Oooga Booga

Many of the self-help books I read suggest the secret to understanding your present lies in the study of your childhood experiences. In fact, one popular theory hints that if you are willing to divvy out significant cash and spend sufficient time sprawled on a leather couch, you will be able to unearth enough evidence from your past to justify any aberration. But what if your Dad didn’t wear your Mom’s Wonderbra in private? What if your mom didn’t make scrambled eggs in the nude? What if your brothers and sister actually share the same father? Not much justification for dysfunction there!  You’ll never secure a spot on Dr. Phil with those credentials

I suspect to some extent we all come out of childhood, members of the “walking wounded.” And everywhere we look we are told there is plenty to fix. Damn…there’s a self-help smorgasbord out there! When I began my awakening every Oprah segment threatened to expose me! Was I holding on to the past, unable to forgive, or was I not asserting myself, afraid to set boundaries? I “felt the fear and did it anyway,” I embraced my inner child, I chanted to the recordings of Tibetan monks, cleansed my colon, and had my Chakras aligned. I hung crystals around my neck and affirmed love into my feminine body parts. I aroused my primal chi. I had my chart analyzed, my aura read, and my energy field boosted. Had my house feng shui’d, my carcass reiki-touched, and my spirit guides channeled. I invoked my power animals and danced under the moon of the winter solstice. I even climbed the twelve steps to addiction and built a meditation sanctuary that could rival Fort Knox. (Note:  Never once in the middle of this frenzy did I stop to question why much of my spiritual enlightenment was requiring my Visa number.)

And what did I learn you breathlessly ask? Have I fixed my damaged psyche? Has my search to become whole and enlightened been successful? Well…admittedly, progress has been slow.  But I just got a hot tip on a healer who is going to release my repressed angst with a tincture of peppermint and clove oil. I’m hot on her trail.