In my many years of medical training, I recall the first time that I was able to pause and take a fully relaxed breath. I had completed my medical internship and signed up as a physician at a health center in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. That was when I was able to take that first full breath.
I still have a vivid recollection of relaxing in my new apartment, sitting on a soft sofa in the corner of the family room, and reading The Greening of America by Charles Reich. I recall thumbing through the pages, when I came upon a chapter entitled “The Lost Self.” It instantly drew my attention, and I can still recall how deeply I was touched. We all have had the experience of a single word or phrase touching a tender spot. That was such a moment. A sense of sadness, and joy arose, all at once.
Reich went on to list those things that we forget in our usual busyness. Here is my list: the sunset, stillness, relating, playing, deep loving, patience, listening, treasuring the moment, and kindness. Add to this list as you wish.
It was as if his simple few words – the lost self – had broken through years of one-dimensional living. I had learned the theory, research, and practices of a brilliant medicine, but at the price of living. I learned about clinical medicine, but little about the human that is central to the healing process. And that, I was to discover, was costly for both myself and my patients.
That recognition led to a rush of questioning, reading, and reflection. I opened to feelings and emotions that were denied for many years. There was more ease, heart, and family time. A more vital life took root. In time, I progressively assumed this new and expanded sense of self.
There was a second recognition that came years later, when I was well established in medical practice and my householding and child rearing responsibilities were completed. I once again had time to take a deep breath and reflect. Although, I had achieved all I had set out to accomplish in life, something was still missing. Is this all there is, I thought? Do I just sit back and live the fruits of my earlier efforts? What more could there be? As I reflected, I had a sense that there was an even deeper self that had eluded my awareness.
I read and re-read the self-development books that had previously guided me to a saner life, seeking an answer to what was missing. However, rather than discovering a specific answer, I discovered that revealing this final lost self did not require further self-improvement methods, more reading, or additional understandings. It required a sustained inner stillness, a receptivity to the innermost voice of life. That is the traditional path to directly experiencing the true self – cultivating a still and unconditioned awareness.
For me, this led once again to taking a pause in medical practice, leaving my usual home, and settling into a quieter, natural setting to silently listen to my inner voice. With patience and time, I began to discover the second and deeper lost self. It was more subtle, defied words, and did not assert or promote itself. This inner home felt authentic, true, trustworthy, and free of all previous identities. Just a glimpse was deeply reassuring. Just a glimpse revealed to me that this was the true center of life – an ultimate self that had no name or configuration.
It is not that I had not touched this sense of the innermost self before. I had, in the midst of nature, intimacy, art, beauty, and other circumstances. But I took these moments as fleeting pleasurable experiences. I enjoyed them and watched them quickly dissipate. They were indeed glimpses of my true self. Unfortunately, I had the experience but missed the real meaning.
The first self lost in medical training was the loss of a healthy personal self. The deeper self, that, unknown to me, I had lost early in life, was my essential true self. I slowly realized that I could not live a full life without living from that foundational center of my being That’s what propelled me toward the study and practice of meditation – a yearning to reclaim with stability this unchanging essence of my life, this more primary and vital lost self.
That self has nothing to do with the personal self and its accumulated identities, habits, and patterns. These are acquired throughout life as a means of accommodating to early trauma, familial, educational, or cultural demands. The true self has nothing to do with self-improvement or self-development. Our true self is there from infancy, innate to our existence. Although obscured from awareness by the thick veils of the personal self, it remains ever-present, untouched, and uncontaminated by past history and trauma. It is the pure and simple truth of who we are.
This homecoming was not such an easy task. It has taken reflection, devotion, and practice to begin to pull back the obscuring veils and be with the true self that lies on the other side. It has taken perseverance to return again and again to reclaim it. But, once touched and re-touched there is no longer an alternative, is there? Our life becomes a one-way street, continuously returning home to who and what we truly are.