Healing Power of a Sacred Witness

The archetypal pattern of the Sacred Witness is essential in any healing journey. Sometimes it comes through spontaneously as you are sharing an experience with someone, or laying on a table during a healing season, or walking on a path in the park.

The Sacred Witness allows your system to share about a wound in a container that helps it truly be seen, felt, and heard. It is through the alchemy of this pattern that the wound, the pain, the trauma can actually begin to transform. It starts to unwind, release its grip on the system. The system then begins to open to the Graces of understanding, compassion, and love. The power of this pattern is often hard to articulate, but if you have experienced it you know its power deep within you.

Here is a short poem by Zahra Indigo I found that I believe is a perfect entry point into exploring the energy of this pattern:

A Sacred Witness is . . .
one who knows that every feeling, thought, and action is sacred.
A Sacred Witness is . . .
one who bears witness to the vast unfolding of existence.
A Sacred Witness is . . .
one who arrives fully Now, knowing all that is needed is already here.
A Sacred Witness is . . .
one who brings attention to their intention and intention to their attention.
A Sacred Witness is you. 
A Sacred Witness is me.

Another prayer that opens to the energy of the healing power of the sacred witness is the “Medicine Women’s Prayer” that has been attributed to Sheree Bliss Tisley:

I will not rescue you.
For you are not powerless.
I will not fix you.
For you are not broken.
I will not heal you.
For I see you, in your wholeness.
I will walk with you through the darkness
As You remember your light.

What is a Sacred Witness?

It is an archetypal pattern that invokes deep listening and holding of space that honors and empowers the other. A Sacred Witness knows the truth that it is not them that heals the other person, it is the other person that heals themselves.

The Sacred Witness opens up and holds a field of grace that allows the other person's process work to come forward organically and trusts the person’s own inner healing wisdom of what/how/and when it comes forward and begins to unwind.

A Sacred Witness agrees to release their attachments to needing to fix, heal, or change the other person. They also are willing to release their judgments and attachments to their own internal belief systems (conscious and subconscious) and thoughts so that they can be deeply and truly present to “witnessing” the point of view and experiences of whom they are holding a healing space for and with.

Some of the characteristics of this archetypal pattern in the light are:

• True belief in the innate healing power of every being.
• A commitment to be free from attachments and expectations of what will come forward as a “result” of the witnessing.
• An ability to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.
• An ability to hold Clean Compassion. This is a concept that I will share with you more in a future blog because I believe so strongly in developing this version of compassion. For now, it includes the ability to allow the other to be them without trying to rescue, take on, over empathize, and/or project our own feelings onto the other. Practicing clean compassion means to simply be with, open our hearts to honoring and understanding the other’s truths while holding our own personal boundaries within ourselves to prevent our stuff from being projected or hemorrhaged unto another.
• An ability to be guided by the other into compassionate, caring deeper invitations, inquiries, and explorations to see what else wants or needs to come forward and unwind during the witnessing.

I would like to share with you that while having a Sacred Witness in an outside container is ideal, I know that not everyone has that ability or access to such a physical person. You can learn how to cultivate the ability to be your OWN Sacred Witness. You can learn how to work with and hold space for the parts of you that are lost, hurt, in pain, or experiencing a disease. 

I share more about how you can do this in this month’s episode of Connecting with Joy!

During that episode, I also offer a guided meditation to start to cultivate the energy of the Sacred Witness within your own inner “team” as well. Click here to continue exploring the power of the Sacred Witness for yourself and those you are in connection with.