Goddess At Peak – A project of yours is nearing completion. Harvest is approaching. Do you dream of fruit, perfectly ripe? Do you love to cook and entertain? Are you attracted by movies with long family dinner scenes, everyone celebrating outdoors beneath an arbor? Is touring wine country a popular fantasy of yours? You are a person who is propelled forward by imagining smiles on the faces of others as the work of community and you believe that family harmony is to be celebrated and enjoyed. This vision can keep us going through bitter hardships.
Harvest Comes Because Goddesses Prepare – You became a goddess because you resisted others’ negativity, hopelessness and learned helplessness. Instead you turned your eyes to the inevitable rituals of seed care, the health promotion of living things, and now you are granted a front-row seat at the celebration of flourishing.
Goddess Challenge – Keeping these visions alive during the training phase is hard, because the growth cycle is long and can be boring and uneventful. That’s why planting occurs in stages, so all your psychic eggs aren’t resting in the same basket. Learn to enjoy all the seasons, without hungering for a single season. This is a good time to contrast group versus individual gratifications and ask ourselves, “What’s that about?”
Goddess Danger – Even Goddesses can become thirsty for gratification until it takes more and more to satisfy us. “Winning” is a shallow goal if that’s all there is. Goddesses seek harmony, blending community resources to make the whole family stronger. The worst outcome is to be locked in an addiction cycle and spiraling downwards; no longer part of the growth process, benefitting from training and spiritual renewal.
Goddesses Rest by Dreaming Forward – Sitting around the fire telling stories, modeling “success” as peaceful sharing rather than as an endless party. Luckily sleep and dreams are the best model of fruitful dormancy. We require those periods and we need to look forward to their relief and imaginative nourishment.
Goddess Opportunity – Every group celebration of the success and nourishment cycle is different. Are there leftover behaviors that no longer serve you? What fresh, exciting new ideas might you add? Is everyone in the family/community being well-served or are there grumpy holdouts? It’s fruitful to listen to the grumpy holdouts occasionally. How might they do things differently? If all they want is to harsh everyone else’s buzz, maybe they should no longer expect an automatic invitation to the feast.
Models & Mentors – “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you will get but by the seeds you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter, enjoy” – William Blake
“Every deed sows a seed, though the harvest you may not see”
– Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“We are each other’s harvest, we are each other’s business, we are each other’s magnitude and bond” – Gwendolyn Brooks
Uh Oh. Nothing Derails a Goddess Like False Love – False Love is recognizable because it only benefits the Other, not you. You are a Place-Holder in this event – you goddess status to be absorbed by the Other and your emptied husk to be discarded.
How Do You Recognize a Firefly? Slowly, after the “Love-bombing” – you begin to feel worse. Joining the World of the Other is an intricate Dance where you are always wrong-footed. The confidence and success that marked your goddess-hood are suddenly things of the past. You’re captive and your light is fading to enhance someone else’s.
Consult Your Dreams – Do you dream of masked balls? Betrayals? Loved and known faces inexplicably turning demonic? People becoming animals? Mazes and puzzles that melt and change? The Firefly is not the only creature using illusion for the purposes of seduction, and seduction is not the only advantage acquired by False Love. The Target is virtually disabled by relying on something that isn’t real. The False Lover lives in a shifting Potemkin Village of mirrors. It’s called “gas-lighting”. Often, we feel in our gut that “something isn’t right.”
Goddesses Stay Alert – You’ve been catfished. You’ve been gaslit. “All’s fair in love and war” means the goddess must always be on game. Pretenders want to drag you into their web of deception by making it seem alluring. You’ll get so many benefits if you just step inside! But once inside it turns out they want you to feel complicit; you can’t escape, you can’t let anyone know, it’s too too too humiliating. You are fated, now, only to deceive others in your turn. Reject this. Resistance is never futile.
Goddesses Know When to Cut Losses – Just as the deceptive catfish forces the lazy cod to keep moving (and improving!) when they would rather lie sluggishly on the bottom, the False Lover actually IMPROVES our game. Time to realize we are part of a complex universe where wings disguise themselves as eyes and flowers are chameleons. Conserve your energy. Others wish to capture your power and use it for their own fuel. Get smart.
Goddesses Are Careful with Deception – You can’t tell the truth to everybody, all the time. Conserve your facts, reserve your strategy. You are entitled to privacy and security but be careful with deception. Deceivers restrict everyone’s options.
Goddesses Battle for the Universe Itself, Not Momentary Gain. Humans are more than energy. Love is more than fuel, it is living water as well as unquenchable fire. It is more than worth your while to hold out for the Real Thing. Real Love stands the test of Time. We are playing this game to get to the next level, and you can’t do that with such a narrow view of existence, where all of Creation is means to an end – the end being You, slick and fat, lying sluggish at the bottom of the Universe. Goddess are commanded to Rise, and so we will.
Goddesses Seek Ultimate Reality – Expand your inner and outer vision. We are multidimensional beings and our emotions – our very orgasms – can become multidimensional as well when we appreciate the historic, the inter-generational, the cosmic ramifications of everything we do and think and are. The marriage service talks about hanging in there through sickness and poverty, and it is a proven fact that people who have been through terrible experiences have a deeper connection. It becomes a secret language others just don’t “understand”. When you have children, you gain the ability to live through them – this is a multi-player, multi-avatar game! Life itself can be a terrible (as well as wonderful) experience. So buckle up! Those who are not alert will be eaten.
Models & Mentors – “Remember sometimes not getting what you want can be a wonderful stroke of luck”
– Dalai Lama
“Let it hurt. Let it bleed. Let it heal. Let it go.” – Nikita Gill
“Don’t waste your love on someone who doesn’t value it” – Wm Shakespeare
“Temporary people teach permanent lessons” – Alysse Aallyn
“Love dies of wounds, errors and betrayals” – Anais Nin
“Attitude toward gratitude defines a person” – Eli Wiesel
Goddesses Welcome the Fresh Morning – All suffering comes to an end. Your depression will lift. The future awaits.
Goddesses Know “ This too shall pass” – We serve the future. Every dream is followed by an awakening which is followed by another dream. In the moment of relief from the fear and the tension that preceded it we are still shaking from the experience we just went through. We are in no condition to make decisions. We are just so grateful that it is over. What is required of us, however, is appreciation of the cycle. We are surfing, whether we like it or not. Another wave will come. Goddesses learn how to ride it.
Goddess Challenge – To rise above any cycle, take an honest look at it. This is hard to do when we are quivering and feeling victimized but it is necessary. What pattern do you see? The surfing analogy is a good one because the tides are not rhythmic nor perfectly predictable, and they are CERTAINLY not “personal” plus we know another wave will be coming along soon.
Goddess Strategy – Sometimes there’s a way out; we can change jobs, switch professions, get a divorce. Figure out where the pressure is coming from. Assess your abilities. What parts are you good at? Where do you suck? Can you enjoy any of this? How can your performance be improved? Most of us take pleasure in things we are good at. Can your enjoyment be deepened?
We’re Never Helpless – Learned helplessness is real. People give up, stop trying to game or even understand the system. They lie down under the shocks, no longer even trying to escape, waiting for death. Never believe “Resistance is futile.” Don’t succumb.
Goddesses Play to Win –This game is bigger than our mortal understanding. Nevertheless, you can comprehend the majesty of what we are up against and appreciate it as a knife appreciates the whetstone. We learn through analogy, we remember through stories.
Goddesses Set Themselves Free – Goddesses can always improve, becoming graceful, competent athletes of this mortal existence until we graduate into the next sphere.
Goddesses Roll with the Punches – You can change and affect your fate. But you must roll with the punches. When Jesus says, “Resist not evil” he means, allow evil to roll over you and smash itself against your non-resistance. Martial arts increases our knowledge of how to manage, subvert and overcome what seems like Superior Force.
Buddy Power – Friends, allies, buddies, sensei, even dead or fictional characters can be summoned to your aid. People choose such different characters as St. Francis, Sherlock Holmes, Mother Theresa, Joan of Arc, Mulan, Buddha and Jesus to be their “Dream buddies.” Some are more comfortable with an animal – your personal power creature; the jaguar, wolf, eagle or wolverine.
Change Dream Buddies based on the problem confronting you. Ask their help before you go to sleep, solicit them to come to you in dreams to shed light upon your difficulty. Then the next morning, start writing and remembering the moment you wake up. Some key dreams take a lifetime to decipher.
Models & Mentors – “Worry is like a rocking chair – it gives you something to do but you never get anywhere”
– Erma Bombeck
“For fast acting relief, try slowing down” – Lily Tomlin
“Happiness is the relief after extreme tension”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Laughter is the tonic, the release, the surcease of pain” – Charlie Chaplin
Even Goddesses Grow Torpid. We accept the necessity of sleep, to clean the brain, connect with the Multi-Soul and refresh the spirit. But what about hibernation? What’s happening when nothing’s happening?
When We’re in Too Big a Hurry to Slow Down We Need to Slow Down – The Multi-Soul is calling you. You have need of dreams. Do you dream of endless sleep? Deep snows? Hibernation? Do you identify with the drowsy bear and the sleepy sloth?
Now’s the Time – This is the sacred moment before a burst of Goddess Creativity. You are gathering your forces. Compare it to a pregnancy. Things are happening, but so slowly and deeply you are not aware of them, with the result that you may feel confused and frustrated. Instead, revel in this burgeoning becoming in the midst of sleepy peace.
Goddesses Can Surrender
Sometimes a plan isn’t ready. Sometimes you’re not ready. Timing is everything.
It’s a Long Wait Sometimes, as anyone who’s ever been through eighteen years of schooling or a seemingly endless winter can tell you. But it comes faster if you turn your attention to other things.
Waiting for Peak –– We cultivate our dreams without pushing or extracting them. We curate our sensations. Spin through pictures of animals – what jumps out? Who is speaking to you? What are they saying? What are you afraid of and why? Make notes and collect images. A collage creates a deeper, more resonant picture. Sometimes it’s all in the eyes.
Goddess Danger – In sleep we are entirely vulnerable and we have cultural and historic reason to fear that state. Guard yourself with supportive beings, with sleep music, with healing rituals. The triple-locked doors, the blackout-curtained windows, the silenced devices protect us in our chosen nest. Don a bracelet of “worry beads”, summon your happiest memories and tell them by touch, eyes closed, one by one. Send every ounce of your remembered love and joy out into the universe with a command to come back to you a hundred times. A thousand times so that your love can spill over and be shared with all you touch, near and far.
Goddess Opportunity – You are creating yourself. The fetus of this pregnancy is YOU. In every dreamy hibernation second you are rebuilding yourself, adding visions, promoting fresh understandings and positive interpretations. Life offers us the chances of joy and misery – use your conscious awareness to accept these tools and allow dream-time and prep-time to penetrate ever deeper into your subconscious, (sometimes called the “preconscious”) to the unconscious, and down down down, deepest of all, to the collective unconscious where we recall in our bones and teeth and cells everything that has ever happened to every living thing as if it happened to us. This is the source of all imagination and creativity, accessible to you in the dream state.
Be Patient. A Watched Pot Never Boils. The mouse is a whole lot likelier to come out of the mouse-hole if the cat isn’t waiting on the other side. Free your mind to imagine what it feels like to be everyone, anyone, in your constructed scenarios.
Over-thinking is Bad for your Brain – Ever heard the expression “Sleep on it!” The only time you shouldn’t sleep on it is in the heat of battle, and the clever goddess AVOIDS battles. ALWAYS sleep on it! Ask your dreams to send insight, bubbling up from the pre-conscious. Participate in artistic pursuits, allowing metaphor and symbol to work it’s magic in your subconscious. Do something completely different. Refresh yourself.
Models & Mentors – “To lose patience is to lose the battle.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Grow in patience when you meet great wrongs and they will be powerless to vex your mind” – Leonardo da Vinci
“Patience is not simply the ability to wait but how we behave when we are waiting” – Joyce Meyer
“Patience and Time do more than strength and passion”
Goddesses Embody Balance – Like a perfectly baked cake, goddesses are a pinch of this, a dusting of that, a hefty serving of something else. We are making our way blindfolded across a restless lagoon by stepping on the lotus leaves.
You can tell when something in you is out of whack. Ordinary souls castigate themselves but goddesses calibrate their approach, recognizing that Balance is a key law of nature designed to help us avoid the dreaded stagnancy that is experienced as a living death. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams begin to balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively in the light of day, as a story with potency and significance.
Goddesses Revere Balance – Unfortunately contemporary life has become a competitive pursuit of “highs”. A good life well-lived provides natural highs – learning a skill, reveling in physical gifts, falling in love, listening to music, sharing with children, enjoying the grandeurs of nature. Our intellect teaches us that every “high” is dramatically enriched just by thinking about it! That’s why we are called “homo sapiens.”
Balance is a Powerful Law of Nature – The pursuit of competitive highs without the thinking and enshrining stages always leads to excess and grief. Highs for their own sake inevitably disappoint, leading to a pursuit of more and more dangerous highs, which, if we are not thinking about them, sharing them with others and incorporating them into our beings, damages our ability to experience joy. Understanding and managing our “emotional highs” is the key to joy.
Goddesses Live on All Levels At Once – Goddesses learn to give thanks for and pay tribute to the Past, to enjoy and understand the Present, to anticipate and strategize for the Future and to revel and be comforted by the promise of Eternity.
Balancing the Levels – Joy that is held in the mind is joy endlessly re-experienced. It will be yours forever, and you will be able to share it with all the people you love for the rest of your life. Each of us briefly experience heaven during our lifetimes; prolonged, immortalized and enriched by experiencing and re-experiencing with each other.
Goddess Challenge – We need to personally set up our brain’s “reward system” to handle pleasure and suffering or we will be prescribed drugs in an attempt to achieve the same effect chemically. Drugs can be useful as training wheels; ideally we want to teach our systems to achieve the same effect naturally. Calm is the first step to balance, so we must learn to calm ourselves. Meditation, sleep and yoga offer the best methods for reliable self-soothing. First we assert calm over our breath, then our bodies, lastly our thoughts. It’s not that difficult! Reminder: this occurred naturally every night of our lives before we started stressing about it!
Night Is the Leveler – Our species needs sleep to connect to the Universal Mind, and to the minds of all Dreamers, human and animal. Conscious dreaming (often called lucid dreaming) provides a trusted avenue to filter daily discoveries down to your subconscious level. Always have a joy to think about just as you are going to sleep, and another for when you are waking up. This will sharpen your connection with emotional ecstasy and deepen your life.Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams will balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively, as a story with potential significance.
Models & Mentors – “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities” – Stephen Covey
“Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life” – Dolly Parton
“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. 2 A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. 3 A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. 4 A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. 5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. 6 A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. 7 A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. 8 A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. – Ecclesiastes 3
Becoming a Goddess One Step at a Time – Make up your mind – Good morning – or bad? If you wake up fearful, fretful and exhausted, you’re a worrier. Worry borrows trouble and erases pleasure. It’s OK to plan but it’s destructive to worry. “Rumination” is endlessly thinking over a problem in a circular way – it isn’t going anywhere. If you dream only about your problems, you are at risk of wasting your valuable dreaming time.
Goddesses Build Routines – Then Explode Them
We construct lists and calendars in our Goddess Training Journals that are very much Works In Progress. Every effort’s an experiment. If you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems, we have to build good systems. As Zig Ziglar reminds us, there’s no elevator to success. We all have to take the stairs, one step at a time. We build ourselves so strong that ultimately we can trust our subconscious, even our unconscious, to do the work for us. Goddess create independent selves to transcend their selves.
Taming Wild Mind to Focus Productively – Buddhists are fabulous at training the brain to calmness. This is a physical discipline and it does take practice. But as in any practice, we start out needing both effort and commitment. Even Goddesses have to “forgive” themselves over and over – “I suck at this.” Learning to enjoy the process is key. Meditation teaches us how to live in the present moment. You are your own adorable toddler, so mother yourself. Be delighted by the effort and moved by the commitment. You don’t yell at a toddler for falling down. Study the work of Pema Chodron (libraries everywhere) for assistance.
Your Toddler Self is Frightened by Everything. As we meditate and the fears boil up, we talk to ourselves calmingly. Focus on small, pleasurable things, the green grass, the blue sky. Give thanks for the green grass and the blue sky. Focus on the breath – out with the worry, in with the fresh day of joy and discovery. Now close your eyes. Are you still seeing the green grass and the blue sky? Isn’t that wonderful? Now they are yours forever. Tonight you will dream about them. Cherish them in your heart.
How Strong is Your Negative Voice? This is the first enemy Goddesses must defeat. We all have at least one – some of us have many. Banish them firmly. Your negative voice is belittling, angry and demeaning. It doesn’t think you can accomplish anything. It is not a helper, in fact it is toxic and we are going to tell it goodbye. Read Viktor Frankl’s wonderful Man’s Search for Meaning and Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With the Wolves for advice on how to pluck the lotus of joy from the mud of despair.
Goddess Opportunity – Learning to focus at our advanced age is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a daily practice of mindfulness and joy in the classroom of creation. Be proud of your effort, your commitment and the confidence you are modeling for all future generations that life itself is a dazzling gift. You are alive at this perfect moment for some perfect reason. Let us find it.
Models & Mentors – “Your habits will determine your future” – Jack Canfield
“You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of success is found in your daily routine.” – John Maxwell
‘Practice isn’t something you do when you’re good. It’s what makes you good.” – Malcolm Gladwell
“It’s easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.” – Benjamin Franklin
Goddesses Must Detach to Rise Above – Goddess-Vision sees the big picture.Is there loss? Yes, and it has a necessary place in the universe o birth freshness. Is there suffering? Yes – no one “rises above” without it. No one grows empathy and compassion without it. The generous Goddess feels your feelings with you, then she suggests you Get Over It. You still have a body on this planet; you will use your brain to Rise Above and Study the Multiverse.
Do Goddesses FaceDepression? As we have discussed, goddesses feel all feelings, including lack of feeling. Discouragement is common. We must accept that the Universal Brain is bigger even than the goddess brain. Sometimes even our dreams hurt. We experience such shuddering emptiness it’s a physical relief to wake up and find that dream wasn’t real. It’s enough to make a person fear going to sleep.
The Cure is Detachment – Buddhism warns against “clinging” as the source of all suffering. Life’s professional warriors – such as cops, firemen, paramedics – all will tell you to “forget’ the personal just to get the job done. Focus on the “healable” crisis– learn to enjoy the exercise of your gifts.
Learn to Mourn. Mourning is the process of “letting it go” – releasing whatever it is – personality, idea, memory – into the multiverse. Goddesses know it will ultimately be cared for because in Jesus’ own words, those who mourn “will be comforted.”
Remember there Is a Worse Loss than Death: People Can Lose Their Personalities BEFORE They Die. Be sure to think your worldview through BEFORE the crisis happens. Remember, what a caterpillar calls “the end”, Nature calls ”a butterfly.”
We All Need to Mourn – Goddesses mourn, too. Goddesses’ powerful forward drive never fools them into thinking that moving backward in the dance is a sign of weakness, when ebb and flow are laws of life.
Sadness is Stigmatized in a society where perfect strangers feel comfortable demanding that you “smile.” Look at all these Instagram feeds with everybody grinning away because they’re having so much FUN and their lives are so PERFECT they never wake up shuddering with sadness. Except they are human too, so we know that they risk their very humanity by trying to pretend ”everything’s fine” when the red lights are flashing.
Maybe They’re Just Better at Covering It Up than we seem to be. And some people, admittedly are just plain shallower. They’ve worked hard to feel less deeply! And narcissists convince themselves that they can transfer their pain to others and “free” themselves by enjoying the suffering they’ve created. This inevitably means we all have lots of work to do.
First, We Sort Out “Real” from “Transferred” Suffering. Whose misery has been foisted on you? If you’re in that position you are literally a “scapegoat” and will need all your goddess skills to get out of it.
DO NOT ACCEPT TRANSFERRED SUFFERING! – Pain is inevitable but suffering is voluntary. We feel compassion for some, we pity others their willful darkness but goddesses do not accept their world scheme of punishment and torment.
We’ve All Got Plenty of Legitimate, Necessary Mourning to catch up on. If you skate over “bargaining” and “acceptance” all that’s left to you is denial and depression. Sometimes, the “causes” of your lost mourning seem inconsequential to our “adult” selves. “So your pet died when you were five,” everybody says. “Your parents got a divorce. You moved five times. Get over it, already!” But we say, Now is always the perfect time to accept the power and significance of your own feelings.
Goddesses Feel Compassion for Everyone – Themselves Included. Begin with yourself. Why feel these things now, right before you set off on your next great, consequential adventure? Sometimes it is joy that brings to the surface those past unhealed hurts. That’s necessary, part of the ebb and flow. Because we are strong enough to feel it now.
Goddesses Are the Heroes of the Collective Unconscious – Goddess do battle for and honor centuries of collective suffering. (Inter-generational trauma.) It’s OK to think about that sadness, especially if it makes us feel closer to other people. Everyone has these lost, wrecked treasures submerged in their lives.
Goddesses Feel Deeply – Your power frees the greatness of your emotion even as it protects your feelings and other people’s. Celebrate the fact that you are able to feel so deeply in a world where others feel forced to abuse themselves, taking risks and drugs in order to “feel something.”
The Art of Detachment allows the goddess to rise above the fray, strategize, plan. Even on the eve of battle they enjoy their lives. Let go – finally – of the toxic elements in your life. Time to go “no-contact” on the toxic people who waste your energy. Read up on sadism, the better to understand the people out there who are revel in your suffering. Buddhists recommend surveying your thoughts and feelings from a distance, as in hypnotherapy, then setting them free.
Detachment is Not Dissociation – Dissociation is more like floating through life with all our systems repressed, feeling numb. Dissociation is not good. You can use that quivering pool of tears to respond more intensely to life, to art, to music, and to each other.
Resilience is the Goddess’s Most Powerful Survival Trait. This means that even after blight, we can flourish more strongly, just the way pruned plants will. It’s not necessary to explore all the caverns of your being, but it will make you stronger. Once again, choose a buddy and a guide. Think about the “hero’s journey” story you respond to most deeply. How would you explain your hero’s journey to someone else? Feel free to use metaphors, after all, when we were children we did feel our world to be populated by monsters and the supernatural.
Models & Mentors – “Detachment is power. Release all things that no longer work for you” – Shane Steele
“To be detached means to dive so fully into the experience you dropout the other side… with full understanding you can say, “Now that I know, I can let go”
– Teal Swan
“In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty…freedom from our prison of past conditioning…willingness to step into the unknown surrenders us to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe…” – Deepak Chopra
“I release the subjective thoughts, energy and emotions I am holding about people, places and things that kept me trapped in dis-ease…I can step back and allow the feelings & thoughts & energy to dissipate…I am then free to act with compassion, love & acceptance” – Angela James
“Attachment is the fabricator of illusions – reality can be attained only by one who is detached” – Simone Weil
“Detachment is having your life be about you, not about other people”
Do Goddesses Have Paperwork? – Plenty! – The path of an evolved, enlightened being is littered with maps – theoretical, hypothetical and under construction.
Goddesses Dream of a Better World – Do you dream of paths diverging in a yellow wood? Checklists? Maps? Are you talking to yourself as you follow your routine? What IS your routine? How has your routine evolved? What efforts have you made to change it to newly perceived needs and discoveries? Or is your routine formed outside you, for the benefit of others?
Goddess Dream of a Responsive Universe. If you talking to yourself throughout your routine that self-talk needs to be positive. Goddesses are accustomed to being alone during peak experiences. They must record these for history because as Virginia Woolf reminded us, nothing has happened until it has been written down. Become an encouraging coach. Don’t hold yourself hostage or nobody can complete the steps.
If You Have No Goal, Any Path Will Take You There – But you won’t like where you end up.
Goddesses are Goal-oriented. As you become more adept at change, you realize that dividing effort into “steps” to achieve a goal is critical. It won’t happen fast. Your conscious, subconscious, unconscious and collective unconscious (not to mention your pre-conscious!) are going to kick up a helluva fuss. But aligning these is the most interesting part! Change is guaranteed.
Goddesses Are Sore-Muscled Athletes – Day 2, thinking, I CAN’T DO THIS. Guess what? EVERYBODY THINKS THAT! Expect it! You treat yourself with loving compassion and cold compresses, hot baths and massage. In other words, there is an established map, a way to GET THROUGH THIS. The challenge is to CUSTOMIZE your map.
Being is Movement. As we shape the Path, it shapes us. Even the most anti-social creatures are constantly making paths for others to follow. Such delight when we uncover a ready-made Path because path-making is exhausting! A ready-made path is a mysterious invitation. All paths lead Somewhere. Every Path, Visible or not, speaks of the existence of The Other.
Paths Speak of Destination, Intention, Design, History. Paths are our Robinson Crusoe footprint. They represent Hope: this Path worked not just once, but many times. We are proud of being Path-makers, Ice-piercers in our turn, Long-distance voyagers. We lead the weary, frightened traveler of the future toward confidence and reliability.
Goddesses Use Models. We need a constantly evolving pit crew of helpers. A side effect of routine remodeling is “crazy thinking.” We all need somebody to talk us off the ledge, somebody who is familiar with not just our goals but what we are going through. Your id is always scheming to hold you hostage, and you need an experienced hostage negotiator.
Waves of “Fear” Surfacing from your collective unconscious require symbolic release and expression in art, dance, love-making, sport or theatre.
Disowned Longings from Your Subconscious threaten your secure sense of self and may require therapeutic intervention.
Unconscious Drives from Depths no one’s ever plumbed can’t be faced without the courage of a Friend or Soulmate. So, don’t try making it through this crisis without a buddy AND a coach.
Halt! AA has a useful acronym – HALT – representing:
Hungry
Angry
Lonely
Tired
These are the Emotion States of Bad Decision-making. So, when you see these conditions developing – Halt. Call your hostage negotiator immediately.
Models & Mentors – “Setting goals is the first step into turning the invisible into the visible” – Tony Robbins
“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not people or things”
– Albert Einstein
“A goal without a plan is just a wish” – Antoine St. Exupery
“Always remember your focus determines your reality” – George Lucas
Goddesses Let the Knowledge Pour In – You didn’t even know there was a wall there! And suddenly, you’re through it and the world looks completely different on the other side. Maturity turns the universe into a “magic picture” – goddesses can see it several ways – each way perfectly invisible to the other. It requires a brain switch. It also requires…
Dissolving Barriers that prevent you from re-envisioning your world. In your dreams are you breasting tape, cresting mountaintops, shedding light on darkness? You are seeking, or experiencing an epiphany. It’s time for the Goddess Maneuver of Magic Vision. Let’s consider the shreds of your psyche/life that don’t add up.
Goddess Aspirations Conflict with Humdrum Reality – At some point we have to face the fact that we see differently from other people. Goddessing is NOT a group endeavor and this is GOOD. But it can be lonely. Others will not understand you. You will have to be content with shedding light and moving on.
Eureka! – Goddesses Learn from Epiphanies – It’s possible to have sudden enlightenment and NOT FULLY REALIZE it. Could it be that this fresh new vision is just too threatening? Could be that you lack the language to explain the new connection you have made. Could be that your “discovery” started down so deep in your consciousness that it’s taking its time to percolate through to the surface. YOU ARE “MOLTING”! Shed what no longer serves you. In the meantime, pay attention to your dreams and track them in your Goddess Journal. Dreams have the power to heal the jagged edges of our fear, our incomprehension and our daring.
Goddess Danger – Don’t quit too early. Status quo can be SO attractive. Let somebody else be the adventurer, let somebody else put into words what nobody else can say, let some other poor sucker stick their neck out and mention that the emperor has no clothes. Study your fears rationally. It’s OK to protect yourself – in fact, it’s mandatory – remember making sure that oxygen mask works on YOU, first? But that doesn’t stop us from evaluating the full “reality”, which also, I remind you, contains suspicions, insights, ideas and yes, dreams. Whispers of the multiverse.
Grow New Skin – Goddess are highly accomplished, well-trained professionals who sometimes find themselves at the bottom of a pecking order. Are you in a group whose leader is making decreasing sense and ever more self-serving decisions? If you’ve been struggling with a knotty historical, mathematic or scientific problem nobody else can solve, why not try seeking the edges of light?
Transform Your Thinking – how often have you had that experience of waking up from a dream whose conclusions were so real they were right in front of you, only to see them melt in the sand like the escaping tide until they’re no longer perceptible. That’s OK. They’re on the tip of your psychic tongue, just waiting for a little more encouragement.
Learn New Things -We are all familiar with the “sleep on it” suggestion, but anything that takes your mind off the problem can be helpful. Sports, prayer, meditation, reading, a massage, a night out, but please – not too much liquor. Hold it at two if you can, if you can’t, don’t start. Liquor affects the brain, killing brain cells. That might keep overlords seeking compliance happy but it’s not good for goddess’ growth and development. Develop a gratitude practice. Keep dreaming. Keep seeking those epiphanies. Keep using your fears as stepping stones to climb higher. Never give up. Be clever – like the fox, wily as the snake, gentle as the dove.
Models & Mentors – “Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.” – John Milton
“Record these epiphanies with care as the most delicate and evanescent of moments” – James Joyce
“Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising”
– Isaiah 60: 1-3
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing” – Henry Miller
Eternity Requires the Goddess’ Perfecting Self. Do you dream of astronomy? Vast deserts, steep, empty mountains, person-less vistas? These are eternity dreams, where change has slowed or stopped. You are struggling not with questions of death or afterlife, but the “ongoing everythingness” of reality itself. What is “time”? How long can “time” continue when nothing is “alive”?
Goddesses Train to be Immortal –When you imagine “life forever” – where is the “you” in that context? Matter is already transmutably immortal – Your body is currently composed from the atoms of exploded stars. We all tremble at transitions; but do we really want certain phases of our existence to continue “indefinitely’? Seems not only impossible but repugnant. It is our Souls that are Immortal.
Change is Life – Changelessness is Stagnation. We are “perfecting”, never perfected. Without any human life, planets and stars continue to evolve. Eternity, like God, must exist outside of time. Fiercely we insist on the continuation of personal consciousness. But do we really want to know the terrible things God knows, or do you really desire a return to an infancy safe inside the arms of a most loving mother?
Goddess Challenge – Some people feel so threatened, angry and violated by life that they want to harm the future itself. They don’t want anyone to be happy or gratified, ever. While admitting that life on earth can be very unfair and terrible, you don’t ever want to be one of those people. They have “eternalized” their own misery. That is the very definition of hell; they themselves have sent their own selves there. Goddesses can eternalize our finest moments, when we brimmed with love, ecstasy poured over us and generosity and joy poured out.
Goddess Danger – Ultimate judgment is not up to us. We don’t know everything, our empathy and compassion are not boundless, we cannot “see” in all directions and dimensions. Goddesses make snap judgments on the ground, battlefield decisions and quick-time changes; but we must leave finality to God. Arrogance and solipsism are serious blinders that harm our spirit as they harm others and even the planet itself.
Goddess Opportunity – We are offered repeated opportunities for growth, for humility, for insight. We need to take advantage of these, all the while admitting that since life is a see-saw process, it is usually two steps forward and one step back. Goddesses recognize and enhance growth; ideal growth conditions lead to health, while harm plunges everyone into darkness. Mentally we can wish others to avoid suffering and the roots of suffering even when we don’t understand what those are even for ourselves. When Goddesses connect meaningfully with others all spirits lighten.
Models & Mentors– “Trust in dreams – they are the hidden gate to eternity” – Khalil Gibran
“Launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment”
– Henry David Thoreau
“What we do in life echoes in eternity” – Marcus Aurelius
‘Love is the emblem of eternity, effacing memory of its beginning and all fear of its end” – Mme. De Stael
Alysse Aallyn 