Thank you all so much for your encouragement and support of SouLodge's new space on the web and for all of the love around the Plant a Kiss Day entry. I feel truly part of a community here and in Lodge. I'm so grateful to offer the Mountain Lion teaching to all of you who are yearning to create a special ceremony for the Summer Solstice, and that so many of you have already jumped in. It's going to be an amazing mini-adventure together.
I've just been speaking with a friend who is currently living out a period of being in hell, and it brought up a lot for me. Holding a safe space container and a community for women to do their soulwork, messy and enlightened, allows me the same. I wonder if I knew that when I began last year? The Lodge that just completed was Spring, which means myself and many women who have walked the Medicine Wheel with me during that time, have completed an entire year of holding the teachings of the seasons close. It also means that we've had a full year to unfurl in the various processes that come up when engaging in soulwork-some of which is the hell period.
When I turned thirty-nine a year and a half ago, I felt like I was on Persephone's voyage into Hades. I was looking at all of the things that were working and not working, attempting to take shameless responsibility for my truth and my nature. One of the many things I was turning over in the muck, was not having another baby. My toil about it sucked me down into an isolated place, and I recoiled by holing up in my shadow until I was able to come to terms with it. I had to let it go, lest it eat me alive.
For any of you who have been through this, or are currently experiencing it, I want to emphasize the concept of shamelessness when walking an awakened path. It can be so difficult to stand tall in hell; to acknowledge that there is a dark side of the Moon and that we can't avoid the work we're called upon to do down there.
The maiden Persephone learned many lessons while with Hades. She was abducted, against her will. She awakened as a Queen down there. She had to lose her innocence and attachments to her family in order to become her whole self, from her own consciousness.
Her maidenhood was forever altered, and she had to agree to grow up, to understand that in order to ascend, she had to look at the teachings below. Again and again. Showing up to this can often take on the look of depression. What if we saw depression in this culture as our time underground to sort things through? To discover the truth clearly, without engaging the voices of shame, guilt, and those which keep us from truth? It requires so much trust. So much willingness to unsign contracts, and allow for mistakes (or perceived mistakes) to teach us.
What do you feel you learn or are faced with again and again?
How can you reframe your thinking around the pattern in order to bring new perspective?
What are the undeniable aspects of you which call for your attention?
To stand in power, we must learn to celebrate what is innate in us, and let the rest go. I cannot teach what I have not, or am not, learning.
Thank you all for the sacred space you hold in your own lives for authentic process, to be in a healing place, unapologetically. To claim it in front of those who may not understand.
