Turn toward the smoldering darkness whence you came, and thank her for shaping you, for scaring you, for wounding you.
Bayo Akomolafe
I have done a number of writing workshops with Marlene Schiwy, a wonderful teacher, a Jungian scholar, and the author of Gypsy Fugue, a deepIy satisfying book on the feminine journey. She often suggests that you stop when doing a writing practice to ask yourself the question, “What do you mean by…?” when a word you have used catches you. This is one of those practice writings. The painting is my paternal grandmother who lived with us until she died when I was five, painted by my mother.
I descend into the darkness. Sitting there in a battered armchair is an old woman, long white hair, brown lined face, so much life written on it…
“Come, child, ask me what you want to know, ask me what you already know and want to hear me say to you.”
“What more is there for me to do, to accomplish?”
”Aah, what do you mean by accomplish?”
“I mean more of life for me to live, more to contribute, to experience, to be.”
“Yes, and you know the answer. You must surrender to it. You must do what you can to be you. That is all there is. There is no more.”
“But you told me there is more and I can choose.” “Yes, child, you can choose more or not. It is the same. Just be you, live you, love you into the world, into others. That is the more you can choose. That is what else is here.”
I know in that long heartbeat that I am looking into my own divine feminine, my mother and grandmother and all my female ancestors, my lineage and me. I AM THAT! It is what we all learn sooner or later. I know it now. I have all the information, the clues and messages I’ve been given. I am to take them and do what I can with them, with me.
The old woman, the beautiful old soul is mine, my guide, my whole Self. She hands me her heart and says, “Take this. This is the heart of all who have preceded you.”
“What kind of a heart is it?”
“It is love, that is what the cosmos is sending you, gifting you, a red pulsing heart of love and belonging that is yours to have and to hold and to give to others, a slender thread of connection to the cosmos.”
“What do you mean by the cosmos?”
“I mean the larger whole of which you are part – that vast past and forever that is one sweet song of Life Death. It is the big picture, the painting of all time to which we each contribute a brushstroke, a line, a tone, a colour. That is what doing what you can to be is about, not painting the whole canvas, just your own true moment, your deep song.”
“What is my deep song?”
It is that part of you that is unique – your essence, your psyche, your soul. The song only you can sing in this lifetime, the one note you can uniquely add to the song of the world, of the ancients, of the cosmos, the song that is being continuously created, the song of all our hearts lifted as One.”