Goddess Words 48: Magnetize

When in doubt, a Goddess word. (I woke up wanting to write, but I didn't know about what.)

Those of us who, over the last few decades, have consumed a fair amount of "New Age" material have a pretty good take on magnetizing. The idea is that if you clearly articulate intentions or goals, or if you visualize your preferred outcome, you will draw to you what you want. There were times when I tried (and tried and tried) to magnetize the practicalities of life -- better income, a job that would at least be somewhat interesting, a car. And yet I rarely had good results. I was (and am!) grateful that I have so often had a softish landing when I jumped out of the proverbial plane, but it's almost laughable how the old fashioned way (hard work ethic, and flooding employers with resumes) never worked for me, and the new age paradigm didn't really either. 

I am becoming convinced that the Goddess absolutely does magnetize, but in a different way. I think what magnetizes is the overall quality of your energy field, not specific actions or intentions. That this mirror, so to speak, senses absolutely every emotion within us, and bounces them back to us with amazing speed and precision. Now the gurus have been saying a variation of this all along, right? If you want a new car, but deep down you feel unworthy, then it will be nearly impossible to magnetize the latest model. However, the way that I think Goddess energy is different is this: in a Goddess-centered reality, I don't think it would be possible under any circumstances to magnetize a sporty new car or a mansion on the Pacific, because those goals were not created by entities (or within a paradigm) that worked with the Goddess from a place of Love. They are for the most part the products of a desire for profit or power. I sense that the only way to magnetize going forward, especially for some of us, will be to immerse ourselves in feeling Love, harmony, beauty, truth -- and wait to see where we are led. Perhaps the only "specific" requests we can make are ones like this: How can I more effectively spread Love? Where is the best community of Love? How can I make Love my only currency and my only home?

I say this as I am in the midst of learning this lesson again, the hard-ish way. In true Transitional mode, I've put any number of things "out there" in the last month or so, applications, or letters to appropriate people in the kind of direction I wish to go, etc. etc. And nothing bounces back. The old me feels the old frustration. But now that it's becoming clearer and clearer that these actions cannot catalyze, my energy is doing that, I'll focus on that in upcoming weeks!

There is an intriguing parallel thread to this: the power of the magnetism of our belongings. As I go through the rest of my boxes, I have experienced firsthand what a powerful experience it is to give away things that are literally and figuratively too old, and no longer vibrating at my current wavelength. In the past, some of this material might have brought up anger, shame and worthlessness (and those emotions definitely tried to emerge even now), but most of the time I'm in a place of near joy. "Thank you, experience A, B or C, but I'm done with that facet of my formation, and it's time to move on." Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the possibilities I was considering for my life even a month or two ago now feel out of the question. I'm done. I've graduated from that academy, or that, or that, and no longer need the refresher course -- or the objects that represent them. I would never recommend tossing belongings because you wish to make spiritual progress -- it's more likely to be the other way around. If you've made the spiritual progress and you look at an item and there is no spark of life to it anymore, the time has come to find another home for it. If it has been blocking your forward movement, it's less likely to continue to do that as you magnetize your new energy. 

On a (seemingly) unrelated topic, yesterday there was a sunrise unlike any I have ever seen (admittedly, I may only see the actual sunrise only a few times a month). The sun's disc was brilliant red. I mean, red. Not orange, or red-orange, or reddish-blue. Fiery, bloody, red. There were no clouds, and the sky around it was pale yellowish-blue. The color reflected briefly on the window screen, but after about two minutes the whole effect morphed into a more normal dawn hue. While I didn't fall into a fear-filled place (that this was an omen, perhaps?) I noticed it. Gaia was speaking. What was She saying?

The Black Balloon

OK, so in my last post, I spoke of how dearly I wish to have my portrait painted. (I was reminded again of how much of my truth has been the opposite of my surface life: arguably, I haven't wanted to write about Herbert Howells or any other musician, I've wanted to be written about. I haven't wanted to live in other peoples' houses, I've wanted my own home. I haven't wanted to paint portraits, I've wanted to be painted, etc.) I breezily said it might take a day or two to process my experience with the TV program about portrait painting, and yet within a few hours of writing the post, I came "this close" to taking it down completely, something I have never done. Why? Because I was horrified by the potential narcissism of saying I want to be the subject of a portrait. The narcissism of wishing to be seen.

When you are the daughter of a father who is an off-the-scales narcissist, and you finally understand that reality, any sign that you might be in the same league is terrifying. And, of course (a related point?), we women are far more used to being the object, not the subject.

A metaphor came to me. It's a bit belabored, but forgive me. I realize that when I was a child, it felt like I was an empty black hole -- a black balloon, perhaps -- attached to my father's face. Surely, I thought, if I was literally right in front of his eyes, he'd see me. If I could play the organ well, or get good grades, or sing beautifully, or create beautiful art, maybe he would finally actually see me. But those charming, friendly-looking eyes simply couldn't see me, no matter my proximity. His ears could not hear me. With perhaps one or two exceptions over the years, my accomplishments were greeted (if at all) with a bland, "That's nice." When I first started my blog, he read two or three of the first posts, and then told me it was very nice, but he didn't understand a word I was saying. Yes, he too had a genius IQ, but my form of the written language was beyond him.

The other part of being the black balloon on your dad's face (thereby being somewhat of a leech in my own right I am mortified to grasp) is that he didn't breathe life into me, he sucked it out, sucked me dry. I was his source of oxygen (and, presumably, others were too), so my little balloon was perpetually depleted and lifeless. And because I would go out into a world that is, itself, horrifyingly like my dad, I remained rudderless and ultimately empty in this balloon-like black hole. He died in 2018, coincidentally (?) the year I returned to Duluth, and I appreciate this morning what a perfect place that was to go through the process of starting to see myself through my own eyes, and to breathe through my own nose. This dire condition undoubtedly continues down the generations simply because people can never fully actualize as their own genuine person, so the next generation cannot, and the next, and the next. Whoever we really are doesn't feel valid, or worthy of being seen, heard, or experienced, and this affects everyone around us. To the extent that my existence in this black balloon may have harmed anyone around me, I am excruciatingly sorry.

Still, even in that context, I am so glad that I didn't remove the previous post. Rather than being negative, a case could be made that it is one of the healthiest posts I've ever written. That I could finally take pleasure in being me, and look forward to seeing how other artistic and sensitive people might interpret me in a painting, has to be a step forward -- as long as it is something I would wish for other people too (and I do!) May all of us who have lived under this kind of shadow finally come out into the light, to be fully seen, appreciated, celebrated. May all of our colors and perspectives reveal our deeper Source of Love. And I welcome the Goddess out on that stage with us. How many facets of Her loving persona can we celebrate today? It is time to be the subjects of our own portrait, and to see Her as the primary subject of earth's portrait.

 

A New Painting

In my previous post (the last of my first decade of writing), I referred to the Goddess painting a new painting in our world, and here I am in the first post in a new decade, writing about painting again. Just at the moment when I have been finding homes for old art supplies, weeding out my old paintings and those of my grandmother, I think I have finally accepted that (in this lifetime) I was not meant to be a famous painter. It hung over my head for years that "if only I had a big studio", I could do the work I want to do, but, no, of course, it works the other way around. You have to be compelled from within to paint, paint, paint, and then you must find the right studio. From early in my time at Parsons in the 1980's, I knew two things. I was only studying art because there was no chance (at that time) that women would ever get to sing English church music at the highest levels, and I had to express beauty somehow. And two, that I didn't have the same passion for art as I did for English church music. I dutifully fulfilled my homework assignments with ease and skill. Art flowed out of me -- I had a teacher who was convinced that I had been one of the great masters in an earlier lifetime (Add that to my list!) And yet...it was almost too easy. I didn't long to paint, I didn't need to paint. It wasn't fulfilling, or compelling as a goal for this lifetime. Thus no studio, thus at 69 the giving away of old easels and canvases. My artistic outlet at the moment is tiny hand-drawn postcards, and that is enough.

So, in the midst of this frothy eddy of old expectations and belongings and current realities, what do I discover on TV? A series that is hardly new -- UK "Portrait Artist of the Year". Somehow, though, I never saw it, either over there or over here. And last night and early this morning, I binge-watched big time, riveted. Just riveted. I had to really become clear with myself -- do I miss painting? No, absolutely not. And I recognize that I never really gained much skill in portraiture -- the likenesses these artists achieved were sometimes staggering. But I knew that world inside and out. I loved thinking, what approach would I take? What composition would work best? What color palette would I use? How did they do that? I was pretty good at picking each episode's three finalists, but in the end I was surprised by the season winner, and yet pleasantly so. 

And last but not least, in true topsy-turvy Liz style, I knew what was drawing me in. I want to have a brilliant portrait done OF ME. I want to have three or six or eight artists arrayed in front of me, painting different facets of me, seeing me, perhaps revealing me to the world. I don't want to paint, I want to be painted. I want to be seen in that way! That certainly is a new painting, isn't it? I mean, I've reached this turning point before, but not quite so emphatically. And I don't know what it means spiritually or metaphorically, but maybe I will by tomorrow.

At ten years, the last of the old words

Tomorrow, August 8, is the ten year anniversary of this blog. I'm so proud of this accomplishment. It is perhaps (along with my early efforts to open up the world of English cathedral music to myself and other girls and women) my greatest achievement. I have grown and changed so much this last decade...and of course my life hasn't brought me success, renown or income! Some days, it takes a great deal of courage to continue on at 69.

But I hope to do just that. And moving forward, my goal is to make these posts increasingly Goddess- (and Aquarian Age-) aligned. Before I do that, there is one last bit of negative, "old" business I want to tackle, one last duality-based word that comes to me almost from the moment I wake until the moment I fall asleep: "affront". 

The other day, as I waited for a friend to check out at a pharmacy, I found myself crammed in between two metal carousels of plastic toys, each wrapped in plastic. Within seconds, I was envisioning all these toys -- and most of the thousands of other plastic items in this one store -- bobbing around as trash in the ocean. I had to physically restrain myself from screaming like a banshee and running from the building. 

If plastic were the only thing I find offensive about modern life, that would be my "cause", but it isn't the only thing. In fact, as I have alluded to before, it is hard for me to find any aspect of our modern world that isn't an affront to what I believe are the values of the Goddess. The list is almost endless: war, weapons, conflict of all kinds, development sprawl, toxic chemicals, power over, profit...I mean, at the very least it is all an insult to me, which is probably why I have functioned so poorly. When I try to imagine the Great Mother's expanded vantage point on it all, it takes my breath away. For thousands of years, we did not take Her needs and wellbeing into consideration -- so of course this neglect has led to this overheated, shaking moment. Affront after affront after affront, a train of pain, roaring down the track with no brakes.

And of course, to those who see it all differently, I am the affront. I am the one who never bought into the norm.

In the larger picture, I don't worry about any of it. Love is going to take care of revealing what needs healing, and She will have the "last word" to catalyze that healing. Who-fought-who and what-was-an-affront-to-whom will no longer matter in upcoming years. We are leaving that place of duality and conflict, heck, we are leaving history, almost literally. But if people wonder what went wrong, why is all of this happening, all they need to do is go to the store and look at the plastic. Really look at it as future garbage. We didn't think ahead, and we thought we could keep out-inventing all our problems. But that wasn't possible, and the moment of truth has finally come. So it is time to let go, and let the Goddess repaint this picture.

A new era beginneth, just in time for a new decade of writing. And a fresh new way of being. Time to shrug off these old affronts, and simply glory in being at one with Love.

Goddess Words 47: Wow

Hmm..."wow." An exclamation in response to something amazing, surprising, huge (my definition). Why I added it to my list of Goddess words all those years ago, I'm not entirely sure, except that I probably sensed that some of the manifestations of increased Goddess energy in the world would be amazing, surprising and huge. This seems to have been the quintessential "wow" week, up and down the scale. 

I haven't tried in any serious way to keep up with all the new discoveries and changes in astronomy, physics, new underwater life forms, and emerging evidence of earlier civilizations. I basically just scan the headlines. But, wow. I mean, wow!

Then, that 8.8 earthquake (and the many that seem to have preceded and followed it, if I understand correctly). Sure, it's remarkable that there was as little damage as there was, and that immediate fears around the Pacific Rim quickly faded. However, Gaia is waking up. There have always been volcanos, earthquakes, and tsunamis, but what we will see in the next few years will be "wow"-worthy on a whole new level. Like many of us, She is changing from the inside out, so expect the landscape to keep evolving before our very eyes.

The world and national news isn't necessarily a "wow" to me -- almost nothing surprises me that much, I'm sorry to say -- but its clarity is pretty stunning. Truth is emerging from under the surface in a way that can no longer be ignored or misunderstood. Everything is connected, "as above, so below", right? Talk about landscapes changing. These political, social, economic, religious, and educational landscapes will undoubtedly continue to morph, and morph again.

On a personal level, this week's "wow" was how I was hit by the enormity of my recent trip to Duluth and paring down my (still relatively few) belongings by 2/3. This week, from the same internal "place", I started to go through my remaining few boxes back here. This was the core of my memorabilia, my "if-someone-ever-writes-a-biography-of-me, they'll-need-to-see-this" STUFF. Over the years, most of it has constantly been in storage, partly because I couldn't bear to deal with it. Here's an example: From 7th through 10th grade, I attended St. Agnes School in Loudonville (near Albany, which no longer exists in its original form). In a pile of papers, I stumbled on not one, but two or three letters from the school, dated from 1958-64 or so, indicating that I'd been essentially pre-accepted to the school based on some "friend (or relative) of a friend" thing between my grandfather's second wife and the headmistress at the time. I mean, strange, interesting even, but I did not actually enroll until 1968, which is all that matters. Is the minuscule weight of these letters and envelopes worthy of continued storage as we head into the Aquarian age? No. Ditto elementary school report cards; all but one of the six or so copies I kept of my Smith College commencement program; and the heavy 1960's-era photo album of my first trip abroad. You remember those awful books with sticky pages and clear plastic covers holding the snapshots in place? I pulled out about 15 of the photos, the itinerary, and the group photo, and tossed out the rest.

It's liberating. This lifetime has been fascinating, terrifying, and unusual, and I will carry it forward with me. But now I feel literally less laden down and defined by it than I ever have. The question I keep asking myself is, "Will this item help me navigate the paradigm we are entering?" By the end of the next few weeks, with only a few nostalgic exceptions, I will be down to just the belongings I think may be relevant to my role moving forward. If even these eventually prove to be too heavy, they will go too.

So that brings me to my previous post, and I guess it is all related. By finally openly acknowledging my belief that my "life" has had an arc of thousands of years, not just dozens, my current incarnation makes a lot more sense. It isn't diminished, just contextualized. It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to feel like one is called to speak for the Goddess, and it made no sense at all as I persisted in thinking of myself as a "little girl from Schenectady". But each toss into the recycling pile has liberated me from that limitation, and speaking out in this way now seems like the work I have been leading up to for a long, long time. It is a relief.

Wow.

I Wasn't Going to Write Today

(I wrote this in draft form on Saturday morning.)

I wasn't going to write today, but some early reading broke open something that I still cannot fully explain, even to myself, but I need to try.

I am reading Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know that I have developed a thing about raptors, and, silly me, I somehow thought this would be a feel-good story about raising such a bird. Instead (and I'm only about halfway into it) it is a grueling account, with parallel stories about English writer T. H. White and his own experience with a hawk. At one point, she speaks of the moment when the life you didn't lead meets up with the life you did, and interestingly enough, this comes only a few pages after a brief descriptive reference to a Cambridge college dining hall. Immediately, despite the early hour and my hot night bleariness, I had an epiphany.

Over ten years ago, I unexpectedly sang choral evensong with the mixed choir of King's College, and then was invited to the dining hall afterwards. But the jolt I felt just now did not derive from that specific experience or from the year eating in Royal Holloway's somewhat less glamorous dining room. It felt like a true window to a past life. I've always assumed that many of my lifetimes have been spent in England, specifically at cathedrals or Cambridge or Oxford, and I have alluded to this. Clearly I've been priest, choral singer, choral director or composer, academic, and perhaps even royalty or nobility. In a way, it doesn't matter. What matters is the energy of the place and the daily spiritual ritual and focus. In this lifetime, though, this little girl from Schenectady could never settle into New York City, or Duluth, or Burlington, or Helena, or the Capital District, because of literally dozens of previous lifetimes spent in Britain at the heart of whatever milieu was central to the era's spirituality. In distant pre-history I was involved in honoring the Goddess (as "Beryl"?), and then must have morphed into Druid then Christian modes. And in this lifetime, the segue back (or forward) to the Goddess again. 

As hard as it is to finally accept it (and I've been teetering on the edge of this for a long time), it becomes very clear why I could never have been British in this lifetime. Over there, I would have become even more identified with this (still) mostly-male set of traditions, and it would have been much harder to break loose. And I didn't "take" in that world, because it knew that beyond my femaleness and Americanness, I was the "other" in an even bigger way. At heart, I was not on the same page, theologically. (I sobbed all the way home from England at the end of my MMus studies in 1981, with airline stewardesses checking in every half hour or so to see if I was "OK". No, I wasn't OK, I was being physically wrenched from my home of thousands upon thousands of years, and I must have known deep down that in this lifetime, I would not get back permanently until late in life, if at all. On the short flight from LaGuardia to Plattsburgh, I looked down from the plane at upstate New York's primeval forests, feeling overwhelmed by wilderness on every possible level. In nearly 45 years, that feeling has never completely gone away.)

The odd thing is realizing that I am centered in my current spirituality in much the same intense way I have always been in those earlier lifetimes. And if we have entered the Aquarian age, as I believe we have, then (I'm very sorry to say) those cathedrals, colleges, chapels, choral evensong services, classrooms and dining halls are no longer the center of "it all". They are not power hubs the way they were for so many generations, at least not the institutional structures above ground. However, Gaia is establishing new power centers around the world as we speak (and unveiling forgotten ones) and many of us may be drawn to them. Whether there will be rites and rituals, or whether life itself will be the only ritual, remains to be seen. Consistent with my post the other day, it isn't either/or. I will bring all these influences forward with me into the new era. I finally feel more at peace with paradoxes and varied threads of experience.

The life I might have led crossed the life I did lead this morning, and it was energetically extremely powerful. There's much more to process about this...I may not publish this post for a few days.

A Contrast too Painful

A few days ago I spoke of being turned on by some wonderful vegetarian recipes, and the urge to make them isn't going away. If anything, it is growing, and that's so interesting.

And yet...even I, who try so hard to stay focused on the emerging Love-based paradigm (not the conflict-based one currently in its death throes) find it hard to feel quite the same about eating right now. I'm old enough to have known about dozens of wars and famines, situations where civilians (mostly women and children) suffered and died in large numbers. I've never been left entirely unmoved, although on many occasions I quickly went into "left-brain" mode and tried to focus on understanding rather than feeling. (Even now, the journalist, historian and artist in me defaults to "observer".) This moment's worst monstrosity is not always reported on at all, or falls late in a newscast. One is left wondering why much of the media's primary focus is (as ever) on missing young women, scandals and the deaths of "beloved" TV, music, or sports stars...don't we see ourselves and our childish selfishness, our attention to glitter, and our avoidance of the real question -- what is it in us that prompts us to kill other people and hurt the planet? And as a culture, when will we understand that this brutal era has ended? Because it is already over. There is literally no future to it.

Everyone alive has a different role to play right now, and as hard as it is to live with these contrasts too painful to bear -- why do I have the right to eat healthy meals today when many thousands are dying of starvation? -- I have to keep reminding myself that there is no more waiting. The Age of Aquarius is here. Those who are incapable of Love are erupting in violence, but within a few short years, such actions will literally no longer be humanly possible. Earth's higher spiritual energies will make hatred impossible to express, and eventually, nonexistent in the human soul.

So I go back to my old mantra -- my job is to write beautifully, create beautiful art or music, treat people as kindly as I can, and cook or bake to nurture myself and others. All of these actions are consistent with the emerging Goddess age and the Age of Aquarius, and therefore well worth doing...but this weekend as I do them, I dedicate my actions to people who are being deliberately starved and made invisible. I walk the tightrope, welcoming the vibrant new era with these exhausted people in my arms. Holding them gently, lovingly, like a Mother.