Archive for the ‘Compassion for ourselves’ Category

Who is the Divine Feminine?

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015

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Have you heard a lot about the Divine Feminine re-emerging? What does this mean? Who or what is the Divine Feminine and how can we benefit from Her?

When I traveled in Nepal, the Divine Feminine was everywhere. In the middle of the market were shrines to Kali, or Durga, or other Hindu figures. People and filth abounded and it was hard to tell sometimes if the goddess smelled of incense, urine, food, sweat, or all of the above. She might be covered with filth and/or flowers, but she was accessible, part of life. Sometimes she was portrayed ripping apart an icon of evil or falseness.

Not exactly the image we have of the Divine Feminine as the Virgin Mary, for example. Shouldn’t the Divine Feminine be pure? Beautiful? Enshrined and protected? Full of peace and tenderness?

Of course in many traditions, she is. But as the force in charge of births, she knows about pain and blood and suffering as a way to usher in new life. And as the force in charge of death, she knows about destroying the false that has to die for the true to gain ascendance.

In America, the Divine Feminine is harder to find. In the southwest, we have the Virgin of Guadalupe, who is much more prominent these days. In Latin America, the Virgin is a mainstay, especially for women. In Europe, one can find the Black Madonna.

So, the Divine Feminine is complicated and multi-faceted. Not to be explained by logic, or tamed by too many rules. She is, in fact, wild. And that is why she has been oppressed in so many cultures for so many years. Along with her human feminine counterparts!

These days a lot of spiritual teachers are writing and teaching about the re-emergence of the Divine Feminine. She seems to be showing up everywhere. As Mother Earth, she has been turbulent, unpredictable and changing. As Venus, she has been hidden from us, traveling the underworld, to reappear as a sign of love. As the Virgin, she shows up on screen doors and tree trunks. As Mary Magdalene, she tends those who suffer, and as Kwan Yin, she is the heart of compassion. As the goddess, she has been honored in a variety of renewed ceremonies and myths. And in the form of certain women, we see her incarnate.

These are times of planetary crisis, and so if we ever needed a dose of compassion, tenderness, unbridled fierce protectiveness and signs of death and rebirth, I’d say this is the time.

So, if the Divine Feminine is calling us to awaken, how can we respond? We might begin by looking for her presence, veiled by tradition or culture, at the essence of things. Even, and especially within our own hearts.

Whether you’re male or female, you have the Divine Feminine within your heart. You have that wild, tender, compassionate, fierce force in charge of births and deaths, all within you.

And so I invite you to begin looking everywhere to see signs that it is time to welcome the Divine Feminine back into full equality—in the outer world and in our inner ones. When she has been fully welcomed, hopefully a new balance will begin to be possible in this wild, beautiful complex Earth home.

What to Do When You Get Stung

Wednesday, June 10th, 2015

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Two days ago, while trying to help a beautiful looking black bug with broad orange wings to leave the confines of our bathroom, I found that the double layer of toilet paper I used to create a portable cocoon was not enough. I got stung by what turns out to be a “tarantula hawk” wasp. Online I found that their sting is reputed to be the worst insect sting in North America!

I felt stung in more than one way. I felt kind of betrayed. I was trying to be nice, and I got hurt. Ever happen to you? And when it does (because it happens to all of us in some form), how in the world are you supposed to be spiritual?

You might think of your own examples like having the check you reluctantly accepted from someone…bounce. Or having someone you loved a lot betray you. Or find out someone you counted on has just let you down. These all sting. So what to do?

We’ve all experienced letting one hurtful incident ruin our entire day and seemingly take over our whole world. One more thing that went wrong may lead us to the conclusion that everything goes wrong for us, or that the world is evil in general, or that we’re drawing dark energies to us. Going down the victim road step by step, conclusion by conclusion.

Seeing it Through a Different Lens

Here’s a process I tried on myself after the tarantula hawk got me, so that I would not go down the victim road:

  1. Breathe deeply and ask yourself how your heart feels.

Mine answered that it felt hurt and betrayed, whether that made sense to my mind or not. And, my heart said it felt a little hurt that my mind was telling me I was just stupid.

  1. List 3 reasons this might have happened.

Mine were: a) I didn’t know it was a stingy creature. (I’ve lived in Southern AZ for 26 years and never heard of this kind of wasp.) B) I made an assumption that an encounter with an unknown creature was harmless  and c) Maybe I needed to learn a lesson about things that sting.

Take a moment to see if anything seems a little clearer.

 

  1. Do a compassion practice for yourself and the person or creature involved.

Breathe into your own heart and offer it your love and gratitude for how it bears all hurts. See if the hurt lightens a bit. What happens inside your heart?

Imagine breathing the person or creature into your heart and ask what it needed when the “sting” occurred. Maybe you’ll at least see something you didn’t see before, and your feeling of anger or resentment might lift a bit.

Do this practice as many times as it takes, even if it takes days or months. Some stings are bigger than others!

 

In my case, I found out that tarantula hawk wasps don’t sting very often, and only when they feel very threatened. I had to admit that if a giant hand with a tent on it came down over me, I’d sting too, if I could.

My husband was able to get it out into the yard in one (slightly wounded) piece, and it disappeared the next morning. Look out tarantulas! This wasp will capture you, sting you, drag you to a hole, lay an egg on you, and bury you. The larvae that hatch will feed on you alive. A much worse fate than mine!

Even with a more personal “sting” than this one, the compassion practice eventually won out over the anger and resentment that can act like poisons in our system. (They are worse than the original sting.)

I love all the versions of compassion practices when bad things happen. By taking the hurtful thing into our heart rather than chasing it away, we open the possibility of re-framing, or seeing the incident through a different lens. It may not take the sting away, but it’s a whole lot more healing than a bandaid could ever be.

Wishing you sting-free days,

Pam

 

Going Home Again: A Lesson in Compassion

Tuesday, May 26th, 2015

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I’m driving along the same street I traveled for years, to take my kids to school and soccer practice, going right by our old house. Only this time my three grandchildren are in the car. Everything is the same, in a sense. Only the trees are a lot taller and I’m a lot older. The spiral of life has gone around a turn, and I’m at the same spot again, only at a new level. Deja vu, but not.

I grew up in this area, and still harbor the visions of the familiar streets framed the way they were when I was as little as my grandkids. I pass the wall with the holes at the top, where my grandfather lifted me up to peek through. One of my first memories. We pass the graceful house where my mother and I lived with her parents after my father was killed. Those grandparents probably saved the day.

I remember being in the thick of parenting, right in the middle of planning three meals a day, doing endless loads of laundry, trying to figure out why only single socks emerge from the dryer, and attempting to explain some of life’s deeper mysteries and heartbreaks to two growing girls, without breaking apart their hopefully secure foundation. Now I’m driving carefully, hoping I can get these three to school at the right dropoff place with all the stuff they need and any arguments solved so they can have a happy day.

My ambitions have been simplified, along with my life. My daughter is the one who must manage a daily schedule so dense that any illness or breakdown or minor crisis will use up the slim margin of time and energy she has available. She is usually sleep deprived, always vigilant, and missing the luxury I have of timing a walk in nature, a meditation, and maybe an afternoon nap.

I am full of admiration for her, and for these three passengers of mine. My daughter and her husband have taken what I gave to her and revved it up a notch. My daughters are better mothers that I was.

I am trying to catch any shreds of shame about the mistakes I made and coat them with love and compassion. After all, that’s what I want my daughters to do. See their journey as mothers the same way they might see the whole journey of life: a partially blind expedition into the unknown, armed with good intentions.

By the time I drop the three precious ones at school the last day, before my flight home, tears spring up and flood me. After worrying about whether I could manage all three, I have done it. Now I’m sad to go. Next time I’ll volunteer for a longer stint.

The tears also signal my grief at being a special event grandmother who lives far away. I must visit their lives instead of being a daily part of them. My influence will come in bursts, rather than being part of the orchestral melody of their growing up. I hope the theme of my influence has to do with being true to your own true self, honoring your creativity, and putting your relationship to the natural world ahead of the artificial one.

I cry because I see that as a grandmother, I have led many lives. Probably ones I don’t remember, with each of them. And then within this one, there has been my life as a child, then as a mother, and now as an elder. The observer in me is pleased. All the strands have woven together in a feeling of gratitude. It is good to be home again.

 This is a reprint of a favorite post for theSpiritedWoman.com I wrote last year after babysitting for my grandchildren. This year I’m missing them. And, I’m still trying to learn the lessons of how to have compassion for myself.

Is there a way you can “go home again” and re-visit a memory, coating it this time with compassion?