82. The Feminine Sprouts from Darkness

BLOG 82—(present reflections tied to December 2000 journal entries about my healing and novel writing journey)—What are the chances of opening to a page in my journal of 18 years ago, and coming across a passage about Trump?

Well, it seems the chances are good.

In December of 2000, I had copied the following information from a book about Mary Magdalene and the Sacred Feminine: “The Tarot card Trump No. 15 is usually called the Devil, but the obscure picture on this card is obviously a rendering of the male power principle unrestrained, gone berserk, enslaving the human community.”

What a statement to read several decades after the fact and find it so true of our times and our current president! As students, once quiet, speak out against violence—against this patriarchal system that relies on unrestrained greed to grow like a cancer that will kill us all—and many more step up in the name of our sacred waters, earth, and rights, old systems fight to survive and hold on. President Trump, as the Tarot Card No. 15 reveals, is showing us the ugly and dangerous face of the male power principle unrestrained, and now it is up to us to stand for a new dawn.

Years ago, I wrote this in my journal as I healed from pain that was not only in my hip, but in my soul, longing to shed thousands of years of disconnect with the earth and the feminine. I grew up learning to beat up that which was soft, tender, dark, receiving, surrendering…that which was feminine. And I came to see that the pain in my body was the ache caused from all the pushing and dishonoring of life and of this feminine part of myself.

My journey into the feminine at this time, 18 years ago, began with a dream in which Hitler’s people were trying to find me, and I remained hiding under a bed. Hitler represented that masculine principle unrestrained, and in my dream he mirrored my upbringing in a German household, of clear belief systems dominated by right and wrong, weak and strong, black and white. I woke up aware that I was stuck inside this duality that was blind to the possibility of  surrender being strength, and toughness and tightness, weakness.

“Truth cannot be split into two’s, into sides, if you are coming from your heart,” I wrote back then. “We don’t need to hold onto our words, our patterns, our reasoning to be where we are each moment. There is only one heart that belongs to us all. Each moment is its own if from the heart.”

As I began to let go of the d5fe7770d9ee3b282ae7b02105e59ce9masculine energies of my upbringing that no longer served me (or at least not on their own), I began to embrace the feminine, to accept myself in my own power and beauty.

I wrote: “We have focused so much on eliminating the shadow and moving into the light—on fixing our shadows to become so-called enlightened. But there is no fixing. The feminine is the shadow, the darkness. It is the dark place that is needed for the seeds to grow, for the areas of our lives that are polluted, to be digested and transformed into rich soil. The dark is willing to feel, to receive everything, because it knows how to shape shift the elements into seeds of love, which, in union with the masculine, the sun energy, can grow new life. Without the darkness, though, there is no feminine, or the feminine energy becomes polluted because it is not allowed to clean itself. It becomes weak, sick, and dying.”

I realized, as I wrote and grew into myself, that so much of my life had been dominated by white, masculine patriarchal energies out of balance with the feminine. I carried this within me as an inner battle of pain. “If we are always trying to fly, to move forward at all costs, then the feminine does not have the chance to renew itself, to create new seasons for us to walk in,” I wrote. “We are losing the seasons of ourselves. We are burning up by the sun. We keep wanting to fix, enlighten, rather than have a relationship and be in partnership.”

Not only had I and so many of us dishonored the more subtle feminine energies from which all life is created, our culture, for far too long, has looked down upon all that is not “white,” all that is dark, including different races and the2b5bbe75dcf1cc9e254a9c0278458da4 earth herself. “For centuries we have been describing evil as dark and white belonging to angels. All that is above is good, is safe, and all that is below is to be feared, including the earth,” I wrote.

Back in the winter of 2000, as I began to change my perspective about the feminine and myself, a new kind of happiness entered my life. I wrote, “When I went for a walk in the woods, I felt this happiness, this relief and joy because I no longer had to fear the darkness—the place of dreams, of the unknown, of that unmanifest; where experiences happen, and we sense, receive, love, and hold; where we transform into magic; where life is made; where we create; where the earth’s energies live and grow new life.”

Today, as our tireless patriarchal system holds on with full might to what it’s got, I invite you to welcome the dark, feminine energies that can transform this old into new. I invite all of us to stop pushing, stop reaching toward the stars—even if for just a moment—and go inside, into the invisible world of feminine magic to discover that which sits in the shadows aching to emerge.

My Novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, is about returning to this renewing feminine energy and our mother, the earth. It’s available on Amazon at Amazon Page  or at www.michelleadam.net. It can be ordered at a local bookstore as well. Also, watch a brief video on “duende,” “the spirit of the earth”: YouTube Video

 

58. Checkmate with Ourselves

BLOG 58: January, 2000—I remember now where I was on the eve of this millennium. Do you? I was in Taos, New Mexico, in the mountains somewhere far away from civilization as the entire world braced itself for what we called “Y2K” (when all computers would possibly shut down, and the world as we knew it).

As we all prepared for a Y2K disaster, I was in the middle of nowhere, drumming in the new millennium with my friend Eric Perry and others. I barely remember that time, other than the fact that I had flown out to San Francisco, CA, from my parents house in New Jersey, to pick up my car (I had left it there a few years earlier because I wasn’t physically up to driving it back East after becoming injured). Eric came out to California to drive my car—with me lying down in the back—on a journey East, or at least halfway to New Mexico, where he lived.

When Eric and I arrived in New Mexico, I helped him decorate his room and we visited Acoma Pueblo, a native village on top of a cliff set up for tourists to visit. Due to my long term injury I wasn’t able to walk  much, but enough to see this village and befriend a stray dog who followed us to our car. After the dog looked at us with longing eyes and a guard told us to take him—he didn’t belong to anyone, he said—Eric, who could barely take care of plants, became a dog owner. We named the little one “Acoma.”

By the time New Year’s Eve approached,c31d532e140f6c8af13c69ef86fc2705 the three of us were drumming away in Taos. Despite being out in nature, I remember feeling disconnected—even in Albuquerque where the Sandia Mountains that had once called me were. My body was still struggling to walk, and my soul questioning why I had stopped in the middle of the desert on my way to California almost four years earlier only to break myself and still be struggling. Why had I followed a spiritual call only to be broken and to feel disconnected from all that had initially connected me?

That year, 17 years ago, my father had called me to tell me he would fly out to Albuquerque to drive me and my car back to New Jersey, to my parent’s home.  I accepted and soon my car and I were back with my parents.

It was a strange place to be—in the same place, or worse, than I had been four years earlier. It was only later, when studying with one of my spiritual teachers, Martín Prechtel, that I would understand that space I was in. We’ve grown up inside this “empire,” he’d say, and we’ve learned to live with the empire mind. Yet, he’d explain, there’s another part of us, “the barbarian,” the one who’s wild, free, connected to nature, our nature, that wants to come home.

In a world where we have continuously fled, especially West, there comes a time when we’re forced to stop, he’d say, where we face “check mate.” Neither the Empire mind nor the Barbarian can move as they are in stalemate, seeing the other for the first time and determining how to make peace w540ab52e39f2f19b2fea568f2462612aith one other since both are a part of ourselves (my apologies to my teacher for not sharing this as eloquently as he did!).

As I look back, I see now, that I was in a place of checkmate, unlearning the parts of my mind that had imprisoned me while getting to know this Barbarian part of me that had rarely had a voice. Relearning a way of being, and making peace with what has been, can be long journey—one that isn’t just about this lifetime, but many before, tied to our ancestors and this long earth walk we’ve all made, I later realized.

Today I feel at peace, and I’ve become a beautiful woman who honors her soul’s path. But, I realize that this place of checkmate, this slowing down, and even being stuck for a while, is always with us. We live in a world that demands we keep up while drawing our attention with endless technological inventions and constant marketing. So coming home to the Barbarian part of us, to our freer, more connected nature, requires daily mindfulness. It requires we know that following our soul’s voice is a commitment, and a muscle we must exercise so we don’t become lost inside the hustle and bustle of this empire we live in.

My Novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, is a story of checkmate, of coming home. Check it out on Amazon: Amazon Page  or at www.michelleadam.net. Also, watch a brief video on “duende”, “the spirit of the earth”: YouTube Video