25/10/2023
Ok. This is the story behind this poem. Do you have a few minutes?
Some years back, I was in a Brazilian influenced medicine ceremony. The ceremony occured during a time when I perceived great turbulence afoot. For one, people were really starting to notice that our forests were catching on fire with more frequency and severity here in the Pacific Northwest. There was a fire burning not too far from us as the crow flies and it created a mood of sorts. Secondly, there was great upheaval in Syria with unthinkable events unfolding daily. And finally, there was deep upheaval in my own home life, and that is why I started to attend these ceremonies in the first place - to find a different reference point in order to learn how to navigate turbulent waters when all I wanted to do was jump ship.
On this evening, related to what I just mentioned, there was a palpable sense on my part of a disturbance not just in my world, but in the fabric of our tiny blue opalescent ball poised in space. I had this felt sense that something deeply fundamental was changing in the world and in moving forward there was going to be a harsh and rocky road ahead for humanity.
Just as I had this bummer thought, one of the leaders of the ceremony asked the group to pray for peace for all that was going on in the world and wham! Immediately I became dizzy, like I was going to pass out right then and there. I knew I had to go lie down and quick! I managed to get myself to the exit somewhat sideways and was caught by a Dear Soul who broke my fall. I had fainted. She helped me to the quiet space next door, got me to the floor and covered me with a blanket.
As I lay there, I puzzled over what just happened. For all the years I had been in this medicine, I knew that as a Medium, one of my proclivities was to clear dense energies from the space. I had cultivated relationshionships in the astral field with unseen but palpably felt forces who worked through me to clear discordant thought fields lodged in the collective. I know this sounds strange to anyone who is not of this medicine world, but in this Brazilian tradition, it is real and it is palpable. This is the best explanation I can come up with.
But this time.... after the peace prayer, I was taken down. Lying there, I had some time to reflect. What was clear was that I was overwhelmed by what got stirred up in the collective of that room after that request to pray for peace. What went into the space was far from peace. It was fear, anxiety, distress, and disturbance. It was just too much. And it came at me all at once. It took me down because I also had my own fear, anxiety, distress etc that that request had stirred up in me. It was like a hornet's nest had been kicked. It was just too much to process.
Then it dawned on me in that moment, that a simple prayer for peace in all it's benevolent innocence, was not a prayer for peace at all. It was a congering of all our fears and anxieties of why we don't feel safe in the world. And it was placed into the fabric of the greater collective like a cancer cell.
In all it's kind intent, it was producing the opposite. We inadvertently created an atom bomb that got thrown directly into the collective field. We think we are separate from one another but we are not. We are frequency. We are electrical. Science has already proved that point. Our currents connect. They can be in flow or collide into static electricity. The field became static electricity.
After that experience, I decided I would never again pray for peace nor for that matter would I pray for the innocents killed at the hands of someone with an AR-15 unless I knew in my heart of hearts that I was "being" peace in every fiber of my being at the moment of the prayer. This meant I would have to be free of my fear, anger, judgement, distress, hopelessness etc. etc., in order to avoid spewing my unprocessed material into the collective and thus creating more of the same. More things to fear, more feelings of not feeling safe, more hopelessness, more anger and the list goes on. And for me, and perhaps you too, "being" peace is most often fleeting; almost an impossible task to be in and pray for peace at the same time. It is a contradiction of terms. If you are peace there is no need to hope for it.
Instead, I decided that what seemed more realistic was to "intend" for the healing of our collective trauma. Intend feels like a better word to me. It embodys hope, sort of like a prayer, but has an aspect if action.
And unless we can truly embrace that nobody, no matter who one is, can escape this world without some form of trauma, we will never find peace. As a humanity, what we have in common is trauma. Trauma? What trauma you say. Let's not forget that shame and guilt are aspects of trauma. I guess this is a long winded way of saying that to acknowlede our trauma is to find a way to begin to move forward into the direction of real peace.
How do we do that? Plant medicines, among other proven effective trauma treatments, have more research and availability than ever before. We have made great strides in understanding the mechanisms and how to treat trauma. I applaude those who are becoming trauma informed, doctors, healthcare practitioners, therapists, facilitators etc.
The more we can embrace our collective woundedness, the more we can do something about it and hopefully dream up a more lasting peace in the world. For peace to be a lover first taken into one's own heart, we have to address our trauma.
Mind/Body/Spirit Health,Transform Unwanted Habits By Changing Brain State, Remote/In-Person Healing
