A continuation of my exploration of the past six months.<\/p>\n
The goddess who consumes all exhausts herself<\/em><\/address>\nI myself have witnessed the esoteric language of one under the influence of the goddess<\/em><\/address>\nThis state is profound<\/em><\/address>\nThe release intense<\/em><\/address>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/address>\n— Taupouri Tangoro<\/span> Lele Kawa: Fire rituals of Pele<\/em><\/address>\n\u00a0<\/address>\n\u00a0<\/address>\nThe smoke and steam of Kilauea rise from a crater held within a vast caldera many miles across. \u00a0You can approach the rim of this caldera in various places and see the crater containing lava a few hundred yards away. \u00a0At night, the steam and smoke glows from the fire within. \u00a0When we hosted out gathering in Hawai’i we did it with the goddess 300 yards away. \u00a0The power and origin of the impulse of creation lay beside us, washing us in steam, rain and sun.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\nFor me Kilauea was one of the most divinely feminine places I have ever been. \u00a0The container within the container, that which holds the primal origins of earth itself, a vessel for the creation of everything. \u00a0It is difficult, or maybe impossible, for me to speak of insights that arose from being there. \u00a0Instead what I experienced was a jolt, a crack in my consciousness that led to tremendous grief, perhaps a mourning of the missed chances I have had in my life to balance feminine and masculine, perhaps a keen awareness of the cost of not being able to do so. \u00a0Something intuitive and emotional; the only way to write it would be to employ the esoteric language of the spirit, disjointed images.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\nMusic always travels with me. \u00a0Snippets of song, melody, poetry and words crowd my head and heart, and flow freely when I am moved, when there is an opening to the outside world. \u00a0I daresay if you followed my internal soundtrack and charted the songs I sing at certain times and place, you could chart the liturgy of my life. \u00a0On the volcano that morning, my mind was filled at times with the line from U2’s With or Without You: “And you give yourself away, and you give, and you give, and you give yourself away.” \u00a0The goddess consumes herself, gives herself away to the flow of life itself. \u00a0Forms and reforms the container to hold life itself. \u00a0The sacrifice, the most sacred gift, is to give oneself away. \u00a0Totally. \u00a0For me, the moment on the crater when I cracked open felt like a flow was moving through me. \u00a0When I told my colleague that “defense” had left me, I was saying that the shell that I used to guard myself from the flow of life moving through me was gone. \u00a0There was no way to defend my tender and open heart, to stop it from breaking, from the heart emerging. \u00a0To this day, six months later, it feels bruised somehow, as if the forceful cracking through of all I had been holding back had torn and ripped its way to freedom. \u00a0Belvie at one point took me aside and said “thank you for facilitating us.” \u00a0 She had seen what was coming through me as bigger than myself.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\nMy shadow is \u00a0narcissism. \u00a0A self centered reflection, on who I am, who I want to be, how I want you to see me, how I want to be loved and appreciated. \u00a0This narcissism comes through in my writing, my speech, my embodied actions. \u00a0It is most alive when I teach. \u00a0I struggle at times with the sound of my own voice. \u00a0But on the edge of the volcano I learned that to be full of oneself is not to be full at all. \u00a0That is an easy kind of fullness, one which fits with the smallest possible container. \u00a0I can create a container that can hold myself and be small. \u00a0On the edge of Kilauea, I discovered that this container is so small and weak, that it crumbles the minute it grows to hold other than me. \u00a0It shatters. \u00a0It is arrogant to stand beside Kilauea and believe that you can hold big things. \u00a0The volcano herself trembles and roars and renews herself every day, for the work of TRULY HOLDING is dynamic, difficult, and requires us to die in every moment. \u00a0Any rigidity in the container causes it to be brittle.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\nMy out of whack masculine impulse strengthens the container, believes the hubris of the story that it is my job to do the holding. \u00a0When I was filled with the power of what was passing through me, that impulse died. \u00a0I felt truly in that moment the integration of masculine and feminine: that one co-creates the other. \u00a0There is no container without fire and no fire without the container.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\nFor six months, I have run into myself. \u00a0I am at sea in this respect. \u00a0I am a poor student of the feminine, of the integration between the masculine and the feminine. \u00a0I have been taught a lesson and I have spent six months trying to understand it, trying to see the way it shows up in daily life, in my work, in my family, with my friends and colleagues. \u00a0I have met or re-met women like Luana, Ria, Ginny, Mary, Christina, Teresa and my dearly beloved Caitlin who are causing me to re-think and re-feel this edge.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\nBut I am a baby. \u00a0I sit silently in the forest watching small patterns, seeing the way douglas-fir trunks mimic my life’s journey, watching ravens sing to their futures and their pasts, studying the flow of water around the moss beds and over rocks, listening to the sea washing the island I live upon. \u00a0I know nothing of this new world. \u00a0It is a monumental shift to the way I am seeing things, and it has tipped me off my keel. \u00a0I feel like I am in some form of limbo, like in Hexagram 12 (Pi – Obstruction) of the I Ching, where heaven and earth are moving apart from each other. \u00a0The masculine and feminine are separated in my mind and my heart seeks their reintegration, hexagram 11 (Tai – Peace). \u00a0What lies in the way of these two finding one another is my self.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\nThe transformation that happened at Beyond Sustainability was one of seeing anew, and is one that requires much time to properly understand, integrate and embody. \u00a0My hope for this lifetime is that it will happen. \u00a0My modality right now is resting in it, letting the feminine teach me in the rare moments when I can be open to her.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\nI build fires, sit in the woods and hum.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n\nLong, long have I tarried with love<\/span><\/address>\nIn the uplands of Kohola-lele,<\/span><\/address>\nThe wildwood above Ka-papala.<\/span><\/address>\nTo enter, permit me to enter, I pray;<\/span><\/address>\nRefuse me not recognition; I am he,<\/span><\/address>\nA traveler offering mead of praise,<\/span><\/address>\nJust a voice,<\/span><\/address>\nOnly a human voice.<\/span><\/address>\nOh, what I suffer out here,<\/span><\/address>\nRain, storm, cold, and wet.<\/span><\/address>\nO sweetheart of mine,<\/span><\/address>\n\nLet me come in to you.<\/address>\n\n<\/address>\n