My Dearest Madeline,
Thank you for your kind words. It was difficult to share with you the rift that stood between your father and me, not so much because of any wrong that I felt guilty of, but because I did not, in any way, wish for you to find in my heart any disparagement toward him. There was none, and there is none—far from it. I always have and always will hold him in my highest regard. But loyalties within a family can play strange tricks on the meaning of words and can conflate intentions beyond any semblance of the truth. So I thank you for acknowledging this; I didn’t want a misconception to stand between us in this regard.
So now we come to your question of how to clean house, and I had to laugh when you relayed to me that story of how Simon would scrub out his chimney every night.12 I can tell you for certain that he performed that ritual only for your benefit. Had you not been there, he wouldn’t have troubled himself with such a task. But that was part of his mastery—he knew that this act would leave a deep impression in you, and so it has.
There are many parts to the answer of what you ask, but knowing you as I do, I can be certain of at least where you will need to begin. But first, I must tell you this story.
Years ago, I was visiting a school of martial arts located in the hills on the way up to Moon Lake.13 On the day that I arrived, I witnessed the strangest sporting event that I had ever seen. There were seven young students, all of similar height, who were taking part in a competition. The arena for this competition was a natural pool of water that was deep enough so that no one standing on the bottom would have their head above the water line. But affixed to the bottom of this pool was a single, narrow pedestal with a platform on its top that was wide enough for just one person to stand on. The height of the pedestal allowed any of these students to stand upright and have their entire head, but only their head, protrude above the water.
Each student was given a phrase of twenty-one words that they had to memorize; that was the easy part. They then all entered the pool, and each had to try to stand on the pedestal and recite their twenty-one-word phrase to completion, while below the surface all the other contestants were swimming hard, battering the standing one, while each of them attempted to mount the pedestal for their own recital.
As you might imagine, this was a difficult competition. But I stood by and made a note of the fragments that I heard from each young student. In the course of half an hour each one of them had mounted the pedestal several times and gotten off just a bit of their phrase. Here is what I heard:
1. “I’m cold, I’m tired, and I don’t like this game one bit …”
2. “There’s a new girl in school, and I’d sure like to meet her …”
3. “Nobody better try to push me off of this pedestal …”
4. “I can’t wait for lunch today. They’re making my favorite …”
5. “If I wrap my toes around this platform, I can hold on long enough to …”
6. “If only I’d learned from a young age to swim, I’d not be in this pickle I’m in …”
7. “Six times seven is forty-two; six times eight is forty-eight …”
In the end, all of the students were exhausted, and not one could finish their whole twenty-one-word phrase before being pushed off the platform and replaced by another.
I asked the master about this competition. It seemed so pointless. I couldn’t imagine anyone winning as long as there was at least one other contestant still strong enough to topple the one standing. He told me that winning was not the point. But what he then told me relates to this question that you have pressed me to answer.
If you are to clean house, the first thing you must do is see what needs cleaning. Then you need to learn what can be cleaned and how and what will need to be thrown out and how. And then you must see what you must learn to live with, because it cannot be cleaned, and it cannot be thrown away. Your first task is to observe what is going on inside. And as you do, you will soon see that your inner world is not much different than this sporting event that I have just told you about.
You will find a chorus of voices, each with something to say—a stream of thought, an urge, a desire, a fear or an anxiety, maybe a song, maybe a love—all rising up to your awareness, only to be displaced by another after only a moment or just a fraction of a moment.
You must see what is going on without any attempt to change what you find, because inner observing, at its lowest level, is nothing more than vanity; there is judgment and comparison to others. But on the next higher level of inner observing, there is no judgment—just seeing what is true. It is in the nature of our consciousness that we can view things from different levels, and in this kind of observation, there are many levels above the ones that I have just described. But for now, don’t concern yourself with those; focus only on seeing the stream of activity in your mind moment by moment.
It is best not to tinker with the machine until you learn how it works! You must first learn what tools there are to clean with and how to use them. You may feel that these voices are just patterns of your thoughts, and so by simple strength of will, you will be able to quiet them. But my dear, nothing could be further from the truth! If you subscribe to the beliefs of the elders, then this is the way you will look at things. But as I have already told you, our world is not so simple.
Each pattern of thought, each urge, each feeling is a pairing of our human form with a particular spirit that gains a bit of life by flowing through us. And spirits, as a rule, are hungry for this experience and will swim hard to stay in the game and to gain the upper hand. These spirits are attracted to our soul, which itself is a kind of vessel, by a kind of resonance—like a choir-master’s pitch pipe holding her choir to a particular key but also like a magnet attracting a piece of iron. Scientists are beginning to guess where these pairings occur—where parts of atoms, spinning in clouds, synchronize from randomness and spin together like a room full of dervishes!
The attraction can be through inheritance—like the broad spirits that hold the patterns of the human form that are particular to geography or culture or the narrow spirits that hold the shapes of noses and ears among members of the same family. These spirits pair with our genetics and are mostly fixed, but, with the right kind of efforts, some can change.
The attraction can be by possession—a common occurrence in everyone’s soul—like a spirit of anger or a spirit of passion overtaking our experiences. These spirits pair with our emotions and can be altered through a kind of inner struggle. And while religions often call this spiritual warfare, and it can feel like a battle to curate and tame the spirits that are not harmonious with our chosen nature, after a time, these more invasive spirits can become less our enemies than our allies. For what champion can ever grow in speed, strength, or skill without challenges from worthy opponents?
Or the attraction can be curated by choice, like spirits that contain entire bodies of knowledge, such as music, mathematics, language, sports, or any craft that has a long and storied history. These spirits are invited in through diligent study and apprenticeship so that one who masters a field becomes a living embodiment of that spirit.
It is a misunderstanding that our spirit and our soul are the same thing; they are made of different stuff. And all these spirits that live through us and our spirit—though we use the same word—are as different as a thread is to a tapestry. This is a big subject, and if you are interested, we can cover it at another time. But for now, try to appreciate that your experience is only partly you. To believe otherwise is akin to an open window believing itself to be the breeze blowing through it.
Let me tell you a story about a patient of mine who I took care of near the end of her life.
In her early years, Lorraine lived in a home ruled by her tyrannical father. Back then, before she had the awareness or the strength to curate spirits of her own choosing, a spirit of oppression was implanted deeply within her. This spirit resonated with other spirits throughout her soul, but I will only tell you of the ones that relate to my care of her, namely those on her periphery—the ones that pair with the body’s structure—such as those carrying the patterns of her stature.
She grew without the three forward curves of her spine: the lower one that makes space in the belly for food and for vitality, the middle one that makes room in the chest for air and for the emotions of the heart, and the upper one that curates our experience and our expressiveness. And without these curves, her back was shaped more like a turtle’s than like a willow branch, and so she had suffered all of her life with problems of digestion, breathing, and speech.
I have always been fascinated by how different curves of the spine, postures of the head, and expressions of the face together seem to attract certain spirits and their attendant attributes. It is as if the spine and the head form an antenna, and bending them this way and that tune one’s entire experience.
For example, posturing the head way in front of the spine and furrowing one’s brow attracts an intellectual spirit that is cut off from the emotions of the heart; constricting the middle and lower spine while tilting the head backward attracts a spirit of grieving; while exaggerating the forward curve of the lower spine, constricting the middle spine, and jutting the chin attracts a spirit of arrogance, and so on.
The oppressive spirit within Lorraine resonated with spirits up and down her spine. The one tuned to her upper spine gave her voice a high and thin tone that lacked any depth of color. The one tuned to her middle spine made it all but impossible for her heart to recognize genuine love, even when it came her way. And the one that tuned to her lower spine was one that I have written to you about before—a spirit of fearful insecurity that blinded her of her window to heaven.
When she became my patient, she was nearing the end of her life, but she had a real wish to be rid of these spirits that had fouled her soul. In truth, any of her manifestations could have been a point of entry to upright her ship—they could each have been used as a lever, connected as they were through their shared resonances with all the spirits singing round the core of her oppression. And if she had been stronger, we would have had the luxury of finding which of these would have had the greatest effect.
In people in less dire straits, the linkages between their core and their periphery are weak, and so correcting one can have no bearing on any of the others. So it can be a long process identifying each manifestation and freeing the body from them. But in her state, though she wasn’t strong, her wish, her inner wish,14 was as strong as it could be.
I have seen this often in my work with those near the ends of their lives and in those who have learned this secret of the dying—they don’t have time to waste, and they live more fully than most of us do when the shadow of death is not pressing in so hard. And in a circumstance like hers, the inner wish strengthens the links among and between these various spirits, so any lever gains the capacity to do the whole job. A strong inner wish is a powerful thing indeed!
I got her to sit up as straight as she could, drop her shoulders, erect her head, broaden her chest, and then simply breathe, slowly and deeply—inflating her belly as she did. I told her to pay no attention to any thoughts or feelings that seemed to come through her but to focus again and again on her posture and breathing, as a lifetime of bad habits—in the posture of her spine, in the set of her muscles, and in the spirits—had crystallized into rigid patterns within her soul. This would require her to catch herself, again and again, as she fell back into her old manifestations.
I told her that the most important thing was for her not to judge her falling back as a failure or as an act deserving of embarrassment, contempt, or grief, because this kind of occurrence is as foundational to our spirit life as gravity is to our physical life. Rather, she needed to cultivate a spirit of patience and steadfastness and to feel only compassion toward herself.
After three days of diligence and following vents of anger, grief, and tears, there came a light to her eyes and a loss of the lines on her face, and the tone of her voice developed a depth that she herself had never heard before. And she told me that a spirit of peace had finally entered her, and she was glad she had lived to experience this.
So, my dear niece, start with observation. See if you can train your awareness to see from the point of view that the martial arts master and I had while we were standing at the side of the pool, watching the competition. I look forward to hearing from you.
Your loving uncle,
James