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Do I Not Bleed?
Jan. 15th, 2011 08:28 pmFrom The Book of Awakening:Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
"…At this, the master sat beside this serious young man who so reminded him of himself and took his hands, offering, "The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of ain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things... Stop being a glass. Become a lake."
I often used to wonder why it is that Shaman are usually referred to as 'wounded healers.'
Any practitioner of sympathetic magic really can fall under that expansive heading at one time or another. Not that we are literally wounded, it's just another facet of being able to feel one with the person that needs healing… be that an actual person, an animal… a situation…
Empathy…
In that kind of Shamanic healing, the healer often takes into themselves the pain of the diseased (the one not at ease), and through themselves to ground it – return it to the Earth to be purified… but we do not bemoan this, for we are not as the glass and do not become saturated with the bitterness of the 'salt' we take into ourselves. But knowing what we do it is not always easy to 'become a lake.'
There's a certain fear we must conquer, a certain 'handful' of salt of which we must claim ownership. A realisation of the message that the master in the story above was trying to give to his student.
For me, I remember the understanding of it came to me one windy, insane winter's night on top of Pendle Hill in Lancashire, at an open circle – and a meeting of the PCoE, (which thankfully no longer exists – but that's another story). We were stupid to go – gale force winds on top of a hill – terrible rain and I… was not well.
A priestess I knew, who suffered terribly with arthritis came to me, with a two penny piece, pressed it into my hand and 'bought' my suffering from me. "Let me take it," she said.
I was humbled. The glass I was being shattered, and the water inside it mingle with the wind and the rain, becoming the lake...
The more spacious and larger our fundamental nature, the more bearable the pains in living.
-Wayne Muller
"…At this, the master sat beside this serious young man who so reminded him of himself and took his hands, offering, "The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of ain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things... Stop being a glass. Become a lake."
I often used to wonder why it is that Shaman are usually referred to as 'wounded healers.'
Any practitioner of sympathetic magic really can fall under that expansive heading at one time or another. Not that we are literally wounded, it's just another facet of being able to feel one with the person that needs healing… be that an actual person, an animal… a situation…
Empathy…
In that kind of Shamanic healing, the healer often takes into themselves the pain of the diseased (the one not at ease), and through themselves to ground it – return it to the Earth to be purified… but we do not bemoan this, for we are not as the glass and do not become saturated with the bitterness of the 'salt' we take into ourselves. But knowing what we do it is not always easy to 'become a lake.'
There's a certain fear we must conquer, a certain 'handful' of salt of which we must claim ownership. A realisation of the message that the master in the story above was trying to give to his student.
For me, I remember the understanding of it came to me one windy, insane winter's night on top of Pendle Hill in Lancashire, at an open circle – and a meeting of the PCoE, (which thankfully no longer exists – but that's another story). We were stupid to go – gale force winds on top of a hill – terrible rain and I… was not well.
A priestess I knew, who suffered terribly with arthritis came to me, with a two penny piece, pressed it into my hand and 'bought' my suffering from me. "Let me take it," she said.
I was humbled. The glass I was being shattered, and the water inside it mingle with the wind and the rain, becoming the lake...
