a card pulled
There’s a marble statue of Mary Magdalene in the main cave at Sainte Baume in France. She’s reclining with her head back, her neck exposed, and her eyes closed. And yet there’s no confusion that she might be sleeping. She’s clearly existing very intensely in the open expanse of the universe within her. Her face exudes bliss and pure surrender.
The word surrender in the spiritual context has been confused with relinquishing power over to someone else, or something else, that’s separate from us. Surrender in Mary’s gospel means letting go of the egoic desires and stories that are separating us from the radiance of true love.
The soul says in Mary’s gospel, “What binds me has been slain, and what surrounds me has been destroyed, and my desire has been brough to an end, and ignorance has died.” (Mary 9:27) This is the experience of surrender. All the seven powers of the ego have died and what remains is the love the soul knows completely.
Love comes from within. Surrender is when we stop our constant search for love to arrive from outside of us, from someone else, or in the validation of a loved one, or from a career, or an accomplishment we think will cover us in adoration. Love comes from within. Surrender is that sweet and potent ecstasy of returning fully to the Good that we already are.
Surrender is never a giving over, a disempowering resignation of who we are. Surrender is never a giving away of our truth. Surrender is an effort of radical trust, of turning inward, and releasing every egoic idea we’ve had of ourselves to the Good that’s right here within.
Surrender is the bliss that Mary embodies of knowing at all times and in all places that she is in Good hands. She can, at any moment her soul calls her to, relinquish an egoic state that’s oppressing her and allow the great big unsayable love within her to rise up and inundate her, suffuse her mind and body with the bliss of knowing again the truth of love at her core.
What does it feel like to repeat inside of the heart “I am in good hands?”
a prayer
There is much to fear. Everyday I hear of a new horror currently taking place or yet to come. A collapse is inevitable, and will be as frightening as it sounds, I’ve heard. AI may take over, humans will perish, so too will the world we’ve constructed. There’s nothing we can do but brace for the end.
I’m beginning to understand my deepest fears, how they are not mine alone, but inherited and implanted through the countless years of life’s survival and deaths. I can feel these fears—like hands—pulling me into the dark, cool waters of the worst case scenario. I sink and sink, letting them take me under. But if I’m wise I remember to breathe. I close my eyes and inhale through my nose1, exhale long and slow out through my mouth. It often takes at least three of these before I notice where I am, and how my mind so consistently and urgently pulls me away from here.
From my room, I look out my window to the world. I see the diagonal falling of rain upon leafless trees, it all seems so consistent, so calm, so unchanging. But we all know, whether we admit it or not, the reality is anything but. As our little planet in our little galaxy—one in a vast web of billions—is both being expanded out and pulled inward through space, I know the ephemeral, fleeting nature of “what is”, is the only truth to be gleaned from the finite, dreamy mammal we are. We have these big brains that think they know and these hearts we claim get us into trouble—but I imagine it’s the other way around. Nonetheless, we grapple with our certainties and uncertainties, we harbor so much damn hope and fear.
Fear, like hope, is a perspective; and the truth is much bigger than either will ever be able to assert. I’m learning, fear is a message, an alarm: Hey, check this out! But it’s only that. Fear is not the truth, certainly not all of it, and it keeps our asses alive, yes, but only until we die. Fear cannot be escaped or eliminated. Fear cannot see the whole picture. Fear can never not be fear. Its whole job is to be fear—let it.
I want to invite us to take our fear to heart—meaning to both listen to it and create space around it. Fear is not something to push away but to notice, and once it’s noticed and we use our senses (bodies) to observe if the coast is clear, we let it pass. We let the fear go. I want us to stop clinging to our fear just because it often feels more real than our present. I want us to stop allowing others to tell us what our fear should be, who it should be at, and how much of it we should be feeling, without our consent. I want our fear to have a room in the house, but not be the house itself.
There is a way to be mindful of the unsettling realities we all face see: economic collapse/climate change/ famine/exhausted food and soil systems, while still rooting into our present with the utmost reverence. You see, the head in the sand doesn’t work, nor does the head in the sky. Our times call for something like eye levelness and courage. Facing bravely the world and the time we inherited. Doom and love are dancing partners. Even collapse and decay can be met with tenderness, with love and kindness and trust, if not always, in moments. May we practice these non-fearful perspectives intentionally, now—and again and again, so that we are familiar with them.
a poem
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
-Mary Oliver (Wild Geese)
the unconscious
Lately in my dreams I am constantly chasing my lover around while he coyly avoids me. He tells me my worst fears, that he doesn’t want or need me, and I rage and scream at him and he just keeps his calm. I follow him around yelling. My logic is that if I scream louder he’ll actually hear my pain, which I very much feel in the dream. But he just keeps his little grin on his face, shrugs and keeps walking.
Dreams are an invitation to see what’s prodding us from the inside. I don’t think it’s helpful to treat them literally, as in—my lover really must not love me—but to treat the dream with a dream like way of understanding. The subconscious deals only in metaphor. Read your dreams like poems and you’ll notice something you hadn’t before.
The poem of my dream:
My rage does not grant me control, in fact it robs me of any—if there is any. Yet it’s there wishing to heard. Perhaps it is not my lover who needs to hear my rage—but me, after all.
What are you dreaming of?
on my mind
I’m re-reading The Courage to Create by Rollo May, a psychologist. The book was written in in 1975, but the content of what it expresses holds up, at least mostly. It’s all about the creative act, and I recommend it to all creatives. If you’d like to read along with me, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I also just picked up a novel titled The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (a literary genius) in the hopes it will inspire me to think of how I want to write my own sci-fi story I’m feeling called to write.
Tomorrow, Monday the 25th, I’m hosting a Salon et Salon, essentially a salon (in the French sense—a gathering of minds) in my little hair home Headdress Salon in the East Village of Manhattan. I will be joined by Nathan Dufour Oglesby (@nathanology), a philosopher, whose six week online course I took last fall. The course invited us to think about the word “eco”, meaning “dwelling place” in Greek, and what are values are relating to it and how to act on them. The Salon et Salon is my actionable project made manifest! Here’s a link to reserve a spot if you’re in the city and would like to join.
While I was considering further my whole “I will not save the world because I do not believe it needs saving” idea, I went to the internet to see if anyone else is feeling the same as I. I’m not alone, and I want to share a piece of the writing I found for anyone wanting to touch some doomy could happens; the author essentially argues we cannot avoid a devastating collapse and that it will happen sooner than we care to admit. I don’t agree with everything I’ve read so far, but I appreciate that amongst his doom he also offers some tips on what to do with it. I’m interested to read more of his work. There’s a fine line I’m teetering that wants to be real about the damage our species has inflicted upon this finite planet and what this could mean, while also being aware no one knows the future and life is still awe-invoking and worth every second of living.
Many of us are breathing improperly and not enough! Watch this video to learn more.