Spiraling
There seem to be two currents that run through us when we are hurt.
One rushes outward, looking for a circle of voices that will cradle it. It wants to be mirrored and soothed by friends who nod and say, yes, you were wronged. For a moment it feels better, and the ache loosens. But often the circle becomes an echo chamber and it reflects our wound back to us in a thousand ways and never letting anything change.
The other way retreats inward. It is quieter and almost dignified at the start. It says, if I stay silent long enough, this will pass. It builds walls of forgetfulness, hides the wound behind locked doors. The hurt sleeps, or seems to. But one day a small thing like a word or a moment, wakes it again, as if it had never been touched at all.
Both currents, the outward i.e. echo-seeking one and the inward i.e. withdrawing one- are only two ways of running. And both delay the moment we must finally sit beside the wound as if beside a child, and watch it without judgment
I have come to believe that true healing moves like a spiral. The spiral is nature’s own pattern. The galaxies wheel in spirals and the shell of the nautilus grows by the same hidden arithmetic. If the soul’s path to healing moves likewise, we should not be surprised. We are of one piece with the world. Our return to the same inner places is a law of growth of the nature.
Living by this law requires patience, which is a rare virtue in itself. We would have the tree bear fruit as soon as it breaks the ground, but it must first root itself deep in the unseen earth. The work of sitting with one’s own hurt is that of rooting. It does not show itself to the world, and yet all strength above depends upon it.
There is a paradox in the spiral: the nearer we draw to the center, the less we need to be rid of the wound. We begin to see that the pain itself was not the enemy but the guide. We grow by absorbing our past into a larger wholeness.
Only the one who has learned to sit in their own fire can sit calmly beside another in theirs. To be healed is to be someone who doesn’t hide from wounds, rather then someone who doesn’t have any.
So the spiral, far from being a trap, is a kind of pilgrimage. We go round and round, but each circuit brings a clearer sight and a deeper compassion. And as in all of nature’s laws, nothing is wasted: even the seasons of despair become the soil in which understanding grows.
When we have followed the spiral far enough inward, the old pattern of seeking quick comfort or proud isolation loses its hold. We discover that true strength is in permeability, which is the ability to be touched, to let the currents of experience move through us without shattering us and no longer letting the wounds govern our choices.
We cannot rush this work. But each time we return with open eyes, we erode the stone a little further, and the water of life flows more freely through us. So give it a little more time, and let the currents carry you to yourself.