This week I officially started my book tour. For many years I have done radio interviews promoting what I thought was going to be the soon release of my bookThe LifeQuake Phenomenonand then a sudden upheaval in my own LifeQuake journey would force me to put the book aside and deal with the health crisis du jour that was presenting itself at the moment. What each illness I encountered had in common was that they were incurable by modern medicine. Each time I went on a search to be healed, I discovered that I had to find the answers myself and in turn disseminate the information to help others in the same boat.
And then I finally finished it. I had to leave town and hole myself up 125 miles away to get it done but alas it did get done. My first book was published.
While doing a radio interview on my book, the talk show host asked me this question: “If I could give Oprah Winfrey advice, what would I tell her? “ Now, Oprah has the crème de la crème of fitness, psychology, and spiritual gurus at her beck and call so who was I to tell Oprah anything she hadn’t already heard? And yet, in watching her show as she reported the feedbacks she received, there was one piece I thought was missing. Yes, food addiction can be a reflection of not enough fun, not enough self-care, and too much work. And yes, it is good to ask the question, what am I really hungering for? But one thing bothered me: she kept using the word control to describe the problem, “getting control over my being”, she said. She also denied being depressed. Now, I don’t think Oprah Winfrey is clinically depressed but I do think she’s in a LifeQuake. This time I don’t think this weight gain is a symptom of her old addiction to food. This time I think it is more a symptom of a LifeQuake. The crisis part of the seven stages of a LifeQuake are the labor pains of the soul birthing itself into its next level of evolution. I think who Oprah Winfrey has been is being called to die and be released to an even bigger self. I think her soul is crying out to bring the content of what she allows herself to talk about on her radio show into broadcast television. Yes, she has had Eckart Tolle on and Michael Beckwith and Elizabeth Lesser but there is a bigger mandate and it is to help people understand that the chaos we are in is part of this evolutionary leap in consciousness. Many people are coping by turning to addictions and distractions.
A reporter interviewing me asked me last week what my thoughts were on newlyweds cruising internet dating sites. Supposedly, one million people who are married a year or less had come to this one site last year. This shocked even me and I thought I’d heard it all. My point here is that the rise of addictive, compulsive behavior is a part of this birthing process. It doesn’t have to be that way. There are people (I interviewed some of them for my book) who recognize that their lives are not working satisfactorily and they do something about it. They don’t numb themselves out, but the large majority of people are dragged to their destiny after a lot of trauma and drama.
Back to Oprah. Oprah did a show where her staff showed how they were putting in her schedule more down time to get a manicure, to have time for lunch, etc but nowhere did I hear anything about solitude, meditation, contemplation, stillness as something they were putting into her schedule. Now, I know she believes in these things. She’s covered spiritual topics on many shows but I think addiction needs to be addressed more on the show from the hunger to know one’s inner life.
In depth psychology, we talk about something called archetypes – a symbol that serves as a model for something that people can relate to within an entire culture or collective consciousness. For example, the archetype of the queen is one that people the world over understand. So when we talk about it for the individual, we ask, where does the queen live insideyou? When does she show up? There is another archetype that is relatively new to western culture and it is called the archetype of The Wounded Healer. Just as many archetypes come from mythology, the wounded healer is represented in Greek mythology by a centaur whose name is Chiron. Centaurs in Greek mythology had the lower torso and legs of a horse and the upper torso was human. As I tell the story of Chiron, I will interweave Oprah’s story as well. Chiron was rejected by his mother at birth. Oprah experienced rejection in the form of neglect from her own mother who failed to protect her from being raped by family members and later impregnated at the age of fourteen when she was running the streets unsupervised by any parental authority.
Eventually, Chiron was adopted by the great god Apollo who schooled him in the arts, sciences, and mysteries. Oprah was sent to her biological father after she became pregnant and he put big demands on her to shape up and do well in school or he was going to send her back. Chiron incurred an incurable wound in his knee that sent him searching the world over for a cure. The knee is symbolic of ego will versus bending onto your knees to spirit. Although it never healed, he gathered herbs and remedies that helped others to heal. Through Oprah’s struggle with her wound around her weight she has helped millions who suffer with a food addiction.
The myth of Chiron has become linked with the path of the shaman who must undergo ego death after ego death so that his/her role as teacher, healer, and sage is pure and unencumbered by the arrogance one can acquire through being seen as a god. The world worships Oprah Winfrey. What has kept her humble and in touch with humanity’s suffering is her own suffering. What liberates the wounded healer is the acceptance of the role he/she must play in the transformation of others. Yes, Oprah needs more balance in her life, more fun but she may also need to embrace the high purpose of this challenge. I submit that it would be possible for her to eat whatever she wanted and not gain weight if she was allowing herself to speak out even more to her daytime tv audience ( not just the internet or radio) on the importance of developing the inner life, stillness and meditation. As we know, women have more thyroid disorders than men (the thyroid is in the throat) and women are taught to stifle their authentic voice more often than men. Do you think there’s a connection?
