Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Summer 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Grinnell, Dustin, "Learning to Love My Fate " Quest 108:3, pg 25-28

By Dustin Grinnell

For more than a decade, I’ve worked as a writer for American organizations. I’m good at the work and have found a niche. But I have increasingly started to feel as though I am little more than a propagandist for business and nonprofits. In these jobs, where I often work within marketing departments, nothing I write is entirely truthful. Rather, everything is crafted and spun to promote a service, product, or brand.  

For example, my writing for a hospital often involves interviewing patients and writing articles to “tell their stories.” After I develop an article about a patient’s experience, a team of marketers weighs in on my draft to edit, spin, and sterilize it in order to project the best possible image of the hospital. While the team’s edits don’t inject overt lies into the stories, they do omit any potentially negative aspects. As such, the published stories are based on real events but are far from genuine depictions.

During the coronavirus pandemic, I wrote many patient stories and articles designed to portray the hospital as safe to visit. These “don’t delay your care” stories were sophisticated attempts to influence the behavior of consumers seeking medical care. It was true that the hospital had been vigilant in implementing safety measures to limit the spread of the virus and safeguard both patients and staff. Therefore I could do the work and sleep at night.

Still, I was becoming discontented with writing marketing copy. I also had the sense that people were picking up on my cognitive dissonance. In the past four years, two employers have offered me new copywriting positions with more responsibility and higher salaries, but I turned them down because of my growing dissatisfaction with a copywriting career. A year later, I interviewed for two more jobs, but came in second each time. Was my evolving self-image obvious to employers? They likely saw that I could fulfill the duties of the job, but could they also see that I thought of myself as a corporate hack? Perhaps they sensed I was conflicted about my place in the world and might be uncomfortable churning out sales material. Why would an employer hire someone with such a “bad attitude”?

In high school and college, I wanted to become a doctor. Scoring poorly on the entrance exam for medical school, I pivoted to graduate school in order to become a scientist. When I realized that the traditional scientific path wasn’t for me, I committed myself to writing about science—but never once did I envision myself as someone who would spin science and medicine for profit. Whenever someone learns that I work in marketing, I feel ashamed.

Nevertheless, I’ve been employed in marketing departments for ten years now, among people whose values I don’t share. Many of my coworkers majored in marketing in college, and most of them have spent time in advertising agencies. Proficient bureaucrats, they constantly jockey for advancement and scheme for power, always preoccupied with self-preservation. Because they scrutinize everything I write, I’m at the mercy of people I’m not particularly fond of.

My disenchantment with writing marketing copy grew in my early thirties, as I began to write more essays and fiction. At thirty-five, I enrolled in an MFA program in creative writing. There I wrote my third novel, several short stories, and a handful of essays. During our program’s ten-day writing residencies, I spent time with other writers who were passionate about writing and storytelling, and it was thrilling to compare notes. Following my growing interest in the arts and humanities, I read biographies and watched documentaries about sculptors, filmmakers, and writers. As I read and watched, I tried to comprehend how these artists had mastered their craft and gained prominence. Increasingly, all I wanted was to spend my time creating art, just like the people I was studying.

I also came to admire journalists, especially independent journalists like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, who aren’t afraid to speak truth to power. I’m inspired by movies like Spotlight, State of Play, and All the President’s Men, which depict reporters “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” and prove that journalists make a difference in the world. I never miss 60 Minutes and find journalists like Bill Whitaker and Lesley Stahl to be true heroes, taking on major issues for the benefit of the public.

I sometimes fantasize about writing for a newspaper or magazine full-time, but whenever I apply for a journalism job, I get no response. I’ve wondered if the Fourth Estate looks at marketing writers like me with suspicion. Perhaps I’m too subjective, too personal, or too imaginative for traditional journalism.

Over the years, my admiration has grown for creative writers with an activist spirit. One such writer is Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, a book that sounded the alarm on pesticides and sparked an environmental movement in the 1960s. After poring over studies about the effects of dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) on wildlife and the environment, Carson said, “What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important.”

Carson went to work in a time of great need, as all artists must do. Scientists had known about the problem of harmful chemicals, and the public had its suspicions, but it took an artist like her to change minds by turning scientific complexity into lyrical prose. Carson pioneered a novel way of writing about science that cut through the statistics and figures. She made people not only think but feel.

Since I am a writer of marketing material, my affection for Carson likely comes from the fact that her work is unbiased and pure, a far cry from the selling and spinning I do on a daily basis. Perhaps I admire journalists like Taibbi and Greenwald because they also write about subjects that matter. In my role as a hired gun for corporations, I often wonder whether the web pages, marketing articles, and promotional videos I develop are adding up to anything at all. Do people even read the stuff we dump onto the Internet? Does this content matter? What good does my work in my day job do in the world?

As I find myself called to a more artistic path, I’ve started to see my corporate work for what it is: a day job. As I continue to write essays and fiction in my spare time, I’ve started to clearly see how difficult it is to flourish in the world as an artist. It’s not until you devote yourself to creative work that you realize how much life seems designed to knock you down at every stage of your development. Even though the artist plays a vital role in society—as a social conscience who often interprets reality and writes about how (and why) to live—many individuals are intolerant of the artist’s flights of fancy. Most people are practical and have better things to do than entertain the artist’s idealism and unrealistic vision of the future. Most adults seem to want to gain enough money to keep themselves and their families healthy, maybe to catch a movie or a ballgame or host a barbeque. Most can’t seem to fathom why anyone hasn’t figured out their life by their thirties. Indeed, it’s often embarrassing to admit that I’m still struggling to find my place in the world.

A young artist also learns that making art, especially in the early stages, isn’t a path to riches. One needs money to pay rent and buy food; hence developing artists live in limbo between the practical world of commerce and the dreamy, sometimes subversive spaces where they produce their work. Young artists must play the game. They contribute to the world’s affairs while working a day job that exploits their talents for profit. The artist might long to be free, but he must rely on the capitalistic machine for financial security, perhaps wounding his dignity in the process.

If society is set up this way, why not leave the workforce and live cheaply while writing essays and fiction? I tried that for a year and ran out of money, realizing that a day job supports me in growing and learning my craft. Plus, moving to a cabin in the woods to live the life of a “true artist” may not be the solution for my existential dilemmas. First of all, a day job, it turns out, provides grist for the mill. The “real world” is a mess, but it can be a big, beautiful mess and can often be the source of stories. Moreover, while it can sometimes be disheartening to work in the corporate machine, it can also be thrilling to be part of this world and its everyday affairs. In the modern-day office, I occasionally feel like an actor on the world’s stage, playing a small part in the grand theater of life.

Though it might sound counterintuitive, I sometimes feel drawn to the absurdity of bureaucratic systems, which I can challenge and try to fix. In my current day job, I’m in the big, beautiful mess, solving business problems. Rather than developing theories in the halls of academia, I prefer to apply philosophical concepts to real-world problems. Every once in a while, I even find myself trying to elevate the banal conversations around the office by sometimes asking “big questions” in the most palatable way: through humor. In the office kitchen, there’s nothing quite as amusing as dryly asking a question like, “Why do so many of us die without ever learning how to live?” while your coworker adds half-and-half to their coffee.

There’s also something comforting about being anchored to the hustle and bustle of civilization through a day job. When I was freelancing for a year and mostly living off savings, I felt unmoored from the happenings of the world. I was following my dreams to write creative nonfiction and fiction, but I was a man without a cause, and I spun out because of it. I often wonder if that’s why the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche descended into madness toward the end of his life, much of which he spent as a nomadic explorer of the human condition in place of the teaching post he’d had for several years.

While a day job can sometimes be a hard pill to swallow, it can provide a ready-made purpose each day that helps keep my feet on the ground as I navigate my uncertain creative life. Perhaps most importantly, a day job also provides the budding artist with security, freeing the mind from worry over money. Feeling safe and secure—as much as one can in a human life—fuels writing projects. I’ve found that I can’t create art if I’m fretting over my bank account. During the year that I wasn’t working a traditional nine-to-five job, I didn’t write a word of fiction. Instead, I wrote news reports and marketing copy—stuff that pays (though not much).

Furthermore, being productive and creative in my staff writing job often breeds inspiration and efficiency in my creative writing. I have many examples of times when I fictionalized circumstances from my job.

Why am I so ungrateful toward corporations? Most of my employers have supported my career development. They’ve mentored me, paid for me to attend conferences and workshops, and bought me meals while traveling. Moreover, without the money from my salary, I wouldn’t be able to move my creative projects forward. I reinvest a lot of my money into hiring editors, designers, illustrators, videographers, website developers, even writers. The salaries from my day jobs have given me the freedom to be creative on the side.

Why do I perceive working for corporations as an exploitation of my skills? Why can’t I see it as my duty as a citizen? In his book Meditations, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius said that he got himself out of bed each day by reminding himself that many people were relying on him. It was his duty to show up for work. Couldn’t I look at my day job similarly? Why not make some commercial art by day while writing essays and fiction on the side? It’s a rather privileged position in society: many people would love a full-time writing job like mine. Perhaps I should try to be grateful for what I have instead of criticizing my place in the world and always striving for more.

Moreover, if I can maintain a high level of production in my creative life while holding down a corporate job, am I already doing what I should be doing? Do I already have what I want? Have I already arrived, so to speak? Then again, how many commercial writers like me toil away at day jobs and never break through with their more artistic work? Is this a matter of talent or luck? Or do some people give up too soon? For me, writing is a compulsion, an activity that I find immensely challenging yet rewarding. It is something that gives my life meaning. But how long does it take to break through, and am I willing to wait as long as it takes?

For me, the answer to the latter is yes, but I suppose every evolving artist wonders if it will ever happen for them. Much ink has been spilled about the famous 10,000 hours a person supposedly needs to accumulate to master any given skill. Having started writing seriously in my late twenties, I’m surely close to that mark. Is a breakthrough imminent, or does it differ for each person, as I suspect it does?

I suppose that most creative people never think that their time comes quickly enough. When I got my first copywriting job a decade ago, hoping that the position would help make me become a better writer, I thought I might leave the workforce and write full-time after the publication of my first novel. I thought wrong. Having self-published two novels and now looking for an agent for my third, I know that achieving our dreams doesn’t happen as fast as we’d like.

I’ve found some comfort in reading about the lives of other writers who held down day jobs to support their creative work. Many writers wrote advertising copy before their creative writing took off: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dr. Seuss, and James Patterson come to mind. John Grisham worked as a lawyer for years while he wrote legal thrillers at night. Sam Shem, author of the satirical novel House of God, went to medical school knowing that practicing medicine would be his day job. He wanted to be a writer, but he didn’t want to have to make money from it. Medicine paid the bills.

Author and neurologist Oliver Sacks found a similar dynamic in his life. In fact, some of Sacks’ most fascinating patients became published case studies, which he crafted to read like fiction. A recent documentary about Sacks described him as a writer who “storied” people into the world. Had he retreated to a cabin in the woods to write what he wanted, the world might not have benefited from his observations about the brain and mind and their malfunctions.

Even so, this idea of moving to a cabin in the woods is a romantic notion among those with artistic sensibilities. It captured the imagination of Henry David Thoreau. When he decided to become a writer, he first moved to where all the great writers were—in New York City. But he failed to thrive there. A rugged individualist and a bit rough around the edges, Thoreau wasn’t accepted into the city’s literary society, so he went back to Concord, Massachusetts, where he had lived and grown up. Not long after, he began his great experiment in living at Walden Pond.

So what path am I on? I don’t think it’s the path of the scholar, the educator, or even the journalist. It’s the path of the artist, and the discontent and confusion I feel comes from the fact that there is no set path for the artist. The creative life is one of always making it up as you go. As I work on one creative project after another, it’s tempting to reach for a metaphor that depicts life as an endless struggle without meaning. I could imagine myself like Sisyphus, who was forced to endlessly roll a boulder up a mountain, only to watch it fall to the base. Could I, as Albert Camus did in “The Myth of Sisyphus,” imagine Sisyphus as happy in the absurdity of his situation? Perhaps, but that’s not the metaphor I want to choose for myself. It doesn’t accept the fact that despite my best efforts to roll those boulders happily, I will always be trying to take control.

Instead, the metaphor I choose to guide my life for now is the notion of “loving one’s fate,” as Nietzsche put it—to know that everything that’s happened in my life has contributed to who I am and what I’m doing in this moment, to know that I’m both limited by my circumstances and also free to pursue any project I find meaningful. I’m both restricted by my circumstances and free to try to transcend them. This is the compromise of living a human life.

What if I never write my way out of corporate work? What if I always need a day job? These outcomes may not be entirely within my control. Maybe my proverbial cabin is coming. Maybe I just need to gather more experience before I leave the workforce for good. But maybe not. Only time will tell. Indeed, these questions might not even matter. For now, I accept where I am, who I am, and what I have found myself doing at this time of my life. I will try as best I can to love my fate, because as Nietzsche said, it is my life. 

Dustin Grinnell is an essayist and fiction writer. He has an MFA from the Solstice MFA Program and an MS in physiology from Penn State. His creative nonfiction has appeared in The Boston Globe, The LA Review of Books, Writer’s Digest, and many other popular and literary publications. He lives in Boston, where he is a full-time copywriter for Bose Corporation. Learn more at www.dustingrinnell.com.

Printed in the  Summer 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Hebert, Barbara, "Growth and Spiritual Struggle " Quest 108:3, pg 10-11

Barbara Hebert
National President

We can define spiritual struggle as a conflict or dissonance between what we hold sacred (our beliefs, including others who share those beliefs or the institution that houses them) and our experiences. This conflict results in emotions that often seem distressing. 

There are many instances in which our experiences challenge our beliefs. For example, dissonance may arise when someone within the spiritual community behaves in ways that are unexpected or considered unspiritual. Another example might involve a time when an individual is faced with difficult life decisions, but his or her belief system does not provide support or guidance in making those decisions. For some, spiritual conflict may occur in times of crisis. During the past year and a half, it is likely that many have found themselves struggling in this way as our world has changed so dramatically.

Our spiritual beliefs support us and answer our questions about the world. They provide structure, meaning, and understanding in our lives. They create a sense of stability and security. The spiritual community becomes a family, sometimes even closer than the one into which we were born. When our experiences challenge our spiritual beliefs, we may feel as if our world has collapsed; it has gone dark and become chaotic and confusing. We struggle to find stability and security. In this situation, we may feel adrift, separate, and isolated from our spiritual community. We may experience fear and even anger. 

No one wants to live through what some have called the Dark Night of the Soul. Although it is not widely discussed, it is a relatively common experience. This spiritual dissonance tends to be an intensely private time of questioning and anguish. One may ask questions like, “How can such pain and suffering be allowed?” “How can I live up to my spiritual values?” “Is there a deeper purpose to my life?” “Has my community abandoned me?” Very likely you have asked yourself these and similar questions during difficult times.

Many people regard spiritual struggle as a bad thing. We may assume that “the universe” or “a higher power” is telling us that we must not continue in the same way, that we have chosen the wrong path. However, if we look at the situation more objectively, we find that struggling (spiritually or in any other way) is an integral component of learning and growing. 

If we don’t struggle, we don’t grow. As you think back over your life, when have you learned or grown the most? Typically, our greatest growth occurs during times of crisis or struggle.

In 1987, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck published The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace. In this book, he describes four stages of spiritual development. A brief discussion of these stages may help us understand the value of spiritual dissonance on our journey.

Peck’s first stage is called the chaotic-antisocial. Individuals in this stage are egocentric. Although they may say they love and care for others, they are primarily concerned about themselves—their own wants and needs—and can be manipulative and self-serving in acquiring what they want. 

In an effort to move away from the chaos of this first stage, Peck speculates that some individuals move on to a second, formal-institutional stage. Here they become affiliated with some type of institution that provides security and stability. This stage is often marked by a focus on rules. Individuals at this level may be dogmatic and legalistic in their beliefs. Because security within the institution is of paramount importance, any change or challenge to the institution or its beliefs can cause tremendous upset and feelings of threat. Peck points out that stage two individuals can be found in every ideology.

Individuals arrive at Peck’s third stage, the skeptic-individual, as a result of a dissonance between their belief systems and their life experiences. Their belief systems no longer adequately answer their questions or explain the situations in which they find themselves. These people tend to self-identify or be perceived as nonbelievers, atheists, agnostics, or scientifically minded individuals who want researched and logical explanations for the meaning of life. They do not need the structure of an institution and feel free to question their beliefs. Many people in this stage are actively seeking answers to the meaning of life. They focus on social justice and work for social reform.

Those who continue to seek may find themselves in the final stage of Peck’s theory: the mystical-communal. Here individuals focus on community rather than individualism. They focus on unity rather than on separateness. They accept the lack of definitive answers and look to the mystery of the universe as part of the spiritual process. They are willing to live in the unknown, searching for the unknowable.

Clearly, Peck’s third stage, the skeptic-individual, is the questioning stage of spiritual development. In order to grow spiritually, we must question our beliefs. If there is no questioning, we are unlikely to grow spiritually.

The Ageless Wisdom and teachers throughout time have encouraged seekers to question, to self-reflect, and to listen to their inner voice for answers rather than listening to authority figures. We are encouraged to grow by continuing to seek Truth.

Perhaps another way of looking at the growth that occurs from facing a crisis is through the hero’s journey described by Joseph Campbell. In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell writes: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

To relate this to spiritual struggle and growth, we may see ourselves in the role of hero. As the hero, we are forced from our comfortable daily life by a spiritual crisis. We battle through the crisis: the questioning, the feelings of being alone, afraid, and uncertain. As we successfully negotiate the battle, we find that we reenter the light. Our understanding of ourselves and our beliefs deepen and expand. We have grown spiritually and have become stronger and wiser. This growth influences others as well as ourselves.

We always have choices, of course. We can choose not to enter the battlefield, not to face the crisis head-on. We can choose to remain in the darkness, feeling abandoned and isolated. Or we can choose to analyze our lives and our belief systems. We can choose to navigate the labyrinth of confusion until we find our way out. This process is a difficult one and requires internal strength and fortitude, but it is the way of the hero. It enables us to deepen our understanding and beliefs. It provides the pathway to finding a new light that shines even brighter than previously.

If you have lived through such a time (which is likely), think back upon it. Remember what you were like before the crisis. Think about how you felt when the crisis occurred. Remember how you decided to face the situation and fight the battle: the courage it required, the times you may have faltered and gotten up again, the joy of moving forward, slow step by slow step. You are the hero! You won the fight. Through your spiritual struggles, you have transformed your life and the lives of those around you. 

Printed in the  Summer 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Hoeller, Stephan A., "Members Forum: The Drama of Spiritual Struggle " Quest 108:3, pg 12

Stephan A. Hoeller

Among the philosophical dramatic works of the world, a singular position belongs to the late nineteenth-century Hungarian play The Tragedy of Man by Imre Madach. Not very well known outside of Hungary, it is nevertheless regarded as part of the broad European tradition represented by the works of such great figures as Goethe, Milton, Byron, and Ibsen. Whether it may be regarded as a preexistentialist work, a document of the tragic sense of life, or an esoteric allegory built on the theory of reincarnation, its quintessential message is undoubtedly the need for psychospiritual struggle in human consciousness.

The Tragedy of Man consists of fifteen scenes, beginning and ending with scenes in the Garden of Paradise. Between these two points we are led through the entire history of humanity as envisioned by Adam and Eve in their embodiments (reincarnations) in various historical periods. In each epoch, the first human pair experiences a struggle involving suffering and the longing for a better future, which, however, upon coming to pass, reveals itself as yet another time of struggle and disappointment. In the final scene, we find Adam standing on a precipice, ready to take a suicidal plunge into the Abyss in order to prevent this future struggle, but Eve prevents him from doing so by disclosing that she is pregnant. The promptings to despair communicated to Adam by Lucifer thus fall on deaf ears. The sorrowful history of humanity will now take place. The grand philosophical message of the play is proclaimed at the play’s end by the voice of the Creator: “I have told thee, Man, to struggle and to hope mightily!”

The philosopher-playwright was not alone in his view of the existential reality and the utility of the struggle. Another great Hungarian poet, Mihaly Vorosmarty, wrote: “What is our task in the world? To struggle and give nourishment to our soul’s desires.”

Many of us reach a point in our lives where we struggle with becoming the spiritual beings we know we can be. We intend to improve our spiritual character, but we find influences impinging on us that are opposed to such improvement. Many of us, unable to endure the suffering of this struggle, settle for minimal progress and thus leave our earthly embodiment frustrated and disappointed.

Throughout history, many systems of psychospiritual development have been proclaimed. Most of them pertain to the great religions: the Law of Judaism, the imitatio Christi in Christianity, the yoga systems in Hinduism. Theosophy, conforming to nineteenth-century thinking, adapted Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to the ideal of spiritual progress. For some of us, the idea of evolution (even when thus spiritualized) has largely lost its appeal, but it would probably be an extreme position to say that the theory of spiritual evolution is without merit.

Perhaps it may be useful to consider that a slow, almost imperceptible, development of consciousness may be underlying the turbulent and sorrowful course of history. The late Boris de Zirkoff, a relative and interpreter of H.P. Blavatsky, adapting certain Theosophical theories, advocated self-directed evolution. This process requires contact with an authentic, wise Self, which may become both the activating agent and the goal of such development. Recalling Shakespeare’s words, “To thine own self be true,” we may be able to move closer to the ontological Self, the central archetype of our being.

To remain true to what Theosophical terminology calls the Higher Self takes us to a battlefield of struggle. Perhaps never has this struggle been more dramatically manifested to us than with the recent pandemic, which has flooded us with loneliness, isolation, anxiety, depression, and despair. Only a mighty hope nourished by the higher power of being, the deific reality of the true Self, will bring victory in this great struggle. The Hungarian dramatist may have been right: we need to struggle while hoping mightily.

Stephan A. Hoeller was born and raised in Hungary and was educated for the monastic priesthood in his earlier years. A member of the Theosophical Society since 1952, he has lectured in the U.S. as well as in Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. He served as a professor of religion at the College of Oriental Studies for a number of years and is the author of four books published by Quest Books: The Fool’s Pilgrimage: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tarot;  Jung and the Lost Gospels: Insights into the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library; The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead; and Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing. He has been associated with the Besant Lodge of the TSA in Hollywood for many years and has been a bishop of the Gnostic Church (Ecclesia Gnostica) since 1967.

Printed in the  Summer 2021 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Prescott, Sue, "Filling the Hole in the Soul " Quest 108:3, pg 20-24

By Sue Prescott

For the length of my career, I have done family, marital, and individual therapy with children and adults. When I began my work, there was a popular interest in self-healing and the idea of mind over matter for creating good physical and mental health. Many techniques and principles were taught for this purpose. As I pursued my own interest in spirituality, I noticed a remarkable similarity between the practices for leading a spiritual life and what people could do to alleviate depression, anxiety, or the feeling that life had no meaning—basically the “hole in the soul.”

What do I mean when I refer to “the hole in the soul”? It is reminiscent of feeling depressed, blue, or having no reason to live, or it may mean that a person has anxiety, with feelings of fear, worry, or dread. Both anxiety and depression can be normal reactions to events that happen in life; in these cases, they are referred to as situational. A person adjusting to a breakup of a relationship may experience situational depression, while a family member laid off from work may go through situational anxiety. These conditions may lessen or go away once things change and the stress is over.

The hole in the soul goes deeper. It is a feeling of emptiness or a blankness, where life seems to have no meaning or purpose. To ease it, a person may try to find an all-consuming love but may be disappointed in romantic relationships. Or the hope may be projected into the future: they think they would be happy if they had a new car or a bigger house. Some may try to assuage their unhappiness through food, alcohol, or other distractions, such as bingeing on movies or computer gaming.

It is useful to define what I mean by the word soul here. Philosophers have written much about the nature of the soul, but I will present what Theosophy teaches. By this view, the soul is the personal self (table 1).

Table 1. The levels of consciousness according to Theosophical theory

The feeling that something is missing in the soul causes a person to yearn for peace and contentment, but it eludes them and they don’t know why. Spiritual teachers say that the cause is that the personal, everyday self is cut off from the spiritual, Higher Self.

Black Elk, the nineteenth-century medicine man of the Oglala Lakota people, said that the long-sought peace comes only when one is aligned with the Great Spirit. (In Theosophical terms, the Great Spirit is the same as the atman in a human being.) In his book Black Elk Speaks, he refers to this as the “first peace,” adding that this must be achieved before peace can come between people or nations.

The first peace, which is most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their oneness with the universe and all its powers—when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit and that this center is really everywhere. It is within each one of us. This is real peace. 

Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr, discussing the Aboriginal mysticism of Australia, writes of the peace of the spiritual Self that is felt from being in nature. One Aboriginal language calls it dadirri:

The greatest gift is dadirri. It is an inner, deep listening and quiet awareness. Dadirri recognizes the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. When I experience dadirri, I am made whole again. I can sit on the river bank or walk through the trees. Even if someone close to me has passed away, I can find my peace in this silence. There is no need for words. (quoted in Stockton, 104)

The Dalai Lama XIV speaks of attaining this peace when he says, “Everybody wants a happy life and a peaceful mind, but we have to produce peace of mind through our own practice” (Dalai Lama, 2020, 197).

When people begin therapy, peace of mind is one of their goals. A type of therapeutic intervention that works well with the mind in its search for peace is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

CBT focuses on the interplay of the mind, the emotions, and the body. It is evidence-based, meaning that evidence shows it is effective. The mind has the most influence on your feelings and behavior, so it is where you concentrate your efforts for change. This is depicted in the CBT triangle in diagram 1, with thoughts placed at the top. The CBT triangle corresponds with the personal self in table 1.

Diagram 1. The triad of interaction according to cognitive behavioral therapy

CBT includes useful techniques for teaching people to change their patterns of thinking or behavior. It is used along with talking therapy, whereby clients process what they are going through. The strategies parallel the teachings of many spiritual leaders.

One technique is thought stopping. This is particularly useful for resentment, which can make a person feel down and depressed. Using the technique, every time you think of something you don’t want to recall, such as a hurtful thing that was done to you, you are to stop yourself and firmly say, “I will not think this way!” State it with power. Then consciously substitute another thought that opposes the unwanted one, such as, “I can heal from this.” It is important to include this second technique, called thought substitution, so your mind can specifically focus on replacing the old, unwanted thought with a new, beneficial one.

In the Dhammapada, the Buddha teaches you to watch your thoughts and change them if needed: “The watched mind brings happiness. The disciplined mind brings happiness.” The same point is emphasized by Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking, who wrote, “Change your thoughts and you change your world” (Peale, 18).

The Polynesian and Hawaiian traditions have a principle that speaks to the power of thinking. It is called makia and means, “Energy flows where your attention goes.” Whenever you think of something, energy will flow into the thought and make it more likely to come up again. If you allow yourself to think negatively, it will cause discouragement and create more stress in your life. It can upset your body’s hormone balance and lessen the effectiveness of your immune system.

The Buddha teaches the same idea in the Dhammapada when he says, “Whatever an enemy may do to an enemy, far worse is the harm from one’s own wrongly directed mind.” You need to choose the way you direct your mind as well as how you feel and behave.

Frequent thinking in a certain way sets up a vibratory habit or pattern in the mental body. This is referred to as a neural “groove” in current informal terminology. If your thoughts are positive, you will feel good, which reinforces the neural groove in your brain, so similar thoughts come up again. If you habitually think of things that are negative, those thoughts will repeat, and your mood will be brought down.

H.P. Blavatsky speaks to this idea as well: “Ordinary intellectual activity moves on well beaten paths in the brain and does not compel sudden adjustments and destructions in its substance. But a new kind of mental effort calls for something very different—the carving out of new ‘brain paths’” (quoted in Bowen, 4).

Mahatma Koot Hoomi, in The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, said, “A person can only think in his worn grooves, and unless he has the courage to fill up these and make new ones for himself, he must perforce travel on the old lines” (in Chin, 470).

Changing your habitual thoughts and making new neural grooves is understood by science and medicine as synaptic pruning or neural pruning. This happens all the time when certain cells or neurons in the brain are reduced or eliminated to allow greater efficiency in thinking and response to stimuli. When you work to change negative thinking patterns, neural pruning takes place. Then you can focus on happier thoughts, which make you feel better. Therapy involves more than just changing one’s thoughts, but if you don’t change your thinking, the potential for feeling your best is reduced.

The Dalai Lama teaches the same thing: “By mobilizing your thoughts and practicing new ways of thinking, you can reshape your nerve cells and change the way your brains work.”

Another type of therapy that relates well to this process and which includes spiritual components is dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), developed by Marsha Linehan, PhD, in the 1990s. It combines the use of mindfulness—or watching your thoughts—with CBT to produce change. Dialectical means from opposing sides: seemingly opposing points of view can come together to help the client, such as mindfulness combined with specific techniques to change one’s behavior. Another example of a dialectic is putting yourself in another’s shoes to understand their point of view as well as your own.

Marsha Linehan coined the term “wise mind,” which refers to your intuition or buddhi-manas. This is a helpful concept for finding insights into your feelings or behavior.

One DBT tool using a dialectic is opposite action: consciously deciding to change your negative behavior to its opposite positive. An example is being nice to someone you resent by paying them a compliment. If you do this, you need to be sincere, although you can usually find something positive in anyone. This process changes the relationship between you, and most importantly, it changes you. This idea is supported by Hippocrates, the Greek physician of the fifth century BCE who is considered the father of Western medicine: he said, “Opposites are cures for opposites.”

DBT’s emphasis on mindfulness comes from Buddhist practice, whereby one is mindful of one’s thoughts and feelings in order to cultivate peace and well-being. If a negative thought comes up, DBT says you are to analyze it to see if you need to do some problem solving or if the thought just needs to be discarded. This way you can prevent the emotions associated with the negative thought from distressing you.

The mindfulness of DBT is similar to the spiritual practice of witnessing, whereby you simply watch your thoughts, your feelings, and how you are behaving. You widen your awareness to take in all that is going on within you as well as around you.

A beautiful quote from the Upanishads perfectly describes the witness: “Two birds, united always and known by the same name, closely cling to the same tree. One of them eats the sweet and sour fruits of life; the other looks on without eating” (Mandukya Upanishad, 3.1.1). The latter is the witness.

The quote continues: “The individual self, deluded by forgetfulness of his identity with the Divine Self, bewildered by his ego, grieves and is sad. But when he recognizes the worshipful Lord as his own True Self, and beholds His glory, he grieves no more.” The last part is similar to the Australian practice of dadirri or calling on the Native American Great Spirit to help you find solace through your inner, spiritual Self.

Looking at the CBT triangle, you must also work on the feelings tied up in the problems you have. One of the most problematic is anger, which can be very harmful to you, both physically and mentally. These next few quotes illustrate this.

An African proverb says, “When you burn with the fire of anger, smoke gets in your eyes.” The “smoke” clouds your vision so you get consumed by what you are experiencing and can’t see the effect you are having on yourself and others.

You also cut yourself off from your spiritual Self. This is expressed in the Yoruba religion of Africa by the saying, “When water boils over the side of the pot, it smothers the flame.” This is the flame of atman in your spiritual Self.

A wise teaching from Basavanna, an Indian philosopher of the twelfth century, emphasizes the negative effect of anger: “Why do you get angry at someone who is angry at you? What are you going to gain by it? How can the fire in your house burn your neighbor’s house without engulfing your own?” Anger consumes both you and the person you are directing it to.

A similar idea is taught in the Jewish scriptures: “Who takes vengeance or bears a grudge acts like one who, having cut one hand while handling a knife, avenges himself by stabbing the other hand” (Talmud, Nedarim 9, 4).

These quotes allude to the unity of all life in saying that when you hurt another, you are also hurting yourself. This is the unity at the level of the spiritual Self.

The principle of thought stopping was demonstrated by Nelson Mandela, the first president of South Africa after apartheid ended in the early 1990s. Mandela had been imprisoned for twenty-seven years. When he was set free, he said, “As I walked out the door toward my freedom, I knew that if I did not leave all the anger, hatred, and bitterness behind, I would still be in prison.”

Because this process can be difficult, breathing exercises are useful for relaxing the body and reducing the flow of adrenalin that is produced by anger. These exercises are also promoted by spiritual leaders who emphasize meditation. Research on Buddhist monks while meditating show that their brains modulate the functioning of the amygdala, calming the fight, flight, or freeze response.

In your daily life, anger serves a purpose: it tells you that something is wrong. Dora Kunz, the late Theosophical writer and teacher, wisely taught that you should only feel anger for a fraction of a second. This means you experience the signal that something is amiss, but not so that you vent your anger on anyone. Then you use the wise mind to help you decide whether and how you want to react.

As you work to improve your emotional functioning and offset your response of irritation or anger at others, it is useful to develop your ability to forgive. This was demonstrated by Fred Luskin, PhD, of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, who says that forgiveness is a life skill that needed to be learned. He has found that forgiveness causes people to have happier and healthier lives, with increased vitality and optimism. They were less angry, experienced less hurt, had less stress, and were more self-confident. Additionally, if people just thought about forgiving the offender, their hearts and nervous systems improved.

Very often people resist forgiveness because they believe it is equivalent to saying that it is OK to be treated poorly or to be hurt. The mind objects to this and holds on to grievances as a shield of protection. However, this is only an illusion: in this condition, you remain even more vulnerable, because you’re on the lookout for another slight. This hypersensitivity prevents you from forgiving and ultimately healing.

Mindfulness and witnessing not only help you forgive but also prevent you from judging others. This keeps you aware of your own shortcomings so they aren’t pushed into what is called the Shadow, which consists of qualities within you that you don’t like or don’t want to admit you have. Judging others allows you to avoid facing your own Shadow qualities and gives you a false sense of your own purity.

This quote from Confucius illustrates the nature of the Shadow: “When you see a man of worth, think of how you may emulate him. When you see a man who is unworthy, examine your own character.” The qualities you judge in others are probably in yourself and could be improved.

The witness helps you see yourself fully and realize that the potentialities of all negatives are within you. This is a process called assimilation by Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who wrote extensively about the Shadow. He said, “I would rather be whole than good.” Then you can recognize aspects of yourself that you want to change and transform them using such DBT techniques as thought substitution and opposite action.

Lastly, techniques to deal with depression and anxiety include doing things for others, which not only helps them but also helps you. Through the selflessness of altruism, your personal problems take a back seat to what you are doing for another, and you feel better by expressing the unity of the spiritual Self.

The Dalai Lama wrote in The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, “Adversity, illness, and death are real and inevitable. To heal your own suffering, turn away from your self-regard to wipe the tears from the eyes of another. This is the true secret to joy.” Then the soul is filled and happy, just as the Persian poet Jalaladdin Rumi said: “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river of joy moving inside you.”

Sources

Bowen, Robert. Madame Blavatsky on How to Study Theosophy, 1960: https://fohatproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Bowen-Notes-HPB-on-How-to-Study.pdf

Chin, Vicente Hao, Jr., ed. The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in Chronological Sequence. Quezon City, Philippines: Theosophical Publishing House, 1998.

The Dalai Lama XIV. The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020.

The Dalai Lama XIV and Desmond Tutu. The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World. New York: Avery, 2016.

Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom. New York: Back Bay Books, 1994.

Neihardt, John G., ed. Black Elk Speaks. New York: William Morrow, 1961.

Peale, Norman Vincent. The Power of Positive Thinking. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1952.

Stockton, Eugene. The Aboriginal Gift: Spirituality for a Nation. Alexandria, Australia: Millennium Books, 1995.

Sue Prescott, MSW, is a therapist, life-long Theosophist, and frequent lecturer at the Seattle Lodge and surrounding area. She is author of Realizing the Self Within, an overview of the concepts of spirituality that can be applied to relationships and self-improvement.