Walking Into Mythos

9.18.2020

Considering the call to listen for personal mythology for Leah Lamb’s course, Mythos, I take myself out for a walk… a ditch walk on neighbor’s land below our home here in western Colorado. A walk that’s brought solace and peace for many years now – off pavement, along a channel of water diverted from Elk Creek that I’ve watched fill, flow, empty and shift from year to year. I notice all the seasonal changes, the way light dances on water, weed, and bird wing. Redwing blackbirds return to nest every spring, shy at first then getting downright cranky with their mid-air warnings to me when the less flashy females are sitting. I note grass & weed growth, harvest asparagus, and once saw a giant pack rat dip and dive in the water. How many photos do I have trying to capture reflections in the meandering flow? In winter, the snow gets deep – which is fun and a lot of work the first time through, and then dicey as it gets icy. A flowering tree once grew about two-thirds the way down from the road to the no trespassing sign where I always turn around. I loved watching its transformations from season to season. We became friends, it my oh, so photogenic subject, especially at sunrise. One spring morning several years ago, I decided I would take its picture every day for a year. When I returned the next day, it was gone – removed from the field. I cried for a week.

Two years later, I found a dead fox on the path. Red fox… still limp… gathered up to be buried in the field behind our house. Now it is a guardian of this land where I live, along with Elk and Red-tailed Hawk.

So, today I’m walking this question of mythos, “What is my mythos?” A slow walk along the ditch. The water is up a bit and unusually clear. Milkweed has exploded its fluffy white-haired seeds along the way. And hmmm, there’s a big scoop of bear poop piled up on the path!

Mythos. I’m feeling into land. I’m feeling into lineage. I’m feeling into my relationship to light. I’m feeling into the way all three inform my being, and how all three hold their own unique stories of my mythos. As far as land goes, the land I’ve lived on for 35 years has been coming alive in my imagination in a whole new way in recent months, a big download received just a few days ago. Together with the land that originally spoke me into being in Great Falls, MT, there’s a lot of mythos to explore. Yes, the land is most alive in me for this telling. Lineage and light can share their stories later.

Happy, alive, delighting in the sheer joy of being alive, I make my way slowly back to the road and decide to continue on along the ditch to the west. (The same family owns the acreage on both sides of the road, friends of my husband’s parents for decades.) As always, I acknowledge the stand of tall, old cottonwoods at the western entry, just barely beginning to show signs of autumn. There’s another pile of bear poop. I slow down even more to examine the hard ground for signs of paw prints. Looking up, there’s the caretaker’s cart ahead. I often turn around when I see the cart (wanting to interact with no one), but I choose to keep going today… relieved when he continues on away from me.

The chatter of blackbird low in the field has my attention now, camera at ready for a few shots as they rise noisily into the branches of a well-rounded tree, perching like fruit ready to be picked. And then I see the caretaker returning. My heartbeat quickens. Damn. And the landowner is with him, sitting shot gun. When they stop beside me, I greet her by name and remind her of mine. She tells me I’m on private property and should not be there. “Yes,” I remind her, “we’ve had this conversation before. Remember a few years back? You gave your permission…. And it has been such a haven….” She is kind, but firm. “Too many new neighbors thinking they can come in here too… and someone has messed with the headgates…. We just can’t have it….”

I cry all the way home and then some, laying my body on the ground in my own yard, beside the shrine that holds connection to so many lands around the world. Pachamama cradles the pain and my belly responds with something that feels like reconciliation and resolve. I will eventually reach back out to the landowner, with hopes of a new agreement, but not until this event has squared itself in the telling of my mythos. Because this loss is familiar. And timely. And loaded with meaning.

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Didn’t she take you
into the center of centers,
the Holy of Holies
from which all that
is sacred and true emerges?
 
I dreamed I was taken
into the heart of the Mother:
keeper of the primordial seed
that whispered into existence
every harmonic aspect
of the sacred  silent  wonder
that is Notre Dame,
the seed in the center
of her mandala
all lit up,
awakening in us
an ancient remembrance
of who. she. really. is…
germinator of the promise
in the heart of the flower of life,
emerging new expressions
of her originality in our own,
extending an invitation
to take to the fire
our old ideas
of who and why we are,
dive into her succulence,
and be reborn
in the succulent center
of our lives
forever enwombed in hers.

Believe

A small songbird,
perhaps a wren,
hits the back window
with a familiar thud.
He lands on his back,
beak opening
and closing
rapidly.
He’s stunned,
but his eyes are open
and bright…
as is my heart,
so wide open
it’s no longer my own
belonging
to an even wider world
of love.
I squat
next to him
on the rain drenched deck.
The angels whisper,
“It’s okay little one,
you’re going to be just fine.
Trust us.”
Hands curl
around the tiny
feathered frame.
A silent prayer
as I set him upright,
his eyes landing in mine.
Another prayer
and I leave him
in peace
to find his own way.
He flies.

In the morning I sit

In the morning I sit
chair turned around
to face out the big picture window
and watch as land and sky
slowly receive
the light of a new day
and I can’t help but notice
how timelessly the gift arrives
and how distracted we’ve become
thinking morning light
is the cue to get up
and move quickly
into our to-do lists
driven by time
to start the day
rather than notice
that light starts us
and would continually
lead us if only
we’d give over
to its silent guiding
if only our power prayer
was to move with the light
yes, at the speed of light
carrying us through the day.
Could we possibly move
as seamlessly as light?
There’s nothing speedy about it,
I notice, sitting here
soaking in the slow infusion
and the reality
that all day
all night long
the land is absorbing
sunlight, moonlight, starlight
all of nature responding
not to a clock
but to the conversation
with light
and what light is doing
as it crosses the land
so today I vow
to pay attention
to what it’s like
to let light carry me
and my schedule
and not be driven
by time

Your Living Potential

One of the contestants on America’s Got Talent this week was Mandy Harvey, an amazing 29 year old singer/songwriter who went deaf at the age of 18 and reached beyond known limits to discover a way to keep singing. Check out her performance:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKSWXzAnVe0 Stories like Mandy’s – about people who break through perceived, generally accepted limits – inspire us, don’t they? Even if only for a moment, they open us to possibility, to more of our own potential. But how often do we then close up, fall back into a familiar, limited mindset and the everyday structure of our lives? How often do we relegate the possibility for real and lasting breakthroughs to some fuzzy future moment? How much of our potential do we leave ourselves longing for – relegated to some unknown future time in our lives?   And what if instead we found ways to nurture our full potential everyday? What if we lived in a way that primes our capacity for the kind of breakthroughs we all long for?    In the hours since I first watched this celebratory video, I’ve realized why it touched me so deeply. It resonates with my own story of breaking through the limits rising from a stressful childhood. As a sensitive child growing up in a family of significant unresolved grief and trauma, I disconnected – from my body and emotions, from nature, and from deep human relationship.    But I did not disconnect from my soul, which was active and alive with a sense of great possibility, not only for me but for others, as well. I went “up,” making wonderful discoveries in the world of Spirit, although disconnected from human life. Ever longing for more, I eventually found my way back into the world… at first without human guidance and later with the help of extraordinary healers and mentors. Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, I experienced every nuanced move that facilitated eventually breaking through the old, restrictive limits. No longer simply dreaming of the life I knew was possible, I committed to living my potential in concert with the big, beautiful community of humanity.   So, Mandy…. Mandy’s performance on America’s Got Talent crystallized the vision of the work I’ve come to do as healer and mentor: teaching this wholistic approach to engaging our living potential – not only as a future possibility, but as a living guide, available every step along the way.     If you’d like to know more, you can schedule a free introductory consultation here.

Why Women?

Today is International Women’s Day. And one year ago today, on International Women’s Day 2016, my book Walking in Wholeness: Women Reclaiming Authentic Passion, Purpose, and Power, debuted as an international bestseller on Amazon – #2 in Women’s Studies.

So much has transpired in the past year — women coming together, raising our voices for love and truth, making our individual and collective marks in the world in powerful new ways. So, to celebrate International Women’s Day 2017, I’m sharing here part of one of the chapters from Walking in Wholeness – “Why Women?”, copied below. If you want to read more, it’s available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle.

CHAPTER THREE

Why Women?

At the Vancouver Peace Summit in 2009, the Dalai Lama said, “The world will be saved by the Western woman.”

His message echoes what we have also heard from other teachers (men and women) in indigenous cultures: that the next evolutionary wave of wisdom will come from the West, and be led by women. In the Andes, this is understood to mean that the re-instatement of the feminine principle is key to western culture taking the lead now.

So, why women? Why the feminine?

I hope you’ll recognize yourself, or at least your potential, in this chapter. We’re asking, “why women,” but the real question is, why you?

As women, we are very specially designed for creating well-being for ourselves and our loved ones, and for planting seeds of well-being in our communities.

We have an intuitive way of tuning in, listening, and responding to others.

Women are naturally receptive. Our bodies are designed to receive.

We are channels for streams of wisdom flowing into the world.

As women, we inherently know how to give birth (to babies, ideas, projects….)

We have a keen ability to recognize fertility when we see it.

We’re able to hold multiple viewpoints at once.

We have an intuitive sense of cycles and timings because our own cycles are intimately connected to the cycles of the moon and the ebb and flow of the ocean.

Our true nature is love.

Women’s bodies are designed to receive input from outside and then to create something with it—new life catalyzed when egg and sperm say yes to each other. We’re designed to recognize a good match, to receive the spark that catalyzes something totally new to come into being from the union.

We’re designed to embrace and embody the mystery, to listen deeply and allow all that is unknown to remain unknown until it rises naturally and of its own accord.

We don’t necessarily live this way, but we’re designed for it.

That’s what I know.

A download

When I arrived to this point in writing this chapter, I got stuck, not knowing what to say or how to add to the conversation. Churning inside, I was fearful that perhaps I had nothing new to contribute, and that maybe I didn’t really have a whole book to write after all.

The muse seemed far away. I couldn’t find my way into the mystery from which the best discoveries emerge. I tried writing with my non-dominant hand, as is sometimes suggested to free blocking. I tried free-writing, journaling with no particular structure or thought process to support it, just writing whatever wanted to come. I got drowsy. In fact I’d been staving off drowsiness for more than an hour.

At first, I judged the drowsiness. Sure, I could go to sleep. I could choose to numb out and not allow the muse to speak through. Wall’s up, can’t get through, I’m going to sleep.

But finally, Spirit got through to me as I remembered other times I’d felt drowsy in the middle of the day and recognized it as a message to go lie down, get out of the way, and let magic happen. What if this was Spirit’s way of getting through to me again? “Incoming! We have information and knowledge for you. Go lie down. This is how we’re going to deliver the rest of this chapter.”

So I paused… took a deep breath… and walked straight into the mystery.

With a crystal in my left hand, I laid down on the futon in my office, my sacred tools beside me, left hand reaching into the mystery, and holding the question, “Why women?”

Tears rose in my eyes, as the message began pouring in. “Because we carry the grief. The feminine is associated with the waters, deep waters, salt waters of Mother Ocean. Your tears are salty like the waters of the sea. Women hold the remembrance of how things used to be, when the feminine and masculine principles weren’t divided between men and women, when we accepted that everyone carries aspects of both.”

(The Dagara people of Africa see tears as sacred: “the heart coming to the eyes so it can see better.”)

The download continued to flow in: “Women know the wound of separation. We know the wound because we have lived it, lived in a world dominated by a short-sighted view of the masculine—going for the riches, each man for himself, pillaging the Earth for Her precious resources in order to live well himself. It’s been too much I, I, I, with woman expected to be the support system at home and at work, no matter what else she’s engaged in. Cut off from and devaluing the feminine, men (and women) have forgotten the value of the feminine principle itself.

“Women know this because we’ve lived it and lost our voice to change things. That is changing now. It has already changed dramatically, but there is so much more to be done. Our voices are re-emerging, as they must, because the old way is no longer working.

“We could view this as a long and necessary swing from one pole of being (masculine dominance) to the other (feminine dominance), but that’s not the answer.

“Some men may fear the coming changes because they’re afraid they won’t be valued, or that they’ll lose something important. And they certainly do not want to be dominated any more than women do. Simply reversing roles is clearly not the answer.

“The real problem is that the masculine has been operating separate from the feminine. The masculine has done this really amazing thing of unplugging itself from the feminine. That’s not the way nature works, but as humans we have an added special ability to think strategically about things—and mess with nature. As a principle in nature, the feminine and masculine operate as one thing. It’s impossible to have one without the other. Only the strategic mind could possibly concoct a way to separate the two and then think it was a good idea! Disconnecting the two has profoundly affected our relationships, our politics, and our treatment of Mother Earth. In today’s world, the masculine generally doesn’t even know where to look for the feminine, and women are beginning to raise their voices to say this is no longer okay.

“The answer lies in reuniting the masculine and feminine as one principle. The answer lies in each person recovering within himself or herself a fully working system of the feminine and the masculine together. The feminine informing the masculine. Not women informing men, but men developing the ability to tap into the mystery as women so naturally do, and finding guidance for their actions in the world. And women developing the ability to tap into their own dynamic nature so their capacity to manifest is naturally informed by the feminine and sparked by the masculine. Split from this natural informing and sparking, humans have created a way of being that simply isn’t sustainable.”

Women are being called to provide this next evolutionary push because we’re the ones with the wisdom in our bellies to heal the split between the masculine and the feminine. We’re the ones empowered and available enough to start restoring the original meaning of wholeness that’s been held hostage in a culture that values the masculine over the feminine.

Why women? Because we’re made for this. We’re ready for this. Our time is now.

Walking in Wholeness: Women Reclaiming Authentic Passion, Purpose, and Power is available on Amazon.

Our Common Bond

My central daily prayer of late has been simple. “Our Father.” I don’t remember what turned it on – pre-election tensions, some conflict with a loved one, or maybe just a general anxiety about the human condition. But “Our Father” – the prayer of my childhood – rose in my throat in the middle of one restless night. The “OUR” rolled around on my tongue and seeped into my bloodstream, releasing the floodgates on what may be the biggest prayer I’ve ever breathed.

“Our Father. Our. Our. OUR.” I can bask in the “OUR” for hours! Our Father… Our Mother… Creator of ALL of us – of all that is. There is no other! We are all born of the same source. We are quite literally brothers and sisters, sharing one common heritage, and it’s completely inclusive! Any sense of ‘other’ or ‘outsider’ simply has no place in our lives now.

Two simple words unleash worlds of wholesome, practical Love and Truth. Two simple words holding the keys to unity. Can we resolve now to clear anything within us (and between us) that keeps us from embracing our full humankindness? Can we please learn how to initiate our words and actions through our one original source, Love?

The kind of yes that wakes you up…

With so much political and cultural dissonance clashing around us daily, I’m remembering  a poem  I wrote during another tumultuous time over a decade ago. It’s titled, “YES!”

 

YES!
Say yes to what is so.
It is only through admitting this yes
that we can change anything.

Some say we must say no
to injustice
to war
to racism, poverty, corporate rule,
all weapons of mass deception
and abuse
that assault our senses daily.

I say, say yes to what is so.
Not the colluding, colliding kind of yes
that bites the backs of victims everywhere,
But the kind of yes that says,
“My eyes are open. I see the truth.”

The kind of yes that meets our evil exactly where it is
and from there opens doors of possibility.

The kind of yes that wakes you up and,
because you are awake,
shows you exactly what you need to do,
exactly where to plant your staff of righteousness,
exactly where and when and how you are needed.

The kind of yes that rallies other souls awake
because it tells the truth.

The kind of yes that changes everything.

                                                                         ©2016 Kimberlie Chenoweth 

I concur with the poet Christopher Fry who said:

Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.

We’re being called to do some big healing, and if we stay at a level of pointing fingers and insisting we’re right while others are wrong, we may miss this bigger opportunity.  Let us wake up in the broadest context possible, one that Fry (and other wise ones) call us to:

It takes
So many thousand years to wake…
But will you wake, for pity’s sake?

A Lesson in Faith

The bus rumbles down the two-lane highway near Urubamba, Peru, past scores of people on foot along the road, their backs to oncoming traffic. There are no sidewalks here, and when vehicles approach, they simply step off the road and keep walking. I can’t help but notice the lack of fear. In the U.S., we walk facing traffic, afraid of being run down by an errant driver. We’ve learned to feel separate from and afraid of even the daily processes of life.

At the moment, I’m in the back of the bus with Doña Bernadina, an extraordinary paqo from the Puno region, self-taught herbalist, and one the most radiant of Pachamama’s flowers. She carries big medicine in her tiny Andean frame. I ask her, “Why aren’t they afraid?” She responds quickly and emphatically, “Recuerden a los Apus – they remember the mountain spirits. They are always calling on the Apus.”

Can you imagine living life in such constant conversation with Spirit, with Pachamama and all of her creation? This, it seems to me, is true faith, true freedom, and the true meaning of wholeness.

To witness such wisdom in action in everyday Andean life is a beautiful blessing, an exemplary model well worth embodying to transform our fear-laden, stress-driven lives.

Making a Place

What if grief is nature’s way of creating even more space in our hearts for love? With grief, we are stretched, sometimes beyond what seems possible.

When my old dog, Shams, left this world a few days ago, I was surprised by the depth of grief I was invited into. I’d been preparing for that moment for years really, because he lived such a strong, long life – some 16 or 17 years. I thought I was ready, but you know, grief has its own agenda.

Shams’ death cracked open a whole new layer of unexplored material from the death of my young sister before I had the capacity to process the material. With grief came an added element this time: abandonment. I hadn’t been quite so consciously aware of it before – how thoroughly the child in me had to close down that frightening experience, impossible to digest at nine years old. Now here it was in full force, and I was being offered the chance to feel another layer of the vast, scary realm of abandonment that came with my sister’s passing – not only her disappearance but my parents’ emotional disappearance, too.

These crises in our lives are also our best teachers, though. Through years of working with this material, I’ve internalized the wisdom of my dear friend and mentor, Peter, to “make a place for it.” Whatever rises is here to be experienced fully – and we will only open to the degree that we can in any given moment. Our hearts are armored to protect us from the unbearable, and with time and much loving attention, the armoring is sloughed off. When we make a loving place for the depth of emotion that rises, the unbearable becomes bearable.

As I’ve been moved by the waves of grief these past days, I’ve been making a place for what until now has seemed unbearable. I’ve been moving through it as it moves through me. To make a place for grief is to go gently but courageously into the dark world of once forbidden and sometimes forgotten feeling. It is to say yes to the possibility of healing. And with each opening, comes release. With each opening, come surprising discoveries and growing wisdom. With each opening comes more wholeness.

The world is different without Shams’ physical presence here, but signs of his ongoing presence are coming in. Raven, wild geese, generous sunsets, and rainbows on the floor where he used to lie. I went for a walk down our rural road yesterday, the first since his death. As I walked I ‘heard’ him say, “What if grief is my way of stretching your heart so there’s room for my big spirit–love presence in there? What if grief is nature’s way of creating even more space in your heart for the love I came to share with you?”

His message makes the grief more bearable… more meaningful. I am making a place for it.

 

(My book, Reclaiming Wholeness, explores the healing and whole-ing process in greater detail. If you’d like to know more, it’s available on Amazon.)