Re-tracing and Healing the Fear Patterns of 9/11
An essay for January 20, 2009 Graduation Day
By Norma Gentile
Sometimes, events just seem to "bookend" periods of our lives. Starting school and graduating. Working and retiring. Getting married and getting divorced. Happy or sad, these events mark beginnings and endings to our way of seeing ourselves. While we are often aware theoretically of the importance these events have in our lives, we typically don't internally "get" the changes that await us until we have lived for a few months on the other side of a bookend event.
The election of Barack Obama on November 4, 2008 was surely such a bookend event. Clearly, not just the USA, but the entire world, took notice of the inauguration.
Events that are bookends, be they large or small, are preceded by the movement of Spirit long before they become visible to humanity. Each bookend marks the start or end to our expression of a certain set of energetic qualities. Those qualities express through us as emotions, behaviors, thoughts and actions. Our ability to recognize and receive the new energies presented to us when we have completed a bookend is based on our ability to release the previous patterns. Literally, it is "out with the old and in with the new."
We as a nation, and to some extent as a world, chose to explore a cycle of fear by giving much of our attention not to Spirit (however each of us might define and honor Spirit) but to the external world of power. The terms of George W. Bush as U.S. president have been merely the external sign of this focus. His role was to focus this exploration into fear. He did not impose this upon us, rather we chose this exploration of fear ourselves, both consciously and unconsciously. His inauguration and departure served to bookend the external manifestation of this cycle. And now, we are onto the next cycle.
But in order to take full advantage of this next cycle, we must heal the wounds of the past. And we are doing just that.
As George W. Bush was preparing for his final address to the nation, we retraced over a painful memory in our national experience and created a different ending. So many similarities exist between the successful ditching of the U.S. airliner into the Hudson River and the planes flying into the Twin Towers. The location, people watching from their same office buildings, that feeling of witnessing something surreal against the backdrop of a clear blue sky…but this time, the ending was different. There was, as my sister put it "a re-mastery of the trauma." I would add that we re-wrote our reality.
My sister Katie lives in New Jersey, right across from the southern tip of Manhattan. Like most sisters, we talk about our aging parents, our relationships, work, and all those things you can only talk about with a sister. In one conversation she talked about having witnessed the planes of both September 11, 2001, and this past Thursday, January 15, 2008. I asked her to write it down, so that you could "hear" her experience first-hand:
Katie Gentile, Ph.D.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was on my way to work as usual when my partner, who had returned to our apartment to get something he forgot, ran out saying there had been an explosion at the World Trade Center. A helicopter or plane had hit it. We continued to the train (we live in Hoboken, directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan near the World Trade Center).
We rounded the street corner and approached the first pier in Hoboken to catch the train into the city. The sight of the Towers against a beautiful clear blue sky came into view, as well as an enormous fire with smoke streaming from the North Tower.
From there, near the first pier in Hoboken, I watched as a plane suddenly appeared low in the sky and struck the South Tower. I turned to my partner, and we left, not knowing or understanding what was about to take place.
This pier is where people gathered to watch from across the river as the towers burned and fell. It was a busy site for the next week or so, as people from throughout the area came to see the space of absence in the sky.
This past Thursday as I was walking again to the train my partner called to say a plane had crashed into the Hudson River. Deja-vu. I went to the pier again to see what was happening. This time it was different.
First, word was that everyone had survived. Additionally, this plane was surrounded by ferries, the Coast Guard and the Circle Line ships who were all able to help. Like watching the events of 9/11, there was something surreal about seeing a plane float down the river. But unlike 9/11, it was not terrifying; it was merely surreal.
I am an academic psychologist and trained psychoanalyst. I publish and specialize in the impact of trauma. So it was interesting to me that as I watched the plane float by, knowing the positive outcome, I felt I was re-experiencing 9/11 in a new way.
It is thought that people who have experienced trauma attempt to master it through repetition. For me, this was a healing repetition. Here I was in the same place, looking at another plane crash, under the same sunny blue sky, but it was markedly different.
Many of the things that we were unable to do during 9/11, we were able to do this time. The New York Waterways Ferries we often take into Manhattan were the first responders. And this time, in this situation, they were able to save the lives of the passengers.
It felt on Thursday like this plane crash, while in no way being a good thing — I would not have wanted to be in that plane nor in the frigid water hoping for help — was responded to in a new way.
Yes, no one died. But the pilot's knowledge is being celebrated. He knew what to do. The benefits of a skilled leader are being acknowledged as a good thing; a life-saving quality and a necessity.
I feel like the plane's successful water landing burst a bubble for me that was created by seven years of world-altering insidious abuses of power by U.S. leaders who showed no capacity to reflect, think or hold emotion. It burst it with a story about knowledgeable leaders, such as the pilots and crew, who knew what to do, and did it.
Again, I am in no way saying the crash was a good thing because it wasn't. Even though no one died, it doesn't mean that people weren't impacted and potentially harmed in significant ways.
I remember looking at pictures of those who died in the Twin Towers on 9/11. So many pictures were of loving-hearted people and clear-light souls. At the time, I sensed they all had an agreement to move into Spirit and were being of service to other souls by doing so. Now I watch another set of people on the television news. This time they were emerging from the airplane and jubilantly coming onto ferries while waving their arms and hugging each other.
From this latter event I see souls who chose to illustrate the re-writing of our reality. Our communal choices have already changed our world. Now we are seeing events that are reminders to release what was, because it is truly of the past. And as we let what was fall away, we can step forward.
There are many qualities of leadership I see arising and being celebrated in this inauguration and presidency. Courage in leadership, courage to speak our own inner Truth, the courage to love ourselves and expand that love to others in our world as well as the spiritual qualities of Patience, Wisdom and Honor in action. These are being celebrated and drawn out of not only Barack Obama, but from within each one of us.
May we each dance with the valor within ourselves. My blessings to all, and my deep gratitude to my sister Katie, for sharing her own story.
Norma Gentile
Copywrite 2009 Norma Gentile. www.healingchants.com
Katie Gentile, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Counseling and Gender Studies
Women's Center Director
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City
(check out Katie's book, Creating Bodies: Eating Disorders as Self-Destructive Survival)
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About Norma Gentile
Norma Gentile, sound shaman, has been writing and verbally channeling Archangel Michael, the Hathors and other Ascended Masters since 1991, Norma channels both in written words and through her singing. She offers individual sessions, as well as free monthly podcasts (iTunes), sound healings (Spirit of Maat), and her e-newsletter.
To subscribe, and read additional articles or listen to her channeled music, please see her website www.healingchants.com. Norma's newest CD, Songs of Spirit, is now available in the Ma'at Shop.
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