Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Torah of Mary


At an ongoing shamanic training workshop last month, we were using each other as guinea pigs. Depending on where I am in my own life, sometimes I love this kinda thing and sometimes I frantically search around for a place to hide the icky parts I don't want them to see. (Ironically hiding stuff from this group is not easy, but that doesn't stop me from trying when I am strung out on my own drama). This time I felt great and I tried to allow maximal transparency. Yeah my peeps are good at fooling me into this kinda thing. I was prepared to hear something akin to what the rest of the group had heard, so I was a little freaked out when they each came back with the same verdict - one after the other. Carefully constructed half closure of second and fourth chakras. Hearing them talk about this gave me new respect for what a nail feels being pounded into the 2 X 4. Maybe that was a bit too much transparency. Visibility is one of those places I still struggle from time to time. When the last person finished their initial evaluation, I said fuck the hiding place I need a doorway - NOW. Eyes rolling wildly, I happened to catch my friend Suz's eyes. She smiled and her spirit gently bid me stay. Calmer for that connection, I stopped flailing and stayed put. Grateful for her presence that day or I might have laid rubber in her driveway in my haste to be somewhere, anywhere, but in that spotlight.

I am also grateful for Toby's words that day as he explained that sometimes things like that are a self-protective mechanism, that they are there for a reason and that thy are created knowingly and deliberately. (He was correct in his assessment. I know they are there. I know why and at some point I will decide I no longer need their protection). I think he pre-empted the possibility of having those blocks inadvertantly removed in an effort to open those centers. It requires an enormous level of trust to let someone see those blocks. It is exponentially harder to trust that they will not fuck with them once they do. I don't think anyone in this group would have done that, but I have certainly known my share of practitioners who would have blasted those to smithereens without ever asking what they were or why they were there. They would do it just because they could. They would work out of their own egoic needs and the consequences to me would have been enormously challenging (read BAAAAAAD!). Having had experiences like that with other healers probably added to the angst this time about having people work on me. Just a word to all my healer friends - next time you see something like that in a client ask your helper what that is and why its there BEFORE you tamper with it!!!

After whacking me with their shamanic hammers til I was pretty much flush with the ground, each person did some work on my behalf. The images were rich and wonderful. The healing was powerful as always. That leads to the next bit of this which is about something my friend Fabeku said about having a scroll wrapped around my left femur. That scroll contained all of the things a woman was "supposed to be" as handed down from my female ancestors. I didn't even want to look at what was on it that day. I was pretty sure I knew what it said and I wanted nothing more than to strip it off and torch it IMMEDIATELY. But I didn't. Maybe words are just too valuable to me to throw any away unread. Maybe I understood that if I did that I would always wonder what it said. Did it contain some ancient wisdom that I had thrown away in my haste to have distance between me and them? The image stayed with me and the desire to reject it entirely subsided. So every night I have been unrolling a bit from left femur to right like a Torah and reading about the woman who came before me. Allowing each generation of women to tell their own version of what womankind should be in their time. Trying not to judge or get angry. Trying to be sympathetic to their struggles. Trying to forgive them for any damage that came to me thru their constructs. When I came to the end of the scroll, I did not re-roll it. I sat for a minute and thought and then took up the pen and began to write my own version, not of how all women should be, but of what THIS WOMAN can be. The culmination of feminine evolution. The Torah of Mary. The last woman of her lineage. The last words.

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