Alas, do we not have our own version of beloved trauma from our dysfunctional family! Admit that it’s true! Let’s celebrate it together by not believing that our stories are everything that define us. Instead, let’s find a way of orientation from wholeness, from our innate right to exist that the Universe grants us and everything else in this great web of relationality.
What we are pointing to here is that the narratives, the architecture of elements of our identity, are a fractal reflection of ourselves in our culture. They are the threads through which we express our essence, but they are not essence itself.
We come into the world naked, vulnerable and impressionable. We are essence coming into form, in our body. It is familial and cultural contexts that create the Circles of relationships around us, providing markers and orientations. These initial patterns are merged into our cellular memories. Our daily lives orbit around our identity—personally and collectively in our culture.
Yet we are not just tabula rosa. We have certain qualities that are hidden which have an element of fate—not in the sense of predetermination, but rather, this recognition that our internal matrix has proclivities. What we are born into does not necessarily satisfy the yearnings of our essence, and this disconnection can initiate our own path- a path to find wholeness. We have innate gifts, patterns within us, that can flow out into the world. Finding the connection between those patterns, our gifts, and our being in the world is our journey.
Essence is the source, the first point of our primary orientation. In Circle Think. We practice engaging with our center through contemplative training, and begin to discover the dimensionalities of who we are as a portal into the wholeness of ourselves in relationship to greater mystery from which we emerge.
It’s from this place, from essence, and this sense of profound and unwavering connection—not just to ourselves, but to earth and sky as orientation– that we “curate” our experiences.
Curation vs Trauma
To curate, these days, is most often associated with the process of organizing for an exhibit, which in itself is a fine way to look at your experiences as a kind of imaginative place of art. But we also want to add to that some of the archaic meanings of the word which comes from Latin: The word, curer “to restore to health or a sound state;” is from the Latin word curatus, which means “spiritual guide” responsible for the care of souls. In the late 14c France, the word curacion, meant “curing of disease, restoration to health,”.
In a sense, going into the center point is being a spiritual guide to our own processes. Qualities of a good spiritual guide include acceptance, humility, compassion, kindness and last but not least, unconditional love, which flows through our essence. Anchoring into these qualities creates the coherence from which you can begin to curate.
This is a very different approach from other healing modalities which focus on parts as orientation, or trauma fields. The orientation around trauma is huge in our culture right now. Yet Circle Think, we try not to use the word, “term trauma”. It’s too generic. It does not allow imaginative possibilities. It also implies something that is concrete or solid, like prison bars. It does not allow imaginative possibilities.
Yet, we have to look for the energy configurations and then how the stories fill out the musculature will make better sense on Circle.
Instead, we can reimagine trauma as our own broken arcs. Disconnection, fragmentation, in inability to have generative relationships—these things have sources. The source can be one event, or it can even be the environment itself, over time—a kind of constellation of complex PTSD—multiple broken arcs scrambled together that anchor the experience around an orientation.
These events can be imagined, or drawn out as lines emerging from points. They are our own unique geography. And, they are still an expression of essence finding its pathway into its own entelechy.
Our approach is to both enter into the broken arc, the energy that emerges from the arc and the space within and around the Circle from which stories emerge. There’s a process. We loosen our version of events and we hold our wholeness in the infinite love from our essence, our center point.
This is a different orientation from the heroic ego, which is trying to conquer “parts” of self—good parts, bad parts, lower self to get to some higher self. None of this is denied. These places represent starting points, from which we can begin to trace expressions of ourselves. Yet these archetypes are no longer our center point once we begin to anchor into essence—ourselves in relationship to the heart of our Mother Earth and the infinite potential…
Holding Center
Once you begin to anchor into your center, you begin to feel stability.
As a wheel moves, as life orbits around you and you orbit around parts of your life, the hub, essence, the center, retains a quality of stillness. This motionlessness can be a much-needed perspective, especially when we’re in the narrows, the rapids.
You can witness and accept what is, even if only for a moment, without judgement, fear, anger or any other emotion. Just witnesses in pure awareness. Holding your entire self and others in the right to be, you can also see everything with more neutrality, and put events in perspective in context to the whole.This center place becomes your home, a grounding into profound resilience.