I used to think of the human psyche as having two sides: the ‘essential’ (or genetic) self, which determines our talents and preferences, and the ‘social’ self, which predisposes us to respond to other peoples’ influence. Over the past few years, I’ve also come to believe there is a third self, one that goes beyond the boundaries of both the genetic and social selves. Buddhists call this ‘no-self’, a confusing term meant to focus our attention on something the intellect can’t grasp. Other traditions call it the great Self, an identity that is shared by everything that exists. I’m going to call it the Stargazer because it never loses sight of your own North Star, your destiny.
I used to help people dig through their social roles (for example, ‘I’m a mother, a fire-fighter, a good Christian, an intellectual.’) to their inborn personalities or essential selves. (‘I’m talented, sensitive, loving, tough.’). Nowadays, that’s not enough for me. Your genetically determined essential self is closer to your destiny than your social self, but as we’ll see, even your genetic self is highly vulnerable to things that knock it off the path of your right life. The genetic self is subject to mental illness, dementia, and death. Above all, it is afflicted by fear, in all that emotion’s manifold guises. The Stargazer within you is unaffected by any of these problems. It extends beyond your brain, beyond your personality. It’s so deep and vast that nothing can ever disturb it.
I’m going to give you a fair warning. Learning to live as the Stargazer can be a wild ride. If you don’t want to have any strange and possibly mystical experiences, turn back now. Find another self-help book. There’s no guarantee that magical things will start happening to you if you do all the exercises necessary to become a Stargazer, but I’d say the likelihood is around ninety per cent. You’ll have premonitions, unaccountable knowledge, experiences that go so far beyond statistical likelihood that to call them ‘coincidence’ would be irrational. The very fabric of reality will seem compelled to help you when you set out towards your North Star, and the more time you spend Stargazing, the more magic you’ll experience.
Learning to live from the Stargazer’s vantage point requires three basic stages, which I call ‘dissolving,’ ‘dreaming,’ and ‘daring.’ Here’s a preview of the first stage, dissolving, so you’ll know where we’re headed.
Dissolving your non-Stargazing obstructions
To say you can ‘find’ your destiny is misleading because it never goes anywhere. Your destiny is closer to you than your own beating heart (literally: I’ve heard from people whose hearts stopped beating and who realized during the ensuing ‘near-death experiences’ that they’d known their destinies all along). The reason many of us feel that we’ve ‘lost’ our destinies is that we spend a lot of time putting on blinders.
We make these blinders because of a highly opaque substance: thoughts. Our thoughts are then rendered sticky by emotions, so taking off the blinders can be extremely difficult. Unfortunately, the central premise of all rationalist cultures is that we can think our way out of any problem. This is like trying to put out a fire with kerosene. Our subcultures of therapy and the arts suggest that when thinking doesn’t work, exploring our emotions will. This is like trying to extinguish the kerosene fire with gunpowder. While thoughts and emotions are wonderful parts of an authentic life, they don’t free us from pain; used incorrectly, they intensify it. The way to find your own North Star is not to think or feel your way forward but to dissolve the thoughts and feelings that make you miserable. You don’t have to learn your destiny – you already know it; you just have to unlearn the thoughts that blind you to what you know.
We can be blinded by many different types of thoughts. Sunny thoughts can hide the stars because they glare so brightly: ‘I’ve got a great job, a cool car, a red-hot monkey lust; now, if I can just get that promotion and put a few more bucks in the bank, I’ll finally feel complete.’ Other thoughts cloud the sky so that no light of any kind, let alone starlight, can get through: ‘I’m trapped. This whole damn world is against me. There’s nothing I can do but lie here and drink.’ No matter what our thoughts, if they obscure our sense of joy and purpose, they’re always inaccurate. Your mind won’t see this right away (or possibly ever). Your emotions will follow your mind wherever it goes. The only part of you that cannot be blinded or misguided is the Stargazer.
Mental metamorphosis
As you gradually learn how to unlearn, you will see that the obstacles and problems you once thought insurmountable begin to disintegrate like rice paper in the rain. What happens inside your head during this stage is similar to what happens when a caterpillar metamorphoses into a butterfly. Caterpillars don’t just hunker down inside their cocoons and sprout wings. For many species, the first thing that happens inside the cocoon is a total meltdown. The caterpillar literally dissolves, so that if you cut open the chrysalis, you’d find nothing but liquid, a goop of undifferentiated cells.
That’s what it feels like to release all the thought structures and emotional habits that keep you from seeing your destiny. Depending on how tightly you’re attached to your favourite blinding thoughts and feelings, your entire ego may fall apart during this stage of fulfilling your destiny. Both the social and essential selves may strongly resist the process, because these small selves are made of thoughts and feelings. When mind structures dissolve, the ego goes with them, and egos just hate the thought of not existing.
My clients virtually always want to skip the ‘dissolving’ stage of fulfilling their destinies. ‘I don’t like this,’ they’ll say. ‘Can’t we just get to the part where I have the perfect spouse and a ton of money?’ Sadly, no. As Joseph Campbell said, ‘You must give up the life you had planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.’ The caterpillar that goes into the cocoon never makes it out alive. The You that fulfils your destiny cannot be the same You that’s blinded by false beliefs.
The only part of your awareness you can never dissolve – because it is nothing (no-thing) – is the Stargazer. This aspect of you doesn’t feel like an individual ego but only an integral part of a completely interconnected universe. It’s so passionately in love with your destiny that it never gets sunblind or befogged. Nor does it mind the mistakes your ego has made. It’s happily amused by all your errors and will always kindly set you back on the life course you were meant to have. That is its entire function and purpose, the nature of its being. When various forms of blindness send you off track – and they will – knowing how to access the Stargazer allows you to return to the path of your best destiny instantly. As you learn to stay on that path for longer periods of time, you’ll develop such clear night vision that you’ll start seeing magic.
From Steering by Starlight © 2008 by Martha Beck, published by Piatkus Books.
|
Inspirational features 
