The Birth of Spring: Out of the Dark Night of the Soul
"La Primavera”, Sandro Botticelli / Public domain
The descent to the underworld can manifest as chaos, depression, illness, addiction, or simply a felt sense that a once vital and juicy life is now desiccated. When we feel ourselves spinning down, we often feel something is terribly wrong. We can’t cope, we can’t cut it, we’re not on, we’ve lost it. If we were good and competent people, we wouldn’t have these horrible experiences. But if we do, we’d better fix it right away because who in their right mind would ever define success as falling apart?
In our blindness, contemporary culture seems to have forgotten that descent is archetypal, honorable, and visionary. We make no collective ritual space for the experience. Instead, individuals who endure the disorientation and despair of an underworld Journey are left to find its meaning mostly on their own and for themselves.
In addressing this vacancy in our culture, Nova Luna seeks to provide a container, a reparative process where all have received an invitation to a Hogwarts-type school of mystery and magic to recover lost, exiled parts and take the Hero’s Journey to those places and parts and transform them.
In the process of recovery, healing often comes through giving positive attention to the wounded and disenfranchised Inner Child; and also giving up the addiction to “acting out”, dramatics and histrionics, the emotional roller coaster. Recovery means reclaiming and championing the lost or disowned Inner Child and healing the toxic shame and low self-esteem that binds one to the addiction pattern, keeping one essentially a prisoner in a dark cave, metaphorically speaking. We must learn to give up control and enmeshment, love ourselves, reframe mistakes and self-criticism, and find support and validation in positive ways that don’t lead to self-destructive or self-defeating patterns. This develops awareness and changes our self image.
To do this, we must grieve our original pain, re-own our disowned parts, move through our fears and allow ourselves to feel again, rather than bury our problems. We have to get in touch with how depressed and angry we really are, and feel the unresolved grief. It also means connecting in a way that is positive for the whole person with a Higher Power, a transformative vision, one’s own form of spiritual awakening or rebirth, and finding bliss in non-attachment.
Finding the Inner Child is part of everyone’s Journey toward wholeness. The Inner Child Journey is the Hero’s Journey. Becoming a fully-functioning person is a heroic task. Discipline helps us release tremendous spiritual power, serenity, and empowerment. Discipline means to teach...to learn ourselves, grow our Self. La Primavera—The Birth of Spring...Beginning and going on. --Michelle Villanti
