Yesterday Coran and I attended a one day workshop with our friend Shirley Flint entitled Rituals of the Dark Moon. This was an invitation to meet and work with the Dark Mother or Goddess in all her glory, transforming our hopes and fears along the way. It was a powerful and tranforming day for both of us, uncomfortable in places, since it meant a willingness to let go of everything and strip it all away (in a spiritual sense), until we were laid completely bear, facing the true reality of who we really are.
The Dark Goddess represents the dark and hidden face of our nature, the wise woman
within. She represents the journey to wholeness through our willingness to look at our inner darkness in all its facets - our beliefs about love, about life and about who we are, both conscious and unconscious.
It had been several years since I attended a workshop of this kind, and to begin with I felt more than a little uncomfortable about sitting round the circle in the Sanctuary sharing what I hoped to get from the day. I had meditated on this beforehand and was clear about this was - the thing I wanted to work on the most was the need to gossip and criticise others, particularly at work, in order to fit in and feel part of the crowd. I received some very practical help with that, and was told that like most other things, it was and is a choice that I have to make. It is as ever about how it makes me feel, for I know in the moment that I do this that it does not make me feel good, about myself or about the person whom I criticise, both spiritually and energetically. There is a better, more appropriate way of doing things and that is simply to speak as I find. What I find is that each being in whatever form they choose to inhabit is a being of love, who is doing the best that he or she can do, the same that I also am. As such, they should be treated with compassion and reverence, for we do not know the agenda of their soul. They should be honoured for the contribution they make to our own evolution in the same way that we ourselves would wish to be honoured.
That is a really big thing for me - the need to be honoured and the need to be acknowledged. I always felt in my current job, that this was not happening, yet during one of the many meditations that we did yesterday, I came to realise that this is far from the case. I have in fact been seen very clearly for who and what I am, by all those whom I come into contact with during my work, including those who own the business. It is that in fact that presses their buttons, in the same way that they appear to press mine. I detect then a large amount of mirroring, but then again, isn't that what happens?
I found myself relaxing more as the day progressed and thinking about why I had stopped attending events of this kind. It started I suppose when we moved to our Surrey village 4 1/2 years ago from the Surrey/south London subburbs. Up until then I had been attending events on an almost weekly basis at our local non denominational church. When we moved here the distance seemed too great for us to travel and so we gradually stopped attending, until we no longer went at all. I did not exactly lose my faith, but my faith changed to one where I was no longer dependant on the 'crutches' of crystals, angels etc that many on the path still seem very hung up on. Many of these things seem to me so very last decade. I have moved beyond the point of needing to attend these workshops, read the latest new age books etc, and am at the point now where I want to just live it.
This is not meant as a criticism to those who feel that they do still need these tools or 'crutches' as I sometimes call them, for they serve a valuable role for those that are new to the path and those who are learning about their own personal power. Many are now coming to the path who previously poo pooed these ideas as new age psycobabble. For me though it is not where I need to be, I am however immensely grateful to those teachers who helped me to reach this point. It is a marker of how well they taught me, and how far I have come.
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