I'M STANDING IN A LINE that stretches one block around the corner from the front door of St. Andrew's Wesley Church in downtown Vancouver, waiting for the doors to open. At 6:30 pm, the sun has long disappeared over the horizon, and the temperature hovers around one degree Celsius, making the wait barely tolerable. In front of and behind me are mostly middle-aged women of two types: the first tend to be dressed in rich, cut fabrics with silk scarves, and expertly styled and colored hair that shimmers under the sodium street lights; the second type appears to spend their time and money on other pursuits. I imagine them raising organic vegetables in their own garden, or perhaps covered in mud, spinning pottery in their home studio.

"Where are the men?" I think. "Am I the only one?"

A tall, successful-looking woman with a maroon and gold scarf around her neck asks her friend, "I wonder how much she charges to do speaking engagements?" I notice her scarf matches her copper hair.

"I don't know. Maybe $500?" suggests her friend.

I smile at her niaveté and turn around to talk to them. "Carolyn Myss (pronounced 'mace') is on a book tour, so her publisher probably covers most expenses," I say to them.

A woman with an official demeanor interrupts our conversation by addressing our section of the line-up. She says, "Does everyone in line have a ticket? All 1400 tickets are sold out, so if you don't have one, you're out of luck."

I silently calculate fifteen dollars times fourteen hundred people… Maybe the book publisher doesn't contribute after all! Someone is making half my annual salary in one evening.

A petite and attractive dark-haired woman in front of me asks, "Have you seen Carolyn Myss talk before?

"Only on video. This is my first time in person," I say. "Have you?"

The dark-haired woman says, "Me neither. But I've seen her on PBS and boy, is she ever… brutal. It makes me nervous." I notice she's in her mid-thirties and looks anxious.

"Have you read Sacred Contracts, her new book?" she asks me.

"Yes, I just bought it last week." I answer.

"Oh, it's so scary," she says. "All that stuff about archetypes — like the prostitute, victim, child and saboteur — they're so disturbing. It makes me realize how often I'm a prostitute, always selling my soul to get other people's affection. It's so hard to take." Her eyes are opened wide and plead for understanding.

I take a deep breath to ground my energy. She's feeding off my energy, trying to replenish her own lack of it. Obviously, she hasn't read Carolyn Myss's book Why People Don't Heal and How They Can. Myss explains how our self-help culture has become one that's based on 'victimology.' Our identity is founded on our suffering rather than our strengths. Within seconds of meeting this anxious lady, I think I already know a lot about her. I try to think of something empowering to say.

"They're not meant to create fear," I say to the dark-haired woman. "The archetypes are tools to understand, observe and transcend unwanted thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are ingrained like patterns."

On the street behind us, we hear horns blaring, as a car tries to turn the wrong way into a one-way lane, nearly causing an accident.

"Oh my god," she says. "Driving is so dangerous. That reminds me of when I ran into a car and the driver turned out to be a lawyer. Of course, that's just my luck — out of all the people it could have been, I hit a lawyer! I haven't driven since."

She looks up at me, locking eyes, expecting me to be at least bemused by her story. Instead, I repress my impulse to reveal the false narratives she holds onto, causing low self-esteem. It's not the right time and place for this discussion.

Thankfully, the line moves forward, and I don't respond.

WHEN I HEARD ABOUT THE CAROLYN MYSS SPEAKING EVENT on January 21, I immediately bought my ticket. I knew they'd sell out quickly. Since discovering Myss's writings, I knew I'd found one of North America's most influential and insightful healers. Since her introduction to the world with her books, Anatomy of the Spirit and Why People Don't Heal and How They Can, she has been recognized worldwide, to great acclaim, and twice made the New York Times Bestseller list.

Myss is recognized for her medical intuitive ability. In 1983, she began to work with C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D., to refine her medical intuitive skills. Using medical tests, he would confirm or deny the accuracy of her paranormal perceptions. Myss claims to read the human energy field and describe 'energetic dysfunctions' present within her clients' bodies, and how it affects their health.

Myss is also recognized for her academic knowledge and interpretive abilities. After receiving a degree in journalism, and working in the publishing industry as an editor, she felt an inner calling to study spirituality. She received a Master's in Theology at Mundelein College, followed by a Ph.D. from Greenwich University, in Intuition and Energy Medicine. As a result, her writing is grounded in academia — including philosophy, theology and contemporary new-age thought. She quotes source texts from major religions, including Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Celtic myths, and popular fairy tales. In a cross-disciplinary manner, she examines their shared spiritual meanings. And each book finds a way to tie these disparate thoughts into a new working model of healing — one which increases our understanding of the spiritual journey.

Finally, Myss is notorious for her ruthlessness with people. When she sees into the fears that stop a person from empowerment, Myss delivers her insight with force. In Sacred Contracts, she explains, "In those moments I am looking through the personality and into the heart of their passion to transform the ordinariness of their lives into the extraordinary — meaning their greater potential in this lifetime."

The queen archetype corresponds to her actions here. Myss says she, "Symbolically decapitates people who are yearning for liberation from their fears." Perhaps the anxious dark-haired woman I spoke with in line has reason to fear Myss. She doesn't soften her interactions with people until she feels they have, "Made a conscious connection to their excuses and self-sabotage." While it's shattering to be in the line of fire of naked truth, it's ultimately transforming. Myss isn't the gentle, nurturing mother often expected in healing circles. Instead, she's the Shakti, a force that destroys to create anew.

I wanted to attend Myss's talk because I wanted to see her in action. It's like the dark thrill of seeing a car accident when knowing no one gets hurt.

I SHUFFLE AT A SNAIL'S PACE into the main Sanctuary, designed in the Norman architectural style. It's characterized by massive pillars and semi-circular doorways and windows. The vaulted ceiling encloses a substantial area of space, large enough for a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace.”  

An unseen pianist plays a piece by Bach in the background. Being one of the first in line, I think I have a good chance of finding a seat in the front. But once in front, I see that the first twelve rows are already crowded with eager Carolyn Myss fans. Returning to the pews at the back, I see a hand waving at me, and the maroon-scarfed woman I was in line with earlier stands, and says, "We saved a seat for you."

"Is that ever kind!" I say with a big smile. I feel grateful for her generosity. Looking down at the fifteen-foot-long bench though, I don't see any spaces. "Are you sure there's room?"

"Oh yes, just scoot in. We'll find some room for you," she says.

Obviously, a seat had not been saved for me (unless she expected me to sit on her lap). Red-faced, I thanked everyone for making room for me, while apologizing for having reduced their personal space.

While waiting for the talk to start, I watch swarms of people fill every corner of the cross-shaped sanctuary. Men of every age show up, scattered in intervals among women. There's even a 13-year-old kid with raspberry Kool-Aid colored hair, whose eyebrows, nose and lips are pierced with rings. The event is a voyeuristic spectacle! Thirty minutes later, the lights dim, and into the chancel walks a small, slender woman. She's wearing matching tailor-cut gray slacks and a jacket, with a pink, black and gray striped sweater. I notice she walks with regal grace.

"Now remember—You're not born yet!" Myss says sternly, like an evangelist preacher looking for recruits to be baptized. Like a pop star, she speaks into a cordless microphone with a heavy Chicago accent. "Imagine you're not yet born and are being prepared for incarnation. You must be born for some purpose, and this purpose is to be burned into your soul, so you won't forget when you're in a human body," she explains. The audience and I are silent, caught up in imagining such a state of being.

"Your purpose is clearly defined. The human experience is about discovering how powerful you are as vehicles of creative expression," she says. "In order to discover your power, you're given a schedule of people you may meet, places you may go, and experiences you may have. It's a situation where destiny and free choice walk hand-in-hand."

A young woman who is arriving late attempts to make it to her seat in the second pew from the front. She's an easy mark for Myss's unmerciless humour. "What are you doing?" Myss says aloud. "Are you trying to make it to your seat without being seen?"

The audience laughs nervously.

"I've never understood how people think they can be invisible by stooping around and tiptoeing to their seat." Myss unkindly mimics her, appearing more like Frankenstein than her discreet target. "It's like when people whisper," she hisses loudly, "Thinking that no one can hear them." Bursts of audience laughter.

"And that feather boa you're wearing isn't helping to deflect attention," she adds.

Myss gets the results she gambled on. The audience peels into horrified laughter. Her technique is akin to spraying mace into someone's eyes at close range. She continues, "No one is born empowered. Not even the saints or Buddha himself. It's a journey that you must take on your own.

Fortunately, each of us is given lots of help on the path. This includes your allies, people with whom you form positive and supportive relationships, as well as your adversaries, who teach you to grow spiritually, albeit painfully."

Was Myss using the woman with the feather boa to help make her point? Or did she react with irritation that the woman with the feather boa took the audience's attention away from herself, even for a moment?

"And you're given archetypes. These are the blueprints that guide you in your decisions," Myss says. "Learning to recognize how they influence your reactions gives you greater choice and understanding on your own path to power."

POWER IS A COMMON THEME in Myss' writings. For her, becoming empowered is about breaking away from the tribe mentality, which involves various stages of risk and courage. Our first test involves overcoming family-of-origin beliefs, such as religion, politics and other ideas about the world, which suppress our individual passions from being fulfilled. The tribe extends to the group influence, which may be cultural, national or global in origin, and makes us believe in the illusion that power comes from our ability to control the outside world. In these instances, our value is measured by worldly success. But at some point, she writes, everyone is disappointed with this externally driven striving. In our suffering, we turn inward and learn to define success by our own, more spiritual estimations.

Spiritual empowerment involves making the decision to never give away our soul for the security or approval of others, and to stop living in the past of resentments or in the promises of the future. In the process, we lighten our psychic load, and our spirit has more energy to invest in inner guidance. We no longer give away our power to others or outward things but use it to manifest our highest potential. "Creating synchronicities doesn't come cheap," she says. "You require great energetic reserves to be able to trade it in for opportunities. Miraculous opportunities that bring you closer to your highest potential, and put you on the fast track to fulfilling it."

Myss's newest contribution to self-empowerment is to identify your personal archetypes, then rely on a game of chance to cast your archetypes, written on pieces of paper, into the correct classification found on a wheel that resembles an astrological chart. For many years, when giving intuitive readings to people, she often saw a symbol for the client in her mind's eye. Myss learned that the archetypical symbols she intuited, represented an aspect of the client's psyche that required self-awareness, in order for healing to occur and empowerment to be realized.

While the term 'archetype' is difficult to grasp, Myss reminds us that we use archetypes in our daily conversations. "Isn't she a 'Princess'," we say about a woman who feels entitled to special treatment. Or, "Who does he think he is...a 'Saint?'" is a sarcastic comment about a man who believes himself to be morally superior. From decades of popular psychology, we're all familiar with our 'Inner Child,' and the games of the 'Victim', 'Rescuer' and 'Saboteur'." Myss includes an index of archetypes with definitions in her book, Sacred Contracts, and asks us to identify twelve with which we feel a resonance. Complicating matters somewhat is that each archetype has a sacred and a shadow side. For example, if you tend to sell your spirit and dreams in exchange for the safety of material comforts, you're the Prostitute archetype. But once you become aware of how you act out the behaviour of the Prostitute archetype, you may choose not to play the role. Then you become the Sacred Prostitute — the holy aspect of yourself that reminds you not to 'sell out.'  By discovering our shadow patterns, and acknowledging our sacred ones, Myss purports we discover our patterns, and make conscious choices that align with our soul's purpose.

After choosing twelve archetypes, the fun begins with "casting your wheel." Myss 'reinvents the wheel' with a 12-sectioned circle called houses." Each house is numbered and corresponds to an aspect of self and life:

• ego and personality
• home
• creativity and good fortune
• occupation and health
• marriage and relationships
• other people's resources
• spirituality
• highest potential
• relationship to the world
• the unconscious.

After writing your archetypes on individual pieces of paper and placing them in one pile, and the numbers one through twelve on other pieces of paper and placing them in a different pile, chance is used to place your archetypes in each house. Once you've stated your intention and put yourself in a meditative state, then select from the first pile an archetype and match it up with a number that represents the house it belongs in.

Myss writes, "Your archetypes will be guided into their appropriate houses by the energy of simultaneity, coincidence, spiritual order, divine paradox and destiny."

By matching archetypes with a house, Myss explains that new insights and connections are made, increasing self-awareness and the potential for making choices that are self-empowering. By avoiding decisions that complicate our lives, we make room for "energetic reserves" that can be used for fulfilling our sacred contracts — our highest potential and purpose of our lives.

QUEEN MYSS IS WINDING DOWN, coming to the end of her lecture, and already a lineup is forming near the pulpit for devotees to pay their respects and — just possibly, be gifted with her royal signature. My butt is sore from sitting on the hardwood pew. The Hedonist archetype — found in my "Ego and Personality house" — is complaining.

"You'll never be able to live an empowered life without hurting someone," Myss says. "You need to learn self-authority and not be afraid of independent thought and action. And only then will you receive visionary insight and high-powered intuition." I glance at the people in the line-up, wondering if they're taking in what Myss just said. I notice the anxious, dark-haired woman I spoke with earlier. She's clutching a copy of Sacred Contracts to her breast, looking mesmerized by Myss.

"You'll find yourself following the most absurd guidance. After all, you only follow logical guidance when you're afraid." Myss says, with a wicked grin on her face.

I find myself sneaking out of the pew, stumbling over seated people's feet and purses. I feel drawn to say something to the dark-haired woman, but I don't know what I'm going to say or why I'm doing it. Suddenly the audience stands clapping, giving me cover.

She sees me coming toward her, pushing through the crowd, and breaks into a smile of recognition.

"How did you like Caroline Myss' talk?" I ask.

"I loved it!" she squeals. "And she wasn't as scary as I thought she would be."

This time I did laugh, but not because she was trying to be funny. I laugh in admiration of her transparent honesty. She seems more confident and empowered; Myss' lecture must have inspired her.

"I'm glad to hear you say that! I did too!" I tell her with a smile. We shake hands, and I whisper a silent prayer for her as I exit.