Resurrection

I was dreaming last night–I would say I had an odd dream, but aren’t they all?–and saw a sort of reverse Apocalypse.  Aliens had conquered Earth, and the bodies of the dead were everywhere, all turned blue.  A vortex had opened in the sky, and an alternate universe was engulfing this one.  Then–and it was made clear to me in the dream I had nothing whatever to do with this–it stopped.  The vortex closed and the normal sky returned.  And the dead started coming back to life.  People who had died in hospital beds, and even already been placed in coffins came back to life.  The feeling was very joyous, after a feeling of deep despair and loss.

And I got to thinking about it.  I have been seeing scenes of the dead, or near dead lately, in my dreams.  On one had, one could see that as a fixation with death. But that is not the case with me.  What I think it is is seeing FOR THE FIRST TIME the existing death in my own life.

As they say, when you are dead you do not know you are dead.  I do not remember most of my sleeping hours.  I do not remember what I could have seen while driving somewhere day dreaming.  I do not know what at this moment I could perceive, but am dead to.

To see a new life, you first have to see the old death.  To see death, you need life.  Death cannot see death.

And to see death from life is a resurrection of sorts, is it not? Is not the task of the spiritual worker to resurrect the dead, who fill the streets and homes of this Earth, after first resurrecting themselves, or, more probably, connecting with a Spirit capable of this task, and accepting it gratefully?

Healing is not something you can will.  I cannot will a wound to heal faster than it is going to, and I cannot force my spirit to bring to peace old scars and fears, deep shames, deep penetrations of evil, and the devastations they bring with them.  What I can do is feed a process which does this.  This is the Nye of Kum Nye, and what I have been carefully cultivating in most of my waking hours for the past several years.

There are four things, as I see it, you can do with deep psychic wounds.  You can seek our processes and people who comfort you when you need comforting, and challenge you when it is necessary for growth.  You can take the spiritual path, in other words.

You can rationalize the dysfunctional behavior that comes from these wounds.  This is not quite the same as lying, but also not quite telling the truth.

You can repress these wounds.  This can only be done at a very primitive psychological level, and I think typically only at a very young age.  The effect of this is that you get periodic eruptions, or consistent irrational behavior that you cannot explain to yourself or others.

You can embrace the evil.  You can say to yourself that it is good for you, and seek out more.  I think this is a combination of 2 and 3.  I think such people cannot truly access their pain existentially, but they know on some level  it is there, and rationalize evil as a means of dealing with it. I think most genuinely evil people still need to find reasons–specious as they may be–to justify their hatred and violence.  Hitler has reasons for everything he did.  So did Lenin, and so does Castro.  All monsters, but they could easily tell you with seemingly perfect sincerity why so much torture and murder was the only possible solution to unavoidable problems.

And here is what I think is a symptom of deep healing: being able to look at your wounds with interest.  That is the stage I am at.  I think the stage after that is compassion, but I am not there yet.