After a "soul retrieval" of any kind, I imagine most people go through an interesting few days, and certainly that has been the case here.
My brain naturally turned to metaphor. (I seem to like them, as a few of you know!)
It is as if I was born in 1956 on one side of the Grand Canyon, and was almost immediately pushed out onto a high wire. Whether I was actively told "go to the other side", or I simply looked down and realized that was the goal, I don't know. But either way, I stood up and slowly but surely inched my way across, without any special shoes, balancing poles, or even a safety net. My only "net" was operating with nearly impeccable alignment with my values, and trying to hold to those values no matter what rocks or critiques flew at me through the air. I could have/should have fallen hundreds of times -- crashed to the ground/succumbed to disaster/ended up on the literal streets/or, of course, simply found a career in the institution that the was least problematical to me, and lived a more "normal" life. Instead, knowing that as a single woman my life was an experiment anyway, and that I might be learning something important, I tiptoed on. I think "the other side of the Grand Canyon" has been within sight for a few years, and that I finally reached it the other day when I wrote the last sentence in my "Soul Retrieval" blog post.
Of course, that place of power (for a contemplative, mystic or visionary) is always within. My feet are back on solid ground, but not the exterior ground of a permanent home, adequate income, meeting a life partner, or finding a career that will better help me navigate what is, for me, the ethically troubling capitalist system. I am no further ahead in those regards than I ever was. The other side of the chasm, for me, was my soul surviving the trip across the abyss. I may have kept going hoping that some material security would finally come my way; that would have been nice, very nice. But at this moment, I understand and honor the fact that my soul had to come first.
Over these few days, the metaphorical place I've been in is shaking uncontrollably. I'm seated on the other side, remembering the dozens upon dozens of times I nearly went crashing to the canyon floor. How I let go and scrunched my eyes shut, preparing to topple over and down through the air, only it didn't happen. Somehow, following only the most elementary notions of what a Goddess-centered paradigm must be like, I stayed upright. And I survived intact. That is my age 65/66, "retirement achievement".
In the midst of my shivering, I cannot help but be aware of all the ways that our current world construct is on the brink. Maybe more aware than ever, since at least for this moment, my focus isn't entirely on staying personally balanced enough to take one more step on the high wire. (I've moved on hands and knees a few more feet away from the edge, just to feel a bit safer, however!) I'm trying to fully take in the scene in front of us. I can't sit, goose-bumped, looking backward, and recovering, till the end of my days. Within the next few months, I'll stand up, bow a little gratitude to that scary high wire, then turn around and walk into the next phase of the journey, grounded in what I believe to be the only power that really exists.
