If we heal our old wounds of shame and unlovability we may no longer be able to take refuge in the unconscious trances of inflation and unworthiness that have accompanied us in close personal relationships, that narcissistic organization that each of us employs to one degree or another in our (often misguided) quest to stay safe and be seen, to receive some mirror back to our basic goodness.
At some level we know this and while we long to awaken from the trance some part of us is just not so sure about it all. This hesitation, uncertainty, disorientation is not some cosmic error or mistake but an emissary of the beloved itself, come to reveal the contradictory, wild, alive nature of healing and what it asks of us, which is everything, really.
Just try to imagine for a moment engaging in our lives without those familiar reference points. Even if that organization has been interfering with the intimacy and joy that we yearn for, it has provided a well-known axis around which we have been able to orient in the world without having to feel too much groundlessness and tender exposure. It is not possible to imagine, ahead of time, what our lives would be like without the habitual lenses through which we learned to navigate. It is important to honor those parts of ourselves that are wired to hold onto prior organizations as we turn into the unknown and give them permission to return to the stars.
While the prospect of stepping into the raw, naked, open unknown may seem thrilling—a life free of our conditioned history—the consequences are profound. It is an act of kindness to prepare ourselves to confront quite a lot of contradictory and paradoxical feelings about the whole thing—on the one hand a genuine desire to heal and transform while on the other some real trepidation about what we know is going to be required. To bring a new level of compassion to ourselves and our journey in our honoring of what the implications truly are.
Art by pixel2013/ Silvia & Frank via Pixabay
My most recent book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available
The next book, A Friend of the Breath, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come
The next event is The Healing Shame Retreat: Spiritual Awakening and Transforming the Core Wound of Unworthiness, April 24-29, 2019 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado, with co-facilitator Jeff Foster
