Caroline Myss on creating chaos

A couple of years ago, I attended a workshop given by Carolyn Myss at the Crossings in Austin. I'd only a vague sense of who she was, but was intrigued enough to sign up. It was an unusual excursion for me, never having been before or since, nor even to the Crossing's sister retreat center in NY, oddly enough, near where we used to live. It was a terrific weekend, not only because Myss was a fascinating, moving speaker, but because (in a perfect case of synchronicity), an Austin friend I'd been trying to get together with for months, had also signed up for this workshop as a wild unknown on her own. It was the opposite of run of the mill, and we had a great time exploring this unfamiliar terrain together.

Today I received this from Myss.com and found it tremendously interesting:

Greetings myss.com subscribers

We are trying something new for the myss.com newsletter.

This content is from the past Austin healing workshop and we found it very interesting.

Have a great weekend.

For Teresa, again, the lower mansions are where you're going to do the work on your interior soul. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd – the most difficult mansion you're going to have to work with, the 1st mansion, of course, ties you to humiliation, chaos and the seduction of God, where you have to look at patterns of chaos in yourself and illness is a pattern of chaos, when you tie illness to chaos and how illness has created chaos in your life, how change has created chaos and how chaos has become a comfort zone, because it does. (Illness, not chaos)

In a chaotic way, you can create chaos for people - for example, an alcoholic. An alcoholic can create a lot of chaos for everybody, but it's his comfort zone – it's his comfort zone. And so, his idea of healing that chaos is very threatening, it doesn't work. Taking away his chaos is the worst thing in the world for him. So, for an alcoholic to have to admit, I create a lot of chaos is a moment of great enlightenment, but it's very threatening because that chaos is a sanctuary for him, it's a form of power, it's destruction for everyone else, but for him (or her) it's complete authority, it's a language.

You come up to the alcoholic and you say to him, "You have a problem," and before you have anything, the house is burning down, because he's convinced he doesn't have a problem, and the chaos is the blockade. We all something like that that has to do with the illness. Even if the chaos is the madness is where we can't figure out why in our insistence that we must have a reason, and the idea that there isn't a reason and what if this just an experience, what if this is (as John of the Cross would say) just a Dark Night, a situation where there is no reason and I simply need to battle my addiction to having to have a reason. I have an addiction to needing to have a reason, and that is what's breaking me in two, is because I am in a situation where there is no reason, and it's me versus God. And I insist on having a reason and heaven is saying, "So, sit there. I'm not giving you a reason, pout, starve, I don't care what you do. It is what it is, and that's the reason. Because I said so, and that's all that you need to do is endure. Bask in your self pity or just say so there it is, it is as it is."

Austin Healing Healing workshop 2007.