The Great Unlearning

"Flowers of Alienation" (Encinitas, CA 7/10)

  We divorce ourselves from process, even as we yearn for love, companionship, understanding, and communion. We constantly defeat ourselves by questioning, asserting ourselves at the wrong times, or letting hatred and pride cloud our perceptions. Our alienation is self-generated.

~Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao~

These words I read on Friday the 13th last month continue to resonate with me. I have been generating my own alienation for quite a while. It came to me recently: much of my spiritual growth has been motivated by fear and resistance...

Fear of being left behind, left out, or found out as a "fraud": How can I co-create healing and miracles for others when I can't do that for myself? How dare I call myself a Priestess! My inner critics and Judges have been harsh, especially of late, stirring up lots of self-hatred and loathing.

Resistance to what is unfolding in the Now moment before me: I don't like the story as it's being written, so I want to make up my own. I get lost in my head. I want to impose my story upon what is unfolding around me - and when they don't match (which they usually don't), I get angry and frustrated, wanting to scream in rage and sob hysterically, which I've done. Guilty, Your Honor! ;-)

A group of "Should-Be's" (Encinitas, CA 7/10)

All suffering is the space between what you think should be and what is.

~Brian Piergrossi, The Big Glow~

Ah, What I Think Should Be. I "should be" somewhere else than where I am, doing something else than what I'm doing, surrounded by people other than who I know now. Time and again I get caught up in What I Think Should Be, because I am a Priestess. I am "special." I have been "chosen." I am the child whose life was altered with one parent leaving, and changing radically - and then dying of AIDS, a disease transmitted by unprotected sex. I am scarred. I must hold myself apart from everyone, not let anyone get close. I must act and speak according to standards not necessary for "mere" mortals. I must walk a straight-and-narrow path, or nothing I wish for will come true. Ever.

Light at the end of the Tunnel. (Encinitas, CA 9/09)

You must Unlearn what you have learned.

~Jedi Master Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back~

So this is what the Eye of the Needle initiation process has shown me, and brought to the surface of my Awareness before stripping it away. In the beginning, I had "beginning" Shadows to Work with and through; now that I'm advanced, the Shadows get deeper, denser, and more persistent. Coyote sits before me and holds up a mirror. Here are your illusions, kiddo, he says to me. What are you going to do with them?

I move to rewrite the remaining agreements of stuckness. I move to remove the proverbial rod from my ass and release my delusions of "specialness." (Yah, Wayne Dyer has a point after all. Word.) I move to stare down those things that persist in blocking me - namely, feelings of Lack and Scarcity - the Scar City in the mind - and fix them with the Laser Eyes of Doom until they dissolve. I won't be the first to look away! Most importantly, I move to replace Fear*full Resistance with Faith*full Acceptance. I've done enough growing the "hard" way; I'd like to try the "easy" way for a while. :-)

Appears to be a LONG way up... (Encinitas, CA 11/09)

 If that which you seek you find not within yourself, you shall never find it without. For behold: I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which you shall find at the (heart) of Desire.

~Doreen Valiente, Charge of the Goddess (slightly reworded)~

With the way cleared, perhaps I can answer some questions that have been dogging me: Who am I, and What am I supposed to be doing, in this New Reality? Karen Bishop (and others) had it correct - trying to act in the "old" ways doesn't work in this "new" reality. So what IS my true purpose?

The answers promise to be interesting, at the very least... :-)