Each of us has lived through tragedy. Each of us has endured losses that have broken our heart and brought us to our knees. Some of us have had multiple experiences of tragedy and immense sorrow. This is the nature of the experience of the mystery of life. The great mythologist Joseph Campbell spoke about this as the swing between the divine pairs of opposites: light and shadow, inward and outward, Yin and Yang, Shiva and Shakti, the seer and the seen, joy and sorrow. What a beautiful and monumental experience this life is- profound in its unfolding of the layers of the soul, when we allow and are supported in its incredible metamorphosis.
But what happens when a culture does not provide rituals and rites-of-passage to assist in the natural transmutation of these experiences from suffering into wisdom, from lead into gold? What happens when we have a culture which reinforces victimhood, dividing us into ever smaller categories, pitting these categories against each other constantly, while never remembering our shared humanity, our ancestral root? What happens when a culture forgets the alchemy of the soul?
Through neglecting to honor, both privately and through community, the rites-of-passage that should be occurring through such immense suffering in life, we block the transmutation process and bury the gold and the light of the soul. We remain prisoners to our own trauma and nightmares, while the path from suffering and heartbreak that is the initiation into wisdom maturity is aborted, neglected, forgotten.
It is the great forgetting.
Instead of allowing this profound metamorphosis to occur in spaces of sanctity and support, we have a culture that is obsessed with the pain body and victimhood caused by and individual and collective trauma. Through this dark obsession, growth is completely stunted, and we are never able to access the spiritual virility needed to co-create the wings to fly. We remain tethered to the notion of self as victim, identifying only with the small self, the many labels painted upon us that reflect the wounds that have shaped us. This identification can be easily exploited, and keeps humanity in a powerless state of being.
When we identify primarily with the victim aspect of the self, we identify with the aspect that is not capable of the inner alchemy that is necessary to actualize any form of liberation and innate sovereignty. A human being who is wedded to their wounds like this will never know their true power, beauty, and spiritual strength, and is easy prey for those who wish to control and dominate. This state of consciousness is a bondage, a self created and fulfilling feedback loop of our smallness, rather than our individual and immense spirit.
This immense spirit that each human being has access to is a part of all and everything, a drop of beauty in the cosmic ocean of our rapturous world. To know this great spirit is our birthright.