Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.
~Cat Stevens
Morning breaks so tenderly. One minute I look out the window into the deep night, in the next, subtle light appears low in the east. As though a single lamp has been lit miles and miles away, sending its soft glow upward, creating the barest hint of twilight at the edges of the world. Shapes of trees are exposed like apparitions—a child's profile in silhouette—no distinction of detail, of individual branches, pink blossoms, sweet new green leaves. As the sun's rays bend themselves around our spinning planet, illumination slips silently, mysteriously through the long river of darkness.
Suddenly the sky appears as though it had been misplaced; trees now sit in relief, pinned to its vast wall. A flush of peach appears, a hint of blue. Minutes tick by. Soon, the horizon is stained tangerine while upwards the entirety of the sky has turned a shade of blue that words cannot touch, unique to twilight, a singular hue that is both dark and pale, and unexpectedly fluorescent. Trees are revealed, behind them, rooftops and chimneys. A serene still life in oil painted one brush stroke at a time. Soon the sun's face will slip fully above the horizon. When it does the scene will be bathed in golden light. A singular bird will be heard, then one by one they call, until their song fills the air on fire with color. Each morning the same, each morning wholly unique, a fingerprint unto itself.
I cannot get enough of this everyday miracle.
In therapy it feels as though I have been under water for the duration, the almost four years that my current therapist and I have been working together. Though lately I have sensed a subtle shift. Even as our faces and our voices stream to each other over the internet, something is deepening, safety is being built, along with trust, from which intimacy grows long taproots. Like a fine lace being woven together one fragile strand at a time. A slow process when there is complex PTSD; a frazzled nervous system and broken heart, all needing time and the right conditions to begin to know they are no longer alone, that unbearable pain no longer needs to be experienced in isolation. The centerpiece of the trauma healing modality that my therapist is trained and experienced in.
I think of alchemy. The ancient mystery school, a mystical process of transmutation and metamorphosis, the attempt by alchemists—the earliest chemists—to turn base metals into gold. Carl Jung understood the alchemical process as a symbol, a metaphor, a philosophy of the psychological process through which we individuate, heal, and become whole; in which we are transformed. Alchemy seeks to free the light, the divine spark hidden in matter, while the inner alchemy of psychotherapy seeks to liberate our own natural but far too often occluded light. Our own souls are laid bare, and at the same time, the soul of the world, the sacred Anima Mundi, comes alive in us, the divine essence that is the life force of the entirety of the universe. “Alchemy flows beneath the surface of Western civilization like a river of gold…” Anne Baring writes, “a rainbow bridge between the human and the divine, the seen and unseen dimensions of reality, between matter and spirit.”
This week after therapy this word alchemy emerges from somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind. What had been a simple mental construct is suddenly alive with meaning, a beam of morning light, a ray of sunshine illuminating a sense of knowing, the understanding that this, the alchemical process, is what is happening in therapy. We, she and I, slog through the work. It is slow, methodical, deliberate, demanding, grueling, and often so painful that some days it feels like more than I can bear; except that she is trained to recognize that and keep me within a safe window of tolerance. Week in and week out, and sometimes in between, we work and let go, work and let go, over and over; and when we are not working, when we are not even looking, change is happening deep in the dark mysterious realms. Silent, invisible, autonomic, alchemy is happening; a presence sensed walking beside me, at work within me, applying just the right amount of gentle pressure. In our session, my therapist moves closer until the entire screen is only her face, kindest brown eyes, curly salt and pepper hair. I am here, she says. I am here, she says again. I am right here with you, you are not alone; you are no longer ever alone.
I can but imagine the alchemy happening deep inside, unseen, when I hear these words, when deep in my cells for the first time ever I have the direct experience~ I am not alone. When I see and feel such tenderness and compassion, such deep caring from her~ I am seen. I am being cared for. Though invisible something inside hears, something knows. I can but imagine that my cells themselves are vibrating in new ways, are being transformed, renewed, regenerated. That pathways are altering, the brain rewiring itself as we now know that it can. It is hidden, for now, deep in the mystery, not unlike morning arriving, the way light dawns ever so slowly from darkness, the inner world, too, is lighting, awakening. I know these things are happening, I know it in my bones, just like I know that my heart, that beautiful deep red organ, like a door, is cracking open even ever so slightly and into it, in wave after wave, pours the world, in all of its beauty, in all of its despair.
~Excerpted from a work in progress.
