Buried Treasure
I’ve heard or been a part of this conversation more times than I can count:
“So, what’s your current healing project? What are you working on in your meditations?”
Acute and embarrassed pause, “Um…oh…well…uh…I don’t know…um…old pain?” There seems to be a perception out in the universe that to heal yourself you need to know what you are trying to change. This simply isn’t true. “I don’t know.” is a perfectly acceptable response to questions about your current healing project.
Through meditation, you can deal with a specific issue; clear pain without knowing any details about the cause; or you can do some combination of the two. For example, you can clear the pain of starting junior high school, without reliving the gory details of every haunting pre-teen embarrassment.
Think of your healing project as an archeological excavation. You start with a big clump of dirt that you know contains something. You begin to wash away the gunk and you get mud and maybe some sticky residue. After a while, you discover you’ve got some type of container. Eventually, you realize it’s a container for holding lamp oil. It isn’t until you are all the way through to the end that you can see the details of the mosaic work on the outside of the vessel and the remains of a smooth finish on the inside. In short, by the time you can see the details of the artifact clearly, it’s almost time to move on to the next thing. Your healing project was to uncover the beauty of the object buried under the mud. (Which, of course, is an aspect of yourself.)
For the past two or three months, I’ve been working on … something. I had absolutely no clue what I was trying to heal. All I could tell was that my “archeological find” must have come from the La Brea Tar Pits because it was covered in thick, black tar; not ordinary mud.
I decided that it must have something to do with my first chakra, because of the way my body was reacting. I could also tell that it was very old, stirring up information from many past lives, because of the fragments I discovered during my meditations and the areas of physical pain in my body. When I meditated, I didn’t focus on a specific idea or issue, I just used meditation to clear away the tar-like energy and whatever was sticking to it.
About a week ago, I got a glimmer – a clue – that first shine of the mosaic under the gunk being sloughed off. This was about being seen. The discovery inspired me to continue moving forward.
One of my biggest challenges in creating my website (www.ofthesoul.com) was clearing away the fear of being seen or noticed by others. By putting myself out on the web in words and ideas and images I was letting myself be visible to the world. This was a scary step, and it took me a while to work up to it.
However, this new level of visibility is something more; something deeper. It is not simply about letting myself get noticed; instead, it is about actively – deliberately – drawing attention to myself and sharing who I am and what I do with total strangers.
I’ve cleared away a lot of my fears about being seen. Now it appears that I am working on blocks to actually wanting the attention. As I work on this, I’ve realized that although it sounds like a minor change, just a change in wording, it actually represents a huge shift in perspective.
Making deep changes like this, changes that involve clearing away more than the usual grime, are steps into the unknown that can be scary and exciting and (yes) painful physically and otherwise. In the end though, the surprises that are uncovered become awesome bits of treasure just for you.
