The Chains Holding Us Back

I work hard to edit out unnecessary words and phrases in these blog posts ("just", "a little bit", etc.) but today I'm going to start with one: "Needless to say".

Needless to say, the last two or three days have been pretty intense. I've had so many turning points over the years, that it may take time to gauge whether last week's moment on the city bus was my "road to Damascus" or just another ordinary step on the path. At the very least, I think I will look back and realize that facing perhaps my most embarrassing and shameful quality (snobbery) has released me from a painful, solitary prison. I may be one of the freest people I know, and yes, I am on a boat speeding down the lake, but there have been chains around my ankles holding me back.

On this Monday morning, am I totally transformed, in a state of bliss, feeling nothing but love? Um, no, not yet. But I have inched closer. I guess you could say that I am in a place of more complete acceptance -- that the world and the people in it are inevitably where they would have to be within the dualistic construct that has been in place for centuries. We haven't been able to help ending up at the top or the bottom, in a race to succeed, or in the constant fear of failure. We have all coped with this in different ways...but in this liminal moment, everything is changing. As we enter the Age of Aquarius, the energies of unity and love are becoming too strong to support stark duality anymore. 

I guess what was hitting me over the weekend is how very old paradigm my chains have been, these manacles keeping me tied to old traumas. I mean, remaining snobbish and condescending may have provided some slim thread of comfort at times, but it doesn't tie me one bit to things I want in my life now! Even if I could be magically transported to England to live in a stately home for the rest of my life -- near a cathedral, and perhaps to become the patron of its girls' choir -- would that be the happy ending of this Liz path? At the end of each day, would I sit in my drawing room, wearing a beautiful linen dress and pearls, sipping my gin and tonic, and say, "Finally, I'm playing the role I was meant to play"?

No! A hundred times no. Not only is it entirely too small of a role going forward, it is not a role that begins to reflect the world and values of the Goddess. As painful as it has been to be chronically outside the worlds I thought I wanted to be part of, clearly it was my unique way to prepare for the higher harmony era we are entering. It was the only way for me to become who I am meant to be now.

It is as if I've looked down at the chains and manacles around my ankles, only to realize that they are not locked shut. All I need to do is reach over, open them up, and step out of them. All the traumas, disappointments, limiting beliefs, even snobberies, can fall away, no longer to impede my freedom of movement. I may wish to continue to hold some qualities close to my chest (musicality, eagerness to learn more about the musical energies of the Universe, passion for the arts and beauty, a certain amount of dignity and strength), but the old historical details can fall away leaving me in a place of more love and acceptance. I feel slightly more at home with myself and the world than I did a few days ago, for which I am profoundly grateful. Life feels a little softer around the edges.

The Recovering Snob

Well, having stuck a pin in a particular balloon yesterday, as the air has been slowly escaping (as it were), I have been inundated by memories of when I've been snobbish, and, perhaps, its origins in my life. This doesn't seem to be a moment for sitting on anything and letting it fester, especially if it might speak to anyone else's condition, as the Quakers say.

I guess it should come as no surprise that most of my snobbishness stems from my twin passions for English church music and England itself. I've told the story of my joining the girls' choir at church, and realizing with a shock that I wouldn't be singing with the men and boys. I wouldn't be singing the repertoire that I had already started to love. Despite the fact that I pivoted as quickly as possible into "I'll be the best girl chorister that I can be" mode, and began piano and organ lessons, the fact is that being so firmly excluded from a world I felt so strongly called to be a part of was traumatic and (as is evident from my writing in this blog) I've never gotten over it. As a teenager, I wore my Royal School of Church Music medallion over my choir robe with a lot of pride, perhaps a little too much. Ditto my pride at being in the choir of Royal Holloway in 1980 -- I soaked up the experience like a sponge, and yet never afterwards had a place to "put" all the expertise in singing choral evensong and that specific genre of music. In recent years, when I have attended services at English cathedrals, I felt actively superior to most of the tourists in the stalls or pews around me. I knew when to stand, when to sit, when to say the confession, and the words of the hymns and canticles by heart, and it probably showed. I mean, it is one thing to adore the music and the environs and the glorious acoustics. It's quite another to feel superior to the people around you. My only consolation is that perhaps being blocked from doing your true work, and being (myself) condescended to at times in that world, has this kind of effect. I had a "ton" of knowledge, skill, and musicality within me, of which only perhaps a few pounds has made its way out over the years. Some of it came out, uh, inappropriately. 

Of course the larger England thing comes to me genetically, although early on I didn't really understand that. But from when I was about eight to fifteen, my family lived what could only be described as an upper crust WASP lifestyle. We had the big house, the oriental carpets, the bits of sterling silver, the summer cabin away from the city. I attended a private school, and slowly, the layers of assumptions that came with that privilege started to pile up. A relative passed on some genealogical material with our almost exclusively English heritage (some of it aristocratic), which I became fascinated with. And the original "Upstairs, Downstairs" started airing on TV in 1971, when I was in tenth grade. (I resonated most with Upstairs...) 

Ironically, that was the very moment when our family's fortunes were in the process of taking an extreme turn, in part because there had been no "fortune" in the first place! Soon after my high school graduation in 1973, we moved out of the swank house and up to the North Country, where my parents would live year-round in our cabin for the next dozen years or so. I would come home from college or my early jobs to find no food in the fridge, no gas in the car, and my dad asking to "borrow" money. Again, shock seemed to be the catalyst for snobbery. I held onto my supposedly upper crust roots like a life preserver. On and off, washing dishes at my Smith College house's dining room, or being the downstairs nanny in the home of a prominent family, or living at the YWCA in Helena, I would pinch myself and try to remind myself of my real roots, my real persona. I held onto -- as I still do -- a few small silver bowls, spoons, and picture frames. Now, finding certain things beautiful, preferable, or enjoyable is fine. If I could have simply said, these things are important and beautiful to me, it would have been fine. But to the extent that I have at times tried to make myself feel better about my ongoing situation by thinking that I am actually superior to other people, as I do on many occasions such as on the bus the other day, that is decidedly not OK. 

My dad's aunts were the epitome of snobbishness...think Maggie Smith in "Downton Abbey", minus the sense of humor! I was rather scared of them, to be honest. When I was in my thirties, I went to see one of them for the first time since childhood. I rang the doorbell, and my great aunt answered the door, looked me over, and exclaimed in a most imperious voice, "I must say, Elizabeth, you don't look like a Wilson!" (She would laugh if she would see me at 70, the spitting image of my father.) She spent the first half of the weekend making these kinds of cutting remarks, before I finally started standing up to her and showing a little moxie. By the end of the visit, I think she began to like me, and gave me two gifts which were telling -- and useless...a mink stole and a copy of The Social Register. 

Well, I guess that is all I can manage for today. Snobbery seems like a relatively minor thing by comparison with what we are seeing in the world today, but still, it isn't love. It's like the curving upper slope of something that can turn downhill fast, into rejection, outright discrimination, and hatred. And there are snobberies in a lot of areas of life...I am sure I haven't covered all of mine in this "confession", but it is a start. 

Another Big Aha

Well, they are coming thick and fast right now. Today may not be the right day for this, but I must do my best to bear regular witness to my experience of this path...

I was on a city bus yesterday to go to a smaller local city. A man got on, with seemingly everything he owned bagged up in a baby carriage. This kind of thing happens almost every time I take the bus, and sometimes it doesn't faze me. But sometimes it takes me to a very dark place indeed. It's like my own private "event horizon". For ten years or more, I've been circling the edge of a strong eddy, trying desperately to avoid being sucked in and disappearing completely. It's on the bus that I sometimes swirl closest to the void, which was what was happening in real time.

I'm at a place in my spiritual development where I literally cannot stand negative feelings for very long, so I gave myself a good inner talking-to. What was going on here? The very first layer to emerge was old-fashioned, unpleasant snobbery. My upbringing and education should have sent me in a different direction. What was I doing with "these people"? (Goddess, forgive me.) I felt, what?, distaste. Superiority. (Not hatred, I don't think.) Ugh...complex, old, extremely yucky emotions. It was painful to realize that despite this long personal spiritual journey, it wasn't yet natural to feel immediate compassion, solidarity, or love towards this fellow human being.

Suddenly, in a literal "aha", I remembered that in this duality construct, there are only two things, love and fear. And so no matter how this event manifested initially, deep down what I was feeling was fear, pure and simple. Not anger that no one should be forced to live that way, but the narcissistic fear that this man's plight might represent my future. 

Over the course of the bus ride, every possible related issue surfaced. Riding through a suburban/exurban wasteland, and looking out, I realized I was still feeling distaste. Nothing about the endless rollout of car dealerships, fast food places, hair salons, doughnut shops, and dying farms-about-to-be-razed appeared beautiful in my eyes, nor the small green lawns and parked RV's and boats. Middle class America is as psychically hard for me as the world of extreme poverty. And yet at my destination, I encountered any number of very well-off and "successful" people and was reminded that I don't belong with them either. I don't find their world particularly beautiful. I fear them, yet perhaps in a very different way than some of the folks on the bus. 

It was overwhelming to realize that, if I love so few aspects of this variegated manmade scene, then I must fear it. What is that all about? After all this enlightenment work, I am still torn with duality -- loving a small sliver of beautiful, mystical, and natural experiences and people, and profoundly uncomfortable with all the rest. How can I consider myself even remotely spiritual?

So it was a freaky day and, as it turned out, a violent one. For over an hour, there was a torrential rainstorm with extremely strong winds. Running around on errands, feeling quite dazed, I couldn't help but get soaking wet, despite sheltering for a while at the library. I was grateful to know that at least I would have a place to really dry off later in the day.

Shortly after getting on the return bus, it stopped at a corner, and who got on but the same man from the morning?! Still with his overflowing carriage. His situation hadn't changed in four or five hours. Had mine? The pendulum hadn't swung from fear to love that quickly. I didn't yet feel warmth or compassion. But I found myself in a softer place of "appreciation" -- he has found a way to just barely survive a system whose currency is money, not love. Ditto the people who build tacky one-story coffee shops, and potential customers for swank apartment buildings starting to be put up. We are all trying to survive. 

I haven't lost my personal fear of slipping over the event horizon. But by the end of the day, I was able to see the whole thing from a larger perspective. We are entering a new age where money will no longer dictate our station in life, where we will all love one another. We will outgrow the duality hell of judging each other's success or failure -- much less (on this Juneteenth) anything else about who we are. We will understand that we are all, literally, one. (Today, I feel quite ashamed of the snobbery that has beset me on and off over the years, but I think yesterday's "aha" served as a pin in the balloon, a bucket of water on the wicked witch.) Aha.

Quite a Day

From what I understand, this is quite a day, astrologically, for the energies of the divine feminine. To honor this, I am basically doing things that come naturally to me -- writing, laundry, clean-up chores, cooking...yesterday I transplanted some plants into bigger pots, and they literally doubled in size overnight! I get the feeling of being squeezed out when you don't have enough room...I couldn't stand to look at their constrained state one more minute. It's a joyous feeling to see them so immediately leaving "surviving" mode and heading into "thriving" mode.

In an interesting addendum to my last post, where I mentioned feeling so much love for animals, birds and trees (but not yet to insects!), yesterday I swear I saw at least five insects that I have never seen before in my life, or at least have no memory of seeing before. I mean, it is almost as if they sought me out, wandered into my orbit, either on foot or through the air. It was a little hard to say, "hi sweetheart" to them, but in the end, not impossible...at the very least, I was more aware of their essential beingness than I generally have been with bugs of any kind. It will be interesting to see how this all unfolds.

I've started a magic list for today, just to note anything absolutely wonderful or magical that I experience. I started with, "I am still alive", and added, "my plants doubled in size." I figure if nothing else happens, that about covers it all!

More Love

On this new moon week, and after days of definite wobbling (emotionally and energetically), I am committed to focusing on love, joy, and magic. By magic, I don't necessarily mean wave-a-wand magic (as fun as that might be!), but more, seeing and appreciating the extraordinary in nature and in life. There was a sunset about three nights ago that was about a twelve on a scale of 1-to-10...absolutely as if from another world. Magic.

I've touched on this once or twice before, but something became very clear to me this past weekend. I have started to think of birds and animals as my beloveds. When one crosses my path (on land or in the air) I often cannot help speaking aloud to it, calling it my "sweetheart". Some of them stick around for a few seconds afterwards, and some skitter or fly off as fast as can be. I knew I was capable of slightly more-than-ordinary depth of communication with people's pets and horses, but feeling almost the same about multiple wild chipmunks, squirrels, robins, wrens and raptors is a leap into what these days people seem to be calling "another timeline". And I'm feeling almost the same about trees. So far, not quite there with flowers, vegetables, weeds, grass, or insects such as mosquitos (the latter would be quite extraordinary, right?!) But for solitary old me, it is a new experience to feel waves of love going outward and, at least in some cases, being received and reciprocated. I can almost hear the word "sweetheart" coming back in my direction, on the wind.

There are only a handful of TV shows that I'm watching at the moment, one of which is "Astrid" on PBS. I am not entirely sure why the main character touches me so much, but she does. (My particular sensitivity is very different, but I resonate with her.) And I'll leave to others debates about its presentation of neurodivergence...but in a recent episode, there was an act of love that almost literally blew me away. A young man, knowing that Astrid loves the music of Bach but cannot tolerate attending crowded concert halls, arranges for the two of them to listen (alone) to a top violinist rehearse. Astrid has never heard music played live, and it is monumental for her. Putting aside the context of a budding romance, what was almost inconceivable to me was imagining someone, anyone, loving someone so much that they would find such a perfect, pierce-you-to-the-core, life-changing gift. It is astonishing that a person could see their beloved so clearly, and leap over so many hurdles, to make the perfect gift happen. Yes, it caused a big wobble, a big moment of feeling sorry for myself that I haven't experienced such love, a brief trip into the Void. But once I righted myself, I realized, this is my new bar. Finding the place inside where I can imagine not only being given a gift of this personal importance and magnitude, but also imagining giving such a gift in return -- not something I need or want, but what they need or want. 

Around the time of the new moon last night, we had a doozy of a thunderstorm, and today has dawned blissfully cool and almost fall-like. After a week of intense heat, it is -- yup -- almost magical...

Olio

Well, it is that kind of day. Very hot and humid. Due to get well into the 90's. I don't know what to write about, except I feel a responsibility to be a balancing energy. In the end, though, I think there may be enough calming, loving energy in enough hearts to provide that balance. It seems fairly old paradigm to feel the necessity to actually write.

So last evening, I saw two woodchucks chasing a bunny rabbit. I spoke about rabbits and fear the other week, and I suspect that this poor rabbit was super scared. The trio disappeared into the underbrush and I didn't hear any sounds that might have indicated that the chase was successful, but I may never know. It was a reminder, if one that was needed, that Nature is far from a peaceful place. And as extreme movements of the landscape become more common -- earthquakes, floods, fires, volcanos, tsunamis --  many of us may feel like the scurrying rabbit at times. Earth herself is undergoing such radical transformation, and is throwing off so many of Her own old restrictions, that we must expect the unexpected. However, violence in Nature may stem from the necessity for change, or fear or a survival instinct, but unlike human violence, it is never about hatred.

I've tried not to let all that hatred get to me, but it begins to seep in, doesn't it? I don't believe in trying to protect oneself -- it's just a case of trying to hold a strong, positive energy. This last week, I've been quite "wobbly". I think it is in part because of having come closer and closer to fully embracing my full wealth of gifts -- looking out at the world becomes increasingly surreal and painful. It is a literal wobble, an up-down wave between energy levels that I finally feel, after a lifetime of trying not to. In the past, I was more apt to try to match my energy to the world's, as unsuccessful as that effort was. Now I don't try!

Unlike last year, I have recently seen very few eagles or hawks, and I feel a bit bereft about it. From what I've read, it isn't an actual decline in population, just some seasonal ups and downs, but I long to see them. Perhaps today, I will experience that gift! Hang in there folks. Have a good weekend!

Goddess Words 63: Gifts

Back in February of last year, I presented one of my other Goddess words, "Gifting". I made the decision this morning not to go back and read that post, so there could well be a little overlap with that essay, or others such as my previous Goddess Word, "Money". But I thought it was best to come to this with as much of an open mind as possible on this very hot June morning.

Gifts. As usual, an enormous word, both a noun and a verb.  I assume that when I added it to the list, what I had in mind was the gifts of the Goddess to us, to all of life. Because all of life is a gift. The fact of being alive is a gift. The fact that we breathe is a gift. The fact that we have access to Mother Earth's natural resources is a gift. The ability of Earth to sustain life is a gift. And although it may not always feel this way, each and every event in our life is a gift, a learning gift, an abundance gift, an opportunity for growth. 

From that standpoint if from no other, I've always found our economic system to be strange. To do anything in life from any other place than "gifting" seems strange to me. I've never understood the exchange of money, but of course that is evident in my. life! I suspect that by some point in the future, gifting will be the norm, but of course it isn't yet.

I don't do the following often enough in my personal journal -- but I'll do it right here as an example of embracing the gifts coming our way in life. Today, I am thankful for many gifts, and I'll list a few of them here. There's been a recent development that may give me more living stability going forward, so I'm very thankful for this. The other day, I was feeling extremely lonely, which is unusual for me. But I just could not think of one person exactly on my wavelength to connect with. I went outside, and realized that the trees surrounding me felt friendly! I could almost feel their blessings and gifts (including shade) coming my way. I am thankful for online access to many wise and beautiful people who are exploring this new age we are entering. I am thankful for the cornucopia of flowers and vegetables blooming right now, and how healthily some of us are in a position to eat on a day-to-day basis. 

Despite what I said above, I am thankful for many beautiful friends, and the people who have entered my life at just the right moment (sometimes to leave again soon after!) I am thankful for a long life of adventures and travel, singing and art. I am thankful for this blog and the regular opportunity to write. I am thankful for the gifts and talents that have enriched my life. I am thankful for animals, the chipmunks on the driveway and the hummingbird at the flowerpot. 

All of these are gifts, the kinds of gifts that may come to us almost every minute of every day. The Goddess doesn't ask us to place money in the hat. She doesn't want to know if we are worthy -- every being is worthy simply by virtue of being alive. And similarly, we can choose to gift others in a host of situations without expecting payment in return, without expecting the recipient to be "worthy". In other words, we can choose to act like the Goddess -- if we wish.

There are many things happening out there which superficially don't seem like "gifts". But they are gifts, teaching moments, learning prompts. If nothing else, we are being reminded of what we don't want, and sometimes that is a gift!

I know many people who are uncomfortable either giving or receiving gifts...at the moment, perhaps seeing our entire life from a gifting perspective might be hard for some of us. Maybe today, focusing on one gift will be enough. The blue sky above me is a gift. It is a beautiful color. Thank you, Goddess.

A different perspective

Today, I know I am circling around some of the ground I've been on recently, but from a different perspective. I remember, literally half-a-lifetime ago (35 years) sitting on a mattress on the floor of my new apartment in Duluth. I could see Lake Superior out the window, and was trying to make sense of an enormous change in my life. I had left New York City, and decided that I couldn't return to England since the men-and-boys' choir tradition still appeared to be in full force. (Unbeknownst to me, at about that very moment, Salisbury Cathedral was in the process of creating the first girls' cathedral choir in England! It is remotely possible that had I known about this and headed to Salisbury to become involved in this venture, everything might have turned out differently. My University of London MMus might have provided an entree...I'll never know!) 

Through a long, circuitous car journey, I had chosen Duluth for an experience of becoming more American, more directly spiritual, and perhaps more grounded. I had already been journaling in a conversational way, perhaps one might say "channelling", drawing on inner wisdom in trying to make decisions. But that particular morning, I must have accessed a huge well of pain and frustration about having significant gifts in a variety of areas -- particularly writing, art and music. I remember bursting into tears and sobbing almost uncontrollably, railing at God about why he hadn't just given me only one of these gifts. I mean, if I had just been one thing, I could easily have focused and not been drawn away by other talents. (My life had already been like a three-way tennis match, art-music-writing-music-art-music-writing...etc.) I had left the one iota of security I had ever experienced, in the corporate world, and here I was out in the wilderness, hoping to use these gifts in some meaningful way, and yet knowing in my heart of hearts that I didn't have the singleness of purpose in any one of these areas to create a career or substantial income. To put it mildly, I was scared to death. And in the subsequent half-a-lifetime, the tennis match has continued. Even now, having focused more exclusively on writing this blog and largely having given up any lingering hopes of fashioning a life devoted to cathedral music or painting, those two talent areas remain live wires, I guess you could say. No matter how often I visualize them flying off into the wake of my boat (!) I find they are still in my heart. They are still at my core.

This past weekend, thanks to some material I listened to online, it finally, finally hit me. These gifts are not (and never were) separate entities. They have been ways of accessing the beauty, harmony, love, and wisdom of the Goddess...separate "paths", perhaps, but one destination that arguably I "reached" early in life and was trying to express. The "gift" isn't being a writer or painter or singer or organist, it is having the capacity to access a high level of spiritual beauty. The gift is having the capacity to easily align with the Aquarian values that are now emerging in our world. (Since I am an Aquarian, I guess it makes sense, right?) Truly, I don't think that I fully understood this until this very moment. 

I don't know quite what to do with this different perspective except to let it settle in and take hold. It helps me understand why this lifetime has been what it has been, but what that will mean for my life moving forward in any practical sense, I don't know. I'll just have to let the insights keep surfacing.

Too much

Nothing is coming as a huge surprise to me right now, even the fact that just about every single external aspect of life seems to be "too much". I mean, after the deep dive inwards a week ago, and then a somewhat quieter, more still, receptive week this week, it seems like absolutely every bit of the world's chatter is too loud, whether it is in the news or in the artistic, musical, or spiritual online venues that I usually find more appealing, more aligned with who I am. Perhaps this is par for the course for a mystic, the moment where everybody else's model falls away, and you are left simply with you. Not politics, not religion, not outer structures, not even potential future structures or models. Just exactly who you are personally, right now, right this minute. All else is entirely too much information. 

I am, however, thankful for a recent guided visualization that helped me to access an image of me at a table writing (longhand!), surrounded by a circle of loving human beings who can't wait to read what I have to say!!! I do long for a slightly less solitary writing experience, and yet I wish to keep writing, in fact, to write more than I do now. I have never run out of things to say! It is the one area of my life where I don't experience "too much"! So how and when I will find a way of being in that sort of community, perhaps only the Goddess knows. The image made me happy. It made me glow with joy. So that is a good thing.

A hot day on the horizon. Stay cool, folks, if you can!

A Big Aha

I had a big "aha" this morning, not surprising given that I dug so deep last week, and then Sunday was a powerful full moon with its clarity and light. This was to be a week of letting realizations simply come to me, and come they have!

This morning, I was listening to the Albinoni Adagio in G minor on the radio. I was swamped by the longing I have felt for years and years to be utterly immersed in that kind of beauty, whether it be classical music, brilliant historical architecture, cathedrals, choral evensong services, major art museums, formal gardens...you name it. The aspects of our world which deep in my heart of hearts I find most beautiful, at times far more than natural vistas. I've mentioned before that there has always been a part of me living in London (or Paris, or Montreal...) within eyesight and hearing of exquisite examples of human creativity. But this has not been my real life, as you know. Whether I "chose" my experiences or they chose me, they were often 180 degrees opposite what I had hoped for. And this morning, I found myself for the first time absolutely furious with the Goddess. If I have been aligned with Her all along, why would She keep me so far from my preferences? (Yes, I know how much this sounds like a traditional lament to God!)

And then it hit me. As beautiful as these traditional (European) art forms are, it is unlikely that many of them were created to honor the Goddess. I cannot know this for sure, but certainly they were all formed within a certain context and set of beliefs that we are rapidly leaving now. Without fully understanding why at the time, I gravitated toward the experiences outside the milieu that would have completely enthralled and engaged me. The life I originally wanted would probably have left me in less harmony with self and the divine feminine. My main intention for this lifetime was undoubtedly alignment with the Goddess, and my actual experiences guaranteed that I would be in Her inner spiritual "place" by the time all our current shifts started. (I did some neat, more extensive, writing in my personal journal about this, which I may share soon. My backlog of things needing to be shared is beginning to get entirely too large. But I can only go so far today.)

I've had a good cry. My logical brain finally makes more sense of this whole journey, but, as ever, it may take some more time for my heart to catch up.  

The Next Day, the Next Week

As I guess most of you know, I've spent the last week or more delving even more deliberately "down and in" than usual. It was a response to feeling extraordinarily antsy, and yet not knowing where (externally) to go or what to do. So I made the decision to symbolically take the bus to stations within, and it has been a rich, intense journey. Yesterday was a rare and powerful full blue moon, and it was a rare and powerful day, as it turned out. The "station" I accessed was really, really hard, and for the moment, I don't quite know what to do with the realizations that came up, so -- as with some other material surfacing -- I am letting it percolate. (The consolation being that I am more consciously letting it percolate than in the past!)

Allowing a quiet "next day/next week" to be part of the process is an important model for the larger re-balancing the world needs right now. We are all so used to feeling the need to keep going and going and going with whatever we are involved with (even spirituality!), and yet Nature, with its seasons, its waxings and wanings, its ebbs and flows, its births and deaths, is a great, healthy, model. This week, I'm not planning to dig one inch deeper. I am feeling quite drained and exhausted, and -- appropriately! -- as if I've just been on an arduous trek! So the plan is to stay in more of a receptive mode, and catch up on sleep, and try to go with the proverbial flow. I know about the best laid plans (etc.etc.) but ideally I need time to weave some of this stuff into the fabric of my life and consciousness. 

In the Northeast, several more days of blessed coolness before summer sneaks back in...

 

Night Life

Today's post has nothing to do with the deep dive inwards that I have been doing this week, except to the degree that it is a result of a certain amount of looking back. 

These days, I am generally asleep by 9 or 9:30 PM. I will only go out in the evening to something that is a "hell yes" (usually a musical event). I was wondering if this is me becoming an old fuddy-duddy. But the fact is that, essentially, I've always been "early to bed, early to rise" in a boring kind of way, by most people's standards. Whether it was at Smith, or when I lived in DC, or my decade in New York City, my idea of a night out on the town was to take part in a choir rehearsal, or take an art or yoga class, or eat dinner out with a friend or go to an early movie. I mean, I never, ever, went to bars, or discos, or night clubs, or swank restaurants. I attended a rather formal dance at The Plaza once, but it was with relatives, not a date. The year I studied in England, I'd go with friends to a pub once or twice a week and have a cider or a glass of wine, but my memory is that last call was 10 or 10:30 pm. In places like Duluth and Helena, night life was usually me reading or watching TV for an hour after supper and going to sleep. 

Now, even today, if the opportunity presented itself to dress up and go out to dinner at an awesome restaurant and have a really top-notch gin and tonic, I would -- and I would do anything in my power to stay awake past nine! But that hasn't been my life most of the time, and clearly if that kind of entertainment had been a priority for me, I would have lived a very different life.

Last night, I chose not to attend something that wasn't quite in my wheelhouse, so I stayed at the house and read an old Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael mystery. Yup. England, monasticism, medieval life, and the option of throwing a bookmark onto any page and take it up again tomorrow. When you are a contemplative nun at heart, that is "night life". That is your "wheelhouse". In the old days, I subtly judged myself for being so dull. What is lovely now is my ability to fully accept and love myself exactly as I am...

Today's "Station"

Over the course of seven decades, it has been, of course, impossible not to engage with the news of the world. The first major letter I ever wrote, at seven or eight years old, was to President Johnson, begging him to stop the nuclear arms race. In school and at the bachelor's and master's level, I studied many aspects of history (most of which involved wars and violence at least to some extent), and of course at Time, my daily focus as a letters correspondent was the news of the world. I've been privileged to be mostly an observer of these kinds of events, and to have the luxury of considering them from an intellectual, spiritual, ethical, even feminist standpoint. More recently, as my heart has opened up, it has become easier to feel the subtler violence I have experienced, and what it would be like to be at the receiving end of it more directly. I have felt grief that I think I had previously buried.

I hadn't planned necessarily to write again until next week, but something new happened to me yesterday as I was listening to a news report on the radio. I reached a new inner bus station. I strained to actively imagine being the perpetrator of violence, whether in war or any other setting. I was trying to "feel" what it would be like to be a person forcing people out of their homes, or using a weapon, or attacking other people, animals, or the earth in any way, and I simply could not get there. If anything, attempting to experience the emotions that cause such violence took me further from understanding it. We are all told that this is the human condition, that all of us could act this way under certain circumstances, and perhaps some day I will be proven wrong. But I am a human being, and as far as I can tell, this is not "my condition". And more importantly, I do not believe it is the condition of (or a given in) the Age of Aquarius paradigm we are entering. Violence does not match this new energy in any way. It may seem fanciful to say, but I truly believe that in the near future, people who are about to act violently will find that their arms literally collapse, their weapons de-materialize. They may shout in frustration, but nothing will come out of their mouths. 

Zig-Zag

This has definitely been a zig-zag week. To use the metaphor from a few days ago, each day I take the "bus" down and in to another "station", and find some new layer of meaning, or pain, or enlightenment -- only to spin into a bit of a whirlwind before regaining a bit of composure. (In honor of my youngest brother, perhaps this "zig-zag" is actually like a sailboat tacking...) Each morning, I "buy" my ticket toward a destination a little further within. Interestingly, a possible future option has opened up that could be both liberating and limiting. So heading inwards did in fact bring the outside world to me, but not in a clear or unambiguous way. That is the kind of moment we are in! I am trying to keep calm, curious, and open. I understand enough about this upcoming era to know that most of us, right now, are in no position to predict exactly how it will unfold. We may feel its energies, and understand intellectually how utterly different it will be from the present, but at least speaking for myself, I cannot foresee the exact timeline, or what our outer physical world will look like in, say, a decade. And so I cannot visualize (creatively or not!) the path that will lead me to where I would be of best use to a world i cannot see. My left brain is floundering big time. I have to go purely on love and instinct.

I'm not speaking as directly and specifically as I would like about this inward journey, for which I apologize. Early next week (after that rare blue moon on Sunday) I will assess it all. I just wanted to check in. Also to express appreciation to the Goddess for the privilege of this journey. It has been so unique, and even when I'm scared, I treasure that!

Reawakening

I'll report regularly on my "bus trip" down and in (!) this pivotal week. I mean, even if I had never watched any astrological videos, I could tell that big things are currently happening just from what my body is telling me.

So, yesterday was sort of a classic "Liz" day from the standpoint of experiencing an early high point, and then the bottom dropping out. I have to believe that this kind of thing may be why, for many people, a life rich in mysticism is hard to sustain.

Early in the morning, I wrote the following in my personal handwritten journal (I love this short piece for many reasons, not the least of which is that it shows that, deep down, I am following my path on behalf of all women. Even I worry that this isn't the case, sometimes...) (With the exception of deleting two repetitive words, I'm presenting this as written.)

I am imagining -- not just me -- but every woman alive, reawakening from the inside out. Becoming her inner Queen, be it of the place she loves, or the people she loves, or animals, or stars...some facet of this world. Every ache within her is a growing pain as the trauma or invisibility or pain deep in her bones turns over, awakens from hibernation. Every iota of fatigue, of numbness, of listlessness, is flipping over into life. Even women who somehow managed to thrive or lead or "play the game" are sensing a big energy shift where they are losing interest in what worked in the past, and they are waking up and looking at the stars and realizing, there's a bigger, more beautiful world out there that we women are intricately connected with (and intimately!) and we don't really have to do anything except let our cells flip over and let Gaia's cells flip over -- and watch what happens!!!

I love this, and am very excited by it. Not that it's saying something new, really, but I love how I am increasingly channelling material like this quickly and spontaneously (usually in handwritten form). It's hard for me not to edit and proofread, and work it over (which it probably needs) but for the moment, it is what it is. Of course, what happened a little while later in the day was a deep, dark, dive. Inner critics, imagined outer critics, and that energy that always seems to swing me like a pendulum took me to a really hard place. How dare I? How dare I express what is coming from my deepest place? That's always what it boils down to.

Late in the day and early this morning, I was pondering power, and the difficulty of defining what that power looks like for me (and perhaps other women) as we leave the old paradigm's "power over" focus. That may have to be another post for another day, but for today, power is defined by me daring to express what I find in my deepest place. Yes, I dare. And we'll see what deeper inner destination the bus takes me to today!

 

The Inner Landscape

About 18 months ago, when I made the decision to return to this part of the east coast, I did it, in part, because it represents possibilities. Duluth, which I still love and miss in many, many ways, is almost literally the "end of the road". It is at the north end of Interstate 35. It is also at the western end of the Great Lakes and that key shipping route. Whenever I see Duluth's Aerial Lift Bridge, I feel I have come home, and there is a strong pull to nest there forever. But in 2024, I realized that because of my income, I might end up living well out of town with no car, on one of the very minor city bus routes. I suffer from a form of claustrophobia in that regard, a fear of being trapped, and somehow instinctively I knew that this wasn't a great "energy" for me at age 70.

New York's Capital District is the opposite to this in so many ways. It is the hub in a wheel of highways heading south to New York City, east to Boston, north to the Adirondacks and Montreal, west to Buffalo, Chicago and beyond, and southwest to Binghamton/Scranton. When you don't have a car, buses and trains make a lot of destinations doable. Even the area city bus takes you remarkably far. I have done some of this travel, when I have known exactly what I want to do.

And therein lies the problem. For several months, I have been about as antsy as it is possible to be, and I was sure that by now I would have moved on, found more permanent housing, or at the very least, set off on a temporary adventure. I cannot tell you how many times I have just wanted to leap up, stick a pin in a map, buy a train ticket, and head off with only one roller bag. Yet with the exception of England, my old destinations do not call me -- and England no longer calls me in the same way. I don't feel particularly curious about new places either. It's like I have travelled over an event horizon into a dense black hole. This hole isn't scary, really, and from what astrologers are saying about this time period, what I am experiencing may be about the huge transformations happening in the stars. I may be on some kind of spiritual elevator, and need to be patient until the bell rings and the doors open. Whatever the metaphor, my instinct to go out and explore the outer landscape is being completely neutralized at the moment.

Which leaves the inner landscape. Now, I'm the kind of person who will never balk at introspection (as you have no doubt noticed!), but I think what I am being asked to do this last week of May is some deep digging the likes of which even I have never seen before. The word "power" keeps coming to me...this is not about the power to travel to see some new part of the world, or to see wonders created by powerful people, or about the power of the modes of transportation themselves. This is not about seeing new destinations outside of myself, and having the power to experience them. This is about the power within me. This is about peeling off yet more layers, and finding the power plant at my core, the passionate landscape within me, because the energy of that landscape will magnetize my new experiences. 

Various teachers are suggesting that all of us figure out what new skills or directions we wish to follow at this pivotal time. I see it not so much about taking on something new, but rather uncovering the power of what I already am. Even here in this blog, I'd like to to open up my connectedness to the Goddess, and speak ever more clearly and more forcefully. To be, at times, less tactful and more courageous. To remove blocks to my leadership ability, and be more willing to validate my own preferences. To truly, fully, embrace beauty, love, and this new age we are entering. Today, may I buy a bus ticket as far into my inner landscape as I can manage, just to see what I find!

Housing Solutions

We're hearing a lot about finding solutions for "the housing problem". One of the ones I hear the most is, to build more housing, affordable and otherwise.

Oh, brother. The hardest part about becoming so Goddess-centered (and also so Gaia-centered) is reaching the point where I simply can see no solutions to society's problems within the mindset that created our current paradigm. The issue of housing seems to illustrate this so poignantly. 

From a Gaia standpoint, this is what building tons of new housing does: it further degrades earth's landscape, and uses increasing amounts of toxins, plastics, and diminishing resources (water, wood, metals). It further spreads out neighborhoods, requiring more cars, more use of petroleum, more reliance on energy. It underscores the notion that individuals and small families need separate houses, separate spaces -- and the larger and fancier, the better. That all of us need to then furnish our spaces with more and more consumer items, more high-tech gadgetry, more "things" of all kinds. Solving the housing problem this way causes infinitely more problems for Mother Earth.

And speaking for myself, I do not wish to find a solution to my housing problem. My challenge has always been finding a home, a place where I (with my very specific passions of English church music and women's spirituality) would be completely welcome, no matter how much money I do or do not have. Finding a place where people speak one or both of my languages, so I feel like I am in my element. (How privileged I am to even be able to consider such factors!) And I don't think we can even envision exactly what housing will look like, say, 25 years from now. Because of environmental, spiritual, and societal changes, we will be living so utterly differently that -- at the very least -- pouring money into contemporary living solutions that may be going extinct within a decade is counterproductive. Goddess communities will be built on love and deep belonging. They will be predicated on taking into account the needs of the earth before one shovelful of dirt is moved. Honoring the earth and one another, wanting people to find places where they will be loved and accepted, finding ways to live healthily and lightly on the earth, gradually phasing out all concepts of money and profit -- that is ultimately the only way to find longterm human (and humane) housing solutions.

Bringing Stories out into the Light

Several times in recent months, I have heard or seen the quote from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas to the effect that if you bring out the treasure that is within you, it will save you, but if you do not, you will be destroyed. Actually, when I first read this years ago, it sent rather a frisson through me, although at that time, I wasn't sure why. Even then, I didn't like the dualism of the thinking or its expression, of course! Like there are two lanes of this life highway, and either we are going to experience salvation or damnation. And there is a certain fear-mongering in, in effect, threatening people to "get with it" and find their true treasure before it is too late. Ugh.

So I guess the first thing to do is really, really analyze the statement and express it from a more Goddess perspective. I agree that we all have, deep within us, a key gift or insight, or perhaps an action that we were meant to do in this lifetime. Some spiritual gem of truth that -- if we can find it -- only we have the ideal capacity to articulate or act on. If I had a young person in my life, I might definitely suggest that their main purpose, early on, be to find this treasure, and uncover it. And then if they came to me a few years later and said, gosh, I've discovered what my true gift is, but I'm kind of freaked out about acting on it, I'd want to sit down with them for a few deep conversations about what is blocking them. 

More often than not, I suspect it would be fear -- the fear of feeling strange, the fear of being attacked for an unconventional view or condition, the fear of criticism or failure. And yet the answer to that fear isn't to mirror back the fear, and force people to give birth to their treasure "or else"! In a more Goddess-centered construct, the person would be gently walked through a process of facing their fears, envisioning possible scenarios if they bring out the best that is within them, and finding a way to commit 100 percent to their inner worth. An advisor would try to help them get to a place where they were ready to shine.

However imperfectly presented, this teaching did affect me deeply. I've known for years that there was something deep within me that had to be brought out into the light. I knew that I was fearful of my own power, and perhaps by continuing to sweep it under the rug, I was burying myself down there too, in effect "destroying" myself, continuing a cycle of homelessness and invisibility. In this blog, I've tried, post after post, to dig further and further down and in.

Several posts ago, I referred to the fact that I have three hand-written stories that I've been sitting on, kind of stuck. And then the other day, I wrote about my three rabbits, which might represent my three greatest fears. I did some journaling about those rabbits, describing and analyzing three general fears I have and even making a color drawing of them! And yet it wasn't until this very moment that I realized -- my three greatest fears are the three stories, and the prospect of bringing them out into light! One of them, particularly, scares the heck out of me with its potential power. 

That's about as far as I can go with this today. But it just goes to show that the realizations are coming faster and faster...

Two Rabbits. Make that three...

This morning, when I went outside to start my walk, there were two rabbits in the driveway. They were standing stock-still, facing each other. I have rarely, if ever, seen two rabbits at a time, and I tried to speak with them softly and comfortingly, sort of, "Hi sweethearts, don't be scared. I am a friend." And as long as I continued to be still, they didn't move. But the minute I started to walk out toward the road, they bolted. A little while later in a different spot, I saw another one!

I still keep several "bibles" by my bed, one of which is the classic 1988 Medicine Cards book, by Jamie Sams and David Carson. The powers and medicines of 44 birds and animals are beautifully and succinctly described...when I purchased the book and cards in 1990, I used them in a loosely divinatory manner, but these days I basically just consult the book when I have an encounter with an animal or bird. Here, Rabbit's medicine is "fear", or a tendency to call one's fears to oneself. Seeing those rabbits run this morning was a reminder -- you could see them shaking, terrified, even though I had tried to reassure them. There are a number of other spiritual meanings for bunnies, from intuition to renewal. But being given the opportunity to address fear -- to see where it is working in my life -- always seems to be rabbit's message for me.

Where is fear showing up in my life today? I mean, there are so many fearful, out-of-control things happening in the world that if I felt fully engaged with them (and the need for human solutions to them all), I would be almost catatonic. I may be saved from that by the fact that I've seen so much of this coming for so long, I would have felt even more fearful if they hadn't happened! Still, I know my own personal life is on the verge of changing again, and no matter how often it happens, I never really face it calmly. By now I should, but I don't (!) This time, though, there is an energetic difference. I know that we are shifting into the all-love Age of Aquarius, that the divine feminine is re-emerging, and that increasingly, after a lifetime of being out of my element, I'm going to be in my element. I know and believe that without a shadow of a doubt. 

Nevertheless, it is important to face the fears. It's sometimes so tempting to slide through them, or talk myself out of them. But three rabbits appeared, so in my personal journaling I'll address the three biggest fears that come up. Write about them, talk with them, embrace them, maybe even draw them. Try not to run away...

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!