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On Wounds and Gifts

Agata Krajewska

We are pain and what cures pain both.

We are the sweet cold water and the jug that pours. (Rumi)


We are all cracked, wounded. We speak about healing our wounds, but what would we be without them? What if they are not something to get rid of once and for all, but the raw material for extracting our unique gold? 



There are a lot of teachings out there about awakening to spirit; our nature as undivided Self. That is a beautiful work and necessary in this time of being over-identified with personalities. Yet there is another kind of work, less popular and feminine in nature (though not belonging to women alone). It is the work of bringing our awareness down into the most painful places- and staying, so that alchemy takes place.  It is a journey of Spirit incarnating as every bit of our humanity and discomfort is part of it. 


Mythologist Michael Meade proposes that there is genius alive in each one of us and, for the sake of All Life, it is time to awaken it. That genius manifests as our own particular contribution. It doesn’t require a great shiny website and a business plan. It can come though in our daily interactions with friends and acquaintances. 

“World peace happens in a four foot radius”, says teacher and author Christina Baldwin. Can we take this to heart and into action, particularly when we are overwhelmed by an influx of information about catastrophes elsewhere? It’s not always easy. 


I am deeply inspired by the understanding that our deepest wound is where we find, and can develop, our precious gifts. What it means is that the events and experiences in our lives that caused us most pain made us who we are. 

I am thinking of Eve Ensler, an author and leading edge activist for women’s rights. When she started collecting stories to write her Vagina Monologues, she had no idea of the vastness of the movement she was starting. In her own words, “she just hoped she wouldn’t be killed.” She was propelled to do this work because she was raped and abused as a young woman. That burning wound led her to start V-day to end violence against women, and to travel all over the globe to listed to her sisters’ stories.

After all she has been through, including surviving cancer, she urges us in a recent interview to celebrate what in our lives is already of the world we long to live in. 


Recently I have listened to a friend, who suffers from a chronic illness, speak about how opening to the pain in her body brought her into the depths of her erotic pleasure. 


I have been reflecting on how this law applies to my own life. One of my wounds as a child was that of not being seen- and there is nothing that gives me greater joy than really seeing others, and creating containers for it. I have always struggled with being alive at all! Yet my greatest passion is to appreciate life through celebrating people’s stories. At an early age I went through a serious surgery that immobilised me for months- and now I have a great love of movement and embodiment. And so it goes. 


I’d like to invite you to reflect on how this manifests in your own life. Remember a painful experience: a one-off or an on-going condition. Now make a connection with what you are passionate about, what most opens you, what in the world you would like to effect. Take this as your medicine… and trust it. 

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