Thanks to Lukas Budimir for this wonderful piece from the Seeds of Peace Newsletter, Issue 12, February 2019, reprinted with his permission and the permission of the editors of Seeds of Peace. For information about the newsletter or to subscribe, please email Marina Budimir at mayarinabudimir61@gmail.com

Healing Trauma with the Help of Ceremony from Lukas Budimir

There are so many ways in which beautiful painted arrows have influenced my life and the way I do what I do that it’s difficult to start writing about it.

Basically everything changes; not so much what I do, but how I do it, because we are all connected with everything and everything comes back in circles. And changes on the inside show on the outside.

You can only access the past and the future in the eternal now – that is why ‘work is worship’ and the effort you put into things needs to be balanced through the connection to your heart so that the seeds of peace can grow out of the soil and bear fruit.

I am not special, I am like everybody else, with all the tasks we have in our lives, because the tasks are there for me to learn and become aware, to place myself in relations and to find a new beginning all the time so I can come back to my childlike innocence. Perhaps I’m just as special as everyone else.

Let’s look at an experience from my life: After caring for and working with people who have experienced severe brain damage for ten years, I decided to move from Denmark back to my native Germany and look for a new job. I thought, perhaps I could work with veterans, so I ordered the book Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing trauma and PTSD by David Kopacz and Joseph Rael.

What I did find was a job at an institute that claimed to offer homes to youngsters that can’t live with their parents. What I found was that I was working with traumatized youngsters with behavioral problems. My primary goal was to build a relationship of confidence with them. In doing so, I realized they had been hurt on different levels and didn’t, or couldn’t, react appropriately to normal situations.

One example of this is:

A young refugee from Afghanistan comes down the stairs with a boom box on full blast. I tell him to turn it down. After telling him the same twice, I touch him on the shoulder and say it a third time. He turns around in combat mode with his eyes wide open, as if he wants to show me something. And then he grabs me by the throat. Our eyes are very close, and I look right into them. In a split of a second, I can see all the pain that he and his people have experienced.

Reading the above-mentioned book, I finally get to page 161 and read about healing the soldier’s heart.

Here Joseph explains that in every person there is a held back place in the heart where goodness is stored. No matter what we do or experience. He describes how to blow light into the heart, suck out what is in the way, and then, so that the hole does not stay open, seal the heart with your hands. David then explains that there are multiple ways of understanding Joseph´s exercise and how he uses it in his practice. I use it with the 17-year old and he starts to change, becoming more and more what he really is. It becomes one of my favorite ways to help people connect to the goodness that they always have within.

So thank you Grandfather and thank you David for doing what you do and being who you are. And a thank you to Life for its perfect timing, for always giving us a solution just when we need it.

Lukas Budimir, Germany: Soundchambereurope@gmail.com