"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." – The Little Prince
Surrender doesn’t have to be an exasperated throwing up of your hands in despair, saying “I’ve give up.”
Surrender can be throwing your hands up in the air with a big “Yay!” I don’t have to figure everything out. I don’t have to do this alone!”
Because really, you can trust a Higher Power. Your mind just doesn’t know that. (Endless hours spent on decision-making, anyone?)*
Surrender is allowing yourself to be fully Loved, despite any stories your mind has come up with to stay otherwise.
Surrender is trusting that you are Love, and that Love is guiding you. That Love knows the way.
Surrender is letting Love more through you, fully.
Really, it’s an act of enlightenment. It’s an act of celebration.
****
*Okay, so why do you overthink and are relatively certain that you can’t trust an inner voice or Higher Power to guide you? Great question!
For many of us, Love, or a decision we made, was invalidated or in some way made bad, like it negatively affected our parents. This is a big wound Gabor Mate talks about…when a child becomes an emotional caretaker for a parent (https://youtu.be/tool-R8VJ2Y?si=IbY20B8dPBzasdYG). Anyway, what happens then is that we create a story, usually about ourselves, about how we were wrong and in some way defected, so then all of these voices (based on a multitude of various experiences) try to come in to help us make the best decision…and that’s how we end up feeling crazy. Parts work is a great way to start to unravel from all these voices, but also…meditating, belly breathing, or any activity that quiets the mind can help us “hear” (for me, its more of a felt sense then translated by the mind) our Inner Guide**.
** I know, I keep switching out Love, Higher Self, Inner Guide…go with what resonates for you.
Extra: It’s actually been really helpful for me to keep track of when I make a decision based on my mind vs one made from my heart, or intuition. I’ve often been amazed by some of the outcomes, which makes me want to trust it more…and it gives those “fear parts” some reassurance.
This season is about the return of the light after a period of darkness. As of Saturday, the days have once again begun to get lighter. Now, the darkness isn’t bad. It represents a shedding, a death, and temporary returning to the void, the unknown, a place of infinite potential. A time to rest. It’s a return to the sacred womb, from which we were all born and have the opportunity to return to so we can be reborn. It’s a necessary phase that can support us in returning to our true selves, to the unfiltered, pure Light that we are. It is from the darkness the light is birthed.
The story of light retuning after a period of darkness is told in various cultures, traditions, and religions. There’s ofcourse the birth of Jesus, a being who preached love and non-judgment while he walked the earth. In western society, it’s also told by the story of Santa, bringing toys, or joy, to (all) the children (not just the “good” children, for all children are good) after a period of recession. In Pagan tradition, the light is returned by the Deer Mother, flying through the night on the darkest day of year, carrying and returning the sun on her antlers.
The light, as I define it, is consciousness, or loving awareness. It’s our nature of innocence and divine love. For us here in this room, it’s a remembering.
If we pause and look around the room, we can be quite certain that many of hold different political and religious beliefs. We have different opinions on women’s rights, animal rights, and climate change. There are different beliefs on the best foods to eat and different definitions of success and what it means to live a meaningful life.
But tonight, none of that matters. Underneath the roof of this Midwest house in America, we have transcended our fear and forgetfulness, what I call type 2 darkness, by leaving our judgments and criticisms behind us, and returning to a unified state of Love.
The question is, will we once again forget? Will we forget the light of loving awareness and return to the realm shadows, illusions, differences, and separateness?
Perhaps more importantly, for what is within us will always be projected out, will we return to judging ourselves for all the mistakes we’ve made and criticizing ourselves for all the ways we believe we’re not enough and could be, or should have been, better?
I think it’s important to remind everyone here that “sin” or”mistake” simply means to “miss the mark.” Mistakes show us where we are out of alignment with our true selves. We only ever make mistakes or hurt others when we are in fear and are not feeling good. And (the human/ego brain is a funny thing) the we think that by punishing ourselves, we’ll do better, but we actually just make ourselves feel worse which makes it harder to act in alignment because our natural alignment is Love!
And I have never, ever, seen anyone, including myself, grow or heal through self-judgement or criticism. I have only ever seen people heal through self-acceptance and self-compassion, for that is when we invite the Light back into our lives. There’s paradox here too…it is only through our imprefections that we can know perfect love. And, if we truly believe that we were created in the image of our creator, or Love, that even in our imperfection, we are all absolutely perfect.
So the invitation here is, not just for the rest of the day, but to the best of your ability, everyday, to look at yourself as you would an innocent child. To look at others like you are meeting Jesus, as Benedictine rule states “Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ.” To look at others as you would a child that holds all the potential in the world if only the are nurtured through love, and treat them with such honor and respect. Because we all hold the potential to be the light.
(Written from the perspective of the Divine Mother archetype)
I love you. I appreciate you. I am grateful that you’re here. I love all of my sons, my sons turned turned husbands, turned fathers.
But I never wanted, never needed, you to fight for me. I love you too much to ask you to pick up a gun. I only wanted you to choose me. I only wanted you to vote for me.
I forgive you.
May you be released of your pain and any guilt or shame you may carry. I know you did not want to kill your brother, your sister, your father, or me, your mother. Anger and self-hate clouded your vision, and I know you could not see. Release your burden. I hold you in no blame. You are my son (my child) and for you, I only have love.
Your anger, it is sacred- but it must be processed. The pain beneath it, witnessed. Only then you can align yourself with love and take divinely- led action.
An ask for you…
Please forgive your earthly mother. I know she hurt you and denied you of her, a mother’s love. She was doing her best to survive in a world built by men, a world that said you must be turn and must not feel. Perceiving she had lost her power, she tried to reclaim what was remained by playing your father’s game. She gave you the little love she could when she was lost herself, deprived of the same love in which you craved.
Please forgive your father. He had to be distant in the absence of himself, for when we forget the feminine, we all suffer. Or, if he too, was angry, please forgive him… he too was acting out in his own grief, the loss of what he most desired: a mother’s love.
My child, you have been taught you were unworthy, the result of fear trying to erase me. But I am always here. I am always ready to hold you in my arms, ready to bring you back home to what has always been yours. Give me your sins, your fear, your wrong-doings, and your pain. I will take them from you and transmute them. I will return you to what is yours, but was never truly lost, only pushed away and forgotten. A mother’s love. Fierce and unconditional.
I love you, always.
Your Divine Mother
*****
We are living in a world where the Divine Feminine has been erased out of history books, including spiritual texts, texts that saw women in positions of power and leadership. Mary, mother of Jesus, is recognized in the bible for little more than her “purity” and birthing Jesus, excluding the fact that she herself was most likely a high priestess. Sexual creatures or not (minus the “not”), it is women that will always birth the light. Then we have Mary Magdalene, most likely Jesus’s most “beloved” disciple, possibly partner/wife, and high priestess, but whose role was greatly reduced in the hand-picked passages of the bible (in 1969, the Catholic Church admitted that it had “been mistaken” for calling Mary Magdalene a sex worker- although this version was still portrayed in the 90s while when I attended Catholic school.) Still, we must consider why the church repeatedly found it so important diminish, or make bad, the act of sex. These are just two of the well known examples in the “land of many.” But the point is… when we rob the world of the Divine Feminine, there will be no peace, we will not be whole. In Her removal of our story, many of us have not experienced divine, unconditional love, resulting in a split from ourSelves, Spirit and ego*. This separation is the source excruciating pain. In attempt to diminish this pain, the ego paradoxically turned on itself, further cementing its identity. And so, our first step into bringing Her back is realizing, no matter what (non) gender you are, She is within all of us, and we can all embody the Divine Mother archetype anytime we so choose… we just have to be willing to choose it.
(It would also be worth writing about the Divine Father, which I will defer here for length. What I can say is that the Divine Father being revealed will be a natural cause of the Divine Mother being remembered and accepted. These two divinities co-exist in union, and when one is hidden, the other is also turned into a shadow, hence why the shadow or “toxic” side of the masculine is now at the forefront of our world at large.)
*****
If you are a military veteran (whom I recognize as various genders), I 100% understand why you would feel defensive around this post. Without elongating my story, I imagine I would be too, being in your position. However, it is always worthy to question why we feel defensive when there is no real threat posed…I’m a 5’4″ psychotherapist who does not, and will not, own a gun. My mission is to preach (real) Love, which, along with the voices of others, will hopefully one day result in war no longer being a consideration as a way to handle conflict. My goal is to remind you that your are infinitely, profoundly, Loved.
Because dogs are Love, which is the true essence of God.*
*I’m getting slightly more used to using that word again because of the backward spelling, yet I haven’t quite detached it from my childhood upbringing.
Many people have forgotten what Love feels like for we have been conditioned to practice love, or conditioned love, which merely holds a scent of love within the energy of fear. And I get it…free Love can feel scary, yet it doesn’t mean we don’t have conditions, for a relationship. It just means we can let go and love the ones whose values and wants don’t match ours without any resentment.
Many times in my life I have mistaken an intense energy of attraction for love that was simply a reflection of the anxiety I carried in my body or an energetic hit that yes, I was supposed to meet that person and possibly date, but I wasn’t meant to stay when things got bad. (In my next post, Relationships ((Part Two), I’ll write a bit more about different types of attraction.)
Love feels like that gentle pressure of a dog’s head on your lap. The softness of the fur through your fingers. The “I missed you so much” look when you come home from work. The shared joy in moments during play. Love feels both comfortable and free. Always there yet without expectations. The delight is in the firmness of ever-present light.
Love is a dog. Dogs are a reflection of us, yet unlike humans almost always remain a clear mirror, showing us what we too, are made of. Dogs aren’t simply meant to teach us love, they are meant to help us remember who we are. And the more you feel like a dog, the more you will remember.
Why are you repenting for sins that you didn’t commit?
The only mistake you ever made was forgetting the truth of who you really are.
Remember.
***
Whether you believe Jesus came to earth to be our savior or you regard him as an important prophet, what I think we can agree on is that he only spread messages of love and offered compassion to all he met.
Yet somehow around Easter, we seem to totally forget this and instead focus on fear, death, darkness, how we are bad, and the sins that we committed.
Before I dive in, let me get one important piece straight. “Sin” simply means “to miss the mark”, or to act out of alignment with one’s true self.
And Jesus knew this. He knew we could only act “wrongly”, or out of fear, when we had forgotten who we truly are, extensions of Love (or, God). Therefore, when Jesus said “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34), he meant it. In fact, I believe he meant it so much so that he actually never even saw a need for forgiveness because how can we forgive what didn’t actually come from us, but rather there persona we developed through fear (this is an important idea from A Course in Miracles, a metaphysical text in which Jesus was supposedly channeled)?
Still, instead of focusing on the Resurrection, life, light, and the rise above the ego, fear, and forgetfulness, we’ve been instructed to focus on our unworthiness, which Catholic’s repenting for being unholy when in fact they have only forgotten their own sacredness. This belief of being separate from Love is one of the sly ways that fear comes to be the primary driver in our lives as we either strive to prove our worth or feel defeated and prove the belief of our unworthiness.
It’s so weird to me now, seeing myself as a kid being instructed by teachers, priests, and parents to “give something up” (albeit quite small, like a favorite snack) to help earn my right back into favor. Of course, my teen self secretly hated and loved the 40 days of lent, which was an excuse to feed my eating disorder and control it more. I didn’t know then that fear and control went hand in hand.
What I’m finding inspirational now, in my mid 30s, is that if Jesus and Mary Magdalene and so many other shamans, prophets, and mystics could rise above their egos (fear-based selves), the stories in their minds, judgement, and feelings of unworthiness, then maybe I can too. Maybe I can forgive the parts of me that made mistakes, the parts of me that prosecute me daily for the perceived mistakes, and quiet the nightmares that live in my head. Maybe I can believe in my inherent goodness and see the world through a lens of love. Maybe I can die and become reborn, to resurrect only the part of me that is Love.
And that is a cause for celebration. I just can’t do it by shaming myself to get there. We only move beyond fear by loving our way through the darkness and then discovering there was only Light.
***Another important point that is often only casually mentioned that it was Mary Magdalene who first saw the resurrected Jesus because she could best “perceive him”.
In all the best movies about light and dark, be it Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or Harry Potter, the protagonist always asks themselves the question: What if I am just like them?
What if I am just like Darth Vader? What if Im just like Lord Voldemort? What if Im just like Sauron?
The wise teacher usually replies with something like: Well, it’s your choice.
Do you want to believe in fear? Or do you want to believe in love? Which is the same thing as saying, do you want to give your energy to the darkness? Or do you want to give your energy to love?
Most of us, at some level, have already made that choice. We’ve chosen to, to the best of our conscious ability, to be good friends, good neighbors, good partners, and good community members. Some of us have taken another step and chosen to be good to the earth and all the animals that inhabit earth. Yet most of us have forgotten to look at how we treat ourselves.
In order to look at that piece, I believe the better question is: What if they, the villains, are just like me?
What if Darth Vader is actually just like me? What if he simply just chose to believe in fear, and in doing so, shut down to love? What if he killed his own innocence before trying kill everyone else’s? Because…he got so scared that he thought he had to dominate the planet in order to feel powerful, because he had actually lost his own true power when he left his innocence and creativity spirit behind?
In the end, we don’t have to fight the darkness. We just have to make a choice. Darkness is just forgetfulness, which invites in fear and we create these crazy stories in our head of not being enough and unworthy of love. When we shine the light of love and truth on darkness, when we choose to love ourselves even when we’ve made a mistake- a choice that wasn’t in alignment with love, darkness can’t survive. Darkness was never real in the first place, just made up. Instead, we can put our own light energy into the belief, the deep knowing, that we are all enough and all deserving of the highest form of love.
The choice is yours: Will you believe in your own light?
A Dog and Her Girl 