A couple of years ago – I think it might have been around the time I turned sixty – I was talking with my teacher, and I said to him, “I know I’m getting older, but I haven’t been at it long enough for it to scar, just yet.”
And he laughed.
And he looked at me.
And he said, “It will.”
I’m not sure what I’d find if I looked for them in the mirror, but something tells me that a couple of those old wounds I’ve been carrying are finally starting to scar…
Many years ago, when I was in the beginning stages of this part of my emotional recovery, a teacher of mine shared a bit of wisdom with me that came in the form of the following aphorism:
“Never trust a healer who doesn’t limp.”
I’ll be quick to point out that he did not say, “Never trust a healer who doesn’t bleed.”
And there’s a big difference.
The healer who limps is carrying the scars of their work. It’s changed them. And now, they can move through the world as an example for others…
My wife and I have been spending a lot of time lately with Elders and older friends; visiting, taking care of them, participating in ceremonies with them.
And one of the things that’s pretty obvious is that people are starting to get older – ourselves included. We’re starting to move a bit slower; starting to do a little bit less.
But things are getting deeper. Conversations are getting deeper. Ceremonies are getting sweeter. And the prayers are getting more honest…
There’s a certain sense of familiarity that comes with covering the same ground again and again. You learn how to read the terrain – how to navigate by familiar stars, even when you can’t see them.
It’s comfortable, even though it can be excruciatingly difficult.
But those of us who’ve learned to step off the path for a bit, to rest a while on softer ground, to feel comfortable for a moment under the light of unfamiliar stars,
we’ve learned a few things…
I’m also reminded, in these things, of this path of emotional recovery – of how difficult it can often be.
And then, how some mornings, you can wake up, and you can feel that something’s changed.
You feel different.
You feel rested.
You feel strong.
You learn, as you go along, to really take comfort in these strong times — in these times where you feel healthy — because you know that there’s always more work to do. You know that you’re being prepared to go a little deeper, to walk a little further, to carry something that’s a little bit heavier…
A few years ago, I was talking with someone about intention. We were having a discussion about what it means to set sacred intention – or sacred intent – when you’re getting ready to do ceremony.
And so I picked up a pebble and I said to him, “What is this?”
And he said, “It’s a pebble.”
And I said, “No, it’s an altar. Say it.”
And he kind of shrugged, and said, “It’s an altar.”
And I said, “No, believe it. What is it?”
And he said, “It’s an altar.”
And then I said it, and then I put the pebble down on the ground
– the altar down on the ground –
and I said, “Now just sit.”
When we sat there for a few minutes, and I saw the look on his face, I could tell he was feeling it. The energy in the room completely shifted. We were totally grounded.
And then I picked it up again and I said, “This is a pebble. Say it.”
And he said, “This is a pebble.”
And I threw the pebble over my shoulder, and the energy of the room completely changed.
And he got it.
For that short period of time, we were bound together in a sacred space specifically created by our intention, by our belief that that space was sacred.
I am very grateful for everything that’s happened in my life, because it has brought me to those places. It has given me the gift of being able to sit with others without judgment.
And I can say, “Well, that’s the price I have to pay for this privilege.”
Or, I can say, “That’s part and parcel of the privilege. That was my school.”
You don’t get to pick one without the other.
It doesn’t mean you have to like every single aspect of it. It doesn’t mean you’d want to go back and repeat it again, because for love or money, I wouldn’t…
Carl Jung once said that “Unless you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”
That, right there, seems to be the core of so much of the work that so many of us who come at the world from the perspective of adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional households are doing every single day.
When we grow up in an environment that’s unpredictable, chaotic, we learn certain survival skills. We learn how to read the terrain. We learn that we either have to keep ourselves low – to stay out of the range of fire – or we learn to lash out in anger in order to make ourselves bigger, stronger, and less vulnerable.
And until we start to explore these things – even later in life, because they’re rooted so deeply, we find ourselves involved in the same types of situations over and over again, the same dysfunctional relationships.
It’s like we walk into the same story again and again, only the names have changed, and the characters are slightly different…
I’ve been talking with several people lately about the way things are in the world, and there seems to be this general consensus that even though the external world – the social world – seems pretty chaotic right now, there’s this feeling that the ground we’re standing on spiritually, even emotionally, is pretty solid.
It’s as if we’re being asked to bear more weight, so we’re given a solid foundation to stand on while we do it…
What’s your alone time feel like?
Does it feel like Isolation?
Like you’re cutoff from everything and everybody.
Does it feel like something you’re sentenced to?
Like you have to stuff every minute of it with something to do, otherwise you’ll go crazy in the silence; just staring at the walls, living inside your own head.
Or does it feel like solitude?
Does it feel open, spacious…quiet, in a gentle kind of way?
Does it feel like it heals you?
Like it refreshes you; gives you time to be with the things that you’ve lived through on the other side of it…
Let me ask you a question.
Have you ever had a moment in your life where something shifted at a really deep level?
Maybe you’re not even sure what it was, but you just felt that change. And you knew that if you said “Yes” to it, that things would never be the same – that there’d be no going back.
And yet, somewhere, deeper down, you also knew that saying, “No” just wasn’t an option…
So, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the backyard lately, taking care of the ceremonial space that our Community uses when we come together on the first Saturday of every month. It needed a little work, so, I’ve been out there doing that, and it’s me taken a couple of days to wrap things up.
At the end of the first day, I was sitting out on the patio, surveying the yard, taking in my work, and as I looked over at that spot, I was hit with the feeling that the energy of the place had shifted dramatically; that the work we’d be doing there would be different from now on.
It would be deeper.
The place felt like it had grown up, like it had become more rooted, become more… solid.
And I also knew without a doubt that I had to say “Yes” to it, and that once I did, there’d be no going back to the way things were before…
Bonja the Bodger 