MIRRORS IN HEALING

Have you heard it said that if we want to know ourselves, to look deeply into the mirror?  In my two decades of experience with helping people to identify and transform what ails them, I’ve watched the miracle of discovering the unknown dark corners of the mind and spirit.

 

While experiencing a chronic pain between my shoulder blades, I asked my chiropractor what might have begun the downward spiraling pattern.  I told him that I’d been waking up with my arms crossed above my head.  “Why?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What if you did know?”

I should never play games of chance that may be affected by the expressions on my pixie-like features.  If I’m thinking the thought, the attached emotion is there on my face for all to see.  I’d just told him that I didn’t know why I was sleeping on my back in the strange posture.  I had never before slept on my back.  “I don’t know,” I repeated.

“But . . . what if you did know?  If you pretended to know, what would you say was causing this?”

Feeling very silly, I ran the question through my intellicomputer again.  “Well,” I speculated, “I don’t ever sleep on my back, and sleeping with my arms above my head, crossed at the wrists, if I was looking at it outside myself . . .”

“Yes?” he prompted.

“Well, it kind of reminds me of the Spanish Inquisition–how they chained people to the wall with their wrists crossed and in shackles.”  I shuddered as I answered, thinking of other gruesome tortures inflicted by the Church hierarchies at the height of their power.”

“Is there a situation occuring in your life right now that reminds you of a situation like that–being shackled or tortured–having control taken away from you–rather than making your own choices?”

Presto/ Chango.  Yes.  I was experiencing more than one condition in which I was being challenged to make peace with, or escape from, situations that were out of my control.  “Yes.”  Without detail, I explained.

He was right.  I did know.  The whole time I had been aware of what my body had been trying to tell me.  My chiropractor-friend had just shared with me a very powerful tool for facilitating healing.

Now, when I ask a client, “How do you think this happened?”  -or-  “Why do you think this continues?”  -or-  “What do you think this is?”  they look at me with the same stunned expression I’d given my friend.  “I don’t know,” 99.9% of them will say.

And I reply, “But, what if you did know?  Just make something up.  Pretend that you are your own best friend, viewing YOU from outside.  What would they say?”

They think for a few moments; sometimes I prompt them with what symptoms their bodies are displaying.  Nearly every time, when they believe that what they’re GUESSING is just a guess, the lightbulb clicks on above their crown chakra.

I watch the realization flood their expression with a sense of wonder.

I have been their mirror, and they mine.  Look.  Listen to your body, to your spirit.

The answer is always inside you.

You are your mirror.  View your image often.  Correct what appears to be skewed.  Face the fears that are twisting your psyche and creating pain in your body.

Be a mirror.  Be a light.  Enjoy a healthy, more authentic life.  Be yourself fully, and be happier for it.

 

 

FEARING THE DARK

We fear the dark, most of us.  Why?  Is it because, in the dark, we can’t see what’s there?  Are we socialized to fear the dark?  Do the fairy tales of our upbringing program us to fear the lack of day?  Do things really go bump in the night?  Do monsters walk when the sun goes down?  Are vampires on the prowl?  Werewolves (check the moon)?

Why do YOU fear the dark?

 

I have feared the dark, and sometimes, fear it still.  Admittedly, living on fifteen very rural acres in Blue Ridge Mountains reputed to foster Big Foot, panthers, rattlers, copperheads, and rogue bears (including the occasional rabid raccoon and chipmunk), the feeling of smallness and vulnerability are ready at the first gasped breath, to overtake my mind and emotions.  Luckily, I have two large dogs.  Unluckily, these 100-pound Weimeraners believe that they are 7-pound lapdogs, and have shown their own fears in strange and unexpected ways.  Case in point:  their absolute terror when a neighbor’s tiny donkey and miniature white pony wandered into our meadows to munch.

However, I admitted my fear (to myself) years ago, even worked on it by camping alone, in the dark (within screaming distance of others) to purge the stupid fear from my conscious and subconscious.  It worked to a great degree.  Following years of forcing myself to face the darkness, mostly alone, created, if not a mastery, an ability to face it even when I was scared out of my half-wits.  Still, it haunted me.  Still, it was a spectre, and in my estimation, a weakness of character.

So, when I started Dark Goddess Studies, I’d hoped to come to terms with the remaining sticky layers of self-preservation that created private films of my being eaten by beasts that move only under cover of night.  But, what is a Dark Goddess?  An evil Goddess?  A Black Sorceress?  Would I be sucked into a miasma of Satanic delirium; would children run at the sight of me?  Would my Rice Crispies start talking to me, demanding that I do things of uncharacteristic and dastardly deviance?

Wearing every protection amulet that I could make or acquire, I went into the fray of new learning.  Dark Goddess.  Darkness.  Dark versus light.  I was a child of the new age: a Bliss Ninny.  I craved light, sought only light, accepted only light.  Everything else was antithesis to my spiritual growth, or so I thought.

Not so, I discovered.

Like up has down, back has forward, no has yes, lightness has dark.  Think about darkness.  It’s where life gets its start–in the womb, in the loamy soil, in dreams.  The dark is sly and silky; it sings in sultry, deep whispers, like the embryo’s heartbeat.  The dark can be protective, nurturing, healing and restorative.  At night, our world is quiet.  People sleep.  Appliances sleep.  Cars still.  Phones meditate and satellites take mini-vacations.  Dark can be velvety and restful, it can be provocative.  It can be healing.

And light.  Oh, glorious light.  The sun.  Its reflection on water; its warmth on skin.  It coaxes the dark-started sprouts from the ground and greets the new babies into its embrace.  It is powerful.  It is life.  And it pushes down everything it can’t move around.

Consider the laser.  Consider sun poisoning.  Consider drought.  Intense light can be a powerful force of destruction.  Yet, we are not trained to fear the light.

Explore your mythologies.  Explore your beliefs.  Are your “facts” true?  Are your “realities” real?  We must have dark.  We must have light.  Darkness is not synonymous with evil.  Lightness does not guarantee the pure.  They are great balancing factors in a universe filled with oxygen and its carbon life forms.

Yes.  There are things that go bump in the night (see exorcism and ghosts for more of that).  But guess what?  Things go “bump” in the daylight too.

Reveal your myths and discard the ones that no longer serve you.  Shed your fears and revel in your new powers.  Before long, you too could be cooing to the moon, standing in the dark whispering, “Fear; you are not the boss of me.”

“We don’t have a spirit. We are a spirit. We have a body.” C. S. Lewis

Please stay tuned for posts and links pertaining to the world of humanity.  There is no need to practice our spirituality . . .only the realization that we need to allow our spirit to have a greater voice in our humanity . . .

PARANORMAL WRITING CONTEST

From September 22, 2010 through Wednesday, October 6, 2010, submissions are being accepted for completed book-length works of urban fantasy and paranormal romance.  Go to Chuck Sambuchino’s link at Guide To Literary Agents Blog under my Blogroll:http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog to enter.

The top 3 winners all get: 

1) A critique of the first 10 pages of their work, by your agent/judge, Marisa A. Corvisiero of the L. Perkins Agency in NYC

2)A free one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com.

Follow the submission guidelines exactly. . .and good luck!