Monday, November 2, 2009

Healing the Family - Part I

A storyteller, and we are all storytellers, honours their family history. This does not mean they have to like their family history but that you give your intention and attention to learning how to create from it. You create from that history something worth honouring, not only for yourself but also through the whole spectrum of the individual to the universal.

In my own family there is a history of a certain kind of disease. It is a disease of the eyes. It is called glaucoma. It is a disease of the eyes that in days of old, and even with today?s medical science ultimately leads to blindness. Genetically, I carry this potential because both my parents had glaucoma that, in the later stages of their lives required medical treatment. Their parents before them carried this genetic code that was created from a resistance to a way of seeing.

As many of you who listen and read the articles I write I am drawn to a certain kind of vision. This is a way of seeing that is the way of a real storyteller, the way of a true bard, the way of a true schanachie. I am interested in my family history for the reason of wholeness and healing. While the sins of the father might be visited upon the children this need not always be the case. If the light of consciousness is brought to that which lives as unease and disease in the psyche then healing happens or can be a happening.

In the best selling book entitled, ?You can heal your life,? by Louise L. Hay she writes about the eye disease called glaucoma in this way.

?Stony unforgiveness. Pressure from longstanding hurts. Overwhelmed by it all.?

Louise Hay tells us in her book that the antidote to this eye disease casual by pressure behind the eyes is to see with love and tenderness. Or as the mystic Hafiz invites to learn to live with a full moon in each eye and to speak from such vision. The antidote is to speak from a vision that will allow others who are longing to be a vision of Love in form to hear what can be a real vision.

Here is something that I as a storyteller, the teller of my personal life story, am directly connected to. I know this connection through the definition give by Louise Hay. I know this connection through the longing for Love and tenderness and the longing to be able to express in this way.

I can see the pressure from long standing hurts and stony unforgiveness mirrored in my father?s life. I can see the over whelmed by it all experience in the life of my mother. So what do you do with this encoded message within one?s personal DNA? Well, you can fight it or you can transform it. When you fight it you are in effect dishonouring it. When you transform it you are in effect honouring the way the story of Love has informed your immediate family. In this way you become a healer and what it means to be a real storyteller.

As a storyteller I start with intention. This is where creation begins to express in form. It is the connecting point between the world of form and the world beyond form. It is the connecting point between time and the timeless. It is where the invisible begins to manifest. It is the invitation to the formless, timeless, infinite possibility to come into being. It is the invitation to the One to become what the mystic Loa Tzu calls, ?the ten thousand things.?

At least for me this word intention invites inner tending and inner tenderness. It is not the get up and go of an often disturbed over accentuated masculine approach to living life. It is more the humble grounded approach of the mature feminine. It is out of this groundedness that healing begins and wholeness can be known and felt. Both the masculine and feminine are needed for wholeness but it is the masculine that serves the feminine.

Each of us stands on the shoulders of everyone who has ever lived in form. This is particularly true of all those family members who have lived in form before we arrived within this time space body. The freedoms we have now are often taken for granted. They have often been won at the expense of deep personal sacrifice. This should not be forgotten. All families have wounds. It is within this wondedness that you have the stuff of wonder. As the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung pointed out, ?The gold is in the shadow.?

The shadow of our family history manifests in disease and as Louise Hay says, and as most wisdom teachers say, disease arises out of the unwillingness to forgive. The disease of my family manifesting as glaucoma arises from the pressure of long standing hurts. Yet it is not the long-standing hurts in themselves that is the problem or is the real problem the unease deepening into disease. It is the pressure from the resistance to letting them go that causes the suffering.

There are so many wondrous stories in books and movies that are available around this issue that is called forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn?t redeem the other person. It redeems you. It sets you free. It takes you out of the prison of separateness that you have allowed yourself to become deeply attached to. There is no judgement here. You are not being blamed but you are being invited. You do not do forgiveness. It is more that you become willing to see the world in a new way and allow that seeing to envisage your life. It is the willingness for something new to be that allows forgiveness to heal you.

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