Minefields and Goldmines

A favorite quote by Jeff Brown that I reflect upon is, “I cannot help but marvel at the human capacity to overcome tremendous suffering and find a way to go on. It would be one thing if we released all our holdings right after the trauma, but that we continue to carry them and still find the faith to believe in a better tomorrow is simply heroic. I think of the shadow material that takes up space inside many of us- repressed emotions, unsaid words, armored musculature, collective trauma- and then marvel at our capacity to weave optimism, faith and determination into the heart of it. Minefields and gold mines sitting side by side in the inner valley. Let’s stop looking for our heroes ‘out there’. They live within us. We are so profound.” We all have our past stories. Most of us can share an experience or a chapter that others listening would shake their heads in disbelief, sharing their compassionate heart with us. We often focus our thoughts and feelings on the negative aspects of our stories, while others would not hesitate to point out to us our strength, our growth, and our wisdom, our gifts in the moment or our perseverance. We are able to witness it in others, but we often have a difficult time to see this for ourselves.

Then with time and grace we learn to rise above and move forward. It is in this moving forward that we often do not take the time to completely process and heal from the wounds of our story. We bury, we stifle, we deny and we move on. Many times this is done as a survival tactic as we don’t believe we have the tools to face the pain. But the truth is that our soul holds for us all the parts. Our soul balances the dark and the light. It longs to be full and bright and alive.

With soul care we are able to walk the minefields of our pain and past and uncover the gold within. As we uncover the reality of our story and face the truth and embrace the richness that lies there waiting for us to discover it, we find ourselves peeling away layers of the survivor. Those are the layers we buffered ourselves with to escape the pain or loss. Those are the layers that also weigh us down so that we often become stuck or in negative patterns that do not serve us.

Our profound beauty is that we hold all of this at once. We may not be aware of it. We may not know what to do with it all. We may not understand our potential, but there is hope. The services of a soul care practitioner can bring to light what our shadows are, they can retrieve pieces of our soul we have lost, they can build bridges for us to cross over from our story to our truth and live the glorious life designed for us.

Blessings ~ Lisa

©COPYRIGHT 2012 Lisa Meade