I am whole. Complete. Intrinsically valuable.
I am Spirit. All the way through. Body and emotions too.
I am perfect in my manifestation. The part you see. The part I see in the mirror. The part I see when I look within. There is no flaw in me. No darkness. Only light.
But sometimes, I don’t see these truths. They are not mine. They are abstract and unreachable. And the illusiveness of such a reality makes me feel disconnected and alone. And very, very, not enough. As though someone comes to draw from the bank of me, and the account reads “insufficient funds.”
Why?
I long ago left religion for Love. Church for community. I left behind structure for freedom. I changed my mind, heard what the Maker said about me. Adopted spirituality in place of liturgy. I look, in openness, for Oneness. Me with Spirit, Me with Humanity. And yet, it is as though I still draw water from a dry well. Not all the time, but enough that I wonder if this “new” wine is any better than the old. And then I remember the flavour of that wine, the bitter aftertaste, the debilitating hangover of too much of it, and I am certain I cannot go back.
Why, if I am happy on the path I am on, do I still feel counterfeit, or unworthy of my good relationships? Is it the remnants of Dualism? Am I yet to have searched my inward thoughts in completion and let go of that which hinders so I can run? Is there a hole in theology that I cannot pass over? Why do I not feel as I am certain I am? Not a new creation?
Oh. I think we’ve all had those thoughts during our ever deepening journey into Love, no matter where our religious and cultural place of origin was. It’s like we’re trapped in Romans 7:15… there are things I hate, I end up doing, things I want to do, I just don’t do (Keith Green paraphrase). Why, if our minds change, does our behaviour not alter?
It is very easy to default to earlier training, and try and discipline ourselves into a healthier pattern, meditate, ground ourselves, stay in the present. Aw… how religion and culture have taught us to self help, self medicate, self actualize. And how it has forgotten the one thread of the human experience that has no formula to externally apply a step by step approach to and succeed.
Trauma.
What a word that is. Trauma. It’s getting a lot of press these days, but it seems it is becoming more of an excuse for bad behaviour than the key to wholeness. The experience of trauma creates holes in our psyche, disruptions in our physical well being, stunted maturity, emotional detachment… It cannot be overcome by the introduction of coping mechanisms, new thought patterns, or habits. Trauma’s sister vocabulary is Trigger. The thing which sets off that which we feel shame for, or irrational about, or even inadvertently exposed by during the course of. Our reactions and responses to the stimuli that triggers us isn’t rational. At least, not for someone of our age and outward maturity. There is also the physical manifestations; ailments and conditions that flare up when our emotions are uneven that we can’t seem to overcome.
We were not meant to overcome the symptoms of our trauma. We were meant to be loved to wholeness so that they lose their grip on us. We were meant to integrate our trauma story into the annals of our history so that they become something that happened, not something that is relived every time we brush up against a reminder.
I’m sure most of us have heard about the inner child. I’m not sure how many of us understand that we don’t need to confront the ones who wounded that baby to heal from our past… We have the parental authority to parent that inner darling, create safety, harmony, and love, so that the playful, joyful, amazing component of our being is free to express life’s wonder and beauty and help us to connect with each other in open and meaningful ways. The faith of a little child… open, trusting, peaceful, innocent, unsullied by the world. How much more beautiful would our external human relationships be if we were internally integrated and settled, child and adult together?
I do not believe that we can mind over matter our path to inner peace, or physical healing. I believe we walk into the mess holistically and heal our path to inner peace. Many find what it feels like when they meditate, and so mediation becomes their happy place of connection. But what if you were so safe that you could leave the drawbridge of your castle down and still maintain healthy boundaries? It seems that many spiritual disciplines would agree that Spirit is made to rule over the emotions and body… it is the place of serenity, and the emotions and body have to follow. And, I think they do. But, imagine with me, what would happen if the body and the emotions sat down in the safe space of Spirit and became reconciled to each other as they learned their secure identity. Something as simple as anxiety. Simple is a funny word. It isn’t really, if one is prone to anxiety attacks, their body gets involved to protect the emotions in an attempt to protect the wound that lies beneath and there is one discombobulating chemical storm in the physical manifestation of “me.” Our culture hands a person substances or therapies to externally apply to the symptomatic evidence, but it does not go within.
I think the intersection of Spirit, Emotion and Body is Soul. Soul is a weaver, an integrator. But Soul can also cordon off and protect things she was too young to process when they happened the first time. She organizes our physical reactions to emotional disruptions into inflammation in our body tissues, and when we are ready to heal from them, we become increasingly aware of the pattern. Our cognitive memory may have blocked out the trauma of the emotional interplay and our physical presence in the moment, but our body remembers the event, and the emotion triggers the contemporary response. Messy. However, Spirit can have a conversation with Soul, and take the hands of Body and Emotion, and walk back into our story, to the unfinished and unprocessed, inexplicable bits, sit down, and deal with our past. We can then shelve the story in our memory and find peace. Within peace, is rest, and in a state of rest, is where we heal.
If we want to experience wholeness, and live uninhibited, we need to allow ourselves the freedom to become mature through integrating our being with awareness, not judgement. We need to stop basing our healing experiences on what happened to us, and replace it with discovering who we are, by understanding who we were before the trauma, generally and specifically.
We can heal, we can be whole, and we can thrive. Our physical being can bow to Spirit and be well, but by moving through the pain and healing our emotions, not by moving past them or hitting over ride.
I am Whole. I am Spirit. I am Perfect in my Manifestation. And as I heal, I mature, and I make it match. Inward and outward. I am at peace.