The Transformation Process

My Promise to Myself

I promise to stay. Along the way I forgot to Tell.  I will Tell to heal. It is my choice and only mine to find my voice to Tell. It is my spiritual-creative divine right to Tell. I am alive, supported and able to stand in my own Telling. The Telling is my creative soul, reaching, touching, feeling— I connect and belong.

By Marta Luzim, Give Her A Voice 

“It is a grave injustice to a child or adult to insist that they stop crying. One can comfort a person who is crying which enables him to relax and makes further crying unnecessary; but to humiliate a crying child is to increase his pain, and augment his rigidity. We stop other people from crying because we cannot stand the sounds and movements of their bodies. It threatens our own rigidity. It induces similar feelings in ourselves which we dare not express and it evokes a resonance in our own bodies which we resist.”

― Alexander Lowen

 

• The work is based in experience- somatic, creative and spiritual

The creative process is not a thought system and cannot be accessed by analysis. It does not involve having to believe anything, and in fact it is helped by a kind of suspension of belief that allows one to simply be open to the process of unfolding. Definitions or interpretation while the actual experience is occurring limits the individual.  Experiencing body sensations and feelings, active imagination, memory and images, thoughts, inner child work, creative work, movement and starts by guiding a person into the body out of the head.

• The process is one of deep healing and growth

The process transcends intellectualization or any of the more familiar modes of inducing persons to change. The journeyer operates at a level not often reached deep in the body, psyche and shadow where the trauma has been buried. Since the work is conducted internally, one learns about personal triggers, reactions and defenses that comes from the  loop of freeze, flee and fight when a trauma memory occurs in the present,

• Individual growth takes precedence over dogma

This takes you full circle back to number one and the understanding that arguments, ideas, concepts, theology, discussions of what is right or wrong, good or bad, do not work in the face of that which causes blocks to growth and healing.  Perfectionism, right or wrong, control, people pleasing, and other co-dependent behaviors are the defense mechanism a child forms to protect him/herself form the pain of the core trauma.

 This helps to break through numbness, resistance, fear, judgment and criticism. It allows you to receive yourself with compassion, courage and unlimited creativity and expression. Advocacy, commitment, focus, persistence, practice and faith keep the individual on the path. At times the creative healing process seems irrational, out of control and non-linear. It feels fearful and anxious. This is where the deeper healing occurs, the deeper riches are hidden, the ability to create beyond limitation and in synchronicity with your authentic truth lives. The courage to take action with compassion holds the container for the fear that will emerge to stop you.  Healing through creativity is a heroine’s journey. A mystery. Going into the story and finding the meaning, purpose and mission of your life is the most creative act of living.

• Acceptance

Acceptance is an active choice. Acceptance nurtures movement and growth. It brings the individual into the present, the now with what is happening in the body-mind-spirit. Judgment and shame is suspended with acceptance. Radical self -acceptance of all of YOU is the key to u unlocking your authentic being.

• Silence/Meditation

Meditation brings a person into a state of acceptance. Silence empowers the individual to go within. It enables the person to notice the inconsistencies, the defenses, the resistance, discomfort in what is said, done and felt. The ability to notice oneself-witness- without judgment establishes a relationship between the heart and soul of the creative voice. To empty and strip away the voices that repress us and say NO to our expression can be witnessed in silence. To break through the wounded self is an emotional release that allows for full, uncensored expression.

• Catharsis

Denial, an emotional numbing, serves to protect the individual from painful memories and experience. Catharsis is the healing release of deeply held emotions that get blocked in the body and paralyze us from moving toward our dreams, expression and intimacy.  Creative catharsis, an active emotional release through voice and movement…with a non-judgmental witness—and releases the fear response into a joy response.

 

“Catharsis provides a model of healing which deals with those things which most disturbs us and which we least want to face. The hope that catharsis offers and which the millennial vision communicates is that there is a practical way to accomplish the ancient spiritual goal of creating light out of the very substance of darkness. This process maybe crucial to our physical and spiritual survival and continued ability to create.”

Work of Lamentation, Joshua Levitt, Parabola, Spring 1998

 

Put your ear up close to the heart of Mother Earth. Listen to the inner whisperings of yourself. Awaken each day, no matter how sad, angry or doubtful you are, like Moses waiting at the Mount, like an innocent child, anticipate a miracle. Let your body feel the direction. Feel the guidance. No words, no language. A wise teacher (John Welwood) once said, “Reality only happens in the moment. Everything else is either a memory or an expectation.” Another wise man (Bernard Phillips) wrote, “Reality can never be known advance. Living truth is discovered in the act of living. If you know what to say, it is a lie. If you know how to teach, you’re a propagandist. If you know how to get along with another, you are using psychology. Reality is not gained by know how, reality is freshly born each moment. You have to give your whole being, without strategies and then something new and real will reveal itself to you. No technique will achieve relatedness, no ordinary resourcefulness, no ordinary ideas, no system, no gospel, no how to’s, will effect the entry into reality, nothing but complete giving of yourself.

From Conscious Companion by Marta Luzim