Dismemberment

I've been reading through some of my old writings in an attempt to revisit where I have been and ponder where I might be going.  Fall isn't here yet, but it may as well be.  You wouldn't agree with me for a second if you lived in California's central valley, which goes from sunny and very hot to a bit rainy and overcast sometime about December each year.  It is in my deeper self that I sense the season changing.

September, ("Don't rush me", she seems to whisper), is my new year.  It's the month of my birth and without fail, I want to run out and start planting the garlic and all of the Fall seeds and make plans of how to percolate all of my ideas through winter (rather a joke here, but again, it's a metaphorical inner winter!) so they'll come busting through the soil in Spring.

I'm thinking about others right now, too.  I've really had my head up my own...cloud for the past year, being entrenched in the healing process.  Making room for brand spanking new mojo to come in.  I'm feeling community and gardens and round table discussions about the brilliant things that can happen when we all put our hearts together.  I'm thinking about women and babies and all of that wonderful, divine buzzing that comes with birth.

When I sat in a shaman's circle, we once did a cleansing journey in which we invited the forces of nature to dismember us in whatever way our imaginative subconscious could conjure in order to be taken apart completely, so that when we came back together, we'd leave behind the old ways that no longer fit and incorporate new energies that we needed to move forward with intention.  Some people felt their arms and legs come off with clunks or their bones disolve. Mine occured with ants and worms that swept over me like a dark, cartoon swarm and devoured every teeny cell, reducing me to a pile of dull, grey dust.  When I stood up from it, reformed, I felt freshened and ready for my new tasks.  It reminds me of the same cycles that move the moon to hide and reawaken, the sun to grow dimmer, then brighter.

Comments

[Goddess of Leonie]

hmmm... for some reason, reading your words about the ants struck a memory in me... perhaps a communal, archetypal memory... of being dismembered, pulled apart, atomised by anties.

ho, sister.

for your workings, your pullings, your dreamings, your livings, your beings.

just as you are.

[jen lemen]

this process is essential.
i need it now--with so many new beginnings dying to be born.

[Gemma]

Wow. This is a new concept for me. Having suffered the wanton destruction of my being through childhood and fought hard to find and hang onto myself, such tearing down to make way for the new has always been something I fear, endure, resist to some degree. The idea of doing it intentionally....I need to sit with that a while! Thanks.