Wounds of the Heart...

My mother’s cat literally dropped dead at her home a week ago Thursday, leaving my 84 year old mother sitting holding her dead cat in a deluge of tears in the Vet’s office - understandably.   Unspoken wells of emotion came from deep caverns within, flooding the room.  I’m sure it was also years of the hidden emotional pain of life and loss.  Loss can do that.  It brings up a lot of hidden issues we didn’t know were there.  My teary eyed sister and I tried to console her.  But what can you do when a woman does not want to be consoled, when she pulls away in bitterness, and uses the opportunity to zing you with her words.  Anger and pain are closely related.  While cradling her dead cat like a newborn, she said: “I know *other people* didn’t like you but *I* loved you – indirectly pointed at the two of us – purposely shrugging each one of our hands off her shoulder – pulling away.  Ouch…

My mother’s cat was not a cuddly, loving cat.  You had to keep your distance, and pass by him carefully undergoing a gauntlet of hisses and swats.  No, we didn’t warm up to him.  But we each have lost a cat and know the deep pain and grief of losing a beloved pet.  And we were being rebuffed for our offering.  I could only step back in wonder at how deep my mother’s pain must go to use this opportunity to bite back – unconsciously, I know.  This hasn’t been the first time either.  As my sister and I stepped away and moved across the room I became aware of an internal hurt to the zing, and a reaction arose.  Instead of love, an incredible awkwardness filled the room – and the ride home from the Vet.  The remnants of unclaimed baggage…

How does one express love and compassion to a woman who obviously can’t receive it, whose emotional baggage is so heavy she has no free hands to receive any offer of consolation.  Whose wounds are so deep they won’t allow her to authentically love – or be loved.  This is the dynamic in my family vortex, and I imagine in many other families as well.  We all have them – the baggage, the wounds, the denial, the blaming, the deep bitterness of not feeling loved and nurtured enough that poisons relationships and gets carried from generation to generation.

Over the years we all have had our own ways of wounding each other with our hidden pain - with sharp tongues, with sarcasm and criticism, with anger - revealing our inability to hold our hearts open. Unable to speak of our wounds with each other in mature, authentic ways that heal, we default instead to the dysfunction, reverting to the passive-aggressive hurtful behavior of our prickly personalities – with little digs that get expressed to relieve the hidden suffering, to bite back, to be right – to try to control our pain.

Many years ago I became aware of my own pain and dysfunction – my shadow side - and began to get some much needed professional help. I also took up the so-called “spiritual path” to find a “better way”, to become more conscious of my own deeply hidden wounds – and – to “awaken” to who I really am at the Heart of Being beyond the pain.  This does not make me special, or more evolved, or “better than.”  I just wanted to move past the pain, and to know the Truth.  I thought I had gotten past the pains of the past, but last week I could feel the heart ache flood to the surface again.  I was a bit surprised actually.  The difference was, I could just let it be there, just notice it rise (and after a couple of days dissipate.)  No longer willing to lash out from hurt in anger, I was just aware – aware of my own woundedness and everyone else’s, still trying to be present - from a safe distance emotionally – allowing some space as the thunder rolled through everyone. 

It became clear that the cat’s death had become a catalyst for the emergence of unspoken family pain again…  But what can one do when other family members don’t want to *see* their pain, to face the 500 pound elephant in the room, refuse to get help while drowning in a sea of dysfunction – threatened by the mere exposure of the deep, open family wound that makes my heart ache to write about it...

“Accepting life as it is” sometimes gets bandied about in non-dual circles like a cliché, but the pain of “life as it is” needs to be addressed at times… At some point there has to be a willingness to *see* - our own and each other’s wounds - a willingness to get to the root of the wound: the *belief* in separation from our Eternal Beingness/True Nature.

Non-dual awareness, teachings, practices, methods, and techniques are not a “spiritual bypass” for our pain.  Nothing is left behind.  Everything is allowed as part of the fabric of Reality – the suffering, the wounds, the shadows, the tears in the fabric of living.  And there needs to be a willingness to open to those wounds through awareness, tenderness and compassion *for* the woundings.   And through that, a different path emerges, so that we are not unconsciously defaulting to the path of hidden pain and suffering, again and again… 

But - are we willing to expose and unwind the wounds of the Heart?   Are we willing to wake up and see the Truth of who we really are and not *live* in our wounds…   Obviously I’m still facing mine :)

~

Photos

The pictures are from a scrapbook I did many years ago when I was addressing the wounds of the Heart.
They are individual collage pages dealing with some aspect of “the wound” as I understood it back then.
What I didn’t understand at the time was the deep wound of separation
that is at the root of our sense of woundedness and suffering -
the not *knowing* of who we really are…

It was only when I began to be aware of our inherent True Nature/Beingness
that the wounds began to be faced and embraced – over time…

May we all wake up from “the wound.”