Pink Moon (Part Six): Counting Myself
Aug. 3rd, 2010 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
windinthemaples
Separating my experiences at Diana's Grove the weekend before my surgery, the hurt and healing of the surgery saga itself, the month of working on compassion and other "Pink" topics in Temple of the Twelve, and everything else that has been unsaid for so many weeks is impossible. It is such a tangle! Everywhere, lately, I've been discovering wise words about wounds and compassion in such a synchronous flood that it is impossible to ignore how important the lesson must be for me to learn. I'd love to be able to compartmentalize it into neat single-topic entries here and yet I can't cut it cleanly apart. So, eventually I'll talk about Diana's Grove and how some of those moments fold back into some of my surgery moments and my healing moments and my Temple of the Twelve moments. For now, though, as best as I can, I wanted to tell you what I learned about my third, and greatest, heart wound.
I don't count myself.
This month, my Pink Month with Temple of the Twelve, I accepted a few challenges. I agreed to dig for and uncover my three greatest heart wounds. I vowed to take steps to heal those wounds and to develop, in particular, a long-range strategy for the healing of the largest of these. I intended to act in a mindfully compassionate manner every day. I dared to stand my ground, at least, and stop running from love in all its forms as it made its way towards me. I would do (and record) one kind thing for someone else each day of the month. Tall order, all of that, from such a gentle color! :)
Following my surgery, I was doing some mid-moon musing on all the ways that this month has changed me and I have risen to the challenges Pink set before me. I've realized that I was shorting those around me by giving generously but carefully avoiding having to receive love/gifts/favors/encouragement/compliments/you name it in return. I wasn't allowing people to really connect with me, to know me beyond my surface layers. I've learned a lot about wounds--the way they stick around only because I feed them, the way that they can be honored by me and yet not sustained, and to appreciate their making as opportunities for compassionate growth within me. I've enjoyed the feeling of gifting myself with flowers for the sheer beauty and enjoyment of the act or surprising loved ones and strangers with tokens of appreciation and magick. I've affirmed for myself how inseparable my compassion and my service of priestessing are intertwined. There was one thing, though, that I had not done. I did not record my daily acts of kindness. Two days ago, I was quite certain, I would be repeating my Pink month in order to meet that obligation fairly.
It isn't that I didn't share a smile or a kind word, an encouraging note, a meal, or a gift with someone every day. Chances are good that I did. I left small "Believe" cards behind on bus benches and subway seats with random quotes about faith and accomplishment. I contributed uplifting, beloved books to the neighborhood free book exchange box. I called a rescue organization and did my best to aid a young pigeon in peril. I bought a meal and extra groceries for a neighborhood homeless man I've sailed past apologetically in the past. I poured my heart into the natal chart readings I did for people. I gave away gifts both small and large. I made a point to cheer all the people who crossed my path--nurses, cashiers, bus drivers. I wrote thank you notes in my hospital bed to the staff who delivered my food, checked my blood pressure, wheeled my bed from place to place. What I didn't do, though, was record any of it. I had failed in that obligation, completely, and would have to start over again next new moon.
On Lammas, all the things I had to mentally unpack wove together into one all-encompassing sense of insight. One part of that new knowledge is that my not-recording my good deeds is actually a symptom of my greatest heart wound--I do not count myself. I think that everyone around me is so beautiful, so heroic, so worthy of praise. I love the spark of the divine within their eyes and watch with sheer admiration the loving work their hands do in the world. They may not see their strength, their light, the difference their lives are making in the world--but I do. Me, though, I do not count myself. What I do is ordinary and flawed and always-too-little, so I do not count myself. When I achieve things that make my soul sing, they are soon forgotten. When I fall short of my expectations for myself, however, I remember those things forever.
At Diana's Grove, we were encouraged in ritual to string beads of challenge onto a string representing our life. Instead of counting our lives as a series of failures, we were pushed to rewrite those challenges into victories--even if that victory was merely surviving the hard time. I cannot tell you how much I wept. I see everyone for their victories, for their purest motives and most untarnished qualities, and myself I sketch in negative space. Here's where I fell, chose badly, stepped awry, took too long, wasted potential, wasted time, wasted space, did not do that which I knew was right. Here is where I screwed up my Pink Month's endeavours by not writing something down each day.
So slowly and finally, the messages are starting to sink in from the month. On Lammas, it all came together in one knowing--I am deserving of an equal share of compassion. It is a given that I am flawed, that I am challenged by this life and that I don't always respond in the way that I would wish. It is a given that I act sometimes out of fear instead of love, out of pain instead of wisdom. This is a given for everyone. This is not why I don't deserve compassion but rather why I require it. I must begin to count myself. I am as beautiful, as important and immortal and precious, as those who catch my eye and my heart and my admiration around me.
I must count myself, number my victories instead of my failures, and lend myself the compassion I need to truly thrive and grow and dare.
~*~
This month, I ran across two phenomenal pink items from a catalog of inspirational gifts for women. They made me weep with joy and soul-deep longing, so I bought them. There would be women aplenty in my life that I could gift them to. That is my way, when I see wonderful things, I want to give them to wonderful people. One, a small blank journal, reads on the cover, "She just had this way of brightening the day." The other, a portable folding picture frame, read on the outside cover, "She makes the world a better place." For Lammas, as an act of compassion to myself, I gave those gifts to myself. I will not redo my month of Pink, unless my New Moon time with Lady Pink convinces me otherwise, but part of my long-term task of healing my wound of not-counting-myself, I am keeping track in my little pink book my kindnesses of the day--for myself and for others. Into the picture frame, I slipped a photo of myself and a trimmed down card from the same "She..." line that reads, "She listened to her heart above all the other voices."
It feels too extravagantly, embarrassingly kind to myself and yet also, I know soul-deep, true. I have trouble holding onto the knowledge in the midst of all my self-criticism, but I am good and loving and compassionate and influential. The less I doubt myself, the more impossible, world-changing things I can achieve.
We are all necessary, irreplaceable, glorious lights in this life, finding the places where our unique abilities are cried out for, altering forevermore the lives of those we touch, shaping the world with our love and compassion--and I-Am-Counting-My-Self!
(I hope you will, too.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 12:22 am (UTC):D
{{{{hugs}}}}
no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 06:01 pm (UTC)Oh my gods. This is amazing, incredible. Wow. :)
Wow.
*so, so, so, so very much love*
no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 12:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 06:53 pm (UTC)You are so beautiful, my Lady.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 12:29 am (UTC){{{hugs}}}
no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 08:10 pm (UTC)Much love.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 12:30 am (UTC)And so much love! You are a phenomenal woman and I'm thrilled and honored and absolutely delighted to be walking my Temple of the Twelve year with you. {{{{{hugs}}}}}}
no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 12:04 am (UTC)It doesn't surprise me that the month of pink is a tangle! It is a mix of such dynamic colours; white and red. It's hard to contain those and then pink as well and it not end up tangly!
Two days ago, I was quite certain, I would be repeating my Pink month in order to meet that obligation fairly.
I am almost certain at this point I'll have to repeat Pink Month, with where I'm at. I hope that I don't, but my fear and trepidation... well, it will either come all at once! Or it will take its time, but either way, I suspect a repeating of Pink Month.
When I achieve things that make my soul sing, they are soon forgotten.
This breaks my heart. I know it so well, and it is so sad that others go through it. I mean I know they do, but I think you are beautiful, and wise, and so authentic, and that breaks my heart. But you are on the journey to count yourself, it is amazing and humbling to witness.
I see so much similarity between us as you share your journey, and I hope you don't find me ignorant or presumptuous to say so, since I am still just getting to know you, and I could be very wrong. But witnessing your own strength, light, courage, I am blessed. Just your presence in my life is a blessing, no matter how you feel on the day, about yourself.
Thank you for sharing this.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 12:46 am (UTC)Me, too! I've decided that I'm not taking it down anytime soon. It has become more of an altar to me, somehow, or a focus on being kind to myself, and I both need and love the daily reminder of that concept. I think it contains every pink item I own! :D
It is a mix of such dynamic colours; white and red.
This never occurred to me. I mean, it is somehow too obvious to have come to mind. Pink is a color that I feel so safe and cozy with whereas Red, to me, is one of those trigger colors for me that makes me uncomfortable and darty-eyed. Perhaps this is gently introducing me to some of those issues early, desensitizing me just enough so that when Red does appear during the year, I don't dart off like a rabbit.
I am almost certain at this point I'll have to repeat Pink Month, with where I'm at.
Maybe so. If you get to the stage of buying yourself flowers and luxuriating in bubble baths and super soft cartoon socks, it might be worth repeating! ;) The comforting part for me was that Pink says from the start that her work takes time and so she sticks around to prop up her people and help them continue their healing while they move on to work with other colors. That's comforting to know, that I don't have to have this all sorted out by the end of the month--I just have to kinda know where the ouchie parts are and slowly stop avoiding them.
I see so much similarity between us as you share your journey, and I hope you don't find me ignorant or presumptuous to say so, since I am still just getting to know you, and I could be very wrong.
Let me be even more presumptuous so you won't have to feel awkwardly presumptuous anymore. :D I believe, wholeheartedly, that we will become and remain friends to the end of our days. I've only just met you and already you are so dear to me, so important, so vital to my growth. Your strength, self-awareness, and courage astound me. That you feel that way about me, in any measure, is unreal. I guess it only confirms what I already know--we were meant to meet and have a lot to share and mirror back to each other. If I can convince you that you are even half as valued and magickal and delightful as you actually are, I'll have done my job in our friendship. And it seems like, with my mercurial self-image, I need the same sort of reality check from time to time. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 03:06 am (UTC)I'm so glad you're having these self-realizations, seeing what we see every time we see you. You do brighten every day, and you definitely make the world a better place. I love you, all of you. ♥
no subject
Date: 2010-08-06 01:30 pm (UTC)It is part of my special charm--my predictability. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-06 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 01:22 pm (UTC)I feel so, so blessed to know you. You are wonderful and amazing and inspirational. And human and breathing and loving.