Always at this time of year, I am moved to introspection of myself, as well as realizing that this time of year can be difficult for many. I have always seen the time after Samhain (Halloween—October 31st) as being the time of the deepest darkness, until Yule comes around with it’s joyful time of the light’s return. My work with myself is about looking at my shadow self, and coming to more deeply understand what is lurking in there that may need to be brought forth into the light for careful examination. This year, I have found parts of my self that were always there, but I wasn’t able to access them truly until now. I found that as I move into my crone years, I must learn to trust my own power—the power I have worked for and from for most all of my adult life.
Many hear the word “power” and automatically think of the systems and/or people who dominate our lives. These systems have been spoken of as “power over”. This is not what I am speaking of here. I am speaking of “power from within”, the personal power we can all have when we learn to be fearless about being truly and deeply all that we are. In other words, when we are able understand, handle and be with our own personal power, we are then able to have a sense of sincere continuity with those around us. Systems and people that require power over others are always doing some sort of damage to those they try/wish/need to control. This damage has lasting effects that often take years to heal.
I’ve been a therapist now for 14 years. As I have walked this path, I have learned much along the way. Thanks to my many clients, I’ve learned to become more intuitive, as I’ve studied my clients, their traumas, their fears, the parenting they received, and the way that this all has manifested as they’ve come into adulthood. I’ve learned to walk with people into their darkness. Though, it is never easy to walk there with them, it is still amazing to me and filled with a continual fascination around human behavior and how we all process the experiences of our lives, and how they come to effect us into our adult years. I admit, it is not always an easy journey, but one that I treasure, as the goal or final destination is always some sort of healing.
Having been able to navigate my own darkness has further facilitated my ability to go with my clients wherever they might need to go. I had to begin by learning about who I am, and what is lurking in my own dark places. I learned about the points along the way where I have had to face down demons—most often of my own making, in order to find my own self again. There were demons who threatened me with their fangs and their growling, they’d even get right into my face, hoping to get me to back up, back off, and go away. Yet I stayed, hung right in there, stared them down, moved toward them, until finally I could walk right through or past them without the fear I thought I’d have. Those moments are always invigorating. This kind of work is what Trungpa, from my Naropa days would have called “fearlessness”. It is this fearlessness that has carried me through much in my life. It is this that has allowed me to help others to find and face down their own demons.
So, as I sit with others, facing their demons with them, I can sit there in a strong place, a peaceful place, a safe place. I can do this because they need me to. This is my work. My family thought me strange to want to go into work where I’d be listening to other people’s problems. Yet, I love what I do. I have yet to lose the fascination I’ve always felt for the workings of the human mind and emotions. I have come to be amazed at the things a being can endure, and the amount of healing that can occur when one truly wants to. I have also allowed myself to be challenged to sit with those who were mired so deeply in their own muck, that they had a hard time being able to reach even one finger out to the dry ground that might help them begin to pull themselves out. Yet, over time, I watched in wonder as they slowly began to be able to start moving themselves from their muck to some kind of wholeness on the shore.
I’ve watched others in pain so profound they couldn’t lift up their heads to see the light that was right there in front of them. I am wise enough to know that I can not carry anyone—but I can lighten their load by listening and helping to weave a rope of strength, that they can tie around their waist in order to allow them to move, hand over hand, as they pull themselves to shore.
I still hold a great deal of wonder at the resilience of the human spirit, and it’s desire to heal, even from some of the most traumatic situations one could ever imagine. I learned that the ability to heal from tremendous trauma often depends on whether the person had a “touchstone”–someone in their lives who had a positive and loving influence who helped them to know that they were truly and ultimately okay. With a touchstone, one is able to have safety and a place where they could see clearly and truly that they were not what was wrong in their world.
My Naropa training was the magic that I learned to be able to work in the way that I do. I would also point to my first teacher Gary Butler “MoonHawk”, who helped me to start my own process of healing by teaching me ways of healing that are still unfolding from my psyche, where I’m sure he planted them years ago. He passed between the veil almost 4 years ago, I miss him greatly.
From my Naropa training, we were taught first of all how to meditate, how to sit there on the cushion, day after day and learn to sit with ourselves—which required us to sit with the crazy machinations of our own minds—often called “monkey mind”. If we can sit with our own minds, we could eventually be able to sit with anything that anyone brought to us, no matter how awful, scary or painful it might be. If we could sit with whatever anyone brought us, we might actually be of some help to them. The meditation also taught us how to simply breathe, “go back to the breath, go back to the breath”, I can hear my teachers saying. If I am in a place of fear, panic, confusion, or whatever, I’m aware of how easy it would be to let those things take me away, so, I go back to my breathing.
My program at Naropa mandated that we also have therapy themselves, so that we could become highly and necessarily aware of our own issues and traumas. If we know ourselves, we know what our limits are–what we can hold and how much. W we know when we are triggered, and how to still sit with our client until we have time to do our own processing, We know what parts of our clients might be hard to look at, and how to just sit there and hold their work in a loving circle of therapeutic healing.
We also learned that we must be able to go where our client needs to go. We need to be able to be right there with them, wherever they are—without our own agenda, our own values, or our own ideas of how they need to heal. This also helps us to step back and truly see who they are without our own stuff getting in the way.
We heard a story once about the Dalai Lama, when he was asked about “low self esteem” through his translators. He apparently had to answer that clear that they do not have a name for “low self esteem” in their culture because everyone is wanted and valued from the moment they are born until the moment of death. There is no place where people are made to feel “less than” or “not ok” as we often are in this culture. Most of the clients I see in therapy have some degree of pain around feeling that they are not “good enough”. Much of our work is about helping them to find the light inside of themselves that will show them, not only through and out of their own darkness, but also help them to learn self-love. I am convinced that underneath much of what we term “mental illness” is often a way that people are pushed to, because of the lack of something in their lives so basic as unconditional love. And what more is unconditional love but the sense that one is loved no matter what they look like, what they do or have done, what color they are, or how they choose to live their lives. I am yearning for more unconditional love to penetrate all cultures, all around the world. It is my fantasy that I will be out of work, because each person will be loved from the beginning of their lives, an all the way through until the end. It is also my fantasy that each person will always feel loved, valued, important, and that they will always remember that they are a part of the eternal flow of life, no matter from where they have come.