Healing???

Sometimes I wonder: am I just perpetuating my own illness and dysfunction or am I really getting better, more healed, more evolved?  I am saying that as I really don’t know. It feels like two steps forward and then three steps back, often.

How do you know when you are healed?  What are the indices of healing?

I know I am better and further along than I was 10 years ago, and I believe I am a more healed version of myself than I was last year at this time, but am I really the best judge?  Aren’t I prone to fits of delusion and a very strong desire to appear better than I truly am, even to myself?

Sometimes it feels like I have put forth so much effort and feel like I have so little to show for it when I think about the healing process and all the shit I have done to make, what feels more like a feeble attempt, a pathway towards a more healed version of me.

I guess it matters less where I land than my commitment to the process of healing.  And I am very grateful that all the broken parts of me were not known, to their full affect, years ago.  I know for sure I would not have been able to handle it.  Like at all.  So I guess healing is more like evolution, something that happens slowly over time, not something that is engaged, processed and then ended.  Healing is really running on a parallel track of living, if you are alert, aware and committed to being a better version of yourself today than you were yesterday.  And looking around at the world at large, it would appear that fewer and fewer people are actually wanting to trudge that particular path and are, instead, quite content to practice their larger demonic defects and hone them to a great deal of evil.

But those people are not my concern.  I can’t change them, I can’t even work to enlighten them, if I have any such ability in this world.  I can only endeavor to heal the parts of me I see as broken or defective or hurting or cancerous or toxic.  That is my task in this life.  To ferret out the places I am in decay or decomposition and work to heal those parts or amputate where necessary. It isn’t a fun process, again, like at all.  But it is what brings me ultimate peace, knowing that I am doing my very best to become closer to the person I think the world needs, the people around me deserve and the human being God would like me to be.

Sometimes, I will admit, it seems far easier to disappear into my own dysfunction and tell healing and all its attendant work and effort to just fuck off.  But it seems like far too many people in this world are on that path, and I prefer a path littered only with trees, vistas and birds...I really do attempt to avoid the masses as often as I can.  

I think healing for me is the gift I give back to my creator.  To show that there is resilience and love and progress and spiritual evolution amidst the chaos and turbulence of this insane time in our lives.  Healing in the face of constant and unremitting spite and spiritual decay has to mean something, right?  I mean we can’t all give up and give into our baser natures?  And while I am quite the fan of chaos, I really prefer only to visit on rare occasions and never want to reside there again.  Not chaos that is created by me or anyone else for that matter.

Healing, after the pain subsides, does bring a great deal of peace...to me and those about me.  And today, anyway, I remain steadfastly committed to the process of healing that which ails me, thwarts my forward progress and to share what I have learned to light the way for others who struggle in the blackness of their own trauma, pain and suffering.

Again...still.