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November/December 2001 Alternative Health
Heeding Psychological Pain as a Call to Authenticity

by Michael Nagel, M.A.

Some persons are fortunate to be called to a life of personal authenticity by nature, upbringing, or simply good fortune. Most others of us however are called by the psychological and spiritual pain of an inherently inauthentic life.

“The call at the beginning is a vague, almost imperceptible and mysterious flame. It shows itself as a questioning of the disharmony you live in. It is your disharmony, as you experience it. It is your own questioning. And it is your personal yearning,” notes A.H. Almaas. Unheeded, the call can lead to profound personal psychological pain and even crisis.

When faced with such personal pain and suffering, how then shall we act? Shall we flee pain’s sharp edge, or shall we embrace it thereby engaging ourselves in an unparalleled adventure in self-discovery?

Is there an alternative to Prozac?

Some estimate that in the U.S. there are as many as 30 million prescriptions for psychoactive drugs such as Prozac. We can infer that 30 millions of our fellows are so pained by the lives they lead, that they choose to be numb to their pain. And how many other tens of millions of our fellows are unable to afford such comforts or choose not to benefit from them. Indeed it seems, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” as Thoreau observed.

We cannot fault persons who choose to treat their pain by numbing it, for that always is a personal choice. And the limited models of science and medicine preclude these fields from offering us an understanding of psychological pain that is more uplifting than a scribbled prescription. Yet others suggest that rather than muffle our pain, perhaps we should heed it.

Psychological Pain as a Call

“These pains that you feel are messengers. Listen to them,” sang Rumi, the Persian ecstatic. Not numb or run from pain, but listen to it? Why?

A principle of holistic medicine perhaps can shed some light. We commonly caricature allopathic medicine as treating the symptom rather than the cause of disease. We value holistic medicine’s understanding of illness as the body’s signal that there is something wrong whose cause, not effect, needs remedying.

So too psychological pain is the psyche’s signal that there is something wrong with the soul that needs remedying. To lose ourselves in television or computer games, to binge with eating or boozing, to run from one spiritual group to another, or to drug ourselves with Prozac is akin to the allopathic strategy of dealing with the symptom not the cause of our pain. A holistic approach to our pain would be to seek its cause by inquiring into our selves and our lives.

The Call to Personal Authenticity

So psychological pain then is a messenger to whom we would hearken were we to heal the souls, rather than numb the symptom of our suffering. And were we to listen as Rumi counsels, what might we find?

The cause of our pain we find ultimately is the inhibition of our authentic natures. Each of us is endowed with a unique nature; each of us is born to unique life conditions; each of us experiences life with a style and perspective that is distinct; each of us stands in a place that cannot be occupied by another; and, each of us is called to manifest the magnificence of our individualities. Yet each of us is socially conditioned to be like everyone else.

The road to personal and spiritual authenticity is not to become like someone else, but to become more like your own unique self. If we mistake our conditioning for our nature, then we become like the pained crow that Zorba the Greek describes:

"Well, you see, he used to walk respectably, properly - well, like a crow. But one day he got it into his head to try and strut about like a pigeon. And from that time on the poor fellow couldn't for the life of him recall his own way of walking. He was all mixed up, don't you see? He just hobbled about."

Heed The Call of Your Pain

So rather than our psychological and spiritual pains being threats to our existence that we would numb and shun, perhaps these pains are the very calls of our souls, our psyches, to an authentic life. If heeded, perhaps they would liberate us from the thralldom of lives that have been hobbled by our efforts to live like everyone else, except our very own selves. Indeed, poet Matthew Arnold understood these calls in precisely this manner:

O air-borne voice! long since, severely clear,
A cry like thine in my own heart I hear:
"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he,
Who finds himself, loses his misery!"

If we choose to heed our calls, then we will find that we will leave behind the metaphorical city of conventional values, and enter into the wilderness of our yet undiscovered selves. And there, eventually we shall again be warmed to Life by the Light of our own fires.

The search for personal authenticity is an issue whose complexities can only be hinted at in a short article such as this. If you feel encouraged in your own search for personal authenticity by the above quotations, you are invited to another 130 quotations that support your efforts to live a life of personal authenticity. See whole-person-mentor.com/Authenticity.htm.

Michael Nagel, M.A. mentors the spectrum of psychological growth with RADIX® body-centered psychology and transpersonal psychology. He has more than 30 years experience with personal growth disciplines. His articles on psychology and philosophy have been published in journals, magazines, and books. For more information: see www.whole-person-mentor.com or call: (503) 226-2771.