I resisted working with my ancestors. Every time I looked to the past or into that web of trauma, I felt a wound that might consume me… and for a while, it did. The wound was bigger than me, but it was my hero or heroine’s journey to travel. Inside the wound lived a jewel. Many jewels. It was only after walking through the fire that I found my true strength and fierce Goddess energy. The moment I ripped the duct tape off my mouth and roared. I am a Leo sun and rising, after all. But I had to learn how to tame my inner lion.
In any spiritual awakening or healing journey, a false identity begins to crumble before the true self is unveiled. This destruction and subsequent in-between state gives way to a feeling of brokenness. My spirit felt broken for years, but this was the chrysalis stage where all I could see was the breakdown of a life that wasn’t working. Walking through “the valley of the shadow of death,” we meet many fragments of ourselves. Parts that are lost, rejected, abandoned; a wounded inner child seeking a place of belonging, acceptance, and love. A deep shadow waiting to unravel and reveal its light and glorious technicolor. Stories untold, dreams un-lived, and love never known. It’s terrifying to walk into any cave, but as Joseph Campbell wrote, “the cave we fear to enter holds the treasure we seek.” And Rumi said, “the wound is the place where the light enters you.”
We brace ourselves and step through the portal with no idea of how long it may take or a plan of how to navigate. We step through with invisible helpers and the faith of a mustard seed—not because we necessarily want to, but because life has become stagnant, gray, and has given us no other choice. So we ask and receive the next step in the awakening journey. The caves we fear are many, and we each have a readiness. Or there’s a catalyst, and regardless of what it is, we plunge into the depths and face the demons. We learn of the invisible support surrounding us, the love and comfort the ancestors hold. We lean into the darkness and feel with compassion every last morsel of it. We feel, we grieve, we accept. Not only for ourselves but for the bloodline, the collective. We see all the uglies, the distortions, the addictions, the darkness, the oppression, the patterns, the wounding, the poverty, the lack, the disempowerment, the codependencies, the narcissistic tendencies, the shame. And we see how that lives on within us, in different ways. We see how a passed-down mother and father wound perpetuates a deep sense of low self-worth, addiction, and poverty consciousness. In the revealing, there’s a tendency to stay bound to it, to identify with it, and a propensity to allow it to continue. It comes up for illumination, but we resist it, and project it outside of ourselves. We hide because we become shameful. Our default has been ingrained; it is habitual. The identification causes suffering until we learn it is not our truth, and that we have the power to make a new choice. We learn we have authority in life to choose differently. We hold ourselves, and all who came before us in the light of grace. We embrace freedom.
And in that embrace, there is a transformation. There is a crucifixion, but then a rebirth—an opening, a new way, a series of breakthroughs, acceptance, compassion, heart & cellular healing, forgiveness, wholeness, and ultimately, a powerful shift in frequency. An awakening and harmonious balancing of the inner Divine Masculine and Feminine spirals within and throughout. The inner child is reborn as we connect to our Divine Mother and Father. We learn, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” And it is our own individual healing that will save us. Our world is a mirror of focus and perception. As we heal the inner landscape, the outer landscape begins to change. Everything starts within this powerful vessel of light we each embody.
Image by Josephine Amalie Paysen.