The Healing Spirit

ithin the male psyche, there is a creature, an unwounded man, who believes in the good, who has no doubts about life, who is not only wise but who also is not afraid to die.  Some would identify this as a warrior self.  But it is not that.  It is a spirit self, and a young spirit at that, one who regardless of being tormented, wounded, and exiled continues to love, because it is in its own way self-healing and self-mending.
Women will testify to seeing this creature lurking in a man outside of his awareness.  This young spirit's ability to bring the power of healing to bear on his own psyche is so awesome that it is astounding.  His trust is not dependent on his lover not to hurt him.  His is a trust that any wound that comes to him can be healed, a trust that new life follows old.  A trust that there is deeper meaning in all these things, that seemingly petty events are not without meaning, that all things of one's life -- the ragged, the jagged, and the lilting and the soaring -- all can be used as life's energy.

There is probably nothing a woman wants more from a man than for him to dissolve his projections and face his own wound.  When a man faces his wound, the tears come naturally, and his loyalties within and without are made clearer and stronger.  He becomes his own healer; he is no longer lonely for the deeper Self.  He no longer applies to the woman to be his analgesic.

There is a saying, a prayer really, among the Sufis, asking God to break one's heart:  "Shatter my heart so a new room can be created for a Limitless Love."

Excerpted from "Women Who Run With the Wolves"
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

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