Healing Through Time
If Time is the great healer, as they say, then how can we cooperate with him in his great work? Is it possible to take a more proactive approach rather than sitting around waiting for her to make a housecall?
I am going to refer to this proactive approach as 'fourth dimensional healing' or 'healing through time'.
Last year I knew that I was going to have a tough time emotionally at Christmas. I had some stressful work projects on and it was the second year of not being with my kids. So, a month before, I sat down and wrote myself a card. When I opened it on the day and read what I had written, I wept in appreciation. I had made my own day!
So I began to think about how the principle might be applied in other ways. Here are some ideas to help shake up the 'present-centric'.
Intrapersonal
Send little 'time capsules' forward….
Before making a significant decision that will affect the rest of your
life, you might consider writing down the reasons for the decision and
the hopes you have for the future. (It might be some comfort to you as
a seventy year old with no superannuation to know exactly why you as a
thirty-year-old considered putting all your money into emu farming was
such a good investment!). Or if you are into reincarnation, you might
want to leave a few notes and perhaps some map directions along with your
favourite bowl to help your reincarnated self pick up the thread.
And back….
If you know you have an emotional wound from childhood ( and don't we
all?) you could write to yourself with the exact words of wisdom and compassion
that were missing at the time. (Dear Bruce, That drawing of a fish is
so excellent - and creative! - those three legs will come in so handy
later in it's evolutionary life…)
Intergenerational
How much time do we spend sorting through all those the unhealed issues dangling from the family tree, trying to find our roots and striving for our independence? Imagine being able to put on a video of your great grandparents and hear them talk about their lives, loves ideas and dreams. Whether we know it or not, we all pass on a legacy far more substantial than just the material dimension - why not do it consciously? "Dear greatgrandson, In order to make a success of the family accountancy practise I had to suppress my desire to become a poet so strongly that it might well take two generations to surface. So if you feel a sudden sonnet rising for no obvious good reason ..."
What if we had international time travel days?
Some very helpful planetary healing might occur
if we all sat down and wrote notes beginning with things like:
"Dear Adolf Hitler….."
"To the generation responsible for cleaning up buried nuclear waste….."
"An open letter to extinct species……"
"Why I thought introducing a fish gene into the family tree was a good
idea at the time….."
Well, you get the idea. I don't think it is Time that heals. I think the healer has and always will be Love. It just that learning how to love, takes time.
To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence
I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.
I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.
But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?
O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.
Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul though time and space
To greet you.
You will understand.
James Elroy Flecker