Wounded Spirit
So many things can wound our spirits. We live in a troubled realm, the Babylon Matrix, and we incarnated into fragile corporeal bodies. Our spirits can be wounded by oppression — creative, social, political, environmental, circumstantial, interpersonal. They can be wounded by overwhelming shocks from which it is hard to fully recover — the death of a child, war trauma, abandonment, rape, etc. And they may be just as deeply wounded and fragmented from a billion small abuses — looping negative thoughts, addictions, surrender to lazy inertia, stagnant relationships and so on and so forth.
What does it take to revive a wounded spirit? If you feel called to intervene with another spirit it will take everything you have, at least while you are doing the intervention, and often that won't be enough. If you are doing a self-intervention, if this card means that your spirit is wounded, then one of the shortest paths to reviving it is to start doing what you came to human incarnation to do, what you will remember well on your deathbed. Get out of soured "internal considering" — focusing on everything from your POV, your likes and dislikes, your pain and deprivations and so forth, and instead focus out and practice external considering (focusing on what others need). As one person put it,"If in doubt, focus out." Don't wait until you feel like doing this. Meanwhile "act as if," go through the motions, physically start doing the work, take steps on the path of heart even if at first you don't feel them, and especially if inner or outer forces test you with resistance. The best hope for your wounded spirit is for you to take responsibility for reviving it. For those with time to read more, consider the text of the card "Soul Imprisoned":
"In every cry of every man, In every infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind forged manacles I hear…" — William Blake, Songs of Innocence INFANT SORROW My mother groaned! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt: Helpless, naked, piping loud: Like a fiend hid in a cloud. Struggling in my fathers hands; Striving against my swaddling bands; Bound and weary I thought best To sulk upon my mothers breast. — William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience The weeping child could not be heard; The weeping parents wept in vain. They stripped him to his little shirt, And bound him in an iron chain. — William Blake, "A Little Boy Lost," Songs of Innocence and Experience "Dinosauria, We" Born like this Into this As the chalk faces smile As Mrs. Death laughs As the elevators break As political landscapes dissolve As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree As the oily fish spit out their oily prey As the sun is masked We are Born like this Into this Into these carefully mad wars Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness Into bars where people no longer speak to each other Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings Born into this Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes Born into this Walking and living through this Dying because of this Muted because of this Castrated Debauched Disinherited Because of this Fooled by this Used by this Pissed on by this Made crazy and sick by this Made violent Made inhuman By this The heart is blackened The fingers reach for the throat The gun The knife The bomb The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god The fingers reach for the bottle The pill The powder We are born into this sorrowful deadliness We are born into a government 60 years in debt That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt And the banks will burn Money will be useless There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets It will be guns and roving mobs Land will be useless Food will become a diminishing return Nuclear power will be taken over by the many Explosions will continually shake the earth Radiated robot men will stalk each other The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms Dante's Inferno will be made to look like a children's playground The sun will not be seen and it will always be night Trees will die All vegetation will die Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men The sea will be poisoned The lakes and rivers will vanish Rain will be the new gold The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition The petering out of supplies The natural effect of general decay And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard Born out of that. The sun still hidden there Awaiting the next chapter. — Charles Bukowski Sometimes the soul is imprisoned by incarnation in the Babylon Matrix. Sometimes the soul feels imprisoned by incarnation, but the bondage is of its own making. In the first case you need to have the compassion for yourself and others that the world did not have for you. Many forces beyond individual control can imprison the soul — war, political oppression, economic forces, gender oppression, oppression based on race, religion, sexual orientation or mutant divergence of various sorts. The oppression could be an ailing body that imprisons the soul with its mortal limitations. Not every form of oppression can be reduced to negative thinking or neurotic complex. Only the very sheltered and naive believe that everyone is creating his own reality. On the other hand, very often it is we who imprison our own souls. We give our power over to another, look for wholeness outside of ourselves, reach for bottle, pill or powder. We suffocate within the cocoon of our own illusions. Sometimes we imprison our souls by disowning our essence and betraying our True Will. As Blake says, "Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." The desires he means are the desires of our soul, not those of our reptile brain. Consider this a propitious time to have compassion for yourself and others who are imprisoned by external forces of oppression. But if you yourself are the warden of you own soul's imprisonment, consider this a propitious time to throw off the shackles of self-imposed bondage and liberate yourself into life. |
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