311: Cometh to Me

What is this pull you have on me, this light, this love?
If it be love then why does it pull me under and into myself, into the places I dare not go?
If it be love then why are there whispers of danger and want and this tumultuous need?
Are you not in essence a highlighter upon my soul, gliding up and down, without touching, and pouring your paint upon me, until I glisten in flaw and uncertainty?
Can you not see my every crevice as you probe without probing and move without moving, entering me without entrance?
I see you there, inside of me, watching, speaking of my ways. I see you there pointing, excavating, moving, and withdrawing. You take without taking, your pursed lips open and filled with what was once my shadow. You suck up this substance I carry, removing without effort.
And I freely give, though I quake and tremble, attempting to hide the part of me you find.
How can I be, how can I stand, how can I breathe, without you entering and devouring my form?
For since I first set eyes upon you, you found my window, your door, the way into the places I so diligently hid and wiped clean. And yet you linger there, this ghost hovering above my edges.
To touch, you not dare. To make your presence known is not goal. For you will not declare your coming. You will not admit you linger inside of me. You will not venture where your own spirit dwells.
I have been your habitat for ages, your dwelling place, your hovel, your home. I am like the sun to you, the river that carries fish, the pond that spins cycle upon cycle of life.
Yes, as I am your child; though you be my shadow, my existence, my longing, my love; the string of my heart you pull, some master to me, some unspoken controller of my wishes’ dreams.
For in the deepest slumbering of my spirit you find me, though invisible you remain, stirring me and moving me to cause, clinging to me without touch, jostling me without motion, tracing your fingers around my echo.
I call out to you with each coming hour, my seconds not enough time to hold you; for you come and go beyond the reasoning of measurement. You are separate but you have taken me, and in the taking I am neither whole nor complete, but missing more than ever before.
You are the first step, the first move in the first square of a game of kings and queens. I am this pawn, chiseled of marble and set upon the trail and left, just left in stillness to ponder.
And how I long to move myself, but still remain a prisoner to your whim, a whim I know not and see not.
My ground you have shifted, my mind you have rumbled, but tis my heart that you have taken, seized and left me to stare upon the endless moves that never come.
Had you not entered, had you not seen me, had you not found me, had you not grasped me, I would still be. I would still be me and not some wonderer searching for your very fingers. I would not be this lost ghost less person than invisibility.
But you did come into me, you did enter, and now the spirit in me cries out for more, for home, for destiny’s light, and yet you come not. You do not return. And I remain captive in this game of living, homeless, and more forsaken in self than in form.
For I am suffering in the madness of awakening, suffering at the source, where the snake springs eternal from my being, edging through like flame to fire.
I am rising, caravanning up inside self, this shapeless self, and aspiring to find you, to reach what feeds and starves all at once. The dichotomy a serpent phantom doubled.
I am this whisper, this dream, this mystery of yours, and you are not soldier that comes to rescue, but rather droplets of honey that seize my aura and slide around the outside of where the unreachable dances.
And here I am watching, my soul crying, my ache yearning, my insides turned out, exposed, tarnished, and layered with what can only be a love of ages untouched.
Am I not dying, am I not yet dead, death himself, so moved and crushed and open and free all in one pull of your tethered ways? Am I not tug boat reversed, mountain stream moving upward, cornerstone unmoved but revealing the caverns below?
Am I not mystery rubbed out, dried where I was once wet, pierced where I was once marked with a name I know not? Am I the falcon with beak plucked and removed and voice of angel replaced where cawing and nonsense once lived? Am I this bird plucked of feathers by a brilliance so undefinable that I ache for the worms of the earth beyond?
Feed me I scream with a voice that I do not know. Feed me I scream from the depth of my womb from the ache of my loins, shivering in the places you have awakened.
And yet I remain here, still, this virgin to your ways, whilst you remain the ever watcher, knowing I am here, but coming not to the rescue.
Shall I beg of you to leave then, or call upon you more? Shall I beg of you to take me or crawl upon my knees to the boundaries you proclaim upon me? Trapped I am left, between this world and next, branded by your beauty, untrained for this world, and unworthy for next.
What shall I do Lord, but to bleed out to you, to stone my own self to death, so that my leaking, my red, my mark shall shine out to you, so you will come again and carry me home.

309: My Wounded One

My wounded one
I see you
I see you there crying alone
I see you with your hands pressed against your fragile skin
Your endless wonderment less chariot than dungeon
Your blizzard mind a target for jagged daggers
Though you are fearful and doubled-down with fear
Though you are strangled, the agony rising and choking dragon from within
I see you
I see you there crying alone
I see you with your heart set out for all, freshly pierced and bleed out upon your sleeve
Your efforts ignored, your desires stifled, your wishes buried with the agony and trembles
Your dreams trampled, your journey unknown, the light dimming and dimming
Though the isolation suffocates and pulls you further inward
Though the ground sinks beneath trapping you in what can only be hell
I see you
I see you there crying alone
I see you, the streaks of your past spread across the room and painted black on each wall
Your moment passed, your joy forgotten, your answers diminished, a sunrise never set
Your sense of isolation churning and twisting, your path unknown in its familiar confusion
Though the images of the future be blurred and joy feels beyond reach
Though the exhaustion breathes alive and misery claims you as chained-companion
I see you
I see you there crying alone
I see you, your swollen eyes, your swollen love, your swollen wants and needs
Your sadness pouring and pounding out in waves, your veins split open and pouring hurt
Your flesh a painful reminder of who you are and who you are not
Though you are crushed and beaten, bombarded by questions and uncertainty
Though abandonment seems certain and slumber your necessary avenue of escape
I see you
I see you there crying alone
I see you my sibling of this strange land, captive to the unknown hauntings
Your strength burdened with heaviness, your view one of bleakness and doom
Your begging a desperation born into being, your emptiness still empty
Though you be an injurious child, nailed to what appears to be destiny
Though you be a fallen star, burned out and spread upon the masses as aged ash
I see you
I see you there crying alone
I see you my precious earth traveler, your shoes worn, your feet bruised
Your image I hold, as I hold the most cherished of nature’s treasures
Your journey I behold, as I behold the purifying waters of a revisited well
Though we be apart, I recognize you as my equal warrior
Though we be separate, I recognize you as my equal healer
For I see you
I see you there crying alone
I see you there calling out in the whispers of your silent ache
Your beauty penetrating the deepest portion of my own existence
Your strength fueling the carved out substance of life that has surrendered
Though you feel blinded, your gift of being grants me the capacity to carry on
Though you feel unworthy, your gift of being grants me the capacity to see my light
I see you
I see you there crying alone
Your heart as my heart, your soul as my soul
Your pain as my pain, your fear as my fear
Though we be temporarily burned within the flame of all consuming mystery
Though we be masked in a disguise of imprisoned misery
I see you
I see you there crying alone

~ Samantha Craft, January 2013

Repost From Day 20. My vision of the Wounded Healer.

The Wounded Healer

“There are many types of healers. They are all brave. No healer is better or lesser than the other. One healer is called The Wounded Healer. Sometimes this may be preferred to as The Wounded Warrior, as they are like warriors, in their undying effort to overcome obstacles and serve. Before coming to this earth Wounded Healers make a soul-contract to answer the calling of a healer. Those that answer the call follow a similar pattern in life; some eventually become healers of great magnitude through various means, others partially complete the process; and still some, as hard as they try to answer the call on this plane, cannot. Still the soul-commitment of a Wounded Healer alone adds to the positive vibration of the earth and heals. And in this way there is always success. A Wounded Healer need do nothing on this planet and still contribute to the healing effect. However, The Wounded Healer that does go on to complete his task will have a huge impact on others’ pain.

Human pain is perceived as physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, and psychological in combination. No pain experienced is singular. Because no pain is singular, Wounded Healers “learn” to understand various levels of pain in their own life. To a great degree, each person on earth has the potential to be a healer. In fact each person in recognizing the light in another human being automatically heals. Thoughts heal. Words heal. But The Wounded Healer varies from many others in that their life’s purpose from birth is to heal. Because of this, there will be distinct markers of a Wounded Healer.

At all times it is beneficial to remember that a Wounded Healer is no greater or lesser than anyone on this plane of existence, and seeing oneself as a Wounded Healer is not meant to elevate or lift a person. In truth a Wounded Healer will feel a great degree of conflict in reading this; not wanting to feel prideful, pleased, or increased in any measure, there will be discomfort in the physical body upon reading these words. For The Wounded Healer’s main objective, above all, is to remain humble in spirit. Without humility, the healing efforts are lessened, not decreased entirely, but depleted with feelings of judgment of self and others. One cannot judge oneself lesser or greater than another, without losing humility. One cannot heal to the greatest degree without humility. Thus, these variants are dependent upon one another; that is to say, give up self to become humble, become humble to heal. Of course, as humans, there is a degree of self-giving and self-worth that is necessary to survive. Therefore, a balance is necessary—that is to say, for The Wounded Healer there needs to be a balance of healing of others and self-love. Though most Wounded Healers, when reaching the fruit of their calling, will be naturally loved and healed through healing others in humility. And therefore, in its greatest capacity, the healing is contradictory in terms of existing as both self-serving and endowed with humility. This is a complicated matter in considering, but no less necessary to explain.

There are five distinct traits of a Wounded Healer. These traits can be used to identify a healer in yourself or others.

(1) Wounded Healers are set on a path of empathy from birth. This is referred to as the “pain-cycle.” Often over-sensitive and naïve in nature, The Wounded Healer will experience pain in all forms before reaching their final role as a Healer of Mankind. This pain will happen throughout many years of their youth, and likely into young adulthood. Some will experience strong degrees of pain for half or more of their life. When this pain-cycle is complete, differs for each healer. When they have experienced the pain intended to experience, the cycle will make a dramatic shift. This will be an obvious shift. Observers will recognize this shift, as will the individual. The shifting of the pain-cycle will feel like a rebirth. This is often predicated by a dramatic change in lifestyle or life choice. This is not to be confused of “hitting bottom” or breaking the cycle of addiction. This is the end result of years of trials and tribulations—one after the other of soul-experience of pain and human-experience of pain, until at last there is a sunrise of a new day. This will literally feel like a “dawning.” There will be no doubt that the pain-cycle has come to an end. Healers will thus still experience pain, pain does not disappear, but the cycle of learning through pain will have ceased to spin.

(2) Often, almost all of the time, the child will experience great trauma in childhood. This will be perceived at one pain-level at minimum, most commonly the psychological-level, but very often the pain comes in combination. Wounded healers choose to experience a childhood of trauma in order to obtain a higher degree of empathy. This trauma (during this current time period) can be seen in all forms of abuse, ridicule, shame, addiction, neglect, malnourishment, poverty and abandonment. In the absence of an outside force produced by others, or in combination, the pain may be self-inflicted, as in perceived ailments of the mind or body. This may take the form of disfigurement, or the inability to be considered by others as “normal.” In later life this pain-cycle may manifest itself in the form of repeated unexplained sickness. These traumas will make a mark on the child. Each mark will serve as a greater good in the years that follow. Each mark indicates a pain that will be released from another being other than the healer. This can be visualized as slashes on the skin. A Wounded Healer carries these slashes that have turned to scars. Each person they heal at a later date will cause a healer’s scar to heal. Thus it follows the more scars a child experiences, the mores pains she is destined to remove from others. But remember, the number of scars is not equated to the number of people. In the process of healing only one person, all of the healer’s scars can vanish. In this way, a Wounded Healer’s soul-purpose may be to heal only one. Whether one or millions are healed is of no difference. Healing one has as much power and magnitude as healing millions. There is no lesser or greater; this is of up most importance to remember. Therefore, a Wounded Healer may complete his contract by healing one or healing many.

(3) All Wounded Healers are called to serve since childhood. It is not uncommon for the child to know before the age of ten what they aspire to be. Whether this vocation transforms rapidly or slowly is dependent upon the pain-cycle the person is to experience. Some will arrive at the vocation at a young age, while other will change jobs many times before answering the call. Still others will slowly transition. All life experience will benefit the Healer’s vocation. In childhood, The Wounded Healer will seek out ways to help others. Oversensitive, they will feel drawn to saving, nursing, rescuing, and easing discomfort. They will notice the wonders of nature that others often overlook. They will cry if a creature is hurt. They will cry if a person is hurt. At one point, in an attempt to survive, they will learn to stop crying as much, and this can cause much inner turmoil. These children will seem wise beyond their years. They will have the strong need to serve the greater good. They will often feel like failures and not good enough. This will be mistaken for low self- esteem. This is not so. These souls have a strong, if not all encompassing need to serve and heal, and when they cannot do so they feel suffocated, inadequate, weak, and not good enough. They might be mistaken by others as depressed, failures, dreamers, or perfectionists. Emotions may be out of control.

4) All wounded healers are empathic and also considered Empathic Healers. The Empathic Healers carry empathic traits, but do not necessarily carry all the traits of a Wounded Healer. The Wounded Healer includes the qualities of an Empathic Healer. However, an Empathic Healer may or may not have the traits of the Wounded Healer, such as: traumatic childhood and pain-cycle. In distinguishing the two, there is no urgency or necessity. But for clarity we point out the difference. Traits of an Empathic Healer include the ability to read the emotional energy field outside of a person. This can or cannot be seen. Usually the energy is felt more than seen. But seeing can be developed with focused practice and attention. Empathics have the ability to pick up on others’ emotional state. They may feel “depleted” in energy around other people, especially in crowds. This is a falsehood to consider the experience a “depletion.” This interpretation implies that there is not enough energy left in the person, and that something has been removed, taken, leaked, or escaped. There is no depletion of energy that is possible. What is happening is the person is taking the others’ energy and reworking the energy so to say, and then returning the energy cleansed to the others. This is like a doctor removing a sample of blood, cleaning the blood, and returning the blood. Only the Empathic Healer is the doctor, the tube holding the blood, and the source of healing. Thus the Empathic Healer is left feeling tired from the process. There is no danger in this except the feeling of exhaustion and the possible susceptibility to taking on another’s pain instead of cleansing the pain. Each Empathic Healer will have to learn how to protect themselves from exhaustion and the transfer of pain. The key is to recognize ultimately there is no pain, and thus, what is really happening is an energy transfer, a giving of one to heal another at a soul-level. This “healing” is complicated, but it is suffice to say the one must recognize the other for the earth to heal, although, even this is very much not the true and ultimate meaning.

5) All wounded healers are repeatedly humbled. This begins in childhood and does not stop for the course of a lifetime. For in order to heal to the greatest degree, as mentioned before, the person must practice and live in humility. Each will do so in various degrees. The greatest healers and shifters of mankind will be the most humble. We need not look far to see who these souls were that existed to transform this world. Not all souls who are Wounded Healers will retreat to the greatest of humility, there will be varying degrees based on culture and the necessity to affect change. How others perceive the healer is still important. Societal rules and regulations, and the status of a person, can all affect the perceived skill of the healer. Therefore, each Healer will have different degrees of humility. Not all seekers will feel comfortable with a half naked man with no teeth. Therefore, Healers are colored in all patterns, and dressed in robes that will attract those needed to fulfill their highest good. This may mean no robe, a tattered robe, a designer robe, or a robe of gold; what matters is not the robe the healer wears but what he houses beneath. A Wounded Healer will heal. This is a matter of practicality. There is no way she cannot.

Wounded since childhood, and sometimes before entering this plane, the soul of The Wounded Healer will seek out help from an early age. They will attempt to remove the pain in many methods. Many of the methods will lead to further humility. Sources such as strict religion, addictive relationships, drugs, alcohol, gambling, overwork, and the like will often accompany the Wounded Healer in his journey through the pain-cycle. Many will seek help through doctors, psychics, energy-healers, therapists, clergy, and counselors, and in this way continue to be humbled. Others may succumb to mental collapse or physical breakdown. Again, they will be stripped to the bare bone. Some will experience great pain through loss and affliction repeatedly, which end results leads to humility. The pain-cycle will continue. When the fruitful time has arrived, The Wounded Healer will break free from the pain-cycle. This is different for each person. If one were to know when the pain would end, this would be no different then knowing the age of death. On knowing the age of death all life is unavoidably lived and experienced differently. Therefore The Wounded Healer has made an agreement to not know when the pain-cycle will end, in order not to affect change or the end result.

Even as the pain-cycle ends, pain remains to a degree. Humility remains, as does the ability to see in others what is in thy own self. Humility then becomes a coat of armor and a friend. A blessed companion we thank the heavens for creating. For in this grand humility we find the comfort of knowing what has come before has served to heal.

In evaluating a Wounded Healer it is best not to use logic but instead to rely on instinct and feeling. A healer of such magnitude, who carries the armor of humility and the pain of many scars, will be notable to you on many levels. First, and foremost, they will carry with them a peace and inner light so that you will have a tendency to feel that you “know” the person or want to know them. You will be attracted to The Wounded Healer and not necessarily know why. This of course is after the completion of the pain-cycle—before this you might actually be propelled away or want to escape. But we speak of the end of the pain-cycle, when the cloak of humility, grace and service is evident. In this time seek you signs of a welcomed presence. This Healer will seem wise beyond his years, will gravitate towards serving others for the sake of healing alone, and will often be serious-minded and unable to easily let go and relax. Overall, in considering The Wounded Healer it is important to remember their coat of humility. For whatever they may say or do, or seem to say or do through your perception, their ultimate goal is healing.” ~ Sam

(No editing was applied to this prose. This all came out in one quick sitting.)

If you be a wounded healer, I recognize you, I see you, I hear you weeping, and I love you. Wishing you love and light and the strength to carry on. With deep compassion and love. ~ Sam

306: Seams, I Am

Who am I, this mystery before me, both below and outward, both inside and beneath reason?

Who am I, this single dancer in a circus line of creatures mistaken as self, whilst all about this singular is nowhere?

Who am I, this bewildered child screaming out of the darkness, whilst light is everywhere, immersing my doubt in the seeded-bed of nutriment.

Am I but my shadow, the edges of me formed by the objective angle, by the instrumental being of sun at play with madness?

Am I but marionette set to strings or the more: this twisted master puppeteer snarling and snapping from up above, laughing at the ownership of chance?

Am I the singer tethered inside shell, severed voice blocked and thusly returned by thine own harbored walls?

Am I this rice, this grain, this planted web, tangled beneath the soil of enrichment, begging within a beating substance to escape the depths from where breath labors?

Am I a blinded legless one, slithering through the streets of reason, slipping through skin in regeneration, hoping passerby will collect the shed of what’s been?

Am I the monk with cymbals, clanging-metal-smile-creator, discontented-sorrow-seeker placating the rebel masses, born into appeasement?

Am I the voice without time, the rhythm without cause, the ocean without water, the mountain without foundation? Am I merely floating in a nonsensical nonexistence, wading and wavering through that which is naught and cannot be found?

Am I dropped here, a foreigner, with all the ripened senses plucked out of me, so I may spend eternity searching for the one I once was?

Helpless at my very seams, I am.

The most of all not mended, not fixed, not finished, left to wander with the stuffing jumping outside into teasing freedom, my insides deserting captain, torn empty, this incomplete form.

I am this.

I am this universal measure in incompletion, steadying myself on untrained legs in an untrained world. Jumping through hoops that neither exist or appear, but manage to bruise the very essence from where I gather semblance and substance and order.

Hollowed I am, in the shape of the corner of the mind, bleached by the external force of unknown, blanched and then blanketed in a knowing of unknowing, taught of the presence of presence, and moment within moment, but then tortured by the possibilities that endlessly speak of nowhere.

I am this vulture starved of the carrion, starved of the self, starved of what would be me inside the mirror, if image appeared. And yet I am meant to be in some way here, as if here was evermore spoken.

And thusly I clamber and shake, my own boots too big for the climbing, my own answers too heavy to be held in the limited chambers of thought’s engine.

And I trumpet, one part bleeding out to the other parts, to prove a lingering hypothesis of ever expansion. Until the weariness speaks louder than the want. Until release beckons like the child’s grave that speaks out to broken mother. Unbendable matters beckoning forth from somewhere bleak but lacking bleakness, formed of unspoken words and erased images that never were.

Here is where the artist’s invisible and imagined heart is purged, here in the incremental sewing of the energetic threads of the absence of self.

Here I exist: as the pudding poured out from the sharpening of nothing.

~~~
Samantha Craft, January 2013

299: The New Day

I’ve decided
I’ve decided that you deserve more
More than what I am offering
With my clinging and self-doubt
You are not the key to my self-worth
So I shall work on being less dependent
On you
I am ready to pull away some
I think
I want our friendship to be nurturing
And I am tired of being so needy
I understand what is happening
I am self-harming
Through you
I build you up into someone you are not
So you can disappointment
Or rather
So I can think you are disappointing
For then I experience a rawness inside
A Terrible Ache
That reaches into the heart of me
It is only then
With the coming ache
That I feel alive
Without this intense angst
I feel numb
For no one can fill my depths
With the love I need
And thusly I am left hollow
And alone
In desperation and with desire
I grasp on to Love’s cousin
Pain
And pour him into me
I use
My addictive substance
Over and over
To exist
Because I feel alien
In this world
In both form and experience
I have been using
Using you
To feel real
Using
To wake up
My sleeping soul
I am sorry
For clinging
For aching
For suffering
Through you
But I still choose you
I choose you again and again
Only this time
You are chosen
For your beauty alone
For your light that shines through
The darkness in me
And opens my eyes
To the new day of us

~ Samantha Craft, January 2013

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297: Symphony of Sorrow

The glacier unleashed above the surface, exposed to the elements, withered and melting, as ice teeth drip in sun dagger’s game

The fortress unmoved in storm, harbored deep into the rooted ground by intertwined redwoods eating away at the past through methodical digging

The opening beyond the passageway, circumventing the avenues of darkness, though blind, a serpent worm hollowing and sharpening the narrowness below

The salutation circled on parchment dry, driven in passion by black-tipped feather dancing its way across the pages of time

The window frame broken, cracked over with windy days turned blizzard, and painted false with robin-blue, layer upon layer, until chipped and exposed the ruined beginning bleeds

The casual handshake of palms fleshy and ripe, with sweat and history intermingled more than the strangers that touch

The blanket hung upon the clothes line, overlapped and moving in the breeze as ghost sheets whisper their jealousy, wanting the warmth to move through them, like champion fingering the goblet of victory

The breath of the sailboat, weeping for the coming of wind, where tossed and turned the sails shall bellow in defense, when all about the observer grins, thinking the movement enters sweet without cost

The misery belonging to one, the performer across dimmed stage, spinning in the absence of light, invisible to the onlookers, if audience ever entered

The broken, spread out for picnic, picked apart to bone, and left for the army of insects to devour the remnants of screams harbored in the feast of gluttony

The fear reaper, echoed shadows of past, silk and web interwoven to glisten and capture, to call forth and entice, until prisoner bewildered in entrapment pleads for escape

The moment, shaded eyes beseeched lost maiden and all searching tumbled outside of tethered pockets, pebbles touching down into river rapids, one after the other, exiting their chamber of ages

The stallion and steed, a chance glance past the soured fields and dank sky, remembering once together they moved free as drifters in hope’s lullaby

Until now, each as forgotten tune joins to create a symphony of sorrow, their music precise and purposeful, reaching into the severed opening of lost child, and soothing the reflection of their collective pain

~ Samantha Craft January 2013