Everything is always hard. It was hard when I was little, it was hard growing up, and as a young adult I have only refined my perspective on just how much of a struggle life really is. Yet for some reason, I 've been hesitant to truly admit my feelings about the difficulties I have perceived in my life, a taboo unspeakable. In some odd twist earlier this week I finally gave up the ghost and confessed to the Universe that I am tired of everything always being hard. . . .
While witnessing my own confession of resentment of Struggle I became willing to claim her equally significant sister, Self Pity. It isn't possible to acknowledge long-term struggle without also acknowledging the effects of its shadowy archetype on one's self esteem. Given that relation, I wasn't feeling very good about myself. As is often the case in my approach to life, the Universe delivered a message to me in an odd way.
As the crux of my work is shamanic, I consulted my spirit guides, who validated my need to pursue what was on my heart. In the traditional process of shamanic pursuit of insight, I elected to do an ecstatic journey, to visit the matters of my heart more closely. Shamanic journeying is a trance state in which an aspect of the soul travels into the spirit realm to gain insight into some matter, then brings that insight back to alter the waking life in some helpful way. Journeying is quite different from channeling, in that in this state I do not invite entities into my body to use my faculties for communication; rather, I leave my body to interact with the spirits. Asking for the spirit who can best aid me in lightening my heart, I journey to the spirit realm.
Upon entering the Lower World, the place where I meet my guides and do healing work, I was met by a lovely young woman whom I'd never seen before, though she seemed eerily familiar. She told me that she needed to show me something, and in seconds, she'd swept me up into her arms, and we were flying high above the treetops.
We alighted at the edge of a dimly lit wood, where a rock face jutted out from entangled brush. In the center of the flat rock was an iron door, which the lady swung open on rusted hinges. The opening was completely dark, and I looked to her, willing to follow. But when she didn't move a muscle, I knew I was going to have to go first.
The lady stepped in behind me, and I felt secure with her presence in this strange place. To my surprise, the small cave was lit inside well enough that I could clearly see its contents. All around our feet were scatterings of broken items - artifacts, partially buried in sand, a scene befitting some long lost ancient site. I saw porcelain vases with jagged holes, tarnished golden trinkets with most of their fine details rubbed smooth. There were paintings whose frames were shattered, their once shiny finishes dulled, worn threadbare. Reflecting on my intention for going on this journey, my first inclination was to think that the lady had taken me to a junk room: the junk room of my heart? Then I noticed that every one of the items in the room denoted wealth, abundance, prosperity. Each item was made of the finest materials to produce the highest quality experience of use, and I felt each had served some rich purpose in its existence.
I looked at the lovely lady, mystified by the cave and its contents. There had to be more to this cave and its strange debris. Why was I carrying these venerable objects in my heart? Could they be grotesque energy attachments, which I no longer needed but allowed to weigh me down? Or they were obstacles to my growth placed there by foes in my past, or even elements of self sabotage? I mulled over every possible reason that I would allow my heart to hold excess baggage; but in truth, I found none. Even in their obvious broken states of being, the energy I felt from the objects was that they were merely used up. They had come into my life to serve a purpose, which they fulfilled until they cracked and broke, became relics caught in the silty runoff of my life.
I asked the lady what I needed to know about these objects, and she told me what I already knew - that they had been great allies to me, but had served their purpose, and it was time for me to clear my heart of them. I knew that I needed to release all of the articles in the cave, but there were so many! I thought it would take me days to sift through each one and learn its gift to me, then in some unique way bless it to return it to the Universe for some other use. I felt incredibly overwhelmed by the weight of intimately learning what each of these things had to tell me, what stories they might have to tell, and that the entire space needed to be cleared.
I asked the lady, who stood by watching me wrench myself into a nerve, how I could honor and release each item in the cave.
"You don't have to," she said.
"What do you mean I don't have to? They're not negative entities leeching my energy, but they are dead weight that needs to be let go of... right?"
She nodded.
"But you just said I don't have to. You just said..." and then I realized that I could release the whole thing at once. I could honor the full scope of what this tiny chamber in my heart had retained, yet still release it all at once. There was no need to pour over every detail or turn myself inside out....
I closed my eyes and said to the cave's inhabitants, "Thank you for what you have brought into my life. Thank you for telling me that it's time for you to move on in your paths, as it is time for me to move on without you, in mine." I stood silent for a few seconds, feeling a swirling around me in the room. When I opened my eyes, the cave was completely clear, and fully lit.
The lady gestured for me to step out. Looking back at the opening in the rock that I had just stepped through, I saw that there was only the rock face, covered in brush. There was no iron door. There was no cave.
I asked the lady again what healing was brought into my waking by releasing the objects in the cave. "How do benevolent things I no longer need, but carry in my heart, affect my life?" She only looked at me and smiled, then swept me up and dropped me back into my Lower World.
I stood there alone on the slope that leads back to waking, pondering what this excursion meant, trying to figure out who the lady was. Then it came to me who she was--the other sister of Struggle and Self Pity--Serenity, the state of being free of turbulence. I can create her as I move through my life as readily as I create Struggle, or by default, Self Pity. I have a choice, if I allow myself to release habitual judgement and embrace all the options. Nothing is easy or hard, it just is. I can create change in my life from a place of displaced hardship, or a place of necessary progression. And with the support of the Universe and the gifts deep inside me, I can realize that I am already the calmness I seek.
S. Kelley Harrell
Soul Intent Arts- an intertribal shamanic practice for "wholistic" healing