Principle: Exposing your raw tenderness is not necessarily a demonstration of faith.
Practice: Give yourself time for raw places to develop strength before you expose them.
written 4/9/21 Friday
Good morning, Beloveds All: Isis, Sekhmet, Great Mother, Yeshua, Black Madonna, all guides, angels, wisdom practitioners. I’m deliberately practicing opening to You this morning, leaning into You, and I feel myself softening. I feel curious about the “vast unknown depths of self” today (see “Shedding an Old Skin” post). What will it be like to be a joyful, open, giving and receiving expression of You, Beloveds? I’m ready to let the old eggplant (which I detest) fall off my fork so I can pick up the yummy grilled salmon! The old beliefs and patterns need to go before I can start to welcome and “pick up” the new. Thank You for this day to walk this sacred Earth path with You, as You, through You.
So this puts me squarely in the unknown, with You, as You, through You, Mamas, and I need Your help to stay present here. In this place, I feel infinite possibility and I have released everything I think I know; I’m leading with my heart. The “suspension” prayer I’ve been saying (see "Practices") is working: Beloveds, please help me to set aside everything I think I know for an open mind and a new experience.” I’m permeable, fluid, no fixed shape, and that’s really unfamiliar, so I’m a beginner. Just feeling uncertain is new, tentative, exploratory. I want to conduct experiments and learn and grow. This is freedom from what I think I know; it’s presence in this moment with You, Beloveds, open and available.
I’ll be dancing in and out of this space with You – I am still human – and now I have this experience of being One with You. It’s not a “peak experience;” there are no bells, no fireworks, no heady expansion. I’m a spiritual being having a human experience. And what I do know in my heart right now is that I am Your beloved and that this experience is always available. You have planted a seed in my heart that we will water and love and tend together. You are my Source, and I am Your priestess.
Yesterday in therapy, I got to see how, when I have an opening like this and feel vulnerable as a result, I sometimes “lead with my chin.” That is, I make myself vulnerable to an upper cut by sticking my chin out. I’ll expose my tenderness too soon, when I still feel really raw, and then feel devastated when someone who doesn’t understand gives me an upper cut. I haven’t given myself the spaciousness to protect that tenderness until it’s strong enough to withstand someone not understanding and criticizing. That’s something I need to learn.
What I see now is that it’s like I expect everyone to respect and take care with my tenderness, to be gentle with my vulnerability – and that’s just not realistic. I’ve also believed that exposing rawness is a demonstration of faith, like I expect the Beloveds to protect me from being hurt. But that's not Your job, Mamas. So part of taking care of myself is learning when and how and with whom to expose my vulnerability. I do feel really tender and vulnerable around claiming that I am an expression of You. If someone were to challenge or criticize me for that, those new shoots might wither and die. I have agency and responsibility for protecting myself from that.
And this new understanding is prompting me to wonder if I’ve sometimes been “leading with my chin” in my blog posts. So I’m going to review past posts with an eye toward that. I don’t really expect to change or delete any of them, but I may add some commentary or make some revisions. I now see the need to protect these new, tender shoots with You from being crushed prematurely. Thank You, Mamas – and blessed be!
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