from my journal, Oct. 13

Hello dear friends,

There are many strands of thought tangled up within me.  First of all, with regard to the dealing with challenges theme of my blog, let me tell you of last night and good intentions.  For the past few days I’ve been feeling pretty good  — the nights are another story, but let’s stay with the days here — and I intended to publish a blog post last night, with the ideas simmering throughout the day.  Then, as night fell, so did how I felt physically.  I was just in too much pain to be able to write last night.  This needing to give up my plans is still so hard for me to accept with any grace.  What I need to do is to craft a life where there are few if any deadlines, and to accept the changes in how I’m physically feeling as we accept changes in the weather.  As in, “it’s just weather, man. . . . it’ll pass. . . . ”

Alas, I am not yet that accepting, even after years of practice.  (I wanna do what I wanna do, and I wanna do it NOW!!!)  Sigh.

Let me tell you about the photo above of a painting I did in my journal.  It’s from a meditation where I prompted myself with “I will go up to a bowl filled with water, and see what I shall see. . . . ”  I settled myself, relaxed, and set my intention that my meditation be healing, helpful, holy.  “Healing, helpful, and holy” are words of Dr. Estes, who calls this type of meditation trance work, a way of working that can access parts of our psyche that we don’t use in day to day consensual reality.

What I saw in my mind’s eye was a golden bowl on a small wooden stand.  All around me it was deep, deep blue.  As I looked into the bowl, the water slowly shifted in color from greyish gold to a lovely blue, and her face appeared.  She was so old and so beautiful, much more so than my painting reflects.  After looking at her smiling at me for awhile, I heard her say “I am always here for you . . . I am always with you.”

So.  For all of you who might say, “Well, you just made all that up!”  I answer, “Of course.”  This is a vision that is already within me, that my meditation and readiness allowed me to “see” and “hear” in a way that I can understand and that is helpful to me in my day to day life.   And yes, I also think that it came from outside of me, to the extent that all of us are connected in some way with all that is.  I understand it as a type of waking dream.

So what does it mean?  For me, I’m taking it mean (“making meaning, making soul”) that there is within/around me an older, wise woman archetype, perhaps a symbol of the divine in feminine form, a helpful, far-seeing, compassionate being who is always available to comfort and encourage me.  That by receiving her compassion I can be strengthened to myself be more compassionate to those around me.   And, that it is good and helpful for me to do what I need to do to remember these qualities that are both already within me and are in potential for me.  In order to remember these things, I need to step into moments of timelessness regularly, and not get into too heavy a relationship with my to-do lists and the stimulation of checking off just one more thing!

May she say similar things to you, in ways that are immediately recognizable and helpful.

With warmth,

Cat