detail from Alchemist's Dream (oil) by NW 1986

Turning it Around ~ Finding the blessing in the wound it taking an experience and turning it around, turning it into something beautiful. And if not beautiful, then at least something useful.

First comes acceptance. I don’t think healing can begin until we accept the wounding. We have to stop thinking there should have been a different result. That somehow things didn’t happen the way they were supposed to. We have to accept that everything happened according to plan. And if we don’t yet see that it was our plan all along, then we must pray for guidance, and ask for guidance, ask for the power to see.

By accepting that all is perfect, we are accepting our own power to create reality exactly the way we have wanted to.

This is when anger dissolves. This is when self-pity dissolves.

I remember when they started taking cancer patients on trips to the wilderness and have them do daring physical things they never thought they could do before. And it almost seemed irrelevant at that point whether or not the patient was able to cure themselves, because they were finding this new power within – this new bravery and zest for life.

Whatever illness we may have is always a signal of some imbalance that we have created in order to see where we are “off” center.

I think a huge part of earthly life – most of our life here in fact, is just for the experience of living in physical bodies that grow and change and eventually give out and die. How we deal with our mortality, our fragility, our perishable-ness, matters a great deal. We can be angry, we can be grateful, we can be anxious to get in all we can before the grim reaper appears to cart us off to the next world, or we can just take it all in stride with divine nonchalance, doing what we need to do each day.

When I was in my early twenties I was kind of in shock about how my life was turning out – which was way different than I thought it would be, and I went to this psychic in London who quickly set me straight in no uncertain terms by telling me that I chose my life, I chose everything that happened to me. And I took that bit of information in, though I couldn’t yet see why this would have been the case – but I took it in and filed it away. And one day I was able to realize it was true, and I was able to accept it, because I had found the blessing in the wound.

It didn’t happen overnight, that’s for sure. I had to go through a lot more suffering before I could accept it. And two things had to happen first. Number one, I had to just give up the struggle to be happy or to find happiness. Much as I love being happy, I was looking for my happiness in someone else’s love or approval. And by-the-way, just giving up in my mid-twenties wasn’t the be-all and end-all of surrender. It was just the first surrender, that’s all.

This business of looking to another, looking to someone else for what we lack within, for what we perceive that we lack within, can take a long time to work through. Or, it can happen in an instant…

The second thing I had to do was become an artist, because painting and drawing gave me the tools to delve into my subconscious for answers to my questions.

There are so many mysteries, and so many ways to solve them. It doesn’t matter what your method is, as long as you pursue it, and go deeper into the world beyond appearances. In whatever way you can.