This is what few spiritual people want to hear… ✋

By Lian Brook-Tyler

One of my past teachers once shared a story (which I’ve probably misremembered to some extent - but that’s the way of stories and dreams and how they work through us) of a group of westerners in ceremony with an indigenous shaman, at the end of their time together, the group were bright-eyed, feeling full of power and love, and ready to make a big difference.

One of them asked something like “How can I change the world?”

The shaman responded, “Go heal your family.”

Go heal your family.

It’s not what many people called to spiritual work want to hear… We want to see ourselves as powerful seers, pure channels, gifted alchemists, selfless saviours, and world-changing visionaries.

Not the one bickering with their partner over the bills, not the one who is squirming with shame and worry about their children’s addiction to technology, not the one who is still being run by their parents’ stories of who they ought to be [and rebelling against those stories is still being run by them, though it can also be a stage along the path of healing].

It can feel unimpressive, unglamorous, gritty, painful, shameful, and most of all ‘unspiritual’ to be in the work of healing our family.

It’s no surprise that it’s the part that people called to work with me and Jonathan to discover their soul’s purpose and serve their community often struggle with and resist the most.

One of our students left me a beautiful birthday message yesterday, expressing her appreciation for me in her own inimitable way: “…torturing me back into love on this planet”.

She also called me both a Rose and a Thorn (which isn’t the first time that’s been said),

This is perhaps the most challenging part of the way I love unconditionally (the Rose), I see and express the ways you are withholding love from your partner, family, clients, community, and most of all to yourself, to your inner child… That is the Thorn, and it can hurt as it pierces open the pathways to love.

So if it’s so excruciating and unwelcome, what does healing your family really mean and why is it so vital for those of us doing the work of Spirit?

Firstly, although I began with quoting an indigenous shaman, his worldview and context isn’t mine, I honestly don’t know what he meant, I can only share my own projection and interpretation of what he meant, through the lens of my own worldview, life and work. (It’s almost certainly not what he meant.)

The reason Jonathan and I tell our students to heal their families (though we don’t say it that way), is that our relationships with our loved ones provide some of THE most powerful crucibles in which alchemy can take place.

For me, healing your family is being in the work of individuation within the context of your family dynamics, recognising and being responsible for your projections upon them, becoming intimate with your own experience, healing what needs to be healed within yourself in order to accept them, which is really accepting yourself.

Which is the reason we say over and over when a student's attention is being pulled to focus on their partner’s selfishness, their son’s obstinance, or their mother’s emotional blackmail… “Focus on yourself.”

Side-note: As Meher Baba’s first precept says “Do not shirk your responsibilities, such as home, family, office, jobs, et cetera.” As we devote to our inner work, our worldly work of parenting, parenting and ploughing the fields of our lives still requires our attention too. The paradox that all of us devoted to union become acquainted with at some point along the path. Gritted teeth optional.

Your struggles with your family can, if you choose it, illuminate all that’s closed, wounded, and conditioned within you, healing your family is really healing yourself, their healing - if it occurs - is a beautiful boon, and is down to the way deep acceptance and love for ourselves opens our hearts to shine like a beacon into the lives of all around us, calling them back to their own souls.

I read this quote by Clarissa Pinkola Estes earlier that I shared many years ago, and that inspired this post…

“If you are not free to be who you are, you are not free.”

The work to heal your family is the work of healing yourself, it is the work of union with your soul, it is the work of becoming free to be who you are.

So… heal your family.

All my love (thorns and all),

Lian

♥️

Art by Diana Simumpande 🙌

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