The Meaning of Three: Behind the Mask
by
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Chapter Five
CONFLUENCE OF THREE STORIES
Most of us have stories, like long running plays that keep coming back to us, stories we just can’t quite release. Either we relive the story over and over with the same people or we play it out with others who take on the old familiar roles. We play our part in the drama, which continues hanging onto us, forming our experience of life by maintaining the conclusions we once drew about the world and ourselves. By bringing truth and healing into the story, we provide a pathway out of the drama and into true life, finally freed from the patterns.
Back in September of 2001 and the dreadful attack on the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in DC, as well as the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, like many other people, I became very despondent about the direction our world seemed to have taken. It felt as if humanity had made a choice to head down a path of destruction and there was little any individual could do about it. Just ten days later, that horrific story of the kidnapping of Mooka broke in the Tampa Bay area. I recall feeling immense sadness and empathy for the tiny child, and was aware that I was feeling disgust, not only from the details of the terrible event—I knew too well that this kind of thing happens to children all around the world—but also, because of the response that came from so many circles. People from the media, the family, and the community seemed to be comforted by the fact that the child was so young that she wouldn’t remember what happened to her. Time and again, reporters and news anchors reminded us of the resiliency of children. My heart broke because it seemed as if clinical evidence indicating that aftereffects of these kinds of events are extremely destructive with life-long impact, didn’t register with those who were trying to make a truly ugly story seem not so ugly. They acted as if all would be well after they washed the infant off and the bug bites on her skin healed. Everything in me saw this response as coming from a mask that society has put on itself to avoid acknowledging the truth of what our species can do.
In my depression, I felt as if I wanted to give up trying to change this limited perspective in the world that refuses to see what is really happening. But the tiny child who clung to life through the horrific rape and strangulation, the isolation, the insects, dehydration, and everything else touched something deep inside me. She pushed her little hand through the debris, apparently trusting the goodness of an outer world when there was little indication such a world existed. Because of her courage, I knew I couldn’t give up.
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About the Book
With the gripping style of a mystery novel, this second book, Behind the Mask, in the trilogy, The Meaning of Three, weaves unconventional personal autobiography with transpersonal insight about all of us. The result allows the reader to gain meaningful experiential understanding of transforming the dark side of human experience into light.
Sela-Smith ventures into the unimaginable darkness of her childhood, as well as into past lives and alternate realities, as she investigates secrets hidden behind her mask and in the process touches on what is hidden behind the masks of every human.
Through the stories of her life, she presents truths that impact us all, and through personal journeys and healing processes, she provides a path for readers to find a way to their own healing.
As much as it is about the author’s healing, this book is about human growth and healing, as well, and the discovery and expansion of understanding and acceptance of the mystical essence that resides in all of us.
Reading this book is an experience; it is a teaching tale, a set of tales, which trigger deep and endless healing chains in you, written from the unique perspective of a wounded healer.
About the Author
Dr. Sandy Sela-Smith has an unusual mix of traditional and non-traditional approaches to her life and work. She holds national certification as a Clinical Hypnotherapist (CHT 193-341), and more conventionally, she has a PhD in Psychology. She has been licensed as a Mental Health Counselor in Fl, # MH 6984 and Wash. State, LH00010277, and Colorado, LPC 5184, and has NBCC certification 216182. Sela-Smith is a psychotherapist, a faculty member of Saybrook University and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and is an author.
Sela-Smith is an international speaker and has conducted workshops throughout the country. From her non-traditional roots, she is a shaman and healer. The discovery of her authentic self—an amazing, mystical spark of God, something that is the core of all of us—came about as a result of a more than 20 years of personal healing process that allowed her to take off the many masks she wore for too many years, find healing for what she had hidden behind her mask, and become herself.
She is a practitioner, bringing mind/body/spirit healing into her work with people who are suffering from physical illness as well as emotional disturbances. She has done extensive work with people with cancer, as well as other life-threatening illnesses, who seek to live from their true essence, but find themselves blocked by patterns from the mask or that hide behind the mask, usually developed in childhood or inherited from family systems.
Sandy enjoys life in the great outdoors and expresses her love for it in photography. You can learn more about Dr. Sandy Sela-Smith’s work online: