Session Eighteen

Maintaining Your Mentalligence

Objective:
Unlearn silo indoctrination that breeds darkness.

Pivot toward integration.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

—Alan Watts

W
hen I first set out on my grounded research study with my graduate students, trying to understand what contributed to their identity and resilience, I had no idea that I was about to open Pandora’s box, wrapped in dynamite. I’ve always had an aversion for me-search, work that is directed by personal interests, versus proper scholarly methods. At the beginning, I brought my game face, planning to stay safely within the intellectual lane. Then came the swerving.

It seemed innocent enough at the time. My student’s stories had been inspiring me for years. I was so set on helping them find their way that my own need for detoxification was totally out of focus. Who knows how long I would’ve avoided it if it weren’t for them, and Lyla, the wonder therapist. When I started to wake up and tune in, the spiral I was engulfed in gave me no choice but to face my own disintegration. The mound of data collected over five years buried me, but ended up leading to a full-fledged soul excavation.

Things were dark for a while.

When I first broke out of the church, I’d thought I’d found the light. I went all-or-nothing; education was my new form of being born again. It seemed like the place to be, with no Kool-Aid in sight at first. I bathed in the certainty of science and peer-reviewed methods.1 No more of “God said it, that settles it.” I clung to evidence like it was the cross. I wanted to bypass messiness; the last thing I wanted was to keep holding onto the fears I’ve always carried. I lived in my headspace, doing everything I could to avoid my emotional and spiritual sides and needs. I thought I’d cracked the code and set myself free. But then my students—and the universe—showed me something different.

The other side of the fence wasn’t all roses. Even though there were a lot more lenses available, there were still strong whiffs of insularity. Insularity becomes the birthplace of hate. Instead of looking for ways to join hands, we point fingers. We don’t see that, in many ways, we’re after the same things, and we’re under the same rule of forces beyond our comprehension. We’re being asked to continue a fight that we didn’t start in the first place. We can’t stay stuck in junior high school behavior if we want to be adults who contribute as global citizens.

As I straddled the fence, I watched a lot of bickering go back and forth between religion and science, and conservatives and liberals. I saw the one thing we all have in common: FEAR. We spend all our energy defending territory, blind to what we could accomplish if we went beyond it. Fear is darkness. The resulting silos it breeds are dangerous. We need more light.

Know That Light Is Light

We can’t shut each other out entirely and expect to overcome darkness. Light is light, even though we all see it through different lenses. It doesn’t mean there aren’t sharp contrasts across domains, but there’s still room to shine brighter together.

The word on the street is different. You hear how dark the other is. All you hear about are the horrible things people do in the name of religion. There’s little talk about how it influences people to do miraculously loving and extraordinary things. Many leaders of our time have pointed to their faith as informing good deeds like feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, and building hospitals, schools, and nonprofits.

Academics and scientists do magnificent things, too. Research has pioneered breakthroughs that touch every one of us to the betterment of humankind. Investigation sheds light on complicated problems and brings advances that make the impossible possible. People in academia and science teach us how to learn, live, and connect better. Without this type of knowledge, we would still be in the dark ages.

Evidence is critical, but our minds do not have the capacity to explain everything. There’s room for mystery and discovery. We don’t have to agree or even like each other, but we should recognize together that silos only breed darkness. Luckily, divisions between science and the spiritual are blurring. Intersections are being found. Faith is showing up on the evidence-based radar, nudging academics to recognize it as a protective factor in resilience. Quantum physics and string theories in science are showing that light is vibrating within each of us; that we’re all connected by a universal energy that’s always moving. Forces cause this connection that we don’t fully comprehend.

Scientific and religious realms aren’t the only silos. Plenty that’s unmeasurable goes down outside the ivory tower also, worthy of recognition than it’s given. While academia’s process of determining credibility is solid, artists and musicians also undergo their own form of peer review, too. We often leave art, music, the visual and performing arts, and spirituality on the fringes, even though all are critical sources of light. They are forces that can break through deep divides, bringing people together and helping us make meaning of life. We need to listen to what Drake songs are telling us about our culture as much as we need to do a deep reading of stellar literature. It’s not one or another. Both can teach us a lot.

In this kind of integration, we need to allow for lights from every side to emit as brightly as they can. When we fight, we’re covering up sources that we desperately need. At a time when old and disintegrated institutions are collapsing, we need to take a good look at the rubble to understand what went wrong and how to repeat it from happening. We need light to help us rebuild new spaces that welcome everyone. When all voices are raised, we reach our highest collective light. We need artists, poets, spiritualists, academics, scientists, and religious folk to find spaces to dance together.

My own light had grown dim in the face of my own disintegration. When I took on my full-time role in academia, I swung from one clique to the next, so set on evidence that I thought I could operate from the neck up forever. But the universe has its own way of teaching us things. Without my consent or collusion, I was handed a stick of dynamite that I needed to handle with care.

Get Closer to Fine

It’s 8:30 on a Tuesday morning, and I’m pulling my usual fumble through the underground garage at my office, where I’m always greeted by a pitch-perfect “Goood mooorning” from Randy, my favorite garage attendant. I echo back with the full enthusiasm he deserves for his consistency with cheerful greetings. It helps my mood. I’m a little tired after a weekend of presenting at a women’s leadership conference where everyone was talking a good game about supporting each other, then pushing each other in the hallways, competing to sell books and services and one-up each other.

Once I swiped my badge, I planned to head straight upstairs, to my full day of meetings ahead. But then I heard, “I like your voice,” which would generally be a creepy thing, especially in Boston where people tend to pride themselves on being stoic and even a little grumpy (except for Randy, who makes up for the rest of us). I’d never seen the voice-liker before, but he drew me in.

We locked eyes; his were beautifully blue against the backdrop of his dark skin—a rare Vanessa Williams combination that I’m a sucker for. His head tilted, and it started to feel like I was in a scene from Harry Potter. There was no stranger danger, though—I was at ease as he spoke like he was in a whole different dimension. It felt like I had known him for a thousand years, so the code he was talking in made sense.2

He told me that I had an important message to deliver, that I was going to help change the world and there would be a lot of work to do. He kept telling me the world needed healing, that what was ahead would require a lot from me, that I’d need help. He kept saying not to worry, that “people” were already looking out for me, that I wasn’t alone. “You know what I’m saying, right?” he asked me over and over. I knew. It was like a chapter from The Alchemist, where I was learning about my personal legend. I thanked him and nodded, not out of politeness, but sincere appreciation. From a rational level, it was a bizarre encounter. I thought about what all the domains would have to say about this:

Science: You just experienced “confirmation bias”—believing evidence you’d already formed conclusions about. It was just brain pattern recognition, nothing more than a coincidence.

Church: God is speaking to you. He has a plan for your life and wants you to do His will.

New Age: The universe is watching out for you. Your vibration is strong. There’s good energy today—the moon must be full. Maybe he’s from a past life.

Psychiatry: Maybe the two of you are a little bit delusional. You might want to look into some Abilify or at least take a few days off. Don’t repeat the story out loud.

Indigo Girls: There’s more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line. And the less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.

As I rode up to my floor, I flashed back again to the conference a couple of days earlier, where I had a similar experience with Julia, an intuitive woman who happened to attend my presentation. When she hugged me after, it felt like the love of a million grandmothers—or to be more specific, my own late grandmothers, aunts, and childhood best friend, Margo. It was epically comforting and odd, prompting me to blurt out, “I love you,” to her, which was totally out of behavioral bounds at a professional conference.3 But I had never felt that much love in a hug before; something spoke to me at a soul level. Julia later told me that a lot of people she’s been close with have died, and that she often had people come through her. She matter-of-factly told me that those I’d lost were trying to send some love my way. I was a little spooked, but mostly appreciative.

When I arrived at my desk, I was ready to shift from all things paranormal to answering emails and writing reports. I’d had my fill of bizarre for the week. Then, I noticed on my desk a small white Dixie cup filled with Andes mints and Kit Kats and a handwritten smiley face on it. My late Grandma Jennie, who lived to be 103, loaded me up with Andes whenever I visited. It was her signature hostess candy when she had her bridge group over. And Kit Kats were the very candy that my late Auntie Jackie and Auntie Terry4 always pulled out of their kitchen drawers when we visited. Had these powerhouse women in my life, the ones whom I had felt with me the entire time I’d been soul detoxing, stopped in to leave a treat?

I’ll leave it up for you to decide. I honestly don’t think they sent an express care package from the cosmos. It was probably one of my nice colleagues spreading a little springtime cheer. I can’t make full sense of the interaction, but I do find myself getting goose bumps every time I relive it. It doesn’t make complete sense, but for once, instead of having to settle what was precisely “right,” I knew I had to keep an open heart and mind. The words of my favorite Indigo Girls song were nudging me to stop looking for definitive and get closer to fine.

My openness allowed me to set aside my bitterness about brownie points and let the light pour back in. When I first was handed the dynamite at the beginning of this whole brain and soul expedition, I faced hard choices. At first, it felt like I was going to blow everything up and start over, but then I realized I might destroy myself and others in the process. The stick was too dangerous to bury. The flame was white hot, and I couldn’t simply hand it off. I had to figure out what to do with it. I decided to chuck it at the places that perpetuate indoctrination, being careful not to hurt the people who were held hostage by it just as much as I’d been.

My new pilgrimage helped me handle the dynamite as best I could and start integrating. I realized that the Beatitudes and lessons about being “salt and light” were the foundations that later became the intentions I set on my yoga mat. The command to love my neighbor was the premise of my entire professional code. They were the same essence, described in different terms. I listened to Alanis, danced to Tracy Chapman, and put crystals in my pocket. I reread Danielle LaPorte, Paulo Coelho, and Marianne Williamson. I walked labyrinths, visited wise healers, and read psalms. I studied spirals and wrote poems. I got out of my head and into my heart. I traveled to Santa Fe and lit candles for my loved ones, and went to Colorado and cried on top of the Rocky Mountains. I wasn’t on science sabbatical by any stretch. I still went to work, read Kahneman and peer-
reviewed studies, and taught rational and critical thinking skills to students.

I was cracked wide open but started feeling whole again.

It helped me remember all the times that love enveloped me in my home and at church. My parents especially modeled kindness—their old hippie ways that prompted them to convert were a big part of their nonjudgmental spirit. I used to listen in on all my mama’s calls. She was the go-to person for our entire church community. When someone was struggling, the phone rang. I never got any juicy details on what exactly people were dealing with, but I knew it was serious. Mama did a lot more listening than talking. She was a safe, powerful healing light—and I doubt at the time she knew I was watching so intently or that I would go on to choose a professional path that so closely mirrored what she was doing with no recognition, compensation, or late-night Twitter shout-outs.

Even though light and darkness coexist, there’s light to be found when we look for it. Signs are everywhere. We can find light in the sound of a voice, a piece of old-fashioned candy, a loving embrace, and a two-hour phone call. We can find it in science’s particle theories and hallelujah songs and mystics working to raise the vibration. We can find it in concerts and art museums and on the back of motorcycles. We don’t have to have precision about its best forms and sources, sometimes it arrives in unexpected places, getting us a little closer to fine.

Spiral On

When my students first started to talk about their transitions from darkness and disintegration to upward spirals, I was impressed by their insightfulness and their agility. Time after time, they revealed that their capacity to work their way upward relied on unlearning and pivoting. This was the inception of the UP acronym.

My students have given us a lot of gems. The key finding in my research was that fusion is the gateway to collective efficacy: the idea that we do well when we all do well. There’s no time to waste bickering about who’s the boss. We need to find spaces where we can all dance. Cliques, silos, and the ignorance they breed bring us all down.

You can dance in these ways, too. If becoming more agile has become your new mission, then you’ve realized the kind of rethinking it takes. It’s a tall order, one that relies on the best of your curiosity and sense of adventure. You know that BS societal rules only bring us down:

You now realize that plot twists can be fun. Moreover, binary categories never capture our true essence, there are multiple contingencies, staying woke to human multidimensionality is lifeblood, and global citizenry is amazing. There’s a way to disrupt myopic constructions, get unstuck, and spiral up.

You’ve become a master rethinker, pockets filled to the brim with a massive collection of lenses that help you see beyond and expose the insidious blind spots our human fam faces. You’re more curious than George and nimbler than Jack. You fuse science, art, culture, and spiritual forces. You have way more questions than answers. You’re not afraid to breathe in impermanence. You approach attachment with caution. You embrace the spectrum of energy swirling about, always on the lookout for new possibilities. You’re obsessed with novelty and variety. You’re always thirsty for more.

Your behavior will continue to take form, and you reflect the kind of creative vibrancy that’s gone AWOL in society. People notice you’re not basic meat and potatoes. You’re a new kind of conscious badass. You’re a little quirky, but endearing nonetheless. You quit hustling for acceptance. Stop handing your soul over. Reject the matrix of the past. Tell conformity to eff off once and for all. Harness chaotic energy for good.

And the best part: it’s not about you or just for you. It’s for everyone’s sake. Work, school, and relationships take on a whole new meaning. Everything changes. Your essence will shine, and you’ll pivot like never before, flipping chaos on its head—the only way to see beyond, redefine success, remain skeptimistic, and create a conscious DIT (do-it-together) life. You now have your own signature spiral—chaos and all—to integrate. You’re ready to do your thing and dance your way to the good life.