Love as Transformation: Walking Through the Soul Fire of Shamanic Discernment
I'm currently in a stage of my life where energetically speaking I feel a bit like a tiger. I'm not judging this because I believe it is transitory and a result of Shamanic work, soul integration, and becoming more boundaried. I'm exploring my range and my edges and where I end and others begin. It is a largely selfish exploration that often involves me being very discerning of what is happening around me. I am studying and observing dynamics and control/power behaviors and speech. It brings me a bit into the zone of territorial, and I find myself always attempting to strike a balance of kind, yet unyielding in my integrity. But honestly, I have never been this way or been so boundaried and for such a long time was existing by throwing myself away and always being "nice". I lost myself to others' beliefs. Now I'm constantly reality testing and fact-checking with myself: is this accurate? Where is this coming from and does it really define me? Can I stand behind this person's behavior? If not where is my boundary with them? And how do I say no without throwing myself or the other away?
Having come from trauma and still healing from much of it, I am extra careful in how I am holding myself here with regard to others. I'm careful not to give an inch past my boundary. Because my soul asks that of me.
This is a very natural process in Shamanic work that is something I call discernment training. In the journey, we are taken to a battlefield where we must fight all those encroaching on our sovereignty (not literally hurting them, but in the context of the journey we are learning not to allow others to break our sovereignty through this training. We are holding center and standing in our authority and domain). Its result is difficult and grueling in some ways because it involves exercising awareness to a very fine level while also asking one to balance out their expression of compassion, empathy, and love.
I am finding where I am at with it currently is in a fierce type of energy that is saying "no" more and more. I myself want the feel-good love more, but the feel-good stuff is, at times it is necessary, not experienced until the boundaried stuff is. Why? Because if we are only experiencing lovey dovey feel-good feelings without first developing discernment and healthy boundaries, we will be less inclined to develop them. We will throw it all away on the whim of things being easy and easeful. We will choose to keep the peace in the name of love without that love being grounded and rooted in our own sovereignty and selfhood, which has the negative effect of conflation and violation. It's ignorance is bliss. Awakening consciousness asks more of us because it is incredibly precious and valuable and dangerous when siphoned and attacked.
So the heat is turned up and we walk through the fire with it while surrendering and softening to Spirit, who guides us through it to be transformed. Love is not withheld, but it is channeled through the fires of transformation and we must learn to experience this challenging energy that is like a parent guiding us into a trial by fire. The love is there, it just doesn't look the way we may want it to. We can't cage it and force it to be what we want. But it is always serving us:
The love is protecting us and rooting out corrupt behaviors, patterns, and bonds.
The love is nurturing us by teaching us to love and care for ourselves despite walking through tremendous challenge that makes this care difficult.
The love is supporting us while we walk through the fire of "devils" and "demons" shouting obscenities at us that we know those words do not define us and only we, in our knowledge of Spirit, do.
The love is giving us grace while we choose integrity and wholeness over self-harming pleasure and trauma bonds.
This is the deep work where love is always with us, but is not coddling us while we do the hard thing. It's asking us to step in our power without throwing ourselves, our power, away.