Is “conscious uncoupling” really such a loopy idea?
It’s very easy to make fun of celebrities when they endorse alternative therapies or weird quasi-religious cults. But if we’re honest with ourselves, there’s an unhealthy dose of envy in such reactions, as if we finally have an opportunity to look down on some ridiculously successful, attractive, wealthy, skilled, or popular individual.
So when actress Gwyneth Paltrow announced that she and her husband of ten years, musician Chris Martin, were in the process of ‘consciously uncoupling’, the charges of ‘moronic’ ‘new-age pretentiousness’, ‘new age gobbledegook’ and ‘the most deluded 2,000 words of tosh ever to be associated with sentient adults’ were immediate.
A consistent theme of such critiques is that Paltrow thinks she’s too good for us ordinary folk, too special to admit that her marriage has fallen apart, and too perfect to admit the word ‘divorce’ into her rarefied celebrity atmosphere: ‘Because Gwyneth does not break up like the rest of us.’
There’s a great deal of pleasure to be found in cynical sarcasm, and a celebrity like Paltrow can seem the perfect target. For many the cynicism is also defensive: people who have gone through bitter and painful divorces naturally take umbrage at Paltrow’s claim that she’s found a better way to do it.
It’s possible to simply disagree with Paltrow, or better still the gurus on whose advice she depends; but only if we can put aside our own envy, cynicism, defensiveness and Schadenfreude. Dare I say it: we have to approach the issue ‘consciously’.
In certain circles ‘conscious’ means more than just ‘awake’ or ‘aware’; it has properties that verge on the transcendent, perhaps even the supernatural. To do something ‘consciously’ is the highest possible good. Bringing ‘conscious awareness’ to any act or aspect of life has panacean qualities, and a host of New Age, new thought, human potential, self-development, self-actualisation, psychotherapeutic, and pseudo-Oriental movements, groups and individuals have for more than a century extolled a basic dichotomy of ignorance and ‘conscious awareness’ as the cause and cure of the afflicted human condition.