Healing is a deep-rooted longing
Understanding healing is important. When it comes to psychological, emotional, and trauma healing, the self is the barrier to healing.
Fundamental questions are:
- Who is it that needs healing?
- What is healing?
Healing: the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again.
The etymology of heal is literally “to make whole.”
Etymology of integrate: “make whole,” from integer “whole, complete,” figuratively, “untainted, upright,” literally “untouched”
We tend to think the wounding will be healed, the little one, me, will be healed, but that is impossible because the wounding is part of the object relation, part of the identity with the whole unit.
The more intense the affect in an object relation, the more difficult it is to work through. Early trauma is some of the most difficult for this reason because the trauma keeps retraumatizing us, turning the bonding agent into superglue.
When we’ve been abused, traumatized, or wounded deeply, there is a deep longing to be healed. Healing will eventually lead us to the point where we must face the ultimate challenge of healing.
Let’s use this again to help illustrate the situation more clearly:
For the wound to heal, for the scab to disappear, the whole unit, who you take yourself to be, has to disappear. For complete healing, the wounded one has to dissolve. You, as the self, can’t and won’t be around for total healing – it’s not possible that subjectivity disappears.
As long as you’re there, the identification with the history remains intact, which means the existential wounding is still there because the very existence of the object relation cannot be separated from the affect, the wounding.
This can be challenging to understand – yes, we’ve been abused, that history will not change, it happened.
The pain and suffering we carry is body/mind memory being held in dynamic stasis via identification. As long as we hold onto the wounded one, we will not be healed.
What’s in the Way of Healing?
- Identification (the self, the inner child)
- Fear, Pain & Suffering
- Misunderstanding
Inner is Outer
One of the big misunderstandings in healing and spiritual work involves the concept of the inner. When we begin to “work on ourselves,” our attention is directed inward—into the body, into the psyche.
This is appropriate, useful, and of great value, but at some point, we become aware that this “inner” is outer, too. It is easy to be aware of the object relations, the you/other dynamic, at play in most inner work.
There is an observer, usually with the self inserted, observing and exploring the wounding, pain, trauma, suffering, healing process, etc.
What is the inner of the observer? The comparative mind can’t answer this. There is no comparison. We can articulate the effects and affects of awareness and knowing —the “inner of the inner” — but these are not it.
We can’t get there because we are there – we are the thereness, the isness, the inner of the inner. The isness has no head, no eyes to turn around and look at itself. If we attempt to do this, we’ll just twist our heads off!
AND since that isness is everywhere, there is no “where” to turn around.
BUT, bringing this conundrum into awareness produces a very useful affect and a very useful effect.
- Affect = frustration
- Effect = sensitivity
The usefulness of sensitivity is self-evident.
Why is frustration useful?
Because it exposes the futility of ego activity. It challenges one of the self’s main foundational footings. One of the biggest jokes in this whole situation, when seen from the other side, is that the self is a masochist. Its whole existence is, literally, self-torture.
I know, where’s the joke? It’s all so serious, really – it is. It is extremely painful – to the self, a nonexistent entity, but all of this still affects the heart/body/mind/soul, a tortured psyche.
Holding on to pain and suffering is how the self perpetuates itself. All of that pleasure seeking of the self is the suffering! You need to get deep into the weeds, with sensitivity and frustration as your support.
It’s possible that you’re frustrated or reactive just in reading this. Halleluja! You’re on your way! Be open, be sensitive to the frustration.
Frustration is nothing more than resisting the rivet-popping process that shakes the whole structure of self apart. Using your sensitivity, it’s easy to experience the resistance, the glue, the rivets, the knots holding it all together. And the futility of not being able to do anything about it.
Why resist
The unraveling
Of the great ruin
Your life
Has made of you?
God has sent His
Wrecking-crew of angels
To renovate
The dog house you call home
Into an exquisite palace
Crystal fountains
Jeweled domes
Diamond spires
Walls of Divine transparency
Why resist?
This Architect’s plan
Always includes
The razing of
Existing structures (jh)
Trauma – For those working with trauma and, for the most part, all of us, this is not something to rush into. First, we need to build resiliency and consciously expand our energetic tolerance through a titration process.
Resiliency
It’s a little mind-boggling that we first need a strong enough, secure enough ego-self before it can successfully collapse. But how can it collapse if it’s not first constructed? And, the construction is very much needed for the evolution of the soul.
Some people’s structures simply collapse, and depending on their uniqueness, they may awaken and remain awakened, or the experience can be more problematic because a tug-of-war develops between the self and reality.
I want to emphasize this point again:
In my opinion, the notion of a true or real self is an invaluable gift to the ego-self. The ego-self is a camouflage magician, hiding in plain sight as a real self. The concept of a real self is a gift that keeps on giving right up to the body’s last breath.
Forget about a real self; that motivation is not needed. To the best of my recollection, with very few exceptions, every mention of a real self I’ve heard is coming from an ego-self.
Hanging on to that concept does more harm than good. It contributes more to suffering than to the process of awakening.
This is where working with object relations serves us.
Working with object relations is like having mini-collapses, a little piece of the structure falls apart, and the structure readjusts itself to compensate. This process includes experience of not-knowing, space, and disorientation.
But, as all of that happens, surprisingly, you don’t die, you don’t lose your mind, at least not permanently, and in the emptiness — awareness (what you really are).
Working with object relations builds resilience in the psyche and experientially educates us about who we are and who we’re not – all of which leads to more trust and the capacity to allow true nature to have its way with us.
UNDERSTANDING THE REALITY OF THE THEORY OF HOLES EVENTUALLY BRINGS US TO THIS RECOGNITION:
What is pain?
Really. Have you ever given this question serious time and attention? I’m talking about a year, maybe two or more. We’re talking about emotional and psychological pain, not the sore thumb from being hit with a hammer.
Eventually, working with issues, whether traumatic or not, leads us to recognizing that the inner child and the self cannot be separated from the wounding. The wounding is part and parcel of the identification. It is the dissolution of these structures that is the healing.
Working with the inner child may, at first, feel like an integration—and this is useful —but in the end, it is the dissolution of the mental images that frees what’s frozen, returning us to wholeness—untaintedness.
I’m not a trauma expert, and I’m not giving advice on how to work with trauma. I’m simply pointing to where work on trauma and all other psychodynamic issues leads us.
Knowing this can help support our unfoldment toward wholeness. It certainly assists with disidentification.
The trauma work I’m familiar with incorporates several elements of essential work:
- Presence – I notice more and more therapeutic approaches emphasize the importance of presence at the outset of working with clients. Some of these processes and techniques lack potency due to a lack of understanding of the essential nature of individual consciousness and presence.
- Space – Space is crucial to the process of disidentification and the detachment needed to support healing and wholeness. Many therapists see space as a result of effective process, but they miss the deeper understanding that space is not only a result but also the dynamism that dissolves inner structures.
- Compassion – All inner work is challenging, sometimes painfully so. Children hold themselves responsible for all the crap that happened to them. Two very, very big challenges for most of us:
- Returning to innocence
- Experiencing that others actually care about us
- Love/The Stupa – Love melts boundaries. Love is the essential quality that relaxes the ego, enabling dissolution. Love is what flows into the nervous system, thawing the frozenness, melting the tenacity.
More than anything else, self-love is allowing love to have its way with you. Sounds easy. It’s a bitch for many of us! The conviction of our unworthiness and our misplaced accountability are two of the most formidable defenses of the ego. Remember, the superego’s genesis is love, but over time and with frustration, it turns into self-hatred.
The melting of the lies, the rending of these most-dear beliefs, lead to what is referred to as “the ruin of the heart.” Oh, the anguish! The ocean of tears!
The rebirth of ecstasy!
Up Next
Moving from States to Stations
John Harper is a Diamond Approach® teacher, Enneagram guide, and student of human development whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and deep experiential inquiry. His newest book, Nurturing Essence: A Compass for Essential Parenting, invites parents to discover the role essence plays in child development. He is also the author of The Enneagram World of the Child: Nurturing Resilience and Self-Compassion in Early Life and Good Vibrations: Primordial Sounds of Existence, available on Amazon.