Do You Sometimes Feel Empty--As If You Lost Your Original Self?
Linda Carroll, author of "Seven Stages on a Woman's Journey of Spirit" discusses the emptiness many women feel and the search for the original self that is often lost.
Commitment: Your book is titled Remember Who You Are. Why did you give your book this title? What message does it hold for women?
Linda Carroll: Each of the wisdom traditions speak about three aspects of human life. They remind us that we are not who we think we are, that we are here to remember who we are, and that there are a series of practices which can help us remove the obscurations which keep us from seeing our true nature.
While there are many parts of the book which would be
relevant to male readers, there are also differences in the spiritual journey of women which set them apart. Theresa King says this so well that I will quote her.
"If female history is different, if female biology is different, if
female psychology is different, if all of the little responses to
life's daily occurrences are different, how can the spirituality be
the same?"
Commitment: You wrote, "There is a Native American folk tale that claims each person is born into this world with a special song that is his or hers alone." How can a woman find her special song? How did you find your own special song, and how did doing this impact your life?
Linda: Often that "special song" is disguised in early years and only later makes sense. When I was in school, my early report cards were filled with criticism and concern that "I would rather hear my friends stories than do math" and that I "prefer passing notes with girlfriends to studying Latin." When I was writing a statement to my counseling program about why I thought I would be a good psychotherapist, I was looking through these old report cards and came
across those comments and laughed out loud. It was true: I was always fascinated with people and their stories, sneaking poetry into prayer books because it gave me more meaning than memorized prayers, and here I am, writing a book filled with poems and stories about my career of listening to
people's stories!
Commitment: Chapter 1 begins with this image: "A woman stands by a window on a sweet spring morning and she weeps for something she cannot name. She has everything she imagined she could ever want, yet on this day she is empty and filled with a yearning that has no face. Feeling in the world but not of it, she performs the tasks of everyday life in a solitude that enfolds her like a cocoon." What is this woman weeping and yearning for? What is she missing? How can she fill this yearning?
Linda: I ask this question of women in all my retreats and seminars and they always answer, "she is yearning for herself," for her true nature, for who she really is. The outer world is important, it fulfills many of our human needs, but it is our inner world which fills our spiritual needs. And sometimes, access to the pleasures and ease of the outer world can actually keep us from feeling our own inner nature.
It is often the pain of our lives which breaks open the defenses and protections to see within. Leonard Cohen has a wonderful song, Anthem, where he says "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."
Commitment: You wrote, "This original self is rarely remembered, although at times we catch glimpses of it." Why and how do we lose this original self? How can we gain it back? Can you explain a woman's connection to "an invisible golden cord" ? What is this cord and what does it connect to?
Linda: We lose this original self as a necessary part of our becoming integrated into human life. This process, called conditioning, requires us to turn our attention outward, learning to read the cues of family and later peers and teachers to survive as best we can in the human community. But there are moments throughout those years which are like golden threads taking us back to an original memory, or
offering clues to that memory of our true selves. The theme of so many of our stories, myths, legends which have endured through the eons are about rediscovering that true self, often by taking journeys to find what we feel we are missing. The search for The Holy Grail, The Hero's Journey that Joseph Campbell talks about, and the theme of endless plays and poetry is this rediscovery of our true nature, which was there all along. My favorite is from T.S. Eliot, who says: "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
Here is an excerpt from the book.
A Native American legend says we are born with an invisible golden cord that connects the top of our heads to the Spirit world from which we came. This cord of gold helps us in our passage to the human world.
As infants, when we are frightened, tired, or bewildered, we draw strength from it. As the skin thickens, covering the fontanel on our infant skulls in the first months of life, the cord gets smaller.
Finally it disappears. We forget all we have known of our own true self as we enter fully into the world of families, community, and culture. Remembering that essence, reestablishing connection to that “invisible Golden Cord,” is what I believe to be the purpose of each human life.
Experiencing our lives in a physical body, we are engulfed and
encased by early events and circumstances. When we smile at Mother, she smiles back. That feels good, so we do it again.
When we run into the street, Father gets upset. This is frightening, and we don’t repeat our mistake. Then influences beyond our immediate families develop the socialized person we are becoming.
We learn more about life, love, and personal values from peers, school, movies, songs, and by watching the relationships around us. We create beliefs about who we are based on what we understand the world to be and what others tell us we are.
As we grow accustomed to the outside world of rules, beliefs, and structures, we forget that our Spirit has its own truth, set of laws, and wisdom, our essence. We often think all we are is a social construct. Though we may refer to our ‘origins,’ we stop short of the source of truth that resides deep and forgotten inside us.
Yet this inner presence is the well from which our highest humanity and deepest wisdom is drawn. A woman’s rediscovery of her essence begins with a journey to remember and reclaim this source.
Commitment: You begin chapter 3 with this quote by an anonymous woman, "I turned my face for a moment, and it became my life." Can you explain what this means?
Linda: This is an interesting question. I always thought it referred to going along the road of our life, thinking it was going in one direction and having something happen that changes our direction: we meet someone for one date which turns into a life partnership, we get a "part time job" which turns into a career. One of my friends saw something different in it: she thought it referred to a moment when a woman stopped paying attention to her life and it fell apart. That's what I love so much about poems and special quotes: we will see them with the meaning that is uniquely our own.
Commitment: What messages do women often receive in childhood that tends to separate them from their true selves?
Linda: Quoted from the book: "our culture teaches us that "finding ourselves" is also a matter of finding "the right partner". We are encouraged to dwell in romantic fantasies by endless messages form songs and movies that reinforce this.
As children, girls often receive a variety of gender-specific messages, which further separate them from our true
selves. Affiliation, relatedness, and cooperation are frequently
rewarded. And then there is the part about being beautiful, which we are taught equals worthiness.
Commitment: What are five ways a woman can honor, reclaim and fully enjoy once again her original essence and feminine spirit?
Linda: Keep your body healthy, spend time in nature, have time to reflect and ways to do it. Get a journal, join a women's support group or a book club. Remember those things you loved to do as a child. When did time stand still back then, because you were so engrossed in an activity?
Look at your current life and ask the same question. Reading this article shows you are honoring one of the essential stages of "Self Remembering," that of exploring. Find time during your weeks to follow the "wants" instead of the "shoulds."
Commitment: What are the seven stages of a woman's journey? Can you explain them to us.
Linda: Forgetting, or losing the connection to essential spiritual self, happens when we are born and enter the physical world.
We develop a personality that allows us to adapt to our family and society. This original self is rarely remembered, although at times we catch glimpses of it. Moments of unexpected grace—falling in love, acting from certainty rather than fear—are reminders.
We reconnect with our essence, too, when our senses are moved by the natural world around us.
Remembering is the key to most world religions and to spiritual
experience. It may be prompted by a thought, a poem, a luminous dream, a dramatic event such as a mystical experience, or any transition or change. In whatever way we are awakened, we are reminded for a moment
of a different realm of existence with its own truth. Such revelations often signify the beginning of the journey back to essence.
Exploring spiritual ideas and religious practices moves us toward an awareness of remembering. We participate in traditional and unfamiliar forms of prayer, join women’s circles within churches, temples, and community organizations, or attend retreats and seminars.
Most bookstores now have an entire section devoted to “women’s spirituality,” reflecting an ever-widening acceptance of a new phase in women’s history. Even the practice of pilgrimage (visiting sacred sites throughout the world) is undergoing a revival in our culture.
Practicing allows us to begin using rituals that can put us on the spiritual path each day. Some traditions use ceremonies, liturgies, prayers, or meditation at a specific time and place; some embrace a lifestyle that itself becomes the practice.
Without practice, the treasures we have found will almost surely lose their light and promise. With practice, the spiritual can entwine with the everyday, changing our sense of ourselves and the world in fundamental ways.
Shadows on the Path reflects on obstacles that will confront us, for this path meanders through as many low roads as high, and dips deeply into the world of emotions and innermost thoughts, even those we previously thought unacceptable. We may feel grief for all the time we have lost in failing to attend to our deeper needs.
Difficulties may emerge, too, in our relationships with others as we try to communicate what we discover. Our friends and loved ones may not understand—may even be threatened by—who we are becoming as we recognize our truer nature.
Reclaiming is that stage in which we begin to recognize and trust those things that have meaning for us, and we take hold of the direction of our lives, both inside and out. Being honest with ourselves and others is more consequential now. We are more accountable for our actions.
Sometimes we are even able to challenge others and ourselves with more ease and less judgment, feeling greater compassion for our common difficulties. At the end of most stories
about a sacred journey, the voyager returns with hard-earned wisdom and many gifts for her community. We may find ourselves in the same work and relationships, but standing on new ground, seeing life through new lenses.
Accepting is less a stage than a condition woven throughout the stages. It is the knowledge that we never completely “arrive.” We are always on the path. We are always forgetting, remembering, exploring, practicing, integrating, and then forgetting again. Acknowledging this, we learn to accept the inevitability of lapsing into old responses with limited ways of seeing. We develop more patience and empathy, more humor about our human fragility, and greater tolerance for having to find our way back again and again.
Commitment: What does it mean to 'see with your heart'? What advice would you give a woman who says somehow, her heart is no longer accessible to her and she feels unable to make decisions or see clearly with her heart, because her head and all the voices around her have shut down her heart?
Linda: If a woman is saying that her heart is no longer accessible to her, she has already begun to change this. Some part of her has to know that her heart is there to know it is missing, and that is the thread which can bring her back to herself.
Her longing is a great thing, and although many of us try to push away what is painful, if we follow the thread of the pain and longing, it will carry us home. Guides, teachers, therapists, books can help us when we need something outside
of ourselves.
Commitment: What advice do you have for mothers who want to help their daughters retain their true selves?
Linda: The most important part of this is to model doing it for yourselves.
Perhaps your daughter sees you exploring and reclaiming, and you can share your experiences in an age-appropriate way.
Secondly is to encourage your daughter to follow her own dreams, no matter how much you deem them as impractical and not fitting what you wanted for her.
I had a client once who had been an attorney for many years and was always unhappy with the job, but could not think of anything else she could do. Years before, when she was planning for college, she desperately wanted to go to a culinary arts program, but her parents said it was not practical and refused to support her choice. I think that one of the most common mistakes we make as mothers is to think
our daughters are us, giving them what we wanted but not necessarily what they want or need. Allowing them to be different, respecting that difference, can help reflect back to them a lot about the gifts they have come here with that are uniquely theirs.
To Purchase Remember Who You Are click here.
Linda Carroll was born in 1944 in San Francisco and adopted into an Italian Catholic family. Very early, she discovered poetry as a form of prayer and a window into an expanded life. In 1961, when Linda graduated from high school, San Francisco was already buzzing with counterculture music, arts, and style, and Linda found herself selling beads and going to peace marches. After finishing her bachelors degree in Oregon in the seventies, Linda moved to New Zealand, where she raised children, sheep, and many dogs. She returned to Oregon in the eighties and received a masters in counseling, and began practicing as a therapist. In the nineties, she and her veterinarian husband, Tim Barraud, began to teach a couples course based on the Imago work of Harville Hendrix, the Pairs training of Dr. Laurie Gordon, and their own insights,study and practices. They continue to offer retreats and seminars all over the world, and Linda is currently at work on a book project, Love’s Four Journeys, based on this work.
As an adult, Linda found her birth mother, the novelist Paula Fox, and began to understand her deep-seated love of poetry anew. In 2006, her memoir, Her Mother’s Daughter, was published by Doubleday. She has five children, eleven grandchildren, and lives in Corvallis, Oregon, with her husband, two Jack Russells and a siamese cat, and continues her lifelong path of spiritual seeking.
Visit www.lindacarroll.org and www.nwseminars.com.
