BODY WISDOM: the path of healing

BODY WISDOM: the path of healing

by | | Embodiment, Healing, Wound Wisdom

Within the body – this vessel of consciousness and organ of perception – exists a rich tapestry of wisdom whispering in mysterious melodies and yet longing to be decoded by the one willing to listen. To the one who’s grown accustomed to perceiving through thought – who relies on the mind to decide and discern – this wisdom may be untapped or even muted. However, it’s never too late to open the doors to a world that defies confinement and expands beyond the logic of mere intellect!

Welcome to the altar of your Soul.

Through the body, we can dismantle the patterning with a grace and an accuracy that blows the mind to pieces. The body is the doorway to the blueprint of your Soul. She carries all information that you came here to unravel – every memory, every contraction, every karmic knot that awaits resolution. There’s no need for you to understand, remember or even know what awaits illumination; but if understanding, remembrance and knowledge should arise then that’s beautiful!

What’s required is the capacity to Be With what arises, no matter how painful or uncomfortable. What’s called for is the courage of Heart to fully feel and welcome all that’s calling for your attention. And so begins a healing journey, an inner relationship and an awakening within.

Healing through the Body

The body (and all her subtle layers) is the store-house for all that remains exiled. In this contracted state, there’s fragmentation, as if pieces of your Soul are no longer available to you. When you call these forgotten parts home – the parts that have been pushed out of view – you invite them back into wholeness. The contraction is ultimately transient and only held together by fear. Through your loving presence it relaxes back into Source. As the contraction unravels, the latent energy stored within it is unleashed.

What may be felt and experienced as a release or dissolution is actually a transmutation, for energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed.

There’s no right way to traverse this path. The purification of consciousness is as varied as it is vast as it is deep. Each Soul, each Body and each Heart calls for different subtleties in approach, navigation and surrender. So the core of this journey calls for your willingness to experiment, to fall, to get back up again and to listen deeply to what works for you. Having said that, there are some underlying principles that can be adapted to your own way of working. If we start with a felt contraction or known issue at hand – one that’s perceived in this very moment – then we can began this inner dialogue …

Awaken your Innate Capacity to Heal

 

Your job as Presence is to restore mobility to the paralysed parts of you. As loving-awareness, you breathe new life into stagnant, frozen energy.

Four Steps to Freedom: 

  1. Clear-seeing (establishing awareness)
  2. Pure-feeling (cultivating heart)
  3. Being With (making contact)
  4. Surrender (letting go)

1. Clear-seeing (establishing awareness)

The first step to freedom is the capacity to see and then acknowledge what’s here.

As the objective observer you’re able to hold space for everything that arises without judging or identifying with it. You are the Seer and Perceiver of all experience.

Practices to cultivate Awareness include mindfulness techniques, spiritual inquiry and meditation. 

The orientation of these practices calls for a re-direction of attention from phenomena (the objects we perceive) to the one perceiving. To rest as Awareness is to rest as the silent space of pure subjectivity.

Related Article: Seeing is not believing: emerging from the story of Me

 

2. Pure feeling (Cultivating Heart)

The second step to freedom is the capacity to sense and feel that which is here.

The Felt Sense of an issue is the recognition of it as comprising a visceral and energetic presence. Through careful and patient investigation one can begin to locate and describe the felt sense of what’s here, whether this appears as sensation, emotion, image, symbol, thought or all of the above.

Pure-feeling is the capacity of Heart to stay open in the midst of pain.

Practices to cultivate your feeling system are any embodiment practice that fine tunes your ability to sense and feel what arises. Any practice that brings you into the body and expands awareness to include subtle energies enhances pure-feeling. Think dance, movement, body-work, breath-work, voice-work, and emotional awareness practices.

3. Being With (making contact)

The third step to freedom is where clear-seeing meets pure-feeling and enters INTO RELATIONSHIP with that which is here.

This is where that which was set aside for future digestion is brought into the light of awareness to be seen, felt, heard and met. Through this meeting there’s the opportunity to practice and cultivate all the qualities that are vital for relationship to flourish: openness, understanding, compassion, and tenderness. When the lost and forgotten part is finally held in Deep Empathy, then the Life energy trapped within this karmic knot is finally able to move. What releases is the misunderstanding that this part became bound by. However, this does not happen through trying to fix, change, avoid, or eliminate; but by simply Being With.

Practices to cultivate being in relationship with what arises include all heart-based and devotional practices. In addition, engaging in service and conscious relationship cultivates the qualities required to make empathic and respectful contact with whatever you’re relating to (whether that be another sentient being or fragments of your psyche).

4. Surrender (Letting go)

The fourth step to freedom is an act of letting go beyond what you know.

When the exiled part feels deeply heard and met then its function of protection dissolves and it can be absorbed and integrated back into pure consciousness, no longer solidified by its misunderstanding. We may notice life energy beginning to flood the system as the wounded structure begins to collapse. At this point, a letting go beyond identification is possible. As Life begins to flow again, our only job is to surrender to this movement.

The key here is to really receive and relax into any movement, opening, and expansion. If anything arises as resistance to this re-calibration, then we can repeat steps one through three by acknowledging, sensing and being with this resistance.

Disclaimer

As with any spiritual instruction, this may sound more simple than it is to put into practice. We all know that we need to cultivate awareness and accept our feelings but when the rubber hits the road we may be easily consumed by panic, shame and overwhelm. 

In truth, what these words point to (which is the act of Being With) is incredibly simple. However, the recognition of this simplicity arises from a somewhat complex journey. As we apply these principles to a fragmented psyche, we’re bound to meet up with all kinds of twists and turns + tricks and traps as the survival strategies get activated. It’s not our job to lament this reality, but rather our duty to show up and deal with the hand we’ve been dealt. Practice is the key word here and it’s the practice of Life.

The awakening to your Self and the inclusion of everything you pushed away is a subtle terrain to navigate. That’s why it can be incredibly helpful to have a witness and ultimately a support system to hold space for those things that feel challenging and just out of view.

Divine Duality

Divine Duality

by | | Devotion, Embodiment, Existence, Surrender

I stand at the threshold of a new relationship with the world, where clear-seeing is not divorced from fantasy. As the lamp in the cavern of my heart begins to glow, and vast new landscapes unfurl before my eyes, I feel a warmth, an un-ending opening, in which reality and story merge.

This is divine duality.

Real and unreal, form and formless, are no longer concepts – polarities arising within The Real – they are The Real itSelf.

Because She cannot be denied – this life-blood of existence – the creator, the destroyer, the great web weaver. She beats on silent drums in the sky, and exhales cool breezes that turn the pages of our stories.

I see now clearly that no thought is real, and yet not one need be shot down. Like butterflies through my Being they build great castles through the mountain of my mind, castles made of clay that can be moulded and fashioned, castles made of sand that can be blown down or left to topple …

The cosmos breathes. It plays.

Its relative reality can be realised, embodied. It functions as both stepping stone and bridge and yet destination in and of itself. Tantra knows this. It expounds this. Every awakened Heart sings this song. No stone, no leaf, no ladybird can be excluded from this. Indeed, shamanic, pagan, and occult paths lead through this forest of Living Knowledge.

It is wild, an untamed assault on the senses that threatens clarity every step of the way, for where identity and desire co-exist there is the potential to fall prey to her many traps and tricks. She wants you for herself, she wants you absorbed without reason, she tantalises your senses from all directions. Oh to surrender to her is to win the great battle – but resist or believe her and you’ll drown in confusion.

The web may be sticky, and your fight will entangle you more, but to fall straight through this make-believe dance – to confirm its ephemeral reality through your dropping – is where true enjoyment meets illusion. Transcendence is a road that leads straight to clear-seeing – for She is not real – but why not meet with her depths, for her beauty is that which makes death harder and sweeter.

 

To love her with abandon, to throw stars into the sky for her, to paint life stories on her temple walls; but to see with a glint in your eye, that both artist and painting are transient, and that death is what animates all.

 

To be a connoisseur of the senses without becoming their slave. To enjoy pleasure while bending it with your gaze – the gaze that penetrates it to its empty core, unfolding it like a blooming flower, and then watching it wilt and die – its pollen scattered, with no trace left, except a warm aftertaste of joy, and the deep recognition that there is peace in the emptiness, peace in death.

To give oneself completely to the fullness, to realise its every nuance, detail and thread. To journey endlessly into its folds and creases, to know that there is resolve in this, that no stone can be left unturned, and yet to give oneself over to the wearing away of every weave, and to know that in this living there is an unpicking that dissolves everything that is touched.

Her transience is eternal. Endlessly she crashes against the shore of Truth before disappearing back into the ocean of Awareness. She is the undefinable wave. The wave that may be caught only fleetingly. And yet, in her illusive nature, lie secrets waiting to be discovered and mysteries that cannot be explained.

Her solidity can be known. It can be dug and tunnelled and shaped. It can be raked and sown and harvested. Don’t die before planting. Drop seeds of delight and watch them sprout. Grow with them, dance with them, then throw them to her flames. Don’t transcend without descending. Bring life into being. Bloom, laugh, cry. Chase every whim and dream, only to watch it falter and fall, deeply, into her bottomless pit.

She waits for your tongue. The tongue that will taste her, envelop her in its ecstasy and merge with her in bliss. Your potential is her purpose, your dissolve her destination. She coaxes you from all directions, and when you dare, in your spiritual arrogance, to think you can escape her, she pricks you hard and burns you harder.

Her grace is fierce. Her fire is fatal. You cannot escape her dance. You cannot run from her flames. But you can hide – into the dark recesses of your psyche you can take shade from her blinding light.

Or, in your allegiance with division, you can gaze silently at her, observing her, enjoying her. From the heights of clarity, you can engage her, even dance with her, but your dance will be half-hearted, your embrace will be the kind that leaves onlookers dissatisfied, wanting more. An insidious stiffness will run through your veins, your blood will flow but will never over-flow. Your breath will never reach its destination, always falling short, filling but never fulfilling.

 

Real Woman

Real Woman

by | | Embodiment, Existence, Human Being, Poetry

The Real Woman is rooted in Earth, in existence
Unafraid of mess and willing to dirty her hands
She digs in the mud, soil flying over her shoulders
Searching for the hidden treasure she lost and left

She will do whatever it takes to unite with every forgotten part of herself
Clarity and chaos are but different sides of the same coin
As her pristine strands of hair blow and tangle in the unforgiving wind, she chuckles
For there’s not one movement in nature that can shake the clarity of her Heart

She’s the Death and the dying, the Life and the living
She’s every land slide, flood and cyclone
The unrelenting earth quake in your heart
And the tsunami of your tears
She’s Life knocking down your door when you’re in hiding
And no matter how you try, you can’t resist her Siren call

Her fierce embrace is the strength of her love
And every door that she opens gives birth to her immensity in you
While every door that she slams is her command
To let die what must die for her to live through you

And if you surrender, if you give way to her burning blinding light
She will show you the core of that light, which is black as night
But do not turn away, do not run into the light
For her darkness is bright and will burst all your corners
And blast through your fight

Now put down your armour, for this is a battle you cannot win
And do what you came here to do, your work is waiting for you
Smash the mirror and wash that crap off your face, for your vanity is a disgrace
Your attention is precious and not to be squandered and spent
Your Soul demands your focus and your focus demands your strength

There’s nothing to protect, it’s a fallacy
It’s a lie, and yes you can rage and cry because you’ve been living that lie
Anything less than your untamed spirit is not meant to survive

The woman that thrives today is false, like a porcelain doll
Glassy eyed, she smashes with ease
Let her fall off the mantelpiece
The sleeping beauty that knows not that she sleeps

Let your clay mask drop on the floor
Put your hands in the mud and see what lies raw
That which you buried and forgot
The key they told you not to use
The one you told yourself to lose

You thought you could control her
But every imposition made holes where there were none
Now she is bleeding, heavy under your hand
But it’s your heart that’s weeping

Open your hands and dance the wild dance that ladies dare not dance
Prostrate to the sun and moon and wail for every wasted minute
Look your carelessness in the face
Be the balmy eyes that heal and seal old wounds
Do not shy away from your dis-grace

Grow your nails and pick out every splinter and stub
Open your eyes and cry till the tears run clear
She cares not for shallow ideals
Imploding limitation is the name of her game
Eroding false concepts and dissolving pain

And her radiance shines through the lines and creases of her wisdom
Weather beaten but never down trodden, her vital force prevails
Sun shining and moon beaming, her smile lights up the forgotten places in your Soul
To bring back into wholeness, that which you cast into a hole

Now everything is returned to nature, to its natural state
Where beauty meets with ugliness and destiny with fate

True woman, Real woman, Clear woman

I FALL AT YOUR FEET