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Connie Zweig - Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path · Vox Novus with Victor Fuhrman

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Vox Novus, The new Voice, Vox Novus, the new dimension, Vox
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Novus thought and movement leaders who will share from their experience and offer tools to
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help us navigate our rapidly changing world. My name is Victor Fermont. Welcome
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to Vox Novus. The new voice within each of us is a spiritual longing
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that prompts us to unite with something greater than ourselves. Yet, no matter
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the spiritual path we choose, we inevitably encounter our own shadow. How may
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we use spiritual shadow work to recover from spiritual betrayal and move from disillusionment to
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inspiration and from spiritual naivete to spiritual maturity. Returning as my guest on Voxnovus
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this week, connie's Wage is known as the Shadow Expert. Connie's Wage is
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a retired psychotherapist and former executive editor at Jeremy P. Tarcher Publishing. Is
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co author of Meeting the Shadow and Romancing the Shadow, and author of the
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bestseller The Inner Work of Age, Shifting from Roll to Soul, and a
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novel A Moof to the Flame, The Life of the Sufi poet Rumi.
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She's been practicing and teaching meditation for more than fifty years. Her website is
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connie'swag dot com and she joins me this week to share her path and latest
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book, Meeting the Shadow on the spiritual Path, the dance of darkness and
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light in our search for awakening. Please join me in welcoming back to Voxnovus
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Connie's Wage. Welcome back, Connie, Thank you Victor really appreciate it.
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Connie. For our listeners meeting you for the first time, Please share with
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us your path and how it led to you becoming known as the Shadow Expert.
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Oh gosh, that's a long story. I became interested in the work
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of Carl Jung in the nineteen nineties. I was working in the publishing industry
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and I put together an anthology called Meeting the Shadow, which was a collection
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of expert thinkers about the dark side of human nature, and it was a
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big hit, and I realized that there was a need for deeper understanding among
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some people. And I was in Youngian analysis at the time and studying myself
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and had some dreams about the shadow, that we're really my own shadow that
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were really significant for me. And a few years later we sold the publishing
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house and I decided to go back to grad school to get my doctorate in
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depth psychology and study young more officially. So after that I became a psychotherapist
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for about thirty years and helped people, guided people to orient to the unconscious
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or the shadow. And during that time I wrote Romancing the Shadow, which
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developed a method for working with our unconscious process in relationships. So if our
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listeners ever have the same repetitive fight over and over again, or they find
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themselves engaging in behaviors that they can't understand, why am I criticizing my husband
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or why am I struggling with alcohol or food, whatever, the cell sabotaging
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behavior. That's about the shadow erupting the part of us that's outside of conscious
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awareness, and it sabotages our conscious intentions. And so I wanted to really
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assist people, guide people to make the unconscious more conscious. And then later
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in my sixties, I was looking for material about the shadow and aging and
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I couldn't find any anywhere. So I began to research and study and wrote
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The Inner Work of Age, Shifting from Role to Soul, which is about
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how to work with the shadow or the unconscious issues around growing older. And
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the new book extends that exploration into the spiritual and religious world and how we
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meet the shadow in ourselves or in our clergy and teachers in the spiritual arena.
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And when you're on last time, we were talking about work of Inner
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age. For those of us who have, let's say, welcome the Golden
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Years. This is a brief synhopsis of what they can find in that book.
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Well. The Inner Work of Age explores internalized agism, which leads us
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to dislike aging in ourselves, to feel uncomfortable with our bodies, and struggle
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with self acceptance as we age, whether it's our image or letting go of
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work and our familiar roles, or whether it's about illness or spiritual practice.
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And it guides people to use the circumstances of their aging for inner work,
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for grist for the mill as Rndas called it. And so for people who
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want a more self knowledge, more self acceptance, and deeper meaning and connection
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to spirituality in later life, I would say, in midlife and beyond,
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that's what the book is for. It's kind of like a right of passage
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to become an elder and to really shift our awareness in relation to our age.
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Absolutely, one of the things that I found personally is having continuous purpose.
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The purpose may have changed, but my day job, my career in
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technology for forty four years, an industry for forty four years, my spiritual
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career working with the Interfaith Temple, and then a return to the day job,
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so to speak, in January twenty twenty two, for which I'm grateful
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that I've been there now for almost a year and a half working with technology
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again. So that purpose has always been there, yes, And for some
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people, you know, the purpose can be different. So for some people
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it's about more work or a different kind of work. For some people,
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it's about service and contributing to the common good. For some people it's about
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grandparenting. For others it's about activism social justice issues. And for some people
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it's more inner work, you know, more meditation practice or finding a different
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religious community or a different prayer practice. And so purpose might not look the
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same for everyone. One of the things I realized that book has a lot
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of practices in it, and one of the practices is life review. And
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when I did my own life review, one of the things I realized was
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that my deeper purpose, which I call my soul's mission, was transmitting information
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about consciousness, and that deeper purpose has been involved with every career, all
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my four careers. So even though they look different from the outside, my
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careers, internally they actually had the same purpose. I totally understand and agree
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with you, because from a retrospective, most of my career, whether it
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be industry or in spiritual work, always had that spiritual component within. Yeah,
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and that's different for different people. So I'm not prescribing what kind of
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purpose people need. Rather, I'm saying that there's a quality of awareness as
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an elder that we can bring to whatever we do, and it allows us
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to experience a different identity. So one of the shadow characters in the Age
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book is the doer. If we continue to identify with the doer as we
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did in midlife, then we lose something precious about the deeper purpose of becoming
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an elder. And if we bring the qualities of an elder into our doing
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in later life, there's more internal freedom, less attachment, more connection to
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something beyond ego, something larger than ourselves. And so that inner shift,
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I call it a shift from role to soul. That inner shift is hidden
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to other people. They can't see it in our They just see our doing.
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But what I'm talking about happens in the inner world, and it gives
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us a different subjective experience of whatever it is we're doing or not doing in
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the moment. What inspired your new book, Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual
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Path The dance of darkness and Light in our search for Awakening. When I
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was in my twenties, I started meditation at age nineteen, and in my
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tw I began to see certain red flags in the community that were bothering me,
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certain kinds of hypocrisy, hierarchies, and I felt like I was seeing
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lies. And so after a few years, I left that community, and
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I was very heartbroken, disillusioned, didn't know if I could trust another teacher,
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and that led me on a whole different path. And I've interviewed many,
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many people who've had similar experiences, whether their minister lied to the church,
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or their rabbi had an affair, or their guru was financially coercive,
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or their roshi had sex with a student. So in every denomination, teachers
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can act out their shadows around power, sex, and money, and this
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can be heartbreaking for people because we become very invested in the sacred relationship of
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student and teacher or parishioner and clergy person. And I wanted to offer people
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again a guide to the inner world in the shadow. What's happening in the
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unconscious when we're drawn to charismatic teachers and we witness abuse or even just subtle
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coercion. Maybe somebody is a teacher criticized as a student, or shames someone
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or threatens expulsion if they don't obey. What is going on there in the
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shadow? What's going on in the teacher or clergy person that he or she
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is aware of because it's unconscious, But that sets up this painful, potentially
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abusive situation. And so I began to study that and extend my research into
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religion and spirituality. And then I discovered that there were many, many,
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dozens of reports of scandals in contemporary communities, and I write about that in
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chapter five of the book. And I try to look at what are the
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patterns in these stories again across denominations, and I found that many communities repeat
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the patterns of alcoholic families, where there's a narcissistic parent slash leader, there's
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some kind of coercion or use. People are told to keep secrets to hold
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the system together. Sometimes there's drug and alcohol abuse going on, and so
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if the student or believer was in this kind of alcoholic family, and then
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it begins to get repeated in the religious or spiritual community. There's a resonance,
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there's a familiarity in the shadow for that person, and that's one of
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the reasons they may be drawn to it. And it's one of the reasons
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they may get trapped and be unable to leave because they don't have the skill
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to become a whistleblower, to speak the truth. There's too much fear and
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shame about losing the precious teacher, the precious belonging, the sense of being
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special, the sense of being seen. It's a big investment. And so
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I really guide people with spiritual shadow work to begin self reflection and to begin
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to look at what was lost in the relationship, what was given up in
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that relationship to the teacher, what parts of the self were sacrificed, and
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do you want to and once you begin to uncover that and explore the consequences,
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then to begin to contemplate the decision about separation. And I'm not taking
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a position here. This is not a book about cults. You know,
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let's get everybody out and back into conventional life. That's not what I'm saying,
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because many, many religious and spiritual communities have great value and beauty and
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compassion and community for people and transcendental, transcendental experiences with the practices, and
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so you know, many people stay because they're having deep spiritual insights. So
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that's another valid reason to stay. But on the other hand, if you're
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struggling with being abused or witnessing abuse, what are the costs to you?
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And so I'm trying to help people evaluate, learn discernment, how to see
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the red flags, how important they are to you, and evaluate whether you
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can act on your own behalf. And so there are stories in the book
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about communities that we're able to redesign themselves once a scandal broke. So Krepali
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Yoga Center and also the l a Zen Center both had sex scandals with the
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teachers, and they were able to bring in consultants and redesign the systems so
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that the systemic issues that were colluding with the abuse were redesigned, were changed,
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and no longer supported the bad behavior. So there are examples of individual
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shadow work with teachers and students and how they were able to resolve some of
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their personal issues as well as the community issues. And so it's full of
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stories and interviews, and some of them might be difficult to read in terms
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of the scandals, but they're very educational because if we feel this longing for
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a transcendence, for a union with the divine, it will guide us to
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a practice or a teacher or a community. And we want to be able
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to apply psychology. We don't want to have blind faith. We want to
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have enough self knowledge and insight to be able to bring discernment to our spiritual
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life and cultivate shadow awareness in ourselves. What are our blind spots and in
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our teachers what are their blind spots? So that we can really have sacred
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relationships that support our development and that are not destructive to ourselves or others.
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From your research, why do so many clergy and or spiritual teachers in every
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denomination act out their shadows? Well, I think there are sort of layers
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of answers to this victor for teachers who come from the East, there are
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cultural differences. Many of them come from monastery where the messaging is sexist or
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misogynist. Women are temptation. They're bad, they're evil. The body is
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evil. The impulses of the body, especially in celibate traditions, the impulses
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of the body come from the devil, and so all of that is repressed
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into the shadow and then and some of them also experience abuse. There's a
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Tibetan Buddhist teacher who just came out and said very publicly that there's a lot
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of molestation going on in the Tibetan Buddhist communities in Asia. So, you
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know, they have these cultural messages, they have their own trauma. They
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come here and the women are very liberated. There's a lot of self expression.
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They're not dressed, you know, they're dressed very liberally. They want
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in some ways to be close to these teachers and to be special to them,
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and so there's a setup there between the shadow of the student and the
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shadow of the teacher. I'm using a male teacher and a female student,
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and that's not always the case. There are cases of abuse of same sex
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students, and there are cases of abuse with women teachers, but the majority
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are male teachers and female students. So there are those cultural differences that can
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erupt in the context of Western liberalism and individualism. You know, there's this
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difference between communal life and the sort of individual heroic ego in the West.
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So there are lots of cultural differences. One of the results of our individual
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heroic ego story in the West is in the shadow is a need for dependency.
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And we're really taught as adults in the West not to express that very
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much. How we need other people and we need to rely emotionally on other
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people. And sometimes that emerges in students in spiritual and religious settings, and
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they want to be dependent, and they want to give up decision making and
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financial independence and emotional independence, and they want to be taken care of.
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And so they're recreating their childhood in this relationship with this teacher slash parent.
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And so that's another issue that comes up. And if there's a lot of
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projection, So projection is unconsciously attributing to another person something that we deny in
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ourselves. So if we deny our own spiritual value or essence or light and
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we project it out onto a priest or swamy or rochey, then what happens
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is that person is carrying that light for us. And what happens if and
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so that student then can become quite obedient and submissive out of fear of losing
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that relationship and out of the need to be close to that parental figure.
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But what happens on the flip side, to the teacher. If the teacher
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has hundreds or in India some cases millions of people projecting that light and that
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power and that perfection onto him or her, eveng the part of him that
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is repressed, that is not perfect, is going to act out because that
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is a burden to carry all that projection for so many people, it's quite
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it's a load, and so eventually that teacher will either, let's say with
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Osho rajniche start relying on drugs or chogiam trumpa Rimpoche, become an alcoholic,
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or many other cases, become verbally abusive and try to make distance from people
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and try to control his students more so that he doesn't lose the devotion,
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because the devotion becomes like food to him. He needs it and he can't
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bear the thought that people might leave. And at the same time, he's
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accumulating wealth and the students are giving more and more money to him, and
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he becomes dependent on the income I had someone recently tell me that the teacher
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started out asking for tithing, and then he wanted part of the student's income,
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and then when the students parents died, he wanted him to turn over
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the estate to him. And so these teachers become they feel entitled. They
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feel entitled to power and to the props of power, to money, to
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a rolls Royce or a private jet, or to property, and sometimes to
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sex. They feel entitled to sex with their students to prove their love and
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obedience to them, and so on both sides there's projection going on, and
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people get caught in a dynamic that's no longer healthy, and that's no longer
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leading to spiritual experience, but is recreating early emotional patterns. My guest is
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connie's Wig her new book Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, The Dance
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of Darkness and Light. In our search for awakening, Connie, please tell
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our listeners where they get this book and find out more about your work.
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So the new book is available on Amazon, Barnesnoble dot com, anywhere you
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buy your books, Books a million. You can find my workshops and other
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interviews on Connie Zwig dot com. There's lots of material there on both of
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my last two books, and I will be forming circles for people who want
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to do spiritual shadow work together. I did with the Age book and it
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was very successful. So if you want to read the Inner Work of Age
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in community, you can send me an email to Connie's wig at gmail dot
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com. Put Wisdom Circle in the subject line and send me your time zone.
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These groups are free in their online If you want to do spiritual shadow
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work with others, put spiritual shadow work in the subject line and send me
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your time zone to Connie's wig at gmail dot com and I'll connect you with
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other people for either of these kinds of groups and we'll be back with more
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of Connie after these words. On the Omtimes Radio Network, the Cutting Edge
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of Conscious Radio HOMETIMES Radio IOMFM. Home Times Magazine is one of the leading
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net proceeds are funneled to support worldwide charity initiatives via Humanity Healing International. Through
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their commitment to creating community and providing conscious content, they aspire to uplift humanity
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on a global scale. Home Times co creating a more conscious lifestyle. Back
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on Box Novis, My guest this week is Connie's Wide. We're talking about
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her latest book, Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, the Dance of
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Darkness and Light in our Search for Awakening. So, Connie, what you
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were describing in the first segment with these spiritual and religious leaders sounds like control.
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Well, in some cases that's what shows up. And again this is
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not We're not speaking about everybody. We're talking about, you know, situations
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in which the shadow emerges in this sacred relationship. I call it power shadow,
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but it can take various forms of control, and it can have various
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motivations. So if you have a religious a priest, minister, a swami,
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a shaikh who is not aware of his or her own need for control
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and conscious need for control, may have authoritarian tendencies, may have narcissistic or
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self centered tendencies. Then part of what may happen in a situation in which
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people are devoted and giving themselves over to this person, doing all the work
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of service for the institution, praising this personal lot, believing what they're taught
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without questioning, without doubt, Then what can happen in that leader is ego
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grandiosity it rather than spiritual development. His ego starts to expand, and when
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that happens, there is more desire for control. If you look at you
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know, teachers from the East, some of them are born into lineages being
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told how special they are. You know, they are the new teacher from
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the time they're born, and so they grow up with that sense of entitlement
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and specialness and then they come here and they're being treated that way with all
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these props, you know, whether they sit on a golden throne or in
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front of a giant Buddha or whatever the props or we think of the props
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of the Catholic Church and the way that a priest is celebrated and treated as
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special. So if that person's psychology is not stable and there's no shadow awareness,
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there's no connection to the blind spots in that person, then what happens
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Eventually that person is going to act out. And you know, in the
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nineteen eighties, when we first started hearing about the scandals in the Catholic Church
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of child sexual abuse, we were also shocked and everybody tried to understand was
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it about celibacy, you know, was it about homosexuality. Was it about
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that these priests themselves were abused? You know, how do we understand that?
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And those scandals continue to this day. I mean, church diocese still
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are paying off many, many believers. And so if we look at that
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the whole system of the Catholic Church, we can see that even there are
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some segments of it that have tried to make ethical guidelines and in some cases
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punished priests, in the system as a whole, this has not been questioned
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enough to be corrected. The ordamon of women hasn't happened, the issue of
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celibacy hasn't been addressed, The widespread punishment hasn't become a deterrent, And so
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that happens on smaller scales, in synagogues, in mosques, and in Eastern
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traditions, where you know, it might be a songa or a zendo,
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or a Buddhist monastery, a Buddhist community of some kind. And so I
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think what I'm trying to suggest, Victor, is that our expectation of a
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spiritual life that's all light in all bliss is naive, and that the human
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shadow is here and it's always going to be here. It's a part of
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who we are, and so how do we imagine a religious or spiritual life
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that includes the human shadow and shadow awareness? How do we cultivate shadow awareness
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and the blind spots in ourselves? So, how do I see my own
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needs in this context and how they might set me up for abuse? Or
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as a teacher, how do I see my own needs or my own blind
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spots, my own flaws and failings so that I can protect myself and others
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in this situation. Part of what's happening today is that tens of thousands of
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people are having spiritual breakthroughs, and the word non duality is being thrown around
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a lot in this domain. And people are having insights into the community,
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into the unity of all of life, and those non dual experiences then lead
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them to believe they're awake. But those experiences are often fleeting their state experiences.
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It's a state of consciousness that's beautiful, that comes and then it goes.
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And so if a person becomes a teacher after a fleeting experience of non
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duality, but that person has not explored psychological development and moral development, then
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that person may be naive as a teacher and act out his or her shadow
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material what I'm suggesting is that we can move from that naivete into a more
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mature kind of spirituality, both as a teacher and a student, by adding
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shadow awareness to the process. What are people longing for when they seek a
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teacher or a practice. I call this the holy longing, and I believe
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that in the soul, in the deepest spiritual part of every human being,
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there is a longing for the divine. You know, the saints and poets
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speak about it as the soul's longing for the beloved. Christian mystics speak about
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it as the longing to be joined with Christ. Buddhists speak about it as
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the longing for awakening and emptiness. So there is this kind of universal yearning,
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and this yearning for transcendence or an experience beyond ego, is in every
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human being. It may not be conscious. There are many people who don't
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consciously feel that, but for people who do, they may live out this
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seeker part of them by following this longing, and it can lead them to
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beautiful practices and transcendent experiences. And often teachers who are highly valuable and who
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transmit compassion and spiritual levels of consciousness and on the other hand, the holy
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longing can lead us to teachers who abuse us, teachers who are not who
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maybe have some kind of awakening, but are not aware of their own flaws,
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in their own weak spots and shadows. And so the holy longing can
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lead us in positive directions and in dangerous, risky directions. And that's why
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I'm urging people to become aware of the shadow in this context. In your
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book, you talk about projection. How do you define projection? Well,
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in the last segment, I talked about how projection is an automatic mechanism.
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We all do it. It can't be avoided. It's the way that the
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shadow gets rid of unwanted traits and qualities, feelings, and behaviors by attributing
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them to other people. So if it's unacceptable to me to be lazy,
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I may look at someone and say, Wow, she's really lazy couch potato,
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and I see it outside myself. If it's unacceptable for me to be
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to connect to my own spiritual essence, then I'm going to project that outside
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of myself onto teachers and say he's so enlightened, or she's so compassionate,
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or he knows so much I want that or she's like the perfect mother,
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and I don't have that in myself. And so with projection, we can
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take material that's in our own shadow. That can be anything at all,
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because anything can be repressed, that is unacceptable to our parents in early childhood,
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to our teachers, to our clergy. It gets stuffed into the shadow,
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and then it gets projected later in life. Maybe it's about sexuality,
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and we see someone who's really overtly sensual and that looks repulsive to us because
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it's forbidden ourselves. And so that mechanism plays out in the religious arena when
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we give away our own spiritual power or access or loving kindness to another person.
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And what do we lose when we project that onto a clergy number or
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a teacher, Well, we lose that quality in ourselves. So for many
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people, there's a period of time when we need a guide, we need
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to do that projection, We need a mentor. This often happens in therapy.
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In therapy it's called transference. A person comes to me and they project
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onto me the good mother that they never had, and so we work on
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that, and at a certain point in the relationship, I begin to hand
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that back to my client. I begin to allow that client to experience those
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qualities in herself or himself. But spiritual teachers are not trained to do that,
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and so they hold on to the projection because they start to get off
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on the power of it. And so the student is left in the subordinate
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position, without the power, without her own spiritual connection, without developing her
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own compassion or researching her own knowledge, gaining her own self self awareness,
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because the teacher's carrying it for her or for him. And so there's a
38:45
lot of there's a lot that can be sacrificed in this projection, and if
38:50
it lasts for a very long time, the person may sacrifice critical thinking.
39:00
She's afraid to doubt the teacher. In some cases you make a vow not
39:07
to doubt the teacher, but to allow the teacher to carry the certainty and
39:14
the decision making for you, and so that is sacrificed. Critical independent thinking
39:20
is sacrificed. In the believer, authentic feeling may be sacrificed. So often
39:28
people need to develop a spiritual persona. In a community, everyone is supposed
39:34
to look happy, and so the range of feeling get sacrificed because you can't
39:40
express your sadness or your anger. Often the connection to the body you get
39:46
sacrificed because the body is often shamed in religious settings. Sexual feelings, sensual
39:55
feelings, even just sensations like intuition, gut instinct can get sacrificed because the
40:04
body, the connection to the body is not supported. And personal agency acting
40:13
on our own behalf might be sacrificed because we get stuck in a dependent,
40:17
subordinate position. We're in service to this greater being who has the power and
40:23
the agency, and that person is going to tell us how to live,
40:30
what to eat, when to sleep, what to think, what not to
40:34
think, what to feel, what not to feel. Otherwise we're going to
40:38
go to hell, or we're going to have bad karma for lifetimes, or
40:44
our family is going to be punished. And so there's a lot of,
40:49
as you said, control going on. Sometimes it's very implicit and covert,
40:54
and sometimes it's overt, you know, in the messaging. So there is
41:00
a lot being sacrificed by someone who becomes a true believer in this relationship.
41:07
My guest is Connie's Wage her book, Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path,
41:13
The dance of darkness and light in our Search for Awakening. We'll be
41:16
back with more of Connie after these words. On the Home Times Radio Network.
41:22
Humanity Healing International is a small nonprofit with a big drain. Since two
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someone cares to learn more. Please visit Humanity Healing dot org. Humanity Healing
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is where your Heart is. Back on vox, nobis my guest this week
41:54
is Connie's wig her book Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path. They of
42:00
darkness and light in our Search for Awakening. Connie, what is religious betrayal
42:07
or spiritual abuse? There's a range of abuse that happens with teachers and students.
42:20
For some people, it can be a careless touch that can feel like
42:25
an invasion of privacy, like an inappropriate aggression. For some people, it
42:34
can be a careless word or glance, a gesture that creates shame in the
42:42
student or believer. Maybe it's a look of contempt. And then it can
42:47
be a word. Perhaps the word is loaded for the student, maybe it
42:55
was loaded because of some kind of family experience. And then we move into
43:01
more overtly abusive situations, sexual assault, for example, which is happening now
43:12
in a number of the communities that I write about. And again the response
43:19
is subjective. So there are some women, let's say, who feel chosen
43:25
by this, who feel special, who want to turn a relationship, turn
43:31
it into a relationship, and in some cases marry the leader. We don't
43:38
know what the power dynamic is in those marriages if they start out this way,
43:44
but the women claim that they're comfortable with it, right. And then
43:49
there are women who are approached sexually by a teacher for whom the assault or
43:58
or the aggression is really traumatic, and they may experience PTSD, they may
44:07
have nightmares, anxiety, and yet still be unable to leave. I was
44:13
watching a video yesterday Victor of several women who are coming out now in their
44:22
seventies having been abused by a well known spiritual teacher in the nineteen sixties and
44:30
never told anyone they were seduced. They were told they were special, they
44:37
were told to keep a secret and never tell anyone, and that's what they
44:40
did. And here they are in their seventies kind of facing life completion and
44:46
mortality and in wanting people to know what happened to them. So this,
44:54
you know, what we're calling religious betrayal or abuse around sexual reality can be
45:00
very different for different people. And then around money, so some people don't
45:07
mind giving money to the teacher. It can be it can start in a
45:13
very kind of subtle way and there's no evidence of financial abuse by the teacher,
45:21
and then it can move into more aggressive coersion for money. As I
45:27
said, the teacher wants the person's estate, family estate, They want to
45:31
cash out the properties. The teacher starts to buy cars or houses or gold,
45:43
buddhas or thrones or rolls, rooices, whatever it is. And then
45:47
at that point the financial abuse becomes very evident to everybody and it becomes clear
45:54
that money has become the grail to this teacher. I would say, more
46:01
generally, the abuse of power is often experienced as a betrayal because part of
46:07
the projection onto the teacher is that he or she is empathic and compassionate and
46:14
would always do no harm. But if that person powers over the student in
46:21
whatever way with threats, with manipulation, with demand for secrets. You know,
46:30
Let's say one of the students observes some abusive situation by the teacher,
46:37
isn't the direct subject of it, but observes it and is told, you
46:42
know, if you tell, you're going to go to hell, that's abuse
46:45
of power. And it's very common in communities to be told to hold these
46:52
secrets. So this kind of betrayal is a betrayal of the sacred relationship in
47:01
which we invest divine properties. We don't tend to acknowledge to ourselves the humanity
47:09
of the teacher, the flaws, the shortcomings, the limitations of the teacher,
47:15
and so then the projection pops. If we experience this kind of betrayal
47:22
or even trauma, then the projection pops, and we say to ourselves,
47:28
well, he can't be enlightened if he's married and having an affair, or
47:35
she can't be you know, the perfect compassionate mother if she's yelling at those
47:40
students, or he can't be who he says he is if he's drinking that
47:50
much alcohol and screaming at somebody. And so whatever the disilute, whatever the
47:55
source of the disillusionment, the nature of the shadow that's being expressed, the
48:02
projection then pops and we're left with the question who is this person? And
48:09
that becomes a reflection on us. Who am I? If he's not who
48:15
I thought he was, then who am I? I'm not so much a
48:20
special member of a community or a believer in this precious knowledge. I'm a
48:29
victim, I'm a survivor. I've been duped, I've been used. And
48:35
then there's an identity crisis that happens, and a choice point, a moment
48:42
in which the choice to stay or leave comes and goes. Sometimes for years
48:47
that choice comes and goes. Sometimes it just happens in a moment. I'm
48:52
out of here, and I'm not prescribing a response for people. I think
48:57
this is very individual. Some people are going to choose the teachings or the
49:04
practices over the abuse of the teacher and stay for that reason. Some people
49:10
are going to find it too intolerable and need to separate and individuate and find
49:16
a different path. My sort of guidance here is about what's going on in
49:23
the shadow, How to attune to how this happened to me so that I
49:30
don't repeat it. How to attune to what is happening in the teacher that
49:35
he or she would act this way. What is happening in the community,
49:38
Because there are group shadows in these communities. Just like there's a group persona
49:45
with narrow beliefs and feelings, there's a group shadow around the secrets and what's
49:53
getting repressed. And so that question, then who am I and what do
50:00
I do about it can cause a terrible crisis, just like a midlife crisis.
50:07
It's a crisis of meaning and purpose, and it can be very painful
50:13
for people. I've had clients say to me, I feel betrayed by God.
50:20
It's that core, it's that central. I feel traumatized by this teacher
50:25
in this community, and if I leave, I'll lose everything, all of
50:30
my friends, my meaning, teach, my guide, my practices. How
50:37
can I leave? And there are other people who respond with I am resilient
50:45
and this is not right for me, and I will leave and find my
50:50
way. And so it's a very individual response. You begin your book with
50:57
a call for spiritual awakening. How may we embrace that call? Well,
51:02
the shadow is not all there is to spiritual life, right, It's what
51:07
has been left unseen and unspoken. And that's why I focused on it with
51:13
you. But the central mystery of religious and spiritual life is our connection to
51:21
the divine and whether we call that God or spirit, Christ nature or Buddha
51:28
nature, pure consciousness or transcendental consciousness, whatever we call it, that relationship
51:36
is the central mystery of our lives. If we're seekers, and the intention
51:45
of that seeking is spiritual awakening, the experience of unity with the Source,
51:53
the experience of the return to God or to the source, the soul longing
52:00
for the beloved, and it's joining with the beloved, which is spoken of
52:04
in every single lineage and every denomination. And so, as I mentioned,
52:10
there are many people now who are awakening to higher levels of consciousness. It's
52:17
actually very exciting, and for me, it's kind of a counterpoint to all
52:22
the dark, negative things that are happening in the world of politics and social
52:29
justice. And it's interesting that they're happening at the same time. So people
52:35
are awakening to different levels of consciousness. Some are experiencing an internal witness or
52:44
observer and recognizing that they are not their minds, they are not their feelings,
52:51
they're not their stories. The narrative self is always telling us stories,
52:55
but that's not essentially who we are. Other people are moving beyond that to
53:01
recognize a unity with living things. The interconnectedness of all of life is not
53:10
just a concept to them, but an internal experience. And other people are
53:16
moving beyond that to higher levels. Still, there are many ways to explore
53:22
this. Ken Wilbur writes eloquently about higher stages of awareness. In my book
53:30
The Inner Work of Age, I explore his work can Wilbur's work about spirituality.
53:37
There are many, many other teachers in every tradition who if you look
53:42
at the mystical streams in your tradition Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism,
53:51
Sufism, you will find teachings about higher levels of consciousness. And so you
53:59
can find find a map, and then you find practices to begin to experience
54:04
this. And that search for awakening can bring great frustration and great gratification.
54:14
And that's why I call it the dance of darkness and light. You know,
54:17
we may meet the shadow, and we also may experience blissfulness, transcendence,
54:25
ecstasy, openings to something greater than ourselves. UI. That's the central
54:32
mystery of human life. My guest Connie's Wig, her latest book meeting the
54:37
shadow on the spiritual path. Connie, please tell our listeners where it can
54:40
get your books and find out more about you and your wisdom work. The
54:45
books are available in bookstores on Amazon, on Barnes and Noble, on Books
54:51
a Million. You can find my workshops on Connie's wig dot com, and
54:57
I'm forming two different kinds of support circles around my books. If you're interested
55:02
in the inner work of age, send me an email Connie's wage at gmail
55:07
dot com. Please put wisdom circle in the subject line and include your time
55:14
zone. If you're interested in doing spiritual shadow work with others, please put
55:20
spiritual shadow work in the subject line and give me your time zone. And
55:25
in both cases I will connect you with other people in your area to meet
55:30
online. These groups are free, they're leaderless. You can set up all
55:37
the logistics with each other and I will send you supporting material. Some of
55:43
these books have These groups have been meeting now for a couple of years,
55:45
and they form very intimate friendships. They're aging in community. The spiritual books
55:52
are just The spiritual groups are just beginning now, So let me know if
55:57
you would like to make those connections. I'd be happy to do that for
56:00
you. Connie, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your experience
56:05
and your wisdom. Victor, deep gratitude to you. Take care of yourself
56:09
and thank you for joining us on Vox Novis. I'm Victor la Voice Furman.
56:15
Have a wonderful week.