The Universal Wound; A Personal Reflection on Chiron

‘Chiron’ by Roberto Ferri

The last couple weeks have been deeply introspective and I have been reflecting upon the suffering of our world which is far more all-pervasive than many would comfortably admit. I have always been highly aware of this suffering, even before I was conceptually aware of it, as my body and emotions have informed me through a sensation of never really feeling quite safe, or never really feeling quite at home. This became an incredible detriment in my ability to participate in “regular” activities and form personal relationships because such physical and emotional sensations isolated me and gave me the appearance of being “too emotional, too personal, complaining too much, etc.” and so the issue, and the problem became ‘me’. That conclusion would become the backdrop of my own self-identity. As I became older and wiser I began recognize that the things which made me feel so horrible and scared was not just ‘me’, but the actual state of the world itself, despite the common conviction that I was simply ‘wrong’ and that was not the case. What everyone else seemed so capable of tuning out would rip me apart from the inside out; A constant overstimulation of sensations, demands, emotions of depravity, hopelessness, abuse; Not just to be found in some places, or some dark corners, but most places and most of the time. How this could possibly could the case, and how this could be the state of humanity, even today, with all we know and have accomplished, would be the questions that ignited a passion which would, and still does, carry me throughout life.

As I write this now, powerful feelings fills me as I reflect upon these sensations which are now accompanied by conceptual recognition and understanding. Tuning into the underlying cesspool of our contemporary world, day and age, the common thread is spoken through the waterfall of emotional runoff… Despite our external security, systems of external support, great machines and electrical currents, hardly any of these things have changed or contributed to how people feel internally. Whether conscious or not, most people construct their entire lives around running from and avoiding the deep rift which they carry in themselves. The common thread is what we are escaping: It’s our nebulous emotions, the pain we experienced in the past, the burdensome components of having a family, having children, having survived childhood. The common thread of what we are constantly escaping is personal intimacy, vulnerability and the unpredictable tide of our changing emotions which becomes regarded as a hindrance, a distraction, or even a curse. The coping mechanisms we create to avoid “going there” (into those areas) all too often becomes the very basis for life; But despite how carefully we disassociate from them such things never truly disappear, but rather fester until the day that we (or someone else) taps into the undercurrent…

You may notice that a personal, intimate, emotionally open and vulnerable connection with another soul is one of the rarest things in the world. You may have even paid a professional to fulfill such a role for you on your behalf. Yet even spending just several days in a therapeutic setting throughout one’s life tends to be often avoided by people like the plague, maybe particularly in Western culture, and maybe particularly by men. The result is an actual disdain for the very thing we are running from. We do not talk about those things; We make our priority to forget them. And we hate the people, places or things that remind us of them. As a result our connections are superficial, our families are distant, our associations tend to moreso revolve around getting things accomplished, or business agendas, then real human bonding. Ironically business suffers as a result of an underlying confusion: We expect ourselves as human beings to behave differently then our human nature and then “berate ourselves into shape” whenever we “fall out of line”. Only really, it’s our entire planet and species which is out of line, and we hold ourselves accountable if we do not keep up with the standards, or expectations of “success”.

When I was a child I had a reoccurring nightmare which typically came when I was very sick (which was often stomach related). The nightmare was one of mostly feeling sensations rather than a story or vision. The dream would begin with a tiny flower seated upon a small, microscopic planet, accompanied by a feeling of being very tiny, delicate, and exposed. Then in a sort of camera-pan affect, my awareness would be drawn outward, and the flower appeared and felt even smaller, and smaller, and smaller… As I was drawn outwards I would become aware of super massive machines and structures which surrounded and seemed to “encase” the flower and the planet… Gradually a deep feeling of being completely and utterly overwhelmed would start at the root of my spine and rise up my body that felt like an electrical fire. The feelings would be so overwhelming and intense I would often wake up from the dream screaming and vomiting. The reoccurring nightmare was one of the most intense experiences I’ve had of that feeling, but the feeling itself was all too familiar; It was the feeling of the world’s suffering. I am now able to recognize that this was not just my dream, and not just my feelings, it is ours and this whole planet’s.

We have so much to process that we have not even begun to as a species, and yet we run full steam ahead as if our increased pace will somehow prevent us from a collective meltdown. Unfortunately, as a result this collective meltdown is nearly guaranteed, and there is almost no use in pointing it out when such an observation is almost always met with only disdain. Yet who can be blamed? Such disdain has its roots in what we all feel deeply cut off from, what we deeply believe we should and can not concern ourselves with lest we be considered villains of the “potential for good and of life itself”. To this day forming authentically intimate, personal, emotionally vulnerable relationships where we are safe and free to share our emotions, our past experiences, and our personal relationships to one another and families in a safe, unbiased environments remains to be one of the most missing components in our species’ standards for healthy living. Despite their invisibility, the battle scars in myself and others that prevents this healthier standard from coming into existence remains to be one of the biggest problem areas on our planet at this time. Our species’ incapability to recognize eachother as a family and as brothers and sisters remains to be one of the greatest testaments of our traumatic separation from the authentic nature of who we truly are.

What used to seem like a curse to me because it prevented me from keeping up with the pace of “life’s standards” and the “world’s demands” I now recognize as a blessing in disguise for preventing me even still from all of the same things. Giving myself permission to live and relate in a different way enables me to grant the same to others. When I look into the eyes of someone who is overworked, undernourished, taken for granted and blaming themselves for not feeling better or producing more I recognize the reflection and have the opportunity to share with them what I am still learning to share with myself; “It’s OK to be as you are. It’s OK to feel as you feel. It’s OK to respect and honor your internal world. It’s OK to make that world a priority.” Until this becomes integrated into our conscious makeup as human beings, and until we we orient our passion and drive to accomplish such feats in addition to our other motives we cannot expect to accomplish anything with much ultimate meaning; As a lavishly decorated yet empty castle may appear differently but in essence is the same as any other abandoned building, until we come home to one another as people, we are all strangers, and our gatherings will be competitions for false pretense instead of circles for nourishment and emotional support.