Goddess Words 62: Money

Talk about Goddess list words that I have been avoiding! When I glanced at my chart this morning, one word popped out: Money. For four years, I have been putting it off and putting it off in the context of this list (although I have certainly spoken of it frequently in other posts) so today seems to be the day. Just for the record, I have not gone back to look at past essays, so I suspect I may repeat some of the things I have said before. My apologies to regular readers.

And I guess I should also tell you that I came "this close" to removing "Money" from my Goddess list entirely, as I recently did with "Worshipped". This is because nowadays, I don't think that money will exist in any form in a future Goddess- or Love-centered paradigm. Even twenty years ago, I'm pretty sure I was already at that "place", so I am not quite sure what I was thinking -- perhaps I still saw money as a way of expressing the potential for bounty. Perhaps I was hoping I would still find some way to earn or attract a good income...I'm not sure. Today, I think we have a few years left with money systems in place. It might be premature to completely discount it as a building block to the new paradigm. Might.

Almost thirty years ago, I attended kind of a free-for-all workshop where attendees could offer talking circles on any topic they wanted. It still stuns me that I had the courage to do this, but I did: I called my circle something like "The Future of Money"-- and a bunch of people showed up. Basically, I spoke for about ten minutes about how I thought money's future was limited, and my reasons why -- and what ensued was a completely fascinating discussion! I mean, right down my alley, non-"partisan" and visionary, people trying to imagine a world entirely without money. 

Because, apart from any other issues I've had with our specific financial system, here is my core problem: not understanding why something that (in my view) really doesn't exist is so central to our world view, our politics, and virtually every aspect of human life. Every definition is essentially the same, that money is a medium of exchange. It's a ghostly ether between two tangible things or beings.

There's me. There's a dozen eggs. If I want those eggs, I need to pay money. I need to exchange some dollars for eggs. Yet I've never really "gotten" this. Why even have this strange, insubstantial middle ground? I mean, all right. It's part of the old ownership paradigm. The farmer's eggs belong to him or her, and in our current construct, giving the eggs away will lessen that person's personal worth. So if I (the buyer) do not have some other object or service to offer the farmer that is the rough equivalent of a dozen eggs, something that the farmer needs, say, a skein of wool or a small toy, then I need to use the common currency.

Let's back up to the moment before the very first use of money in the modern sense -- no matter how many thousands of years ago that might have been -- and imagine a completely clean slate. There is no sense of human ownership of land, animals, plants, or other people. Let us say it is commonly accepted that such ownership is impossible, as is human ownership of Gaia or The Goddess. Everyone and everything is of equal value as part of Her, a reflection of Her. If everything is done from a place of Love, and that Love is all-existent and all-replenishing, then nothing I give away will leave me diminished. There needs to be no medium of exchange, monetary or otherwise. If everything on this planet is an expression of Love, my actions are done lovingly and freely. Love draws to all of us a modest roof over our heads, and meal on the table. Love draws to humanity the best that the earth has to offer, for free. But individuals in the new paradigm don't seek to take too much for themselves. People in the new paradigm are far more community oriented than now.

In a sense, this lifetime has been a practice run for me and the new paradigm, whether or not I ever "live to see the day". I am living proof (and I am sure there are others like me!): you can survive with little money, occasionally even thrive, although you may be seen as using people or being a bloody idiot. And I couldn't have let this experiment go on for so long if I had been responsible for children. I am thankful that I remained relatively free, and that I gained at least the feeling place of what will be the norm not too long from now: Love as "currency". The construct of "earning a living" has gone by the wayside. Ownership has gone by the wayside. "Money" -- in whatever form or system -- will be in museums, if we even have those in the future! For the moment, I'll leave it on the list, but not for long!

Middle of the Night

Recently, the middle of the night seems to be the time when I am able to access a place of bliss, love, connectedness with joy, and belonging to the great, deep scheme of things, (In the past, it could be the opposite, feeling completely adrift in the dark!) If I wake up and I find myself happy, then I stretch it out absolutely as long as possible, as tempting as it might be to fall back asleep!  Back on April 18 ("Too Big for the Small Boxes"), I spoke of having been in a blissful state for an hour. Two nights ago, not to become competitive with myself!, I stayed at a pretty high energy for over two hours, literally, again, smiling from ear-to-ear. I don't try to do or create anything, although sometimes I do a crossword puzzle simply to keep my left brain occupied.

Actually, it has seemed important not to create or plan in this state. In previous years, a positive state of mind seemed like a good time to try all that marvelous "creative visualization" I was reading about. I would envision a beautiful house (who wouldn't when you've never had a permanent home?), a nice car, a job that would both engage and pay me well. I visualized getting to the UK permanently, attracting acclaim as a Howells expert, even marrying and having children or stepchildren. I was singularly unsuccessful at these visualizations. It is a good thing that I didn't spend much money on gurus or courses, because I would have had to go back over and over again! I now get it that the problem wasn't that I wasn't visualizing or focusing properly, or even that I wasn't coming at the visualization from a high enough energy. My theory now is that these goals were too old paradigm for me, energetically representing a system that is currently passing away. They were the manifestations of a now-crumbling foundation. My energy at its highest was not resonating with the energies of these goals.

Even if I wanted to use these current middle of the night moments to create, it's complicated by not really knowing what a 5D, love-based world will look like, function like, or feel like in its solidity. Perhaps it is a good thing that I don't know, that we don't know. It forces us to lead from the heart, not follow our brains to as many external goals. If I say anything in the middle of the night, it is to my heart: "Simply guide me." May the love spilling over be my path forward, my exhilarating boat ride down the river. May we feel which lights on shore are beckoning us, where the love shines brightest. 

Thank You, Mom

Another post that's coming as a surprise to me.  

Yesterday, I somehow managed to get beyond all my awkward feelings around Mother's Day, not being a mother, whether I have ever really felt mothered, and so forth, and found my attention being drawn to my mother simply as a person. I never got to know her well. I hear friends in long telephone conversations with their daughters or mothers, and find it amazing. Mom and I certainly became closer when I accompanied her through the last eighteen months or so of her life, but we were so, so different. I wrote about her back on February 6, 2016 ("My Mom"), and if some of today's stories have also appeared in subsequent posts I apologize. I need whatever part of her is surfacing today.

She was a spunky young girl, based on photos of her in a childhood spent just north of New York City. She had a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. She and her 10-to-12-year-old friends had a club, "The Naughty Eight", and they'd smoke cigarettes behind someone's garage. She refused to learn any of her mother's creative or cooking skills, and remained adamantly outside that circle all her life, except for a few tentative forays into watercolor painting. She was extremely smart, but not "intellectual" -- during World War II, she studied for two years at a junior college before eventually following her brother to Schenectady, where she worked briefly at Union College, then met and married my father.

Mom was full of contradictions. Spunky, yes. Organized. Potentially she could have been a leader or a modern-day career woman, yet her actual self-esteem could be abysmally low. With us, and apparently even in other settings later in life, she often apologized before giving her opinion ("This may be a stupid idea, but...") She claimed not to be a feminist, and was clearly uncomfortable with that language and terminology -- yet the day I scared off some Mormon missionaries by saying I was a "post-Christian feminist", she told me that if she had more time ahead of her, she'd be a post-Christian feminist too! She had always stood up for women in leadership positions in the church, and even all-but-ran a small church between rectors, and she briefly considered the Episcopal priesthood. But not long before she died, her original Catholicism came back, along with core fears and memories. Never mind, her memorial service reflected the best of the Anglican tradition, just as she had directed many months earlier.

She had had to very deeply bury all.her emotions when she married my dad, I think, and I (their eldest child) terrified her with my introspection, my creativity, my need to analyze. From early on, I was doing the kind of inner work that she couldn't bear. I think she was scared for me too -- she knew I would never skirt the surface of things, and that life would be hard for me to navigate. My brothers were just easier -- funnier, more successful, better at "playing the game".

There's so much more, but not today. However, with all my talk of my old life flying off the back of my boat into the frothy wake, what little nugget of my mom do I want to carry forward with me, close to my heart?

She had a wonderful, almost theatrical, speaking voice. She wasn't into holding, hugging, or touching (I come by this naturally, it seems!), but I have memories of her sitting on the bed with three-year-old me, almost cuddling, and reading A.A. Milne ("Christopher Robin had wheezles and sneezles, they bundled him into his bed...") and Dr. Seuss. These rhymes poured out of her like honey. Like music. No hesitation, no fear, a river of confident, beautiful sound that is still in my ears to this day. More than anything, this is what stays in my deepest center. Thank you, Mom. 

There is a Moment

I wasn't planning to write again this weekend, but here goes.

There is a moment where you finally get it -- that all the pushback you have received over the years is proof that you've been on the right track, not the wrong one! That all along, you were aligned with future realities that were in the process of forming...and of course, they seemed absurd in reference to the reality in front of us. Much easier for "thee and me" (as my mother used to say, and, no, she wasn't a Quaker) to be labelled as strange and weird and nonfunctional and ditsy, if not worse. I shouldn't have survived long enough to reach 70, but now that I have, I rejoice looking out at the world because it is so clear. So clear! Without the balancing spiritual, intellectual, and physical energies of the feminine being respected, humanity can only go down the tubes. This isn't an indictment of the masculine, just of complete imbalance going on for far too long.

I guess that is what I didn't grasp back when I was 15 or so, when we girls were suddenly being encouraged to dream, to find out what we wanted to do, to pursue careers. Forget about the fact that my preferred life was still completely closed to girls and women. I was too young to understand the overall history and institutional rigidity. Somehow I optimistically thought the gate had opened and the voices and perspectives of women would change the world overnight. Over the years, day after day, year after year, I just couldn't understand why this wasn't happening.

I am trying really hard not to push back against the pushback. (If you are serious about "Do unto others", how can you cause any conflict?) But I am aware that, just as the world has been speaking a language I don't understand, I speak a language the world doesn't understand. These languages are so completely unrelated that it may be necessary to release old hopes or expectations of a middle ground. As this rapid ascension process moves forward, there will probably be not only a third way, but a third language, which comes from the heart. I personally cannot quite grasp how that will work, but there is a moment when you know it will work, because it must.

Quite the Week

I don't have to tell you. This has been quite the week. And, strangely enough, I awoke this morning hearing these words in my head: "This is your day, Liz." Hmm...this isn't my birthday or any anniversary that I know of. I haven't heard or seen any news that might reflect significantly on my present or my future. Heck, a rainy weekend looms, and Sunday is Mother's Day, and I am not a mother! I have been writing every day this week, and I am not entirely sure how this experiment went. Next week, I will probably return to my usual two-to-three times a week. But I feel the weight of most of the world's women on my shoulders -- so many have no freedom to speak their truth at all, much less to write it. So however articulately or awkwardly, I plow ahead.

Perhaps connected with the above, another phrase came to me as I was out on my walk: "I know where I belong." This may not seem radical, but it is. In any given moment, I have rarely felt I was where I really belonged. Even now, if I use my logical brain to define such an ideal place or situation, I stumble. But something in my heart broke through this morning, reminding me how it would feel. My knowing is in my heart. That's a start. Maybe that's what is meant by "my day". And maybe Sunday will be the day of the Great Mother!

Try to stay grounded, all, amid the swirling cruelty and hatred out there. An old era is passing.This is our time, hard as it may be to believe most mornings!

Looking Without

Interesting. I'm glad for my archaic old dictionary, which has my intended "without" definition first -- without, as in "outside". Interesting, too, that the only other time I used this phrase was in April of last year ("Oracles") when I spoke of all the different ways (outside of me and within) I was accessing spiritual information.

Since then, I have moved to where I don't seem to be engaging too well at all with the "outside world", even as it pertains to some of the wise folks online who have saved my sanity over the last few years. How fortunate I've been to discover people as new paradigm as I am, as aligned with (and curious about) the Age of Aquarius! But unlike some of them, I don't seem to be interested in galactic energies, or archangels, or light codes, or crystals, or even (now) oracle cards. These colorful "patches" are definitely an integral part of the new age quilt we are all sewing, and the right paths for some. But right now, they are too much for me...too extraneous, too distracting, too "other". It is all I can do to align with myself. I continue to be somewhat haunted by the fact that I come from such a narcissistic background, but I get a bit of a chuckle out of it too. I suppose it comes in handy in terms of looking within -- who does it better?!

It's like, me, my writing, and the Goddess. That's all, right now.

There's a surprisingly cold wind here in the northeast. The sun is high in the sky, but it is crisp and cool, almost fall-like. I'll take these conditions over 100 degree temperatures any day. The first lilacs are coming out. I'm trying to stay as grounded as possible in nature. Trying to notice and celebrate Mother Earth's fidelity to her process, and be inspired to stay faithful to mine.

Two Rainbows

Yesterday's most remarkable event was the fact that the day started with a rainbow, and ended with one as well. The early morning one came almost immediately after a rather strange 6AM sunrise, orange in color (not red). The heavens opened, and yet the low-hanging sun remained clear of clouds, leading to a rather faint rainbow to the southwest, amidst the raindrops. And the reverse situation happened about an hour before sunset, this time producing a much sharper rainbow with two visible "ends". It's always exciting, even at my age, to see the end of the rainbow!

I look back this morning, wondering what this particular portal signified, and I'm not sure. I wrote a blog post yesterday (for those of you keeping up with this temporary daily schedule, thanks!), agonized a bit about my future (very old paradigm!) and then saw the movie "The Devil Wears Prada 2". It, too, was very old paradigm, at least for me. Not only were there scenes near the old Time and Life Building on 6th Avenue, where I worked in the '80's, but I found the characters' pursuit of wealth and power actively off-putting (where in the past I might just have found it mystifying). It's hard for me to deal with scheming and manipulation, and overall, I couldn't find it funny or interesting. When Meryl Streep's character says words to the effect that she loves her work, I'm glad for her, but I know that I never would have loved a career like that. And that is OK. It's all so glamorous and so fragile. I still grapple with shame at not having "succeeded" in a small or big way, but at this point I have very few regrets. Ah well, the film provided a few moments of humor, and a short vacation to the Big Apple and Milan!

Today will be rainy, morning to night. Probably not one peek of rainbow-creating sunshine, so I'll have to find the light within. Blessings, friends.