If I'm being honest, I think we all in some way, want the "magic pill" or "sacred plant" to heal us of the pains of our humanity and free us from the burdens of our uneducated cultural imprinting. Yet recently I have been exploring the depths of this longing, and uncovering it's addictive and disempowering roots.
It's time to remember healing as a process instead of a place.
You see, we have been tricked, or rather more innocently - misinformed, that healing is some kind of destination place we arrive, instead of a path that we walk. This over emphasis on the goal instead of the cultivation of skills that creates such a result, is a toxic form of bypassing and actually perpetuates the old narratives of oppression more than we think....
Part of the pains of event based healing, is that it's rooted in an illusion that healing is a place instead of a process. Anyone who has experienced tremendous healing knows that there was a long and detailed journey that lead to some sort of shift in energy, physically or energetically, and that shift can rarely happen with any sort of sustainability without the preliminary evolutive training ground of the journey itself.
When we think in this manner, what we really are invoking is a short-cut mentality where the individual is seeking an external savior archetype to rescue and heal them instead of remembering that we have the capacity and skill to be our own healers, if we could only let go of this tendency to seek the quick fix.
I can see this pattern even show up in plant medicine spaces, where the individual hopes and maybe even is told, that this long night of prayer and plant consciousness can offer the healing they most need. Although profound healing and insights do come through for many people in these spaces, I personally believe that if these events are being attended without proper integration, and shifts in one's daily life, then they are still perpetuating the consumer based model of healing.
I will say, there are PLENTY of magnificent and integral places and people to commune with plant medicines with that are indeed life changing. But what I am inviting us to consider here, is the levels of access and sustainability underneath it all, and what new forms of medicine and healing might guide us closer to a revolution that moves us from this consumptive goal oriented form of healing, and guide us towards a self-responsible and empowered practice of process of understanding the nature of healing itself.
Enter, Breathwork. a medicine and experience just as, if not more potent and consciousness clarifying than any plant medicine, yet is fully accessible to us in each and every moment of our entire lives. There is something about the removal of a guru or shaman archetype, and external ingestible substance that births a deeper self connection and integratable revelations that creates an experience that supports journey and path based healing more than anything I've ever found. Meditation could come close, but that still requires some sort of renunciation from the stirrings of life, instead of adding a deeper presence to what is.
The miracles of healing, wholeness, self love embodiment, communion with Divine spirit directly, forgiveness never before thought possible, and so much more, has been made possible by simple opening our bodies to receive true fullness of breath (life) and surrender the physical process of letting go (exhaling). "They" dont want this medicine of pure simplicity and free of charge ethics to be widely remembered because it would flip not only the health care system upside down, but also the dismantle the hierarchical structures of who can heal who.
What do you think happens when we literally remember and embody the awareness that WE ARE THE MEDICINE, and we are our own healers? Not to say that everyone is psychologically equipped to handle this level of responsibility that has been bred out of us, but what if there were ways to learn this again as our human right as Divinity in form?
We have forgotten our power, our purpose, and our practices that bring us home to wholeness. There is no blame here, other than an understanding that this is a symptom of a sick culture that has been unwell for far too long.
Through the breath, and learning how this practice can awaken and invoke our God-self again, we get to reclaim our presence in this now moment along the path of healing and wholling ourselves from the wounds of culture, and awaken the courage to really see the truth of this instead of look the other way and hope someone will come along with the easy way out.
Healing requires looking at the wound. We have to understand the nature of the wound to know what kind of care and healing it needs. This is the process. This is the bravery.
Once we can remember our own innate ability to heal ourself through allowing the process to become just as, if not more important than the destination, we become present. And presence is the only place that healing can happen - in the here and now, the eternal moment that life continually exists in.
This is how we get free - breathe our way back into our power of presence, learn through this what is required to heal and whole the experience, and invoke practices that support that healing and let the healing unfold and occur in it's natural pace and process.
You can't rush a cut to heal. Have you ever put a bandaid on and left it there for too long and it actually make the cut more oozy and infected? There's the right balance of giving the cut some air, and keeping it protected. This is a silly example of the wisdom that we learn when we stay present with the now... "what is really needed here to support healing?
In the same manner, the healing is what happens with the conditions are right for it to naturally emerge. We don't create healing, we get out of the way and support the conditions that honor "healing" as a natural occurring phenomenon. Life is constantly seeking balance and wholeness, we are the ones preventing this from happening.
So in conclusion, healing in inherently a process, and it's our own greed and lack of patience that has created industries and systems that focus on healing as a destination instead of a path to be walked in reverence and wonder.
Maybe the path isn't breath for you, but for me it's been the most direct practice to embody and then live this truth in my life, and drink from the well of it's ancient wisdom.
May we each remember the immense power of life force energy that flows through us, and that when the "self" can get out of the way, the Divine will always bring us back into wholeness (health).
Come and breathe your way back into trusting the innate process of life. We are constantly being shown the path....
LOVE
JJ
