Ridge Trail, American Fork Canyon, Utah
Over the past few months, Life's Classroom seems to be hammering one critical lesson into me, helping me to transform knowledge into wisdom through repeated experiences and encounters.
What is the lesson? A deeper appreciation and acceptance of duality in creating positive change, healing, and fulfillment.
The process doesn't feel comfortable, good, or pleasant. But it's necessary for growth, so I'm paying attention.
How will embracing duality help us create spark and excitement in life? How is duality a part of a healing crisis? And, what does G. Holbrook Jackson's quote, "Happiness is a form of courage," have anything to do with duality?
Read on for more insights! I can't wait to share them with you! Have a beautiful week!
Duality: The Forgotten Principle of Fulfillment
"Happiness is a form of courage." G.H.J.
Chani Getter, MSW, LCSW shared something during her Learning Lab at ACEP called "The Process of Change: Leaving Fundamental Religions & Insular Communities" that struck me like lightning. Chani Getter is an interfaith minister and licensed social worker who was raised in an ultra-orthodox Hassidic Jewish home and left an arranged marriage.
Loosely paraphrased, she said that she doesn't have her abused clients talk about their abuse nor encourage them to leave their abusers because "they are already aware of it." Instead, she helps them explore what keeps them in their abusive relationships. As they come to understand why they stay, they gain the insights they need to leave.
Admittedly, I'd never approached it from that angle. I'm more of the "when are you going to leave, and what's kept you from leaving for so long?" kind of therapist. But not anymore.
I applied this important insight during my subsequent sessions. One pivotal session focused on helping an individual, who was feeling stuck, explore how to gain more spark and excitement in life.
We explored the central question, "What advantages or gains come from being stuck, disconnected, and disenchanted with work, relationships, and self?"
We came to understand the many root fears and events that led to the individual's avoidance of connection and commitment as a coping strategy for avoiding loss, conflict, and despair.
We then created this Empower Energy Technique (EET) to heal him during the session:
I now choose to be one with Life Energy as a wave is one with the ocean and be empowered to ___:
Have the courage, faith, love, forgiveness, strength, and wisdom I need to heal from the experiences that caused me to avoid disappointment, betrayal, conflict, commitment, and connection, as well as to adopt coping skills that lead to a disconnected and isolated life.
Embrace greater connection, passion, commitment, spark, fulfillment, and excitement in my life despite the risk of greater vulnerability, pain, conflict, loss, and disappointment.
Have the capacity, strength, and Life Energy I need to face the challenges, responsibilities, fears, and difficulties that may come from a connected, expansive, and fulfilled life.
I completely and gratefully accept healing energy at all levels of being and through space and time from Life Energy to create and achieve this healing process. I embrace the positive shifts that occur as I heal and release the beliefs, emotions, habits, traumas, negative spiritual influences, and other blockages that prevent me from receiving all the energy I need to heal and empower my life, at all levels of being, now and through space and time.
For some reason, energy testing indicated that I leave out "releasing fear and pain" as part of the EET. Currently, my best guess at why this is necessary is that fear and pain are not our enemies. They are part of life.
A recent article called, "Being Anxious or Sad Does Not Make You Mentally Ill (July 20, 2023), written by Arthur C. Brooks, a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the host of the How to Build a Happy Life podcast, explains it beautifully:
1. We are all anxious and sad.
Decades ago, the researcher Christopher Boorse uncovered a seemingly strange fact: By the ordinary criteria for mental disorders, the population at large is no less disturbed than the population of clinical patients. In truth, this isn’t so strange when we recall that distress is a dial, not a switch, and no one’s dial is at zero. The first Noble Truth of Buddhism is, after all, dukkha—that everyone suffers and suffering is part of the world. But forgetting this is easy when you’re told that you have a specific mental condition, and when you feel isolated and alone in your pain.
You are not defective simply for feeling distress.
2. The goal is not to eradicate suffering.
It is normal and healthy to want relief from your suffering, but futile and dangerous to try to eradicate all of your pain. Think of it this way: When you have a headache, you want a Tylenol to take the edge off, but not narcotics strong enough to numb you completely. Emotional self-management—through meditation or prayer, or with the help of therapy—is like Tylenol, so that you can regain a bit more comfort and control.
3. Your happiness requires unhappiness.
The 20th-century self-improvement writer Norman Vincent Peale wrote a wildly best-selling book called The Power of Positive Thinking, in which he exhorted readers to start each day by reciting Psalm 118:24: “This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.” As a young man, I sometimes did this and gave thanks for the positive, happy things in my life as I did so. Today, I realize this was too narrow a reading of that verse. The psalmist is not saying “Be grateful for the fun stuff” but rather “Be grateful for all of it.” That means both the fun parts I want and the hard parts I need, so that I stay alert, mourn loss, learn, and grow.
If an essential principle of life's energy is that it flows, and healing is a movement from or expansion beyond a given state, then there is no healing or growth without change and loss.
Unfortunately, these changes may bring greater fear and pain than we anticipated. This leads me to another experience with duality from work last week.
A patient wanted to add an intervention to improve his attention and focus. Through energy testing, I decided to start him on a product called, "Clear Mind" by Energy Tools International, a trustworthy and effective company.
After taking a couple of doses, the patient informed me that he had developed hives and welts all over his body. He was very worried about it never healing, or that it would worsen, and he would need to go to the hospital. A representative of the company said that it was the first time she had ever encountered such a drastic reaction to the product.
Of course, he stopped taking the product. Fortunately, after three days, all of the hives disappeared. However, I noticed that for the first time, the patient had a natural inflection to his voice that he never had before. His voice used to sound flat and monotone as if he was disengaged or emotionless.
After some reflection, we came to the hypothesis that he may have experienced a healing crisis. His body may have been using his skin (the largest detox organ) to release toxins or metabolites, and his immune system may have been trying to help destroy the toxins or metabolites through the inflammatory process.
His medical history involved having a horrible reaction to Zoloft (Sertraline) and to its withdrawal which led to chronic recurrent anxiety attacks. Perhaps the metabolites of that medication were being released after using Clear Mind. In this instance, perhaps his suffering was an integral part of his healing process.
After using EET to help him reduce the traumatic effects of having whole-body hives, I was surprised when he asked me if we should try using it again.
"There's something to be said about its powerful effects," he noted.
As a physician, I have devoted myself to helping my patients eliminate suffering and stress. Successful healing, to me, meant the ability to help my patients slide smoothly into health and well-being without fear or pain.
However, like Arthur Brooks, I've changed my mind. Instead of avoidance of suffering, I believe that healing is a creative process that uses positive empowerment and growth to transform fear and pain into gifts and gains. Gaining gifts as we overcome suffering is the hero's journey that allows for true forgiveness and movement into happier, healthier lives.
As G. Holbrook Jackson once said, "Happiness is a form of courage," because happiness cannot exist without the courage to face its loss. And loss is inevitable.
Also, Thomas Szasz once said something similar, "Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence."
Life is full of dualities. Intelligence often blocks clear thinking to avoid pain, fear, uncertainties, and loss. The gift of clear thinking requires the courage to face suffering as we leave what we know and move toward the unknown and new ways of being.
May you gain great gifts as you journey on!