In the palm of the Goddess
Last week I flew down to Melbourne for a business trip.
I always pray when the plane takes off and lands.
I'd been reading while the plane taxied out onto the tarmac. As it gathered speed, noisily, shudderingly, hurtling down the runway I looked up from book and stopped. Suddenly the realisation came to me, unbidden and surprising, that all things were part of oneness, in time and in space. The grime-streaked rivets on the wing below me and the grass over on the edge of the runway. The grass roots, even then pushing down into the soil, greedily, lustily as they always had. The air rushing by the fuselage over the wings' curves lifting us up, throwing us up, high into the high sky.
Forever, for all time, everything that has ever been and ever will be is this one, single oneness.
How I had often asked Goddess to hold me in the palm of Her hand and now I understood that I had always been there and always would...along with the rivets and the grass and my pain. For I understood, too, that there was no escape, that oneness was abraxas, the Oneness of Good and Evil. How could God do this to us? Because He, She was the God/dess of goodandevil, godandevil.
Once, long ago when I was a hippie nomad immersed in the spiritual striving of '70's I would have felt gratified, gifted, saved, self-satisfied to have had such thoughts. But now I understood that they conferred no benefit, no credentials but were true and precious nonetheless. I remembered Pema Chodron's "The Wisdom of No Escape".
My almost constant and crippling fear and anxiety, my low self-esteem, my suicidal ideation, my depression sat in and around me, part of the web of the whorls in the palm of the hand of the Goddess...along with my sense of self and self-possession and the skin into which I so surely and truly fitted and lived. The breathing in, the breathing out, ebbing and flowing, birthing and dying.
The plane levelled out. I settled back into my seat, returned to Robert Goddard and the Spanish Civil War.
Breathed out calmly between fears.
I always pray when the plane takes off and lands.
I'd been reading while the plane taxied out onto the tarmac. As it gathered speed, noisily, shudderingly, hurtling down the runway I looked up from book and stopped. Suddenly the realisation came to me, unbidden and surprising, that all things were part of oneness, in time and in space. The grime-streaked rivets on the wing below me and the grass over on the edge of the runway. The grass roots, even then pushing down into the soil, greedily, lustily as they always had. The air rushing by the fuselage over the wings' curves lifting us up, throwing us up, high into the high sky.
Forever, for all time, everything that has ever been and ever will be is this one, single oneness.
How I had often asked Goddess to hold me in the palm of Her hand and now I understood that I had always been there and always would...along with the rivets and the grass and my pain. For I understood, too, that there was no escape, that oneness was abraxas, the Oneness of Good and Evil. How could God do this to us? Because He, She was the God/dess of goodandevil, godandevil.
Once, long ago when I was a hippie nomad immersed in the spiritual striving of '70's I would have felt gratified, gifted, saved, self-satisfied to have had such thoughts. But now I understood that they conferred no benefit, no credentials but were true and precious nonetheless. I remembered Pema Chodron's "The Wisdom of No Escape".
My almost constant and crippling fear and anxiety, my low self-esteem, my suicidal ideation, my depression sat in and around me, part of the web of the whorls in the palm of the hand of the Goddess...along with my sense of self and self-possession and the skin into which I so surely and truly fitted and lived. The breathing in, the breathing out, ebbing and flowing, birthing and dying.
The plane levelled out. I settled back into my seat, returned to Robert Goddard and the Spanish Civil War.
Breathed out calmly between fears.
posted by Paula at
9:21 pm
1 Comments:
(((Paula)))
Really there could be nothing for me to say here that would add anything of insight or value to your entry. Your thoughts and feelings had me sitting alongside you - experiencing it all as if I were you. Of course there is an understanding and knowing about the revelation you experienced - but of course the immediacy and Truth of the moment can be only yours. But I hear what you say.
Love Pat
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