My quest for God brought me here.

My quest for redemption

and Inner-Peace.

My quest to be a good girl, a nice girl, a Yes Girl

and a sexy amazing successful woman all at the same time.

My quest to cleanse myself from past karma.

My quest for freedom

from self-judgment and self-loathing.

My quest to feel forgiveness.

MY QUEST TO FEEL LOVED

and approved of

and noticed

and special.

My quest to earn validation from others.

My quest to earn that which can never be earned.

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These things brought me here.

Into my shadow-dancing.

Into meeting all the fucked-up characters who reside within me on any given day

or night.

All the broken bits.

All the faces of me I haven’t wanted to love.

All the faces of me I just wanted God to take care of.

I wanted God to fix me, protect me, parent me.

I wanted God to erase my karma and reward me according to my devotion.

I wanted God to carry me like a baby.

And – I know – the Divine has carried me and interceded on my behalf on many occasion in this lifetime.

No doubt.

But God has been hearing my truest prayer

beneath the shallow seeking.

My prayer beneath the constant trying

to earn love from the outside.

My prayer beneath my desire to dissolve and merge

back into God.

I was praying to find the source of Love

the source of God

in me.

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Yeah.

That’s what got me here.

The Divine has heard me.

I have heard me.

I am beginning to honor all the pieces of me

and let me tell you

sometimes the honoring leads to an exorcism.

The collective pain that dwells within any wound

and any wounded character within

has to be felt

for true healing to become possible.

“I have to feel you,”

I say to the voice of shame within,

“I have to know your grief in this, and still love you.”

“I have to feel you,”

I say to the feelings of unworthiness,

“I have to taste your pain, and your deep deep longing.”

“I have to feel you,”

I say to my wounded inner-child,

“I have to feel what you’re going through and know what you need right now.

And then,

I have to provide it.”

Me.

I’m the one who has to carry me now,

leaving no part of my being denied, judged or left out.

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I swear this is the biggest job I’ve ever taken on.

And yet –

I keep touching these places in me, these painful, aching places

and when I can feel them

despite the pain,

and when I can let them be here

with me

without having to change

get pretty

or put on a smile,

in these moments –

I find a deep deep love

and a deep deep longing

for more of my own truth.

More of my own self-acceptance.

In these moments

I know I am tasting God.

 

I bow to my Shadow.

The Dark Mother, the Dark Queen.

The one who holds me

when no one else will.

The one who provides safe harbor

for all the pieces of me

that I have cast out of the temple of my heart,

unwilling to recognize, accept and love.

My Shadow has been working hard.

My Shadow has been keeping me alive – for without all my pieces, I am no longer whole.

My Shadow has been far more loving than anyone could ever, ever imagine.

All the pieces I have denied, rejected and hated

have been protected and given shelter by my Shadow, my Underworld Persephone, my Dark Queen.

*

My Shadow is the iridescent ebony Dragon who feasts on the toxic notions and false beliefs that I based my existence on for so, so long.

She eats my pain

as soon as I hand it over.

She has powers of transmutation like nothing I have ever seen.

She heals me – more + more – as I befriend her.

As I listen to her guidance and her wisdom, her soft promptings to go within

DEEPER

down and down and down

to the root of all that I Am.

My Shadow shows me this I Am

Beautiful and Terrible

Dark and Light

Special and Mundane

Seen and Unseen

Known and Unknown

*

Somehow, she loves all of me

all of you

all of The All

and she holds it

in the vast emptiness of her Cosmic Womb.

*

My Shadow teaches me the mysteries of birth, creation, death and destruction.

My Shadow is the missing link – the necessary key – to accessing my full-spectrum sexual energy, my life force, my kundalini.

I bow to my Shadow.  My Lilith.  My original Eve.

Without her, I am living a half-life

which isn’t really living at all.

*

It is she, SHE, who held me when I was dead.

It is she, SHE, who has carried all of my burdens.

It is she, SHE, who delivers me

into my next phase, my next incarnation.

It is in She, where I find my awakening

and the incredible vastness of Divine Love.

*

Photo by Raj Eiamworakul on Unsplash

It’s hard to describe myself these days.

Everything feels like worlds colliding together, deep within

as I come to slow down to the frequency

that cannot

not love.

In that frequency, I meet all the aspects of myself

that would have otherwise, and have for lifetimes, been buried, rejected and denied

by me.

All the ways I became a slave, chasing illusory happiness outside of myself.

All the ways I wanted “love” to come rescue me, heal me + fill me.

Love in the form of a man, love in the form of my children, love in the form of validation and approval from the outside world.

Love in the form of a God outside my very center.

A dependent love.

A “you fix me” kind of love.

Such a hunger, for so long.

*

But I could never win that way.

I could never appreciate the realness of love, I could never fully receive.

I could never even begin to become one with the trees and the birds, the rivers and the Oceans, tasting the fruit of living awareness.

Tasting the fruit of love + compassion, as the yogini sisters speak of….

I could never savor life.

I was too busy pretending, chasing, hiding from myself.

For years, I called it being a “seeker.”

*

But an inner-gravity pulls us.

Our truest desires are Unavoidable.

Like the desire to Awaken…the desire to Know Love…the desire to Be Free…

The Universe responds in kind.

And no stone is left unturned for the ones who want it all.

*

I am born and reborn on this path.

I die and die again.

I kill my inner-demons only to drink their blood and bring them home.

I drink the poison + the medicine and find they are one in the same.

All can lead to eating the fruit of love + compassion, all can be alchemized.  

This path isn’t neat + tidy for me.

I must have not wanted it to be.  I must have desired to grow in all the ways available to me.  I must be like so, so many of us.  I recognize myself in others on this path.

Some days, it feels way too hard.

And some days I am in rapture, in awe, feeling the waves of immense love, forgiveness + compassion coming in.

And I still hold back in places, and I’m still learning to Trust.

So I have some practices:

I get very quiet inside as often as I can remember.  And I listen.  And I feel.

And sometimes I cry and moan, or dance, or pray.

Sometimes I must rage.

And as the shadows make themselves known to me, I welcome them.

The one I hate is me.  The one I judge is me.

The one I reject is me.  The one I fear is me.

The one I have been waiting for and longing for….is also me.

The one I have been aching for.

The one I have secretly, desperately, been dying to become one with. 

I make a nest, in my heart and womb.

And now I see, this beautiful gift…

The gift of loving myself and holding myself and not waiting for permission, or worse – waiting for someone else to do it for me.  (Even God.  Even Guru.)

Just as my beloved Brother has said: “Do not give a man a fish.  Teach him to fish.”

It’s just this way –

God won’t steal your thunder.

God won’t deprive you of the gift of getting all the way down into the bottom of who you think you are, who you have believed yourself into being.

The gift of facing all of you, all the hidden, all the unseen.

All the faces you’ve ever owned.

Every face you never wanted to see again, each of them – you will see, and you will fall to your knees and offer your love.

You will let them come home, where they can heal….and rest.  (They are so tired)

You will promise not to abandon them ever again.

You will promise not to betray them or cast them out.

The face of shame, unworthiness, hatred and fear.  The face of lust and greed, the face of neediness, jealousy, narcissism and victim.  The face of apathy.

The face of loneliness.  The face of rejection.

The face of domination, perpetration, rage and perversion.

The face of hiding, the face of seeking approval, the face of grief.

All of these and many more, you will bring home.

You will see them reflected all around you, and you will find them in yourself, little pieces like broken glass and sometimes a huge buried monster…

dying for your love.

*

When ignored, these faces are like leeches

sucking your life force.

They will run the show and convince you to create more and more drama in your external reality

until you begin to bring them home.

*

The path is like this.

It crushes my bones sometimes.  It cuts off my head.

It turns me inside out.

It flattens every false belief.

It flattens every pretense.

It burns a holy fire I am cleansing myself in,

and it dares me to get very, very naked.

It gets me to listen, just so I can hear it say:

“You do it.  Love yourself as I have loved you.  Love it all.

Fiercely.  Gently.  Courageously.  Fearlessly and Shamelessly.

Love yourself.  Know this love, the living water.”

Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash

And what if you hadn’t

Kept working

What if you had sat down, as a disciple yourself

way back then?

If no one served, do you think Yeshua would have said:

“Hey Marta, get back in the kitchen!”

Probably not

*

Can you imagine a different story….

Lessons that we as a collective are learning now….

Consider:

What if we women

are actually blocking the ability for our men to Rise Up

and be MEN

to powerfully lead and serve

in the unique and honorable ways that the Masculine can?

What if we women are blocking the channels for our men to support us in being the Bright and Fierce feminine leaders WE are?

By “doing it all ourselves”

and resenting not being validated

By acting small

and resenting others who don’t act small

By hiding our Light

and seething with envy when others Shine

By wearing the the sheep’s clothing that really doesn’t fit

has really never fit

the kind of animals we are

*

Now, let me ask you

Can you handle it?

Can you handle giving up the illusory control?

Can you handle not trying to make yourself look good

or gain approval

from anyone else?

Can you handle drinking from the Fountain of Life

and facing your Self?

Can you handle admitting

who you Really Are?

Can you handle

stopping

the charade

the facade

That you have anything better to do

than Be Here Now

That you are a victim

of ANY of your experiences

That you have to conform

to something outside yourself

That this life isn’t actually

FOR YOU

*

Beloved Marta,

when will you stop

depriving the Living Well

from your beautiful

hungry

mouth?

*

 

Beloved Marta

Your story is still unraveling

Your rapture came later

For at the time

You couldn’t stop working so hard

Bound by rules and regulations and what a woman SHOULD do

Trying to win at your own game

But you didn’t, did you?

*

We never win that way.

Ego never wins.

Trying to get it “right” never wins.

Conformity never wins.

Giving our power away never wins.

Postponing our joy never wins.

Contraction

judgment

resentment

and all that holier than thou

bullshit

can never taste the nectar

of Love’s Liberation

*

See, Marta, beloved of the Beloved

You tell an important story

~ one we are still telling ~

For by separating yourself from Love’s embrace

By diligently working to serve the men

Acting like a dutiful woman

Doing as you were conditioned to do

Instead of Drinking

from the Living Well for your soul

you martyred yourself

denied your very self

and the choice was completely

yours

*

Beloved Marta,

come out of hiding

with all of your Shadow

and all of your Light

Come howling

Come hungry

Come undone

The Living Water is running through your circuits

And the nectar drips like honey down your spine

Beloved Marta,

It is time to serve the One who lives inside

and let the nectar drip like honey down your spine

*

 

I’m cleaning up around here

Oh, it’s been a mess

I’ve had to throw a lot out

A LOT OUT

And rearrange things

So energy can flow,

So oxygen can touch those hard-fast places

Where I had tried to keep Love’s face away,

in my shame

in my idea of not deserving Love’s glance

in my own rejection of That which I crave the most

*

I have a Sacred Guest

Who is bound to arrive

The moment I open the door

I smell Her fragrance like the lilacs and the jasmine flowers of spring

She’s right outside

I see and feel Her brightness

Even from behind these walls,

where I stand sweeping, sweeping

*

Sometimes my sweeping is born of devotion

In itself, the chore becoming a dance of Union

But sometimes, I’m just keeping my Guest waiting

Sometimes even sweeping is a form of hiding

from my Maker

The One who governs my very breath

even as She stands on my doorstep

Ever patient

Ever awaiting the thrill of a soul who wants only this Homecoming

*

And then, what can I do?

But strip naked in all of it

All the mess

All the effort

All the wanting and striving and formulated plans

All the habitual patterns and pre-conceived ways of

doing things

Strip naked

and stand before the Sacred Guest

Strip naked

and allow Love to touch this body

and allow Love to fill this mind

*

I open the the door

creak

and let the Guest enter the cave of my heartspace

wombspace

sacred space

every space

My nakedness is my innocence

And I am seen

*

There is still so much brokenness

Everything unfinished

Splayed out

Threads reaching back lifetimes

The imprints from my ancestors

The passed-on pieces revealing themselves

And the fragmented pieces

finding their way back to me

through this newly opened door

*

The Guest is here

(already)

“Come on in, it’s a bit of a mess”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before”

I laugh

I am seen

And my nakedness is my innocence

*

 

 

The masochist is the sadist.

The martyr is the narcissist.

The persecutor is also persecuted.

The virgin and the whore.

The vile and the pure.

The beast.

The wicked one.

The saint.

The child.

It’s all in there,

in me and in you.

All in there, where there are no victims,

not anymore.

Not when everything is you.

Not when your cosmic nature is so blazingly obvious

that everyone, even your friend the cynic, has to admit:

You are wild and unstoppable.

*

But go ahead, delay your homecoming.

Sweep yourself up into tidy little piles of broken mess.

Tell yourself and the world that you’ve got a plan, a goal and a destination.

Endure.

And whatever you do, don’t exhale or breathe deeply,

no, not until you’ve attained something achieved something validated yourself

Chase the carrot of false security.

And while you’re at it,

humble yourself with false humility,

the kind that keeps your unworthiness in check.

The kind that keeps you hiding.

The kind that keeps you prideful and judgmental.

The kind that you will always cheat on

because you know you are more

than that.

*

Forget your tidy piles!

So you can be vast again.

Forget the simple conditions upon your life,

forget the timeline you have prescribed for yourself and others,

forget the rules of the game,

forget the lines drawn in the sand,

forget the numbers in your bank account,

forget the opinions of others,

forget your coping skills.

For once, will you own the one thing you have and leave the rest behind?

*

The limitless one walks upon the bridge leading to the gates of the fifth dimension.

At the gates, the eyes of the Sphinx are open.

The heart of Christ and the Magdalene, open.

The burning bush is within you and upon you – it IS you!

You feel the heat, hotter and hotter the closer you get.

The faint of heart will run back into the imaginary security of institutionalized living.

But not you,

oh deathless one.

You stand in the fire.

All that does not serve is being incinerated.

Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly

And your true primal and sacred self is being reborn.

Into black, space, nothingness

you are reborn.

Your flashlight and your compass are one and the same,

and now you know

what you’ve always known.

you are here

of sheer

desire.