True self

     It is so easy to live separated from spirit, or as some say from our “true self”. What does this mean, our true self? It feels like one of those code phrases that people who know what it means nod sagely about. The rest of us either nod sagely with no idea what it means but wishing we did, or dismiss it. 

     Here's my take on what the true self means, and why it's worth pursuing.

     From the vantage point of where I now stand with a cancer diagnosis, all of my “self” that is my physical presence in this world is under threat. Already surgery has removed invasive tumors and my reproductive organs with them. I am not who I was. Chemo will continue to change me physically, a price for the hope of blockading further activity of the primary tumor making itself at home in my body.

I may not look the same if I lose some hair; I may lose feeling to a lesser or greater extent in my fingers and toes; my energy may decrease; I may lose other parts of my anatomy to surgery, or scar them from radiation; or the cancer may take my body altogether. Or not; I may survive all this and remain a physical being walking on the earth beside my beloved husband and family. The point is my physical self is not an assured thing. The body is finite. And so if that is what defines us, if we think of our body as our “true” self, then we spend our energies trying to preserve it and we measure our success against other bodies we encounter in our daily lives.

     Logically, this attachment to our physical self extends to our hopes for what our bodies will be doing and living in the future. Plans to travel, change jobs, publish a book, or get old beside a beloved and watch grandchildren take their first steps are all dependent on the successful persistence of the body. I have these hopes. My body is the vehicle for my spirit to be able to do these things. This sense of self is a hybrid of physical and spiritual, the full package we are born with.

It allows us to experience creativity, sensory wonder, intimacy with other creatures, emotions, thought, failure and achievement, service to others, and hope. There are many more aspects of being human, of being a physical entity animated and differentiated by a unique life-force-energy, that are only possible because of this merger. I'm thinking that most of us understand our true selves this way: a unique blend of genes and personality.

     So how important is our spirit or soul, our life-force-energy, to the sense of self? I have read about people who have lost the use of some or almost all of their body – Stephen Hawking for example, or Charles Krauthammer. If the true self is a hybrid of body and spirit, have they lost their true selves? I think that in fact nearly all they have is their true selves, and they are - or were - vitally alive. It is the force of their spirit that comes shining through regardless of physical manifestation, regardless of the loss of many of their first dreams, their control over their appearance, their strength, and their ability to walk on this beautiful earth.

     I still have my incredible body. What is gone is my assumption that it will function and age the way most people's bodies do. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But I feel more alive, more my true self now than I ever have. The little snarky judge that sat on my shoulder monitoring everything from my performance at the gym to the clothes I put on to my worthiness as a Reiki teacher or children's book author or, for crying out loud, as a mother – that little beast is gone, dismissed, seen for the purveyor of false self that it was.

And I've discovered my true self is no stranger; it is the quintessential me that was a seed at the beginning and grew along with those other layers of self I added through childhood, adolescence, college, relationships, career, parenting. All along there was this me, sometimes guiding, sometimes ignored, sometimes sending tendrils of longing forward to my more conscious mind. As I began to acknowledge the longing and reach in to my soul bit by bit, feeding it with readings and retreats, letting it out to play in its wildness when no one was looking, practicing some of the teachings of wisdom traditions that rang in the same key as the song of my spirit, I began to peel away those other layers of self to at least glimpse my true self. Practice would have brought me closer and closer, like peeling away the layers of an onion towards the center. It's just that cancer shucked the remaining layers off all at once.

     If my snarky little judge was still on my shoulder right now, it would say “you must feel naked and vulnerable, exposed for everyone to see.” The amazing thing is that I feel just the opposite. I am clear. I know what I know. I know who I am. I am content with being exposed because I am at home in my self. I don't care one whit what the snarky little guy says that other people might think about me.

     I understand that love is a powerful energy, one of the foundational sources of life. It is profoundly more than I ever understood it to be. Love is so simple and easy to give and accept when there are no layers of onion trying to filter, analyze or apportion it according to worth. Residing in my true self I am not vulnerable – I am powerful. It is the soft, deep, grounded power that rises through me. It is love. I cannot push or force from this power. I can only give.

     We naturally protect ourselves from living as spiritual beings in a world that overwhelmingly values physicality, products, achievement, gain. Snarky judges and the pain they inflict abound, and it seems easier to follow the cultural rules. I think that is why we stay separated: to begin to peel those rules away and simultaneously seek and nurture your true self can be unsettling at first, with a foot in the body-world and a foot in the soulful-world.

But it's worth it. Keep going. Be who you sense you really are. You won't lose yourself, or your hopes; they will become clearer. Your path to get to them will become increasingly unimpeded by that snarky little judge. Your life-force-energy will swim in the companionship of what you find beautiful and your gratitude for that. The depth of your well to give happiness to others will become bottomless. You will be you. 

     That is my experience, and it is my deep sense that it is possible for anyone. There are many paths to help peel the layers back, most residing in the world's religious and wisdom traditions. I am deeply and humbly grateful that I know this – I am this – now. I would have preferred another means besides cancer to teach me, but since I have no control over that, I can only accept what I have now: me.