Healing Wounds

Healing Wounds

In the human world — where we are less self-revealing. Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the “integrity that comes from being what you are.”

Divided Life

My knowledge of the divided life comes first from personal experience: I yearn to be whole, but dividedness often seems the easier choice. A ‘still, small voice’ speaks the truth about me, my work, or the world. I hear it and yet act as if I did not. I withhold a personal gift that might serve a good end or commit myself to a project that I do not really believe in. I keep silent on an issue I should address or actively break faith with one of my own convictions. I deny my inner darkness, giving it more power over me, or I project it onto other people, creating ‘enemies’ where no one exists.

I pay a steep price when I live a divided life — feeling fraudulent, anxious about being found out, and depressed by the fact that I am denying my own self hood. The people around me pay a price as well, for now they walk on ground made unstable by my dividedness. How can I affirm another’s identity when I deny my own? How can I trust another’s integrity when I defy my own? A fault line runs down the middle of my life, and whenever it cracks open — divorcing my words and actions from the truth I hold within — things around me get shaky and start to fall apart.

In fact, wholeness is not about perfection. I am astonished to see how nature uses devastation to stimulate new growth, slowly but persistently healing her own wounds.

Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness — mine, yours, ours — need not be a utopian dream, if we use devastation as a seedbed for new life.

Om Namah Shivay