Soul and the Sea

Benig has written a profoundly reflective book on healing, weaving together her own life and therapeutic work, where a key insight is that ‘healing lies in the wound itself.’ She characterises herself as an ‘Aphrodite woman’, embodying the goddess of love in terms of beauty and desire, attractive to men and therefore primed for love: ‘Love relationships, being in love and experiencing heartbreak many times would be my path.’ (p. 57) This is a central theme in her earlier book Love in a Time of Broken Heart, and she has also written Songs from the Womb, and Reclaiming Father. Echoes from these previous books here in the new one. Benig works as a Jungian psychotherapist, blending therapy and spirituality to provide tools for emotional and soul healing. She lives on the wild coast of Southwest Ireland – wind and sea pervade the ethos of the book, and it is the place that she has known since childhood when her father became a political exile in Ireland and become a lobster fisherman – very different from his previous career as a civil servant in a city. As it happens, while I was making notes on the book last night, I had in my hand a very good glass of Connemara malt whisky!

This landscape invited a deep dive into Benig’s inner calling to connect with the voice of her soul where the sea represents ‘the mother, the vast unconscious and the ever life-giving Feminine.’ (pp. 1, 116) She is also a poet, often returning to great authors such as Rilke, Rumi and Kabir, as well as classic texts of mysticism. A significant influence has been the teaching of Sai Maa on the path of the Sacred Feminine (p. 97), but also that of self-forgiveness and nurturing: ‘Healing is a matter of the heart involving love, acceptance and surrender.’ (p. 11) We need to reconnect with our divine self by going within to join forces with our higher selves while also drawing wisdom from nature. This work is hidden and secret, seeking to unblock energy trapped in past trauma by letting go and moving on.

Benig takes the reader into a series of rooms – red, pink, blue rose, green and purple - where she is lyrically bidden to write about different states and corresponding qualities. The anguished soul enters and endures the dark night as a process of expansion and alchemical transformation. Ultimately, as Rumi writes, ‘what you are seeking is also seeking you.’ This is the dissolution, stripping and purging of the ego, leading ultimately to illumination. We need to overcome the fear of speaking our truth, entering fully into life, which also involves heartbreak and suffering as a spiritual opening leading to a greatest sense of wholeness. In this process, we encounter deeper and more archetypal layers of life and soul purpose. Some of our patterns may originate in earlier lives or in ancestors, and many more in early childhood, such as a sense of abandonment and not being loved unconditionally by an emotionally available parent. Benig invites readers to reflect on their own healing processes and to initiate new patterns, using such affirmations as “I construct a new life with new energy.” We also need to pay attention to our dreams, remembering that the psyche is a self-regulating system.

The second part takes the reader into three further Healing Rooms – Birth, Life and Death. Here she considers specific case histories and the lessons we can learn from them. Her own premature birth created a deep imprint, which she was finally able to process. She quotes the wise words of Rumi: ‘Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.’ Sometimes this involves difficult choices, as ‘the complicated bundle of unresolved knots’ will follow us. Death represents the ultimate untying and surrender with inevitable loss, and death can even occur before or during birth – a pending arrival becomes a premature departure. In such circumstances, self-nurturing becomes a key practice in moving beyond self-blame. The final chapter addresses our individual role within the larger evolutionary process involving an awakening to a higher consciousness and vibrational frequency. This is our work and it called to mind a quotation from The Talmud which I read yesterday:

"Do not be daunted

by the enormity

of the world’s grief.

Do justly, now.

Love mercy, now.

Walk humbly, now.

You are not obligated

to complete the work,

but neither are you free

to abandon it."

Benig sees that the demise of the old order ‘of patriarchy and a society dominated by fear, greed and dominance opens the way for the rebirth of the feminine principle and a society based on her values and the cyclical nature of existence.’ This means ‘honouring the sacredness of all life, of love, of compassion and generosity.’ (p. 208) In healing ourselves, we are also healing the world – this inspirational book shows the way and lights up the path in our transitional times where we will be called to draw on deep wells of resilience, resolve and hope.