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Lessons, from all sides, have been piecing themselves together into an "a-ha!" moment. I'm not sure I can explain my personal epiphany or where it all came from, but I wanted to try.
I've been inspired lately by Nicole Bouchard Boles' book How to Be an Everyday Philanthropist. It has hundreds of suggestions on how to live a life of daily philanthrophy using the resources you already have to spare. It encourages me to know that if I share what I have, on a small, sustainable scale, that I can do good in the world every day that I'm on it. Reading through the sort of menu of ideas and cobbling together what works with my own circumstances has been so inspirational. I can remember in elementary school telling people I wanted to be a philanthropist when I grew up. (If it wasn't a "ballerina" kinda day.) I'm only now getting into the mindset that it isn't something to aspire to in the future, when I'm organized and I have a lot of disposable income and my son isn't quite so dependent upon my time. It is something I can choose to be, choose to embody already. Quite a mind-shift there.
Mystery School at Diana's Grove has raised some interesting questions for me. Somewhere in the material or the resulting conversation, I came across that concept where theologian Frederick Buechner described a vocation, "[It is] the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need." I was reading another theologian who dug into the concept a little and talked about how, if you start with the world's need, you get nowhere. It is too immense. Everywhere, need. Anyone with any empathy can feel the edges of that need, sense the size and shape of that hole. Nobody could get out of it. How often do we get the barest sense of that abyss and back away by shutting down emotionally? I know that is what allowed me, for years, to eat meat even though it went against my own personal ethics. I backed away and shut down to the reality of what it meant to me. Clearly, if we gathered on the edge together and looked into the yawning depths of despair and deprivation, we'd never begin anything. Instead, I must start with my own abilities, my own renewable resources, my unique talents and passions that urge me where to direct the small sparkles of effort I can contribute to the darkness of the world's troubles. What a life I would be living if it was shaped to the purpose of being love! What are my abilities and talents? I have more trouble with that. I do know what the Call sounds like, though, I know the feeling of reading a news-story, more often about children than anything else, and sobbing. I know the feeling that energizes me, even for just a moment, with the lightning bolt of, "I Must DO Something!".
Mystery School discussed the nature of heroism, too. Heroes were defined at one point as the people who keep getting up after they're knocked down. They aren't perfect and they aren't some elite predestined group--an unattainable level of mankind--they just choose to keep getting up. That's it. The sole quality of heroism. That shook me to the core. In the mailing lists, someone asked what helps you get back up when you've fallen or stumbled in life. I couldn't answer because, unlike other respondents, I didn't think I had much of an inner cheerleader spurring me on. I think when I stumble or fall, I'm the opposite of my own cheerleader. I've been, in the past, the voice of my own self-doubt. If I trip up, I've used it as an affirmation that I wasn't the person for the job--I wasn't good enough, talented enough, strong enough, organized enough, enough enough to be the hero that I wanted to be. At the core of all that self-doubt, there is the despair that tells me that I don't matter in the scheme of the world, that my life has not lived up to my potential, that I'm not important, that I'm without worth. That is the wound at the heart of me.
I met this banyan tree in the park the other day. It was fairly young and hadn't yet gotten any prop roots to grow from its branches down to the ground. Instead, it was curved around itself tightly in a tangle of bark, like a trunk of rolling snakes, to keep its weighty branches aloft. I put my hand out to her and felt the soreness. "Oh, Mama Banyan! What has happened to you in life?". I looked up along her great curving branches and found the source of that pain. Two of her main branches had curved alongside each other and there was a giant half-healed sore there where the wind sawed them against each other as a constant irritation. She couldn't get out of her own way. She couldn't help but hurt herself. She bore the scars of pruning and wind damage but nothing compared to that giant wound of her own making. Isn't that the way of it for me? Aren't I a banyan spirit whose greatest injuries don't come from outside influences but from the barbs I've laid that tear and worry at my energy, my sense of self?
And in another spiritual group, we discussed our Sun Signs and the lessons they are bringing us as individuals in life. I'm a Libra Sun and I have always thought I had that pretty much down pat. I'm fair and balanced, I'm diplomatic and logical, I eschew drama in search of harmony. I had this realization, though, that I'm lacking in balance. I'm invested in relationship and in doing so, I often neglect my own needs. I want others to feel harmonious so I don't always take a stand when something is important to me. I have trouble claiming what I need for my own self without feeling that is being, in fact, selfish. (One of the worst curse words my Libra mind can come up with...along with any thing along the lines of declaring what I "deserve". *shudder*) I am lacking in balance between meeting the needs of others and meeting those of myself. I don't always have to come last, do I?
It is time to dedicate to an element for the year. I am dedicating to water. At the full moon ritual, when I was so immediately connected to the divine, I felt my energy as an overfull glass of water, cascading the excess as more poured in. I was an open vessel of abundance. There was no scarcity within me, no wound, no self-doubt. I was embodying the Ace of Cups. I've often felt that I shouldn't dedicate to water or air as they are so much a part of me already. It felt like a cop-out, an alliance that would be too easy to take on. And yet...the full moon ritual, the meeting with the banyan, the realization that I'm not the balanced Libra I'd like to think, the hero getting back up, the everyday philanthropy, all of it moved together into my mind in one click. I am a compassionate being and yet I rarely, if ever, spare compassion for myself. If I become an embodied Ace of Cups, I must first fill my own cup to overflowing and then that energy, that healing and compassion and philanthropic passion will pour outward. I will not be living in scarcity if I drink first myself. There is enough for all of us--including me.
All this time, like Kore, I've walked without looking behind me. I've wandered and worried about all that I couldn't do. I've fallen and refused to go onward. I've been the thorn in my own side, the poison in my own cup. I have wanted to matter and yet refused myself the self-compassion of looking backward and acknowledging the wake of flowers that have sprouted like a cloak of small, bright miracles behind me.
I am the hero in my own life's story. Now to stop being my own hero-self's villain, too. Love and compassion trumps all and there is enough for all...including me.
I've been inspired lately by Nicole Bouchard Boles' book How to Be an Everyday Philanthropist. It has hundreds of suggestions on how to live a life of daily philanthrophy using the resources you already have to spare. It encourages me to know that if I share what I have, on a small, sustainable scale, that I can do good in the world every day that I'm on it. Reading through the sort of menu of ideas and cobbling together what works with my own circumstances has been so inspirational. I can remember in elementary school telling people I wanted to be a philanthropist when I grew up. (If it wasn't a "ballerina" kinda day.) I'm only now getting into the mindset that it isn't something to aspire to in the future, when I'm organized and I have a lot of disposable income and my son isn't quite so dependent upon my time. It is something I can choose to be, choose to embody already. Quite a mind-shift there.
Mystery School at Diana's Grove has raised some interesting questions for me. Somewhere in the material or the resulting conversation, I came across that concept where theologian Frederick Buechner described a vocation, "[It is] the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need." I was reading another theologian who dug into the concept a little and talked about how, if you start with the world's need, you get nowhere. It is too immense. Everywhere, need. Anyone with any empathy can feel the edges of that need, sense the size and shape of that hole. Nobody could get out of it. How often do we get the barest sense of that abyss and back away by shutting down emotionally? I know that is what allowed me, for years, to eat meat even though it went against my own personal ethics. I backed away and shut down to the reality of what it meant to me. Clearly, if we gathered on the edge together and looked into the yawning depths of despair and deprivation, we'd never begin anything. Instead, I must start with my own abilities, my own renewable resources, my unique talents and passions that urge me where to direct the small sparkles of effort I can contribute to the darkness of the world's troubles. What a life I would be living if it was shaped to the purpose of being love! What are my abilities and talents? I have more trouble with that. I do know what the Call sounds like, though, I know the feeling of reading a news-story, more often about children than anything else, and sobbing. I know the feeling that energizes me, even for just a moment, with the lightning bolt of, "I Must DO Something!".
Mystery School discussed the nature of heroism, too. Heroes were defined at one point as the people who keep getting up after they're knocked down. They aren't perfect and they aren't some elite predestined group--an unattainable level of mankind--they just choose to keep getting up. That's it. The sole quality of heroism. That shook me to the core. In the mailing lists, someone asked what helps you get back up when you've fallen or stumbled in life. I couldn't answer because, unlike other respondents, I didn't think I had much of an inner cheerleader spurring me on. I think when I stumble or fall, I'm the opposite of my own cheerleader. I've been, in the past, the voice of my own self-doubt. If I trip up, I've used it as an affirmation that I wasn't the person for the job--I wasn't good enough, talented enough, strong enough, organized enough, enough enough to be the hero that I wanted to be. At the core of all that self-doubt, there is the despair that tells me that I don't matter in the scheme of the world, that my life has not lived up to my potential, that I'm not important, that I'm without worth. That is the wound at the heart of me.
I met this banyan tree in the park the other day. It was fairly young and hadn't yet gotten any prop roots to grow from its branches down to the ground. Instead, it was curved around itself tightly in a tangle of bark, like a trunk of rolling snakes, to keep its weighty branches aloft. I put my hand out to her and felt the soreness. "Oh, Mama Banyan! What has happened to you in life?". I looked up along her great curving branches and found the source of that pain. Two of her main branches had curved alongside each other and there was a giant half-healed sore there where the wind sawed them against each other as a constant irritation. She couldn't get out of her own way. She couldn't help but hurt herself. She bore the scars of pruning and wind damage but nothing compared to that giant wound of her own making. Isn't that the way of it for me? Aren't I a banyan spirit whose greatest injuries don't come from outside influences but from the barbs I've laid that tear and worry at my energy, my sense of self?
And in another spiritual group, we discussed our Sun Signs and the lessons they are bringing us as individuals in life. I'm a Libra Sun and I have always thought I had that pretty much down pat. I'm fair and balanced, I'm diplomatic and logical, I eschew drama in search of harmony. I had this realization, though, that I'm lacking in balance. I'm invested in relationship and in doing so, I often neglect my own needs. I want others to feel harmonious so I don't always take a stand when something is important to me. I have trouble claiming what I need for my own self without feeling that is being, in fact, selfish. (One of the worst curse words my Libra mind can come up with...along with any thing along the lines of declaring what I "deserve". *shudder*) I am lacking in balance between meeting the needs of others and meeting those of myself. I don't always have to come last, do I?
It is time to dedicate to an element for the year. I am dedicating to water. At the full moon ritual, when I was so immediately connected to the divine, I felt my energy as an overfull glass of water, cascading the excess as more poured in. I was an open vessel of abundance. There was no scarcity within me, no wound, no self-doubt. I was embodying the Ace of Cups. I've often felt that I shouldn't dedicate to water or air as they are so much a part of me already. It felt like a cop-out, an alliance that would be too easy to take on. And yet...the full moon ritual, the meeting with the banyan, the realization that I'm not the balanced Libra I'd like to think, the hero getting back up, the everyday philanthropy, all of it moved together into my mind in one click. I am a compassionate being and yet I rarely, if ever, spare compassion for myself. If I become an embodied Ace of Cups, I must first fill my own cup to overflowing and then that energy, that healing and compassion and philanthropic passion will pour outward. I will not be living in scarcity if I drink first myself. There is enough for all of us--including me.
All this time, like Kore, I've walked without looking behind me. I've wandered and worried about all that I couldn't do. I've fallen and refused to go onward. I've been the thorn in my own side, the poison in my own cup. I have wanted to matter and yet refused myself the self-compassion of looking backward and acknowledging the wake of flowers that have sprouted like a cloak of small, bright miracles behind me.
I am the hero in my own life's story. Now to stop being my own hero-self's villain, too. Love and compassion trumps all and there is enough for all...including me.
