At the core of the trauma response is the exclusion of the parts of us that are suffering. A well-designed Nature that allows us to survive and avoid, sometimes, feeling the depth of the pain.
Yet when we embark on a healing journey, very often we come with the intention to finally get rid once and for all of that pain.
But in reality, the path is a path of re-membering. Putting the "members" back together as the root of this word express so beautifully.
How do I do that? How do I include what I have excluded? How do I feel what I avoid feeling for so long?
Maybe I went at this with ceremonies, yoga, meditation, self-help books, Ancient wisdom, etc. And maybe I realized that nothing was ever to go away until it was felt, honored, included, revered...
What if in this abandoned part of me, the parts in exile, the outcast, there was wisdom waiting to be heard?
What if in what I consider the less spiritual parts of myself was the depth of my own Altar and the bridge into God, into Truth?
Those themes have come very often recently in our ceremonies and sessions and in my own life. So I want to honor them and invite this conversation. This different relationship with what we call brokenness, darkness, and shadows.
In our society, the answer is always numbing and hiding. Either through drugs and addiction, or other more sneaky ways. The outcast and the brokenness need to be excluded or fixed.
There is very rarely a space of inclusion and compassionate presence with those parts of us. You get labeled as X, Y, and Z, you are sick.
Yet those inner battles and abandonment create those wars we see on TV or in our community, the bullying of those who are different, the border walls, and the exclusion of the "immigrant". You either look, speak, dress, pray and feel like the "majority" or you are excluded.
It is not the one that is different that I want to protect myself from with a border, a wall, a law, money, greed, or alcohol, it is the part in me in suffering that I feel does not belong in me, with me. The inner walls and protectors are harder to conquer and easier to numb or avoid…
We cannot avoid the inner conflict longer or we will keep living in a world that is divided and suffering. We cannot avoid this healing.
On this day of celebrating the resurrection, literally from the Greek "re-birth", we are reminded that we carry as individuals and as a collective this capacity for transformation. One so profound that the world as we know it can be totally uprooted into something so new we would call it a miracle.
That miracle is possible if and when we will come together.
Only then will we truly change and be resurrected, rebirthed.
