 |
| Hecate, goddess of thresholds, mystery, magic, and the moon, via Jean Bakula, www.jeanbakula@exemplore.com |
Silence.
Beautiful, deep, alive silence.
Beautiful, deep, alive silence.
Outside, rattle and roar of wind against windows. Inside, the quiet of a hundred people sitting in meditation, inhaling, exhaling the peace of this space. Dozens of small story fires radiate through candle flames; a carved wooden statue of Avalokitashvara, the Buddhist
goddess of compassion, stands on the altar, as loose and graceful as an unfurling wave.
It's New Year's Eve. Twenty blocks north is Times Square, with its screaming millions. Here, a different plane, one that I've been craving. I have chosen to welcome my new year at the annual New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care sit with other like-minded, softhearted New Yorkers trying to get through these noisy and scary times with equanimity.
Why here? I have been following Zencare's Facebook posts (https://www.facebook.com/nyzencenter/) and am attracted to its mission of offering solace and companionship to suffering people, including those at the end of their lives, as well as training those who want to do this kind of work.
It's New Year's Eve. Twenty blocks north is Times Square, with its screaming millions. Here, a different plane, one that I've been craving. I have chosen to welcome my new year at the annual New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care sit with other like-minded, softhearted New Yorkers trying to get through these noisy and scary times with equanimity.
Why here? I have been following Zencare's Facebook posts (https://www.facebook.com/nyzencenter/) and am attracted to its mission of offering solace and companionship to suffering people, including those at the end of their lives, as well as training those who want to do this kind of work.
During their dharma talks, the two guiding
teachers, Robert Chodo Cambell and Koshin Paley Ellison, invite us to lay aside resolutions, which we'd be sure to fall away from by mid-January. Instead, they ask us to consider a quality we want to embody and nourish in our world in
2018. They suggest that embodying is an expression of giving birth, bringing a gift from within
ourselves, is a Divine Feminine way of stepping into the new year rather than
the conventional patriarchal notion of reaching out or making something happen
in the material world.
Ahhh…. I exhale. This is an easy one for me.
Listening.
It is what I do, have always done, since I was a pesky little girl tugging on my father’s shirt: “Tell me a story, Daddy.” I have been saying virtually the same thing – tell me a story – ever since, as a comparative literature student, a reporter, and since 1994, a healing story counselor. “Tell me your story.”
Given this luscious time to remember and visualize listening, I know with certainty that in 2018 I want to be able to listen more deeply to the stories life is telling through clients, places I walk through, environments in which I live, friends, family memories, new adventures, and through through my pen on the page. To listen more deeply to whatever is calling.
Listening.
It is what I do, have always done, since I was a pesky little girl tugging on my father’s shirt: “Tell me a story, Daddy.” I have been saying virtually the same thing – tell me a story – ever since, as a comparative literature student, a reporter, and since 1994, a healing story counselor. “Tell me your story.”
Given this luscious time to remember and visualize listening, I know with certainty that in 2018 I want to be able to listen more deeply to the stories life is telling through clients, places I walk through, environments in which I live, friends, family memories, new adventures, and through through my pen on the page. To listen more deeply to whatever is calling.
What quality are you embodying this year? Is there a visual metaphor you can use to hold the energy of your quality and to remind yourself to connect with it?
Mine is Hecate, goddess of thresholds, magic, mystery, and the moon, the one who lives at a crossroads outside of town, listening for the cries of lost souls.
When I first started my Living Story practice in the world's most lost and forgotten places such as prisons and homeless shelters, I read a lot about myth and fairy tale, because ordinary language was inadequate to contain and express that experience. Two goddesses especially resonated with me, both of them transformational: Aphrodite and Hecate. Transformation through love, and transformation through deep listening and intuition. Lighthearted listening through delight, love, and playfulness, and deep listening to the call of the world's suffering.
Through the years, as I have listened to more stories, and especially in the last year, as I have faced personal challenges and my country has slid into a sorrowful place, Hecate is the spirit and the energy that most guides my practice. A mature female goddess whose wisdom comes from lived experience, Hecate is the goddess who hears the cries of lost souls and guides them home.
I found the image at the top of this post on google and followed it to the website that houses writer-astrologer Jean Bakula’s blog, jeanbakula@exemplore.com. Briefly, Bakula notes that Hecate’s three-headed dog represents her ability to see past, present, and future. In my practice, Hecate’s way of knowing comes through story, which creates coherence between the present moment, the past that has led us to this place, and the future possibilities latent in any situation. From my own reading, I know that serpents represent higher consciousness and broomsticks represent the sweeping away of threshold hindrances.
Most important to me about the energy of Hecate is that she brings the quality of listening to the world. It was Hecate who could not see but who heard Persephone’s cries from the underworld to which she had been abducted by Hades. It was Hecate who called upon an army of other gods to rescue the buried child, and it was Hecate who remained Persephone’s companion throughout her life, even when she returned every six months to take up her role as Queen of the Underworld, guiding those who had fallen there back to the light.
I want to manifest Hecate's energy ever more fully this year.
Back to the zen present: the evening concludes with the ringing of a huge bell 108 times for the 108 gates of liberation and the 108 hindrances, which in Buddhist thought are the same. Reverberating with the deep clear tones of the bell, I walk out into the night both grounded and lifted. Struggling against the frigid winds to the subway, past other stragglers going to their midnight destinations, filled with new energy, knowing that my path this year is about bringing forth more deeply the quality of listening – for the story beneath the story, the story that wants to emerge – in my life, yours, my world, yours, ours.
Are you listening to the story your life is
telling you?
In every moment we’re at a crossroads: past and future are right here with us in the present. We’re always being asked to let go of the past by telling its story, and to choose a direction forward. The fact is that we’re given difficult situations to help us grow — not to overcome its problems, but to ripen in it and blossom through it, to look and listen more deeply into ourselves and our experience to discover strengths, gifts, and a degree of commitment to life that demands more than we knew we possessed.
Do you feel lost and stuck? Or do you simply want to listen more deeply, as I do?
Your personal world and its mood. The environments in which we find ourselves or choose to live often mirror our internal landscape. What does your world look and feel like? What features stand out for you? In my own recent life, I’ve lived in a series of rooms that aren’t my home. They reflect the major life transition I’ve been traveling through since my mother’s death four years ago. When I understand my experience this way, I feel not homeless and anxious, but calm and focused on listening for what is trying to come forth and what is being asked of me now.
Your supporting cast. Who's with you and who matters? I’m sure you’ve heard it said that everyone we meet is a teacher. This is true. The characters who populate our lives affirm and lift us, or denigrate and deplete us. Remembering that all the world’s a stage, and that the people whom we meet outside are often reflections of characters in ourselves, who uplifts and energizes you? Who sabotages you? Understand that we are all made up of light and shadow energy; your hero and your "villain" can be the same person. I have met both companions and adversaries during my life, and I am careful now, as I grow older and want my time to be spent more meaningfully, to identify and travel with the light-bearers who energize and inspire me.
What perplexing situations or yearnings are calling for your attention now?
What are they asking of you?
What are you not hearing?
Would you like to learn more about listening to the story that is unfolding right now in your life? I invite you to visit my website: julietbruce.com. If you would like to explore your experience as an unfolding story, please write me at julietbrucephd@gmail.com to set up a free story session. You can sign up for my periodic newsletter, which announces upcoming Story Sanctuaries on selected topics.
NEXT FREE ONLINE STORY SANCTUARY: THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 8-9 PM EASTERN. WRITE ME AT THE ABOVE ADDRESS TO REGISTER!
