REINTEGRATION

From a journal entry dated June 28, 2006:

It's clear the demons we cast into the depths of our minds never actually go anywhere.  They just stew in the darkness and occasionally erupt into the conscious landscape in dreams or compulsions.  It's hard to know where to begin when it comes time to face something so deep and old that its history is inextricably woven into my very ideas about who I am.  About who God is.  

Why does any of this matter?  It matters because a person's inner demons are no joke, because they can threaten to undermine every good thing one's ever cared about.  I write because I cannot, will not ever allow that to happen.  Old wounds, vulnerabilities that were preyed upon, the twisted sense of identity that wraps its tendrils around childhood sexual trauma...what has emerged in me must never see the light of day.

I confronted an old demon this morning.  Despite my promise to bury it, I think the unraveling of my ghosts has somehow uncovered it.  I can bury it no deeper.  There is no running away from it now.  It is inextricably linked to my communion with God, which is utterly intolerable.  I must vanquish it once and for all.

I'm attempting to reach out to you, but something is holding me back.

Of course, and you know what it is.

Yes, and it's interfering with my communion with you.

That is no coincidence.

I don't understand.  Is that something I must defeat before I can progress?

No, you can't defeat it - but it's time to see it resolved.  This old wound haunts you.  You adorn yourself in fig leaves,  ashamed even now to open your mind to this with me.  Rest assured it is quite alright.  I want to help. 

Open my mind?

Yes.  Don’t bury it.  When you bury it, you turn away from it.  Like I have said, ignoring evil does not make it go away.  Nor does it resolve it.  You must face it with the mind of Christ.              

But if I  turn toward it, it might overcome me.

True, but welcoming it is the only way to understand it and have any chance of healing it.  

Okay.  I'm willing to trust you...

Now, what do you sense?

I don't know.  I am seeking something...something to complete me, comfort me, love me - something larger than me.  From what I've read, I'd guess this is my feminine aspect reaching out.  Is this a result of my childhood trauma?

Yes.

But why in this way?

Your aspects are in schism and functioning in pathological reaction to the deep wounds inside you.  More than anything your feminine aspect wants to relate.  That's what the she does best.  Due to the schism, she moves to relate to something external and patterned after the experience that created it in the first place.  She is doing what she was created to do, but not in the way she was created to do it.  It does not satisfy her, but she subjects herself to it because she cannot see any other way.  How does your masculine aspect feel when she does this?

Ashamed, angry.

And how do you react?

I hate  it.  I loathe myself.  I want to murder that part of me and have it silenced forever.

Yes you do, but such reaction is neither healthy, nor effective.  It's your masculine  aspect's reaction to the very same pain.

So both my aspects are acting out against the other in different ways, for the same reason? 

They need each other, but cannot even recognize each other.  Their rejection of the other blinds them and leaves them alone to wander desperately and futilely in the darkness. 

All this time I have beaten myself senseless over this.  I hated myself for it, and cast my eyes in apoplectic rage upon the force that saw fit to reenact the very thing that hurts so terribly.  I regarded it as a demon, but in this most terrible of moments I realize it was not a demon at all.   I was set upon severing a part of myself,  something I could never live without.  How I hated her so...  How I tortured her, mistook her for a virus, a cancer that had so malignantly attached itself to my soul.  But I could rid myself of that demon like the sun could rid itself of shining.  She was a part of me all this time, and I didn’t recognize her... 

All this time, you fought what you should have embraced.

This is too much for me.  My soul is overcome with profound, wordless grief... Where do I go from here?

The next time the feelings present themselves, face them.  And in facing them, face her.  And when you face her, love her.  And in loving her, welcome her.  Let her know she can come home.  The completion, safety, and love she seeks can be found nowhere else.  Then your psyche can be reintegrated, whole, and one in Christ.  Love yourself, both aspects - in all their weakness, in all their glory - for they need each other much more than you now know.  A house divided against itself cannot stand.

It may take some time to process all this, and to even recover.  I am so happy and shaken and  struck by the irony it's beyond words.  You have turned my world upside down in a way that far surpasses anything I could've ever conceived.  I've been searching all my life for the truth in this matter.  Now that I know, it's so simple and so very, very tragic.  I am deeply sorry...

This is a monumental turning point for you.  A huge weight has been lifted from you.  Now it's time to fly.

theperennialjourney