beauty and grandeur that surrounds us. We begin to appreciate the incredibly intricate web of spirit that connects us to each other, to the plants, to the animals, and to Gaia, our Mother Earth. With both of our eyes wide open we can begin to heal ourselves, our relationships, and our planet.
It is never too late to open our eyes to who we really are!
Dr. Bruce
LightHearted Musings - The Only Thing to Fear is Fear Itself
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on September 29th, 2008
The only thing to fear is fear itself.
–Franklin Delano Roosevelt
This is a quote that has been roiling around in my head ever since the recent financial crisis started. Maybe it’s because of our politicians’ continual references to the Great Depression. Maybe it’s because it is one of those lines that I would really like to be true but know is not for many people. Homelessness, unemployment, poverty, ill health, death, even fear of lost dreams or missed opportunities are top on people’s minds at the moment, and for some, these are very real possibilities in their lives. For others, this has become their present reality. There is a lot more than fear to fear right now.
So what do we do with this statement, that the only thing to fear is fear itself? Do we scrap it or do we try to pull out those parts that resonate, those parts that have made this such an enduring phrase? I’d like to take a stab at the latter.
The first thing to comment on is how simply inefficient fear is since it doesn’t fix the problem or even avoid it. If it could help you to be proactive and move forward toward your goals, then that’s one thing, but more often, fear paralyzes. It’s like the deer in the headlights that waits for the car to come and run it over. One of my favorite quotes from my own dark days after a broken neck was coincidentally from Roosevelt’s compatriot, Winston Churchill, ”If you are going through hell, keep going!” That is hard to do when fear is cementing your feet to the floor, cutting off your options for escape simply by narrowing your focus and wallowing you in despair.
Dr. Bruce and I regularly teach people a simple technique for loosening that cement. First, close your eyes and take a few good, deep breaths. Then, think about a time in your life when you felt completely loved, completely happy, when all was right with the world, even if the feeling was just a moment in time. Imagine yourself back in that moment and let yourself bask in that feeling for a bit, holding your hand to your heart while you do so. Now, with that image still in your mind’s eye, bring into your heart the problem you are currently dealing with, be it a situation, a person - whatever it might be. Allow both the problem and the love to sit side by side in your heart and then ask your heart if there is any other way to handle the situation or person that you are dealing with. Your heart will give you the answers that you are seeking, and you may be surprised by the great wisdom that comes from within you. Your heart has been patiently waiting for you to seek its guidance - tap in and see what it has to say to you.
One of the advantages of staying in your heart during troubled times is that it gives you access to your own wisdom. It opens up the box of possible solutions and leaves you free to be creative and innovative. It helps you to find your balance, to think quickly and clearly, and to find solutions that are in integrity with your highest values, all of which cannot happen when you are coming from a place of fear.
Acting from fear often brings with it a backlash of recriminations and anger because it stems from a feeling of disempowerment. People do desperate things when they are drowning, even to the point of pulling down and drowning the one person who had come to rescue them. Some in our society have used fear-mongering for their own purposes, as a method of controlling our thoughts and actions. As a country, fear has gotten us into wars, it has put us into financial peril, it has divided our nation, and it has created many more enemies for us to fear around the world. We are now paying dearly for this - the fear has fed on itself and multiplied.
On the other hand, acting from a place of love is inherently a statement of empowerment. Love creates win-win situations and actions that you can feel good about later. It creates alliances, friendships, cooperation, healing, and yes, even opportunities. Love feeds on itself and multiplies as well.
I have sometimes been accused of being too optimistic, of always looking on the bright side of things, but it is important to comment on that assumption. I have had more than my fair share of troubles and challenges in life, and I know full well what loss feels like. I do see what’s going on out there right now. We have financial turmoil, war, anger, and greed. I know the challenges that are coming up for me and my family in the next few years, and I know that other people I care about will be affected as well. My choice of love over fear is not a case of my sticking my head in the sand.
Instead, I see it as the most pragmatic and efficient reaction to the situation that I can have, much more useful and powerful than fear could ever be. I simply don’t have the time for fear. There is too much work to be done if we are to find solutions out of this mess. In this time of limited resources, I can’t afford to waste my limited energy on something that won’t yield positive results. We as a community hold the solutions to our problems in our collective heart, and what we most need right now is to take a moment, tap in and ask love to impart its wisdom. Maybe the line ought to read, “The only thing that works is love itself.”
Dr. Molly
LightHearted Musings - We Belong to Each Other
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on September 19th, 2008
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
–Mother Teresa
When I was younger, I really thought I wasn’t going to live past the age of 30, and I am amazed at how many others of my age had the same thought. You have to wonder what that kind of impending doom does to the human psyche.
I and others like me were convinced that we would all be blown up in a nuclear storm long before we would have a chance to grow old and die peacefully in our beds. This was during the 60’s and 70’s, when we were full force into our Cold War with the Soviet Union, when we were told that this “Evil Empire” on the other side of the world was just itching to blow us off the face of the planet. We were told that we were the good guys and they were the bad ones, that they couldn’t be trusted, had no morals or conscience, and wanted only war and destruction.
There was much talk of impending nuclear war and of our leaders having their fingers on the trigger of worldwide destruction. We saw what a nuclear blast did to cities and people in those famous newsreels, we saw movies depicting people who went crazy and set off a nuclear ping pong match that nobody could possibly win, we heard in great detail what a nuclear winter would be like, we saw the news where the latest conflict was splashed all over the headlines whipping up fear, we heard the concern in our parents voices when they discussed these issues – our impending death was clearly right around the corner. And I always knew, even as a young child, that our “Duck and Cover” nuclear blast drills at school wouldn’t save anyone. How is a cafeteria table going to guard me from a radioactive blast? Might as well face it head on and get the dying over with quickly. Those were my 10-year-old thoughts, and 10-year-olds all over the country were right there with me on the firing line.
Well go figure, here I still am, now well into the second half of my 40’s, still intact and free of radioactive contaminants. The dreaded “Big Bang” didn’t happen, I grew up, got well past 30 (!), fell in love, got married, had children, and now our first child has just gone off to college. All my body parts are intact and my kids have no idea what “Duck and Cover” might refer to.
We are now friends with the Russians, and (who knew!) we found that they were just like us, with all the same fears, stresses, joys, loves, and hopes that we have. Sure, there are some bad guys in the bunch, but we have some of those ourselves. The majority of them are good, kind, decent, loving people who want peace and harmony in their lives. They had been hearing the same demonizing words about us, and to them, we were the “Evil Empire.” All it took was for us to talk with them for a while to find out how much we have in common.
Now I hear some of the same talk about the newest in a long line of bad guys, those in the Middle East. I hear that they are just itching to blow us off the face of the planet, how they have no conscience, honor or sense of right and wrong. Those in the Middle East are hearing the same words said about us, and to them, we are the “Evil Empire.” I hear our leaders demonizing those from the Middle East, and yet when I meet them, (go figure!) they are kind, peace loving, want only the best for their families and want to do right by the world. Some of them are bad guys, but then so are some of us. Just like our new friends, the Russians, and just like us, most of them want peace and harmony in their lives as well.
I see us all as more similar than different on so many levels. As a physician, I know that 99.4% of our DNA is the same in every human being on this planet. I see that we all come from a common ancestral line and as such, we are all brothers and sisters in our humanity. We are a family, dysfunctional though we may be at times, but one worth working on to find more peace in our interactions. Just like family, we are all connected, and our countries can’t harm one another without harming themselves in the process. The same goes for us individually, something that is important to consider the next time you want to yell at your spouse or cut someone off in traffic.
On an emotional level, our needs for safety, physical comfort, love, fellowship, fulfillment, and understanding are common to all. So said the old woman in Egypt who asked my daughter to tell those in America that she wasn’t evil at all, that most people in the Middle East want to live their lives happily and peacefully just like everyone else. So said those people in our group workshops who commented on how surprised they were that another group member was so similar to them when all they saw at first were their differences.
On a more cosmic level, I see us all as children of God, all with that spark of the Divine within us. It is that Divine essence that unites us, makes us all One in a far deeper sense than those words can adequately convey. We are all connected to each other and we all have our parts to play in this great collective World that we share. Violence toward one person on this planet energetically creates a ripple effect that harms everyone else. Harming another because they are different is just as irrational as if I cut off my arm simply because it was different from my leg. This recognition of our divine unity is what we need to tap into in order to honor and cherish each other and bring peace to our world.
So much of our collective time over the past millennia has been spent in figuring out how we are different and then attacking that difference in others. It has been the basis of all our wars and conflict. I wonder how much better our world and our future would be if we all just stopped with the demonizing, with the “us vs. them” mentality, with the thought that those “others” couldn’t possibly be like us. I am so dearly ready to hang up the concept of “Evil Empire.” I am so ready to focus on what we all have in common and to highlight our similarities instead of our differences. I am so ready for my children and my children’s children to assume that they will grow old and die peacefully in their beds. I am so, so ready for a more peaceful world.
If you have been overwhelmed by the events of the world, then consider bringing these words into your heart and letting them roll around in there for a while. I know I am not alone in this peaceful wish, and if you are a compatriot in these personal and cosmic hopes and dreams, then please share your thoughts here.
Dr. Molly
LightHearted Musings - History is a Vast Early Warning System
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on September 12th, 2008
History is a vast early warning system
-Norman Cousins
Don’t you just love this quote? I do, partly because I’m a history buff (history nut I sometimes say). I think that every Presidential candidate should be a history nut as well. If they were, we would avoid tremendous amounts of pain, war and anguish.
Our ancestors are our greatest teachers, not because they were more brilliant or more noble. In fact, they were no different from you or me, making decisions to the best of their ability and not knowing what impact their decisions would have on the future. They are our teachers simply because they have already blazed the trails of both success and failure. We waste so much of our time reinventing the wheel when all we need to do is turn around to see that wheel already made and waiting for us to make use of it.
There are very few problems in this life that haven’t already happened in some similar form in the past. I will stand by this statement even with the tremendous technological advances that we are all living through because most of our contemporary problems are still mainly related to how well we get along with each other. This is an area with some of our greatest failures, but ironically, it’s also the area where we most shine. We could save ourselves a lot of time and heartache by studying the successes and failures of those who have come before us in order to learn how to “do life well.”
No matter how well we do with this challenge, we will most certainly be our children’s teachers. We are all quite literally the future’s ancestors. So what do you want your own legacy to be?
Dr. Molly
LightHearted Musings - The Cure of Many Diseases is Unknown to Physicians
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on September 7th, 2008
The cure of many diseases is unknown to physicians…They are ignorant of the whole which ought to be studied also, for the part can never be well unless the whole is well. This is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that the physician separates the soul from the body.–Plato
When I was a little girl, my doctor was a woman named Mary Saxe, M.D. and what a character she was! Dr. Saxe had been my mother’s doctor when she was young, and she then became my doctor until I reached adulthood. She had literally known my family for 3 generations, and her interactions with us reflected every facet of that familiarity.
Dr. Saxe’s office was in the poorest area of the city. She was aware that these were people whom others had thrown away and she wanted to be of help. If you sat outside her office for any length of time, you would think you were hearing two different people in the next room. One moment, she would loudly and forcefully yell at someone for not taking their medicine and the next, she would be lovingly hugging somone who was going through a rough time. She would minister to all of us with her unique blend of anger and love, and her patients absolutely loved her for it.
By the time I knew her, she was an old woman. Dr. Saxe had been trained in a man’s world in the early 1900s, when she was one of the very first women of her time to receive her M.D. degree. She had to be tough to get through that type of medical gauntlet, and tough she most certainly was!
Dr. Saxe could be incrediby gruff, like when she knew I wasn’t going to listen to her advice. If she thought I was whining about a problem that was in my control to fix, she would berate me…and she was quite a powerful force when she was in berating mode! I remember being more than a little afraid of displeasing her and inciting her wrath. She expected more from me than I expected from myself, and she would push and prod to get me to recognize that I had it in me to be…whatever I wanted to be.
And yet…she could also be incredibly kind and insightful. She would come to my home to minister to me when I was really sick, would see how I was living and how I got along with my parents and brothers, would comment on the posters I chose to put on my wall, would pay attention to who I was and how I was doing in my own world. When she knew I was hurting, really hurting either physically or emotionally, all that gruffness would simply melt away and I would be the lucky recipient of the full force of her love and attention.
She knew me in all my dimensions, mind, body and soul, my family make-up and dynamics, my joys, hopes and fears. She ministered to all those parts of what made me whole and recognized that the body was just one piece of the puzzle to full health. Dr. Saxe had the unique gift of fully accepting me while at the same time continually challenging me to live my life fully.
There is something about this quote from Plato that always brings me back to my memories of Dr. Saxe. She got through the medical system that insisted on toughness and compartmentalization of the body from the soul, and she managed to “do it her own damn way,” to express by example the true meaning of healing. She recognized that our health is related to all the wondrous aspects of our life, that physical health was only the tip of the iceberg for a life full of joy and vitality. In so many ways, she was my inspiration, and it was my great honor to learn these lessons at the feet (and sometimes under the feet!) of a master holistic healer. Plato and Dr. Saxe - may they both live among the angels!
Dr. Molly
LightHearted Musings - Nothing I Can’t Handle
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on August 28th, 2008
I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.
–Mother Teresa
I chose this quote for a very special reason. When Mother Teresa died, news came about the crisis of faith that dogged her for several decades. Soon after she went to India to minister to the poor and forgotten, she stopped hearing the Divine guidance that she had always heard up to that time. She felt separate from her God, like she no longer had Spirit walking with her in her life. She struggled with this separation privately while being a paragon of faith in the public’s eye. Her comment about wishing God didn’t trust her so much has a whole new meaning when viewed from this perspective, and I have even more respect for her now than I did before.
Her ability to carry on without any spiritual feedback must have been quite a daunting task, and her determination to keep going is a testament to her fortitude and faith. I have to wonder, though, what would have happened if she had taken this out of the shadow of her life and faced it more directly. Could she have found that spiritual connection again, that connection that had given her so much life, guidance and joy?
In 1999, I had an injury to my neck that paralyzed my arms for a while and caused great pain for several years afterward. I got quite an education in Spirit during that time, and I recognized myself in Mother Teresa’s words.
Before then, I had always felt like I was surrounded by Spirit. It was as natural a feeling as wearing clothes, wrapped in loving energy from some force connected to but outside of myself. I felt eternally nurtured by this, and my communication with the Divine felt like a personal conversation between friends.
When I injured my neck, though, I found that the incredible screaming pain I was dealing with day in and day out simply drowned out my spiritual connection. All of a sudden, I felt like I was on my own, and it was truly the most lonely experience of my life. I had always assumed that I would be able to rely on Spirit when the going got tough, and yet, here I was in the most painful experience of my life, and Spirit was nowhere to be found. I remember hearing myself quote Jesus’ words on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
I found it hard to articulate this experience with others, and much of this internal torment was dealt with in the privacy of my own psyche. Many others who have come to see me in my practice have related to this feeling of being abandoned by Spirit at the worst of times. It is such a personal experience that many never talk about it, making it even more of a lonely time for them.
Several months into my ordeal with partial paralysis and pain, I discovered Shamanic healing techniques purely by synchronicity. I went to a one-hour lecture on the subject that ended in a short, 10-minute journey that was life-changing for me. A Shamanic journey is a deep meditative technique that very quickly gets you out of your head and into your heart and opens you to healing and new insights.
During my first journey, Spirit came back in full force, saying that I now understood pain and despair on a deep level that I never could have gotten to without having fully experienced it. This would be helpful both in my healing work and in my own personal growth. I was told that I was never far from Spirit, especially during the worst of times. My shamanic pursuits since then have given me additional tools to help me tap in whenever I need a boost from Spirit or need to gain insight into the challenges of my life. Shamanism was clearly the next step in my spiritual evolution, though I am aware that others will find their own unique solutions. I was able to find a new dialogue with the Divine, one that sent me on the most powerful internal growth experience of my life. I can now truthfully say that it was all worth the journey.
Mother Teresa’s difficulties leave me with a lot of questions. I wonder what would have happened if Mother Teresa had been more open about her spiritual difficulties during her life? What if this had been something she could have explored within herself without worrying about how the whole world was going to react? What kind of impact would her struggle have had on those who are dealing with the same struggle in their own lives? I wonder what would have happened if she had gone for a full physical and nutritional work-up to make sure her biochemistry wasn’t creating a block in her spiritual channels.
What if she had explored other avenues for finding communication with her spiritual guidance instead of relying on the prayer that was no longer working for her those last 40 years of her life? I’m not talking about her changing religions, since there are several forms of meditation and spiritual communication within the Catholic Church that might have been helpful to her. Though I have great respect for her life journey and dedication, I wonder if she gave up on her ability to tap into her spiritual connection too soon, without exploring every possible channel to the Divine. Instead of God trusting her to press on, might God have been trusting her to keep searching?
These are strange things to hear myself saying about an icon like Mother Teresa, but her struggle does, after all, highlight her humanity. I can’t answer these questions for her and it isn’t my place to try, but the questions themselves are worthy ones to ask. If you are struggling with a loss of spiritual connection of your own, then these questions may have meaning to you as well - how would you like to answer them?
Dr. Molly
LightHearted Musings - Moving Mountains One Stone At A Time
Posted by Dr. Bruce Roberts on August 24th, 2008
The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
-William Faulkner
I once read a wonderful little book called “The Gap” that says that the world is basically divided into two groups: those who look to the horizon and make themselves miserable because they can never reach their goal and those who look over their shoulder and celebrate just how far they have come. I happen to be a card carrying member of the first group, but am fortunate to be married to the president of the second group!
For those of you, like me, who happen to be perfectionists, the work ahead can seem daunting indeed! You see, no matter how much progress we make, the horizon remains unreachable and unattainable. We are guaranteed failure and are destined to a life of misery.
I guess I was hoping that if I stuck it out long enough, there would be some type of retirement benefit at the end, perhaps a Martyr’s Pension Plan. If you are already a member of this group (and you know who you are), I’m here to tell you it’s not too late. You can tender your resignation at any time. The pension plan does not exist - there are no benefits!
If you are a member of the second group, congratulations! You have discovered the secret to a life of joy. You have learned to celebrate every little step along the journey and can marvel at how far you have come. It is, after all, in the journey, not the destination, that true happiness resides.
If you are still struggling in group #1 I have good news for you. I checked with President Molly and am told that they are holding open enrollment! It turns out that there is enough joy and happiness for all of us!! I hear that all you have to do to enroll is to begin moving a few small stones and then simply remember to look back to celebrate how big your pile has become! What could be easier? I think I’ll sign up today!!
Dr. Bruce
