May you be happy

Huge waves have been crashing against the rocky shore all week. Thundering in, smashing into the rocks and erupting into a million sparkling droplets. The water seems playful, exuberant, bursting into the sky then, as if in slow motion, falling into the embrace of the awaiting wave to repeat the experience all over again!

All this outer turbulence must be stirring the depths, drawing nutrients upwards towards the light, readily available now, to fuel a great harvest.

I’m thinking of all the watery nature documentaries that show how storms accompany a springtime thaw. From the churned waters, nutrients rise, plankton blooms and a whole chain of life is drawn in. All are fed, from the smallest krill to the largest whales.

What nutrients might this metaphor be adding to your life?

I’ve been deeply contemplating Sedna and Salacia, two of the watery goddess archetypes who have lent their names and stories to two of the dwarf planets.

I’ve mentioned them before[1].

As you’ll remember, the Sedna myth has many versions, but all hold themes of the great transformative journey. There is a rejection of cultural norms, a leaving and time of initiation, a betrayal, dismemberment and dying to what has been in order for a new transcendent life to be born.

Alan Clay[ii] describes Sedna as orbiting the new outer limit of our solar system where –

“the ego consciousness morphs into an ineffable universal consciousness, which is heart-centred, in a transpersonal, big picture way.”

He continues

“With Sedna we learn to let go of the physical realm and allow transcendence to a new holistic spiritual consciousness where we learn to allow love and harmony, and nurture abundance.”

In the myth, Sedna’s learning to let go involved a brutal dismemberment, she sank to the depths, drowned and was reborn as one with her watery world, before returning to her village as goddess of the sea.

On first hearing, it’s easy to think about Sedna as a victim to a cruel turn of events. I have engaged with the story from that mindset, using it to reinforce my injured victim status, using it to strengthen my quaking ego in the face of its imminent dissolution.

Alan Clay has written extensively on Sedna[iii]. He writes about the difficulties of letting go, the various ways that Sedna works in our lives to wake us up and of how scary transcendence is.

He also suggests that victimization is a “role relationship” that has its appropriate place as “an evolutionary impulse for our growth”. Once we become aware that we are playing the victim and we no longer wish to do so, we can let that role go.

One of things I love about myths and the oral tradition is that the stories remain alive. They live within us and grow. Drawing on their inherent wisdom, they can be told again and again in fresh ways, keeping them relevant and helpful in our lives and current circumstances.

In line with the swell of teaching and practice within spiritual communities supporting us to transcend our shadows and emerge as our authentic Selves, Heather Ensworth[iv] retells the Sedna myth from the perspective of participant, rather than victim.

And I’ve been practicing that too!

I have been practicing acceptance – that all of life is valuable, necessary, and exquisitely designed to direct us individually and collectively along the path of evolution towards spiritual growth and more loving actions.

Acceptance that I have been complicit in the relationships in which I have felt victimised.

Acceptance that I no longer wish to inhabit the victim role.

Acceptance that for the last 5000 years or so, humanity has operated out of hierarchical consciousness and the social laws (rather than natural laws) needed to govern those hierarchies.

And as such all humanity have been victims – operating somewhere along the sliding spectrum that includes reaction or submission to the hierarchy, and taking advantage of it for personal gain.[v] Victimisation has, for the most part been the air we breathe, the background frequency at which humanity has operated. We can see it playing out in our world and in our individual lives.

So many of us want this to change, want the background frequency to increase.

How is your practice coming along?

I realise that I have only come so far!

In a somewhat exasperated telling of the story of my attempts to break free, I told a friend last week that I felt caught in a strong undertow – constantly being sucked back into the waves. She said that as she listened to me, the image of drowning came to mind.

It felt as if the Sedna myth had not yet finished with me!

At the end of Jonah’s three-day belly-of-the-whale transformative experience – Jonah was spitted out on the shore. He had a task to complete, a job to do and realising he could not escape his calling, he was uncomfortably propelled towards it.

His symbolic foray into the underworld resulted in what? A change of mind, even a change of heart. I wonder, was there also a transcendence of form?

Sedna is calling us into a dissolution.

The invitation touches upon our fear of death, fear of annihilation – our ego’s greatest fear. And of-course, our first response to such an invitation is to resist!

Much as the invitation through death to transcendence might be tantalising, for many (most?) the sense of excitement is usually overwhelmed by sheer terror!

Resistance, it seems is a perfectly appropriate initial response!
And, despite my conviction that I would surrender to the process, on some unconscious level – I was resisting.

I’ve been very happy to participate so far – to swim around, exploring the deep, befriending my shadows, learning much, gaining awareness and being changed in subtle ways. But I had been trying to crawl out onto a familiar shore, willing to share my new insights whist still clothed in the tatters of a victim mindset.

The evolutionary impulse, like a powerful undertow is strong!

And so, through two meditative practices of active imagination, invoking the archetype or undertaking a shamanic journey (choose your language) I asked Sedna for guidance.

She took me to the familiar depths, then turned, guiding me deeper and deeper into the blackness of the abyss and deeper still until I emerged on the surface of the moon – still surrounded by the darkness, but now able to see the world and the harmony of the planetary spheres from an entirely new perspective.

And then, I was in the whale.

I was the whale.

Journeying from the deepest seas where the wisdom of the depths converges with the wisdom of the cosmos up to the sparkling surface waters, and then back again, joyfully fluid and lithe, singing out an ancient-new, mysterious song.

So Beautiful!

And oh! Then comes the unseemly delivery to the shore!

My ecstatic journey had been short lived and here I was, coughing and spluttering on the shore of my life wondering what to make of all that.

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you”

(Luke 6: 27)

I’m writing this a little earlier than usual due to another commitment at the time of the new moon.

And I find myself on the cusp, hovering between the Christian lectionary Gospel passage for this week – quoted above and the next passage – the Transfiguration. Wow! What timing!

And unconsciously – the “love your enemies” passage was the one I quoted in the contemplation “But I say to you” where I introduced Sedna to you all.

In these last days of the Mars retrograde, I have been invited to review once more how to “Love your enemies.”

Let’s call in Salacia, goddess of higher love consciousness to help us out here!

Salacia is semi-sextile (30⁰) to today’s sensitive new moon in Pisces. So, her energy is flowing with the energy that wants to embrace everyone this month, with heightened awareness of the uniqueness of each one in our lives.

Luke 6 reminds us that it’s no big deal to simply love those who love us – the invitation is to go deeper.

And so, this past week I willingly dived in once more to revisit some teachings on love that I have not yet mastered.

It has been such a rich journey; I’m going to make a mini-series from my enquiry and contemplation, which I’ll share with you over the next few weeks.

But for now?

How do we begin to love our enemies?

How do we begin to soften the edges of the “me and my enemy” mindset?

Let’s consider the Metta or Lovingkindness Meditation. Whilst born from Eastern Buddhist traditions, it is suggested by Joseph Goldstein[vi] that

“[the] defining characteristic is not Eastern or Western, but an allegiance to pragmatism and the very simple question: What works?”

It will be a familiar practice for some of you.

I used this practice at least daily for about a month when I was struggling to forgive and release myself energetically from a difficult relationship. Whilst I am no longer in contact with this person and do not therefore know the effect on them. However, I can now feel genuine compassion and care for them. All cords of resentment and hurt have dissolved. I am more and more able to see their gifts – those gifts that had been subsumed by their shadow or immature egoic aspects.

I’m delighted to be revisiting and deepening this practice.

Why not join me in extending lovingkindness to yourself, and others – including those currently perceived as enemies?

Click the rose image below. The link will take you to my new “Contemplative Practices” web page. Here, you will find a 19-minute video, my guided version of the familiar lovingkindness meditation.

And if you wish, you can watch the video on YouTube, give it a like and leave a comment!

I’d love to hear how the practice impacts you and the one to whom you are extending loving kindness.

May you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you be free from suffering.

With love.

Annie

[1] Annie Sempill: But I say to You, Extending the Arms of Love -and Deepening Intimacy with Life
[ii] Alan Clay. New Stars for a New Era: A Consciousness Workbook for Our 10 New Planets
[iii] Alan Clay. Sedna Consciousness: The Soul’d Path of Destiny (The Astrology of the Dwarf Planet)

[iv] Heather Ensworth – Sedna and her transits with Uranus and Pluto – Guiding us through Stormy Times into Transmutation

[v] Richard Rudd: the Gene Keys: Embracing Your Higher Purpose – GK 50
[vi] Joseph Goldstein: Triumph of the Heart. Dharma Talk – Spring 2008 Edition

Images:
Crashing Waves – Annie Sempill
Mystical Whale – Marek Piwnichi: @marckpiwnichi on Unsplash
Whale tail – Andries Meijer: @zilz on Unsplash
Swimming whales – Chinh Le Duc: @mero-dnt on Unsplash
Heart in Hands – Public domain image on Pexels