nce we have a sense of our personal variation of the holistic state, we can begin
to identify areas in which that experience is blocked for us. Perhaps we are blocked
because some areas are too painful to examine and include in with the rest of
our life. Some of these roadblocks might include a lack of connection with ourselves
and the world around us, an absence of community or an inability to communicate
with others. Addiction--which is the way many people today cover up emotional
pain--is perhaps the most common wedge between us and the truth of things. However,
there are countless more subtle forms of personal and cultural addiction most
people never notice. They end up as roadblocks to holism because their purpose
is to distract us from what's inside of us emotionally and spiritually.
One very significant block is the split we believe exists between
spirituality and sexuality. It not only separates us from
our significant others, our spouses and loved ones, but separates
us from our bodies and from the natural world as well. It
is a major detour on the road to holism. It adds to the repression
of the shadow self (the dumping ground for the parts of our
personality we disown), and to the separation of the body,
mind, and spirit. This can lead to shame, and poor grounding
of personal energy, which are roadblocks in themselves.
Other barriers include illness, unawareness of psycho-spiritual
principles, lack of respect for self and/or others, cultural
pain, repressed trauma, depression and anxiety, confusing
adult and childhood needs, and censoring our own inner voice.
The Relationship Between Illness, Trauma, Addiction, and Holism
If you're like most people in any illness recovery, you suffered traumas or loss early in life, and received little or no help at the time. In order to survive the pain, you began to dissociate, or cut yourself off from the part of yourself that was in pain. During the time you were dissociating (fantasizing, drinking, taking drugs, drowning your sorrows in any one of a number of addictions or compulsions) you were splitting yourself into safe little compartments, to hide the pain from others and from yourself. You began to fabricate stories around your "shadow" parts to deflect attention from them. You began to create stories around your over-compensating inflated ego too, creating a "mask of composure," a facade that controlled what feelings you let people see. We've all done it in some form.
The light and dark sides of your mind became separated, and you
began to see every situation in black and white, with little or no shades of gray.
If something was not ideal, it was "hopeless." If something was good, you "outlined"
it, separated it from all other things, and attached yourself to it as if it was
your only hope. In the end, you lost all concept of what a whole self might be.
Your fear had divided and conquered your own being. Naturally, you became separated
from the cosmos. You became "disconnected from the stars," an expression in Latin
which spells disaster, pronounced: disastros.
But this is not how it has to be. Once fear lessens its grip,
the pain will lessen as well. Once the pain diminishes, the
need to dissociate will fade. Instead of running away in fear,
we can begin to look forward to exploring new adventures;
small ones at first, perhaps, but growing more and more bold
as time heals our wounds. As so many have said, "It is never
too late to have a happy childhood."
The following chart shows in the simplest terms how addiction
and other destructive blocks to our well being begins in pain and fear, and how
it can be resolved back into a state of holism.
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