One way of imagining the path of embodied transformation is through the archetype of the wounded healer. Its invitation is to open to the possibility that our sensitivities and tenderness aren’t obstacles to our path, but the very path itself.
It's a radical view and one that’s counter-instinctual, meaning that we're unlikely to want to turn toward our embodied vulnerability with curiosity and compassion; it’s just too painful, shaky, and unknown.
This concern is valid. For in the core of the shadowy places dwell the lost orphans of psyche and soma - in their personal, collective, and ancestral forms.
This confrontation with the unconscious, as Jung referred to it, isn’t always syntonic with me and the way my life was supposed to turn out. It has a way of going against the psychic status quo, and that can ache and burn.
It’s essential that we respect this not (always) “wanting” to do shadow and depth work, accessing, feeling, and tending the wound: no shame, no blame, no apologizing for what we are as open, sensitive human beings.
Here, it’s not about seeing how quickly we can get rid of, transcend, or even “heal” the unheld and ungrieved ghosts of our unlived lives, as they surge into conscious experience.
It’s more a journey down the descending current, into ground, mud, and Earth. Toward embodiment, holding, and containing. This isn’t always going to feel all that great. We just can’t always ask that of the path.
But there is fruit here in the depths, gold in the shadow, a life of profound meaning, connection, beauty, and depth. One of richness and full participation.
Despite the counter-instinctive nature of depth work, well, here we are. Perhaps as friends of Chiron and his merry band of traveling soul-explorers, with an innate longing to live in a way that's not partial, but dancing, playing, weeping, and grieving within the full spectrum.
Through that doorway, we don’t go around the wound (including by way of our spiritual beliefs and practices), but we hold and embrace the achy pieces of soul as emissaries on the path, as potential allies of wholeness.
Photo: sunset on Last Dollar Road, listening, the aliveness and holding of Telluride in the late spring
