The process of sifting our old selves and shedding them is a lifelong adventure. It can also be viewed as a lifelong burden. It all depends on how we look at it. I repeat: the issue is how we look at it.

In my own life, the unthinkable once occurred. After 20 years of passionate enthusiasm for my life as a Jesuit, I was called upon to shed that form and step out into the unknown. The “unknown” turned out to be a more universal approach to spirituality. Since then, I have kept on shedding skins. After I left the Jesuits, I discovered, to my surprise, that I was no longer a Roman Catholic, either. All the individual things that I no longer agreed with had eventually added up to not being a Catholic any more. It took me a long time to fully embrace this, because Catholicism had been the anchor of my identity for the whole first half of my life.

The great swim in the ocean of the unconscious took on new parameters. I found myself at Native American gatherings, at intense desert immersion in shamanism, at Holotropic Breathwork events, and Buddhism (which teaches how to put into practice many of the same things Jesus taught) courtesy of recently deceased Thich Nhat Hanh, whom I view as a saint (especially since the then-Cardinal Ratzinger called him the anti-Christ, but my hero Thomas Merton gave him communion).

How did all this come about? Answer: my mind had been colonized. This is a term I have adopted from an excellent book that came my way, called “Touching the Jaguar: Transforming Fear Into Action to Change Your Life and the World.” The author is John Perkins, who describes his former colonized mind as an “economic hit man.” That means, he unwittingly became a participant in the colonization of Ecuador, courtesy of his involvement with what he thought was helping the Third World. Eventually, he saw through the process, as one of creating dependency leading to a situation where Ecuador became, in effect, a colony of American oil companies, to the point where even their minds became colonized and many of the young people actually surrendered and became employees of the Earth-destroying oil companies.

My and John Perkins’ life experience illustrate what happens when our minds themselves become colonized. In Christianity, it’s Lent. For others, it never hurts to check into yourselves and see what’s what. Has your mind been colonized? Have you been colonized to comfort and convenience and consumption? Do you consider saving Mother Earth as too overwhelming to enlist your energy? And now I’ll get really brazen — with apologies to Father Andy, do you still believe in original sin — what one sage has called the greatest con job in history?

I repeat again: the issue is how you look at it.

Bill O’Brien is a consciousness coach and shamanic practitioner. He and his wife Linda lived in Shepherdstown from 2005-2021, before relocating near family in Blue Bell, Pa. He can be reached at billobrienconsciousnesscoach@gmail.com.