Pain and dissatisfaction found Caroline Myss, a revered author who came to fame through success in medical intuition and the book she wrote about it, Why People Don’t Heal. The term medical intuitive may have been coined by and for her.
Myss needed to make sense of her own pain. She believes she’d already come to terms with what she’d observed in others. However, it’s doubtful that any empathic intuitive escapes seeing and feeling enormous depths of pain, but the gift is that intuitives also see some of how that pain came about, why it’s there, what can be done, what can be avoided, and what needs to be endured. The lines aren’t always clear.
Psychic or mystical states are like fugue states, otherworldly, a kind of fog where information lives in layers, pictures, metaphors, sometimes clear sentences and directions, often symbols. We’re sometimes left to determine what those images mean. Practicing dream interpretation can make someone more adept and deciphering symbols.
Hence Teresa of Avila’s metaphor of the Interior Castle and Myss’ book, Enter the Castle: An Inner Path to God and Your Soul. Myss sees herself as a way-shower.
Myss highlights salient points essential for a modern-day mystic to comprehend. She uses Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle as her guide. Where Myss loses me is when she builds a structure of her own around Teresa’s work, as if we need her imposing her own gifts on the work itself. Teresa’s writing seems clear on its own. (See Mirabai Starr’s translation of the original.)
In this book, Myss introduces her vast audience to Saint Teresa of Avila, the 16th Century Spanish nun, whose dramatic life was defined by a quest to know God. Her discoveries echo through our lives today. Her description and subsequent book, The Interior Castle, came from a vision she said was bestowed by God. This vision showed the path to know God.
You’re not a religious zealot or a mystic in a cave. You’re a divine being coming to understand your gifts, and how to use them. Your gifts may be intertwined with your greatest pain. Pain often pushes us to become seekers of truth. It presses us to search for the force we call God. Give it whatever name you choose. The I-Ching calls it The Creative.
Are you that seeker? If so, what does it require? Did you sign up for the mystical path when you were still a soul not yet incarnated on this plane? If so, why? What was in it for you? Is it still there?
Or is life simpler for you? More black and white? Most of us view pain as that thing we want stopped, a punishment, something to be avoided.
“Mystics are what the word implies–people called to know the divine through its mysteries. Many people today want the mysteries and challenges in their lives solved and resolved quickly, but mystics know that we all have a deeper task: to accept that some challenges come into our lives in defiance of human reason, logic, order, justice, fairness, and even common sense. They know that underlying these challenges is a divine order and sense that may be revealed in time.” Page 16
What allows us to find that underlying trust? If you’ve suffered great pain and been brought through it, then the steel of your own fortitude is promisingly forged. If you don’t become bitter, entitled, the one who expects the ride to be a certain premeditated way.
“Medieval mystics saw their suffering as a sign from God that they were loved…constant pain served them as a…reminder not to be distracted (from God).
Enduring extreme illness and relentless pain brought a strength and stamina to their souls. They became able to endure direct contact with the divine.”
Here Myss is talking about the tremendous inner reserve you need to face the raw power of the universe, as exemplified by Moses and the burning bush. Can you stand the heat of that fire, the uncertainty, the rarity of being chosen to see?
“As a contemporary mystic, you are measured by the quality of attitude you bring to all your tasks, by your capacity to be a model of generosity, and by challenging the fear that there is not enough to go around in this world…mindful that every second offers a choice either to channel grace or to withhold it.” Page 29
Myss assures us that this concept is a work in progress for mystics and not a done deal. Imagine St. Francis bleeding from stigmata while still showing kindness and reverence. Patron saint of animals and birds. How do you become that powerful?
“No one escapes this life without some crises of faith or questions about where life is going, no matter how many times his [or her] prayers are answered.” Page 42
You don’t need to shun your pain when it comes. You can open all the doors of your soul to your experience. This is not seeking crisis but meeting it when necessary. What if in the face of it you cower and beg. Then it is the journey of your soul to find its strength. Its reason to be. The god that it serves.
“You want to become so comfortable in the skin of your soul that you do not feel separate from this eternal part of you.” Page 57
“A spiritual life is not about finding ways to feel good. It’s not about how to get guidance on how to stay safe in this world. A spiritual life means that you excavate your false gods, fears, and illusions that hold you prisoner in this world. You face these false powers [ex, addictions, manipulative habits] and free yourself from them in order to know the true power of God.” Page 60
What if your pain was calling you to something deeper? What would it mean for you to think about it this way? Would you change anything? Could you change anything?
