Besides journals I’ve kept over the years, I also have a precious collection of scraps of paper, all shapes, colors and sizes…where I’ve written a thought, a quote, a question, an insight. In a quiet moment I’ll take them out and look through them, as I would an old photo album…savoring each one…often remembering what inspired me to write it down. A couple of weeks ago I was sitting with my little leaf pile of papers and came across an insight I had from before I began working with my dreams…
A wounded mind thinks in a wounded way.
At the time I sensed the truth in my statement but wasn’t sure how…or even if… this wounded mind of mine could be healed in a true way…
This time in the reading so many years later, so deeply in relationship with my dreams it was different. For myself I have found the how of healing…and I have to look no further than my dreams…and what it is they teach me, what it is they want me to remember about who I truly am…and how they support my healing…and my feeling…all the way through…and how much I feel part of the Eternal.
What was wounded in us was not our heart.
What was wounded in us was not our soul…
A quality of soul is its capacity to feel it all…
love, pain, joy, sorrow, hurt, grief…the whole palette of feelings.
And these feelings…all of them…even the most painful…are not wounds.
They are the feeling waters that nourish our soul…liquid grace.
They keep us connected to and in conversation with our soul lineage…to Spirit.
What was wounded in us was our mind…
What was wounded in us was how we think…
about ourselves, about the world, and our place in it.
“I don’t belong…”
“There is love for others but not for me…”
“I’m not enough…”
“It’s my fault…”
“If I meet everyone else’s needs they’ll love me…”
We never lost the connection to our true self…our soul…to Spirit…
but a wounded mind thinks in a wounded way…and we forget…
and we believe something is inherently wrong with us…that it is our fault.
Perhaps all it takes to be wounded is this human experience. And when we experience hurt, which includes the many forms of physical and emotional abuse, especially when young and inarticulate, it changes us. It changes the way our minds work…and we think and make sense of the world in a wounded way. It changes the way we think…about ourselves…about what it means to love…to be loved.
Our dreams show us what we often call the dream ego. Perhaps a more accurate naming would be that the dreams show us how we are in the world from our wounded mind…doing things…saying things…either out loud or the frantic reasonings of our mind…
Our dreams want to help us with this tender and heartbreaking misunderstanding…and that what was wounded can be healed…that this wounded way of thinking can be healed…and that we can recover this connection to our true self.
And in our willingness to explore our dreams…to drop into the feelings a dream image carries…to embody it…let it move through us…we take the medicine the dream offers…and the wounded mind begins to heal…begins to remember who we truly are.
(Image by Ghost-Opera)
Mary Jo Heyen is a Natural Dreamwork Practitioner working with clients throughout the country and abroad in person, phone or Skype. Learn more about her work with dreams at www.maryjoheyen.com or www.thenaturaldream.com
