When I first saw this image I immediately recognized myself as a grandmother. I have had difficulty seeing myself as a grandmother ever since I found out I was going to be one and in this image I recognized that archetype in myself for the first time. I wasn't ready to be a mother when I became one, I did the best I could under the circumstances and with my limited knowledge of what the role of a healthy mother would feel like for a child but I always knew I was lacking.
After years of working on myself so as to embody the archetypal Mother and eventually (hopefully) the Crone (along with my natural 'Magician' archetype) I was concerned that when I get to see my granddaughter I won't be ready once again, to 'show up' for her the way a grandmother should. But then I saw this image and in an instant I saw the work I have done. Of course I see age but I also see experience, knowledge, love and a dignity that I never knew before. I see someone who has strived to be worthy of my heart's desires that are just now beginning to be fulfilled. I reflect with reverence on the journey I chose which was heavily influenced by the women before me - the Sages and Crones that passed on their anguish, their lessons, their hopes, their dreams and their love. I will continue to pull away at the layers laid on me by my past, appreciating what was once offered - trusting that as I continue to reveal my deepest self I will give the generations to follow the courage to appreciate what I and other ancestors offered without needing to adapt what does not serve a greater good. I will vow to honor the naivete of my youth as I honor the wisdom that comes with my advancing years.
0 Comments
We are often told that once your heart has been neglected, abandoned or broken that it will carry scars but what they don't tell you is how comfortable you can become with those scars. In the journey of healing, you become aware of your scars and through healthy self-love, you learn to stretch your heart around them. People come into your life, bursting your heart open in ways you never dreamed and you remember what love can feel like. Tears fall as the scars are stretched because you feel something you had forgotten you were worthy to feel. The simplest, sincere act of compassion and love can expose how terribly vulnerable you still are and you feel it in those scars. You begin to accept that this is part of what makes you who you are and it helps you connect to others in a more meaningful way so you treat your embarrassingly vulnerable expressions with the compassion you know you deserve.
As you become more adept at the process of transmutation, no longer seeing yourself as something that needs to be healed but instead someone with gifts to offer others, you will be sent people and circumstances to push your development further so you can step further into your truest potential. It's easy to become comfortable in our aloneness where it's safe and constant. Solitude predicates transcendence and transcendence can become addictive but once it is an addiction it's no longer transcendence. One of the many paradoxes of spiritual pursuits. The continued need to transcend can become a way to avoid what we are on Earth at this particular time to do. It can lead to disconnection when not in balance. When something happens to make you feel uncomfortable, to test your resolve, that is your lesson to unite heaven and earth within yourself and demonstrate it in all you do. What we aren't told is that sometimes, the deeper the love that comes along, the more uncomfortable it can be but in the best possible way. The best kind of love shows you the atrophied pieces of your heart buried in adhesions and brings it to life again. There's a pain that comes with this, a pain that reminds you of how these wounds came to be, simultaneously showing you how the past can still, ever-so-subtly affect you. If you want to keep growing you will have to let your heart stretch through and around everything that has kept it restricted. You will begin to forget why the adhesions came to be and only care about lovingly working through the pain of massaging and stretching them, knowing that doing this is to expand who you are and what you are capable of. This kind of love doesn't feel like falling, it feels like a mindful, intentional surrender to each of your greater good. This kind of love comes along to challenge you to decide if you want to remain comfortable and settled in how things are or if you are ready for an adventure that will change you and those you influence for the better if you allow it. Honor the past with reverence in all it had to offer you and release what is no longer helping your (or anyone else's) greater good. Trust yourself and trust the process as you explore love in a wise and profound way. Feel your heart guide you, your body doesn't lie. Learn the difference between your body warning you and your body ready to embrace something wonderful if you allow it to. Photographer: Ted Scanon of TedScanon Photography from a project we did together titled 'Becoming' With one brush of his hand, the past falls away like a silk slip delicately tumbling to the floor. You have asked for this moment in a thousand little specific and non-specific ways. You have asked to be confronted with all the work you have done, with how far you have come. You have asked to be faced with your progress and your limitations. You have asked for a safe space to witness every experience that has shaped you up to this moment, to have it reflected back to you and then to witness it leave you, no longer adding value to your life. You are completely reborn in this new moment, the past integrated and now nothing more than a tired dream you can choose to forget or recall on a whim.
In this moment you are fully present and aware because you promised yourself that much. You promised to embrace an opportunity like this as the gift that it would be. You have learned what unconditional love is and promised yourself that to be in that state you would need to be fully present, free of expectations, open to learn, to raise a new awareness, to go deeper into your self and to share that experience with just the right person; someone that would allow you to be safe and completely vulnerable without compromising themselves but instead stepping more fully within themselves along with you. Boundaries and needs are understood and honored so that unrealistic expectations can’t accidentally slip in. There is no past and there is no future, just this moment. Intention is a powerful thing and when two people create an agreed upon, mutual intention, magic happens. Moments like these show you that the deeper the love is that you have for yourself, the more you can trust yourself and your judgement. You can be patient because you know your worth. You can release expectations because you are already fulfilled. The right people will ask to be invited into that space and will command the same for themselves. You can both experience freedom and vulnerability because your faith is that strong, in yourself and how you connect to all things. This moment will shape you, bringing you closer to who you are striving to become if you simply allow it. Never before have I completely surrendered. My mind always clouded with impressions of past pain or fear of an agenda but this time would be different. This would be my first time completely present and vulnerable. An intimate dance played out energetically, physically and spiritually as we were able to explore our selves and each other in new ways. I witnessed my own fear-based impulse for control, explanations, or any other form of power and realized that I no longer need to get caught up in power plays and those impulses evaporated before they could even become. This wasn’t about a power struggle based on lack, an over-compensation or an escape. This was an empowering and healing dance between two people exploring the ultimate, healthy, divine masculine and ultimate, healthy, divine feminine and what that meant for our selves and for each other. There was nothing to prove. Our egos were laid to rest, if even for the moments we shared and that was our ascension. Over time, the deepest part of my self that I had to face was being challenged in a new way of what unconditional love truly means. Agape seems easier to come by when someone hurts you because you can relate to their pain on some level and sometimes empathy can be a bit of a crutch, but unconditional love also applies to the most exquisite interactions as well. Allowing something or someone to remain undefined so you can witness the unfolding is, in itself, a sacred act and an act of unconditional love not just for someone else but especially for you. Fear tries to make us think… well, think! Dissecting or defining something doesn't always make it more beautiful... manageable perhaps (and necessary at certain times) but not more beautiful. You allow the levels of and types of love you believe you're worth so as your self-worth grows in your own mind and heart, when you can make your own spirit soar, the various forms of love that enters your life is almost unfathomable. You have to step back in awe as you witness the expansiveness of true, soul-filled love and acceptance of people. Of course, the reality that perhaps no one can love you the way you can love you may be jarring, but the great thing is, that love is reflected back to you by the people you begin to align with. People rise up to meet you. They see and honor their own ability to love and accept another person as well. What if all love was simply a reflection of your own love? If everything is connected and everyone is a reflection, the love you're capable of offering is also the love you're capable of receiving... why shouldn't that begin with you? This image captured for me, that moment of deep, sacred reverence for the honor of being invited to share the space and the most intimate types of experiences that two people can share and all that it has done for me. This simple exercise, just laying in bed, changed my life! In response to a viewer's request, here is a body meditation to help you manage your own energy when feeling drained, especially if it's because of energy vampires, abusive or toxic situations and people.
Some choices and certain decisions can be tricky. You question yourself because when you look outside of yourself you hear other people's opinions as well as their fears and it clouds your judgement; you lose yourself in other people and become unknowingly obsessed with what they see in you and how your actions may change their perception of you. This vicious cycle never really satisfies anyone, especially if you're living a lie, because it doesn't actually satisfy those you want to make happy because if your decisions had that much bearing on their love for you... well, that isn't love at all. That's their fear and you being a victim, a pawn of someone else's fear, thus perpetuating fear and not love.
I look back on some of the major decisions I've made in my life, when I was influenced by others and when I stood firm in what I knew to be true and best for me in that moment; knowing that as circumstances change and I grow and evolve my decision may be different but in this moment, this is what is best... when I trusted my gut things worked out for the best. When I feel fear creeping in, I check in with that fear, is it a valid fear? Is this fear because I could be putting myself in real danger? Or is this fear based on someone else's perception of "right" and "wrong", "good" or "bad". One thing I've learned is that sometimes we are put in situations that compel us to demonstrate love in a way that others may question. Perhaps it's necessary for a karmic cycle, maybe we are reaping what we have sown, or maybe we are just being challenged to love unconditionally and demonstrate that, to prove it. When I'm faced with a difficult decision I ask myself questions to get clear. Am I really afraid or am I feeling what I imagine someone else would feel or think of me and my choice? If I were to die tomorrow or the next day, what would I regret more? Therein lies my best choice. All we have is each moment, nothing beyond that is guaranteed and if I'm coming from a deep space of love and inner knowing, of what I know to be true and I have no attachment to any particular outcome, no agenda, then I dive in. Sometimes these choices feel like sacrifices but in the long run, when you trust your decision they make you feel more alive and you radiate that love you demonstrated, even if it was just a courageous act of self-love, others still feel it; maybe not the people that are determined to condemn you if it doesn't fit what "they" would have done but it changes them for the better over time. Trust yourself and trust the process of your unfolding. |
Micah ~Micah's confessions and lessons that have helped with self-forgiveness, healing and acceptance. Categories
All
Archives
April 2020
|