We’re staying up nights searching websites, blogs, social media, newsletters, the next new technology, new foods, new diets, new travel, new locations to move to, new health practices, new spiritual practices, alternative lifestyles, non-traditional careers. What are we all trying to find? What are we searching for? What is this longing in us?
It’s the ancient search in modern clothing. People across the globe have always looked for artistic, physical, medicinal and spiritual ways to discover something more about reality – nowadays, we have added technology.
Our human intuition – which tells us there is something more to reality than meets the eye – is correct. There is more. And the wise guides of every time and culture have told us that more is inside us, waiting to be awakened. Sometimes such an awakening is an emergency.
Sara has Stage 4 ovarian cancer and is being treated at a major cancer center in Manhattan. She came to our center asking for help with feelings of anxiety and terror: “The ground has been ripped out from under me. I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Sara reported her anxiety and terror to her oncologist and was given a prescription for anti-depressants. Anti-depressants didn’t have an immediate effect on her emotions and she didn’t like the side effect of feeling “out of it.” She needed immediate relief. She went back to her physician seeking a better answer. Her provider then prescribed an anti-anxiety medication. Sara experienced some relief from the meds but as its effect slowly wore off, she began to worry. “Am I supposed to keep just popping pills?”
When she understood that we could talk about anything together, Sara came straight to the point and asked, “Do you just get annihilated when you die?”
Sara’s anxiety/terror was being fueled by both the fear of losing this life and the fear of the nature of death. Asked if she had a religion or world view that helped her, she replied that all the injustice and cruelty in the world had long ago proven to her that God does not exist.
The second aspect of her “annihilation” terror was that her beloved grandson would never be able “to find me” in the world again. This broke her heart. She couldn’t imagine how to prepare her grandson and she couldn’t imagine that her daughter would know what to say, either.
Sara desperately needed something more to help her. Her usual self, her usual personality, had no answers for her anxiety and her heartbreak. She needed to experience the benefit from the qualities in her transpersonal (beyond the personality) nature – deep inner peace, inner wisdom, life purpose and oneness. The journey of our work together had begun.
This is the core of all of our teaching and
writing – how to discover the inner strength
in your transpersonal nature. Our latest
book, the Florentine Promise, invites you to
accompany a seeker on his journey into the transpersonal.