Ever seen a dog running around and around in circles chasing its tail?
Tails are tales. Stories.
We’re just like them if we can see it. Going round and round in our heads, chasing our tales. Mentally, silently, sometimes driving ourselves completely mad.
If I turned up the volume inside your head so that everyone could hear the voices there – what would you feel, how would you react?
First, how would you feel about yourself and what others could hear? Guilt, shame, embarrassment?
Second, how would you feel about me for exposing your secrets? Hurt, resentful, defensive?
This goes on in the world everyday. Soap operas, drama, gossip, noise on every level. And we all partake in these irresistible morsels of the human shadow – and together we grow those shadows. We grow them, whether we repress them or express them.
We don’t pay enough attention to our thoughts because of the vast quantity. And probably because they’re boring. Replaying the same soap-opera, over and over again. If our own pain-journey has been suppressed or ignored or medicated with whatever we can lay our hands on, we end up becoming numb and dumb with it all. Common weapons of suppression are work, alcohol, shopping, food, entertainment, ‘scrolling’ (ah if only it brought wisdom!)
What’s the Medicine?
Turn the opposite way to what is easy, familiar, comfortable.
My pain has been rising lately and from what I hear, so has many others.
My astrology-lover self says that was the work of the April eclipse in exact conjunction with Chiron, the Wounded Healer archetype. The sun and the moon sandwiching our festering wounds and daring us to look and take a big bite of our own misery sandwich and start chewing it over (see my intuitive astrology leaves for more if that’s your thing)
Time for Humanity to rise and take responsibility for its own self-created suffering. We can deal with the other stuff later, the finger-pointing at what others are doing that’s 'wrong' with the world. As a wise person once said, if you’re pointing outwards with one finger, there’s three other fingers pointing right back at ya kid!
Let’s start with what we can manage to clean up first - and that’s our own mess.
But where on earth do we even begin – especially if we feel completely overwhelmed?
The medicine lays in the opposite to what comes naturally for you.
If your problem is in your head, go to your feet for the medicine.
Get walking, get away from the noise and start listening. If you’re exhausted, lay down, directly on the earth in as natural a place as you can find, let her hold you, intentionally share your problems with her and with the sky above. From that place, you invite a healing process to begin. When you are ready to stand again, look down at your feet, accept where you are right now. Acknowledge any and all good you can find in your life. That’s your shield and your armour for the battle ahead. And don’t trick yourself into thinking there’s only one battle. My recommendation though, if this is new to you, is start small. With the little things. They matter too. And they give much needed practice for the big stuff of life. Then get to work on your own pile of personal mess before attempting to busy body and ‘fix-up’ others lives. You will never-ever succeed and in fact you will only rob them of their own power and self worth.
For me right now, my pain energy pours out through my mouth, verbally. When I’m in pain, others know about it. The others I love. So my medicine is the opposite. Silence. Rather than pour out my moans and complaints and howls and yelps onto others, because “hurt people, hurt people” – I decided to do the opposite of what feels natural and instead I have temporarily gone away, taken some opposite medicine, humbled myself. Not run away from the problems, but silenced the external emotional noise, my own and others and immersed myself in my own discomfort.
My present medicine prescription. "I've sent myself to Coventry"! Minimise outer distractions of daily life. For me that means I “Head to the Shed”. No electricity. No noise. No daily chores to distract. A real fire. Food only when I really want it. Walking. Breathing. Listening.
(And yes I hear some say, if only I had the luxury of that kind of time – well I once had that exact wound too – so as I said, start where you are now. Throughout life, we’re invited to go deeper when we are ready)
And then it comes. In the silence and stillness, when I’m surrendered and vulnerable, the flow state takes over. The healing waters arrive. The medicine, the only true medicine, is created from the chemistry within my own body.
The image arrives to complete the process.
The dog chasing its tail from boredom, morphs once more into it’s predecessor, the wild wolf, roaming wild and free, exploring new landscapes and maybe occasionally howling at the moon in pure ecstasy.
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