Transforming Failure into Sweetness
“Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt- marvelous error!-
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden beeswere making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Antonio Machado
In Sufism, there is a word – nafs – that’s used to describe what keeps us from realizing and living our true nature. It represents the ideas that make up our old self-identity, patterns of thinking and responding, painful memories and emotions-the inner energies that obscure our essence.The spiritual practices that are used to work with the
nafs are similar to what we do as hypnotherapists. There are practices for breathing in different elements-air, fire, water and earth. There are imagery practices, and language practices of repeating sacred words. Each brings one into a deeper state in which they can begin to transmute the
naf– not fighting with it, not pushing it away, not succumbing to the momentum of the old ideas and patterns or identifying with them as
us– but creating a space in which we are bigger and wider- more fully conscious and present, able to meet them resourcefully when they emerge.
Then, a moment of difficulty becomes a moment of making sweet honey, so that we can discover our own luminosity, the truth of our own being- revealed when what obscures it is transmuted, transformed, and the space is clear and open. This is truly medicine for our souls.
