A SOUL IN LONGING. . .

Since 1964 I have been intrigued by what is known as the Iroquois Confederacy.  In the cosmology of the Iroquois, sickness is seen as the soul’s way of indicating that something is missing in one’s life.  A body in pain is a soul in longing.  I love this idea.

To the degree that a body in pain is a soul in longing, consider the following example; I experienced this in 1996 during my third trip to The Netherlands.  I was guiding a four day session for senior level managers and executives.  As we were settling in for day four my host, Tjeb, told me that after we finished that day he and I were going to meet with four men who owned third generation family businesses.  I asked Tjeb about the purpose of the meeting; he responded, as he was wont to do with, ‘We’ll see what unfolds.’  The six of us met later that afternoon and we began talking; ‘getting to know you’ was the theme.  As each man told his story it became clear that each had accepted their role in the family business out of loyalty to the family; out of duty.  Each also manifested chronic physical issues.  One of them informed us that he had chronic lower-back pain and it started within a month of his taking over the family business.  After the third person finished his story the first man interrupted and said ‘I hate where I am sitting.’  And he began to cry; this was no small thing for a male in Holland, especially a male of his stature.  After some time of crying (we were all crying with him for his pain unleashed pain that we each were carrying) he began to compose himself.  He said that he had always wanted to be a chef.  His father and his grandfather made it clear that he was to carry on in the family business however.  Tjeb informed me a few months later that this man had resigned and had gone to Cooking School and that within a week of entering the cooking school his lower-back pain vanished.  As it turned out, each of the other three men believed that they were called to something else in their lives and that they had sacrificed themselves for the family business.  Tjeb informed me that another of these men had also resigned and went off to do what he truly loved and that his health, too, had dramatically improved.

Dr. Benie Siegel provides us with a number of examples, here are two of them:  An adoptee had been searching for his mother for years and was suddenly stricken with an inability to blink.  After some deep searching he reported to the doctor that ‘If I blink, I might miss my mother.’  Then there was the man who had a cancer in his backbone and he noted that he had always considered himself to be ‘spineless.’  Dr. Siegel insists that our bodies know what we are to become.  We can trust our bodies he says to bring us into alignment and we can trust the soul to speak through the body.  The body is a channel to the soul – I like this idea too.  One of the ancients, Paracelsus, put it this way: The body’s sufferings are the midwife of very great things.  Decay is the beginning of all birth, the beginning of the Great Work, that of spiritual transformation.’ 

Recently my soul has been calling me through my body; specifically through my face.  I have yet to discern what my soul is longing for.  Perhaps this entry today will help me as I search for an insight if not an answer.