The Petals of Soul

The human soul appears to have an endless mystery. The findings of Sigmund Freud about the unconsciousness, or the ideas of Carl G. Jung about the shadow, apparently is not the ultimate end of human efforts to uncover the mysteries of the human soul. The findings of seekers in this field will continue to flow without knowing when and where it will stop.

Within the framework of Freud's unconsciousness, or Jung's shadow, all negative emotions which are suppressed for various reasons are thrown into the warehouse of subconsciousness. One day when the warehouse is full, then it will come to the surface in the form of stress, depression, illness and some people even go crazy.

Clinical psychology in particular has tried to neutralize the inner imbalances through pharmaceutical interventions. It is not entirely unsuccessful of course. But in meditation sessions, many people with mental illness open up and share their secrets, pharmaceutical drugs make them leave behind an inner dark room, but at the same time they enter another inner darker room. 

Deeply learn from these kind of findings, many authors tried to move away from pharmaceutical interventions, trying to "process" the inner psychological wastes into the beautiful flower of healing and peace. The central theme for these seekers, the inner garbage is not dumped or thrown away, but tried to be processed especially by keep hugging like a mother who hugs her only baby.

The latest approach of healing tried to blend the modern psychology with the old meditation approaches drawn from Buddhism. One of the prominent figures in this case is Thomas Bien, PhD. Almost all the works of Thomas Bien from "Finding the Center Within", "Mindful Therapy" to "Mindful Recovery" tries to combine the science of psychology with the deep practice of Buddhist meditation.

As a practical guidance, in the early stages, a person is invited to rest in the perfection of this moment. Especially by keeping training oneself that all dualities (good-bad, right-wrong, dirty-sacred) are the dancing of the same perfection. Many friends who have rested for a long enough time in the tranquility of this moment will understand, the inner water will be getting cleaner and cleaner, the mud of negative emotions settles to the bottom.

Whenever the inner water is clean and clear, by then one is invited to process the wastes within (like childhood trauma, school problems, family problems, etc), and transform it into flowers of healing and peace. The last approach is simple but profound, soul wounds are treated like crying babies. And the task of the consciousness is to beautifully hug the crying baby, like a mother who hugs her only son.

Many spiritual friends who are guided using this approach share their experience, some of healing energy appear within. Not only the soul wound which is healed, some with physical illnesses can also be healed. Mainly because the tranquility of the soul make the immune system recover. As a result, the body can heal itself.

But that's not the end of soul mystery. A very talented young psychologist named Hilary Jacobs Hendel opened another mystery. Her experience in curing a patient named Brian, who for years could not be cured by any pharmaceutical drugs, can not be helped using any therapeutic techniques, opened one of the other mysteries of human soul.

Human emotions, that's how Hilary tried to explain her findings, are divided into two parts which is the inner emotions like sad-glad, sorrow-joy, hate-love, and the outer emotions like shame, politeness, courteous. What actually happened to Brian is unique. Because of various factors, the inner emotions are wrapped by the outer emotion of shyness. As a result, the inner emotion lost the opportunity to be fully expressed.

Consequently, the inner emotion is like huge amount of water which fails to flow. Some therapists mistakenly conclude it as depression, but when the outer emotion of shame is opened, then the inner emotion begins to flow. The result was impressive, Brian who was very rigid, closed, easily upset, turned into an ordinary human being who began to learn the art of being cheerful.

The lesson is simple, modern life has a lot of restrictions that comes from religion, tradition, culture etc, all of which can make people repress their outer emotions. And before religion and culture give birth to more wounded souls, let's find the healthy modes of soul expression. Writing, painting, dancing, singing, exercise are the most common way provided. Meditation, yoga, prayer, worship are some of the spiritual practices which are available.

And it is worth learning from Hilary Jacobs Hendel's triangle: "listen to your body, discover the core emotion, recover yourself". In Tantra in particular, it has been long taught that the human body holds many secrets of light. Sadly, very few people have the ability to listen to the voices of the body such as the quality of sleep, the clear color of urine, skin color, etc. Any one who can combine the ability to listen to the body with the ability to make the inner emotion flow, over time will become their own best healer.

Author: Gede Prama.
Photo Courtesy: Twitter @Lotus_tweet.
Proofread by: Kirsty Spence.