Soul Retrieval
Hello, lovelies. Even though the month is not over, I hope December treats you well. It was a good month for me until recently. Most of my days consisted of substitute teaching and working on my psych class until last week when I got really sick with a weird flu-bronchitis-laryngitis-ear infection combo. The ear infection has left me bedridden because every time I try to sit up or stand, I am so dizzy I have to lie back down again. I still have my psych class to finish, and I'm praying I feel better soon so I can finish my essay and ace this class.
I've been so excited about this post since the beginning of my "Soul Series," but first, let's recap:
We learned about The Dark Night of the Soul and how it can be triggered. Then we learned about our Shadow Selves and how detrimental they can be to our psyche.
I talked about Soul Loss and how to overcome it.
We will be learning how to retrieve the part(s) of our soul we have lost in order for us to be complete and whole again.
It's quite a lot process and takes many months or even years to complete. This step is often the hardest and most painful because you have to think about the memories in which you lost a part of your soul. This step is also the most liberating and rewarding. This process is called Soul Retrieval.
“Just like a human fetus, while in the uterus, retrieves and assimilates the components that allow its physical body to become whole and fit to emerge into the outer reality, the third dimension serves the purpose of shamanic pregnancy, which is about retrieving and integrating the fragmented pieces of the soul, finally giving birth to the multidimensional self.”
Beneath most headaches is heartache. It's our natural protective mechanism to think our way around wounds instead of feeling our way through them. In this day and age, we want an escape. An escape from the shit we deal with. It is said that whenever we suffer physical or emotional trauma, a part of our soul flees the body in order to survive the experience. Our essence and vitality grows weaker with every cut and wound, whether physical, mental, or emotional. This is called Soul Loss.
Today, you'll learn how to recover the shattered pieces of your soul so you can become whole and complete again.
What is Soul Retrieval?
In some countries, whenever a person gets injured, someone else whispers a prayer to them. It is said that the prayer was to get their soul back. In shamanic cultures, Soul Loss is understood to be a spiritual illness. In other words, when a part of our soul fragments, all kinds of emotional, physical, and mental diseases occur from the diminishment of our life force energy. It is therefore seen as vital for parts of the soul to return to wholeness.
Core Wounds
In psychology, Soul Loss is known as dissociation, or the splitting from reality in order to survive a traumatic experience. This is caused by Core Wounds from childhood, which can affect us later on in life, especially during adulthood when you have a wife and kids.
Some examples of Core Wounds are:
You enter relationships in the hopes of finding what you lack inside in the other person (i.e. you want to "feel complete").
You often feel inadequate, and you have the following thoughts: "I am not enough," "I am incomplete," "I am unlovable," "I don't count," "I am imperfect," "I am powerless," and "I am bad."
You constantly feel a sense of abandonment, resentment, and/or betrayal.
You have a perfectionistic attitude towards life (i.e., you gain self-esteem from the outcome of your actions instead of the intention behind your actions).
You suffer from chronic anxiety. This results from anticipating the emotional pain of being found unworthy, which deep down you think is true.
You repeat the same old mistakes in relationships. This is because you are trapped in a habitual mindset and don't feel courageous enough to make a change.
You find happiness in your misery because it's a source of attention in the form of sympathy from other people.
You have a strong Shadow Self.
You behave in dishonest/inauthentic ways that are not true to the person you are. You act in this way to gain the acceptance of others.
You feel numb inside. You feel a sense of meaninglessness and disconnection from the world around you. This is the ultimate defense mechanism: feeling nothing.
You are your own worst critic (i.e., you constantly remind yourself how much of a "loser" or a "failure" you are).
You always feel like an outcast and can never quite fit in with anyone. Instead of appreciating your uniqueness and seeing it as an opportunity, you see it as a curse.
So what causes Soul Loss?
Any form of abuse, e.g., sexual, emotional, physical, or mental.
An event of prolonged grief, pain, and fear that made you feel helpless or impotent.
Deep-seated addictions, e.g., substance dependency.
A near-death or out-of-body experience.
Being forced to act against your morals.
An experience of intense rejection or abandonment.
Witnessing the unexpected death of someone.
A sudden and shocking accident.
Entering a relationship without solid boundaries of Self (resulting in an unhealthy relationship and losing your personal power).
Soul Loss happens to help you, not to hurt you. It's a natural protective mechanism. However, every wound must be healed. If we don't heal wounds like this, we are left with a chronic feeling of not being whole. Eventually, we can suffer from chronic issues such as anxiety, depression, and physical and mental illnesses as a result.
An example of Soul Loss can be found in countries that frown upon expressing emotions like anger. A child who gets in trouble for being angry will quickly learn that it's an unacceptable emotion and showing it results in punishment or withdrawal of love by their parents. What happens to this anger, you ask? It is suppressed, and for this reason, Soul Loss plays a massive role in creating our Shadow Selves.
Why does the Soul Fragment?
You know how you become unconscious when you're experiencing immense amounts of physical pain, in the same way, your soul is wise and knows its limits. Your soul knows what it can and can't handle, so it leaves your body as a survival mechanism to protect itself from feeling the fullness of pain.
This splitting of the soul only becomes an obstacle when the pieces aren't actively retrieved. This leads to chronic depression, suicidal tendencies, post-traumatic stress syndrome, addictions, immune deficiency problems, and grief that refuses to heal.
However, the process doesn't end when we retrieve the parts of our soul we've lost. Once we've recovered parts of our soul, we must then learn how to integrate them back into our lives in order to recover the vital power, potential, and energy they possess.
The Soul Retrieval Journey
Just like in Dante's Inferno and the Seven Levels of Hell, when retrieving our soul, we may encounter strong, harsh energies that manifest through the archetypal images of monsters, ghosts, vampires, and dragons. These are the guardians of the soul, or in psychotherapy, they are known as "defense mechanisms of the psyche." We must overcome these with the help of our spirit helpers or people who have helped us through tough times in the past in order to persuade the soul part to come back. Spirit helpers can be a parent, friend, youth pastor, or even God Himself.
The easiest way to retrieve missing parts of your soul without needing a psychotherapist or psychoanalysts is by meditating and reliving the incident that left you broken. Here's how to do it.
Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed. For some, this might be the place where said the incident happened.
Think about what happened, what was said, what was done, how people (including yourself) reacted, and so forth.
Let each emotion enter and leave your body. It is okay to swear, cry, scream, etc.
Now say to yourself, "I accept what happened to me was to make me stronger. And now that I have that missing part of my soul back, I am stronger and can help people who've gone through something similar.
And that's it. There's no fancy hypnosis done by a therapist or anything. You're on your way to feeling whole and complete again. It's okay to feel pain and exhaustion after doing this. Go to bed and sleep for the rest of the day if you want.
An example of soul loss and soul retrieval I can give is in the 2014 movie Maleficent. Maleficent's wings were a huge part of her, and when Stefan betrayed her and cut her wings off, she lost a huge part of herself. She wasn't herself after that, so she became "evil." Maleficent is not evil; it's her Shadow Self that is evil. And the betrayal by Stefan is what brought out her Shadow Self. Maleficent didn't become herself again until Aurora freed her wings and returned them to her at the film's end.
She made broken look beautiful and invincible. She walked with the universe on her shoulders and made it look like a pair of wings. ~ Ariana Dancu
And that concludes my tips on Soul Retrieval and my "Soul Series." I know how complicated this process is, but if you stick with it, I can assure you that you will become whole again. One little note I have is that if you want to do this with a therapist, it's called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). I know people who have done EMDR, and they've all said it's been beneficial, especially right after something traumatic.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you like, comment, and share this post. Follow me on social media (listed below). As always, sending you all the light and love in this world. See you next time!
