Spiritual Journey and True Self

Mythology around the world describes a descent into darkness, such as the goddess Innana’s descent into the underworld. She descends deeper and deeper, shedding jewelry and clothing, and it gets darker and darker, and when she ascends back up into the light, she is reborn. The darkness is similar to meditation: meditators don’t just focus mindfully on pleasant things but also on unpleasant, even extremely painful things and disturbing things. You sit there with disturbance in the darkness and observe it closely. Rising up from the darkness is like enlightenment.

My descent into darkness was my deeply depressing and alienating six years of dwelling in Topeka, Kansas. I was rather reclusive and quiet while surrounded by the most hostile community I’ve ever encountered, an androcentric and oppressive place completely at odds with my beliefs and discouraging any possibility of healing. Poisonous relatives verbally abused me to an extreme before I finally stopped having denial about what my relatives are truly like and how I feel about them. As a result—while on one hand I was psychologically traumatized—I analyzed these relatives, and I analyzed and figured out my own past and my own life’s path. Meanwhile I could not sleep without having dreams that involved long white hallways representing the path of my life.

During that time, I sat with the unpleasant and the profoundly disturbing and the deeply depressing. Meanwhile, I could not find my True Self in that environment, which I realized is just the thing my poisonous relatives have wanted all my life: for me to be completely disconnected from my True Self, which most people in this dysfunctional patriarchal society lose in very early childhood. Despite meditation and intellectual understanding, I lost myself and through fear and loathing somewhat regressed to my childhood, to the point that I almost returned to the voluntary muteness of my childhood. Nobody wanted to hear what I had to say, so why should I speak? Nobody would listen to me but would attack me no matter what I did, so why should I speak? In this deeply hateful and alienating environment, I experienced almost constant fear and loathing and had no sense of belonging. I even lost that false sense of belonging in a family to which I had clung for all those years. Despite that regression, I still had wisdom coming through in thin beams of light.

Moving from Kansas to Portland, Oregon, is not only a geographical move but also a spiritual one. I do not mean to imply that when I moved I reached enlightenment and became a Buddha, but rather that I have moved from that poisonous Goddess-rejecting environment, the dark underworld, to a city that is very progressive and creative, supportive of artistic creativity, and rich in fertile soil for spiritual growth. In Portland I have joined a meditation community that is genuinely helpful in the healing process (and more like group therapy than organized religion). Not only the meditation community but much of my experience in Portland, such as my nonviolent communication classes and meeting up with feminists, give me a sense of safety and an ability to say what I genuinely think and feel rather than wear a mask. I have moved to a community where it is possible to find your True Self.

During my first trip to India, an amazing Buddhist pilgrimage, I thought I found acceptance with a temporary traveling sangha, but during my second trip to the other side of the world I came to realize that India, Nepal and Tibet are not ultimately where my path was pointing me. I became all the more eager to head for the west coast, which seemed to be drawing me in. Ever since I graduated from college I have felt an urge to move to the west coast, but fresh out of college I didn’t have the courage to go through with it (even though now it doesn’t seem particularly courageous). I think the healing and supportive energy of the west coast was calling me all along. I don’t believe in “manifest destiny,” an excuse that arrogant white people used for attempted genocide and greed as they moved west in the nineteenth century; this is something very different. If a community just like Portland existed in the Midwest, I still would have moved to it.

Sometimes I think Oscar Wilde wasn’t joking when he said, “Life imitates art.” I don’t know if everyone’s life has a strong plot and so much metaphor as mine. I suspect that since most people are stuck on the most basic need of safety, when it comes to attempting to meet their needs, they are oblivious to their needs and to their True Self. Even if their life does have the potential for a plot and a mythological connotation, they are completely oblivious to it. Actually, I suspect that people who are on that bottom level of needs are at the starting point of the journey and never actually take it. I don’t quite know why some people are truth seekers, while others have no inclination to seek truth.

I'm currently reading a book called Dancing in the Flames: the Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness, by Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson. Another relevant book (also published by Shambhala Publications) is The Heroine's Journey by Maureen Murdock.