Naming the Wound

Permaculture! 

Klimt's Tree of Life

Healing the Earth whole.

I've just come back from Earth Activist Training and I am still feeling like I am under the spell we weaved throughout two weeks of permaculture, direct action training, group process work and magic. The experience no doubt changed the direction of my life and provided me with some very intense and much needed healing experiences. I feel I am seeing with new eyes. My body feels different, more loose and comfortable. My heart is vibrating with all the love and support I received and gave, with the new connections I made. I feel empowered and hopeful about the future, both my own and of the planet. The peak of my experience came in the form of a story told by a very magical and conscious woman, a story of the beauty and utter improbability of all life. As she told the story my heart opened, it ached and resonated with the truth of our unfolding. After, I sat down in the rainy forest and poured my tears into the Earth. Releasing, releasing, releasing... humble and grateful, changed and changing. 

This past year has been challenging. I've found myself caught in a frustrating series of mental loops. The closer I came to a realization the more unclear the nature of it became. I found myself searching desperately for a greater meaning, posing questions of purpose and intent. Finally, I had a breakthrough and understood that within our dominant culture of violence and rampant consumerism - there is ultimately no greater meaning. Consumer ideology and power dynamics do not fulfill me! Nor do I believe that they are capable of fulfilling any human needs. They only serve to confuse, distract and further isolate us from the truth of our being. I see the symptoms all around - war, poverty, dis-ease, mental disorders... our culture is making us ill. There is no meaning within a structure that is designed to strip my power, destroy my relationship to my body, to the land I live on, to my sisters and brothers. In a structure that is designed to make me feel powerless, in a system where even the language I use is the language of my own oppression, how can I remember that magic lives inside me? 

I've always wondered if I was wounded at some point in my past. Did something traumatic happen to me as a child? Was it the way I have mistreated my body at various stages in this life? Old relationships? Physical injuries? Nothing in my past seemed to explain a hurt this big, a pain so searing. I couldn't find the words to name the source of the rage welling up inside. Or the words to describe this heavy numbness that eats away at me in the darkness from time to time. Now I understand that this gaping wound I hold in my body and in my consiciousness has been fed throughout my lifetime and lifetimes before me. The wound is the pain of separateness. It's my wound and its the collective wound of all humanity. This disconnectedness sickens us. Demonstrated in our violence and depression, our fears of intimacy, fears of our own truth, in our inability to accept our capacity to feel bliss. We are structurally taught that we are alone, that we exist as seperate beings, outside of rather than part of nature. The pain of that seperateness causes searing wounds, lifetimes of internal struggles and disease; it births wars, injustice, hatred, destruction. Its deeply woven into our culture. 

But we can retell our story any time we wish, in fact we MUST retell our story so that we may remember our connectedness and share with our communities. 

So this is the work, this is the goal, this is the process, this is the meaning I have been searching for. Reclaiming my own magic, my imagination, retelling my story, our collective story. We must reenvision our future by remembering our interconnectedness. We exist as part of a complex and beautiful system of natural cycles. When we can only picture ourselves outside of those cycles we don't see how essential each one of us is to the very fabric of the universe. Our work is to reconnect to our magic in whatever way we can. We must remember our place within the rhythms of the planet, reconnect with our own bodies and imaginations, with our land. We need to imagine ourselves back into the story of the universe.

And so we struggle to find new words, to sing with our true voices. We dig deep and find new ways of defining ourselves and tune in to an emerging consciousness. We look to each other and to the Earth to help us identify Self once more or perhaps accurately for the first time in our lives. The solutions we long for will not be handed down to us by any leader or government. It will emerge slowly, trickling out of All of Us as we collectively awaken and redefine our values. We will create a new culture, one that honors the magic and beauty that exists within us and all around us. We will make mistakes, but we'll create space for them. And we will forget many times along the way - because the forces that continue to shape us are strong and deep and engrained in us to the very letter on the page. 

I feel hopeful today. I trust that people are slowly waking up. That people will not ignore and suppress their deep dissatisfaction with the dominant culture. 

And in naming there is healing.

In sharing there is healing.

In witnessing, opening, crying, dreaming, remembering there is healing. 

This self awareness I once thought might be a curse is unfolding to be the most precious gift. 

How long has this story, these realizations been brewing? And how lucky am I to be alive and unfolding great mysteries in this very moment? All of our consciousness, intelligence, and understanding ever growing in complexity, our dialogue expanding, our awareness growing, our wound becoming raw again, bleeding and open, deeper than we could have ever imagined.

And it must be so. We must explore the very depths of our wound to discover, to truly understand our gift of life.