The Wasteland: lost, empty, and bereft of faith, and lost hope, in it I felt trapped, no exit! When I realized that there was no way out, that it was indeed the pathless way in the forest; that Campbell was right in defining it as the very essence of being lost. In this place I had only one way to go, instead of finding a way out I realized in a moment of clarity, I must go inward. As a psychologist I had told many clients, the solutions are always within, it was about time to follow my own advise: I had to become the wounded healer and must heal myself.
Again, I turned to Campbell: "The solution if it is to be found is inward, to the dark and unknown regions of the unconscious mind." This is what I call the dead zone, the land of repressed memories, dissociated feelings of grief and loss: a deeply fragmented self. This was where the impulses, the compulsions, the inability to trust, care and feel were being housed like a vault in the basement. I once had a client who went to get something out of a safe deposit box which belonged to her father who died. But she had lost the key; and the bank had no record of its existence because it had been opened a long time ago. She like me, had no access, no key to what had been put away a long time ago.
But we do have a key: "One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light." The inward journey begins by paying attention. The first step is to stop the noise of the inner world and notice feelings. It is Awareness that leads to awakening: pay attention to dreams, as Campbell views it, dreaming is like fishing in the vast ocean of the unconscious. Freud calls dreaming the royal road to the unconscious. By stopping my world we must pay attention to fleeting images, memories, dreams and only partially felt feelings.
Awareness brought the Recognition that I must address my wound. "The Hero's Journey begins with the call--the wound". This is always the beginning of healing and transformation. By facing our wound, we stop running, avoidance, and all the other failed defensive strategies. And when this happens, we can take the first courageous steps into the land of the lost self.
The first step happened completely by accident. Sometimes that's the only way it can happen. I was having lunch with my son and daughter, when my daughter asked me to tell the story of the family secret. Niki's death had never been talked about. I hesitated a long time, stunned, but saw the necessity and opportunity to talk about the black hole left in our family life. I told them the story of her death and how difficult it had been to handle it for both her mother and myself. It in fact led to the divorce which also amplified their own difficulties.
Then my daughter took the next daring step. "Dad can we go see where she is buried?" And so we went to the cemetery. We located the burial site; she was buried in a special area just for children. And then the healing moment: we stood at the grave site: ground zero, and held each other. I had never gone back to the grave after the funeral. It had been so many wasted years. That's a lot of running, avoidance, and repression. But with that first step the inner journey took a major step. Transformation can only happen through facing, recognizing and addressing the wound.
