Healing our Wounds of Separation + Disconnection
I'm guessing you feel this too: that we are living through a world crisis (perhaps particularly centered in the United States.)
We have lost our way. It seems as though every single one of our mainstream systems is failing, we're supporting devastation across the globe, including genocide and ecocide, and so many people are lost, lonely, sick, and deeply hurting.
So many people are reaching for coping mechanisms just to stay afloat. There is very little “living life," and a lot of “getting by.” There is very little true joy and vitality.
I believe so much of this crisis is a spiritual one at its root.
We have separated ourselves from our true spiritual nature, and from the experience of belonging to the wider web of life, on both the Earthly and Cosmic planes.
We have painted over the conscious world with the story of materialism.
Living on a land that is dead, or devoid of a spiritual nature, we are empty.
We live out our pain of separation in the form of greed, destruction, hatred, endless consumption, all to try to fill a deep spiritual hole within us.
A deep experience of not-enough. A deep loneliness that stems from an untethering to humility: knowing our place.
Without true ties to the magical and spiritual quality of life we become hollow.
There are many threads to be woven to heal this spiritual crisis, but there’s two that stand out to me:
#1 Healing the wounds of separation and disconnection within ourselves.
#2 Remembering that the world is alive.
Today I'm going to talk about the first point, and next week I'll share more about the second.
Healing the wounds of separation and disconnection within ourselves:
We have to lovingly heal the wounds within us that tell us we’re separate from Life, or unloveable.
We need to practice loving ourselves, devoting ourselves to our inner world, to our bodies, to the deep affection that it takes to love ourselves in a world that tell us that we're not enough, not worthy, that we need to do more to belong.
While much of this is an inner process, it also important for this to happen in community, with others, whether human or more-than-human (plants, animal allies, mountains, waters, etc.).
Because the lies of individualism have kept us in separation-mode, healing through community is a remedy to this false story.
We learn to love ourselves in and through relationship: cultivating relationship between the inner parts of ourselves; allowing ourselves to be witnessed in community, by a loved one, by the moon, by the waters, by a trusted practitioner; learning that we're loved by the wider consciousnesses of the Earth body...
When we fortify loving relationship between us and Other, that’s where the magic happens. That's when we nourish our sense of true belonging. That's when inner love can flourish.
Working with plant consciousness and the forces of nature have been the primary places I’ve been able to grow this experience of cultivating self-love through relationship. They've helped me grow self-compassion, deepen my experience of feeling "ok," and expand my sense of wholeness within.
This shift has to happen at the deep, somatic level.
We can’t surface-level ourselves into growing self-love and feeling whole with affirmations, positive thinking, talk therapy, or acts of self-care (especially ones that comes from a place of "should" or because you think doing more will help you feel better.)
While these can be a piece of the healing, the embodied, spiritual level must come in.
Connecting with plant spirits allows this to happen.
Performing ceremony with the land allows this to happen.
Sharing yourself in sacred circle with others allows this to happen.
Listening to the voices that live within the body, and loving them like you would a little child, allows this to happen.
Praying to wider and wiser forces of life allows this to happen.
Holding space for your emotions to pour through allows this to happen.
Deep listening to the spiritual quality of life the weaves within and around you, allows this to happen.
I'll go deeper into this next week when I share more about remembering the world is alive.
But for now, can you do perhaps the most profound and simplest thing?
Offer love and compassion to the potentially scared, grieving, or lonely parts of yourself within, and ask them what they need.
Get support:
Embodied energy work and cranialsacral work can be so supportive in the process of developing self-love, being witnessed in our healing process, and inviting the parts of ourselves that feel separate into wholeness.
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