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Sometimes the best way to introduce a profound truth is to convey it through a parable. We all know what it is like to stand at a crossroads in our life, that powerful, vulnerable position of choice between the known and unknown. And we all know – perhaps all too well – what it is like to wonder what to do next, or why certain events happened as they did in our life that led to us standing at a crossroads. Nothing is easier than to fear moving forward or to wonder again and again why relationships or a job ended poorly. And yet, we have inner resources – soul-skills – that allow us to interpret the events that have happened in our life from other perspectives. We have a natural intuitive capacity to make decisions that enable us to navigate the unknown, to risk taking the path of our higher potential.
This wonderful parable contains examples of exactly what I am trying to convey and let me add that some of these incidents actually happened:
The Guru and the Devotee
A devotee of an enlightened Guru announced to the Guru that he was ready to become enlightened. He had traveled a long way to deliver this message in person to his Guru. “Ah,” said the Guru. “Is that so? Well then, come and stay by my side and see the world as I do. But you must not question one thing I do or say.”
The young devotee agreed, thinking that this task would be easy, as he was convinced he was so enlightened that he understood how the laws of the Universe kept the multiple ecosystems of life in balance and why God allowed events to occur as they do to all people. Now the Guru met with all his followers every day to give blessings and to hear their prayer requests. He often selected people for healings during this time. The devotee began anticipating whom the Guru would heal, thinking certainly he would choose that person who seems so weak and that person who has been here day after day. The devotee was absolutely convinced the Guru would heal the crippled child brought to the ashram by his mother. Day after day passed but the Guru never seemed to notice this mother and child. Finally the devotee, bursting with frustration, said, “I don’t understand how you can look into the face of that mother and not heal her child! Can you not see how they are both suffering?”
“You are questioning me. I see them. Do not question what I do again. That is our agreement,” replied the Guru. While out walking a few days later, the Guru and his devotee came upon young man crossing a field who fell into a deep hole filled with snakes. The devotee and the Guru could hear him screaming with fear. He shouted for help but the Guru, who could have easily saved him, stood on the road staring across the field completely motionless. The young devotee, disregarding his agreement to say nothing, pleaded, “Help him. Why don’t you save this man?”
“Why are you questioning my actions? I hear him shouting for help. You are breaking your word to me. Do not do that again.” They both remained on the side of the road until the screams of the man fell silent. Then the Guru walked away. A few days later, a beggar man came up to the Guru asking for food, but the Guru refused to feed him. Again, the devotee, seeing the suffering on the face of the hungry beggar, challenged the decision of the Guru. “Why did you not feed this hungry man? We have plenty of food that we can share with him. It’s not right not to feed this hungry man when we have so much.”
“Again you challenge me?” The Guru paused for a moment and then said, “Go away from me now. You are not enlightened. You walk through this world only seeing yourself, only feeling your own pain, only fearing your own hunger. What did you see when you looked at that mother and child? You saw only your own pity and heartache – and that is what you wanted me to stop. You did not really see who those two souls were or why they had to endure that path in this lifetime. They abused crippled children in a previous life. They sold them into street slavery without mercy. That mother needs her heart opened. She needs to feel love for a crippled child and that crippled child was once a human being who made his wealth off the broken bones of children. They are being healed but it is through living the life they have been given. Take this life away from them and they will learn nothing. Not even you will learn anything. All three of you will feel better, but what good is that?
“You wanted me to save that man in the snake pit so that your fear and panic would stop. You did not even consider whether that man should be helped or whether helping him was the wise act for his soul’s journey. You only thought about how you felt in that one moment in time and what you were feeling while you were watching him.”
The devotee was stunned by the Guru’s response. He wanted to defend himself, to apologize because he did not realize these things, but the Guru would not let him. Instead, the Guru questioned him. “You think help should always be offered to someone. Should it? Why do you believe that you should always receive help when you scream for help? It is just as likely that God is telling people to walk right by you and not help you as it is that God directs one person to stop and help you. You are not ready to bear witness to the wisdom of God. That man whom you would have pulled out of that snake pit in the field was coming to that village to only do harm to the people. He was a vengeful person filled with darkness. Now those good people will go on to live blessed and wonderful lives because he did not make it across that field. He had only evil in him. And that beggar that you felt so much pity for let his whole family starve to death while he ate all their food. Now it is his time to know the suffering he put them through.”
The Guru continued. “You are still too weak to witness the wisdom of God. You still want your own justice to prevail in this world. You think this world should be ordered according to your personal feelings. If you are upset, then events should be righted so that you feel better, regardless of what is unfolding in all the many other lives woven into the journey of your life. You are still guided by whether you are happy or sad, calm or upset, warm or cold. Why are your feelings so important? Why should they determine the destinies of all these other people? Were they born to insure your happiness? Would you like it if they had the power to change your life because they were unhappy? Or hungry? Or cold?
“And further, are you suggesting that God is a fool and is unaware of what is just and unjust, fair and unfair? There are no accidents in this world. There are no catastrophes. There are no mistakes. All choices have consequences and all consequences are eventually balanced. Go away from me until you develop the strength of spirit to detach from your own sense of right and wrong, justice and injustice, and your own desire to make things right for you and you alone. Then you will be able to truly see that life is ordered around the wisdom of God working for all.”
We will explore the deeper meaning of this wonderful story in our first session.
The Crossroads is a position we meet again and again in life. It is an archetypal pattern presenting us with the opportunity to start again, or sometimes shift from what feels like a path of fate to one of destiny. Because it is an archetypal pattern, all of us recognize when we have arrived at this choice point in our soul-gut. That is, when you come to a Crossroads in your life: You know you cannot go backwards; you know you have a limited time to ponder which path to take; you know that if you do not consciously make a decision, then the fates will decide for you and finally, both paths offer potentially different futures. Every time we are standing at a crossroads, an opportunity for transformation of some part of our life is being presented to us.
How do you recognize that you are standing at a crossroads in your life? You know it by the questions that you automatically begin to focus on: What should I do next with my life? Where do I go from here? Why did this happen to me? How am I going to survive? I have no doubt that you, like so many of the people I have met through the years, have had exactly this experience. Few experiences are as frightening and none are as common.
Or perhaps you might come upon a crossroads you have actually been seeking, only you did not realize it until you arrived at that place of having to make life-changing decisions. Perhaps an opportunity you have been waiting for has finally come along – and now what do you do? Or what if a business idea actually takes off and then comes to a crossroads because it requires an infusion of more capital? A crossroads can manifest as a faith crisis not just in the Divine, but in oneself.
So often we find ourselves at a crossroads because of unforeseen events that set unplanned changes into motion, such as illness or job loss or any number of many life challenges that just “happen” all the time. But we are also driven by an impulse to discover what comes next in our life and what’s around the corner. I have yet to meet the person who has not asked, “I wonder for what reason I was born?”
I love the parable of The Guru and the Devotee for so many reasons, not the least of which is that each of us in our own way is that devotee walking the road with the guru. (I was actually told one of those stories by a devotee of Sai Baba while at his ashram.) Though we can easily recognize when we are standing on an obvious crossroads in life – one brought about through a job loss, for example – this parable shines a light on a truth rarely reflected upon. That is, the most significant crossroads in your life occur in your capacity to detach from an illusion in order to understand a truth.
The Guru tells the devotee that he is not ready to walk the path with him because he still clings to his need to see the world through his eyes, through his feelings, through his needs. As a result, he needs the world – and everyone he encounters in his world – to serve his world. He thinks of the world as his world – not as the world. The Guru points out to him that so long as he sees the world according to his personal sense of justice and righteousness, God would be guilty of mismanagement, of accidents, of egregious acts against the nature of life itself. But the devotee, with his limited five senses and all consuming emotional needs, would of course know exactly what should unfold for all people, bearing in mind the intersection of each person’s karma in past, present, and future lives.
From a mystical perspective – which is of course the playing field where truth happens – we actually live at the Crossroads. We are always standing at the intersection of truth and illusion, the mystical language for the known and the unknown. (Reflect on that.) Grasp this profound truth and every decision and choice you make becomes a potential game changer. Fall into a snake pit and though you may not be able to climb out, you can make the decision to calm the snakes, symbolically speaking. You have more authority (note the use of the word authority versus power) within you but it is you that has to decide you are worth the inner journey of self-knowledge. Inner authority and learning discernment – that is, how to discern truth from illusion while standing at a crossroads – requires a commitment to allow your own life path to open to the unknown and to new possibilities. I don’t say that to you as a type of teaser but rather consider for one more moment the story of the Guru and the Devotee.
Imagine that the devotee listened deeply to the wisdom of the Guru. Imagine that he truly understood that he was unable to accept Life the way Life had always been and will always be. Instead, he wanted Life to work just for him, to make him happy and to make sense to him for the duration of his short lifetime. He was possessive about Life itself, and Life belongs to no one. Not even His life belonged to him, as he could not extend his life even one more second than his karma would allow. Imagine he finally detached from his own needs and was able to observe Life unfolding in the natural flow of the Tao, including the threads of his own life. He would witness the cosmic Crossroads, at which each personal life intersects with the Divine plan in all ways.
Consider your life just for a moment as a constant Crossroads, an on-going power position in which you are endlessly given opportunities to break an illusion. Sometimes that illusion is a fear, sometimes it’s the way you think about an event from the past, sometimes it’s a self-defeating attitude or habit you maintain, and sometimes it’s an opportunity to finally get recognized for your talent if you only take a risk. The truth is, we are living at the continual experience of the crossroads.
Lesson 1:
Standing at the Crossroads
In our first session, we will explore the Crossroads as a powerful archetype that represents our constant struggle with the power of truth, illusion and choice. Here is a sample of the topics that will be covered in our first session:
- Crossroads as an archetypal pattern: Coming to a “crossroads” in life is itself an archetypal experience. It represents a position of choice in which fate intersects with destiny, illusion with truth, the lesser path with the higher road.
- Recognizing when you are at the Crossroads and identifying the two paths.
- Are some Crossroads more powerful than others? It would seem that what makes a Crossroads powerful is a significant external life change, such as getting married or divorced. But the truth is, power is not determined by action but by the capacity we have to perceive what is ending in our life and what is being offered as a new beginning.
Lesson 2:
Fragments and Fractures
It’s a strange thought to consider but each of us is “many places other than here.” We all hold onto wounds from the past never realizing that in doing so, we are fragmenting ourselves. By that I mean that we are fracturing pieces or particles of our psychic energy that we need to be able to think clearly and creatively or that we require for healing an illness we have right now “in this present moment.” We have yet to truly understand that healing or intuitive clarity requires that we are “present” to who and where we are in this moment in our lives. Often we find ourselves standing at a crossroads in life simply because we are so fragmented that we have triggered the loss of mental and emotional health. And therefore, we must face the choice of letting go of the past or staying on a path that can only diminish our well-being.
The following topics are a sample of this seminar:
- Where are you other than here? One of the constant truths in life is that there is only the present moment; only the here and now. Our memories and our thoughts transport us to times gone by and to imaginings of what might yet occur in our lives, but our laboratory for our decisions and choices is here – in this moment in time. Often we arrive at a crossroads position because we are “all over the place”. We are fragmented, having distributed so much of ourselves to our past that we cannot think clearly about how to navigate this present moment in our lives. We find it impossible to recognize that the time has come to take a new path.
- How do we identify our fragments?
- And how do we gather the strength of mind and spirit to bring those fragments of ourselves into this present moment of our lives?
Lessons 3:
How Do You See Your World?
Years ago, the thought was introduced into our society that “we create our own reality.” That’s an outrageously huge concept. It is a truth, in fact, of cosmic proportions; however, it is one that requires an extraordinary amount of reflection. We don’t exactly “create” the whole of our reality. After all, if we actually could pull that off, we would all be retired, healthy, and happy as larks on a soft wind. So let’s just agree that we influence our “personal reality” and that’s the extent of our power. However, what that means is that each of us essentially lives in his or her own reality. You see things you way and I see them my way. And that’s that. Therein lies the reason why all great spiritual masters have taught that regardless of what you or I believe to be true about our personal lives – emphasis on the word personal – it’s an illusion. We can, however, ascend to the realm in which cosmic truth applies equally to both of us and indeed to all of us. That is not an illusion; that is the way it is.
How you see your world determines your personal reality. That’s a huge statement. We are going to spend this session exploring the depth of that perception because it has taken root in our social consciousness. The reality each of us creates for ourselves is therefore a subjective playing field that no one but ourselves occupies. What is real for you on your playing field is not real for anyone else. This truth is one of the jewels Buddha was emphasizing in his teaching about the nature of illusion. And this truth is what the Guru was pointing out to the devotee who was still navigating everything in the world by the coordinates in his own personal world. The Crossroads archetype represents the intersection between our illusions and an opportunity to perceive – and thus respond to – a greater truth that is simultaneously active in the events of our life.
These are some of the topics that we will explore is this session:
- How do you see your world? You are the devotee in this session. How do you interpret the actions of people in your life?
- Relationship challenges: Inevitably unfinished business with relationships leads us to crossroads.
- Likewise, starting new relationships represents a crossroads experience, but are you taking a new road or walking the same path?
- Personal illusions: We all have more than we can imagine but we have to start identifying some basic ones in order to recognize how powerful even one illusion is in our psyche.
- The “must have in life” illusions are among the most powerful that can block us from making new choices at the crossroads.
- The “people should be there to help me out and take care of me” illusion. This is one of the most difficult illusions to release by far.
Lesson 4:
Interior Crossroads
External crossroads are obvious: job changes, moving, marriage, birth of a child, divorce, decision to make major financial investments, relationship problems, illness, loss, personal trauma – the list of both positive and challenging crossroads, of course, is endless. And there is nothing simple or easy about any of these crossroads. Let’s consider these the “macro-crossroads”, the one’s that play out in front of our eyes.
Our interior crossroads, or “micro-crossroads”, function on the psychic plane. This is the crossroads in which we confront our conflicts with ourselves, with the two paths of right and wrong, good and evil, ethical and unethical, truth or lie, betrayal or honesty, selfishness or generosity, judgment or compassion, optimism or pessimism, hope or despair. We find ourselves psychically at these crossroads countless times each day in the privacy of our heart and mind, but the truth is nothing about the consequences of the decisions made in our hearts or minds is private at all. Each of the decisions we make that we think is private turns into a choice that in turn becomes some expression of an action. And every action generates a consequence.
The macro-crossroads of our lives are created by the activity generated by our micro-crossroads – one small choice at a time. Each choice we make empowers or energizes the reality in which we live. We may dismiss a negative choice as inconsequential but that is only because we still do not comprehend the creative power of every choice we release into this universe. Imagine that every decision you make becomes an email that you send into the Internet with the address: To Everyone. Thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes are messengers and magnets.
In this session, we will examine this topic at length. Here are some of the highlights:
- How fears control your intuition.
- The three major roadblocks at the crossroads: I have to be right, I have to win, I have to maintain control.
- The fear of choosing a path that might empower another person.
- The inability to trust positive actions over the power of negative ones.
Lesson 5:
The Undiscovered You
Some of our most powerful Crossroads deal with how we see ourselves. We have more opportunities than we can imagine to build our self-esteem, to improve our well-being, to heal memories, to change negative attitudes, to begin exercising, to learn something new, to create something from scratch, to try something different, to open your mind to fresh ideas. New paths are offered to you by the hour – literally. You don’t even have to get off the couch! Just turn on the Discovery or History or Science channel for a documentary on a new subject.
You don’t know yourself as well as you think you do. None of us is born knowing who we are or all that we are capable of learning, doing, creating, and giving. Each of us needs to get to know ourselves as young adults and then as middle-aged people and eventually as elders. And like getting to know another person, it takes time, effort, and commitment to pursue the journey of self-knowledge.
It is not unusual for me to hear people comment that they have no idea why they feel as they do or think this way or that. As I look at most of them, I realize that they have no intention of figuring out why. Not knowing is a permanent condition for them. They are content to not know why they think and feel the way they do. But in accepting such a state of being, a person remains walking in a type of life-fog, a psychic drug state, never understanding themselves, yet always expecting to be understood. You may not think that is incredible. I think not wanting to know yourself right down to your core is equal to choosing to spend your life on a hypnotic drip. You end up walking the streets of your life endlessly asking people, “Do you know what I should be doing with my life? Do I have a purpose? Where is my purpose? Have you seen it? Does my life have meaning? Do I have any life at all?”
You are the one in charge of discovering yourself. No one else is. Each choice you make is an opportunity for you to discover something new about your intellect or talent or capacity for love – or your survival skills, for that matter. Not all the crossroads you encounter are external dramas. Many are deep interior dramas that deal with personal issues of self-esteem and how you handle yourself.
This session is devoted to those deeply personal crossroads that we encounter in the privacy of our hearts and emotional spaces. But these crossroads are the invisible roads – and choices – of our lives that matter the most.
Here are some of the highlights of this session:
- Identifying the Crossroads of the heart.
- Self-esteem challenges at the crossroads.
- What does the higher path look like?
- What does “getting to know yourself” mean?
Lesson 6:
You and the Guru
In this session, you are the devotee escorting the Guru through your life. Imagine taking the Guru on a sojourn through the time line of your life, through all your memories and life choices. Imagine revealing to the Guru how you came to make the decisions you have in your life, both the ones you have always considered to be blessings as well as the ones you list as regrets.
Deeper than the obvious decisions, you have to bring the Guru into the intimate world of how you construct your reality. What is it that you believe is absolutely the truth about this universe? About the nature of God? About karma? About what happens to you after you die? What beliefs do you hold onto about reality that you know are simply not true at all, but you refuse to let them go? (I’ll help you out here: There is no Santa Claus, God was not born on December 25th and Earth is not the only planet with life on it in this entire universe – oh, and climate change is not a man-made myth. The climate really IS changing.)
Let me sum up the highlights from this session in this way:
This session is about establishing a template in your imagination between your personal world and the impersonal or between your subjective reality and the realm of cosmic reality. You are a devotee, a disciple of life, of Earth school, of the cosmos. Each of us is. Guru is a term given to a spiritual master, an enlightened Being. In this session the “Guru coordinate” will be introduced as your cosmic anchor, an imaginary polar opposite position that represents the impersonal you, cosmic truth, and the higher path.
About Caroline Myss
Caroline Myss is a five-time New York Times bestselling author and internationally renowned speaker in the fields of human consciousness, spirituality and mysticism, health, energy medicine, and the science of medical intuition. Caroline established her own educational institute in 2003, CMED (Caroline Myss Education), which offers a diverse array of programs devoted to personal development and draws students from all over the world. In addition to her written work, Caroline maintains a rigorous international workshop and lecture schedule and has produced more than eighty audio/visual products on subjects that include healing, spirituality, personal development, and the study of archetypes.
