BEYOND HER BEAUTIFUL
"There are no accidents! There are only mirrors!"
-Chapter 1-
"There is a psychological condition inherent in human beings which sabotages their dreams of greatness and relegates them to live in mediocrity and conformity." Academy of Ideas.
She is late as usual...and I am mildly annoyed. It's one of her signature things, being late. As she enters the restaurant, she hurries a little, as if to demonstrate to me how hard she has tried to be on time. We hug, and I can no longer maintain my annoyance at her. As we find our usual booth, I notice she is wearing her red and black checked lumberman's PJ top with what looks like a lump of dirt on the right upper hand side. Unconsciously, I reach to scratch it off with my index finger while asking her, "What's that...?". I realise just as my finger touches, and I begin to scratch, that I have misjudged her anatomy somewhat. "My boob...", she casually replies with a smile as if she is talking to a toddler with a huge curiosity about the female body. I blush like a beet.
I have not seen her in months, and it's hard for me to reconcile the feelings that I have for her that begin to surface as I visually embrace her presence. Her skin is absolutely unblemished, porcelain, not a wrinkle to be seen, her eyes bright and clear, with more than a hint of playfulness. Her lips are full and the most beautiful shade of pink. She knows it and never fails to apply her lip gloss once she knows she has my attention. Her long beautiful hair is naturally golden and worn in a bun. She does know how beautiful I think it is down but always wears it in a bun, typically pausing in the midst of our discussions, to take it out of the bun and let it flow over her shoulders, just for a moment, as if to rearrange it. She is teasing me, of course, and it is a part of our dance.
However, while my interest in her physical beauty is clearly acknowledged and appreciated, that is not why I am there.
She carries the energetic imprint of the Goddess, that remarkable tenderness and compassion of the Sacred Feminine, while at the same time carrying the courage and passion of the Sacred Warrior, all within her heart. She is a lioness able to spring into action in an instant...but for now, she rests. She is not yet fully aware of who she is, her high calling, and her ultimate giftedness. This is, however, still remains hidden from her consciousness ... protected by walls, moats, fierce wild animals, land mines, and all manner of defences. I know this from personal experience. I have lost several of my lives trying to approach this Sacred place. Once, on one of my journeys, I met her inner child...all shabbily dressed, dirt-smudged all over her waif-like body. She carried a sign which said, "not here"! I asked this little girl what she was doing ... and she answered, "hiding my light."
The irony is that the more she is still busy trying to hide her light, the more her natural brilliance comes seeping through, and all her efforts to keep herself small are of little or no avail. I have a saying on my office wall that reads, "It is painful to be small when you are called to be Great!". For her, this comes in the form of anxiety and dreadful apprehensions that something terrible will happen, especially to her kids. This has been going on for such a long while that it has become the norm in her life. There have been moments of courageous breakthrough, but the spectre of anxiety and dread always seem to find her again.
I am briefly distracted from my musings by our little waitress, who looks remarkably like Heather Graham. As we order, I smile, remembering how healthy her appetite is, and I order another drink. Once our order is completed, I look over to see her sitting with her knees up against her body in a stance that could only be described as protective. Seeing that I have noticed, she comments, "Oh, I often sit this way, ask anyone." Clearly, she is anticipating some kind of rebuke or admonishment of some sort, so I ask her about it...but that in and of itself, is probably enough to warrant the posture. I momentarily feel bad for her ... that I represent such a potential threat. I silently bath her in love and let it go.
Over the seven or more years we have known each other, I have been aware of our comfort and familiarity. We are like brother and sister, old friends, partners, mutual guides, and, perhaps, even teachers. There is an ease between us, even when we are in disagreement. Mostly, I am her friend, which we have both very heavily emphasized for some odd reason as if we have the potential to become deadly enemies...or worse. Still, there remains the lingering light of those few spiritually transcendent moments, which may or may not be real, depending on which of us you ask, and which, for some reason, seems essential to me to bring up today.
Our waitress shows up again just as I am about to explore this matter. Before my friend's "late" arrival, I had had an opportunity to talk to our waitress about her work at the restaurant. She told me she was from back East and really was quite unhappy in her present situation. I asked her where she wanted to be and what she really wanted to be doing instead. She told me she "really, really wanted to be a Child Psychologist," but had chosen to come to out to Vancouver instead. I asked her how she felt about her choice, and she told me how much she still regretted her choice. She did not feel she had the confidence to get her degrees and felt she didn't have enough money to go through with it. I asked her if she was absolutely right about that being true; she said: "No, I never even tried!" Her eyes began to fill with tears". I hugged her and said, "your destiny is still calling to you ... just answer!". I am instantly reminded of what the great psychologist Abraham Maslow has called "the fear of our own destiny." My friend orders extra dip and I order another drink.
She carries the energetic imprint of the Goddess, that remarkable tenderness and compassion of the Sacred Feminine, while at the same time carrying the courage and passion of the Sacred Warrior, all within her heart. She is a lioness able to spring into action in an instant...but for now, she rests. She is not yet fully aware of who she is, her high calling, and her ultimate giftedness. This is, however, still remains hidden from her consciousness ... protected by walls, moats, fierce wild animals, land mines, and all manner of defences. I know this from personal experience. I have lost several of my lives trying to approach this Sacred place. Once, on one of my journeys, I met her inner child...all shabbily dressed, dirt-smudged all over her waif-like body. She carried a sign which said, "not here"! I asked this little girl what she was doing ... and she answered, "hiding my light."
The irony is that the more she is still busy trying to hide her light, the more her natural brilliance comes seeping through, and all her efforts to keep herself small are of little or no avail. I have a saying on my office wall that reads, "It is painful to be small when you are called to be Great!". For her, this comes in the form of anxiety and dreadful apprehensions that something terrible will happen, especially to her kids. This has been going on for such a long while that it has become the norm in her life. There have been moments of courageous breakthrough, but the spectre of anxiety and dread always seem to find her again.
I am briefly distracted from my musings by our little waitress, who looks remarkably like Heather Graham. As we order, I smile, remembering how healthy her appetite is, and I order another drink. Once our order is completed, I look over to see her sitting with her knees up against her body in a stance that could only be described as protective. Seeing that I have noticed, she comments, "Oh, I often sit this way, ask anyone." Clearly, she is anticipating some kind of rebuke or admonishment of some sort, so I ask her about it...but that in and of itself, is probably enough to warrant the posture. I momentarily feel bad for her ... that I represent such a potential threat. I silently bath her in love and let it go.
Over the seven or more years we have known each other, I have been aware of our comfort and familiarity. We are like brother and sister, old friends, partners, mutual guides, and, perhaps, even teachers. There is an ease between us, even when we are in disagreement. Mostly, I am her friend, which we have both very heavily emphasized for some odd reason as if we have the potential to become deadly enemies...or worse. Still, there remains the lingering light of those few spiritually transcendent moments, which may or may not be real, depending on which of us you ask, and which, for some reason, seems essential to me to bring up today.
Our waitress shows up again just as I am about to explore this matter. Before my friend's "late" arrival, I had had an opportunity to talk to our waitress about her work at the restaurant. She told me she was from back East and really was quite unhappy in her present situation. I asked her where she wanted to be and what she really wanted to be doing instead. She told me she "really, really wanted to be a Child Psychologist," but had chosen to come to out to Vancouver instead. I asked her how she felt about her choice, and she told me how much she still regretted her choice. She did not feel she had the confidence to get her degrees and felt she didn't have enough money to go through with it. I asked her if she was absolutely right about that being true; she said: "No, I never even tried!" Her eyes began to fill with tears". I hugged her and said, "your destiny is still calling to you ... just answer!". I am instantly reminded of what the great psychologist Abraham Maslow has called "the fear of our own destiny." My friend orders extra dip and I order another drink.
Meanwhile, in what could only be called synchronicity, I am on the verge of bringing up the topic of transcendent spiritual experiences. She has had several moments of deep spiritual connectedness, which I draw her attention to. Still, she does not distinguish between her own ego's very subjective perspective and these brushes with Spiritual Intimacy, Connectedness and her own Calling. To her own personal ego-consciousness, months later, these connections are at the least repressed, likely invalidated and forgotten and considered potentially perilous experiences, especially in the absence of any real spiritually transcendent context. She is drawn to the transcendent experience, while at the same time caught in terror and denial. She makes it quite clear to me she is not having any of it, and in one of her better "creative utilization of projection as a counteroffensive weapon," shows me how this is all my projection and really has nothing at all to do with her. I agree because it is true, all of this is about projection, not only for me but also for her. I point out that, indeed, it may also be the case "that it can be a projection as well as a good individual fit".
"What do you need from me...?" she asks. It catches me off guard, and I find myself having to pause and reflect. Her knees disappear from in front of her as she leans forward to face me. The lioness has stirred, and she is eying me. "Nothing comes to mind immediately...", I say, but I continue to explore. When we first met, I can remember having had a sense of deja vu, a certain quality of familiarity with her that I could not explain, almost as if we already knew each other. I asked her about it later, and she agreed that she had had a similar experience, but I wound up feeling she was just going along with it.
Then in a flash of brilliance, she says, "It's your little boy, your inner child, the picture of you with the blooming flower over your head and your arm around your sister's shoulder." Suddenly, I am in tears, without any warning, as I remember my sister and how much I loved her and how much fear and pain she carried, and how much I tried to reach her with my heart, love. To me, in retrospect, I had come as a gift of love for her and my family, but I wound up as the black sheep, even then. I start to lose the sense of what is happening as things begin to whirl around, and I am unsure of what is going on. I am in touch with the experience of not reaching her and my family, and the sense that I was letting them down...my heart is breaking, and in this place, I can't say why.
"Well, I don't know how and I don't know why, but when something's living, well you can't say die, you feel like laughing, but you start to cry, I don't know how and I don't know why..." Passenger
"'Cause I know those eyes and I know that touch, I don't have many, and I don't have much" Passenger.
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