I saw a bumper sticker once that read; “On the road to success, there are many attractive places to park your car” and I thought that sentiment could be applied to the road to healing just as well.
When we feel powerless to change the things in our lives we are unhappy with, we often brush them aside with excuses; “well that’s just the way life goes”, “oh well, you can’t have everything” or “life wasn’t supposed to be easy”, but these excuses wear thin over time. In our hearts we know that we deserve to have everything, we are entitled to fulfil our potential and in my opinion, we have a moral obligation to heal ourselves so that we may contribute our very best to the world.
We are truly blessed to be living at a time when there are so many healing modalities available to us. We have a selection of modern approaches to health and healing to choose from as well as facilitators dedicated to reviving and integrating traditional knowledge from our indigenous ancestors. On my own healing journey I have experienced at least 30 different healing modalities from bodywork to hypnosis, re-birthing, theta healing, many different forms of energy therapy and shamanic practices to name just a few, and I have found them all to be beneficial
What is important on the road to healing however is that you learn to discern the powerful from the frivolous. There are methods of healing which work at the core to bring profound and life changing results, and then there are those which just make you feel better for a day. An unfortunate side-effect of what I call the ‘happiness movement’ is that it can encourage us to ignore our deepest wounds, which is kind of like parking your car somewhere with a nice view and forgetting where you were headed in the first place.
Spiritual philosophy which encourages us to ‘rise above’ or ‘lift ourselves up from’ our own darkness is a band aid solution. True healing comes from being willing to face our own pain. The road to healing can be long and there are indeed times when we must take a break, be refreshed by some lightness or uplifted by some positivity, but again we must return to the real work of facing our fears, our resistance and our hurt.
It takes courage to acknowledge our own woundedness and all the ways which we have relived and recreated the same wounds in our lives. It takes strength to really take responsibility for our lives as our own creation, and it takes humility to truly own our mistakes and weaknesses. The payoff however, is a level of self-awareness and self-mastery which cannot be gained by just making ourselves feel better.
Often we are afraid that if we dig deeply enough we will uncover a world of horrible and scary things that we don’t have the tools to deal with. We are afraid of being overwhelmed by our hurts and betrayals, stuck in our rage, drowning in our grief and all this may in fact be true. We may be suffering so much that we don’t think that anything can ease our pain. We may have tried everything and still not found relief. What can we do then with the hurts which seem beyond healing? Where do we go when we can’t find anything that works?
Deep inside there is a fire burning, a fire that heals, a fire that can transform all the things which seem too big or too impossible. Deep within your own psyche there is a council fire where the elders meet, a fire where your ancestors gather, a place where you can take your pain, your burdens, your grief and I invite you to go there. Pull off the highway, get out of the car and walk towards the fire. Here you can unload your troubles, here you can tell your deepest secrets and burn your deepest pain to ashes. When nothing else works, go within and find the fire. Sit there with your tribe, your people, the ones who know you and love you. Now, look into the flames and see the healing you require.
