The Healing Self by Deepak Chopra

Author:Deepak Chopra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Britt wasn’t unusual in finding herself mired in struggle. A crisis like the one her husband threw her into creates heightened confusion and struggle, but everyday life masks the same conflicted situation. Nor is Britt unusual in the choices she made. In exchange for an outward self that looked perfect to the outside world, she gave up her power over the private, unconscious, and higher self. What’s unusual is how quickly she came to this realization after her husband moved out.

Her therapist was very encouraging. “Whatever you gave away, you can take back,” he said. “It’s a return journey to pick up the pieces you dropped along the way.”

The world’s wisdom traditions, which we define simply as the traditions of higher consciousness, agree. Wisdom begins by recognizing that the bodymind isn’t just about cells, tissues, and organs, nor is it just about thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Instead, the bodymind is about unity between body, mind, and spirit. If you fall in love, there is a corresponding biology of love created in your body. Likewise there’s a biology of anxiety, a biology of depression, a biology of happiness. The whole-system approach rests upon this fact, but it’s hard to grasp the whole truth: there is a shifting biology that meets the needs of every moment. Your cells know what to do in any situation, which counts as the most astonishing level of intelligence in nature.

The “I” you identify with is like a magnifying glass gathering the sun’s rays to a point. Your “I” interprets every experience and makes it personal. “I” is a bundle of hopes, fears, wishes, and dreams. “I” harbors memories no one else has, and in the compartments of memory are stored habits, beliefs, old traumas, and past conditioning. This multiplicity is bewildering, which is why the teaching of “Know thyself” is actually the point of being alive—until you know where “I” came from, you cannot discover who you really are.

Britt took the “journey of return” seriously. Despite all the advantages of her external life, she couldn’t do the most basic thing, which is to be alone. Without a life of keeping busy and caring for everyone else, “I” was a terrifying prospect to her. This implies a great deal of healing in the unconscious, where the demons lurk but also the wounded child. Britt’s journey over the next five years went through roughly the following stages:

Overcoming her anxiety. Britt relied on tranquilizers at first but weaned herself off through therapy and, more important, by taking up meditation and yoga.

Learning self-reliance. Britt told Poul he couldn’t come around anymore pretending that family life was normal. (It quickly came out that he had had a girlfriend on the side.) She moved toward divorce on her own terms and at her own speed, taking fully two years before she felt ready to stand on her own.

Getting back into relationship. Britt began to date, a strange experience for a woman who hadn’t been on a date in twenty-five years. She discovered

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