pillars of transformation

from maiden to mother

An early elder in my life once told me: “There is no situation in life in which Loving More won’t help make it better.”

This morning we got our first snow flurry. 

After a night of pouring rain, thunder and howling coyotes, the rising Sun turned the rain into snow, and big fluffy puffs of crystalized water fell from the sky. 

The mountain is shrouded in mist. 

When I closed my eyes this morning, humming to the drone of our slightly out-of-tune shruti box, I was gifted a vision of the greater transformation of my life. 

Before I became a Mama, the choice of which startled numerous people in my world, I was blissfully unaware of the enormously self-centered nature of my life and choices. I went where I wanted, when I wanted, stayed or left according to the whims of my own desires and generally had very few responsibilities to attend to, other than supporting my relatively minimal needs as a single person with hardly any possessions. 

I indulged in everything I could: morning practices, music, creative pursuits, ceremonies, communities, teachings, travels, love (though always brief). I could disappear from the world for days, weeks and months at a time. I felt most safe and at home in the company of my own presence, tucked in a little single person tent by some unmarked river in the naked, remote and nameless wild. I never stayed anywhere long. 

And then, life, in a sudden, lightning-speed answering to many years of subtle (unconscious?) prayer and longing, dropped me into a situation of very real, very life-changing commitment. Partner (“wife through life”, we sometimes call it), Mother, Land Steward. 

And this morning as I hummed and offered sonic beauty to all that I hold sacred, I could see that I was living in this new (inner?) realm. I saw this very light colored palace, held up by a few very special pillars. And I was tending to this palace, to these living pillars of light, in a way I haven’t really tended to anything in my life before. 

The first pillar, and the most important pillar, is the committed partnership with the father of our baby girl. This is the most important pillar because it is in the context and beauty and strength of this pillar that the rest of the palace exists. 

While my habit and (ancestral?) conditioning has had me fighting this pillar for years now, I feel the Universe is really asking me: “What if you just said Yes to this?”

And in that saying Yes, that new, tender, unfamiliar, Yes to another human being, to a real opening of the heart, to something I don’t have much experience with; in that vulnerable surrendering, something very beautiful is unfolding… something I can’t quite name yet. 

I can see how, in my previous life, I could manipulate the elements of my physical surroundings to maintain a personal comfortability (or distraction or intrigue). And now, through a few years in the cauldron of my own transformation, I am becoming the fire within my own palace; I am the creative hands molding the clay of creation; I am tending to the palace of my own life. I am here, stable in it, loving and shaping it through my mind, words and hands. Wife, Mother, Steward.

In a letter written by the Mother to Sri Aurobindo in India (mentioned in previous post), the Mother said to him how in Divine Love, we never impose our will on others. And that we love without expectation or condition. 

These are actually very revolutionary concepts. Especially when put into practice.

I don’t love my daughter because she makes me proud, or gives me an eskimo kiss the way I taught her, or because she helps carry sticks over to the fire in the morning. I love her because she IS, because she exists as a miraculous manifestation of the Divine. And I love her papa because he IS. Because he exists in his magical unbounded connection to Source. I love this land because it IS. The mountain, the snow, the meadow. And in loving it all, I make it better, I help it grow. 

In loving it all, I get closer to true surrender, to true freedom.  And I liberate those I love from the bondage of my expectations, from the kind of sickly love we learned to give only under certain circumstances.  

By saying Yes to it all - to the mischievous goats, to the bags under my eyes, to my partner’s frustrations, to the mud and snow and poop on the floor - by saying Yes, I am gently tending to the pillars of my palace in a way that keeps it liberating, keeps bringing in more light. 

And I can see now, that having these pillars, this palace, this realm of steady commitment, is actually giving me the grounds from which I can truly grow and transform myself, in a way I literally couldn’t have imagined possible before. 

So here’s to that. And to the Sun peeking through the clouds. And to the wind picking up from the west. And here’s to you. And here’s to us, to this workspace of life and learning how to Love.