Caroline Myss and the Shadow

Although I'm a huge fan of Caroline Myss (see yesterday's post), like everyone else she too has an apparent shadow side. I first observed this a few weeks ago at the conference I attended to hear her speak (I Can Do It! - Tampa). I was fascinated by what she was saying, but her lecture had a definite edge to it. For example, she said to the group, "Your mother and father didn't love you? So what? I don't care that your mother and father didn't love you!" Her point was that people need to get themselves out of their self-pity and self-focus, but she can come across as a bit harsh despite this important message.

Immediately following the lecture, I heard two women talking outside. One had attended the lecture, and the other hadn't. The woman who attended was telling her friend that she "felt like she was in church" and noted the fire-and-brimstone flavor of the talk. I chuckled to myself because I could relate, yet still I found Caroline's message to be ultimately important and affirming. When I later described the workshop to my partner, I said it had an SM quality to it. At times, Caroline seemed angry and punishing, but then she would soften the tone and say the most exquisitely loving things to the audience.

Later that evening, I attended Doreen Virtue's keynote workshop, open to the entire conference. She is a warm, delightful speaker with a great sense of humor (you can hear her on her internet radio show at Hay House Radio). Like Caroline, she is an intuitive, but Doreen works with the angel realm. Caroline is a medical intuitive, and also senses the archetypal patterns in people, so you would expect a reading given by these two women to take rather different approaches.

Well, these approaches completely clashed later in the evening. There were hundreds of people in the audience, most of whom wanted Doreen to do a reading for them. It is fascinating to see Doreen do a reading, because with little or no information she is able to talk to a randomly chosen audience member with complete ease and accuracy. One of the last people to be chosen for a reading was a woman from Brazil. She was a massage therapist, and said that she had a life-long dream of being a healer. Immediately Doreen confirmed that the angels supported her in that path, and that she was meant to be a healer. The woman looked relieved, yet also frustrated. She said that earlier in the day she had told Caroline Myss about her desire to be a healer, and Caroline bluntly replied that she did not see the healer archetype in her "at all." Direct contradiction between two great intuitives! Perhaps there is a way to reconcile these two readings, but nevertheless the incident was rather jarring.

When I returned home from the conference, I told my partner how much I had enjoyed hearing Caroline Myss speak. He dug out the Sacred Contracts 5 CD set he bought several years ago, and I listened to them for the first time. It is an excellent set, and I highly recommend it along with the book Sacred Contracts. Since I enjoyed the CDs so much, I looked at the Amazon reviews for her Entering the Castle 9 CD set. I was somewhat surprised to see that several Amazon reviewers rated the set with only 1 star out of a possible 5. However, when I started reading the reviews, I realized that many of the reviewers were complaining about the same harsh tone I had a taste of at the conference (although from the reviews, it sounds like the CDs are worse).

Regardless, I still plan to listen to the Entering the Castle CDs after I've worked with the book for a while longer. If her tone on the CDs is anything like her tone at the conference, it is clear to me that many people are far too quick to take offense. What I witnessed at Caroline's lecture was a woman who is an incredible visionary. She speaks with tremendous passion, and a conviction that what she is saying is useful, relevant, and important to every person in the audience. She is not trying to get people to like her, or even to buy her products. She is saying what she believes, and she is not sugar-coating anything. I found her candor and honesty impressive. And what she is talking about is far beyond programs like "The Secret" or other programs designed for getting what you want (or what you think you want). She addresses the very highest levels of spiritual practice and possibility, and she pushes her audiences to meet her at that level. I love her for that.