Finding Ourselves in an Uncanny World

10k YouTube Subscribers Reflection and Celebration

I just hit 10k YouTube subscribers.  Woohoo!  Many YouTubers do celebratory Q&A’s and other sorts of self-reflective videos when they hit those landmark subscriber counts.  So I decided to do some reflection on the journey and challenge of finding ourselves in this day and age.

Starting YouTube

I started making YouTube videos in the most panicky part of the pandemic.  A few months in, when there was so much conflicting information, when the “we’re all in this together” vibe was fading and everyone was starting to argue about whether joggers should be wearing masks or if the lockdowns were doing more harm than good.

My thought process was “ok, the world is clearly in crisis, if there’s ever been a time for us to contribute what we can to help, it’s now.”

This crisis, for me, was a blessing.  I needed that pressure to force a change I didn’t feel ready to make.  The decision to start YouTubing wasn’t about me; I simply knew I had some tools that people could really use at this moment, and it felt selfish or insensitive not to share them.

But at the same time I knew this was something I wanted to do, I had previously just been too shy or scared to put myself out there so boldly.  Overcoming these inner fears and resistances was not easy.

At this point I had already been teaching meditation for about 5 years and had just finished my psychotherapy internship.  I was planning to slow down after an extremely busy year and take some time to reflect on my career ahead anyhow.  A few weeks before the pandemic hit I referred out many of my pay-what-you-can clients to other student therapists (as is custom), freeing up much needed downtime.

I already had resistances around presenting myself as a meditation teacher (something I talk about in my “My Journey” video).  I had grown up around Tibetan Lamas who had all done 3 year cave retreats and previously thought anything short of that was half-assing it.

It was actually the encouragement of my good buddy and meditation teacher Jeff Warren, and probably a lot of trickle down encouragement from his/our teacher Shinzen Young, that helped me see that we actually need many different types of meditation teachers -  and that I was especially well suited to teach meditation to a specific type of person.

Shifting Your Identity is Scary

In the first few months of my YouTubing I only told a few close friends.  I felt self-conscious about being seen or judged by some of my old friend groups.

Now this doesn’t really make logical sense.  I can’t think of a single person who would have judged me for making meditation videos, but there was this larger fear of no longer fitting in with the community I felt a part of.

In my 20s I had been a very social person in Toronto.  I was out every weekend - and many weeknights too - at all the cool parties and art openings.  I truly felt a sense of community in this scene. It was comforting to know I would be met with familiar and welcoming smiles across the city.

While that community was great, at some point it was no longer really doing it for me.  In Bill Plotkin’s book The Journey of Soul Initiation, he discusses two of the most important developmental needs in adolescence; owning our authentic self and finding acceptance and belonging in social groups.  But a key point being that these things need to happen together; we need to be able to express our authentic self and feel accepted by peers, and not create a false persona to meet the expectations of a social group.

Plotkin argues that if these needs are not met, we end up in an arrested state of development, never truly maturing into an authentic adulthood.  Plotkin further argues that true adults are quite rare, and this is one of the major reasons our world is so, uh… the way it is.  Very few “adults” are acting responsibly, in the best interest of the whole; and this is especially true for adults wielding corporate or political power.

I loved all my old friends, and didn’t feel like I was being fake with them or not being who I really was, but at the same time I recognized that I needed to engage with people in a deeper way that was more personally meaningful.  There was some part of myself that I wasn’t fully owning and expressing in these relationships.

And even though my friends were good people I still had this irrational fear that expressing my deepest interests - all the meditation and psychotherapy and healing and whatnot - would somehow lead to me being judged and maybe even cast out.

In retrospect I can see that this wasn’t actually going to happen, but this change signified a moving on from that part of my life.  It wasn’t that my old community would reject me, it was that I was ready for a new chapter and to truly move forward I needed to let go of the last one. It was the letting go of that part of my life that was the scary part.

The Fallacy of Choice

In spite of all these fears, the weight of my choices became clear.

At this time I was quite depressed.  I never had good feelings.  Never any sort of sensation on the spectrum of happiness or pleasure and it was really hard to muster motivation.  This is known as anhedonia, and is tied to a deactivation of the region of the brain involved in reward and motivation.

I had done countless hours of therapy with a variety of excellent therapists - privately and in groups.  I had poured myself into my meditation practice and done meditation retreats.  I had done A LOT of psychedelics (responsibly and with clear intention), including 100 ayahuasca ceremonies… I had tried just about everything and despite various breakthroughs and transcendent experiences I still remained relatively numb and inert.  I felt disconnected from life, and disconnected from myself.

James Hollis, a brilliant Jungian whose work was very supportive and validating for me during this time, aptly said that when we don’t listen to our soul - our innermost knowing of what we need for ourselves - it leaves us, and with it much of our life force and energy.

At this point it was clear that I didn’t really have a choice.  I knew that in my current lifestyle I would never feel better.  The only choice I had was to make a dramatic change and commit to a life that is more demanding of me, but also aligns with my most deeply held values.

I’m reminded of this Ursula K LeGuin line from her first book in the Earthsea series (which J.K. Rowling admitted was one of her main inspirations for the Harry Potter series).  The protagonist is on a journey to become powerful mage (wizard), when one of his mentors gives him a reality check:

“You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do…”

I can see now that some part of me was afraid to commit to a certain lifestyle, a certain vocation, a certain identity.  The more I committed to one thing, the more I gave up all the past things I connected with, as well as countless potentials - long-held dreams and fantasies - that could have been.

I was still holding onto this adolescent vision of freedom; that I could do all the cool fun things, that I could have it all.  This was in direct opposition to committing to a more meaningful life that actually reflected my values and interests, one where I was deeply responsible to other people.

Kierkegaard famously said that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, and I’m no expert on Kierkegaard but I think I get what he was saying.  In freedom there is limitless choice, and that’s dizzying.

Kierkegaard viewed anxiety as essential because it served as a reminder of the weight that comes with the freedom of choice.  And that actively choosing to be oneself was necessary to avoid falling into a cycle of self-loathing and despair.

This became so incredibly clear to me.  That my choice was between living the rest of my life in a numb despair, or to actually overcome my inner resistances and actually go after a life that felt truly meaningful.

So I went for it.  It wasn’t easy.  Even though I knew what I really valued - and knew that I was helping people - it was still a slog.  But it was also somehow ok, because I knew I was on the right path, and didn’t really have much of a choice anyhow.

I was hoping that as soon as I transitioned into this new career, this new me, that I would instantly start feeling better.  But that wasn’t the case.  It was a very slow transition, and took years for the inner heaviness to lift.  But it did.

What I’ve observed in myself, in others, and also heard from experts in the field (particularly from James Hollis) - is that the transition is never easy.  Jung famously said that there is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Sure, it may sometimes seem like the obvious choice, it may even look easy from the outside, but it’s always grueling.  We must confront uncomfortable truths and let our old selves die to make way for a new self to emerge.

But it’s also comforting to know that not only is this a natural process, but a necessary one.  At some point we all have to let go of some form of our identity to make way for more authentic parts to be realized.

Many older cultures knew this and had initiatory practices woven in to support this sort of transformation.  Even the custom of taking time off after school to go travel points to this sort of initiation; it offers us time outside of our normal environment that inevitably reinforces our old, limited sense of self. 

While these sorts of modern initiatory practices are undoubtedly helpful, they still lack a supportive framework to help people through the countless challenges that arise.  It’s my hope that modern initiatory experiences and understandings continue to evolve, helping to usher in a world of mature and responsible adults who are capable of overcoming the temptations of status, vanity, and greed - and instead act in deep alignment with our most deeply held values, and in the interest of our collective wellbeing.

I was going to leave it there, because you probably get what I’m saying, but I’ll say it anyway: The world needs us to show up and share our gifts.  It’s time.  Jung once said that he had never encountered a patient who, on some level, didn’t know what their soul was calling for.  The vision may not be clear, but usually the direction is. Step by step, we find our way.

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