An Imbolc Blessing

We yearn toward the light.

It is the yearning that keeps our feet on the path

when the dark threatens to overtake our hearts

and we feel faint with dread

and soul-numbing fatigue.

But before the birth time

the greening, leafing of spring and warmth

there is the time in the belly of a thing.

It's a strange feeling

drifting in a reality that is completely foreign

destabilized and free-falling into the unknown

while simultaneously contained within

a process entirely out of known control.

At times thrilling and warm

Sometimes a keen sense of loss

Of anxiety- around the great unknowns to come

the changes, the inevitable altering.

This is more than cosmetic change at the surface.

The very pattern of the weave

of life as it has been understood

is moving through a transformation

that will leave us forever marked.

This is initiation.

The dirty work.

The scraping away of old flesh

to make way for something

new, larger, louder, brighter.

Bleeding, opening, cracking ground

to make way for new shoots to spring up.

Surrendering to an unknown outcome

because there is

truly

no going back.

And because even if I could at this point, I wouldn't.

So initiation is a door I willingly

if humbly and sometimes timidly

walk through of my own accord

I am not forced.

Initiation is intrinsically cleansing.

It is the most basic of purifications

played out in profound measure

for the stretching of us.

Can you feel the pulling at every end, beloved?

It always begins in the belly.

I fidget, I squirm, I resist, I curse

and finally... I collapse

surrendering to the process

of this birth before birth.

Moving through that birth canal is a team effort.

The child struggles toward the light

turning this way and that

compressing and bending limbs and even bone to fit.

The familiar warmth of amniotic fluid

filling the soon to be airway is pushed away

in this labor toward the light.

All this happening in the belly

and below.

This is initiation

moving in the belly.

Together. We.

Our mind and our soul.

Our experience and our Self.

We who are today

and our potential fighting for life

and clawing toward breath.

It is as much a taking away as it is a giving in to.

The emptying that comes before the filling up

and the aching arms that were pleasantly full

of the weight of all that was

now required to grow accustomed

to air and possibility.

We accumulate knowledge, practices and truths

that serve us well.

Until they don't.

We outgrow them.

They must move through us

out, onward and away from us

to new hearts waiting for them

as others travel toward us

waiting for us to invite them in

and choose the initiation

that will allow us to understand their language.

They arrive in the belly first.

A clenching in the gut

of faint but definite recognition.

Oh, there you are!

we eventually say

I was wondering when you would arrive.

Our mind tricks us into believing

that there is security in the known.

If we know it, if it feels familiar

if we are used to its weight and heat

it must be truth and true for us

always.

But this is false, and holds us back

from the growth we are meant for.

It stalls the birthing process

stopping it dead in its tracks.

Refusing initiation in any form

when it appears to us in the secret moments

the pained silences

the raging grief or quiet loss

of a thing, person, or idea

is certain death

to our evolution

at some point along the way.

There must be movement toward the light

from the belly place of a thing.

Where life stirs in secret darkness

before it can be born.

Preparation looks as much like clearing out

as it does adding to.

This is more than a quaint decluttering.

This is cleansing on a life-changing scale.

It cuts to the bone.

And it's time.

Time to let go of what used to serve us

that we are past now.

Time to hold ourselves accountable

to the deeper truths that have been growing

in strength

in the belly.

. . .

In the Belly | Her Strange Angels