Wounds as the Path to Awakening
What an utterly weird, amazing and utterly frightening time we are living through. Many people are walking around with masks on their faces, and yet inwardly we are all being unmasked. We are being confronted with all of the dark shadows inside of us—our wounds, traumas and unhealed abuse issues—that we’ve been able to postpone looking at up till now. All of these shadow energies are not only in our face, but behind it as well, which is to say that we are confronted within our very soul with the darkness of the world we live in, which is a darkness in which we all share. I am curious about how these seemingly darker forces in our world (which we see playing out all around us in the outer world) have to do with our inner experience of being wounded.
I can talk for myself. Since the advent of the global pandemic, I have felt even more intensely both the light AND dark aspects of myself, as if they are interdependent parts of a deeper process wherein one is evoking the presence of the other. Due to the feeling that there’s no time to waste—a sense of urgency—it’s as if the creative light-filled part of me has gotten more vibrant, while at the same time, the deepest darkness embedded in my unhealed wounds also seems stronger. The creative tension between the two—between the light and dark parts of myself—has correspondingly intensified to a practically unbearable degree. As my light increases, the darkness within me is simultaneously coming to the fore, making itself known to the point where it’s getting harder for me to look away from it.
It’s as if the light that I am getting in touch with is illumining everything in me that is not of the light, i.e., that is dark, which makes sense as the purpose of light is to reveal darkness. As I more deeply connect with the light of my nature, my subjective experience is that there is a seemingly darker force within me that wants to prevent me from connecting with my light at all costs.
Maybe this is just me, but I have an intuition that this is an archetypal, impersonal and universal situation. I find myself easily imagining that an analogous process might be going on for many, if not all of us (be it consciously or not). The question is: do we indulge in our coping strategies to keep these seemingly darker and wounded parts of ourselves at bay (food, drugs, Netflix anyone?)—which is ultimately to be avoiding relationship with ourselves—or do we unmask ourselves and turn to unflinchingly face the darker, wounded parts within us?
Our wounds are semi-stable resonance patterns of vibratory energy to which we have become accustomed as existing in a particular way. They are held in place by how we pay attention to and interpret them. If we intentionally start attending to our wounds in a new and different way we change their resonance pattern, i.e., the way they manifest.
Though the moment(s) of our wounding happened historically, in an actual moment in time somewhere back in the past, our experience of our wounds is something that takes place in the present moment. When we get right down to it, our wounds are not a hangover from the past (what in alchemy is referred to by the term caput mortuum - a residue left over after the distillation of a substance). The genesis of our wounds lies in the present moment; they only exist in the present moment. Our wounds are freshly constructed—with our participation—each and every moment, which is to say that it is only in the present moment that they can be “cured.” This is to say that we ourselves are complicit in the creation and re-creation of our present moment experience of woundedness.
At each and every moment that these unhealed, wounded and seemingly problematic parts of myself come up, I am confronted with two options. One is I can turn away, subtly avoiding them, which is to dissociate from a part of my experience (and hence split off from a part of myself). Once I do this, I have unwittingly granted my wounds an unwarranted substantial existence in which I’ve reinforced their “reality” (for if they weren’t real, I wouldn’t have a need to avoid them). In avoiding relationship with this wounded part of myself, however, I am unconsciously colluding with my wounds so as to sustain and perpetuate them over time, thus keeping them alive.
The next time my wounds manifest I then have all the evidence I need that I really have an unresolved problem, for if I didn’t have an unresolved problem, then I wouldn’t feel these wounds, as round and round my story goes. Once I solidify myself as having wounds, however, just like a dream, where the inner and the outer are mirrored reflections of each other, the universe instantaneously reflects back and supplies all the evidence I need to prove to myself that I really am wounded, which further confirms and validates my point of view of seeing myself as someone who has unhealed wounds, ad infinitum, in a self-perpetuating feedback loop whose source is my own mind.
If we can imagine the possible existence of “darker forces” that exist within the fabric of our universe, one of the ways these darker forces operate is to seduce us into getting hooked by our wounds. Once we fall prey to taking the bait and identify with our wounds, these darker forces can then exploit our feelings of woundedness so as to keep us stuck in our wounds. We are then unwittingly colluding with the darker forces that want more than anything else to keep us unaware of the light that we all carry. This process, which takes place in the present moment, is the real tragedy, far more tragic than any personal experience that happened in the past. Once we identify ourselves as being wounded, our wounds then instantly become obstacles to the light of our true nature (or more accurately, we ourselves become our own obstacles), instead of the portal through which we become familiar with our darker half and further introduced to our light.
Conceiving of our wounds as existing objectively instantaneously conditions us to be a separate subject—an object, actually—who is subject to our wounds. The story we weave around our wounds is an expression of how we relate to, experience—and create—ourselves. If we conceive of our wounds as objectively existing over time with their cause in the past, we concurrently conjure ourselves up and believe ourselves to be a wounded person who exists in and over time, and hence, as someone who is bound by time.
In contrast to thinking that our wounds are merely happening to us as passive victims, however, there is another perspective through which we can view our wounds that empowers us and allows us to receive their gifts. We can realize that our wounds are on-going events that we are actively participating in via our awareness (or lack thereof) that only exist—and are only ever experienced—within our present moment awareness.
This insight allows us to relate to our wounds as being ephemeral artifacts of our present perception, existing as momentary displays of our creative process in the moment we are experiencing them. From this point of view, the present moment manifestation of our wounds, instead of confirming our identity as being a wounded person with an objectively true personal history that supports our woundedness, are experienced as releasing and unwinding themselves via the very process of their arising. In other words, we can allow our wounds to manifest in the very moment of their arising as an evanescent, transitory and self-liberating revelation of what the moment before we had conceived of as existing in solid, substantial and "real" form.
A perfect symbol for this process is a mirror and its reflections. A mirror is a symbol for our true nature – it always remains imperturbably and unwaveringly the same, a presence of pristine clarity, unaffected by whatever reflections arise within it. Whereas the mirror symbolizes our higher self or true nature, the reflections, in our example, symbolically represent our wounds.
In the apocryphal text The Acts of John, Christ himself said, “I would be wounded and I would wound.” We could think of Christ being wounded as his appearance via the reflections in the mirror. In saying that he will wound, he is pointing out that our experience of being wounded is a numinous event. The birth of the higher self can oftentimes be a wounding experience for the ego. The problem is when we personalize our wounding, identifying ourselves as being wounded – we then tend to blind ourselves to the deeper transpersonal context in which our experience of woundedness is taking place. The reflections in the mirror, though inseparable from—and the unmediated expression of—the mirror, are not, however, the mirror. In this same passage, Christ reveals his true nature by saying, “A mirror am I to thee that perceivest me.” The mirror is only perceived through its reflections.
The forms of the reflections are imbued with the pristine purity of the mirror, yet if we overly focus on the forms without noticing the mirror which contains them and in which they are suspended, we also tend to not perceive the mirror-like purity of the forms. When we see the reflections that arise in the mirror, we then tend to either identify with them (becoming absorbed into the reflections, thereby thinking we are wounded), contract against them, dissociate from them, judge them, etc. – all of these reactions are investing the reflections (the wounds) with a greater sense of reality than they deserve, and hence, bestowing them with power over us.
If, on the other hand, we recognize the reflections that are appearing as being the impermanent display and unmediated expression of the mirror, and that who we are in all this is the mirror itself, we have then distinguished ourselves from the reflections while simultaneously connecting with our true nature. We have then revealed our mirror-like nature while at the same time creating ourselves anew in the process.
Even if we are momentarily taken over by and identified with our wounds, this embodied experience of self-identity (as a wounded person) is itself an ephemeral reflection arising within the mirror-like nature of our mind that leaves our true nature untouched. Any sense of a particular identity—wounded or not—is similarly a transitory reflection with no substantial independent existence from the point of view of the mirror.
The reflections (our wounds), though seemingly obscuring the silvered surface of the mirror (our true nature), simultaneously reveal it, for we wouldn’t notice the mirror without the reflections. A clear mirror is empty of all qualities except its ability to reflect. Yet, it cannot reflect itself, just like the pure formless state of awareness which underlies and precedes every state of ordinary cognition can itself never be the object of such cognition. If left to its own devices, the mirror would never enter our experiential reality; it needs something seemingly outside of itself (the objects it is reflecting, in this example, our wounds) to reveal itself.
The mirror and its reflections are quantum in nature, existing in a superposition of states, simultaneously obscuring and revealing the nature of the mirror. How the mirrored reflections (our wounds) actually manifest—as obscurations or revelations—depends upon how we relate to them, which is a function of our awareness in each moment.
A polished mirror is open and receptive to the world, invisible by itself were it not for the world seemingly outside of itself that is reflected within it. Interestingly, the philosopher’s stone of alchemy (symbolic of our true nature)—the healing panacea for what ails humanity—is said to be as clear and translucent as a diamond or a crystal, considered invisible to normal vision, called lapis invisibilitatus. The Self as a mirror is difficult to understand not because of its obscurity—it is literally staring us in the face—but rather, because of our unfamiliarity with a dimension of our experience that is ever-present and yet, is practically invisible because of its obviousness.
Just like the reflections potentially reveal something (the mirror) that is transcendent to themselves and is invisible by itself, our wounds are also potentially the revelation of an invisible part of ourselves (the Self) that is transcendent to our wounds. Our wounds contain the true gold (another symbol for the philosopher’s stone) that could not have been found anywhere else.
The reflections are the energy and pristine presence of the formless mirror manifesting and being expressed in form. Hidden, encoded within the conditional appearances that are the reflections, is the doorway to the unconditional mirror that underlies, contains and transcends the reflections. Similarly, hidden encoded within our wounds is the revelation of our true (unwounded) nature in disguise. When we recognize this, we realize that our wounds are not only the doorway to our true nature, but both its covert and overt revelation, simultaneously cloaked in shadow while openly revealing both our darkness and light.
Recognizing this instantaneously dispels the darker forces that are seemingly obscuring our nature, transmuting them on the spot into secret allies. Though our wounds are seemingly the manifestation of these darker forces, by breaking us open they can potentially let in and actively serve the light. Unwittingly helping us to deepen the realization of our true nature, these seemingly darker forces wind up connecting us with a higher form of light within us that transcends the dualistic notion of light and darkness as opposing each other.
We don't cure our wounds. They cure us.
About the Author
A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, Paul Levy is a wounded healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality. Among his books are The Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality (SelectBooks, May 2018) and Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil (North Atlantic Books, 2013). He is the founder of the “Awakening in the Dream Community” in Portland, Oregon. An artist, he is deeply steeped in the work of C. G. Jung, and has been a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for over 35 years. He was the coordinator for the Portland PadmaSambhava Buddhist Center for over twenty years. His email is paul@awakeninthedream.com; he looks forward to your reflections.
