Lady Liberty atop frozen Lake Mendota, Madison WI ~photo wkow.com — Lady Liberty atop frozen Lake Mendota, Madison WI
~photo wkow.com

June 4, 2020

It has been 130 days since Orange County reported the first case of Covid 19 in California and 77 days of sheltering in place. As I write, there have been 10 days of national protests following the death of George Floyd. The individual internal work we do to navigate the challenging terrain of our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health impacts the collective. If 80 percent of the population wore masks, infection rates would plunge by more than 90 percent (The Week, May 31, 2020). And my projection is, if Derek Chauvin had acquired better tools regarding emotional regulation, George Floyd might still be alive.

I will be writing a series of posts regarding the work I am doing to complete my education as a certified depth hypnosis practitioner. The writing in this case was a request to reflect on the books Coming to Peace by Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D, The Undefended Self by Susan Thesenga and Eve Pierrakos, and When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön.

In graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin, I spent a lot of time thinking and writing in the Greek and Latin reading room—with its 6x10 foot blackboards and heavy walnut library tables. With chalky hands my mind was trying to untangle ideas surrounding identity. How do teachers inadvertently bring a gendered sense of self into the classroom and what are the implications? How do we step outside the constructions that form our ‘identity’? What is identity? What is ‘the self’?

As I recall both the inspiration and the complexity of my journey into understanding and applying Foucault’s postmodernism systems of reasoning and feminist post-structuralism into the educational field, my mind turns to an image from the frost torched window of a half sunken Statue of Liberty head, arm and torch, nestled into the frozen ice of Lake Mendota. The image was compelling--the illusion of Lady Liberty’s body submerged in thick ice, presumably right down to the bottom of the lake. The irony and humor provided perspective, Lady L, stoic yet hopeful, despite the immovable anchor of her own body.

Is that how I felt? Half submerged in a very long dissertation process, my body long and heavy with feet in the mud, yet somehow hopeful that the work I was doing would ultimately help those entering the field of education be aware enough to not bring quite as much of their conditioned selves into the classroom, thereby not projecting their racial or gendered assumptions onto students? Was it possible to introduce preservice teachers to the idea that they have a gendered and moral self, and to help them walk the dog backwards to see where such constructions arose? I wanted to help teachers in training understand that the self they brought into the classroom mattered—that that ‘self’ did have a lasting impact on their students. Therefore, who was the self entering the room?

The Styrofoam Statue of Liberty tradition began as a prank on February 22, 1979 after Leon Varijan and Jim Mallon ‘79 made a campaign promise, that if elected to the Wisconsin Student Association, would bring the Statue of Liberty to Madison. The ‘real’ Lady stands her ground on Liberty Island of course, her copper veneer supported with a cast iron and stainless steel interior.

As a young gay woman, I was becoming iron-clad, armoring myself against hurtful societal projections. And through my writing and research, I was trying to free myself of inner and outer conflict. I didn’t grow up thinking I was gay...but that’s where I found myself, undeniably attracted to women. My parents, born in the 1930s, had an understandably difficult time when I came out to them. It took years and a heated argument in the kitchen with me shouting, “Who would choose to be gay and live a life of oppression!? It’s not a choice!” before my father finally understood, in the way of a golf metaphor, saying, “Well, I guess you have to play the ball where it lies.” That wasn’t the last painful moment they’d ask if I’d ever date men again, but in a poignant demonstration of love, eighteen years later, in 2008 when same-sex marriage was legal in California for a brief six months, they toasted my partner and I at our wedding. Rain required tents at the last minute, and during the ceremony the rain stopped and a rainbow formed across the Mendocino sky. It was the last time I saw my father alive.

My dissertation, among other things, was an exploration into my own pain and healing, and discovering that we are freer to be who we want to be then we sometimes think. Societal constructions force us into tight boxes and we end up forcing others into those boxes as well. I wanted classrooms to be safe places for both teachers and students to be their authentic selves.

Conflicts, are “symptoms of larger issues going on and point to ways in which we have twisted away from our true self” (p.20) writes Isa Gucciardi from her book Coming to Peace. Her coming to peace inner process supports a close examination of the conflicting parts within ourselves, giving voice to each aspect (subpersonalities in the psyche), with resolution as the intention. Through hypnotherapy, clients move beyond their conscious minds, uncovering aspects of themselves that might not otherwise seem accessible. Gucciardi’s model works with presenting issues on emotional, physical, mental and spiritual fronts, and views those as opportunities for growth, transformation and ultimately harmony. Gucciardi developed this conflict resolution process drawing on earth-based wisdom traditions and decades of depth hypnosis counseling.

Had I known of this process when I was first coming out 30 years ago, I can imagine the part of me that was disappointed for ‘letting my parents down’ might have had something to work out with the part of me that was like, Hey, I’m just being me! Being able to draw upon my guide, or the wise part of myself, would have been extremely useful—lessening inner and outer turmoil.

Outer coming to peace is a process whereby core principles of equality, respect, honesty, personal responsibility, compassion, tolerance, patience, willingness to engage and cultivating one’s inner wisdom are drawn upon as participants come together. The practitioner leads a meditation guiding people to connect with their inner wisdom and guidance and from that place they listen and interact—each person stating their intentions and speaking until the talking stick is still. I can also imagine that this would have been extremely healing for our family. When I came out one family member asked for the key back to their house and my parents sent me to a psychiatrist and threatened to not pay for my last semester of college if I moved in with my girlfriend.

I wish I had known during graduate school, as I stared at the chalkboard, that the “best teacher is the life that is right in front of us” (Thesenga, p.14). Perhaps I would have struggled less, knowing that crisis, in whatever form, is a spiritual evolution opportunity. My father flew across Lake Michigan once, as I contemplated dropping out of the program, and told me I needed to stop dating and focus on my studies. I told him those connections were actually helping me survive.

It wasn’t until 2005, when I attended the Hoffman Process, that I finally understood that nothing was inherently wrong with me-- that my essential nature, my bright and shiny spirit, was Spirit. The same was true of my parents, but their negative patterns clouded their essential natures. My armored body softened and I learned we are not our negative patterns. Love, compassion and forgiveness are possible.

In The Undefended Self we are prompted to consider, “The path of the real self includes learning to shed our mask, accepting our ‘lower’ imperfect nature and embracing our ‘higher’ perfect spiritual nature. Spiritual growth is movement toward the undefended self, the self that neither masks our human flaws nor denies our spiritual essence” (p.16).

Masks are the face we show the world, an idealized version of ourselves, meant to protect our vulnerabilities. The primary masks Thesenga describes are the power, love and serenity masks. As children we fear rejection and not being loved by our parents and develop strategies to mitigate that fear based on our specific circumstances. Some children attempt to extract love by always appearing loving (the love mask), others attempt to control life and other people by appearing independent, aggressive, competent, domineering (the power mask), and still others attempt to escape the difficulties and vulnerabilities of life by appearing serene and detached (the serenity mask).

As a kid I didn’t want to make waves so I adopted the serenity mask. I was protecting a feeling of not belonging, stemming from being a tomboy. My mother used to hang dresses in my room, hoping I would like them. I wasn’t interested, so to protect the hurt of feeling I wasn’t loved or accepted, I would detach and go play outside, riding my horse or bike, exploring the nearby woods and streams. That was my refuge, where I felt accepted and safe.

Masks hide our vulnerabilities, wounds, and shadow. I didn’t want people to know I felt I didn’t belong. The same childhood pattern will continue if not addressed, and present itself later in life. Coming out in my 20s then became the flashpoint for me continuing to feel I did not belong, and thus the mask remained. Hiding under the mask was anger, hurt, rejection, and pain stemming from prolonged exposure to societal hatred, as well as specific incidents, like hearing anti-gay protestors at Pride yell that I should burn in hell. The mask seeks to protect our soft underbelly—who can blame it?

As I stared out the library window at the ice fishermen shanties and onlookers of Lady Liberty, I wouldn’t have thought that years later I would be thinking about her as a symbol of our own personal struggles with masks, lower selves, higher selves and coming to peace, but I am.

“Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” These iconic words from Emma Lazarus’ 1883 sonnet, “The New Colossus,” gracing the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, are far from actualized in our country. The day before the Statue of Liberty’s inauguration in October 1886, the New York State Woman Suffrage Association met, agreeing that the statue was a symbol of hypocrisy, given that the monument was representing Freedom as a majestic female in a State where women were not yet free to vote.

Describing the social unrest at the time of the statue’s inauguration, Francesca Lidia Viano writes:

“The statue was an enigmatic monument, speaking at once to the rich and poor, established and marginal, men and women. To a great degree these contradictions characterized the contemporary scene. The 1880s were turbulent years in America.

...Discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and ethnicity had long run deep in the American grain; now prejudice against foreign workers were joining those other bigotries. In 1865 the Thirteen Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery, yet African Americans were still profoundly marginalized. Although women had won civil constitutional rights, they were banned from voting in most states and all federal elections. The bloody Indian Wars were forcing Native Americans onto reservations. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, imposing a ten-year moratorium on the immigration of Chinese laborers, the very first law forbidding a particular group from entering the United States (p.4).”

The Statue of Liberty holds the Declaration of Independence, a document that stood for independence from oppressive regimes globally, and yet had not been fully assimilated by the U.S. legal or political system.

Now, 134 years later, we are still fighting for justice. I want to believe Pema Chödrön in When Things Fall Apart when she proposes that inherent in all of us is a noble and awakened heart—Bodhichitta. I want to have confidence in the sacredness of the world, to be egoless–that is to say, like rays of the sun, radiating outward (p.61), embracing the unconditional well-being and joy that includes all different qualities of experience. Who wouldn’t want the “freshness, openness, delight in our sense perceptions” (p.64) that this egolessness promises? I want to believe, as Trungpa Rinpoche says, that “Whatever occurs in the confused mind is regarded as the path. Everything is workable. It is a fearless proclamation, the lion’s roar” (Chödrön, p.145).

Fear, according to Chödrön, is the natural reaction to moving closer to the truth. She recommends allowing for not knowing, welcoming it, meeting it. She invites us to welcome difficult feelings as our teachers, and to develop loving-kindness with ourselves while we relate honestly with our experience. We are here to study ourselves with kindness and clarity. And it takes fearlessness, discipline, patience, generosity of spirit, and work to remove the masks that obscure our essential nature.

Lady Liberty is a symbol of freedom in the purest sense. Is she akin to an undefended self? It takes courage to take off our masks, to take inventory of those parts of ourselves that are not in alignment with our highest self. This conscientious and compassionate effort is the ‘way forward’, the ‘path’ that leads closer to inner and outer peace. Can we get to the point where each person’s dignity is respected to the point that these ideals are actualized? Can we embrace that we are in a time of awakening with a clear call to action, thoroughly understanding the implications of doing our own internal work?

If I know my perception of my reality is dependent on my relationship with myself and my narratives, why isn’t it so easy? Why is changing the habits of our minds difficult? How do we meet confusion instead of struggling against it? How do we move beyond the discursive thoughts and incessant chatter that’s always reinforcing an image of ourselves?

For me, building on Chödrön’s observations, I suffer from a perfectionist image and the narrative of getting it all together. This might manifest as revising this blog post for a month before posting, or getting yet one more credential before opening my healing arts practice. Whatever is it, getting it all together is an impossible task that sets us up for suffering. There will always be the next thing that takes us ‘out’ of whatever “all- togetherness” we thought we had attained. This is the nature of samsara--the hopeless cycle of suffering. So in having worked on this narrative, I now understand there will always be one more thing to do, one more way to make something better, and there is no need to reinforce actions that reify a perfectionistic image. I now have an internal barometer which communicates when something is ‘good enough.’ In taking off the mask, in embodying my highest self, in claiming my imperfection and wisdom, my authentic self emerges and I am less likely to project those expectations onto others. This is one small example within one narrative, of how one’s individual work impacts the collective.

And we are never done. We will be practicing until our moment of death. Impermanence, Chödrön asserts--get used to it. It’s a worthy challenge. I find at times like this that I want to hold onto something concrete, something that will tell me everything is okay. Chödrön reminds us that we must practice finding our ground in groundlessness—and for me, that groundlessness is my purist connection to Spirit, the ground luminosity, the mind of clear light. When I can connect and rest there, I really am okay.

As my mind arrives back, now gazing out my Berkeley window into the tall reaches of an apple tree, one thing remains constant. I still want us to be reflecting on the self that we are and the self that we could be. I want us to do the hard work, to be accountable and compassionate with ourselves and others.

Now is the time to close the gap between the Statue of Liberty’s ideals and the territory in which she has found herself. Whether on Liberty Island or half sunken in ice on Lake Mendota, can we bring Lady Liberty’s ideals to life by doing the necessary personal and collective work that undergirds a stronger foundation in our country for all people, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, ableism, religion, and age? It is each person’s birthright to experience freedom from oppressive systems and it is also our responsibility to not perpetuate them. I want the promise of freedom to be tangible for all people finding their way out of suffering.

Sources

When Things Fall Apart- Pema Chödrön

Coming to Peace- Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

The Undefended Self- Susan Thesenga

“Sentinel” by Francesca Lidia Viano. Printed in Places, The Journal of Public Scholarship on Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism, October 2018.