Part of what I feel my calling is, in this blog, is to express my particular variation on the mystic path. Whether or not people are reading, and whether or not I'm expressing things well or doing things well, I'm trying to stay true to that goal.
However, this last week has been so intensive, inwardly, that I suspect there is no way I can quite catch up! Last Tuesday, I wrote as powerfully and as clearly as I could about the spiritual paradigm that we are entering. By Thursday and Friday, not too surprisingly, I had a pretty significant crash. And it led to several important realizations; today I'll talk only about one.
Even in the midst of hitting the wall, I had sort of an amusing observation. I guess it is part of the standard lore about male spiritual figures that at certain moments in their journeys, "the Devil" comes to them, tempting them away from their high calling, into "sin" -- riches, sex and women, gluttony, worldly power or violence, etc.
I can't and won't speak for other women mystics, but I know that for me, temptation has barely ever taken that form. Sure, I've wished for a little normalcy, but excess has never really even gotten my attention. What form has temptation taken? The temptation to feel even worse about myself than ever. The temptation to hate myself. The temptation to give up completely. To some extent I hear the voices of family and friends who have said my life is a disaster, and to some extent, I just feel the pushback energy of a paradigm that I couldn't navigate. I mean, I don't believe, per se, in demons and devils. Just the blockage power of ways of being that are wrong for me.
And turning 68 seemed to turn up the message to the nth degree: "You were never very attractive, and now you are old and your hair is getting grayer by the day. Why don't you give up?" "You never gave the system anything it wanted, and it didn't want you. Why don't you give up?" "At this late date, you'll never earn any more money, or afford a nicer 'forever home' than high-rise, low income senior housing out on the periphery. Why don't you just give up?" "No one has ever wanted to listen to you sing, speak or write. Why don't you just give up?" Friday, I had to hang on for dear life. I don't think I would ever be tempted to take my own life, but giving up and no longer caring what happens to me or the world -- that is a temptation much of the time, especially when I have made spiritual leaps forward. I talk about this in case any of you are going through this too.
By Saturday, I had the "aha" of all "ahas". In this lifetime, I was more aligned with the Goddess than I realized, and could only "accomplish" the kinds of things that exist in Her paradigm. To speak in irritating double negatives, I didn't achieve the things that don't exist in Her world -- "traditional" marriage and children, home or property ownership, career, money, security, and power over other people. And so perhaps to Her, I am a success. It is only looking through the lens of our dying paradigm that I look pathetic and expendable.
Whoa.
