All Is Well With My Soul

“We seek not just that within us that is uninjured, but that which is uninjurable.”

~Stephen Levine

*****

Over and over again in settings as diverse as challenging professional workplaces, to broken and toxic families and relationships, to breakdowns due to mental illness and substance abuse, I hear a question in a myriad of forms:

“How can I be okay with this?”

The difficulties, angst and heartbreak, is obvious in the question. It is the same human conundrum tackled by philosophers, sages, and mystics over the ages and across many wisdom and religious traditions.

It came up recently in a recovery retreat when a participant, Marianne, asked, “I’m so stuck with my family situation. All I can feel is the inside churn of my gut. Yet you tell me that there is something deep down inside me that is always and forever safe and secure. How do we find it?”

To be honest, once most of us begin to tune in to what we are often feeling, we find a background anxiety or stress somewhere in the core of our body. The more it becomes clear, it is no surprise humans seek to take the edge off or to escape via any number of strategies, everything from overwork, to addiction, to ceaseless distractions.

The evidence from so many traditions and practices is that we can become profoundly secure inwardly. The scriptures speak of being “in the world but not of the world.” Twelve-step recovery explores emotional sobriety, a state where our well-being is not dependent on anyone or anything. Viktor Frankl explored this deeply and richly with his writings and his entire body of psychological work.

For this blog though, I want to use the notion of “hermetic sealing” which is a central idea of Georges Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, though it was taken from ancient Egyptian spirituality.

The idea is simply that through our practices we can “seal” our insides in order to keep them protected and safe from outside influences, even as we allow ourselves to engage with the world. The ways to do so are apparently endless, though most begin when we stop trying to avoid discomfort, instead beginning to engage and explore the cause(s) of the discomfort. Slowly then over time, as we “debug” our reactions to ourselves, others, the world, and life, the hermetic seal is strengthened time after time. At some point we will begin to seek out challenges, which strengthens the sealing all the more.

The most remarkable outcome is liberation. As we become less and less compelled by things outside us, we find greater and greater freedom. Eventually, we gain a capacity to choose. Of course, that only further accelerates the process of our growth and development.