Musings 
No Comments How To Overcome Your Discontent!
By Rick Myers (http://mystictravelersbook.com/)
In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions:
When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing?
When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?
Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.
-Gabrielle Roth-
When I read the above quote for the first time I was transported back to when I last danced with wild abandon and sang without thought of anyone judging my performance. I saw myself as an adult male completely free from my fearful ego telling me I was being foolish. I saw my terminal adult shedding his cultural conditioning to find a renewed childlikeness that was liberating and exhilarating. In seeing myself this way I felt my heart open, my spirit soar, and my depression lift. I experienced again the aliveness I once knew and lived with gusto. Do you know what I’m talking about? Of course you do. We all know this aliveness, this healing salve, this awakening to the presence of wonder and delight. Why then, have you stopped accessing it, living into it?
I’m not so sure I ever stopped being enchanted by stories. I’m still awed by the ability of a good story to transport me and others into a land of enchantment. I spent two years writing a story that came to and through me and still sit in wonderment at how it all happened. Could it have been told better, written better, or developed better? Of course, but it makes no difference for the healing salve that was poured into my mind, body, and soul. It was the writing, the telling, the listening, the engagement, and the participation in the story that was the enchantment for me. Did you ever sit around a campfire at night or with a parent, grandparent, or teacher and become mesmerized by a story? What is it for you that’s so healing in reading, writing, telling, hearing, or experiencing a story?
As a boy, I found the sweet territory of silence high up in a tree that grew beside our house. The tree was the best place for me because I could climb to the very top of it and nobody could find me. For a few wonderful moments every summer and fall I could become invisible and disappear into the branches and foliage of my tree. The silence and solitude got me through many difficult and confusing dramas in my childhood. Eventually I lost my tree and the silence. It took over a decade to rediscover the silence and when I did, I also found the tree. It was inside me. It truly is a sweet territory.
The wisdom in these four questions points to what we’ve lost and what we have to regain. We can transform our own lives and the whole planetary experience as we simply reconnect with these four universal healing salves. The next time you feel disconnected, down, and depressed, remember to remember one of these salves and apply it generously to your life. Find a private place where you can laugh and sing and dance, where you can act out a story, get quiet, and remember the childlikeness that still lives in you. You can do it! You can be it! Awaken to the wonder you are. . .
by RICK on JULY 18, 2013 ·
