The shattering of old armor, both personal and collective, is obviously our grist for the mill: the basic stuff for our spiritual learning. Once we know that, we then ought to focus in upon our particular way of being in daily life situations. It is not only in meditation and in service to others that we learn the basic lessons of self-revelation - it is in the heat of the moment as we deal with our intimates, talk with friends, work at our jobs and sit alone at home. In all such situations, weaving the loom of personal life, we experience some sort of catalyst - some sort of sensory, emotional, and/or mental process. These are our typical ways of thinking and feeling, intense or mild, pleasant or otherwise. This is the basic stuff of personality experience.

When we then add a desire for spiritual growth, we have to expand our eye-shot from not only the stuff of experience, but also to how we relate to the stuff of experience. As I continue my counseling in the U.S. and Japan, I see time and again the truth of this principle: what we think and feel is far less important than how we relate to what we think and feel. In other words: What we commonly call my shit, my crap, and my garbage, is in point of fact - if we are keen enough to see it - the major catalyst we can use to fertilize our growth of love-wisdom.

This idea crystallized for me after a recent counseling session with a European woman I met in Japan who happened to be visiting San Francisco. Despite her long background as a healer, she was quite stuck in her own process concerning her marriage. She and her spouse still lived together, but they hadn't had intimacy for months, and after a brief episode of infidelity on her part, the husband was still enraged. She had already acknowledged her responsibility and now wanted reconciliation, but she couldn't really confront the misery of her home life and the heavy grudge still nursed by her spouse. Actually, they were both stuck.

After some back-and-forth talk in the session, a bolus of tears and sorrow welled up in her, and eyes red and bloodshot, she cursed her process:

I thought I'd finished all this crap years ago...

I told her, If you'd really finished it, then it wouldn't be coming up now. If you'd really healed it, you'd no longer be feeling it. In time, she agreed. And after the session, walking down the street, I saw the front page of our local weekly alternative paper, running a story entitled Fecal Matters. (It was no doubt an exposé of local corruption, or the newest sexual fad in Babylon-by-the-Bay.)

It was then that I put two and two together: our old encrusted emotional issues are the very stuff of self-transformation, as they offer us head-on catalysts that we can use to love ourselves more, accept ourselves more, and understand our process more than we already do. This so-called crap is the fertilizer of love-wisdom if we know it, accept it, and understand its generation, then move ahead to forgive the self and others. Seen in this light, it's damn good crap! It's worth far more than its weight in gold, because unlike gold, the inner growth from this fertilizer you can take with you.

For this lady and her spouse, what her healing demanded was a commitment to self-acceptance: a conscious, deliberate choice to feel, accept, and be willing to completely experience her pain, weakness, sorrow, guilt and despair. This decision is no less than the decision to love, which always begins with self-love. This simple (but not easy!) act of deciding would be the fastest, most direct way to open her heart-chakra further, to generate more energy in the 4th or green-ray center, and accelerate a true and real reconciliation in the situation. If she applied it to her heart, what she considered her old crap was actually rich fertilizer for developing love and compassion. Knowing this, the only question left is whether or not she really wanted to apply this fertilizer to her own process.

After our work together and some more of her own self-reflection, she did in fact try to welcome her emotions a little bit more so she could then move on to wisdom, the 5th or blue-ray center (throat-chakra). We then looked at the deeper dynamics, questions emerged: Why have you been unwilling to feel yourself? What is the state of your partnership, and what are your alternatives at this point?

This type of inquiry requires more effort (hey, no one ever said healing is easy!), and more mental focus. We quickly plunged further: she didn't want to feel because she feared a complete nervous break-down; she fought against weakness because since childhood, she always thought she had to be strong; and she was afraid to feel her emotional void, so she avoided the prospect of being alone again. Exploring all these issues, we peered into the beliefs underlying her so-called negative emotions (as almost all feelings arise from beliefs). Clear your limiting beliefs, and you'll eventually clear the painful emotions. First, however, you must be willing to feel them.

As we looked from this angle, we saw the roots of her present paralysis (loving a man who hates her and living in a tortured double-bind). Her somewhat masochistic behavior (keeping herself in the path of rage), was actually a form of self-punishment which fulfilled a confused desire for atonement for the act of marital infidelity. It was an example of méa culpa: long-term guilt from chronic self-blame, which maintained her low self-esteem and was rooted in some very old self-doubt and negative self-valuing. These roots were complex.

In this way we came to understand the how and the why of her present condition as well as the mixed feelings of her spouse, who had been threatening separation for months, all the while hanging onto a pity-me role of victim-cum-torturer. Simply making the conscious act of will needed to reflect more deeply and thus discover these facts is a catalyst that fuels the growth of wisdom and discernment. She emerged from our sessions renewed.