Healing: Balancing the Sword.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with the sight and sounds of the forging of metal.
Something deep within me is moved by the red hot light from the piece being worked, the sparks and sounds of each hammer blow, and the incredible creations that can come from the repeated heating and pressure applied to a single piece of metal, creating form and function where once there was none.
And I am not unmindful of the way that this mirrors our lives.
Because I kind of feel like I’m in a forge right now. As I move through this healing process, I feel like I am taking new hits from the hammer every day, and every time I feel like things are cooling down for a moment, someone somewhere turns up the heat again, albeit in a different way.
I am trying to keep my focus on the benefits from the process, not on the feelings and struggles I experience along the way.
So I try to imagine myself as the sword in the furnace.
Because the purpose of heating steel in the furnace is to bring to the surface the impurities inherent in the metal. Then, with repeated strikes over and over again, those impurities are struck from the metal, leaving the remaining core purer, stronger, more flexible, and more prepared for the purpose for which the sword is being made.
And this is hardest part of the work.
For no matter how skilled the craftsman, even the greatest cannot produce a work of art with steel that contains too many impurities. So the time is spent, hour after hour, heating until those impurities are revealed, very much like the truths I am facing now as I travel further into my past, deeper into my soul.
As the pressure on me increases, the weaknesses and damaged portions of my foundation rise to the surface, so that I may examine them, understand them, and finally dispose of them.
And although this process is far from easy, or painless, I am beginning to find a sense of gratitude for the lessons along the way.
Because once the steel is refined, then the master craftsman begins to shape the sword, finding within each blade the point of balance and weight, so that the sword can be held and wielded in perfect alignment.
Then, after a process that has stressed the metal in the blade, and strengthened it, shaped it and prepared it, the final part of the process is revealed.
The sharpening of the blade.
For although the blade may be strong, balanced and aligned, the sword is nothing without its edge. In some ways, my very soul is being sharpened, focused and brought into symmetry. I see this as a providence, for the desires I have to go beyond where I am cannot come to pass without a significant change of who I am.
And so I choose to accept this process, and pass within the forge, that I regenerate into the person I most desire to be.
But there is one extra lesson through this journey, and while I sense its necessity, I am saddened by its reality.
I am mindful that the sword is an instrument to cut, and that sometimes, progress means deciding to cut away that which no longer serves you.
For the Latin origin of the word ‘decide’ is de (off) and caedere (cut) to decide is literally to cut off any other way.
To heal from the wounds that beset me, I have to not only cut off the behaviors, fears, false self beliefs and childish notions of how the universe should be, but I also have to cut away some of the relationships in my life that do not uplift me, support me, or that no longer bring joy to me.
And while the loss of these things will hurt me, I have to believe that my future will be brighter through my time and my decisions in the forge that I am currently in.
For now, I am focusing on finding a balance in the sword of my soul.
That I might come through this process more perfectly, and find on the other side a better me .
— Dr. Alan Barnes
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