Entangled Humanity

Since I am beginning again in writing about the things that matter to me; shared mourning practices and Death Rites. I have decided to map out some of the key skills and areas of knowledge that are essential to fully understanding a lot of what I am rambling about. Partly so I can refer back to these posts later to prevent repeating myself. So the first post containing the fundamentals of Death Rites is on Psychic Anatomy and will be followed with these topics to explore more deeply:

Psychic Anatomy Basics

Mapping the Unseen Landscape

Assessing your Psychic Health

Protections when Working in the Unseen

Your Body as the Ancestral Landscape

Listening and Interpreting Somatic Feedback

PSYCHIC ANATOMY BASICS

Follow me if you will; imagine that your Being (your whole being that is not just your body) is woven; like a net or basket.

And imagine that when you were born you were born whole (we shall revisit this later, just pretend for now you were born whole).

When you experienced a shock, pain or deep fear there was a loss of innocence. Even the smallest of experiences of losing innocence is a trauma of sorts.

When you experienced a trauma the fabric of your being tore. If it was a little trauma maybe the fabric was worn away only a little, but if over time these little pains kept happening eventually the fabric would wear to the point of tearing.

Once there was a tear in the fabric of your being the loose threads at the edges of that tear, like an open wound in your psyche, spiral out into the ether.

If that wound or tear in your fabric was not tended to and repaired; then these loose energetic edges are open and raw; they meet (or even attract) other people's loose ends and a bond is formed.

People bond when the loose ends of their wounds meet. Unfortunately this can lead to patterns of re-traumatising each other. It's the foundation of an unhealthy relationship.

Even if you leave that relationship, sever the bonds, if you don't take steps to healing and repairing the original wound; you will repeat the same patterns over and again until you do.

Healing is essentially the repairing of what is torn and the untangling of what is tangled.

How can a family or community help a child to heal the wound (repair the tear) before it goes on to become a toxic and unhealthy festering pattern?

By giving them the space to grieve the experience without trying to fix them. By holding space for them to express their feelings about what happened.

By believing them. By validating their feelings. By mourning with them.

For those that were part of creating the tear, to acknowledge their own wounds and to apologise for harms done.

If seen, held, acknowledged and mourned; these wounds need not set in for life.

Remember when we just pretending we were born whole? Well... we are of course bonded through our parents to their own wounds and to all the generational, ancestral wounds that come down our lines. It would have just been complicated to start there.

And moreover, we are also cross bonded with people we share characteristics with; our kindred. And we are also not just bonded with people but with the More than Human, nature and animal kin.

So there is a LOT of attachments that go into being human. Can we even distinguish at all where we begin and end in this interconnected web?

What is the difference between a healthy bond and one formed of trauma?

Consent and agency. We choose healthy bonds and are not obliged to maintain them.

So, what does this mean to us as we encounter this Work of collective mourning and Death Rites. Firstly, a person who is negatively bonded, attached, to people places and things will not experience a "good death"; a person who is in healthy consensual bonds of love will relinquish these connections at Death and those that love them will release them too.

Mourning practices are about the conscious release of bonds so that the dead, literally and that which has metaphorically died as well, can flow onwards.

The power of mourning together is amplified; personal grieving is important but being in community, witnessed and a sharing of the grief is key to moving on and through. Crying alone is not transformative in the way that true lament in community is.

Secondly, and this is very important to note; psychic integrity is the marker of good health. So this becomes a touchstone and a benchmark of our practice; to check the Self for attachments to the living, to the dead and to the Unseen; that are draining us, affecting us negatively, distracting us, introducing fear and anxiety... And having a practice to clear and clean the psychic field is essential. Which is why the writings coming down the line go into this in more detail.

For now, we can just reflect on the great paradox of what it is to be human - with the individual self which needs boundaries in order hold and channel personal power; which is in turn part of the great web of life; not separate from but part of the One. We are connected to all things for better and for worse; so becoming conscious of to what, how and why we are attached is a fundamental in any spiritual work.

Next time: MAPPING THE UNSEEN LANDSCAPE