Patrick Donovan, ND

About the Book: Forty Years of Sacred Space

After forty-three years in the sacred space of caring for patients, Dr. Patrick Donovan shares his observations and thoughts about illness and healing. He believes illness serves us by acting as life’s transformative process. As such, the journey through our illness may be precisely the very experiential journey we need to realize our healing and ourselves more fully. After all, we don’t “get” cancer. Cancer, like any illness, is a process. We “are” the cancer we manifest. Our cancer arises out of our own tissues and cellular make up. To rid our self of our cancer is to rid our self of a part of our self.

Instead of thinking about illness as something we “get,” something separate from ourselves needing to be removed or defeated, Dr. Donovan thinks we might well do better viewing our illness as a transformational journey that must be undertaken and completed for our healing to emerge. We can’t get rid of our selves, but we can transform ourselves and our illness provides us with that opportunity. It allows us our healing. Dr. Donovan’s website is http://seattlenaturopath.net/.

Chapter Six – Fear and the Old Prayer

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”
(Marianne Williamson, Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”)

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility,
and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
(Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents)

“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.”
( J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin)

The Old F—k You Prayer

Just as I have come to realize the utility of illness in the healing process, I have come to appreciate fear as a function of courage. Courage can only be realized in the presence of fear.  Upon asking if a man can still be brave if he is afraid, Bran is told by his father, in George R.R. Martin’s, A Game of Thrones, “That is the only time a man can be brave!” Our bravery and courage to continue forward through fear is a function of our will. Fear strengthens our will; clarifies our will. It teaches us how precious and dear life is to us and how precious and dear we are to ourselves. Fear, when we conquer it and move through it, is a functional aspect of will. However, when we are caught in it, when fear controls us, it becomes a dysfunctional form of will. When this happens, it drags us into an entropic paralysis where living becomes a greater threat to us than dying. I have watched too many of my patients allow themselves to be dragged into this place of paralysis by fear to the point where they unconsciously choose death rather than courageously face living.

Now I can certainly understand how the unremitting stresses of our lives can wear on us over time. Some of the many life stories I have heard over these years have been heartrending and distressing enough just to hear and be present for. As I am writing this very paragraph, I am disturbed by a phone call from one of my good colleagues and past students. After nearly two years of going through a father’s hell with his son’s cancer, his young son and only child, was just found to have another recurrence of his high-risk neuroblastoma. Few children survive these high-risk forms. I am a father; I can only imagine his struggle, his pain, and his feelings of helplessness and guilt. We talked about this for a while. Life, and its many struggles, can be too much to bear at times for many of us. At those times it feels easier to “tap the mat” and give up the fight, than it does to continue onward. The fear of living through more pain and yet another struggle can sometimes be more acutely threatening to us than the fear of death itself. This is the time the old “f—k you” prayer, as clarified for me by an elderly Irish priest, comes in handy.

In 2007, I was experiencing a lot of grief and emotional pain working through a divorce, a move, caring for my ill and deteriorating parents as well as my children, and managing a medical practice while also teaching. After slamming the trunk of my car on my head (forgetting the bike rack was still on it) and knocking myself out on my driveway in the pouring rain one frustrating November evening, I decided I had enough and needed to get away for a while and go to Ireland. I rented a small cottage in a little village outside of Glendalough. This cottage happened to be near to the only church in this village. One Sunday, trying to escape the monotonous and incessant pounding of the Irish rain on the “tin” roof of my cottage, I went driving the Irish roads. I drove them like the angry and crazy Irishman I was at the time, swearing at myself and the Universe for the seemingly endless torment of struggle I had been experiencing. Anyone who has driven the Irish country roads knows how bad of an idea this was. After going over a small bridge and realizing my tires weren’t touching the road due to my speed, I decided it was time to get back to the cottage and take a deep breath.

As I approached the cottage well after ten o’clock in the evening, I noticed a light on in the church rectory. Father Kevin was still up. Now I had never meant Father Kevin but I knew I needed to talk to someone of his ilk so that I might be able to clarify some choices I had to make. I knocked at Father Kevin’s door and he greeted me with a smile and his priestly collar undone and invited me in. “Tea, my son?” “Yes, sure Father. That would be great,” I replied. We began to talk. In the midst of our conversation, Father Kevin asked me if I had been praying. I told him, “Yes Father. I have been praying but you might not approve of the delivery or style of prayer.”

“How have ya been prayin’ now, my son?” he asked. I told him the best I could do as a prayer was to punch the steering wheel of the car as I was driving and shout at God saying, “F—k you! F—k you! F—k you!” Well, with that said Father Kevin promptly stood up, walked to the cabinet next to us, pulled out a small bottle of Irish whiskey and poured a shot into each of our cups of tea and sat down. Then he said, with the most understanding sparkle in his eye, “Ah yes, the old f—k you prayer. I know it well.” We talked long that good night, well into the early morning hours.

THE SHADOW OF LIGHT

I came to Ireland to be alone again in some very powerful places… to realize again the deep Celtic heart of this land… of my heart and the heart of my father(s). I came to Ireland to heal a broken heart and face down the “beasts” of my own shadow and the shadow of my father(s). It was a powerful experience facing them both at the same time alone in the land of their origin… in the dark, heavy, melancholy and unremitting rain and dampness of this proud yet so deeply wounded place. Driven by my personal inquisition and the genetic beasts of my inner narrative, I found myself at the rectory door of an Irish priest and the conversation of a lifetime. I then began to understand the darkness… its power to transform things and invite the light… no, its power to demand of the light its presence… demand the light TO BE. Light emerges from the darkness… always overcomes yet contains the darkness within itself. This is the blood-truth of the Celtic soul. This is the blood-truth of life.
P. Donovan, Dublin, 2007

I learned something that night from Father Kevin. When we are faced with the fear and frustration of living due to the incessant and overwhelming torment of our struggle; when we find ourselves thinking more about dying than we are about living, it is time for “the old f—k you prayer” and it’s alright. It’s alright to be angry and fed up with ourselves and the life situation we find ourselves in. It is alright to say, “F—k you!” to the world and to ourselves when we have had enough. It can even be therapeutic to say “Fuck you!” to The Divine and let The Divine know we are at the end of our resources. It is out of this frustration and anger, change and healing emerge. The key here, however, is change. We must then do something to change our situation and not allow ourselves to be a victim of it any longer. That something most likely will require three things:

1. Identifying, facing and overcoming the deep, secret fear that is at the source of our struggle and illness;
2. Thinking creatively so that what we chose to do isn’t the same thing we’ve been doing leading us to the same outcomes repeatedly. To continue to do the same thing and expect a different outcome is hopeless if not to say ridiculous.
3. Asking for help from our own “Father Kevin.”  That could be anyone we respect, professional or personal, who can go to the burning ground with us and be present for our story. They then can act as a sounding board outside the box and reflect back to us our struggle with new perspectives we could not see before. A trained healthcare provider can be invaluable here. 

The Secret Fear

Many of us have had and may still have a fear of the dark. It is theorized by most schools of psychology, our fear of the dark arises from our fear of the unknown and the possibility of unseen dangers lurking in the depth of the darkness threatening our survival. This is certainly an important component of the fear of the dark. However, I am going to suggest a theory here that is something completely different, one involving a primal fear that is rarely acknowledged or discussed. I suggest our fear of the dark comes from the fear of our own light. As with healing requiring illness for its realization and fulfillment, and life requiring death for its renewal and regeneration, the manifestation and appearance of our own light requires the darkness for its expression. Light is not light without the essential possibility and existential reality of darkness.

We all know dark places require light to reveal not only the unseen dangers hidden there but also the pathway leading us out. Light is power. It reveals and makes clear to us our pathway on our journey in this life and the dangers we need to avoid. If we are the one holding the flashlight in the dark forest at night with friends, we have the power of discernment and clarity. To paraphrase psychologist and mythologist Eric Neumann, light is the symbol of consciousness and self-awareness. Only in that light can we know our way in the world.¹ From Neumann’s perspective then, for us to manifest our light and illuminate our way through the dark places in our life, we need to be conscious and self-aware. I agree with Neumann. I think our light is revealed to us and illuminates our way when we live consciously in our authenticity. When we live creatively the fullness of who we are, accountable to and responsible for ourselves and our choices, we manifest our light to the world and the meaning of our life is revealed to us in that light.

Oh, but even as I write this, “accountable to and responsible for ourselves and our choices,” something inside of me shutters with fear. Something in those words makes me draw back and reconsider. Why? Why is it, that not only me but nearly everyone with whom I have known in my personal and professional experience retracts in some way from these words of accountability and responsibility? I have come to realize it is because of fear. What we truly fear about our light is the responsibility and accountability required of us and the freedom it generates when we live in the light of our truth. Freud informs us, “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” Ego has no way out when we are responsible and accountable. It can’t protect itself by projecting its failures or deficits on to someone or something else. It must be accountable to them and responsible for them and risk the judgment, criticism, or even punishment that may result.

Freedom is scary. I remember backpacking and hitchhiking around Ireland in 1971, when I was nineteen years old. It was just me, my backpack, and my guitar. I was fully accountable to and responsible for no one else but myself at the time. I had no “planned” destination and woke up every morning with the excitement of the new adventure the day would bring. I was free! It was one of the best times of my life, yet one of the most frightening. I was too young to know who I was then and too frightened to find out. So I left Ireland and came home earlier than I planned after weeks roaming the Irish countryside by myself discovering my freedom.

I find many of my patients in this same predicament regarding their illness. They are too limited in their knowledge of who they are and why they may be ill and too frightened to find out; frightened of the light of their own self-revelation and the freedom it allows them. Their fear restrains them and holds them back in illness; prevents them from realizing the story of their healing hidden in the story of their illness. Their story of healing calls them into accountability and offers them freedom. For many, this is too frightening. Instead, the proposition of death and illness is easier for them to handle then the riskier proposition of freedom and the self-revelation healing offers.

I am now convinced the greatest actual obstacle to our healing is our fear of being well. Healing and wellness carry with them the promise of freedom and that promise can be frightening for many of us, especially if our illness works for us in some dysfunctional way. This fear is not easily revealed or discussed by us. When it is revealed to us, we will have to act on it. Therefore, it is kept in a secret unconscious place by our ego so that it won’t be discovered and called out. When it is discovered, our ego protests loudly with intellectual rationalizations and excuses because it doesn’t want to give up the habits of our illness easily even if they are self-destructive; it doesn’t want to give up the security, comfort, pleasures, or control our illness offers us. This may be hard to understand for many people reading this. But I swear I have seen this many, many times with my patients suffering from chronic illness. This is especially true when their illness allows them some sort of dysfunctional control or is a result of unhealthy diets and lifestyles that give them pleasure. In such scenarios, our illness becomes the excuse for our failure to live fully and authentically.

I first got an eye-opening glimpse of this scenario many years ago when I was caring for a middle-aged woman with M.S. In a deep and probing conversation with her in my office, she told me her husband of twenty-eight years had made some substantial changes since her illness with regards to their marriage. When I asked her how he had changed, she told me he was now coming home from work every night to take care of her instead of hanging out until late drinking with his men friends. He even made her dinner most nights now. Before her paralyzing illness, he wasn’t coming home until after eight o’clock in the evening and gave her little attention. Now, she had all the attention from him she wanted and needed. In fact, with more probing questions on my part, I discovered she was actually able to control him with her illness. She used helplessness and guilt as her mechanisms of control. Through her illness, she was now able to get what she wanted from her husband. If she was to get well again, she would risk losing that attention from him and control of him. She settled instead for M.S. because it worked so well for her. Partial paralysis was a reasonable price to pay for his attention and she no longer had to openly deal with the interpersonal and personal problems that contributed to their marriage woes driving her husband away from home every night.

The choices we make regarding our fear of freedom; our fear of coming into our full power as an individual, are not commonly conscious choices. We don’t usually plan out how we are going to avoid our fear of freedom and responsibility. We aren’t even typically aware this fear exists because it hides so deeply in our unconscious and is protected so well by our ego mind. The woman I described above with M.S., didn’t sit and consciously plan all day long how she was going to use her illness to control her husband. She wasn’t even consciously aware she was controlling him with it. She just knew he was now giving her what she had wanted from him for many years. With this state of affairs set up for her by her illness, could we really expect her to want to get well? She has become comfortable being a victim of her illness. It works for her. The freedom her healing promises contains within it the threat of chaos, change, and loss of the dysfunctional arrangement she has been enjoying with her husband. From her perspective, the cost of her healing is more than she is willing to pay. 

For me, these patients are the hardest patients to work with because all that is done for them to help them get well is unconsciously sabotaged. They must look like they are working hard to get well because this pacifies their inner conflict but underneath it all, they are frightened of what their healing promises. We don’t have to be a patient with an illness to experience this situation. We experience it all of the time with various situations in our lives. We are frightened of who we are and who we can be when we live authentically the fullness of our being. We are frightened of the freedom living so boldly can bring us. Instead we rationalize our victimization and use it to cover up the fact that underneath it all, we are scared to death of our potentialities and possibilities; scared to death of realizing our own power and authority as an individual expression of The Divine.

Creativity Is the True Healer

Chaos appears to be the root of life’s creativity as it is described in systems and chaos theory. It functions as a harbinger of change forcing living systems to creatively transform and adapt to that change. When it occurs in our lives, I see chaos as an invitation from life, to change. I have witnessed the illness in people’s lives, acting as a chaotic event; inviting them to change their life in some way. The change requested of them is always one requiring them to live more fully the person they were born to be; requiring them to live more authentically, more productively, and more compassionately involved with life and the world around them. When we discover the secret fear that holds us back from living more fully, that has kept us trapped in our comfort zone of limited freedom and accountability even when it includes illness, we would do well to face it and overcome it. This demands creative thinking.

When we accept life’s invitation for greater life and decide to change the way we are living so we can more fully realize our light, we must be creative. Creativity gives us the ability to transcend our fear, to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, and relationships that may be limiting and dysfunctional to our growth, keeping us in the cycle of illness. Creativity is “the elixir of life” that heals and transforms life. Through the creative process we enter a sacred place. We enter that zone of evolution where the world lights up to itself as we light up to the world. In the moment we are fully present in the act of creating we are reunited with the magic that gave us birth; reunited with the waters of the wellspring of life. Creativity is the source of the River of Life from which all creative energy and vitality issue forth to be manifested as new life. Through every creative act, life fulfills itself. Therefore, through every creative act we enter into, we transcend the mortality of our three dimensional ego-self and enter the realm of immortality to become one with our greater self as Thou, one with The Divine. In the creative act we become a self-realized collaborator with The Divine in the creation of our life story and of the world. Through creativity, we are revitalized and delivered from the chaos of illness into the dynamic order and freedom of a new life.

When I graduated from nursing school in 1976, I began working at The Cleveland Clinic on the post-op open heart surgery unit and then infectious diseases intensive care. I worked three different shifts in a week and worked long, stressful hours. I had just broken off a five-year engagement with the wedding planned. In my off time, I was being formally trained in western mystical traditions and Jewish Kabbalah. It was a difficult time of much change. I needed the medicine creativity offered me. I needed to paint again! I needed to go back home again where that magic that connected me to something greater than myself existed.

One day, on my way home from work, I bought a large 34” x 52” canvas. I lived in a one-bedroom apartment with little space to spare. So I shoved my bed up against the wall and turned it on its side to make room for my painting. I struggled at first as though I had never painted before finding myself in a vulgar conversation with an inanimate object… my canvas. Then it happened! I broke through the limitations of my limited thinking and began to “feel” the painting on the canvas. The more I felt it, the more it flowed and I painted. I painted all night and into the next morning through my alarm for work. I called in sick and continued painting all day and all night rarely breaking to drink, eat or use the bathroom. I called in sick again and kept painting. I painted for seventy-two hours straight without stopping. Better stated, something painted through me for seventy-two hours, something of magic.

I accessed something greater than myself, when I painted that picture. I stepped outside of who I was in the limited sense of myself caught in my struggle and fear and merged with a greater experience of myself as Thou, as The Divine. I became the brush in the hand of a greater artist. I became “the hollow bone,” the conduit for the waters of life. As I painted, I was healed and my life was changed. When we access the magic of creativity we step outside of time and our mortal selves to become immortal for a moment. It doesn’t matter what we create: a painting, a garden, a poem, or a bench. Whatever it is we create, it will heal us where we are wounded and free us where we are imprisoned by our fear. Creativity is the true healer.

Imagination is essential for creativity. It guides and directs our creativity in our visualization of wellness. Imagination becomes “the substance of things hoped for” as described biblically in the definition of faith. For us to creatively overcome our fear and change our lives, we will need to employ imagination. It has been said, “What we can imagine, we can accomplish.” However, as I have stated earlier, I am astonished at how so many of my patients can’t imagine what their life would be like if they were without their illness and fear. Asking them to imagine this is one of the homework exercises I give them and rarely do they accomplish it. It appears to be a difficult task for many of them. The question that comes up here for me is: “Is it that they lack imagination or is it that they unconsciously feel threatened by the possibility of being well?” 

The Not-So-Secret Fear

Paul Tilich tells us, “Fear of death determines the anxiety in every fear,” and “… anxiety in its nakedness, is always the anxiety of nonbeing.”² I agree with his statement but find it extremely ironic that the two most primary fears we deal with deep in our psyches are so conflicting; the fear of dying and the fear of living our full potential. We certainly fear dying and becoming nonexistent. There is no doubt about that. This is a fear we openly accept and talk about often: “I have a fear of flying.” “I have a fear of drowning.” “I have a fear of falling, a fear of cancer, etc.” How many times do we hear ourselves confess these fears openly? But how often do we hear ourselves say we are afraid of living? “I am afraid to be all that I can be.” “I am afraid to be successful.” “I am afraid to be healthy or get well, etc.”

As I have already shared, I have seen the fear of living regularly play a bigger role in illness than the fear of dying. However, both do have a role. When we find ourselves being called by our struggle or our illness to wake up to a change in ourselves that is needed for our continued growth and evolution, we must first find out what fear lies beneath it. To identify the fear that limits us in our struggle and illness is to identify the denizen of our unconscious that needs to be slain; the gift that needs to be sacrificed in the fire of our burning ground. Are we frightened of our death or are we frightened of our power and freedom?

The fear of death will show itself in our resistance to let go of something old and familiar that has served us and is no longer beneficial to our growth. This could be a memory of a wounding, a belief, a relationship, a way of thinking, a lifestyle, or a dietary pattern. Our ego mind will of course protest loudly and try to make a trade for something of less value. Our heart will know what has seen its time. Always, when we let go of something that has served us, we let go of it in gratitude and love for what it has given us. When we slay our dragons, they are slayed with love. When we sacrifice our gifts to the fire of the burning ground they are laid upon the fire with gratitude. When we do this, what has served us well, will always be a part of us but no longer an obstruction to us.

The fear of our own power and the freedom it brings us will show itself more insidiously. We will make all sorts of excuses as to why we can’t do whatever it is we are being called to do for us to live more fully. The tell-tale sign of this fear is what I call the victim soliloquy, “I can’t because of…”  “I have no say in this.” “It is out of my power.” “Such and such made me do it.” As I am writing this, I am laughing at myself because I’m thinking of how many times I still sing this soliloquy to myself and the world. I am thinking further how much we all must sing this familiar declamation of powerlessness when we are asked to be more and live more who we were born to be in our fullest. I say, when we hear its monotonous oration in our heads and our speech, we pause a moment and say the old prayer to ourselves and then go ahead and change what we can change. As poet Dylan Thomas instructs, “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

References

1. Neumann E: The Origins and History of Consciousness. 104
2. Tillich P: The Courage To Be. Yale Univ. Press, 1952; 38

Published April 22, 2023

About the Author

Patrick Donovan, ND, is a primary care naturopathic physician, author and educator voted by his peers as one of Seattle’s “Top Doctors” in the Seattle Metropolitan Magazine. He has also served as an adjunct clinical professor of medicine at Bastyr University for many years and was one of 23 physicians featured in Burton Goldberg’s book, An Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide to Cancer. He has over 40 years of professional patient care experience. Dr. Donovan is also a poet, artist, and musician. When he is not seeing patients at University Health Clinic, he can be commonly found puttering in his garden at home in Shoreline, Washington, with a cup of tea or glass of wine waxing philosophical or “jamming” on guitar with his son. His website is http://seattlenaturopath.net/.