I don't like to write a lot about psychic damage in my blog, Shamanic healing digs deep, offering us the fuel we need to transform our dark crevasses into diamond mines. Still, the work of healing is cyclical, there may never be a 'done'. We return again and again to old themes - journeying deeper into the blessings of spirit.
I spent a year in my twenties immersed in colorless nightmares. It was the most arduous phase of a healing that left me virtually homeless and jobless for about 3 years. I understand what it is to sleep but not rest, to walk half awake - without knowing what world your footsteps fall in.
I see that year of nightmares as part of the healing power of dreams that was returned to me in a soul retrieval. It was a tangible change. After that retrieval I felt some great healing power had been returned to me, enabling my sleeping self to somehow transform wounds I could barely touch while awake. My black and white nightmares were the final part of that healing, my spirit's way of scraping out the fetid debris of the original wounding. I haven't had to return there since.Are we all born with the power to heal ourselves in our dreams? Since then I've felt my dreams can rejuvenate my soul in ways that perhaps many don't get to experience. Truth is we don't all get to address our damage, and those of us who do may never feel complete with our life defining issues. Thats when alchemy reveals itself as art. Perfection is just an idea that gets in the way of the profundity of the process.
There's no escaping some damage for this little one. The only answer for her, as for all of us, is to become masterful at setting that damage on fire, inviting healing in to transform suffering into gold. Healing or bust. We're working on giving her as much kindling as possible for the time when she's ready to hold her wounds herself.
We all have to take responsibility for whats happened to us in life, regardless of who is to blame. Thats the key to starting a transformative fire, claiming your process for better or worse. My wounds, my healing, my lead, my gold. Once you've done that there's nothing you can't transform if the fire is hot enough.
We work to remind her spirit of what it is to be cherished, nourished, loved, and respected. I know she won't forget what that feels like now, no matter what the future brings to her. She will be drawn to the light of love where it might shine for her in life.
Of course the spirits have a lot to do with our opportunities for transformation. Michael Harner once said to me, "the spirits are opportunistic." They're always reaching out to us, always offering us healing. None of us walk alone. We are always blessed, even while dreaming.
Free Angel Tears by by D. Sharon Pruitt
From Flickr, used under
a Creative Commons license
