I went right to the edge with chronic pain and the ensuing addictions I experienced in reaction to it. I barely made it back from the brink. But I made it. I was so broken down and had almost completely lost my sense of myself. I went into treatment to get off of the meds and learn about stress and pain management. I went through quite a cathartic experience there and dramatically changed the trajectory that my life had been on. As a result, my world as I had known it turned upside down and became unrecognizable to me. People who had known me before I made this change in my direction barely recognized me when I returned after being away for 3 months in treatment and early recovery. I was so fortunate to be able to do some deep, deep healing. To say that my recovery has been a challenge I believe would be an understatement. I have had to use my strength, all of it at times, to remain vigilant, open hearted, willing to do whatever it takes to work through my stuff, and just turn inside and face all that is Elizabeth. I feel like I have remade myself and been remade. If you had asked me if such a thing were possible three and a half years ago, I would have found the notion ludicrous and laughable.
I have had so much help and grace rain down on me. I have a spiritual name: Puran Adesh Kaur — it means ‘the graceful Princess/Lioness who is the pure light of God’s divine order and harmony in the world’. There is a part of Elizabeth that is in essence Puran Adesh Kaur. My journey is walking the path between the human and the Divine within me. I am not always graceful. I go dark. I experience myself as fragmented and have sought to reclaim lost pieces of myself in the last 3 years and 2 months of my recovery. Since I received my spiritual name back in the Spring, I entered into a gentle, if tentative inner dialogue with the Puran Adesh Kaur part of me. It is both a humbling and uplifting experience.
I was so upset and deeply shaken by this last US election cycle. I have been allowing myself to feel all that is coming up. I have asked the Divine for guidance and clarity. I saw something a little deeper around all of this early this morning. So many are disturbed and in reaction around what happened last week. It is additionally a reaction to so many other events. I submit to you that the reaction is really to something else. I believe we know deep within us, even if it is unconscious, that we have come to a critical edge. It is not one party or the other, but the system itself that is so broken to have almost completely lost sense of itself. I believe that it is this loss that we are in reaction to. And underneath all of this, is a knowing, even if unconscious, that we have lost our awareness of our essential connection to Source, the Divine, the Infinite. We are suffering deeply from a case of separation that is taking us right to the brink.
When our children only know their food from a package or a grocery store, and have never seen a lettuce or a potato plant in a garden or a farm, and they have no clue of what it means to see a seed sown and then grow all the way to maturity, they are experiencing disconnection. When we live in such a way that we move with all due haste through our day with this and that and believe that we do not have time to slow down and spend time in sincere and unhurried connection with each other or nature, we are experiencing disconnection. When we are measured and rewarded by our doings and our ability to just ‘be’ with ourselves is nearly wiped out of our agendas, we are experiencing disconnection. When our fingers are pointing at someone else in respect to the problem, we have lost sense of ourselves – hence such a sense of disconnection.
I submit to you that the state of this country and the world are a direct reflection of the state of what we are experiencing on the inside. I believe that the system can survive. It needs deep healing, and what it will look like on the other side of such healing will most likely, like my own healing journey, be unrecognizable on the other side. But heal we must. Each one of us. The uncomfortable, ‘I-don’t-want-to-look-at-this’, the fragmented and lost parts of us – it is here that we each must turn to do the deep healing. We share our experiences and support each other as we each do this work, but we must each do the actual work alone. It is in this aloneness that each of us will rediscover that connection to Source. This rediscovery is at the core of pulling ourselves, and in turn the world, back from the brink. Let us all find the courage to step into this work. It begins right here, right now. If I can make it back from the brink, anything is possible.That is all. #UnleashYourHealingPower #LivingBeyondChronicPain #ElizabethsBlog #kippinitreal
