Psychotherapy and common-sense experience has it that we dissociate at different times in our day-to-day realities. Could be just "day-dreaming" or might be in response to some kind of trauma.
Beyond talking about dissociation in the sense that "we leave our bodies" there is not too much written or commonly understood in the psychotherapy field that has to do with a sense of expanded definitions of the phenomena.
What I love about the shamanic world view is that it has a great amount of information to share with us about what happens to our soul when we dissociate.
First is that, as a rule our whole soul does not leave our bodies. Just a time-slice. And, what tends to leave us is a sense of our purity and innocence. Perhaps our will-power or our self-protective self. Maybe even our imagination or creative self. The list goes on!
Where do these "pieces" of ourselves go?
The shamanic world view has it that they go somewhere into non-ordinary reality. Not in this space and time but somewhere into the past, the future, the upper world, the lower world and perhaps even into an alternate reality. The Universe is vast and our souls have been around for a long time. The soul parts know where to go where they will be safe. When we are unable or un-wise in our living choices and set ourselves up for more self abuse or corruption a piece of us splits off. Sometimes it is our better sense. When we regain our sense of self-care then we come back into some semblance of integration although perhaps with less of an intact personality.
One can see how easy it is over time to become less integrated. All it takes is some kind of high stress or high wantonness to lead us down the paths of paring ourselves down!
Our job as individuals and as healers is to find and cultivate "presence" and to then explore the territories of non-ordinary reality in such a way as to locate and retrieve soul parts so that they can return into our bodies and merge with our greater sense of soul-self.
Joseph Campbell's motto was "The purpose of my life is to become fully integrated!" I adopt that motto as one worthy of immolation. To become fully integrated is to become the seeker and healer for one's own personhood. To do so means that we need be able to find a safe place in this reality to intentionally leave our bodies and "psycho-navigate" into unchartered territories to locate, reassure, re-educate and otherwise comfort wounded or lost soul parts back into our bodies.
Energy follows intention! And, when our intention is to heal and we find a place in our lives where we can feel safe and loved then the intention to heal can create a reality where we find ourselves healing. We connect with people who resonate with us in such a way as to allow or provoke us to find our lost soul parts.
Now that the shamanic world view has returned out of the shadows (where it was perhaps hidden by the great-white-fathers) we can conceive of our healing in a totally greater holistic sense. Our imaginations and creative selves, our awareness of micro and macro realities, and our practicing mind-full-ness and radical forgiveness for self and others excites the wounded soul parts such that they seek us out. In a way they set us up to compel us to find them. And, we now know how and where to look.
How wonderful. We can't not heal or become enlightened because the purpose of our lives is to become fully integrated.
I have heard that in quantum physics there is a concept that once any particle has touched it will touch once-again. And, as we intend for our soul particles to re-unite they will be attracted to each other with a greater sense of compelling need. And our intentionality works with us to facilitate the seeking and finding as well as the merging and healing.
This can and will be problematic. What it takes is firm nurturance and clear boundary setting . . . even for our own soul parts. To have them all become attracted at once results in our being emotionally flooded. Establishing a contract with them to heal will set up conditions where they will return in a manner that allows us to increasingly and gracefully heal. So maybe it takes ten years. What is that in terms of countless life-times?
How to do that?
Check in with me next blog!
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