imagesI’ve been reading this amazing book, Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser. The premise is that a life crisis, such as a divorce, illness, or the death of someone we love, can bring us the opportunity to die and be reborn, to experience what she terms The Phoenix Process. You have to be broken open to become whole. The book begins with the Anais Nin quote that graces the lefthand column of this blog; it’s been Lesser’s touchstone. 

I’ve been shamelessly dogearing my library copy for the last week, and will eventually need to buy this book, as I can tell that I’ll return to it again and again. I love, for instance, Lesser describing her first encounter with the Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa:  ”He was not interested in spirituality as a form of escape. He was training people to become ’sacred warriors’ — not so that they could do battle with others but so that they could develop the kind of courage one needs to be kind and happy and radically alive in the midst of the world. There is no dry land, he said; there is only fearlessnes, which is to be found in the heart. This is the path to freedom.” RADICALLY ALIVE – love that!

Or in quoting from a friend who has MS and a child with birth defects, the friend comments: “The lesson is not to dwell on whether or not something should be happening to me. …my only hope was to give up the life that had been, in order to make room for the life that is. …Making that choice, over and over again–to accept what is, and to release what was–has become the major focusing agent for my spiritual work.” In other words – give up the notion of self as victim.

But perhaps what’s spoken most to me so far (and I’m  just over half way), is Lesser’s concept of the Shaman Lover. She quotes Rumi, “There is some kiss we want our whole lives,” to describe the longing for another person, to be totally engaged with another. “The Shaman Lover,” she writes, “is a man or woman whose destiny is to heal the  heartsick with the sweetness of love, and to give the gift of fire to those whose passion is frozen. …sometimes the Shaman Lover has been sent by fate to blast us open, to awaken the dead parts of our body, to deliver the kiss of life. And if we succumb, we are changed forever.”

“Every marriage has a story that could end in divorce. That does not mean they all should.”

I really appreciate Lesser’s description and belief in the usefulness of the Shaman Lover, for twice I was blasted open and both times I felt guilt. The first time, I fell in love with someone far away. Someone I never knew in the flesh. We finally met once, but by then, our relationship had shifted. When, however, we were first learning each other via phone and email, I was opening to him as though my ribs were cracking open. I’d been so alone and felt so unheard by anyone, especially by Alex, that I actually sometimes had the impression that people couldn’t hear me – that I wasn’t speaking loudly enough.

One day, I sent my  new friend an email that was more personal than most. I admitted how lonely I was, how afraid of life. He wrote back immediately to say that he was going into a meeting and couldn’t talk right then –  it was the middle of a week day – but he wanted me to know that he’d heard me. And then he sent me a song that hinted at the depth of the feelings we were both increasingly becoming open to – even engulfed by. 

It was a dark November night. My office door was shut and most people were gone. I began to cry when I heard the song and then, actually brought to my knees on my office floor, I sobbed as I realized that I loved this person and all of the ramifications that held for my life, my marriage, my tiny children.

I was very honest with Alex about my feelings for this other person, but eventually decided that I wanted to try to make our marriage work. I ended contact with the other man. I did whatever it would take to “right” myself in Alex’s eyes. I  moved up to the attic. I worked on myself. I had daily affirmations. I read and read. I softened. I made changes I hadn’t wanted to make, such as going on an anti-depressant and putting our very small kids in daycare. I changed. 

What I sensed at the time but was too wracked with guilt to appreciate the effects of was that Alex did not change. He’d totally bought into his role as the wronged party, allowed me to work my fanny off at improvement, and had remained just where he was. In fact, a month after I came down from the attic, after we’d agreed together to try again, he had an affair. “It was his fair due,” friends said. “He had to do it to make things even,” others said. I bought this. Sort of. And on we went.

But two years later, I found myself in a similar situation. Again, falling in love with someone. This time with someone who was as dangerously romantic, if not more so, than I. Someone who promised the moon. Whereas the other man had written me haiku-like simple but mysterious admissions of his feelings, this man declared them to the Universe on bended knee. And I fell. I fell and fell. And when I kissed him in broad daylight, I knew that everything was over between Alex and me. It took me a few weeks to tell him; but I knew. And I was ready. Not  just for this man — whose love for me turned out to be nothing more than lust disguised in a way to lure back  his wife, or as an inability to give in to his own need for a Shaman Lover — but to dive into the fire of finally, truly ending the marriage.

One thing I like about Lesser is that she is neither pro- nor anti-marriage/divorce. “Every marriage has a story that could end in divorce. That does not mean they all should.” But she wants us to take seriously our patterns, the way we repeat ourselves. She wants us to listen when our souls are dead and not be content, after the danger of an affair, to return to the status quote.

“I do not wish upon anyone a descent into hell,” she writes. “But if your life has to be turned inside out in order for you to know yourself–if the shadow of a sham crosses your path and your turn and follow it down–I pray that you use its force wisely. I hope that you take the ultimate responsiblity for your actions and that you consecrate any destruction to the rebuilding of your higher self and a more radiant life.”

Now, a year after that broad-daylight kiss, there are days when I am lonely. There are days when I wish someone else would mow the lawn or deal with a child’s tantrum or make the PB&Js. Sometimes, I even wish someone would take care of me – just a little. But I never wish to feel dead again, or to feel angry at another person on a nearly daily basis as I felt toward  Alex in our final years. I am gaining myself. And I will only open again for someone else who is found, who is whole, who is fearless.

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