You Are Not Broken

If you could really zoom out for a moment and perhaps have a seat on the moon and look down, dispassionately, at your life, you might notice something fascinating.

You might notice that the entirety of your life has unfolded through a living pattern. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that you are the pattern.

This pattern - you - has unfolded with such Intelligent Design that it would be difficult for you to perceive yourself as ‘broken’ any longer.

Of course, this is not to deny trauma, heart break, guilt, regret, shame.

It is fair to say that we all have trauma. Trauma is not what was done to us, it was the adaptive response to what was done to us.

These adaptive responses include anything from feeling or being closed down; feeling anger; being anxious; being sick; having no boundaries; having manic episodes; depression; addiction…we could go on.

On the surface, these adaptations seem like malfunctions of the human spirit. It is from these very responses that we’ve come to feel broken.

But, as we’re sitting far, far away, and looking down at the patterns, adaptations and so-called ‘malfunctioning’ of our lives, we might come to see that what we’ve deemed ‘broken’ has actually been incredible; life-saving even.

Let’s look at depression, as an example. Why might depression be an Intelligent - and decidedly not broken - response to past trauma? Well, let’s look at the energy of depression.

Depression is heavy, withdrawn, slow. It feels like some days you can’t get out of bed. The origin of the word ‘depression’ comes from the Latin, deprimere, meaning to “press down.”

Perhaps depression is a crucial rest - a reprieve - from life. Perhaps earlier hyper-vigilance had been so overwhelming, that the body desperately requires stillness; slowness. Perhaps if it didn’t get that, things might go very badly, otherwise.

How about addiction? How might addiction serve as an Intelligent Adaptation? Addiction is the temporary reprieve from oneself. It is a moment in the day where the litany of inner torment recedes and a lightness, a ‘forgetting’, a numbness is able to lift the self out of the near constant pain that courses through the veins of the one addicted.

For a while, addiction actually works.

For a time, depression is the rest one actually needs.

So I repeat…you are not broken.

When this is seen - when this is appreciated - we come to see the Unconditional Love of all things; the Cosmic Genius of the whole play.

When it is seen that the adaptations no longer serve, for various reasons: They are seen through; demystified.

OR, they’ve now become more disruptive than they are helpful.

When this happens, it is a call from within to meet the pain; accept the trauma; take a large exhale and admit that what you’ve been running from just wanted to be fully felt and acknowledged.

But it was never any indication that you were broken.

This is a crucial discovery.

It is crucial because when you realize that your mania, anxiety, depression, addiction, anger, etc…was the appropriate response to earlier life experience…that it was the most intelligent and protective response that could possibly be made…you begin to trust yourself again.

You begin to trust Life again.

You trust that something - I would call that something God - knows what it’s doing. That your life has not been some malevolent, random, mess that is beyond repair.

The great poet Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

You are not broken.

You’re simply worthy of more than you once thought.