I Don't Want To Go Through This
Dear Ones,
“I don’t want to do this.” “I want to go home.”
“I want my Mama.” These words are written on my first mandala* during the Spiral Path: Cycles of Change segment of the month-long SHIP. You can see that I had a lot of resistance initially going through this initiation process. These three sentences were coming up for me as my spirit/soul/psyche lead me to do the deeper work of excavating lifetime (and lifetimes) patterns I had developed to feel safe and to avoid feeling the pain and even delight of being a human.
It was March 2011 and I had just started my Shamanic Healing Initiatory Training (SHIP) to become a Shamanic Breathwork Facilitator (which would lead us to become a congregation and offer our SHIP workshops in Springfield, Illinois as Aahara Spiritual Community of Venus Rising).
As I look at this mandala now and reflect on where I was emotionally and spiritually then and now, I can see the bigger picture of these expressions. I had a ton of resistance trying to avoid feeling the pain of loss from my father's and thirteen-year-old sisters' deaths in a car accident in 1976 and then my husband's death in a car accident nine years later. And there was lots of other pain as well as joy that was suppressed in my body to feel safe. I needed to control my life so that nothing bad would happen. It was a lot of work to keep those reins tight and held close. I didn’t want to tell my four-year-old daughter that her father was cremated. I didn’t want to go through grief and feel the pain. I didn’t want to raise them as a single mom. I wanted my mom (figuratively and literally). I wanted to go home (figuratively and literally).
However, in doing the healing work with this powerful modality, this is exactly what I did. I went through it to the other side of the pain, held by the great mother to come home to myself. It was a death and rebirth experience to find more passion and purpose in my life, to deepen my relationships with my daughters, new husband, family, friends, and even more importantly myself.
Green leaves surround the perimeter of the circle, a sign of new growth. The little girl (representing my inner child) has a spiral at the center of her chest, representing the spiral path of change. The flames around the spiral suggest that what is not needed (the holding on of the pain) is being burned away like the phoenix rising from the ashes so that she can grow and evolve from the pain. She is not alone through this process as she is held and embraced by Mother Gaia, the mother of us all, our spiritual mother, the feminine life force energy of the Universe.
Through this process, as you can see in the mandala, she is surrounded by the golden light of protection and transformation as she goes through this fiery alchemy of change, held safely through the rebirth.
This transformational process is ongoing as we each meet the next creative impulse and release the old to birth something new. We are always growing and evolving whether we are conscious of it or not, whether there is resistance or not. Yet, when we make the decision to face our fear and meet our resistance, we come home to ourselves. We connect with the mother (life force energy) and move through it to rebirth at a higher octave of our journey in this lifetime. SHIP is a transformational process that has changed my life and many others.
Much Love and Gratitude,
Carley and John
*Two days ago, I found the mandalas (after cleaning out the attic) from my first month-long SHIP which took place in March 2011. What a treat to revisit this transformational process and see things from a new perspective.