People who engage in therapeutic work with me often ask – why dig up my past, it holds pain, why look at attachment patterns, why explore the theme (myth) of my life? What a waste of time. I only want to get rid of my symptoms.
We all, without exception, suffered injuries. The creative question to ask is – how has the injury shaped my life, and what purpose does it serve? Many years ago, during a group dialogue following the inspirational talk of my Sufi teacher, we discussed three basic kinds of injuries. I connect my own experience to the third injury.
1 Having experienced physical injury can result in fight and flight behaviour – it brings a heightened sensitivity and develops a sharpening of the senses.
2 Having experienced sexual, sensual and emotional injury can result in escape from one’s self into others, estrangement from self, lack of differentiation and boundaries – the great challenge is to accept one’s self, differentiate as an individual from the tribe and take responsibility for one’s unique potential.
3 Having experienced injury on a cognitive level accelerates individuation – the escape is into deeper realities, a search for authenticity and truth and the development of symbolic reality – universal reality.
My novel, Course of Mirrors, is the fictionalised account of an aspect of my personal myth made universal – in the sense that memories of events don’t have to be real for a story to be true.
@ Natasha Tonkin
Even the most die-hard materialists among us grok that life is animated and guided by an all-pervading spirit? We are vessels, psychic switchboards for the spirit that animates and records all life.
An ungraspable phenomenon we try to name in vain.
Mental states pass through us. We call in and then process thoughts and feelings, seeking coherence, and – given we assign meaning to what happens to us – are gaining wider perspectives and deeper insights. With every new connection made and every little light brought to what is forgotten and unknown – collective consciousness grows.
Our body knows, if we care to notice, what stirs in our psyche, what wants to unfold and emerge. When energy flows freely through us our essential nature is uplifted, and our desire is aligned with the potential in us that seeks actualisation – in the way a cocoon reveals the butterfly. Our life has many cocoon and wing stages. The proverbial flutter that causes a stir in all spheres of the universe is like yet another love-transcended aspect of us emerging from yet another cocoon.
Presence, responding to situations, accepting differences and contradictions, frees energy that is ghosted and stagnant. While blocked energy creates frustrations and often painful symptoms, it is totally inevitable, since every organism evolves through condensed experiences. Life enhancing and life destroying events subject us to a pattern of repetition in time until we embrace change.
‘A truth outgrown crushes you under its weight.’ Fazal Inayat-Khan
To bring a repeating pattern to a higher level of flow requires a kind of quantum leap of consciousness. Small leaps occur frequently, especially when we befriend the unconscious and allow fresh symbols into awareness. The released light/energy brings new meaning and allows the self-actualisation of new potential.
‘It is obvious that the percolation of a timeless NOW is penetrating everything!’ – Philippa Rees
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The image above is by Natasha Tonkin, my son’s partner. It was done two years ago as Christmas card and gift idea towards illustrating my novel, to help bring it to life. I scanned and inversed the image for the mirror to appear light. Natasha’s animation website: http://pandahorse.com/
Link to a book I co-edited about the Sufi teacher I mentioned above, Fazal Inayat-Khan. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heart-Sufi-Inayat-Khan-Reflections-ebook/dp/B00BFUO0T6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369084226&sr=1-1&keywords=heart+of+a+sufi
Link to ‘Involution,’ an exceptional book by a kindred spirit, Philippa Rees. http://involution-odyssey.com/ her book will soon hit the market. Her site is being developed.
Course of Mirrors 
Thank you for kindness but more for existing. I have to post a book to Andalucia for reading between the olives with a glass in the fading light…what more could any writer ask?
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I wouldn’t mind sitting in Andalucia reading your book with a glass of red catching the sunset ☼
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Followed your link to a new David Bohm that I had not seen before. What an extraordinarily modest, hesitant and in many ways unhappy and inhibited presence. Yes lovely hands, and they make continually moving gestures symptomatic of his unceasing currents of thought. Watching him and Krishnamurti together is like observing two snails gradually approaching a leaf of agreement, and far from certain it will taste good when they get there!
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I know a little about Krishnamurti’s background, and that Bohm became an agnostic in his teens. It’s likely they had to battle with cognitive injury to develop their own cosmology.
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Our life has many cocoon and wing stages.
I enjoyed reading this and it made me think deeply about what is going on with me at the moment and the small phrase above is very reassuring. Thanks for this post.
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Thank you Diane. I re-discovered this discussion about injuries and it reminded me of the particular trajectory my life took, the search, the doubts, and the gifts it brought as well.
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