Doctortayria's Blog

Liberation is an inside job. Nothing, nothing outside of ourselves can liberate us from what worries, binds or afflicts us. We are our own liberators. And each of us have that innate, inherent power. It is easy to forget this.

Passion is an inside job in the same way. We want circumstances, opportunity or life to grab us and bring us into passionate states of living; but those flames only burns from the inside. Interiorly scraping those rocks together to creates the sparks ignite passion.

These two messages just fell into my sleepy head like embers from the fire crackling in my burning stove, and I am grateful for them. I feel liberated and impassioned by them already.

Today I awakened with strong memories of an image that went straight to my core when I saw it 17 years ago on the island of Iona in Scotland. It was my first of several trips to that island which became a place of pilgrimage for me. It is, truly, one of those places where “the veil between worlds is very thin.”

Let me say that at that time I was a woman minister, in a strong role for a woman and comfortable with it, and was in a marriage that was also strong and happy then. I had been fortunate to have very positive role models both male and female that taught me very much. I was not a woman suffering with gender issues that I was aware of outside of the subliminal messages that the culture in general, not necessarily me in particular, was working increasingly to make conscious.

When my guide and mentor on Iona, the lovely Vivienne Hull, took many of us on a hike over the hills across the island, we ventured to the place known as the Cliff of Streams. This is a rocky cliff of great height that drops straight down to the ocean below. As we approached it, even before I knew what I was seeing really, something entered me and I fell to my knees and stared, feeling thunderstruck, in awe. The rocky cliff has hundreds of little enclaves or platforms upon which nests were built with female birds sitting upon them – looking upright, serene, dignified, focused, purposeful. A thick sea of the male birds were flying, also hundreds of them, all around the area, swooping about looking for fish or feed to bring home to their nests. They were active, powerful, full of purpose, moving constantly with grace and harmony, none running into or interfering with the other. It was a such a powerful sight.

This, I later realized, was a huge ah-ha moment for me, though I still don’t know what the moment actually means. I only know it has stayed with me as one of the most holy and strong visions of my life. I so wish I could paint it.

We have multitudes of strong male and female archetypes that express the diversity of qualities in each gender – Athena, Artemis, Hera, Aphrodite to name a few of the feminine ones; Zeus, Dionysus, Apollo, Hermes in the masculine. I don’t know how to explain the simplicity in this image of the birds at the Cliff of Streams that seemed to inform me of something more foundational at the ground of masculine and feminine qualities of being and consciousness. I thought of women in frontier or indigenous times that stayed with the children, raising their machetes to cut the soil, plant the crops, harvest, feed, protect and raise their offspring while their men went out to hunt, or trade, to bring back goods and information. There was a natural order in this, not one gender being weaker, or one more important than the other, just each having functions that biologically, even in their DNA, created particular mandates and strengths.

Certainly, as a Jungian, I am a strong advocate for the awareness that every human, no matter the gender, has both male and female sides that must be developed, that need to thrive and become conscious. Not living on the frontier anymore we have the freedom to explore the interchange of roles in household and workplace more fully. Some of us have stronger female sides than male sides and vice versa, no matter what gender we are born to.

All of that being true and important to me, why did the sight of those birds on Iona go straight like an arrow into my heart and soul? Before I could even begin to form ideas or concepts around any of it something primordial, primary and sacred penetrated me in an instant.

I do not know. I have recently thought of leaving my nest here on the mountain, to go out and hunt and search for feed, maybe to resettle in a more urban environment that will support that need differently. I know, though, that what I do well and instinctively is stay near a hearth listening deeply to the psyche of nature, people and the world, tend to dreams, nurture, feed, grow, explore and protect spaces of heart and soul.

I talked with a friend today about my thoughts and the sense of dilemma I feel. She suggested maybe I should consider staying more committed to the nest, not to leave it. And I wonder, can I develop a strong enough masculine spirit that flies out to do the hunting and bring home what will feed the work here, as well as a strong enough feminine spirit to sit serenely, hatch eggs, be present to this without fuss and worry?

Those birds keep talking to me. I don’t think I’ll ever get to the end of what they have to say.

The sacredness of space can so easily be overlooked and forgotten, I find; which always surprises me because I do know that. A home is the most sacred of all. Matter has consciousness, a fact not generally recognized any more. When various forms are brought together to form a home, matter and space becomes a temple wherein our most private rituals, thoughts, prayers, loves and work takes place. What could be more holy?

My little home had been glowingly alive, probably sensing she was fulfilling her deepest purpose, during a retreat in early December – hearth lit and tended by many, dreams and deep heart stories shared, ancestors invited and talking, smells of delicious food, peals of laughter, birds coming to check it out – when thump; news hit that a storm was coming, a big one arriving quickly and if people didn’t get off the mountain after dinner on Saturday night then Sunday, our normal ending time, would be too late. Miraculously we pulled together a conscious and sweet closing after dinner and off everyone went safely. But the ending was abrupt, too soon, something aborted. Then two days later, I had to rush out in the same way – moving quickly like a madwoman, batten down hatches, but leave everything in disarray as I ran off before the storm arrived that could lock me in.

During the month away I thought constantly about my little house sitting up here alone, having been left without proper attention, pounded by feet and feet of snow and storm, no fire lit inside, no smell of coffee in the morning, no real sense of purpose. Some would call this psychological projection, to some extent fairly – my but heart kept feeling this home as an alive being who was feeling confused and abandoned, holding on very bravely but being sad.

Coming back much later than originally intended, within hours of the roads and my driveway finally being plowed I came to her. But a variety of confusions immediately took over the homecoming. Plants I have owned since my children were little were dying due to a mistake by a neighbor, things felt rotten and dead and plundered; like the aftermath of a hurricane. The evening was taken with some long conversations. And my home just sat here like – so? what? say something? aren’t you proud of me? When I looked at her all I could see was the mess of a month’s worth of mail, a car full of stuff dragged inside, the effects of too many people leaving in a hurry, unmade beds, death of loved plants, rotten vases of dead flowers, dust, dirt.

How does one sleep in the middle of this? I didn’t. Bad night. Then as I picked away at things yesterday I was haunted by ghosts of every kind. Haunted. Ow. Finally in the middle of the night the house finally broke through to my consciousness and demanded she get some dignity back, show some gratitude! I straightened, cleared, dusted, mopped, vacuumed.

I did then sleep, and had dreams of trees dancing; I began to notice the familiar trees start to spin in place and playfully sway and dance. Their spirits came down the mountain like people and I brought out warm milk with cornbread soaking in it, with cayenne that for some dream reason I had rubbed and rubbed in my fingers to make it full of essence. I served it in bowls to warm everybody up.

This morning I got up and opened the house all up – freezing air and weather blowing through taking all of the stale air out. Built a blazing fire. Burned sage and spread it’s clearing smoke into every corner. Threw cornmeal out to the mountain and to all 7 directions. Thanked the spirits, the trees, the house, the snow, the wood, the sky, the sun, the air, the matter and the essence of it all.

Reclamation. Sorry it took so long.

Today I finally got to my home after almost a month in refugee status – much of the time away because weather kept me from having free access to my mountain abode. Arriving home has been complicated, not the romantic reunion between self and place of rest that one might hope for it to be. Huge issues at multiple levels confronted me almost instantly and through the evening.

“Home” is maybe a romanticized idea –  but what is it really? What should it be? Does it protect and shield us from difficult realities in life, or does it insist that we come to terms with them? Both. I guess it is both. I wanted to come home and collapse into a refuge. But this is not a refuge. It is real. I am still a refugee from the refuge idea.

This is good, because it is true, and truth is good. But love always finds a way.

There is a dark place that I go to at times when the challenges of life begin to feel like they might overwhelm me. I want to try to describe it, as there is often a connotation that goes with ideas of “darkness” or “dark places” that implies something disturbing, wrong or evil. Those are not the experiences I speak of.

Where I go is just black, completely and utterly. Not a speck of light or any sensation of any kind. Void. Nothing. No-thing. When I sink to it, it swallows me and I know I can’t come out until it releases me – not for anything, not to answer a call or a necessity of any kind. My body shuts down, so physical urgencies or interruptions are not an issue. I don’t generally know how long the experience will last, nor do I have any control over it. But psyche knows – She just does. It seems to be like the spell that Sleeping Beauty goes into – the whole kingdom is asleep while she sleeps. An intelligence seems to be in charge of everything in the area.

There are diagnoses in the field of psychology that go along with this, and have some information to offer about it, but for the most part I think of these experiences as mechanisms that the soul offers the personality, a way to incubate and gestate while big processes assimilate, like the miracle of a baby forming in the womb. Though I have only had these particular experiences after some very painful things happened to me psychologically, so that they might be seen as symptoms of a problem to be solved or a dis-ease to be cured, I also want to state that I am grateful for them. An extraordinary and valuable education is involved in this that I’m not sure I could achieve in any other way and I feel it adds to everything I see and understand about the world.

Too bad they don’t give certificates for this kind of education. I don’t think I can put it on my resumé. But I believe these events offer more to the background and experience that I have to offer than many of the things that do belong on the resumé. “Doctor of Darkness”?? – probably not. The angels know, though.

The power of a musical phrase is more than we can comprehend. I remember some years ago feeling deeply that if I could reincarnate as anything in the world it would be as a musical phrase in Mozart’s Requiem that explodes my heart and moves my consciousness every time it sounds, or is even remembered. I thought — that is what I want to be, something that simply pure, moving and enlightening.

Last night a phrase of music in Paul McCartney’s tune called Anyway, the opening notes that also repeat in the song, sounded in my mind over and over again as I went in and out of a very troubled sleep. It was on autoplay, I wasn’t trying to hear or remember it. Finally it felt like the music moved me to a heart place where I could tolerate the deep discomfort and sorrow I was feeling. After going in and out of sleep with that one phrase repeating and sustaining me, I awakened to a decision that I was not even imagining I might be called to make right now, a big and difficult one.

As I went through today attempting to assimilate the night’s work, the phrase kept repeating. I now believe that it was the actual, literal physics of that music took me to where I needed to go in consciousness. Even now I can only sustain the intensity of the decision I made if I recall it.

Anyway. Music is a power. Beyond description or comprehension. Divine. Intense. A reckoning.

Tonight as I open up my computer to write, the above phrase jumped into my head – one of the names given to Kuan Yin, a female deity in Buddhist tradition, known to have supreme compassion as Mother to all beings. Having just traveled safely from Illinois to North Carolina through a miraculously open corridor of dry and open road in a country battered with storms coming this way from several directions, arriving just minutes before the big one moves in, I feel the loving watch of a compassionate Mother and want to acknowledge my gratitude. And having just gotten a letter from a friend who has recently lost a dearly loved one to suicide, as she attempts to make sense of what has happened I feel the Compassionate Mother speaking through her heart, mind and voice. She sees, loves, and offers true insight to the grieving.

There is one who mothers us, each of us, compassionately. Her visage and name come in many forms, from a variety of cultures and stories. She is the spirit and presence in all of them, true and real. My thanks to this Mother tonight as I sleep in the warm bed of a friend who has taken me in since my own home can’t be reached. I ask mercy for all who are challenged by these storms.

I can’t quite believe that I am moved to tell this story for the first time, but here I go. Some twenty years ago I designed for myself a 40-day ritual that I did every day during Lent for three consecutive years. My spiritual teacher at the time used to talk about ways that we humans box ourselves into small spaces spiritually and psychologically and find it difficult to think or move outside the box. She called these “enclosures” and would teach her students how to identify and then move through small spaces we detrimentally limit ourselves to.

One day I became painfully aware of patterns in my life that were repeated almost mindlessly every day. I felt like an ant moving in a colony – from the laundry room to the kitchen to bathing the kids to putting them to bed to taking them to school to the office to the parking lot to the grocery store to home…  to repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Every day felt like a repeat in that certain way, and I wondered how I would grow without more adventure than that.

So, I decided to create a ritual to invite a break in patterns. Each day during Lent I determined to take a walk of whatever length I could manage with exactly the intention of breaking out of patterns I felt enclosed by, to search for the mystery, the beloved, “the bridegroom”, a term that had been used in a book I loved. I gave the ritual the title Breaking out of Enclosures, Searching for the Bridegroom. I practiced the ritual each day of Lent for three years.

As the life of a working mother with small children goes, often the only opportunity I had to take my walk was after the children were tucked in for the night. I lived in La Crescenta, California, at the time – a rather safe neighborhood in the Los Angeles area. I had been trained by living in the greater area to fear walking alone at night, but what was I to do after I made the committment to myself? Off I would go into the dark. Behind bushes I would sense movement and feel fear move in my gut, the rustle of leaves, the shadows of trees and street lamps – many times fear would arise. And just as soon it would dissipate as I realized they were only shadows in my mind, not outside of it.

Ever since this period in my life I have been strongly aware of what that ritual did for me. It has been an immense power in helping me to understand fearful workings of the mind and to overcome them. I do not believe I could have moved to the mountains of North Carolina, living alone in the wilderness for all of these years, never having experienced a moment of fear in my house alone, without having done this ritual. And that in only one of many, many ways I have come to identify the way that ritual has worked for me.

I realize I want to create a new ritual to help address other kinds of fears that taunt from the shadows now. I know the power of such practice, and invite the angels and invisibles to help me conceive a new one to help with current needs for breaking through.