This year, beginning in May, I participated in a 6-month course called Master Your Awareness: A Toltec Way of Knowing. Early on in the course participants were asked to identify what masks they wear. These masks, strategies we called them, developed over the course of life - to understand, cope with and make sense of a confusing and complex world. My main strategies were: Pleaser, Isolator, Distractor, Victim and Savior (there are a total of 15 or so). As you would imagine, it's not easy delving in to these - turning them over, probing their origins, fathoming the scope of their influence. Yet delve we did. In a supportive circle, the group worked to hold space for each member as we mined this territory together.
What we learned was, the strategies we'd been employing were impeding authentic connection. If I wanted to leave behind this outdated mode of relating, I had to grapple with and release the strategies that I'd not just become accustomed to, but had woven tightly to my identity. At the stage of life I'm in, newly postmenopausal, I was ready for an overhaul; a new way of being. This was a gift I wanted to give myself.
Prior to my Toltec class, in March of this year I gave myself another fabulous gift, an Emergence Dream Retreat with Toko-pa Turner. I've been following her Dreamwork for years and the content she covers - the crafting of her words - rings like a bell in my heart. The dream retreat was central to my transitions this year as I learned to capture, listen to and understand the language of my dreams.
But, there was another gift waiting for me, one I hadn't expected. What Rainbow, my Toltec teacher and therapist, and Toko-pa helped me discover and nurture, is connection with Mother Earth. I've relished time spent in nature for years, and the rejuvenating power of it has nourished me time and again. What's changed is my relationship with Mother Earth. I've gone deeper, opened more fully to her - found her welcoming spirit, her unwavering love, her magic. It is through connection with Mother Earth that the mind calms, the heart opens, and perceived boundaries dissolve as I allow my energy to merge with hers.
[before sunrise on the marsh]
Our Toltec class concluded in October, the weekend of my birthday/re-birthday. Since the end of the group I've been able to pause, listen to my heart, knit, write, and ask myself what I want to manifest. The time I make every day to spend in connection with Mother Earth is central to my authenticity. She knows me. Accepts me. Holds me.
She is me. I am part of her.
We are one.
Not awkward at all.
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