Healing is Cyclical
Because I am a shamanic practitioner, it might be obvious that I am committed to healing, whether or not that healing is meant for humans, children, our non-human kin, or even for myself. Through an illness, I was called to the shamanic path by the helping spirits so I could heal and then be of service to others, which is the traditional calling of most shamans from all over the world who have been chosen by the spirits. Along with performing healing ceremonies to take away pain, to bring back power, or to assist someone in becoming more whole after a traumatic event, it’s just as important to me that I open myself up to another’s experience in a way that holds their suffering in a safe container in that moment.
In my work as a healer, I’ve noticed that there seems to be an unspoken belief about healing that isn’t resonant with the actual healing process. There is an inferred paradigm that healing occurs in a linear path. This belief might manifest in a statement such as, “I’ve dealt with that, so it’s healed.” In actuality, healing isn’t a linear path at all - it’s cyclical. In my work with the helping spirits for almost 15 years, I have been shown metaphors for healing that look like a spiral staircase, or a peel from an apple that circles around and around. You may have heard the phrase, “peeling away the layers of an onion,” and that is exactly what occurs!
When we begin the healing process, we might hold feelings of motivation and excitement. We might even feel that we have found “the” solution or modality to move out of the space that we have felt stuck in and that when we are finished, we will be completely healed, in perpetual bliss and harmony with the Universe. But when a challenging experience occurs, the exact wound we thought we “healed” opens once again, and we are surprised that we have to do more work around that old wound. When we heal something only to find something else related to it still remains unhealed and then to heal that and then to recognize something else also related to it needs to be healed… it can be tiresome with this sense of unending work. We might feel disappointed, frustrated, overwhelmed or hopeless. We may feel ashamed for failing, or worse, that something is “wrong” with us, or that we are fundamentally flawed to the point that happiness isn’t something we will achieve when we are still needing to heal.
But the truth is, like the ouroboros, there really is no end to healing: it is a continuous cycle of death and rebirth. While we live life in a body, and are enrolled in Earth School, there will always be incidents that “set up” our healing catharses. And, those incidents are built to be painful. No one experiences life in a body without experiencing challenges. It seems that the buttons pressed are the ones that are most needing our attention. The closer we can get to letting go of whether there is ever an end to our inner healing, the less the process of healing will cause us to suffer. In the meantime, we can’t just keep looking for the next thing to heal. We can live while we are healing, too! In fact, being in the present moment while we are moving through the tough stuff is healing in itself.
As humans, we are hard-wired to avoid pain. In some cases, when part of the healing process involves complicated emotions, we might realize that some emotions may not have labels in our language. And that’s ok. Our process is to just bewith them. Feeling is healing.
Over the years, I’ve often been looked to by some clients to take away deep grief. I do wish I had the magic wand for that. However, pain such as grief or anguish are not our enemies. They may hurt and we may experience extreme discomfort, but our emotions are there to teach us something about ourselves. As far as our emotions go, the only way out is to go through it. This means we have to make challenging emotions something we are willing to feel in order to feel better. It takes patience and support from our internal and external worlds. Usually, the process isn’t built to be easy, but it’s made easier when we befriend ourselves with compassion and empathy. It becomes easier when we see our inner child as a responsibility to care for with our adult selves as we choose to mother or father those parts of us that need it. In this, we might begin to see ourselves not as if something is “wrong” with us that needs to heal, but to actually see what is right about us. Healing means being unconditionally with ourselves with approval as we are, rather than tireless efforts in trying to change ourselves.
In honoring where we find ourselves in any moment, we can then open up a new way to honor others, even if they are on different paths with different experiences and perceptions. Then we are free to make choices that don’t perpetuate the existing patterns that we find repellent in the world.
In our modern lives, we may forget that the ancients honored the cycles of Nature. It’s time to remember that we are all a part of Nature and not separate from Her. In remembering that we are a part of Her, we might come to accept the cyclical nature of our inner healing processes too.
