Freedom is never free

All morning I've been receiving messages to let go of the past with love and compassion. This is a nice sentiment, but I wonder if the tools I am using are merely targeting middle to upper class white women with daddy issues who can just find a distraction until the next uncomfortable recollection comes up that again needs sweeping under the carpet.

While I have been feeling an abundance of kindliness and love in my life as I have entered the second phase of my recovery, my second initiation as I like to refer to it, I also have entered a new level of honesty (which comes with the package and nothing of my own doing of surfacing burdens to have healed). What is different in this clearing of the past, however, is not going to the person who I have a broken relationship with and trying to talk it out and possibly come to a solution on how to change behaviour.

What is coming up now are recognizing societal problems that are so much bigger than me, but letting go with love doesn't seem sufficient. While God is working unbelievable miracles in my life, helping me to help myself be rid of so much toxins in my life, I wonder if I can do more than say a prayer and go about my merry way. And going about my merry way is also sufficient, because peace spreads by mere energy transference, and I know that I can continue as I am, and die in peace.

But I want so much more than to just ride out the spontaneous moments of pain and then to live and die in peace. I want to understand the rot in this world. I want to fight the good fight. I want to help women work through their own trauma and go on to live not only in peace, but in self-worth, which means complete severance from people-pleasing, and also to live in independence, which means complete severance from financial and emotional dependence on others. I want to leave behind tangible resources for the generations to come, and they will come.

Jesus came first as a sacrificial lamb, but he WILL return as a ravaging lion. This shows me that innocence comes first, but then retribution will come second. A part of me wants to be in the movement that disrupts the status quo, because I am seeing violence inflicted on females as early a primary school. And while we are taught that we don't fight fire with fire, maybe the entire structure needs to burn to the ground.

There is nothing unholy about our recompense; the danger is when we try to do God's job which is for His glory and His time and not ours to execute. But changing the way we raise our generations isn't the same as betraying our commandment to show compassion, it's learning to work through corrosion and violence in a different way. As we wait for the last saints to return to God, let's in the meantime see what happens when we call a spade a spade, and use it to pierce those who somehow got their hands on a weapon that is incomprehensible how they even found it, let alone learned how to use it.

Balancing the inner light

I have noticed that there is a difference between inner light for guiding self, and inner light for guiding others. When I am shining my inner light for self, I am more humble and meek, more willing to be flexible and engaged, and more integrated into the web of culture where I am better accepting of others and circumstances. When my inner light is guiding self, I desire connection more than goal-setting. This is the passive, unnoticed work, and I believe this to be a more feminine energy.

When I am shining my inner light for others, I am more focussed, attentive, dispassionate, disciplined, and less interested in anything that could be a hindrance in achieving my goal. This is a more active power where there is often outward reward. I consider this inner light for others a more masculine energy.

My name means "Woman" in Old English, but I have mostly lived in the masculine polarity of energy. In Kundalini Yoga the practitioner is given a spiritual name, whereby he or she works to live up to that name. I had never received a spiritual name when I practiced, but in my heart I knew I wanted to live up to my birth name.

This meant I had to give up a few things. First and foremost - drugs and alcohol which are (in my experience) tools for the masculine energy. Then I had to give up keeping (as many) secrets - this in my opinion, is also a masculine technique used to help facilitate scientific and financial progress in society. And the hardest thing I had to break from - telling others what I believed their spirituality needed to look like.

In cultivating balance in my mind (and therefore life), I first need balance between my inner light for self, and my inner light for others. Without the respect and trust of my peers, which I gain through the strength of inner light for self, I will only alienate myself in then vain attempts of oiling my inner light for others. My intentions will become murky and show through. This of course means releasing from a phony call of duty to serve others by trading in that saviour syndrome with the appreciation through light for self, first.

People are generally intuitive. No matter how disturbed a person is, even the most viciously possessed characters could recognize God when His son passed by. We inherently know Truth, and I recognize my own discord and disassociation when I am not living in balance, through the feelings of defeat when I am not in accordance with my surroundings.

There is a time and a place for the things that I want, and today I work to approach my instincts with the respect and reverence that they need, while respecting the boundaries of others. This means that sometimes I must go within and shine my inner light only for myself, with the hope that the nourishment from those rays will in turn grace my life by turning outward, for others. Amen.

About my Father's business

Today marks the fifth year of my sobriety, and as God has intended, I am reminded of my devastating weakness: that I am powerless over people, places, and things.

I am surrounded by situations that I would like to change, control, or just outright demolish. That today by sheer grace, I recognize and accept that I not only have no power (though I have driven myself mad deluded that I do), I have no right - it is my Father's business.

What I love about my God though, is that He has never let me suffer for too long. His scale of justice has balanced out this erratic person's circumstances so many times, it is impossible to not see Providence in my life today. It only takes an open mind, an open heart, and the belief that redemption is offered for all who seek. Amen.

Surrender

Love is redemption,
this I know,
so I will never
let you go.

Though battles wage on,
and I want to fight,
to leave you now
would not be right.

The knowledge I gained
through a pure heart as yours
led me to trouble
and closed some doors.

Still I move forward,
and just let them be -
finally without power
over me.

Our time is short,
our message clear;
I will no longer squander
What is now so dear.

The sacrifice is made,
the music's suffice
to permit me to leave
this wretched fight.

You aided me,
so I will stay true.
I finally promise
to not fall through.

This indignation
ruled me for so long,
now what time is left
I will be strong.

The songs we sing,
I will not fear
my creaky voice,
and all these tears.

You've seen it all
the release of pride
week after week
no one by my side.

But that doesn't matter
anymore:
And I await the knock
at my door.

Wild flower

Oh how I mourned
those sweet flowers,
taken far too soon.
The first tipped domino
in the collapse
that was to be
everything I knew.

But I didn't know
that those flowers were poisonous,
all I saw was the white light,
the clusters of beauty,
wild, and therefore free.

So in their passing
I believed myself to be a prisoner,
because my ignorance of God
shut out all possibility
that there was good
outside the walls
where those flowers grew.

Though they had venom,
they were not weeds,
they were not evil.
They were a moment in time
that was meant for that moment in time
and none other.

Now I leave those flowers
in the grey zone of my mind
where I no longer need reference
the time I was beaten down.
And there is no need to fear
that something is undone.

In so there is no dishonour,
no passing over of my past
in knowing now
what is gone
is not forgotten,
and nothing of me has been taken,
but perhaps instead
has been restored.

Dance on

I wanted to write a blog today about my usual passage through life toward regeneration, however I'm a little unstable in the spirit today (I shall blame the end of daylight savings which I can't figure out if I lost or gained an hour). However a year ago my ballet mentor suggested I write about my ballet studies. I was going through a now-or-never episode, really struggling with a solo I was choreographing for a December performance, for reasons both within and outside of my control. At the time though I was feeling so sorry for myself in what I perceived to be more setbacks than I could face, let alone share with the Internet. But I pushed forward. I studied videos of principle dancers in famous ballets and classical art paintings of ballerinas in traditional ballet postures. I also had huge help from my teacher who filled in some time-gaps, and so, in an unprepared performance and ill-fitting tutu, I executed with relative success my dance.

Fast forward a year, I am much more confident in myself and in my art, and feel privileged to write this piece on this rain-soaked dreary, but with the comfort of autumn, Monday afternoon. Today my article is inspired by a book that I bought by chance when shopping for a friend's birthday present last month. I am at the office with lots of downtime, and am finally reading it. It's called The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, and so far says exactly what my teacher has been passing on about art the past couple of years as I develop in my craft.

What struck me today in what Julia Cameron wrote, and what I have known for over a year now because I have witnessed it in my teacher's success as a choreographer and an award-winning recording artist, is that it is safe to express our creative talents. Cameron asserts that the disapproval of our creative endeavours that we might have received from our parents causes us to make a connection that our creativity is bad and therefore ungodly. While this might be the case for some, for me I know today that it is really a duty for me to express my talents, and Cameron says this is giving back to God what pleases Him, for it is what He gave to us to use.

Before people's backs go up about the God word, let me say that while there are spiritual principles in this book, it falls more into the New Age Self-Help category (in fact I passed over some paragraphs that were a little too spacey for me) which even an atheist I'm sure can appreciate. In fact the entire "self-help" category made me a little hesitant to credit this book, but I know for me to live is to let others live as they see fit. There are no more prophets of God.

That little disclaimer aside, I would like to conclude with the what I began with. I was not ready to write about my journey through dance. I have always felt a sense of inferiority in dance, since I have such few performance opportunities and I am studying a classical performance art. The nagging feeling of being unauthentic and incorporating sporadic personal dance adventures into my online life felt unsatisfying.

But something that I have learned is that when we live in our passions, good things come to us. We inspire people and make connections that otherwise wouldn't happen if we didn't put ourselves out there time to time in moments of fearful vulnerability that can lead to hurtful reviews.

To reiterate what Cameron writes, we have associated our creativity with negativity, something wrong, shameful, worthless, and therefore to be avoided. But there is another problem which causes us to snuff out our creative joys, and that is the coercion of being told that living in the creative gifts which make us special instead make us evil, egotistical, and prideful. Those of us who affirm our talents are misconstrued as being arrogant, but rather the opposite is true. Living and honouring the manifestation of our creativity is true humility, because applying what makes us unique is actually giving glory to God. We are using what was divinely given to us, and not cloaking it (see the Parable of the Talents). To be confident in what makes us unique in our creative talents is righteous, and not to be feared, rejected, dismissed, belittled, or insulted. Amen.

A Degas painting. A classical position that I studied for my solo performance in December 2017