Resurrection, Iboga and the Collective Abandonment Wound
What is the price of healing the core wound?
The Wounds We Carry
Healing is an incredibly complex experience, which even with the most experienced guide usually takes most 2-3 years. If you do it alone, or in an ad hoc style with multiple guides it can take a lot longer. It took me 17 years of an active healing journey to heal something that happened 35 years ago, but all the variance, ups and downs and relentless pursuit taught me a great deal.
I have been offline for 5 months, prior to this it felt like I was treading water for a very long time. My desire to give myself in service to the world was countered by a lack of energy and inability to meet my obligations to myself, my family and the greater service I wanted to give.
A common theme of the wounded healer… Tipping from an empty cup, and giving what could not be given without the detrimental depleting of lifeforce energy. This has pretty much been my story as far back as I can remember. There have been moments of temporary feelings of wholeness, sometimes lasting years, but without the resolution of the wound I did not know I was carrying it would only ever be temporary.
The Wounded King
Mythologically this is seen in the questions Parsival was expected to ask when he visited the grail castle when met by the Wounded King. The King represents the wounded part of Parsival, and when by the grace of God he finds himself in the spiritual domain of the grail castle for the first time, the participants of the precision wait in angst for Parsival to utter the words “What ails you king?” or “Who does the grail serve?”. He of course fails to do so, and is kicked out the castle without a return in sight.
As grace can only be given, not earned or taken– Parsival must wait for grace so he can return, and at times it feels like that grace will never return. All we can do in the interim is prepare for that second visit, and wait patiently as almost everyone fails on the first visit. If you fail on the second visit however, your quest is over with the most dramatic finality. You will not touch the grail in this lifetime.
The Abandonment Wound
The wound I was carrying is abandonment. Almost everyone suffers from Abandonment and/or Inadequacy, but having company does not make it any easier. For me it was specifically abandonment to the education system, and even more specifically being hyper sensitive, empathic and shamanically gifted and being left in an environment where these traits were rejected, restricted and made out to be fantastical.
There comes a point in our lives when we need to take responsibility for our wound/s. It is easy to externalise them and blame caregivers, or cover them up with overcompensation, but until we take on the conscious choice to take responsibility for the healing of ourselves we will stay forever a victim.
Shamanism, the Yogic Path and the Good in the “Bad”
I have been consciously walking the Shamanic path for about 12 years now. This started with using music to enter a trance state, then magic mushrooms and DMT - then my first deeply profound experience with Ayahuasca 10 years ago in the Amazonian rainforest - this was a catalyst for both deep healing and suffering– it brought a lot to the surface and I followed up my 10 days in the jungle with a 13 month journey participating in about 50 ceremonies with many different plants in this time. This was followed by a need to calm my nervous system as ayahuasca, and other medicines I was working with can be very out of body and energetically intense. This led to going to India and starting in the Yogic path, the 2 of which complement each other well.
It was about 8 years ago that I heard about Iboga. I have a friend who was a living testimonial, being someone who drank, took drugs, ate too much. By his own admission he was an addict– he then went on to visit Gabon where much of the Bwiti tradition is housed and healed himself of addiction. At the time I was busy in my relationship with Ayahuasca, and put this journey to one side. It would pop up with periodic reminders, but I never felt the pull in the same way I did with Ayahuasca… until recently.
My preference is to experience medicines in their home, with a strong lineage, there have been a few exceptions to this rule, one being times I have experienced strong lineages that have visited the UK, and two ceremonies held by inexperienced and poorly equipped Shaman– there is a paradox in this as the experiences held by the inexperienced Shaman created a lot of problems in my life, but this also catalysed me going to India to study Yoga and return to myself. So while I strongly recommend you only do this work with people who really understand the landscape and in whose presence you feel safe, sometimes it is the “bad” experiences that also catalyse change. This is also the case with a core wound, which I will speak more about in a moment, but the first major fracture from feelings of safety once healed will lead you to purpose and ways of serving the planet.
Untangling the Knots with Iboga
Fast forward to a few months ago and I made the commitment to do Iboga when the opportunity presents itself– not long after this I met a Bwiti Shaman in the laundrette and we booked in for a 3 day initiation.
While I was preparing myself for this I watched a video where a teacher from the Bwiti line said (and I am paraphrasing) “in the west you guys go on a healing journey with endless healing, here we heal once and get on with our lives” and this is what I have felt since taking Iboga - all the sabotaging voices, guilt over what I am eating, feeling bad about my relationships and uncertainty about who I am as a person have dissipated and I feel free. This happened by going to the initial break from safety I felt as a 4 year old and reliving it, and then loving the event and all those who contributed to it. Talking to those I could in regards to it and accepting what happened with love.
What this felt like for me was like a tangled necklace which over the years I have been slowly pulling out the tangled parts, some could only be pulled out so far before being stopped by the big knot in the middle. This moment felt like I found the middle knot and pulled it out, making all the other knots easy to untangle. There was so much psychic energy entangled in this wound that I could not live the life I was trying to, as the energy was not available. The ceremony allowed me to reclaim this energy in what is called soul recovery or retrieval.
The experience went on for 3 days without sleep, and during the process I was able to visit all the moments when pieces of my soul were lost to traumatic events and reclaim them. I saw all the times I should have said something that I did not, it was a systematic healing of the fractured parts of myself. I cannot really explain the process, as it is too profound for words, but it is the most powerful thing I have ever experienced in my life.
Becoming the Swiss Army Knife of Healing
During my work I have picked up many tools that have been able to work as reference points for healing. Parsival is the myth which claimed me. Tarot works in the same archetypal way, which interestingly enough the Bwiti use the same symbology in their ceremonies with the coin, cup, sword and wand. The medicine wheel of the East, South, West and North- which work as an anamistic container for different aspects of our life experience e.g. the East is Fire, Spring, Rising Sun and Childhood. South is Water, Summer, Midday Sun and Adolescence. West is Earth, Autumn, Setting Sun and Adulthood. With North being Air, Winter, Midnight and Elderhood. This unfolds in an infinite way with animals, feelings and symbols all occupying their respective corners. I say all this to say something I have mentioned in previous articles– in the Tarot we have the Major 22 arcana, numbered 0-21. The 20th card is Judgement, and this is the moment when we resurrect and pull together our inner child, adolescent, our inner feminine and masculine–our soul, spirit, light and darkness. That which is known and that which cannot be known all in a coherent formation to support the life you want in the depths of your soul. Death is the 13th card, which is an important part of the journey of letting go of the outdated parts of ourselves, but it is not until we can pull everything back that we can move on to the final card the World, which is to inherit the keys to a good life here on Earth and participate in the eternal dance with our duties, obligations, identity, likes and dislikes in hand.
This is what Iboga really helped me to do!
It is one thing to understand this conceptually, but this was a lived experience of healing, both the wounds of this life and of my ancestry.
A New Myth…
They say that for a culture to heal it needs a new myth. Currently our cultural Myth is abandonment, and inadequacy, I am holding a prayer that this can to shift to belonging, and feelings of comfort in our own skin.
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