DAY 17 - Facing the Dragon

‘We fear the dragon and feel that if we face it, we will be consumed by it.’ Colm Holland - The Secret of The Alchemist.

Yesterday, I promised to tell the story about how I started the healing process of my own inner wounds and the story begins with a dragon.

The dragon, in the context of inner transformation, as seen by the ancient alchemists, represents our dark side, the part of our nature that we would prefer to ignore, or we are in denial about. The dragon lives in our unconscious, and we mostly believe we have it firmly under control and can keep it hidden from public view or we are completely unaware of it.

The dragon possesses all the fire and danger of the unwanted aspects of our humanity that we fear the most and:

The irony is the dragon is firmly in control of our lives.

In my last meditation I talked about healing old wounds and how by allowing Love into our darkest places we can begin to allow that transformative process to begin. Unhealed emotional wounds, mostly from our childhood, become buried in our unconscious but don’t remain dormant - their power grows as we grow older and exert their influence throughout our lives - sometimes with devastating consequences.

Often we have become so detached from our true feelings and thoughts that we are completely unaware of ourselves whether we admit it or not. What the ancient alchemists—and later, Carl Jung—realized is we have to face the dragon if we have any hope of achieving true wholeness and well being.

Moreover, facing the dragon is the only path to true empowerment, because when we do find the courage to face it, we must draw from within on Love - the prima materia at the heart of all life to defeat it’s power.

How do you face the dragon in your unconscious?

To begin, we need to take a look in the mirror - which is what I did and realised the dragon was pulling the strings of my emotions in ways that were very destructive.

The dragon in my life was terrified of being abandoned. From childhood onwards I was constantly searching for a sense of being loved - and yet even when I did experience love - it was never enough to satisfy the dragon within. I would even go so far as to breath fire - or angrily ‘project’ - that sense of not being loved onto those who did love me.

I then discovered an incredible trick to enable me to begin to take back control of my life from the dragon.

The first step to facing your inner dragon is to name it!

I gave my dragon the name ‘Unloved’ because I realised that it was not a fire breathing dragon at all - he was a small inner child who had genuinely experienced very confusing messages about love from his earliest days. Miraculously, I now no longer feared this dragon - instead I was able to have compassion for the small boy who was still looking for love and so began the healing process.

Our mantra for today is:

I will face my inner dragon and offer compassion to distinguish it’s flames.

Remember I have asked Love to give you everything you need to be the Alchemist in your world.