in between the rhythms

Woodpecker - Keeper of Rhythm (Kit Carson Park, 1/12)

Woodpecker has been accompanying me through 2012, starting a bit before January, with the opening of the Diamond Year on 11/11/11. When you hear the tok-tok-tok! on a tree and look up and see no less than three woodpeckers in an inverted triangle above your head, you know the rhythms of your life are going to change, Big Time. Yes they have, Big Time.

I had to leave my muggle job at the answering service in 2010 because the changing of the rhythms (at work, at home, in my life) was becoming too intense even for me to handle. For nearly two years, I floated along, in a sense, as I moved out of one set of rhythms (the "old" reality) and into a new set of rhythms (the "new" reality). The shifting of rhythms increased in tempo last November as I began my initiation and shed my old skins. Winter Solstice: power*full. Spring Equinox: intense. Summer Solstice: BOTH! I'm still amazed I made it through June and emerged relatively coherent!

Now I am arriving at the midpoint of Autumn, the Fall Equinox, very much aware of how much my rhythms have changed. What was once full in my life is now emptied; what was empty in my life has been filled. My rhythms these days are very simple: Work. Rest. Love. Rest. It hit me recently how simple my life, my rhythms, had now become. Where I would have cringed and railed and resisted this simplicity once upon a time - because of how different my desired world was from my real world - now I am seeing that this is but a moment in the Greater Shift of Rhythm. This, too, shall pass, and is passing.

I have a pair of Doreen Virtue's Goddess Guidance cards on my altar. The one for the Autumn season that I chose/was chosen for me is Kali - the Great Changer Her*Self! She is not quite as fierce in Doreen's deck as She is elsewhere, but Her message in this iteration is no less profound than anywhere else: The Old must be released so the New can enter. (She represents Endings and Beginnings in the deck.)

The Old must be released so the New can enter. I'm really feeling that right now...the woman writing this blog entry is SO completely different than the woman who started 2012! A little time, a little perspective, and I can see, now, what I took to be "blocks" or "obstacles" were really place-holders to delay me just a wee teeny bit so my True Destiny could be realized, in the form of my Beloved.

Sharing Rhythms (near Irvine, CA 9/12)

It's one thing to feel yourself shifting from one reality to another. It's another thing to observe the details of your New Reality taking shape around you, coalescing from the Void into solid forms and structures. Two years after my "anchoring" into the New Reality, I see it beginning to take substance around me. Outlines of these details are becoming more tangible, more real, in my life. Should I doubt or second-guess the process - which still happens, trust me! - I hear the chirrrrr! chirrrrr! chirrrrr! of the woodpecker at the top of a nearby tree, and I remember: oh yes. The new rhythms are becoming noticeable in the ground under my feet, in the whispering of the wind blowing past me, in the sight of the lightning dancing in the clouds. I just need to abide, and watch, and move gently, and love fully, and be loved fully. It was never a time to force; it's always been a time to allow...allowing the Great Unfolding.

My harvest from this unfolding has been a good one so far... :-)

August: Mut - Mother of Mothers

I have waited a lifetime to bloom. (@ Home, 8/12)

Mut...was honored (in Egypt) as the mother of mothers, since it was believed the cosmos sprang from Her. (She) was usually depicted as a vulture or in the form of a woman's body with a vulture's head...

~from the Goddess Inspiration Oracle guide~

It is no accident that this aspect of the Goddess came up for me in this time, for two reasons - first, I prayed a lot to "Mother Vulture" during the more intensive parts of my Eye of the Needle initiation, asking her to pick my bones clean of whatever garbage and detrius was remaining in my body and my spirit. (I have a dear sister at the Goddess Temple to thank for introducing me to this particular totem animal in the first place; she knows who she is.) Second, I entered August very much in need of some deep nurturing and mothering...though my body was feeling much better, my spirit was still raw and ragged 'round the edges. On the anniversary of my father's death, I found that nurturing, in the last place I expected to find it - in a man's gentle, adoring embrace.

Those of you who know me, online and IRL, know that although I am bisexual, haven't had a whole lot of experience in the game of love, with either gender. What you might not have known is that I've been a very lonely lone wolf as a result. Many times I found myself "outside looking in" at other couples in their relationships. Many times I've been able to keep my head above the raging waters, but have been desperately looking for some solid footing beneath the surface. And one of my greatest fears was that I would die alone, unloved, because the Path of Spirit I walked was too "woo-woo" for anyone else to understand, much less to walk with me.

I have been proven happily wrong. :-)

At the end of April, I stood in the middle of a circle of soul-siblings and declared that I was over being a single woman. "I want my Beloved, and I want my Beloved NOW!" I shouted, tears streaming down my face.

Thirty-three days later, Love came walking in the door I had left open, but unattended.

Everyone, I'd like you to meet my Beloved, Jonathan.

"Namaste." (La Mesa, 6/12)

I actually met him in June, just before I plunged headlong into Hekate's crucible to burn away the last of the dross in the final Big Push through the Needle's Eye. Choice and circumstance kept us at arm's length for a time, but I made the choice to be with him for a long weekend at the beginning of August. The fireworks are still going off. :-)
Those empty spaces that were hidden deep in the core of my being are now filled. I have found my sure footing beneath the surface and can flow much more easily with the current. I find myself opening up and calming down because of the love I am sharing with this man. The small stuff has become truly that - small stuff - that I'm no longer sweating. I am teacher and I am student; I am lover and I am loved...and I won't be lacking in rose petals for quite a while! ;-)
In entering this new and exciting co-creation, I have put other things on the back burner for the time being - namely, the growth of my Shamanic practice as a self-sustaining business. I am not hurting for money, though; I am well compensated as a "Supervisory Priestess" in my muggle job at the answering service. I am also getting little opportunities here and there to keep my shamanic skills honed. All the pieces of the puzzle are still there, abiding in the box I have put them in, simply waiting until everything has settled back into place before I take them out and assemble them into the configuration they belong in.

"Me" is now "We." (San Diego, 8/12)

The greatest miracle I am receiving is the gift of Changing-in-Place: at the beginning of the year, I believed that I would have to move across the country before I could be truly Authentic and truly Do What I Love. Now that I have met my Beloved, I am seeing the path form before me, step by step...and I'm not going to be leaving the state of California in order for it to happen; in fact, my stomping grounds will be relocating only slightly. I am receiving SO much Abundance in my life - I feel truly Blessed for the first time. Ever.
YES, all the Hard Work is Worth It! :-D