THE CLOSET MYSTIC

sometimes, the feeling I want to convey is nonverbal, beckoning me to use a different medium.

what is it?

What is healing? How do you define a healed state from an unhealed state? Of course, you can see it, you can feel it— it’s rather easy to pick a “healed” person from an “unhealed” person in a crowd, if you will. Not literally, but in conversation, in their interactions with others, it’s quite easy to identify with even a little bit of a perceptive eye. 

So, then, what is it? How do you define it? What is the “healed” state versus the “unhealed” state? What is the pursuit of the ideal that drives the therapeutic process for some? I have my criticisms of the current zeitgeist surrounding the mental health field, particularly in how it is represented in the media, as well as my praises of it. 

There’s always, always a balance to be struck and found. There are some ways in which an excessive focus on “boundaries,” self-love, and self-care become antithetical to the growth of the individual. I view the formation of the actualized self as involving a necessary degree of a variety of ingredients. There is a cookbook to the production of the “best self”, or the self-actualized, self-realized human. 

I do believe that one of those ingredients is discomfort. A therapeutic process that does not involve facing one’s fears and embracing discomfort where appropriate and within balanced doses is not a therapeutic process at all to me. It is my observation that a regressive attachment to what is comfortable can be veiled under seemingly-enlightened language such as “boundaries,” “self-love,” and “self-care.” How do we remedy this? And, additionally, what am I to do as an aspiring therapist who truly wants to help and aid people in their process of growth? I fear that I will have clients and patients who merely want a sounding board, and to have their ego coddled and stroked, without ever actually taking an honest look at themselves and doing the work. That is what I want: clients who are willing and eager to do the work. 

Now, do not get me wrong: I am not advocating for a cold, strict, critical, disciplinarian approach, nor am I saying that the aforementioned — boundary setting, self-love, and self-care, to name just a few — is of no value. I am, however, advocating for balance, and a closer examination of what those things really mean. 

Is self-love about an attachment to comfort?

Part of me believes in an innate trinity to our being. Symbolically, we can consider ourselves to be our own father, our own mother, and the child, all at once. Now, imagine the ideal approach to parenting along the permissive-authoritative axis. Balance is appropriate, is it not? I suppose the point that I am trying to make here is that I sometimes see the modern therapeutic process as being overly permissive — soft, coddling, and without a sufficient degree of encouraging growth. 

We must strike a healthy balance between being our own father — appropriately critical in the spirit of demanding that you use your strength, for no, you are not a helpless victim — and our own mother — giving nurturing warmth, security, and nurturing, filling your cup that you have sufficient fuel to be your strongest self. 

If I were to speculate, I might say that, due to therapy as a whole being a business, therapists are naturally going to want their approach to keep patients coming back to ensure a steady income. Could there be therapists who consciously or unconsciously stroke their patients’ egos, focused on making them feel good about themselves, simply to ensure their return? I do not know — this is mere conjecture. 

I do think that therapy is work and it should encourage work. It’s like hiring a personal trainer — you don’t hire a personal trainer who is going to tell you how great your body looks and make you feel like a king or a queen. You hire a personal trainer to show you what work to do to get where you want to be. I believe that an honest examination of oneself can, most of the time, be rather painful and raw — and what is therapy but an honest examination of oneself?

I am sure that this entire piece of writing has been loose, tangential, and perhaps not as cohesive as it could be. I suppose that all I am advocating for, as always, is an alchemical marriage of opposites. I am pointing out that there are some things I see on social media that pertain to the therapeutic healing process that leave a bad taste in my mouth. 

Here is what I believe: the process towards wholeness and true healing is about integration of the shadow. How do you define the shadow? Whenever you shine a light on something, and make one thing your focus, something behind it is inevitably left in the dark. This is to comment on the fact that people strong in one personality trait will often have an “equal and opposite” personality trait left in the shadows, unintegrated. I believe that the healing process often necessarily involves us finding what is there in our shadow for us to integrate.

I believe that there are people who are too hard on themselves and refuse love. For them, the therapeutic process will involve softening, and allowing themselves to receive love. Tears are almost always, as a rule, shed in this process. 

I believe that there are people who inadequately own their own power, independence, and self-sufficiency, and need to find greater strength. For them, the therapeutic process might be about hardening. Not via coldness, but almost like how a muscle that is exercised becomes harder — the hardness is reflective of potency, not reflective of a refusal of love. These people may need a critical voice to remind them that they have the keys to better their own lives in their hand, and they are only self-sabotaging by perceiving themselves as victims. 

I guess, to go full circle, one of the infinite ways in which I’d differentiate the “healed” state from the “unhealed” state is “integrated” versus “unintegrated.” Healing involves wholeness, while being unhealed involves inner incompletion. The unhealed, thus, are more likely to enter codependent relationships, for they cling to another to fulfill the unintegrated half of their psyche, rather than embracing it themselves.

I do believe that the most potent forms of love, and perhaps one of the many forms of “true love” that exists — possible in any kind of relationship, romantic, platonic, familial, et cetera — involve finding someone who embodies the unintegrated parts of ourselves that we have refused to accept. They will often embody for us something that exists quite literally inside of ourselves that we have built walls around, perhaps condemning it on a moral basis, perhaps fearing what it could bring, et cetera. However, until we integrate the unintegrated, it will continue to present itself in the external world, and we will continue to run away from it; but guess what? No matter how far you run, your shadow stays right behind you. 

Carl Gustav Jung — “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

from The Fault in Our Stars, Augustus and Hazel on a date in the park:

“‘Two things I love about this sculpture,’ Augustus said. He was holding the unlit cigarette between his fingers, flicking at it as if to get rid of the ash. He placed it back in his mouth. ‘First, the bones are just far enough apart that if you’re a kid, you cannot resist the urge to jump between them. Like, you just have to jump from rib cage to skull. Which means that, second, the sculpture essentially forces children to play on bones. The symbolic resonances are endless, Hazel Grace.’”

the symbology of children, representing youth, life at its beginning and primacy, upon bones, representing death, and life after it ends. the duality and juxtaposition of such opposites is obvious. then, you consider the theme of the book: youths with cancer, youths well-acquainted with the very real possibility death, nestled well within it as a potential reality. 

additionally, the book, An Imperial Affliction (Hazel’s favorite book) ending mid-sentence randomly, representing how youths with cancer die “mid-sentence” — their life, like the book, ends prematurely, before the full story has a chance to be told. I think that’s genius, and terribly fucking sad of course. I do see a similarity, though, with how Hazel and Augustus never say goodbye — they simply say “Okay,” not giving their own conversations a proper end, just as the book doesn’t receive a proper end, nor the lives of youths with cancer. 

this book… the hardship. it just feels so unfair. so unfair that children should have to go through that and yet it happens all the time. it makes me want to go and be there somehow for the sick and suffering? what can I do, what can I possibly do? is there a way to read for sick children? to play with them? I just want to swaddle them and the families with love. And I mean, the parents? How can anyone make it through that? It’s just so so much.

And… it just makes everything else pale in comparison. How can I complain about anything? Anything? I don’t have problems. These people who suffer in this way — everything else becomes a walk in the park. I feel like I need to expose myself to more suffering to gather more perspective as a person. 

There’s something about suffering and dark times that makes you long for times that may have appeared to have missed the mark when you were in them. like that saying from The Office — “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

I need to stop focusing on my suffering and instead see the infinite possibility of this life. Live to the full. 

…

edit: another fascinating symbol I just considered — how Augustus always puts cigarettes between his lips, but never lights them. he says something to the effect of “you put the thing that does the killing in your mouth, but you don’t give it the power to do the killing.”

it makes me consider how I’ve often heard that the battle of many cancer patients is often more mental than physical, to an extent. no matter how close they get to death, the power is in their hands to let it do the killing or not (potentially, symbolically, in this school of thought, of an iron will being what overcomes the illness above all else).

it also makes me consider how the power to overcome the illness has to do with the power of the mouth — or the power of word — where the cigarette is placed. we can speak our own refusal to quit, and our own victory, our stubborn will to conquer, into existence.

just another fascinating little symbol from the book I was pondering! my own friend Saida, in her battle with cancer, told me that the book Becoming Supernatural fell into her hands just before her diagnosis, and she was determined to beat it through the power of her will and mind from the very beginning because of its contents — the grand healing power of the human spirit and will.

It really isn’t far off to suppose that human intent, will, and belief can alter patient outcome — the placebo effect, producing literal biological changes simply through what the mind accepts as reality, tells us that this is so. Who is to say that we cannot take control of this and speak what we will into existence? I believe we can.

perhaps the reason why I do fine performing on a stage is because my entire life has felt like a masked performance. what’s the difference? it’s always been an act. there’s no shift in consciousness. just another mask to be put on, a quick shift, my life has always been quick change after quick change, character after character, adaptation after adaptation, dependent on the circle in which I find myself.

what does this leave me with when I am alone?

a blissful void.

the thing is, such a way of being sounds… neurotic. without a still center, without a constant self.

but I think otherwise.

I think the closer one becomes to the ever-still center within oneself, the fixed point, still Polaris that remains despite the spinning Ferris wheel of the zodiac, the more adaptable one becomes —

for, within one’s heart is the whole. all for one, one for all, contained within the heart.

the first paragraph I wrote here is awfully misleading.

masks?

no —

it’s all entirely authentic. I genuinely love all beings and feel like I can relate to all from all walks of life because there is always commonality to be found. the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity is that constant. our unity is Polaris. therefore, all else, all other transitory features of the personality, are less important to me. I want to dance with all. All of humanity could be my dancing partner! I’m a quick enough study. Show me how you move, I’ll get the hang of it quick enough, and we’ll both have smiling faces in seconds 🙂

Just finished Turtles All the Way Down by John Green.

Wow.

I’m just absolutely stunned and floored by how a book can be so beautiful. Regularly, regularly, regularly the kinds of lines that you want to hold onto, catalogue somehow, bookmark, write down and remember for their profundity. I don’t know how he did it. While reading it, I couldn’t help but think to myself — and not with shame or disappointment, but with awe — “I’ll never write anything this good.” While I’m typically not one for defeatist mindsets — and who knows where effort can get me — I can say I’m glad I get to read things that good, though.

I literally wish I could shake John Green’s hand and thank him. WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW. I do not remember the last time I couldn’t put a book down like that. ❤️

sometimes it feels like my life exists in cycles of building dams against the waters and then being inundated and flooded by them, temporarily taken and washed away, for the waters to be resorbed by the Earth, balance to return to the land, to build yet another dam to be taken again once the concretes fail.

reading this book Turtles All the Way Down — filling me with compassion and understanding that I wish was always there. the screaming winds of internal hurricanes that sometimes never cease inside the minds of the externally silent… sometimes those with their mouths sealed are quiet only because they cannot pick what to say, to begin to truly speak is to risk a near-infinite spiral of a monologue, because that is the state of their mind that will not abate.

the thought process is eerily similar. the natural disposition of Aza’s mind reminds me of significant people from my past. 

her OCD seems centered around a form of grief involving what seems to me to be a complete and utter loss of control — i.e., the sudden death of her beloved father. 

I have this hunch that her OCD is almost centered around an attempt at control. she continually describes her mind and her thoughts as being something she witnesses, completely and utterly out of her control, unable to choose her thoughts, instead at the mercy of their ever-shifting and brutal winds. 

I think her childhood and her experience of her own mind is centered around a complete and utter loss of control. I don’t really believe this, but it’s almost like her mind is behaving in ways that cannot be controlled because of the sudden severity of the trauma — someone so near and dear ripped away from her suddenly without her having so much as a say in the matter. Her mind fearfully understands life as something that cannot be controlled, and it’s almost like her mental scape behaves in a way that reflects that. the inner reflecting her experience of the outer.

It gives me compassion for people who are suffering in this way, particularly if their childhood involved a loss of control, particularly in relation to a parent.

The book also gave me compassion for myself, in that I recognized the anxiously-circular nature of the thought patterns. They felt all too familiar.

I just want to have more compassion for all beings. I have a hunch that the evils of all beings are easily explained by their own suffering, by ignorance… it’s so easy to look underneath the surface and find the reason for why someone is behaving in any particular way. Too, too easy. I almost feel like intelligence lends into compassion, in this way, for to see the truth of things, and the hidden reality that a perceptive eye/mind/heart can pick up on, is to necessarily come to forgiveness and compassion for those who are hurting. Hurt people really do hurt people, and I’ll always remember that, and try my very hardest to love and forgive accordingly.

amazing little quotation from Turtles All the Way Down by John Green, currently reading:

“Dr. Singh once told me that if you have a perfectly tuned guitar and a perfectly tuned violin in the same room, and you pluck the D string of the guitar, then all the way across the room, the D string on the violin will also vibrate. I could always feel my mother’s vibrating strings.”

I feel this way with all of the people I love

the only shape that actually exists is the sphere

every other shape is an illusion consisting of particular arrangements of smaller spheres

reality is borderless 

I like being alive.

such a wonderful contradiction

to contemplate the truth underlying fiction 

for no matter the skin

a heart is dressed in

within those veins

the lifeblood’s the same.

…

I’ve once heard

“politicians use the truth to tell lies,

while artists use lies 

to tell the truth.”

…

a life without art is not a life at all

art 

is the story of ourselves

with ourselves placed 

as far as can be.

…

self-loss

and self-discovery 

becoming one and the same.