when all of the images and dream to be's die-
and identity is threatening to abandon me
when the ideas of
and visions of, and
aspirations for
get stripped down to a haggard strand-
a threadbare silhouette flickering against
the luminous backdrop of life
what hand can possibly weave the singed
frays of fingers
gripping hard to hope
into a basket that holds the Wind
as the Gift?to think for one second that my every experience is not a perfect orchestration, a vital medicine, a unique coagulation of history repeating itself in endless cycles to see itself in a form that never was before, has always been and never again will be- a dazzling mess of love’s mastery in this epoch we call humanity-
that I am anything other than in service at every point of the wobbly pivot back towards Truth is a path walked upon hollow ground into a voiceless clearing where all that lovingly allies my breath has been reduced to a name that silences the Song- a death worse than disappearance itself.
and even all of that must go
“Mother, am I dying?”
I said a prayer. I asked to have misogyny erased from my body- my identity. The pretty and poised, the postures for pictures to please the eyes of those who I have mistakingly devoted my survival. The words someone wound around my tongue that forced me to take that fork in the road towards the false belonging of becoming somebody.
~It was all I had to sustain me- this body, this beauty. No “education”, loads of addiction, abuse and deep seated religious oppression and all I was left with to survive and be loved was how this body looked and performed. So I clung to it, obsessed over it all day every day. The whole potential of my life shrink wrapped into this 5’2”, 115lb, blonde, strong legged, “pretty” faced flesh suit.
I could not ever be present or focus on any passion as my precious attention, which is also my power, was always turned towards this body. My life force drained so that the beast could be sustained. Every fiber in my body is unwinding this and it’s wound tight. The old patterns continue to disguise themselves until an innocent walk, the same walk I have always done that I was warned not to do, and my back goes out. Gentle little one.
We still live in a world where pretty and popular are what get paid. It’s changing in some ways at a snails pace, but not fast enough to keep up with the AI game and its influence on beauty and identity. (This is a BIG topic)
I have had moments of wanting to be ugly and therefore free to be a true artist. Yet the dominant dialogue hovering in this part of me has mostly been “phew at least I am not ugly, fat, black, blue, red- old.”
What? Don’t tell me that you don’t have thoughts of this nature when you look out onto humanity. The majority of us are unaware of these thoughts because they have been fed through the dirty water we drink generation after generation. And then there are those who actually, proudly, display these thoughts- which are behind genocide and all slave systems.
These prejudices are sereptitiously, subconsciously wound into our collective DNA and misogyny is at the root as the attempted destruction and domination of women, the feminine, is the core theme of our convoluted, misinterpreted creation story. And since we are all born of the womb, of woman, and mother is our first taste of human life, then we are inborn with prejudice against various aspects of life, and on some level believe it to be ok. This begins within the individual casting off full aspects of herself in judgement, fear, shame and hate that will translate into the external life in various harmful ways.
Radical self honesty about this inheritance and awareness is the first step to freedom. Witness without judgement of what lives in the mind and body and you will begin to unwind the disease. One must know how it travels to forge a new pathway.
When an inheritance of this magnitude has lived in the DNA for hundreds of years and those strands are confronted with a daughter, or a group of daughters (people) as is our times, whose very presence unravels the blindfold, there will be a contorting of form and function, a reorganization of cells, a purge, a die off, a healing crisis. It will look like hell has landed upon her, when it is actually heaven healing her insides.
The fear will be high, there will be many impulses to fix and fight rather than sit witness in the unknown, reduced down to the question- so what is this pain, this illness anyway? If I don’t do something will I die? It’s all static in the mind with only a faint, familiar echo whispering a way through the dark that lights up the heart.
Yet, the patterns writhe in response, twist the mind to once again convince the heart that there is no such thing as something so loving. Until there comes a moment when trusting the whisper is all that is left.
There is an impulse to hide away in shame and an existential fear of rejection to go against the grain of a thousand year reign of dictated perfection and show up as a wretched, and necessary, form of medicine.
I just pulled out 25 handfuls of hair again today. The terror of what’s ahead rupturing my senses, I am barely sleeping. Part of me is riling with all of her might against this, trying to shove the full term wisdom back into the womb. This part of me fully believes she will die without her “beauty”. All I can do is cry with her, love her, let her still win in small enough ways that don’t create more of a fight.
A beloved elder/teacher/writer extraordinaire Nancy London sent me beautiful head scarves in the mail. Someone trying to console me relayed that Buddhists shave their heads to thwart the perpetuation of comparison and envy associated with the power that hair can hold. I am keeping a jar of the carnage. I will feed it to a flame, inhale the smell, celebrate death.
there is a rage I have suppressed under the fear of sounding like
a victim, a wound, a wretch.
coming out to be burned
can you tend this fire with me?
Identity
There are what I see as three layers of identity. Identity to feel “safe” in a system that only rewards an exact shape of things. This layer of identity is what must die when we hear of the infamous ego death on the healing path. The next is the necessity of identity to navigate life in a material plane. The third is absolute or true identity, which refers to the ever-present, undying, complete nature of our being. Differentiation of true vs. ego identity is what cultivates wisdom.
One of my dear friends and Non-Dual Spirituality teacher Erin Reese speaks to this here.
Wayne Dyer also states that proper use of ego is- Earth Guide Only. In other words, don’t worry, you get to keep the essential things, even adorn and take care of your gorgeous self, but on Life’s terms, in honor of Life’s terms. In this trust fall you land inside of what you have been seeking all along.
You won’t be lost in a haze of nebulous love and light unable to pay your bills or go to a music show. Or maybe you will- isn’t that terrifying?! Why is that terrifying?! I don’t mean to make light of this, it’s the deepest fear you will ever confront. Being stripped to what is most essential is your prayer answered.
The majority of humanity operates in the first two layers. We consume and give our attention to what we desire to identify with from a place of ego. Social media algorithms feed on this wound. If pretty and popular, wealthy and credentialed are what we believe will feed us, because it’s what we have been fed, then we will subconsciously gravitate towards that as “good, wise, successful, acceptable”, perpetuating misogyny as this systemic pattern is built upon it.
We dismember a whole entire body of wisdom, perpetuate our own identity crises and continue to build layers of personality (armor) that we believe will make us happy- which really means keep us safe from all of that other wretched stuff that will for sure alienate us. The greater the layers, the greater the suffering will be when letting go arrives at your door -as is the guarantee of life.
Misidentification is at the root of suffering. It is breads the existential fears we all carry as humans and therefore we lay vulnerably splayed open to manipulation by way of fear propaganda. Our major world religions water those roots with their misidentification of God and therefore Life.
They understood the power of darkness, half of the whole of life, and therefore turned whole populations against it creating a great split in the collective and individual psyche. It is the only reason war can break out in God’s name.
I was listening to a talk called Darkness as Medicine by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
She asked (paraphrased) “Do you honor Life?” Is it possible to honor Life when we only honor parts of life as Life?
It changed me. Although I had heard this simple question many times before in discrimination discourse , a part of me had opened to receive the depth of the medicine on this day, a true integration of healing wisdom.
There is the work. The great inescapable cliche of radical acceptance, loving what is, yada yada, as a path to freedom for all and healing of the separation wound. This is a wrestle on a war torn planet.
Can each of us track in our own identity where we divide and discriminate? Even if what we find is in opposition to what we see as evil- that is still a division, a judgement of life.
Can we travel the pathways of misogyny that wind back to that story about the first mother and allow yourself to feel the pain? What is this illness anyway? We will never know if we keep pushing it, and therefore the remedy, away.
~ ~Little shout out to my plant friends. Sure, yes, great for depression and many wonderful “recently discovered” things. But what do you really think the Goddess is up to with allowing this pop of plants shower over our culture right now? Well, hmmm- teach us about death certainly, true identity for sure, unity consciousness duh, the Mother wound yep, oh and everyone’s favorite- surrender and letting go.~ ~
If we want change there must be a death. Can we sit in that empty space between worlds when the appearance of annihilation threatens our core. Let’s breathe into the impulse to name ourselves too soon, to come up with escape routes and big fixes or we risk a miscarriage of the magic that knows exactly what is coming, what it’s doing, that contains a long forgotten blueprint for regeneration- a seed planted deep for a reason.
We must stay at the altar of our hearts and pray as the limbs fall and the mycelium listen for the new story from within the lessons of the old bones and make the medicine for these times. Can we lean into the waiting, the faithing and the writhing in the sweat drenched space between contractions? Simply put, can we be with the unknown, observe what feels like it might rip out our core and therefore open up the long sought potential to remember everything?
I Don’t Know
So I write all of this in a full blown ecstatic terror, mid death to a systemic disease within me. I wouldn’t blame you if you turned away to follow what’s pretty, heck I have done it all of my life and it’s why I am in - “what is really dying? And, I don’t know and I hate this, omg I have never known such love and I am done holding it all in if I am going to die.”
I write you from inside the birth chamber in case you should ever find yourself here (like now) and discover, as I have, that there are very few resources to turn to (but all the right ones show up)- which is also the point of the process.
I do know this though, every loss in my life has created space for extraordinary and unimaginable gain. And yet, that memory still pails in comparison to the thick veil of fear thrown over my/our innate wisdoms.
And hey, I am a woman. I chose this sacred form that says “I am made to let life birth through me knowing that it could kill me.” And, we would not birth if we didn’t know at the core that we can never die.
Namaste,
Shira
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Hello all! The reference to Zenju Earthlyn Manuel on Darkness as Medicine did not show up in the email sent out and I want to give proper credit to this incredible spiritual teacher. Thank you.
So powerful. You are amazing.