CHAPTER SIX

INTO THE UNDERWORLD

MY FIRST NIGHT IN THE AMAZON rainforest was a mix of fear, excitement, and awe. I was attempting to sleep in my tiny wooden hut, huddled under a mosquito net and lying on a lumpy, damp mattress. With no electricity, I was engulfed in darkness, and the sounds of the forest around me were indescribable, otherworldly sounds—monkeys, frogs, insects, and God knows what. In spite of being completely exhausted from the long flight, the boat ride, and the hike into our jungle camp, I knew sleep would never come. The heat and humidity were suffocating, something was chewing on my roof, and a strange looking insect kept biting my ankles. I was in a different world and didn’t know whether to laugh or burst into tears. I seriously started to question my sanity. What in the hell was I doing here?

My journey to the rainforest had begun after an intense, three-month meditation in Massachusetts the year before. It was during that particular time that I came face to face with a lot of not-yet-processed trauma. I was already a Dharma teacher and had spent a decade practicing meditation, and I thought I had already transformed this suffering. But the terror, grief, and abandonment I felt were so debilitating, I knew I needed something more, a different approach. I realized that some childhood wounds are so deep and traumatic that a special kind of intervention is needed. I didn’t know what was happening any more, and I returned to California in a state of dread and panic. I don’t know why I was so drawn to shamanism, but my intuition kept telling me I’d find answers there. So I decided to seek out the guidance of a shaman or a medicine woman to help me understand what was happening to me. Shortly after returning home from my retreat, a dear friend, a psychologist, told me she’d done some powerful healing work in Peru. A few months later, I was on a plane to the Amazon rainforest.

Over and over in indigenous stories, folklore, and world mythology, we encounter legends of the underworld—desolate places hidden deep in the earth that represent darkness, sometimes called the “Kingdom of the Dead.” For unfortunate souls lost or trapped there, it’s a terrible nightmare that never ends, a place with no hope of escape, no light, joy, or happiness. After an eternity of sorrow, the dead slowly dissolve into dust. In various legends, the underworld is watched over by a powerful god or guardian. In Greek mythology, it’s Hades, whose primary function is to increase the number of souls in his kingdom and to be sure no one ever leaves.

From a psychological point of view, the underworld represents everything we don’t see, acknowledge, or understand within ourselves. It’s everything in our mind that is hidden, everything that’s hiding in the shadows. Using shamanic language, we’d say that everything we are unaware of is dark and all we are aware of is light. The underworld is the doorway between the conscious and the unconscious dimensions of the mind-made worlds in which we live. Our deepest pain and core traumas lie in the underworld of our body, mind, and spirit.

I see the mind as a gigantic filing cabinet with an elaborate system of organization. We have access to certain files, the ones we use every day, which present no stress or problems. These files are stored near the front of the cabinet and are easy to locate when needed. We can call these our “conscious” files. We depend heavily on our conscious files, and they help us navigate life and make sense of things.

A larger number of files are stored near the back of the cabinet, hidden from view, and usually inaccessible to us. These are the “unconscious” files. We also use these every day, but without awareness. They have a life of their own. There are two kinds of unconscious files. Some contain truth, love, and beauty and others contain pain, darkness, and trauma. A goal of the spiritual path, the journey to wholeness, is to uncover, reveal, and integrate all the files in our cabinet, especially the unconscious files, both positive and negative.

Some unconscious files may contain light that is more beautiful that we can stand. Visions of angelic beings or experiences of love, heaven, or oneness can sometimes create fear or doubt, so they get buried as well. All the parts of ourselves that we are unable to handle are buried there. We want to be loved, accepted, and approved of, so the mind creates this elaborate filing system to help us fit in. Over time, we might bury so much of ourselves that we become depressed, disconnected, and confused, leading to the overwhelming feeling of being lost. Eventually we might shut down completely.

On a regular basis, in an attempt to help us function in the world, our mind buries information in the unconscious files. Many of the difficult childhood experiences and events that traumatized us are buried there. The word trauma describes experiences so emotionally distressing that they exceed our ability to cope. These are events that are outside of “normal” human experiences. Physical and sexual abuse, rape, violence, assaults, near-death experiences, accidents, war, and medical procedures can create deep traumas. As children, we are particularly vulnerable to these experiences and unless the emotions are resolved, they can impact the rest of our life. Painful experiences of our ancestors are also in our unconscious files, hidden from view.

Whole communities or ethnic groups can also participate in burying things in unconscious files. Injustice, discrimination, and the politics of war are often denied and buried in the collective unconscious. Corporations that destroy the planet and then hide the evidence are also burying things in the collective unconscious files. Humankind is suffering from collective heartbreak; years of so many buried memories, destroyed dreams, and a lack of compassion have taken their toll. A society that participates in war, in the destruction of its own environment, a collective filled with sexism, homophobia, racism, and classism is symptomatic of our collective heartbreak. Individual and collective trauma shuts down our ability to give and receive love.

The part of ourselves most likely to get lost in the underworld is our heart. I saw this clearly while working with the shamans I met during my first trip to the jungle. My heart was so wounded, I knew the only way to rescue it was to feel everything that was keeping it closed. At some point, we all have to embark upon the heroic journey to regain all we have lost. To heal, we need to descend into the land of the dead and recover the buried and fragmented pieces of our hearts. No matter how hard you try to bury things, it all eventually surfaces. And besides, we’re always feeling what is happening on an energetic level, whether we are aware of it are not.

The doorways between worlds are always open. In shamanic cultures and mythology, we are summoned to the underworld for specific reasons. Once we decide to pursue understanding and freedom, we can no longer run from ourselves and the battle lines are drawn. We go into the underworld to make a daring rescue—to reclaim our courage and our power. We travel there to rescue the parts of ourselves that we have forgotten or neglected and which are now in jeopardy, slowly dying.

In the Shipibo communities of the Upper Amazon region of Peru, shamans travel to the underworld during sacred ceremonies on behalf of the sick. In a heightened state, the shaman is able to locate and retrieve the spirit of the patient. This is called a “soul retrieval,” and I have experienced this type of healing directly. After participating in this sacred ceremony, the patient begins to recover from the physical or mental suffering she was experiencing.

We go to the underworld to become free. We walk through the swamps and encounter the forces that operate within us. It’s the way we heal ourselves, the path of purification. We don’t get to choose what will be purified: “Please put my mother issues in a nice container, and I’ll take it to go, but leave the divorce (or whatever is the most difficult) for later.” In meditation, we see the most painful and blissful aspects of our life in high def 3-D through repetitive thoughts, stories, and emotions. We feel the pain from our families and communities, the ethnic groups we belong to, the pain of the Earth pulsating in our bones. When our body begins to open, we feel it through all the sensations we’ve been unable to access until now. We enter the underworld through our body and through our mind, opening doors and windows that have been locked for years, if not centuries. It’s scary but it’s exciting at the same time.

At some point, we enter the epicenter of our mind, the eye of the hurricane. Habitual ways of thinking, addictions, and the other ways we fall into darkness can help lead us to find the root, but we can’t just look down at it. We need to discover the source of our suffering and uproot it. For thousands of years, shamans have facilitated death-and-rebirth experiences. At each stage of our life’s journey, aspects of ourselves, including core beliefs, negative habits, dysfunctional relationships, and even the person we thought we were—what we think of as our identity, “us,” “me” “myself”—needs to die so that new life can come forth.

The Gnostic Gospels say, “If you bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will be your salvation. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will destroy you.”¹ We need to find the courage and compassion to look at the forces that operate with impunity within us. It’s the way to heal ourselves.

On a retreat I led a few years ago, I met a courageous woman named Kafira. She was born in Israel and had been living in Brooklyn for years. She was tall and athletic with that distinct New York edge that comes from years of urban living. She had become extremely depressed and described to me how she’d begun to mutilate herself. She would pull her hair and hurt her body in ways that frightened her. During our conversations, she shared that at the age of eighteen, she was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces special operations unit. The violence she participated in and the horrors she witnessed during her deployment were unbelievable. When her service ended, she left Israel, cut all ties to her homeland, and never looked back. She had blocked everything out in an attempt to move on, but the trauma she carried for so long was resurfacing. During the retreat, she realized how much her military experience had affected her whole life. She was unable to have intimate relationships, was frequently angry, and had lost faith in humankind. Worst of all, she hated herself for what she had done as a soldier.

I encouraged her to practice self-compassion and allow herself to be present for the memories she had blocked out for so long. As the fear, anger, and grief began to arise, she started to open to it instead of fight it. She began to feel again and was able to grieve compassionately for the eighteen-year-old girl who had endured so much. She discovered that going into the pain was healing and, with each courageous step she took, her beautiful heart began to open more and more.

Jack Kornfield says, “We must shed the past over and over again.”² Doing so moves us to a higher state of consciousness, and with it comes more understanding of who we really are. What follows death is always rebirth, and that’s what makes the cycle so powerful. The caterpillar morphs into the butterfly, and with faith and trust we can experience transformations like this ourselves. There is an intelligence that supports us as we move rhythmically from one stage of life to the next. The universe moves and dances, and we shift and dance to the same rhythm. Periods of expansion are followed by periods of contraction; nothing stays still for long. Everything moves in and out of cycles of death and rebirth.

Navigating our way through the shadows is where we reclaim our own light. It’s in the shadows and the darkness that we learn who we truly are. All our experiences have value. The most painful ones are grist for the mill, sacred compost. Our suffering, past and present, allows us to open, and thus to grow. It’s all part of the healing process. In Twelve Step recovery programs there is a saying that you’re only as sick as your secrets. I believe this to be true.

It’s time to let go of everything that is holding us back. We can no longer run from ourselves; Pandora’s box has been opened and now we all have to dance in the dark. We’re all in the underworld now, so trust that your fierce heart will lead the way.

The Buddha said that the past is already gone, the future is not yet here; there is only one moment for you to live: that is the present moment.

—THICH NHAT HANH