Silent Retreat Day 1: A Soul Retrieval

Flow Writing:

I am somehow above a strip of cloud looking down, before me is a vast body of water, end to end under the canopy of the sky. The wind makes little silvery scales on the surface of the water, all of it carried from below by giant rolls of waves like the soft backs of hills, peak, valley, peak, valley, unlike the hills, the ocean never stops moving. It moves not because it is water, but because it is connected to earth. It moves because the earth moves. Everything that is connected to the earth moves, turns over, changes, renews itself. Even the hills that do not seem to move.

And so I expect change, and it is the only thing I expect, whether I am hanging out on a cloud taking in a bigger view, or down here in my corner dissecting life into a million pieces. Hope may come and it may go, but change is always here.
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Today I begin my 2-day silent retreat with myself, to be guided only by my body and Source.

I was led to check my emails and to look at an email from Jeannette. I thought it was telling me to book a session with her, but when I asked what the session is about, it was for a soul retrieval. Then it turns out that I ought to do a soul retrieval for myself, to retrieve the lost part of my selfhood. Today. Thank you, body, for this guidance.

Soul Retrieval for my Lost Selfhood:

I called for my spirit animal and a little bear came. Her name is Honey Honey Bear and she is very playful. I take her paw and we walk across the field until it becomes a hill. We begin to run down the hill but pretty soon we are tumbling like little kids. We are little kids. When we come to a stop at the bottom I look up and see a huge stone circle in front of us. There is a mist or smoke rising inside the circle and obscuring most of it. Honey Honey Bear says it is smoke rising from out of the earth and it is hot. I can now smell the smoke but could see no fire. HH Bear says it is a fire that burns all by itself, has been forever, and this is where the smoke comes out. Comes out? I say. Yes, there’s a hole in the centre of the circle. HH Bear says. Uh oh, don’t tell me we have to go down that hole, I say. Yep. Says HH. I’m scared, I say. Me too, says HH, but our trust is greater than our fear. I check with myself, and it is true.

Tentatively, we step inside the circle, and indeed the ground feels warm, the smoke thicker now around us. We start to walk toward the middle and HH is hopping a little, saying Ouch ouch, it’s getting hot. So I told her I’ll carry her and she hops into my arms. Despite waving at the smoke in front of us, HH does, it is getting only thicker. Soon there is the opening in the ground we have been expecting, not much bigger than a person’s girth. Here goes, we look at each other, and jump into the hole. The smoke is even thicker as we fall, and our screams quickly stopped as shut our mouths against inhaling more smoke. But soon it thinned out and the air became clearer. We did not have time for relief though, as a huge raging fire appears below us, bigger and bigger as we fell. Screams begin to escape from our throats again, and just as we start to feel the searing heat and big WUMPPHHH! came from the fire, and a huge puff of heated air pushed us aloft and off to the right of the big fire.

HH and I fell into a heap against earth, blessed earth! I can see immediately as we recover ourselves that there is a dark area just ahead of us and we know that there is a way to go yet. HH goes ahead of me into what I assume to be tunnel, completely pitch black. I hold out a hand in case there’s something lower than my head I might walk into. But soon the tunnel narrows and I have to get down on all fours and crawl. I made griping noises and HH said, it’ll keep you humble, we are going to see a diety after all. What kind of diety? I wanted to know. A goddess. HH replied. I pondered about that. After a few steps I called out to HH. Yes? she replies. Just wanted to know where you are, I said. I’m just in front of you. Don’t worry, I can see you. HH said. I didn’t know bears can see in the dark. Nevertheless, I talked to HH now and then just for my own assurance.

Suddenly our voices rang out with a slight echo, as if there’s a cavern ahead. We stopped in our tracks and after a moment HH said, come a few more steps. I took 3 steps forward and saw why. There was a hint of bluish light hovering above the edge of the ground, because we are at a cliff. Another step and I saw a scene that took my breath away. Below the cliff was a very large circular area occupied almost entirely by a ring, a spiraling ring, of blue liquid flame, and in the centre of the spiral was the goddess, like HH said. She is dressed entirely in the same blue flame and her features were human-like but not quite anything I’ve ever seen on a human before. She is the Goddess Spring Fire, HH whispered to me.

We crawled to the edge of the spiral of fire, it was warm but nowhere near as hot as the big fire before. I called out to the goddess and asked if we may speak to her. She raised a hand, palm up. I took that as a yes. I am looking for the lost part of my selfhood, Goddess, will you help me? I said to her.

With a small smile on her lips and her gaze steady upon us, the Goddess Spring Fire put her arms together skyward and rose in a stream like a meteor into the air, and from her fingertips a stream of blue shot up and down onto me. In a flash I am totally cover in the blue liquid fire where I crouched. It felt warm but not hurting. I could feel it cling more and more to my skin. I opened my eyes and saw HH sitting a few paces away, agape, watching me. It’s growing me a new skin, I said to HH, amazed yet content.

Then the Goddess came up behind me and ran her fingertips down along my spine, without touching me, and the blue covering zipped open and down like a carapace around me. I looked at myself and saw that I am beautiful, just like the Goddess, except I am still entirely human, in fact I looked like a young Chinese girl from a few thousands years ago. And I understood then that this is who I am, this is the part I’ve lost and now recovered. I turned to the Goddess and said, this is for more than just me then? Yes, she replied, it is for all the women in your lineage who have lost their selfhood because they were women, and everyone of you has carried that ancestral wound until now. Go now, and be whole. With that, she lifted up her arm and swirled around, darkness took over once again, and suddenly we are deposited back onto the field where we began.

I looked and dressed like myself again, and I gave HH a tight squeeze and let her go, with the deepest gratitude and love in my heart to her. Thank you, Honey Honey Bear. Thank you, Goddess Spring Fire. I thank you from my deep and more whole self!

~~~

So I have a new skin! The ‘new’ skin is my lost selfhood, and without it I have been too vulnerable, too self-conscious, feeling too exposed in the world to feel at ease and in my element. My mother, her mother and sister, my grandmothers, my aunts, my sister and cousins and their daughters, they all must have felt this missing part of themselves, that has prevented them from being fully what they know they are. We all have a chance to become that now, women with the blue fire of masculinity burning in them, enabling us to step out into the world and do what we are here to do.
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Went out to return some camera gear for Michael, and on an impulse (after checking with my body) drove up to a library that I’ve just ‘discovered’ last night. It is the S. Walter Stewart Branch, on Memorial Drive just behind the East York Civic Centre. The day is solidly overcast and drizzling, but the farmers’ market was on in front of the civic centre. Nice folks but nothing interested me.

The library was a sweet little gem though, newly restored and renovated, it is a round building from 1959, the interior spacious with a feel of flow to all the sectioned areas radiating from the centre which is the main librarians’ station. There’s a table with coffee urns and plates of cookie, ‘the café’ according to the sign on the wall. I found a whole shelving unit of books on photography which I will tell Michael about, CDs are laid out in hip-level sectioned boxes like in music stores, and plenty of computers everywhere although I glimpsed a few ‘out of order’ signs.

In another circular area just off the centre of the circle I found movies and audio tapes. I quickly found a mittful of foreign movies that looked promising. I thought I better remove my insatiable little self from the premises before I do more damage, and it was then that I discovered the clever device of the self-checkout counter! Not only can you do it youself by following simple instructions on a nearby screen, you can check out 4 or 5 or 6 items at a time. Coolest! But I hope it’s not taking jobs away from librarians though. Every cloud has a silver lining, but every silver lining can have a rip in it… Nevertheless, God/dess bless libraries, my life wouldn’t be as joyous and full without them!