Available Places of Light
Photography and Text by Jules Hovee Steffen
We may at times feel like we have lost all hope, where we perceive there isn’t any reason to be anymore. It’s quite a scary place when we’re in this space. We may not be able to find any hope or motivation to go on. Time and time again, I have sat with those who have been in this space, and what we may not realize in this particular moment, is that our body is remembering an earlier time in our existence when we felt this way – and brings it forward such that we may touch into it again in order to finally heal. As a prenate, on our way toward being born, we may experience wounding times – and we may feel all alone, with little or no hope of making it through. Our bodies have incredible wisdom and engage in an unconscious vision quest of sorts, in our search to heal what has happened to us, finding countless ways of prompting these feelings forward – time and time again until we are ready to rest in the healing that is truly ours. Our conception and/or our birth(day) in particular may be vulnerable times for us, just two of many potential experiences where we may carry specific wounding. It’s not an accident that we may feel more emotion with respect to these experiences – we may feel alone in it – we may shy away from celebrating our birth – we may hurt ourselves in some way, or get sick unexpectedly, all specific ties to our journey into this world and around the time of our birth experience.
The more aware we become aware of what may have happened for us, the more present and conscious we will be in life – and in our death. We are worth the ride to consider the path of the Middle Ground: Where Sages Dwell. None of what happens to us is by accident. Magnificent threads of sagious meaning and intriguing continuity travel alongside us – and within us – the entire way, guiding us further into the mystery of life. Hope may 
come when these pieces may pierce into us more deeply – when we touch delicately into the threads and may realize that what happened to us by way of our wounding is not who we are. The wounding is what happened to us, but it’s not who we are. And yet, we may invariably believe we are the wounding given that we identified with it early on. These identifications may become more clear to us as we look deeply into our perceptions, the archaic beliefs to which we are tightly bound – out of which our actions, addictions and the repeated themes that cycle over and over again for us – occur. As a prenate, we identify with the wounding that happened to us because we have no boundaries to defend ourselves, and we mistakenly and inaccurately believe we are that which is negative and wounding. We may live in this darkened space for most of our lives and unfortunately miss the truth about the light that we are.
Each of us is a light of hope who existed in this Light before our woundings occurred – and its to this Light of hope that we long to touch again. We may mistaken the light for many things along the
way given the degree to which our illusive beliefs are tightly wrapped within the grip of these identifications. We may confuse who we are with our clothes, money, status, job, beliefs, friends – and on and on – because it’s the unconscious wounding within us that is speaking. And yet, our unconscious wounding is our ticket to conscious healing. Rumi, the ancient mystic poet, reminds us that the wound is the healer – and as we move into the times of our wounding, grace may meet us there. May we persevere and find ways of creating safety for ourselves so that we may touch into the spaces of wounding and thereby find the path that leads us to experience the healing that is ours. Even in the most dense spaces of darkness, there are available places of light. Blessings to all who know the darkness. May we find the pieces of light that are here for us.
