The well of pain

In the years I have spent healing trauma through various different modalities I have come to think of our selves as like a deep well, full of pain. We throw the bucket in, and it goes deep. We dredge up the hidden stuff, hold it up to the light, we heal and start to feel better. Then we go back down and repeat the process. I came to think of this as a never-ending life’s work. We continue to go back down, to go deeper, to find the pain, and then let it go.

But here’s the thing I never knew until recently. There’s someone lurking in the well; the devil and his minions. The devil is there, looking for a way in, through a pain, through a trauma, through someone’s vulnerabilities. The devil offers illusions, and mirages. Something that can look like a chink of light shining on the side of the well. Something that can look like the hand of an angel, offering to pull you out.

Now I start to wonder, about healing, of when this work is genuine, and when it is a trick, offering something that feels so good, but necessitates the continuing, the going back down into the well, ad infinitum. This ‘healing cycle’ as I’ve come to understand it, is something that some believe even needs to occur in lifetime after lifetime, as we continue to work on our stuff over, and over again, until we finally, at some point learn our lessons.

The funny thing of late is that I have stopped going down into the well, almost completely. After years of journaling, and meditation, and being listened to and going into the body to find the well of pain, and pull the water up. I do one thing, and that is to pray.

When I pray I do all the things that I have come to learn as healing, I cry, I yawn (for some reason my body needs this a lot to release physical tension). This is a practise that I never could have done when I was thinking of God as a word for ‘the universe’, or the ‘universal oneness.’ It is only possible now I think of Him as a being.

It’s not trying to heal something broken or ‘work’ on myself. It’s just going to ask for forgiveness for the times I mess up, and asking for what I need. And saying thank you.

It has replaced everything, but it is not the same. It’s not going down the well.

And yet it has helped me find what I was always looking for but couldn’t quite get to in the neverending journey of healing; peace.

These testimonies from Sarah Jayne and Kathi Holmes helped me understand more about healing cycles, and getting stuck on the neverending journey of reliving pain.