We are living through truly exceptional times. COVID-19 and the lock down may have kept us indoors, but the crisis has swung open the doors of duality forcing us to stare into this unending dance of shadow and light. In this article, Safa Boga, RCST shares about some of her clients’ transformations during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to illustrate why this is such a potent healing time for us all.
The dance of light and dark is real. The prisons and the freedoms are also real. All perspectives and viewpoints are reality, because they are held by reality and therefore trickle into the collective mind. My clients are reflecting the collective polarization too. Some are struggling more than ever to regulate their emotions and self soothe; their minds spiral into self-defeating thoughts and their hearts are weighed down by emotions of the past and concerns about the future. Some have become so sick they’ve lost their well-paying jobs. I can’t help but feel this is a collective “dark night of the soul”.
This crisis has swung open the doors of duality, forcing us to stare into this unending dance of shadow and light. I can’t help but feel this is a collective dark night of the soul.
Others, particularly those who have been healing for a while now, are surprised by their own sense of relief and inner strength. Whilst they face the same challenges, job losses and bereavement, somehow they are able to see it as a release rather than a removal, as a blessing rather than a burden. Their newfound sense of optimism about the world and their place in it is actually changing their entire identity. No longer willing to be victims, they are suddenly stepping into their power.
One of my clients last week told me he wanted to work with psychedelics; he wanted to ‘see something big’ that would shift him and take everything away. I was surprised. This period we are in right now, on all dimensions of experience – from the physical to the energetic – is probably the longest trip/journey/purge/vision quest/initiation/multidimensional experience of our lives and it is free. So, I was curious about him wanting to add a layer to have something ‘happen’.
I’m very frank as a therapist and healer. I asked him what he wasn’t willing to see right now, given everything that is happening, that leads him to seek an alternative experience. The question landed immediately. He put his head in his hands and began to cry. It is not easy for men to cry, especially not in front of a woman, especially not when they have spent a lifetime trying to be strong by not expressing emotion.
I invited him to get a pillow and to scream. I had been working with him for a while and this was the final bit of permission he needed. He let out the screams of a thousand lifetimes. The enslaved, caged, shamed, and rageful masculine. He didn’t just do it for himself, he did it for every man that doesn’t have the strength to release it and, is instead, being bound by it unconsciously.
After nearly 35 years of holding, it took him 20 minutes. Eventually, he sat up straight and breathed deeply. I worked with his root, his entire spine all the way to his crown and began to anchor the stillness of the divine masculine energy that characterizes his highest self within his field. As it awakened within him, it made him more upright in his spine and in his very being, more sure of himself. He transformed. His inner smile radiated through his heart and his body. The shame was gone. He was love itself.
The times we are living through are transforming us quicker than we even realize. This is healing work from the divine, at its finest. This is the path back home to our souls.
The times we are living through are transforming us quicker than we even realize. It’s often only when we have a guide or a mentor, or a therapist, or a really good friend that we can sometimes let ourselves see how far we’ve come. This trip is life and death, it is existential and provocative. It contains enough triggers every day to help us completely purify not just ourselves but our entire lineages and to turn over our identity at least several times. This is a free trip. Please use it wisely.
Psychedelic healing work is profound. It allows us to visit places within ourselves that are otherwise too hidden, too painful to be with, and too soul destroying. The purges in plant medicine ceremonies help us release energetic density and stagnation and toxic blocks that impede our purity and our flow, our highest creativity. This is healing work, from the divine, at its finest. Not only are we getting the integration space by having to stay at home (we all know the feeling of having to catch the tube and sit in front of a computer a few days after a deep awakening experience), so now we have time. We have time to rewrite our story as individuals and together create health, harmony, and balance in a way that fulfills us and takes us to a deeper, more connected place together. This is the path back home to our souls.
