The earliest known record of recovery from sexual abuse
Let them not deceive us this as a modern phenomenon. We have ancestors who are also survivors.
They had no words in their time for what they suffered. They too were spirits struggling to live in their bodies.
They took another path and retreated into their minds dreaming of the day they would die and their spirits would be re-united with their souls. This was the only way they knew. Now we know that life is the manifestation of spirit in flesh and our souls are essentially sensual.
An ancestor, a survivor, by the name of Sati myth wrote the following in the first century AD:
“I couldn’t live with who I was
And so I did dream of a land far away
Where my particular circumstance
Did not exist
I was free and me
Again before the shame
There, in that world, I had a life
And a woman I did love bore me a child
I saw that child grow and saw
Its spirit sparkle and glow in his
Eyes and his smile
But the dark clouds grew
Deeper than before
And although I was sad
And jealous of his life
I never let my hurt turn bitter
I let him be free
I saw how he radiated love
And changed the world around him
As he became a man
I basked in that warm affection
And it gave me life
When I became old and the day came
When I would once again be re-united
With my spirit my son came to me
With his smiling eyes
He held my hand
And told me to look in my soul
I didn’t think I had one
But I looked and there
In my soul I found my spirit
And I was one again
I was happy
He told me that my spirit
Had returned all those years ago
When I had allowed one of Gods’ spirits
To become what it would
I had allowed life in then
And I didn’t know it
I was dead no more from that time
So now at the edge of life
I am meeting death
And for the first time
I realised I was alive
This death didn’t seem
Like the dying I had known
There was a peace to it
I managed to speak some last words
To my son
“Why did no one tell me?
My spirit had returned?”
He replied,
“No one can tell you when
Your spirit returns
You have to find it for yourself”
He held my hand and
Looked into my eyes
And as I slipped away
Our eyes said all the love
Our words would never capture
And then came the darkness
When I opened my eyes
I looked upon my dead self
And I was with terrible grief
I saw I was holding my hand
And then I remembered
That my world was a dream
But in my dream
I had lived my whole life
I had died and been born”
This is the earliest known record of recovery from sexual abuse. Others followed his legacy and dreamed his dream and began to believe they too could have life before death We follow on now in this tradition and it gives us hope that there are people who have gone before us. Who have died and come back to embrace life and who have lived.
Rob Jones