One of our Reiki students is trained in crainio-sacral therapy. So she gave us a demo yesterday evening. What an interesting experience!
A slow cycle--3 to 5 seconds--much slower than Reiki. It reminded me of the sea, of the jellyfish opening and contracting in the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Gentle and very relaxing.
At one point, she wrapped my earlobes around her fingers and pulled outward. Literally expanding my consciousness. An amazing feeling--all sounds got much louder. And relaxing doesn't begin to describe it. I think I was in bed before she had driven out of the driveway, and slept very deeply.
And had a very disturbing dream. A summer camp, or maybe a church social hall. A young woman who was being touched inappropriately by an older man and took a knife and cut off his arm. The stump looked the way a tree branch does when you prune it. I was amazed that there was no blood. And then a later scene where the young woman was preparing to have her own arm cut off in retribution.
Over the years, I've become much more at home with my shadow. I realize that I have within me the racist bigot, the chauvinist, even the Nazi. I don't like it much, but having these parts of myself in view is much better than having them influence my actions behind the scenes. So on one level, the fact that I dream of sexual abuse and primitive eye-for-an-eye retribution isn't a total shock. But this dream seems to be particularly repugnant to me. Something very deep is touched.
Perhaps it's something that was locked in my muscles and got freed up last night. Seems likely. If so, good riddance. Hello shadow, my good friend. I've come to dream of you again.
At the base, it really is all about love. Unconditional love, that blessing that is attributed to God. Isn't the message of Christianity that God loves us, even if we are sinners? (So tell me again why Christians go to war, burn witches, and hate non-Christians (or non-Baptists, or black Baptists, or whatever). Guess they aren't God. Not surprising, but disappointing.)
The concept of unconditional love really is revolutionary. It's pretty unthinkable for most of us, for whom love as a child was conditioned on cleaning up our plate, being nice to mommy and daddy, doing well in school, and keeping quiet. After two failed marriages, I finally got it--the nature of the marriage vow is unconditional love. That's another way of saying richer/poorer, sickness/health, etc. There was no way I could do that in my first two marriages--I didn't know what it was, what I had missed. More to the point, I couldn't unconditionally love someone else until I could unconditionally love myself.
And that means me and my Shadow.
How can I love the brat, the abuser, the paternalistic stuffed shirt, the bigot, the screaming tantrum-throwing hellion? I know I'm not God. So I do what I can. See them in a circle of golden light. Pour love down on them, soften their hard edges, their hidden terror, the bottomless anger and pain. Give them hope. And give myself hope. And feel myself growing stronger as the wild horses are broken by reins of love and start pulling the wagon where I want it to go.
Hard work, but nobody else is going to do it for me...
Thank you for reading.
Copyright © 2002 Pete Stevens. All rights reserved.
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