I had thought when I began to write about the heroine’s journey that this post would be the first and only. Turns out I wasn’t ready to write this post and truth be told, I still don’t feel ready. I am afraid that I will never do justice to the soul. I am afraid that in trying to put words to something so boundless and exquisite that I will desecrate what is holy.
Yet this is my story to tell and no one else can tell it for me.
My descent into the hell of my own making began in August of last year. After meeting with my spiritual director, we were able to put language around what was happening — some sort of dark night. This helped me to have the courage to press on.
My suffering went on and on until the morning of February 22, when I awoke in a particularly dark place. After dropping my kids off at school, I came home to do my work but found myself unable to sit. Pulling on my running shoes, with music blaring in my headphones, I began walking to the familiar place where I go to hash things out with Love. As I was walking, a scene from Frozen II came vividly into my mind, and I knew there was something there for me. Something about “the thing that is trying to kill me being the thing that will actually liberate me.” Something about “letting go and allowing birth to happen.” I walked home and found the scene, watching it several times and feeling something breaking apart inside of me.
And just like that, there she was. My own dear soul. No longer was she looking at me through a veil. The door from my world into hers was simply gone.
She was magnificent. And she had everything I needed because she was fashioned from the very material of God. No different from Pure Love. The exact image and likeness of God. To begin with, I was so intoxicated by her beauty that I wondered if I would ever need anything from anyone else, ever again.
Finding her was like finding someone more familiar to me than my own self but also like finding someone I will never fully know. Finding her was a joy that I’ve never experienced, and often when I gazed into her face, it was full of mirth, as if she was chuckling with utter delight at being found. At times my outer life became so busy that I would forget about her, but all it would take was a shift in my attention and there she was, always with those light-hearted eyes, as if to say, “Try out my yoke, dear one, it’s easy and light.” She was never disturbed. No matter what I brought to her.
By undisturbed, I don’t mean uncaring.
At first it was all so startlingly beautiful that I imagined I would never need any other thing. But before long I realized that I must not isolate myself. Not that I could actually isolate myself from that which I’m part of — the same body. But I must not live as if I am isolated. It would be a grave mistake.
In spite of the torn veil and in spite of the completeness of my soul and her ability to offer me all things pertaining to goodness and beauty, I must always remember that she (my soul) is part of something far bigger. And within this bigger body, there is no part that is unworthy or less than.
Yet, she also gave me something no other human could. I have been sitting with my experience and trying to find words to explain the uniqueness of her offering. I think it is an intimacy born from being able to see me in a way that none other ever will. An intimacy that understands fully. And also a confidence in her essence. She *knows* who she is, and is utterly unshakeable in that knowing. Because she knows who she is there is no need to grasp or cling and no need to puff up or dumb down. It’s as John Daido Loori says, “she moves quietly, gracefully, and when she enters a space, she fills it completely.”