I have been patiently praying for God to reveal *Herself in me for the well spring of poetry to break through. But there are these stubborn stories clogging the way that I try to shovel aside as I cry for Beauty’s grace.
They don’t budge against my frustrations. They persist, offering long wilted flowers in their hands asking why they aren’t beautiful too.
No wonder I am constipated. Because life can only smell like roses or the Gardener must have a black thumb and therefore be a failure.
There is an old remedy in the ancient Vedic texts made with Cow dung. It helps the garden inside the mind grow beauty from its sorrows so that the body can again be bright by way of decay.
Spirals of earth, water, fire, wind, etheric wonder, storms that rise and kingdoms that fall. For what does God look like really?
~ This course hair growing out of an old mole
The little bit of stubborn fungus on my big toe
The pain in my jaw after my teen boyfriend held my head down in his lap for an hour or else he threatened to ruin my life.
This young girl snorting white lines to stay skinny in her heart and numb in her mind.
Bags of stolen goods, oh the thrill
Meeting the hot waiter in the abandoned banquet room while my blind date sat alone at the table for two in the swanky downtown grill. (He even paid the bill)
Sour puke on my breath but he kissed me anyway
The bloodshot eyes after another trip to the bathroom while everyone looked away
Tens of thousands of dollars vomited into the belly of the sewer
Tens of thousands of prayers to the porcelain Gods to renew her
The famous baseball player who took me to his hotel because my ass was “so tight”
Sneaking out of my father’s house in the dark of night seeking to feel any sort of light.
Doing what I could to stay in the corporate game with no “education” and a resume of shame
The big boss trying to get in my pants for 8 years while I never said anything
Shoes drenched in sweat after running and running and running and running
“Wow look at your body, you are so stunning”~
An unclean God, a haggard God, a demon possessed God. The way God functions when parts are denied and slandered.
A mysterious form of Love. The way the wound functions for the birth of the medicine. The is-ness of forgetfulness.
What She looks like when She is silenced, not Silent as in the supreme posture of peace and power, but a suffocating silence.
In a system that weaponizes illness and death what else would you expect?
In a society that hides the underbelly of the gold which story could be told?
In ancient Indian spirituality, one of Shiva’s many (the lord of all creation to oversimplify), depictions is Nataraja. He dances in a circle of fire with 5 limbs, each representing a state of consciousness on the path of awakening.
One of these limbs is crossing himself, veiling an aspect that is not yet awakened, all the while pointing at a dancing foot which beholds the pathway back home if the veiled aspect chooses. This is to say that within God there lives a subconscious denial of God in order to awaken to God.
This is the mystery birthing every mystery school tradition cross culturally and the impetus that sparks the Heroine’s journey. Depicted in all ancient texts, every sea scroll, every cave drawing there is this symbolic, which can take shape as the literal, “battle” between dualities, between good and evil for the evolution of humanity’s awakening. It’s collectively and personally inherent.
Yet to fight it, try to fix it, demonize and deny it, is to become blind to what it is trying to shepherd you towards. It beckons a correction in perception and the supportive lifestyle practices, not a complex solution.
How could it all be God? Only your unique path holds the answer. I do not have it for you. I do not have it at all, or I again veil myself. It’s all a divine play for you to view yourself in the proper way. Yet, we fear it for many reasons, mainly due to the mislabeling of the veiling as suffering.
Each day I have demonized parts of myself, berating myself for not being such and such. Waiting to be all the things. Shaping God to look like something more before I shared Her. Hiding aspects away in shame and therefore denying union with what I was perpetually seeking, creating loops of suffering. I wanted to just move on and talk about Love—
The wounds with wilted flowers in hand “am I NOT Love?!”
Yet, there is a wisdom to timing as words and stories told hold a vibration that can free or enslave the speaker if she is speaking from an illusory identity that can pull her back to the past. And it’s still a gamble.
There are many reasons for this confusion. Our deviations from natural law are at the root, which sprout a society that equates external accomplishments, possessions and physical appearance with power and love- and therefore a subconscious misunderstanding of God.
None of these material expressions are “bad”. It is how they are positioned in society that creates harm. They are the arm veiling the pathway to true freedom, security and sense of worth.
Most of us are deeply conditioned (no blame) to continue turning towards the dangling golden carrot that, if we saw things through the unbroken lens, we would realize is long rotten- and then bless the moldy little saint for its wisdom.
So what does God look like?
I told Her she must be pretty to play, so in a divine rage she scratched out my eyes until I became blind to all light but the One flickering in the heart. That can be a long walk home if you’re lucky. For along that path are the most exquisite treasures, best of friends and your One True Love.
P.S
Please become a paid subscriber and help me build a sanctuary for helping others along their path. Everyone and their “un Godly” parts will be welcome. For as much as one or two cups of coffee depending on where you live. Thank you. Shira
*I refer to God as Her for at this time that is how God is expressing in my life. God is also Lord of creation. The many aspects are fluid.
This is very profound writing for me, Shira. Thank you 🙏 your honesty is inspiring.
I read a piece recently about grief, and the part of it that jumped off the page at me was ‘we must forgive ourselves for NOT being loved’ This is the NOT love I feel in your words.
Here is the full article, that you may appreciate. It was posted in a Grief group I’m in, as part of NAAS and the. Sanity project. It really resonated with me. I thought you may find it pertinent. And others may appreciate it also ❤️
"There are losses we carry in our nervous systems that we do not know how to name.They whisper to us through our longing, prayers; even the ways we get caught in loops we can't understand how to break free of.
They repeat themselves over time, revisiting this place we haven't been taught about, worse yet is spiritualized into an illusion we dissociate from.
It's an ache deep in the center of our hearts that carries a feeling of being wrong or wronged, unworthy, scared or disconnected from all that is good in prosperity, health, love, pleasure, belonging and ultimately the freedom of our liberation.
These kinds of losses live beneath what we call negative beliefs, though it is often not the belief that is the issue because the belief arose as a response to this loss that we cannot name.We cannot name it because we aren't trained to see it as a loss, but as a failing on our part. We are trained to "work on ourselves" until we hit the magic formula, whatever that is for us. If we can't find it, we aren't working hard enough.
We are trained to turn a blind eye to some truths in our society,, family or social cultures, to sign unconscious contracts to stay in codependency with unconscious belief systems born out of a lack of love.
We take unconscious vows to remain loyal to suffering as love.
This is the biggest loss we have yet to name, the lack of love.
The love that never was.
The needs that were never met.
The heart that yearned to be seen but was not.
The body that ached to be respected, but was not.
The soul that called some genius forward that was rejected.
Our unique way of seeing that made others uncomfortable, so we turned away from our inner eye.
The pain of others that was never loved transferred into our hearts.
The trauma that taught us it wasn't okay to feel happiness or joy or pleasure without a cost.
The innocence of our aliveness that was shut down because that is what is expected.
Our society is generally deeply disconnected from love, from the celebration of our true humanity. It is not driven by soul but by a constantly moving bottom line.
We develop inside a consciousness that trains us that "not love" is love, so when we don't trust love we embark on shadow work, when really it is "not love' we don't trust and love we don't know how to open into relationship with.
It seems easier for us to embark on an endless shadow excavation to figure out what is "wrong" with us, to alter our beliefs or find new strategies in order to try gain what we long for, than to acknowledge that what we needed when we were developing was love. And, that it is this love that we are truly longing for.
There is a grief in our longing for love, a grief for what never was we must turn to with our own presence, love and forgiveness.
This gives us the resilience, the capacity to look into the eyes of the intergenerational transmission of "not love," to forgive "not love" and claim our birthright to change this nervous system patterning our body continues to live out.Not only for ourselves, but for where we came from, what comes forth from us and who we are meant to be.
Grieving that we weren't loved the way we needed, for what never was, frees us from the loops of lovelessness.
It helps us return to a loving relationship with ourselves, where we no longer act out what was internalized towards ourselves.
An intelligence wakes up inside of us that carries us safely to the shores of loving-kindness to the totality of all we are.
Grieving releases self-blame and replaces it with an honoring of self, of what was lived and survived, what really happened.
Grief is love, it is loving to honor what never was in order to make space for love to flow into these broken open spaces in our hearts.
Grieving clears out the beliefs, because beliefs are just our minds way of trying to make sense of the pain in a world that denies grief (love) and would rather have us turn on ourselves, and each other, than look at "not love" in the eye and say no more, I will learn how to love you, learn how to love here.
We must forgive ourselves for not being loved.
For it is not our fault those who are in pain, who were not loved themselves, could lot love us.
In our grief, we let ourselves off the hook for what is not ours to carry.
Our hearts open to the world around us in a new way and worthiness, flourishing and natural, innate genius of aliveness takes hold. We remember we are a part of this larger ecosystem. That we belong. That God, Eros, the divine mother always loves us, always forgives us and we can always, always begin again.
This is the woman who wrote it.
https://www.dreamingawake.org
getting down to the bone here, darling...."am I NOT love?" loving you and your words.xoxox