Your personal dustbath

It seems a bit counterintuitive, but I spent most of yesterday afternoon getting to know a bunch of chickens, and I learned that they clean themselves by digging holes in the dirt, crawling in, and taking dust baths. And how bizarre is that?

By now you know I can take almost anything and relate it back to the book I’m reading, but this one – farfetched as it may seem – is one of the most obvious metaphors I’ve encountered in quite a while. Because this morning’s chapter in Soul Without Shame is all about the importance of allowing yourself to stay with pain long enough to revisit its source, so that you as an adult can clarify what was happening for your inner child and offer compassion – which leads to healing.

Apparently as long as you think of your hurt as something to be avoided or gotten rid of, "the implicit rejection and hostility support a state of disconnection inside you.” But getting in touch with those old wounds and accepting them with compassion “is like having spaciousness in your chest, room to breathe and be with your feelings. The unconscious holding against the pain in the heart relaxes. You can rest in what is true: there was hurt; that can’t be changed. You feel the pain, and you are larger than it. You experience a sense of allowing and support for the truth, without needing to do or be anything. The warmth of tender kindness is mixed with the cool freshness of reality.”

I mean, hello: isn’t that just as counter-intuitive as a dustbath? Somehow getting “down and dirty” with that stuff in your past that haunts you – and then accepting it, allowing it to be, and loving yourself through it – is refreshing?

But hey: if it works for chickens, maybe it can work for us, too. Certainly worth investigating!