i was a child who wove a cloak, wrapping it around me, hiding my own radiance

this morning i had a zoom session with palika in the bone hut ~ much was revealed and remembered in this session that i want to try and capture as well as the places i might explore to further deepen into this new and old terrain of the heart.

shared my dream of skins and furs and feathers; myself and others wrapping our bodies in these skins, furs and feathers so that we might be better able to acclimate to the environment of the ones we’ve come to observe. Rather that finding these others skins to be uncomfortable or cumbersome, i find them to be just right, to fit like a glove. the feeling of oneness feeling both old and new, familiar and lost. in my sharing i remember my conversation with owl heart and greenfire yesterday when charles shared the story of the cloak that the monks would wear when they came to the village so that they would hide their radiance. So that their radiance would not offend, or threaten, or set them apart. this felt so resonant with me as I imagine that I wove myself a cloak when i was a child, maybe a child of about 9 years old when I hid in my closet, my ro tun da club, a temple of my own creation where I did not have to hide the aspects of myself that I was afraid would be rejected. My love of dark places, my love of mystery, the lover of animals and the natural world (all I took into my closet were by books about horses and my drawing tools) the creative imaginative one of me, the sensuous, mysterious one of me. I remembered in this sharing the deep well of sadness I felt around my dad as a child, that I could intuit his grief but it remained mysterious to me, he remained mysterious and unavailable to me. I remembered that when I met a man and chose to marry him, Jon, I imagined a man who saw me for the fullness of me and when I began to develop and communicate in the new language of creative expression, of symbols and metaphor and dreams, instead of “seeing” and celebrating this one of me, I was critiqued and he began to distance himself from me. My radiance was threatening as he was trying so desperatley to find his own. So I pulled my cloak ever closer afraid to reveal this one of me who was finally coming alive. When I exposed myself again in my thesis show and my mother said, honey why are you so depressed? I again felt unseen and pulled the cloak closer. Some years later and I thought I had found another mate in Russ, an artist, one who understood better the vulnerability of the artists way, In this new relationship I began to experience and revel in my innately sexual nature. In this time while visiting in NYC with friends Holton and. Maria, he made photographs of myself and others, nude and expressive and so liberating to me. When I showed the contact sheet with Russ he was furious and confused about my “digression” and again, I pulled ,my cloak ever closer to me, hiding my radiance, again, this time the strong sexual being one of me.

a few notes from my pod zoom with greenfire and owlheart

hiding our essential nature ~ cloaks to cover our radiance

dissolution and middle world testing, trickster coming in with a possible distraction to get hung up on, to derail the YLSI process

navigating both chaos and order ~

living on ridges or canyons ~ rilke the poem; as onto a vast plain. The line appears in the context of exploring the threshold between physical and mental devastation, and spiritual becoming

Onto A Vast Plain

Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Joanna Macy

You are not surprised at the force of the storm—

you have seen it growing.

The trees flee. Their flight

sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:

he whom they flee is the one

you move toward. All your senses

sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.

The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel

it wants to sink back

into the source of everything. You thought

you could trust that power

when you plucked the fruit:

now it becomes a riddle again

and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you know

where each thing stood.

Now you must go out into your heart

as onto a vast plain. Now

the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind

sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.

It is what you have.

Be earth now, and evensong.

Be the ground lying under that sky.

Be modest now, like a thing

ripened until it is real,

so that he who began it all

can feel you when he reaches for you.

the Dartington Yew tree which they both know well….a prayer for mystery that she says each day to herself upon rising. the

origin of the rivers in the celestial plain

the humpless camel who encounters the desert, does he think; I should grow a hump so I can sustain my time in the desert. Do we all grow a hump to sustain ourselves now or do we become the desert? Bayo Akomolafe’

those with uncompromising spirits who live in full integrity

with Palika:

in this year long we are asked to embody the wanderer….becoming naked, we are in a kind of preparation. what if i was to enact the cloak, perhaps outdoors in a forest wearing many layers where I might take one layer off at a time, speaking out about the one of me who is removing that which hid the one of me who….this cloak that has kept the mysteries of me safe from rejection, from fear, from exposure, from vulnerability. I am the one who as I communicate with the depths , with the dark waters, where are the layers of hiding….where does the tenderness show up?

then there is the dream of the stone and anouk speaking to me, she is in shadow, her hair is wild and she is missing one of her front teeth, she is bone hut, babayaga, a witch, the mysterious hag one of me….while she speaks I become aware that I am sucking on a small stone, smooth with angular edges, I am hiding it from her or others and then just as suddenly she stops speaking and I quickly remove the stone from my mouth and I insert it into my yoni. and the dream ends. This is another dream to enact, even while being witnessed at the next YLSI encounter, sucking on a stone, kind of concealing; what am i hiding? and why do I hide it in my yoni then? what is being hidden? how is it in hiding in the womb tomb temple of my inner sexual being/one?

re-imagine this threshold where I am with the one of me who is the hag with the missing tooth, i am also the one sucking on the stone and then just as quickly and mysteriously i put the stone in my yoni. I repeat this encounter as well with stone and do it enough to recall this when I am being witnessed so that I don’t physically have to do it but can recall the impulse, the gesture, the embodiment, the oneness with stone ….anytime I feel fearful of revealing something vulnerable about myself, something that I may feel I will be rejected because of, imagine this gesture of removing my cloak and exposing my radiance!

clearly dream maker and mystery has brought charles/greenfire into my world now six years ago to help me to learn something about my own beloved. is he my inner beloved/ in my longing for my own wholeness, how do I become my own beloved? Palika has asked me to re-call, to re-member as a practice….if greenfire out of stone was my beloved, what I am most terrified to reveal to him, if he is the masculine that I have hid from in many ways since being a child, or the masculine in myself that I hide from…what do I most admire about greenfire? this is a golden projection as well as a true appreciation of a dear friend. he is an agent of mystery for me. in my psyche, heart and body what do I feel when i imagine the one of greenfire? what is so activated in me, why did I think, fuck no I won’t do the ylsi with you! what is true in me but not been seen in me but /and I am terrified to own, what is my relationship to all of these qualities in greenfire in myself….

love his creative, intuitive, symbolic and articulate, mythopoetic mind and ways of articulating ideas and images creative, weaver of story, bringer together of relationships and communities, father, partner, patience, lover of nature, explorer, intensity, passionate, humourous, lover of language and books, we love the same books and authors and ways of living outside of the mainstream but recognize parts of ourselves that are too afraid to do so and wonder about that part. love his physicality, his body, his tallness, his relaxed way and lack of self consciouness (at least on the surface of things). The watery nature he describes, weaves and shapeshifts to accomodate others to avoid disruption and confrontation and conflict. so recognize this one in me.

What am I most terrified to reveal to the masculine in myself and in others?

Bone Hut asks me what am I able to sacrifice, to lose, in this YLSI?

probably 30 years old at Lake Minnewaska in the Catskills with Jon, not far from our home in Stone Ridge.