Untamed Women Of The New Millennium
Courage   Creativity   Leadership   Passion   Health

 August 2006 Newsletter

The Healing Power of Dis-ease
A Deeper Perspective

by Sheridan Bushnell
Each step was excruciating agony with the arthritic swelling in my knees. I was virtually “stopped in my tracks,” immobilized between the recovered memories of childhood trauma and the physical freezing up of my joints. There was nowhere else to go but inside, to my heart and ultimately to my soul. No one was able to give me the answers. How was I to heal myself from this deep physical and emotional pain? There was nothing left but surrender. This was the beginning of the long, long, journey home. The journey through the heart to the spirit of all things.
I took a deep, searing look at my life, my childhood and the culture at large. I discovered we all come into this world wide eyed and innocent, ready to embrace everyone and everything, a state of curiosity and deep wonder. We are then presented with the “cultural scripts” of: competition, materialism, denial, workaholism, total reliance on the mind, at the expense of the heart and spirit, and so the closing down and the armoring begins. We leave the joyful innocence of childhood and become what is expected of us. We ignore our heart’s desires and “do the right thing.” We experience a deep loss of self and spend the rest of our lives trying to recover. Our bodies become ill, our relationships flounder, we enter a state of permanent dis-ease.

What is the solution? The journey back to the self and the heart’s desires involves a dismantling of all those things that do not nourish our being and an embracing of those things that do. A movement from the mind and its ingrained cultural scripts to the heart and spirit and its knowledge of what gives us personal satisfaction and joy. This is not an easy task, since we have been led so long to ignore the small, still voice within, the whispers of the soul through our heart’s longing.

Awareness is the key factor here. What is it that shuts us down, saps our energy, produces tension and stress? What is that opens us up, infuses us with energy, produces joy and contentment? What is the balance between these two things? How much of the joyful activities do we have in our lives on a daily basis? Is our life just one of constant “doing” out of a consciousness of responsibility? How can we bring back the exquisite joy of being, the wonder of the child? What would it feel like? What would it look like? What must we let go of in order to experience this? What must we embrace? Are we ready to make changes, shift our consciousness? How much choice do we believe we have? Is this true?

The point of decision is always in the present moment. What will we chose going forward in our lives from this moment on?

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