Healing Hurts
This week’s Pagan Blog Post is about Hurts. Not the kind of hurt you get when you fall down, but the kind of hurt that gets into a child’s mind and changes the way they view the world.
You may wonder what this has to do with magic. In order to perform magic fully, you need to understand yourself. You need to be an integrated whole. I don’t mean to suggest that you can’t perform magic if you still have scars and hurts from your life, but it works a lot better when you acknowledge these parts of yourself.
The way we interpreted the world when we were younger impacts the way we view the world now. More importantly, it impacts the way we think that the world views us! If, as a child, you were told that you weren’t worth anything, or no one wanted to talk to you, or you couldn’t do anything right, then you will tend to carry those feelings into your adult life.
Some people have an ability to hide these hurts, but unless we face them and work to heal them, they are still there. To the world they can can seem to be an all-together, charismatic leader, but if theydon’t really believe it, then it’s much easier to push them off balance than if they had addressed that hurt.
Healing these hurts is not easy.
I have a few hurts myself from when I was younger and some of the less-than-ideal choices I made have reinforced them. I want them gone. I need to work through my resistance to putting myself out there, to committing, and love myself and accept the situations that hurt me in the past. I did some work on that this weekend, and I can say that it wasn’t fun at all. I ended up in soul wrenching tears for a while, but it was good. The tears were healing and progress was made. It’s not something that is going to be done with in one session … there’s a lot more work for me to do, but a start was made.
If you have some resistance to something, write a letter to yourself asking why, and what is the resistance … then, a few days later, allow resistance to write back (and have a box of tissues nearby).
It’s not easy, but to truly integrate our selves and to be fully present in our lives, we need to heal our hurts.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to plug a new book that came out. I have had the pleasure of working with T. Thorn Coyle in the past, both in one-on-one sessions and in group classes. Her teachings have helped me to heal a few of my hurts.
Thorn stresses the importance of daily practice to her students and, having given it a try myself, I have to say that it’s been very useful in helping me to find and maintain my balance and to be more present. If you want a refresher for your daily practice, or if you are interested in starting one, please check out her new book.
Crafting A Daily Practice by T. Thorn Coyle
