*Shedding Beliefs Opens Portals to Evolution*
THE MINDFUL LIFE
Listen to Dr. Giroux read her article
When we think about evolution, we imagine acquiring knowledge, wisdom, experiences, tools, abilities. But the real evolution, the one that matters, implies the opposite. It is about shedding all our beliefs, patterns, conditionings and ideas that came from outside and obscured or hid the inside, our true nature, the deep knowing and awareness we already have and fundamentally are.
By finally admitting what we do not know, we discover the most important knowledge. Through the destruction of our egos, there can be creation, growth and transformation. It is by living with less that we see the abundance in our lives. As Carl Rogers, a founder of the humanistic approach to psychology said, “The curious paradox is that when I can accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
So, my view of evolution seems equally paradoxical, just like in many other truths when it comes to what I call “the Divine.” When I refer to the Divine, I am referring to the spiritual realm, or a dimension that is apart from our tangible, concrete, and procedural lives. It encompasses our interconnectedness and all the values we experience at a soul level, such as compassion, love and peace. I also use it as a way to describe blissful, transcendental aspects of life (such as holding hands, admiring a sunset, or even eating chocolate) that are where the Divine meets the material world — or even lights it up.
Your Divine is there, hidden like beautiful frescoes under the ashes of a volcano that erupted long ago. You just need to sweep away the dust and ashes gathered during your journey on Earth to access your essence.
Through the destruction of our egos, there can be creation, growth and transformation.
I consider the societies some used to call “primitive” as some of the most advanced spiritually. Our Indigenous populations tend to be in closer connection with nature and are more attuned to its cycles. They are not encumbered by metrics such as wealth, success or status. They honor life and death, listen to the wisdom of their elders, and believe in a connection to animals and the seasons.
Being an intellectually curious person who lived in my head too often in my life, it took me a while to realize that education or a high IQ tends to get in the way of so many portals to the Divine, such as creativity, laughter, and yes, sex. What do they have in common? First of all, they are natural tendencies based on human needs. They are also a form of energy that can act synergistically.
From a young age, kids like to explore and express their deepest selves through artistic attempts. That generally lasts until they are acquainted with the experience of comparison and competition, or when someone plants in their heads that they are not talented enough — and even if they were, they won’t make a living with their art.
Pure joy without restraint starts manifesting in babies. But expressing it too spontaneously in any context can be frowned upon. Kids don’t care about being seen when they run around naked or discover their private parts. They start caring when shame creeps in due to adults’ disapproval, disgust and judgment.
Creativity, laughter and sex make us kind and loving human beings full of potential. But life is generally not that smooth and simple. I see the perverse effects of our programming repeatedly as a psychiatrist, as I listen to patients’ dysregulated sexuality either from premature exposure to porn (which forces a very pathological conceptualization of intimacy on the child, associating sex with a power dynamic, and later on increasing the threshold for arousal in “real” life encounters), or through repression of that dimension of our beings, like the way certain religions have used shame to control people’s sexual lives. Clearly, most people did not have an innocent, harmonious “Blue Lagoon” type of experience when it comes to sexual development. Instead, many people are confronted with unmatching desires, perplexing encounters, disappointments, and boundary violations.
The path to a fully ecstatic sexual self can be messy, confusing, frightening. I have been wanting to write about this for a while, but it is unfortunately still somewhat taboo, even if it is a central part of being a human and so pervasive in movies and literature. That void can lead to a desire to learn, understand and heal.
For instance, I wrote an essay, “Early Exposure to Porn: A Form of Sexual Trauma,” that had the most clicks in the online journal where it was published. So far, three readers have emailed me, including one from Saudi Arabia! Since then, I have been increasingly interested in helping people break the chains of oppression and liberate this well of creativity within them.
As a woman, I have been particularly affected by the double bind my gender has been caught in. On the one hand, for a long time we have been viewed as evil temptresses, while on the other hand, there was a time when a woman’s experience of being raped was invalid and dismissed if it was by her husband. Whichever way we look, there has been no room for our saying yes to our own desires or no to others’ trespassing our boundaries. I remember a conference I attended in San Francisco years ago that included a talk on reproductive rights. One sentence on one slide totally resonated and consolidated what I was trying to reclaim for myself: “It is not women’s job to regulate men’s sexual impulses.”
Amen.
Another indicator of the centrality of sex is that so many people stop taking anti-depressants or other medications because they either decrease their libido or they are the cause of delay (or absence) of orgasm. During residency, I remember vividly a young male patient on an antipsychotic yearning for a sexual life again because “it gives energy.” Until then, I had not seen sex as giving energy, as fun as it can be, but rather as energy-consuming. His opinion was the first of many more eye-opening perspectives shared by patients.
I think that our material world tries to suppress the Divine because it feels threatening (it is mysterious and the antithesis of our ego-based way of living), hence the attempts to control sexuality and reproduction. It takes extra work to reacquaint oneself with one’s body, to start seeing the beauty in its vulnerability and imperfections, and to remind oneself that its sacred and lovable aspect is intact even though someone might have tried to corrupt it, exploit it, damage it.
Once we know ourselves (after years of observation, compassion, de-shaming), we see the beautiful nuances and can seek relationships where our particular erotic blueprint will be expressed and compatible with a partner or give us an opportunity to become “fluent” in a foreign sexual language.
What helped me become more at peace was really talking with friends I trust about my fears, my past experiences, my desires, and hearing their stories. There is healing happening when we bring stories together, when we no longer feel alone in reminiscing about disconcerting experiences and trying to make sense of them. There is something amazing in the level of diversity in those moments, and some transformative power in our ability to view past experiences with a different lens as we get older.
We can grow by acknowledging behaviors or choices we have made that were not fully aligned with our Divine and do our best to figure out things by ourselves as we put aside the shaming voices of a religion or one’s own internalized authority figures. At some point in my adult life, I noticed I had stopped inhabiting my body because it felt like it was no longer mine due to insidious patriarchal attitudes and motherhood (even though I enjoyed breastfeeding my three sons very much). Upon that realization, I told myself, “OK, time to reclaim my body, and with it, my whole, spiritual and sexual self!” I have been a prude most of my life, but now I am thankful for my body, and I appreciate nudity in art with a degree of fascination I never let myself access before.
The novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the movie “The Art of Loving” opened my eyes about women’s pleasure and confirmed to me once again that this is not talked about enough. Of course, I am a big fan of “When Harry Met Sally,” especially Meg Ryan’s enactment of an orgasmic moment in a restaurant. I thought this scene was a perfect way to break a taboo, by looking closer at a reality, embracing it and admitting it is there (and absolutely awesome) instead of shushing it.
