The season of lights is now upon us as we string and bring splashes of color into our lives. A younger part of us may awaken within – with eyes of wonder as we are drawn toward shimmers of hope. And yet, for many, the holidays may bring memories and experiences of pain and suffering from smatterings of woundings that seemingly have had their tenacious and unrelenting grasp on us for years.
It’s the younger part of us that is awakened for the festive lights and it’s this same part of us who persistently carries the wounding themes and their corresponding beliefs about ourselves. We may not know how to keep ourselves safe when in the company of the those who wounded us so deeply. If we remain unaware of this dynamic, we risk getting stuck in the rut of unconsciousness because we are unaware of what is really happening for us.
When interacting now in the present day with those with whom we lived during our early years, we may inevitably be triggered by their behaviors. That’s not an accident in that our first relationships are formative in fostering the wounding imprints that come to us as we embody and correspondingly reflect the incredible healing themes that are at our disposal.
For example, if we carry a belief in life that I am bad, this comes from a specific wounding that we experienced early on in life given we are in relationship with significant others. Each time we re-experience our belief of being bad, the wounding and our belief about it deepens and strengthens within us. If we believe we are bad because of the specific wounding we carry, life invariably offers us opportunities to discover our healing path that envelops the innate goodness within us. The healing properties of believing in our goodness exponentially outweigh the destructive properties of believing we are bad because our earliest blueprint of our innate nature prior to embodiment is free from any wounding imprints. The potential healing outcomes for shifting disease within our bodies is greatly increased when releasing these negative wounding imprints, calling us to remember the whispers of our innate blueprint that is wonderfully complete and void of attachment to the wounding imprints that may haunt us.
It’s essential to understand that our woundings occured in relationship, and thereby, are healed in relationship. It’s a powerful connection in that our woundings and our healing are relational in nature. The very things that wounded us can lead us to the healing for which we long. Most of us want to run in the opposite direction of the pain, but as Rumi, the mystic poet, reminds us, the wound itself is the healer. Only when we move toward the pain and allow ourselves to feel the pain can we move through the pain and get through to the other side to experience its release.
The countless people we bump up against in life carry undeniable properties of healing within. They may hurt us in ways that remind us of what it felt like with those early significant others we grew up with in our homes/elsewhere, but it’s important to remember that these people in our everyday lives are only triggers who trigger us back to the source of our wounding. When they do, they touch the very wounds that resonate deep within us from our early years. These individuals in our daily life who trigger us give us a huge opportunity to feel back in time to find the source of our pain.
It’s only when we become aware of our individualized wounding themes that we may begin to consciously connect the dots and realize that these painful interactions in the present day guide us back to the source of when the wounding began. Why? – To awaken us, to enliven our bodies to the sensations that are true to our design, to stimulate the feelings that may have remained dormant deep inside, to kindle a healthy sense of wellness from the negative-themed beliefs to which we attached from our woundings, to arouse us from our unconsciousness such that we can finally heal and reclaim our initial and innate blueprint self, and to relinquish the veiled fog within us that may have blocked us from living conscious lives.
Self-care is paramount in the here-and now. When the woundings began for us, we were very young in our existence and we had no defense. We could not protect ourselves by creating boundaries because boundaries were either primitive in nature or nonexistent. But now, we have the advantage of being in adult bodies and we have the added benefit of experiencing universal concepts. If we didn’t experience unconditional love in our families, we may get a felt sense of it from someone else in our life who exhibited loving behaviors that spoke deeply to our system and the sensations within our bodies. We may have an idea of what trust can look like because we may have felt its soft edges. Or we experienced a lack of trust, and in so doing, we invariably have a concept of what trust is by knowing what it is not. Once we have the felt sense of unconditional love, our systems may begin to reset because of the remembered memory of our initial and innate blueprint self.
It’s the younger part of us who is drawn toward the festive lights of the season -and it’s this same part of us that may feel fear, anger or sadness about what has wounded us. May we not minimize the healing powers that can transcend negativity. May we find hope all around us, knowing that the universe supports our desire to heal and that we have resources available to find our healing path.
Jules Steffen, LMHC, CHT, PPN 