My friend introduced me, so to speak, to Caroline Myss, and this year I've read her book and listened to her tapes. Myss (pronounced "meece") has a quirky sense of humor that is pronounced in her talks, a humor that is more subtle in her book. She wasn't born with her particular skill, and she frankly describes her fight against becoming too familiar with it.

Educated in convent schools, she grew up in a Catholic structure that she often took issue with. After getting a degree in journalism and going through what she termed "a dark night of the soul" in her career, she went into a Catholic college to pursue a master's degree and wrote her thesis on mysticism and schizophrenia--the madness encountered on the path toward spiritual sanity. Later, I would come to see that my very feeling of powerlessness had led me to study power, for the lives of mystics are lessons in physical, emotional, and spiritual bereavement and disempowerment, followed by rebirth into a new relationship to power. Behind closed doors, through anguish and ecstasy, mystics gain access to the spirit, access so profound that they become capable of breathing an energy, like Divine electricity, into ordinary words and acts.

It is the power of each person, its use and misuse, and how it has been affected by all the events in one's life that Myss seeks to read when asked for a medical diagnosis. She says:

When I was still new to intuition, I had not yet made the connection between disease, healing, and personal power, but I now believe that power is the foundation of health. My own objectivity--my symbolic perspective on life--helps me to evaluate people's relationships to power and how power influences their bodies and spirits.

What is a medical intuitive? A person who, without physical testing, can read the energy of a person's body, frequently by knowing only the person's name and age, and is given images that illustrate the illness(es). Myss discovered, as she learned human anatomy, that her images became more specific, and as she read more people, she learned:

It [the information received in a reading] showed me how the emotional, psychological, and physical stress in the subjects' lives had contributed to the development of their illness....I began to see that no illness develops randomly,....I was able to identify the emotional, psychological, and physical stress patterns of nearly a hundred different illnesses.

There are two major sections to this book: the first describes energy medicine and intuition, the second describes the body's energy centers (called chakras, from the Hindu teachings) and what each person needs to think about in relation to each chakra.

What is most relevatory is her continuing emphasis that:

your biography--that is, the experiences that make up your life--becomes your biology....The emotions from these experiences become encoded in our biological systems and contribute to the formation of our cell tissue, which then generates a quality of energy that reflects those emotions.

Not one of us is free from power issues. We may be trying to cope with feelings of inadequacy or powerlessness, or we may be trying to maintain control over people or situations that we believe empower us, or we may be trying to maintain a sense of security (a synonym for power) in personal relationships....Our relationship to power is at the core of our health.

Myss then lists seven guidelines for learning symbolic sight ("the ability to use your intuition to interpret the power symbols in your life"), followed by the second part of the book describing what she calls the seven sacred truths of energy medicine which follows the seven chakras of the body. Between these two sections, though, is a chapter called "Made in the Image of God."

As I noted earlier, the seven chakras are described in the Hindu tradition. Myss was struck by their correlation with the seven sacraments of the Christian (and more particularly Catholic) tradition, and then learned that the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah of the Jewish tradition also has seven levels, some with two parts. She correlates and defines them as: Level 1 is All is One; Level 2 is Honor One Another; Level 3 is Honor Oneself; Level 4 is Love is Divine Power; Level 5 is Surrender Personal Will to Divine Will; Level 6 is Seek Only Truth; and Level 7 is Live in the Present Moment. In bringing these three traditions together in describing the seven energy centers in the body, Myss says,

Again and again the sacred texts tell us that our life's purpose is to understand and develop the power of our spirit, power that is vital to our mental and physical well-being. Abusing this power depletes our spirit and siphons the life-source itself out of our physical bodies....every belief we nurture, every memory to which we cling translates into a positive or negative command to our bodies and spirits.... Once this truth becomes a part of your conscious mind, you can never again live an ordinary life.

I had mentioned that several other women and I had been getting together to talk about this book and relate experiences that we had individually been through. At one meeting I mentioned reading about labyrinths, and so the following meeting we watched a video of Marty Kane describing how she created a labyrinth in the quadrangle of Radcliffe College.

Within a month, one of the other women had dowsed and mowed the path for a labyrinth in the meadow beside her home. Several of us met to walk it one June evening. I had no immediate sense of gaining energy during the walk in and out, but we had dowsed each other's auras before and after the walk, and mine had improved. Not only that, but a physical ailment that had been bothering me for about six weeks ended that day, and my health has improved to normalcy.

While we have energy language in our culture (i.e., feeling drained, spark of life), we are often unaware of the truth of the words, and generally have little or no knowledge of how to more effectively help ourselves. The last section of Anatomy of the Spirit, in which Myss describes each chakra center and the issues which affect each most strongly, can be an excellent guide, provided one is willing to answer her questions fully and honestly.

For instance, at the end of the description of the sixth chakra, the energy center for seeking only the truth, she suggests that you ask yourself:

What beliefs do you have that cause you to interpret the actions of others in a negative way?

Then I considered the number of times that I've attended a group function, and perhaps talked briefly to two or three people that I knew. It's almost inevitable that I'll then move to the fringes of small groups centered around someone I'd like to talk with, but I have a difficult time breaking in. Finally, it just gets to be too much of being alone in a crowd, and I leave.

The actions of the others are interpreted as having no interest in interacting with me. And the belief? I'm not an interesting person and haven't been during just about all of my life. A belief that is exacerbated by a poor ability to converse in generalities with groups of people.

The truth, though? In small groups and one-on-ones with good friends, I have no problem in conversing and offering great ideas. So I need to work on living that truth more fully and in a wider arena.

That's an example of the way that Myss' questions ask you to think. At the end of the book is a short chapter called "A Guide for the Contemporary Mystic" with, again, things to focus on as you are meditating on your energy system. She closes with:

Through this self-evaluation you will develop the skill of reading energy and sensing intuitive guidance. Developing this skill requires daily practice--in times of crisis, even hourly.... We need but close our eyes and feel the energy of the sacraments, the sefirot, the chakras, as the origin of our own power--as the energy that fuels our biology. Ironically, once we realize the stuff of which we are made, we have no choice but to live a spiritual life.

Cherie Staples