This book is for those people who have done their work and therapy regarding their childhood abuse issues but still have been unable to lead fully happy lives. It is for those of you who may be stuck in destructive relationships or unable to find a fulfilling relationship. It is also for those of you who may still be suffering from eating disorders, shame, rage or periodic depression. It is for all of you who have worked on the direct issues of your abuse in childhood but still feel out of control in your lives.
This is a book of advanced techniques for recovery from childhood abuse. It is an outgrowth of my own journey from childhood sexual and verbal abuse to thriving in life. I believe that this book would be useful for those of you who are dealing with other forms of childhood abuse as well. First, any form of abuse rarely occurs without some other form of abusive behavior present-- verbal abuse, physical, mental abuse and sexual abuse are often paired. Second, many of the techniques presented here are ancient healing ways that have been used for generations to bring people to a fullness of body, mind and spirit regardless of the type of abuse they experienced.
Ideally, in using this book you have already been in therapy or are currently in therapy. This book is not meant to supplant any kind of therapeutic intervention that you may have undergone or may be currently undergoing. Instead, it is written as a support for that process.
This is a book about moving beyond surviving from abuse and into thriving in life. You do not have to be an abuse survivor for the rest of your life; you can be living free of the abusive syndrome. I know this because this is my story. This is my journey from abuse to thriving. I will share with you the secrets that changed my life. They gave me meaning, control, peace and happiness. You can have these things too. It is not easy, but it can be done.
Before I first recovered the memories of my childhood sexual abuse I had what appeared to be from the outside a desirable life. However, my Ph.D., my "good job" and my nice house weren't enough for me. I was constantly crying. I had spent ten years of my life in depression. For those ten years I did little more than go to work, come home, lie in bed, sleep and eat. Therapy did not seem to help. I had dysfunctional relationships. I was filled with rage that showed up mostly during devastating periods of pre menstrual syndrome (PMS). I had gained 60 pounds since high school and felt ugly and undesirable. I was sexually voracious and I was unsafe and unwise in my choice of temporary partners. Still, somehow I thought that each new sexual encounter might become a relationship. I hoped that they would love me. Of course, they did not. Each time they left I felt rejected. The few times I had longer term relationships, I destroyed them with jealousy and anger.
When I recovered the memories of abuse in therapy, I was relieved that there was a reason for why I had acted as I did. Finally, there was some explanation for why I could not seem to manage normal life. I was not just a crazy out of control person. I was an "abuse survivor." Still this term frightened me. It felt like a label that I would wear for the rest of my life. I would always be a survivor of abuse. It all seemed so much like a pathetic talk show. I had always pitied those women who bared their lives on talk shows for the prurient pleasures of the audience. Now, I was one of those women I had pitied.
I read everything that I could on the subject of overcoming abuse. I had a very good therapist. I made great strides. I found that I was a fast and hard worker on my own internal issues. My depression lifted, but my life stayed pretty much the same as it had been before. I was still attracted to destructive relationships. I was grossly over weight and hated my body. My PMS and rage seemed to take me over as if I was possessed by someone else. I was not happy. I was a survivor all right, but that was all I was. My life had no vitality nor joy. I was empty and no amount of food could fill the whole. I needed something more than traditional therapies could provide.
I had been exploring "new age" ideas for quite a while. I tried everything that didn't seem totally preposterous. Some of them gave me temporary pleasure. Many provided insight. Still my life did not change. Slowly, I was introduced to Shamanic practices. I knew an anthropologist who worked with Shamanic cultures. I saw a video tape she had and went to a lecture sponsored by the anthropology department. It seemed like the next likely thing to try. Shamanism, however, seemed especially appealing to me because of my up bringing in New Mexico where I had been fascinated by Native American cultures. So, I began to read about Shamanism. When I saw that a psychology meeting I was attending was offering a pre conference workshop on Shamanism with Michael Harner,1 I signed up. Soon after that the magical journey began. I opened to the voices in all of nature and found the spirits that were here to help me. Slowly, I found myself.
Since that time, I have been a client of Shamanic counseling. I have found Spiritual and Animal Guides to aid my work. I have attended a number of workshops with noted Shamans. I have even served for two years as an apprentice with a local Shamanic Healer. I have learned how to use energy to heal the body and spirit. I have incorporated Shamanic practices into my teaching, research and consultation. Moreover, I have transformed my life. I have begun to thrive. My journey through Shamanism has been a highly personal one. Still, there are general practices and principles that can apply to anyone who is in the situation I was-- a survivor.
I know personally that there is more to the promise of life than mere survival. If you seriously engage in taking the actions and doing the thinking and exercises in this book you too can begin to thrive. By doing the practices outlined in this book, I have gone beyond thinking of myself as a survivor of abuse to living a happy and fulfilling life.
Does this mean that I never again have acted out of my victimization - or that I still don't overwork myself - or that I don't engage in destroying small parts of my relationships? No. From time to time I still lapse back into these behaviors. It is normal to lapse back. I want to say quite clearly, though, that the regressed times are fewer and farther between. The episodes last only moments rather than days, weeks or months. In fact, as I am writing this book, I have a fulfilling and healthy relationship. My weight and eating are normal. I like myself. I enjoy my work. I have enduring friendships. My PMS is very slight and I no longer feel possessed nor out of control. Most of all, I am happy. I can honestly say now that I wake up each morning with a sense of joy about my life and my day.
There are days that I am working some issue in my relationships or in my personal growth and I have negative feelings of loss, sorrow, fear or anger. These used to be difficult, depressed days for me. Now, they are days of great excitement and joy. What used to be unbearable pain is now a joyful excitement of discovery. Even the tough work of being alive is fulfilling for me.
I write this book now because I can not wait any longer to tell the joy that can be a part of your life even after having been abused as a child. These ways have brought me to a life of joy and fulfillment. I offer them here to you. In following them you may find for yourself the deep comfort and love that lives within you. These ways have not made me a different person. They have brought me back to myself. I am finally my full loving, joyful self. I believe that these ways can do this for you as well. You can be happy. You can live every moment of life with vigor and power. You can thrive!
Thus, this book was born from my own journey from childhood abuse to survival and into thriving. The basics of what I've learned in this journey are portrayed here. They come from many sources. First and foremost, are my spiritual experiences as a Shamanic client and later as an apprentice and Shamanic counselor. These flights of the spirit are by far the most powerful portions of my personal journey to healing. In this book I abstract the basic processes used in Shamanism and offer them to you. You may do the exercises by yourself or in conjunction with a Shamanic counselor.
In addition to the Shamanic underpinning of this book, the techniques and understanding presented here are also informed by my basic knowledge of psycho-therapeutic technique and intervention. My years teaching in a school of psychology are part of my life and thinking and I did not give these up to learn Shamanism. I must admit that, at times, my scientific knowledge got in the way of fully embracing the spiritual knowledge I was gaining. Still, there have been times in which the two (spirit and psychology) have informed each other. I present here the psychological information that I believe is helpful in the thriving process. In addition, I am an academic. Thus, some parts of this book are rather academic in nature. I trust that those of you who need to understand the phenomenon will enjoy these portions. Those of you who do better with the being and doing of learning are welcome to skip them.
Finally, some material in this book is "channeled" material. That is, there are parts of this book that have been handed to me by my Spiritual Guides. Channeling portions of this book has itself been a journey. In order to explain to you what my Spirit Guides gave me, I have often had to learn to explain it to myself. Sometimes the channeled portions made no sense to me in the moment, nor did they seem to fit within the context of what I thought I was writing. However, in my own spiritual journey, I have learned to trust that what is handed to me by spirit is much better than what I could have produced myself. Thus, I worked with these messages. As I pondered them, I began to learn. What I learned from them is included here for you.
In learning to do hands on healing and energy work, I was taught that there are multiple bodies beyond the physical body. The three main bodies beyond the physical that I will address in this book are: the emotional body ; the mental or cognitive body; and the spiritual body or bodies. These bodies are arrayed in layers extending from your physical body outward. They envelope your physical body like a cocoon of energy.
During my apprenticeship I was also taught to feel and recognize these bodies on a client and myself. I learned to sense blockages in each of these bodies. I found that the wounding events in our past manifest as wounds or blockages in multiple levels (multiple bodies). Wounding experiences can create blockages in each of the bodies. Further, the blockages created by a single incident can be different in each body. When a wounding event occurs it enters through each of these bodies to affect us. Wounding events can be seen as arrows coming in from the environment, piercing through our multiple bodies and finally into our physical body. Each arrow leaves specific wounds (holes and blockages) in each layer. Full healing requires removing the arrows and healing each of the wounds in each of the layers.
Healing the wounds, however, is just the first step to thriving. The process of healing from any particular wounding incident, requires releasing the blockages and mending the holes in multiple bodies. However, to thrive one must make the multiple bodies resilient to future arrows or wounding events. Once resiliency is created, then abusive arrows which come from the environment no longer pierce the layers. When the bodies are resilient, abuse no longer tears through the spirit, mind and emotions and into the physical self.
Thus, this book addresses both healing and thriving. Healing utilizes techniques for removing the arrows of abuse and allowing each body to heal in its own way. These include: addressing negative thought forms, soul retrieval and re-parenting. Thriving involves using tools for creating resilience in these multiple bodies such as: walking meditation, living meditation, and the Journey Way. To introduce you to the journey of this book I will spend some time going over the various chapters and their themes. I will also introduce you to some of the major concepts that we will be learning in this book.
In this book we will first address your relationship to your physical body. Many survivors of childhood abuse are not connected to their physical body. In Shamanic terms they go "out of body." In Chapter Two I will discuss why you go out of body and what that does to your experience. We will talk about how to recognize when you are out of body and what you can do to get back in. By using the techniques of grounding, exercise and breath you can develop a new relationship to your body. Caring for and loving your body is an important part of this new relationship. Thus, I will offer you several techniques for loving and maintaining your body. I will also discuss how profound changes in your physical body can result from changes in your outer bodies. Similarly, any change you undergo in your physical body will map itself in your outer bodies as well. Thus, you will need to be prepared to have changes in all of your bodies as a result of working first on your physical body.
Your emotional body is layered just outside of your physical body. The emotional body holds the feelings of events in your past. Your emotional body experiences pure sensation. Your emotional body contains the feelings you experienced devoid of the meanings that you created about those feelings. Thus, feelings of pain, loss or even joy are held in your emotional body without interpretation.
The techniques of healing the emotional body offered in Chapter Four are "soul retrieval" and "re-parenting." Soul retrieval is a Shamanic technique popularized by Sandra Ingerman2. In general, the belief underlying soul retrieval is that each wounding event creates a splitting off of the part of self that was wounded. This part of self must be retrieved energetically and brought back to the individual so that the individual can become whole. The act of finding, retrieving and bringing back lost parts of self is soul retrieval.
It is my experience that the lost parts of self which have been split off in relationship to the wounds of childhood abuse have often left holes in the emotional body. Similarly, I have found that the technique of soul retrieval has its greatest healing abilities in relationship to the wounds of the emotional body.
However, the retrieval of split off parts of self is not sufficient for healing to occur. These lost parts of self have been sitting in a kind of limbo since they were split off. This means that the parts that were split off in childhood may still be at the age they were when they split. Thus, when we integrate these parts they need to be re-parented and brought to maturity within the adult self. Therefore, re-parenting is the next section offered in Chapter Four.
Re-parenting begins a method of healing your emotional body by providing the nurturing and protection that your own parents could not provide. Re-parenting offers emotional support to the parts of self that were split off. To re-parent our inner selves we must find within us good parents. In re-parenting, internal good parents serve to nurture the parts of self that were split off and are now recovered.
Your mental body is where thoughts and meanings of events you have experienced are held. The rationalizations for your experiences and the ways in which you have interpreted your life live within your mental body.
Sometimes feelings held inside the emotional body are consistent with the thoughts we have about those feelings. However, this is not always true. For example, you may feel hurt and garner the meaning from that--- "This hurts." This would be a consistent relationship between your emotional body and the meaning of the feeling in your mental body. However the messages sent in childhood abuse are often times confusing. Mixed messages often create rifts between the emotional body and the meaning we attach to our feelings in the mental body. For example, a child may be experiencing pain and the feeling may be scary and hurtful. At the same time, the abuser may be telling the child "I love you, this is for you own good." Thus, the mental body retains the image that hurting and scarring is love while the emotional body retains the full sense of the pain and fear of the abuse. In such a situation, the emotional body may also retain the sense of confusion in the mixed message. Thus, the woundings of the mental body are not always consistent with the woundings experienced in the emotional body.
Therefore, the healing of the emotional body does not necessarily equate to the equivalent healing in the mental body. It is sometimes true that each body must be healed separately. Thus, there are separate chapters in this book that are dedicated to the healing of the emotional body (Chapter Four) and the mental body (Chapter Three).
To address the mental body we'll discuss the healing of thought forms. Thought forms are the belief systems that are created by past events which serve to control and guide your future action. Thought forms are beyond mere thoughts. When thoughts gain an energy of their own they become thought forms. These forms then serve to guide how we act and how we view the world in which we live. The thought form, then, is a thought that has been given energy to control.
All of us are governed constantly by thought forms. We hold within us belief systems which cause us to view the world in particular ways. Thought forms by themselves are neither positive nor negative. Every act that we take is governed by some thought form. Our own personal reality is just that-- a personal reality of thought forms. It is formed by our thoughts and our interpretation of events and actions. However, these personal realities can serve to either enhance or diminish us. The trick in healing thought forms is to eliminate those thought forms which diminish our capabilities of living happily in our lives. When our thought forms no longer serve us they must be removed.
Too often the notion of self created thought forms is used to blame the victim. New age philosophies hold that you are responsible for your own feelings, diseases and experiences. Though I believe that this is generally true, I think that the interpretation of this can go too far. I believe that you are responsible for changing your thought forms. However, the creation of thought forms is influenced by many people in your environment, not just you. Especially when you are a child, you are not wholly in control of the thought forms that are created for you.
This more encompassing notion of thought forms is similar to the social-psychological concept of social construction. In social construction the belief is that all of an individual's reality is socially constructed. That is, the people around an individual serve to focus the individual's attention and understanding in ways that create reality for the individual. Thus, not only do you create your reality, but your position within your social group (your relationship with others) creates your reality as well.
Therefore, it is important to understand your relationships with others as a function of the formation of your understanding of your own reality. Abuse, or your relationship with the abuser, served to form your reality. This reality then formed your relationship with yourself. Therefore, your relationship with your abuser also formed your relationship with yourself. In addition, your reality and your relationship to self are formed by the meanings that others in your world held about your abuse.
If others denied the abuse, you learned to believe that denial was the appropriate way of dealing with abuse. If the abuser was protected from being discovered, you probably learned that abusers should be protected or hidden. If you were punished for having engaged in sexual acts, then you learned to believe that sexuality was negative and deserved punishment.
The important aspect of the social construction of reality is that those who lived in your social world had a part in creating the inner rules for your reality. You incorporated these rules naturally as a part of growing up. If the ways in which people around you behaved were abusive or dysfunctional, you incorporated abusive or dysfunctional ways of understanding your own reality. In the social construction of reality notion, a social group conspires to create a reality that is held by individuals within the group. Given the degree of the general conspiracy to deny, cover up and punish the victims of abuse it is not surprising that we incorporate negative and disconcerting ideas about ourselves from this experience. These ideas, reinforced by the ideas of our social group, become thought forms.
The process of removal of unwanted thought forms requires the identification and removal of energy from the thought form. Thought forms are not just thought patterns. They are thought patterns which have the ability to control. Their ability to control uses and stores energy. This energy must be broken away from the thought form in order for it to dissipate and eventually be removed.
Through identifying thought forms that no longer serve you and removing their energy you heal your mental body. Chapter Three on the mental body offers several prevalent thought forms which are created by childhood abuse. In addition, it explores techniques for identifying thought forms that you yourself may be carrying. Finally, it explains several means of releasing the energy from these thought forms so that they might begin to dissipate and be removed.
Your spiritual body is layered just outside your emotional body. Actually, there are four spiritual bodies each layer just outside the other. However, for our purposes they need not be distinguished nor dealt with separately. Within your spiritual bodies are retained all the parts of self. Your spiritual bodies hold maps of the parts of yourself which are known to you. They also contain maps of the parts of self which have been split off from you. In addition, your spiritual bodies retain aspects of self which are a part of your "higher self." Your spiritual bodies, then, are key for creating transformation. This is because all parts of yourself (known, unknown and higher) are all mapped within them.
The spiritual bodies also contain the archetypal knowledge that Carl Jung3 spoke about. It is here that the archetypal (or eternal) masculine and feminine can be accessed. The images of archetypal masculine and feminine can be utilized to build images of good parents within.
However, the uses of the spiritual bodies for healing go far beyond the access to archetypal images for rebuilding internal parents. This is because the spiritual bodies are the first bodies to exist both in "ordinary" and "nonordinary" reality at the same time. Though Shamans learned to move all their bodies (including their physical body) into both nonordinary and ordinary reality, most of us do not. The level at which our ordinary reality meets our nonordinary reality is the level of our spiritual bodies.
Ordinary and nonordinary reality will be discussed later in more detail. For now, let us talk about your main available bridge between ordinary and nonordinary reality-- metaphor. Through the use of metaphor one can experience nonordinary reality (that exists in the spiritual body) and bring that nonordinary reality into ordinary reality. Living inside the metaphor (as we'll learn in Chapter Seven on journey) is a primary method of bringing healing to the spiritual body.
Metaphor also becomes a primary method for building resilience in all the bodies. Since all aspects of yourself are mapped in your spiritual body, the healing of your spiritual body leads to resilience in all your bodies. Thus, the journey method or living inside the metaphor is the key to healing your spiritual body and moving into thriving.
In talking about the spiritual body, I've alluded to how two dimensions, masculine and feminine, are mapped in their eternal/ archetypal forms within the spiritual body. Masculine and feminine are also mapped within the other bodies. They are mapped in the emotional body in their emotional state and they are mapped in the mental body through belief systems.
Masculine and feminine are two primary dimensions of the self. Though there are many dimensions of the self, these two are central to healing from abuse. These two dimensions, masculine and feminine, are most likely to have been altered and deformed in the wounding that occurred in abuse. In addition, the relationship between masculine and feminine, when connected with childhood abuse, often becomes distorted into a relationship of victim and abuser. Thus, these two dimensions (masculine and feminine) become critical to the healing process.
The primary mode of healing masculine and feminine is moving towards balance. Masculine and feminine each exist within their own paradox or loop. In addition, these loops are intertwined. The center of each loop (or the balance point of each loop) is a place of health. Because masculine and feminine paradoxical loops are intertwined, a balance point between masculine and feminine must also be achieved for full health.
Masculine and feminine dimensions each have their own form of transformation. Learning each form and when it is most effectively utilized in life is important to achieving balance. Therefore, Chapter Five dealing with the paradoxes of masculine and feminine will explore what these paradoxical loops are and how they interrelate. I will also show how these paradoxes form into another paradoxical relationship between abuser and victim. In Chapter Six on balance, I will describe masculine and feminine in and out of balance and give you some exercises to move you to balance within and between these dimensions.
In order to address the four bodies and the two dimensions of masculine and feminine, I will employ multiple methods-- many ways. These methods are drawn from neurolinguistic programming, psychoanalysis, Shamanic techniques and my own personal experience. Each chapter will contain some didactic material and some exercises for you to experience. Some chapters may also have my reflections on my own journey towards thriving. These reflections are included to model the process of being in the experience and reflecting upon it. Being in and reflecting upon is critical to living inside the metaphor (See Chapter Seven).
You will notice that the chapters in this book are presented in a slightly different order than in this introductory chapter. To properly sequence your work toward thriving, I have placed Chapter Three on the mental body before Chapter Four on the emotional body. This is reversed from the order in which they are layered around our physical body. However, we live in a very mind and thought oriented culture. Thus, many people are more in touch with their thoughts than their emotions. By clearing their thoughts first, it becomes easier to access their emotions. I have also put Chapter Five, on feminine and masculine paradox, and Chapter Six, on balancing the feminine and masculine, before discussing healing the spiritual body and the Journey Way (Chapter Seven). This is because the Journey Way is most easily achieved after doing the work of balancing masculine and feminine. You will find if you work sequentially through the book that the series of exercises will build upon each other and hasten your progress.
Healing stories are also included as another form of helping you move from your ordinary reality into the life of metaphor. Ancient and channeled healing stories that are presented in this book live at the level of metaphor. Their meaning resides in the interpretation of symbols by you-- the reader. I have provided for you some instruction or explanation of most of these stories. However, their true value lives in the meanings that they create within you. Some of the stories presented here are mythic and some have been channeled to me. Others are about real people that I have encountered in my life or in my work.
However, you are in the beginning of a story right now. Learning to thrive means moving through wounding and into thriving-- living your own story. This is a journey. Your journey is your story. The symbols and the characters will be uniquely yours. Their meaning will be an outgrowth of your growth. Your story can have a happy ending. Pay attention to the symbols and characters of your story. They are and will be as rich and meaningful to interpret as those of the mythic and channeled stories in this book. It is through learning to interpret and live your own story that you learn to live in metaphor and thrive.
This book is for all of you who have already begun your healing process in relationship to your childhood abuse. This book is for those of you who have begun to heal, but have not yet found the happy ending to your story. It is for those of you for whom lasting and loving relationships still feel elusive. It is for those who find daily happiness is only a chance occurrence. If It is time for you to live happily ever after, this book is for you.
This book is also for those of you who have come to know yourself well enough to be able to move beyond therapy into a way of living that is intentionally therapeutic. To do this you must empower yourself to become self energizing in the therapeutic process. This book is for those of you who need to move beyond looking upon the therapist for your insight and experiences and move into having those insights as a part of your daily routine of life. This book is for those of you who need to become your own story.
In taking this opportunity to live and be your own story, you move yourself another step along the journey to the happy ending of thriving. Thus, I will introduce you to the first healing story "Looks Far Woman" (adapted and abstracted from Jamie Sams "The Thirteen Original Clan Mothers."4) because it parallels the story you are about to begin.
Looks Far Woman is a wise healer who is the doorkeeper to the Crack in the Universe.
One sun, while Looks Far Woman was spending some time in solitude, a young boy came stumbling up the rugged path that led from the hot springs to her cave. Carrying his sister's bruised, limp body in his weary arms, he explained that his sister had been raped, beaten, and left to die by traveling hunters. He laid the girl's body at Looks Far Woman' s feet. He wanted to know if his little sister would ever return from Eternal Land. Her unseeing eyes were wide open and the grimace of terror still locked her jaws as if she had been frozen in time. The girl had passed fourteen winters, but it was doubtful she would last another Sun. She had not spoken, eaten, taken a drink, nor moved since he found her. He traveled for three Suns and Sleeps, bringing the girl to Looks Far Woman, who was his last hope.
Looks Far Woman hid her feelings as she examined the girl. The Clan Mother looked past her own feelings of anger and heartbreak to see if the girl's spirit had been broken forever. The light of the Eternal Flame was weak inside the child's Orenda but it flickered and sputtered each time the boy spoke to her.
Looks Far Woman worked to keep the girl, who was named Star Fire, from losing touch with life. She was afraid that Star Fire's spirit would slip through the Crack in the Universe, and she would forget who she was, wandering into Eternal Land without a hope of ever returning.
Looks Far Woman sang to Star Fire's spirit while she relieved the girl's body of any stress by floating her in the warm mineral waters, simulating the safety of the womb. Although Looks Far Woman was present and aware of what she was singing, the child in her arms and the child's brother, Little Eagle, she was also aware of the Crack in the Universe, making sure that Star Fire's spirit did not wander away. At times like this one the Seer was grateful that she could easily master simultaneously seeing many levels of awareness in the tangible and intangible worlds.
Many moons passed while Little Eagle and Looks Far Woman worked with Star Fire, slowly bringing the girl's spirit back from the edge of Eternal Land. The brutality of Star Fire's trauma had shattered her sense of being, tearing a hole in her Sacred Space, allowing fragments of her spirit to explode, abandoning the girl's senses inside a vastness of the Void. In darkness, without her Spiritual Essence intact, Star Fire's connections to the tangible world, her recovering body and broken mind were minimal.
Looks Far Woman traveled into the void regularly, collecting shattered fragments of Star Fire's spirit. Every Sun and Sleep, the Oracle guided the shards of spirit back into the girl's Orenda. Little Eagle and Looks Far Woman waited and watched, spoke and sang to Star Fire; then they returned thanks, sending love to Great Mystery every time a tiny bit of progress was made.
The Sun finally dawned when Star Fire's eyes lost their glaze, stared and flickered with recognition when her big brother greeted her. She had been eating and drinking for some time but had no awareness of herself or those who attended to her needs. Looks Far Woman realized that the healing process would continue for many moons, but the crisis of losing Star Fire's spirit was now over.
Slowly, Star Fire began to trust Looks Far Woman, as the Clan Mother took the girl through a multitude of small healing steps on the path back to wholeness. Through learning to take care of her personal hygiene, feeding herself, talking about her feelings, walking in nature, and learning to feel safe, Star Fire firmly rooted herself in the tangible world of family life. Laughter would come to the girl's lips when she shared in Little Eagle's antics, making fun of the standoff he had seen in the glen between the Bear and the Honey Bee. The passage of moons had worked its Medicine, allowing Star Fire to share in the happy routine of Looks Far Woman's life. Little Eagle and Star Fire, having lost their parents, stayed with Looks Far Woman for many seasons.
Star Fire decided to train with Looks Far Woman in order to develop her natural abilities as a Seer and Dreamer. Looks Far Woman tested her adopted daughter when they went on Medicine Walks, telling the girl to shut her eyes from time to time and to describe in detail everything she had seen during the preceding moments. When visitors' came to the two women's fire, Star Fire would be tested on the observations she had made during the visitors' stay. Through seeing the obvious truths in the tangible world and being able to recount every detail, Star Fire honed her ability to see. After completing these lessons, the Clan Mother began instructing Star Fire in how to use the blackened Medicine Bowl filled with water, gazing into the inky pool to see beyond the tangible. Looks Far Woman understood the keen abilities that Star Fire possessed. Every Two-legged who had survived the shattering of the luminous orb that held their Sacred Points of View could access other realms, because fragments of their spirits had journeyed into the Void of Creation. The process of becoming a Seer or a Dreamer would test Star Fire's strength to confront and to go through the memories of trauma that would be encountered in the visions that appeared. This part of any abused human's healing process was a delicate one that could be very frightening, but Star Fire was strong now. Many moons passed as the girl challenged and bested the nightmares of the past, moving beyond the shadowy remnants of her former pain, cleansing the feeling that could inhibit her ability to see clearly.
Looks Far was proud of her adopted daughter's progress. The girl had passed twenty winters and was becoming a talented Seer. Looks Far Woman said to Star Fire "Daughter, the time has come for you to travel beyond the realms you have journeyed through. Go and purify yourself in the bubbling water of the hot springs, then meet me in the cavern where we used the Medicine Bowl to seek vision."
Star Fire nodded, then unhurriedly made her way out of the cave. While Star Fire prepared herself for the journey, Looks Far Woman sat with her memories and released them. Looks Far Woman was ready to face the future, having reviewed the past and released it in order to see the truth of the here and now. She stood up and walked with silent determination to the place of the giant cavern where the next turn in her Sacred Path would be revealed.
The two women sat in the vision cavern, peering into the blackened Medicine Bowl. The surface of the water was lit by the flames of their twig fire. Star Fire would be journeying alone, but Looks Far Woman would observe the girl's effort by using her talents as a Seer.
Star Fire melded her consciousness with the water and fire seen in the Medicine Bowl by focusing without blinking. Gently, she surrendered her mind to the flow of the life forces of the elements of fire and water, using the fire to burn away her random thoughts and water to cleanse her total being of the need to control the journey. She continued by bringing the Earth Mother's magnetism from the soil beneath her into her body's center of gravity, her womb. With the breath, she brought the element of air into her lungs and used the life manna to stabilize her bodily functions. Finally she opened her heart and gave over, surrendered to the love of the Great Mystery. The connection was now complete, combining the Clan Chiefs of Air, Earth, Water and Fire with the raw Creative Potential of Great Mystery, melding these natural forces with Divine Love inside her Orenda.
Through limitless space, Star Fire traveled on a beam of love, beholding the dreamscape of earlier journeys as she crossed the vast expanse of the Void. Much time had passed as she sailed through the Dreamtime, finally reaching unfamiliar territory. The Bow of Beauty stood before her, glittering in the light of stars. The golden bow was inlaid with pearls, representing pearls of wisdom, and with rubies, glistening in the reflected golden light. The Bow of Beauty spoke to Star Fire: "Child of Looks Far Woman, the arrow of your spirit form can be mounted upon my bowstring and shot into the Void if you possess the faith reflected in the red of these precious stones inlaid in the arc of my bow. Like yourself, through living with the grit of human life, the Oyster produces the pearls of wisdom that have brought you this far on your healing path. Are you ready to travel farther?"
Star fire agreed and her spirit form was shot by the Bow of Beauty into the void of the unknown. Blazing colors flew past her, blurring the dreamscape, as she traveled far and fast into the new realms of the Dreamtime. When her vision cleared, she saw the erratic dance of lightning bolts far in the distance. The silent storm of raw creative force drew her forever forward, drifting easily, seemingly being pulled by her own fascination. Suddenly, as she drew very close to the Fire Stick Beings crackling silently before her, she spied an apricot light that reminded her of the rising of Grandfather Sun. The radiant apricot color lightened into shades of buttercup and sunflower yellow, revealing a large chasm as space seemingly split in the center of the burnished golden orb. A figure appeared in front of the enormous crack in space, faintly outlined in the purest gold. As the figure took on more substance, Star Fire was drawn closer until she could see the face of the spirit form.
The welcoming arms of Looks Far Woman encircled the girl's spirit form as she felt all the love of the universe course through her being. Together they watched the Golden Door of Illumination appear, rising from the Crack in the Universe. Looks Far Woman stood aside and questioned her daughter with eyes filled with compassion. A blinding light appeared inside Star Fire's spirit form in the place where her heart resided in her human body. The Eternal Flame of Love blazed with passion for living inside the girl's dreaming body, signaling that she had forgiven those who had wounded her and had seen the truth of how that pain had served her by opening her to the gifts she now held. She had become a healed healer who had passed through the dark night of the soul to reclaim the love. Her connection to the Creator and to all life was complete. Star Fire nodded to her mother and allowed the light of love, beaming from her heart, to draw her through the Crack in the Universe.
Inside you lives the healed healer. Take this first step upon your journey to uncover, train and bring him/her to your conscious self. You too are both Star Fire and Looks Far Woman (or man).