Time to Go Down
Mar. 8th, 2008 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosOne of my tasks for the weekend is to do a descent ritual. I'd known I needed to do it, but until this morning I wasn't sure it would be for. I was doing Morning Pages (Julia Cameron's daily creativity exercise) and started writing about two things I knew I needed to let go of in the underworld: my current job and my relationship with Michael. I kept writing, and found myself expressing the need to strip away all the old expectations and identity limits left over from my youth and college years.
You would think that at age 43 I'd be over all that by now, but no: those expectations go very, very deep, and are tied in with my self-esteem and my beliefs about what consitutes security.
I hasten to add that these expectations are not overtly negative -- but if I continue to be ruled by them on a less-than-conscious level, I am going to be blocked from becoming my authentic self. I'm going to let the expectations of my loving, mundane, middle class parents and my highly selective, leaders-of-the-world undergraduate college dictate who I am.
"Who I am" doesn't even come close to fitting into their paradigms: walker between worlds, wise woman, underworld priestess, Pagan author, bdsm practitioner and instructor, tarot reader, wife to a disincarnate husband. Even "spiritual director" is outside their realm of understanding, since for me it involves working outside a recognized denomination, being a solo practitioner, not operating within the defined boundaries and under the auspices of an established organization which confers legitimacy and and security.
Those are the key words: legitimacy and security.
I've been struggling with legitimacy for several years now -- but it's still and issue. My current job issues have highlighted the security aspect.
Time to shift paradigms. Radically shift them.
And Ereshkigal is just the lady to help with that.
You would think that at age 43 I'd be over all that by now, but no: those expectations go very, very deep, and are tied in with my self-esteem and my beliefs about what consitutes security.
I hasten to add that these expectations are not overtly negative -- but if I continue to be ruled by them on a less-than-conscious level, I am going to be blocked from becoming my authentic self. I'm going to let the expectations of my loving, mundane, middle class parents and my highly selective, leaders-of-the-world undergraduate college dictate who I am.
"Who I am" doesn't even come close to fitting into their paradigms: walker between worlds, wise woman, underworld priestess, Pagan author, bdsm practitioner and instructor, tarot reader, wife to a disincarnate husband. Even "spiritual director" is outside their realm of understanding, since for me it involves working outside a recognized denomination, being a solo practitioner, not operating within the defined boundaries and under the auspices of an established organization which confers legitimacy and and security.
Those are the key words: legitimacy and security.
I've been struggling with legitimacy for several years now -- but it's still and issue. My current job issues have highlighted the security aspect.
Time to shift paradigms. Radically shift them.
And Ereshkigal is just the lady to help with that.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-08 07:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-08 09:09 pm (UTC)May it go well.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-09 06:41 pm (UTC)I'm 54 and I don't know if some childhood/youth things ever really go away. But gradually, I try to come to where I embrace them and allow myself to have a past and work with it instead of against it. Not easy and not always successful, but the effort helps.
Reminds me of hiking... I have asthma and arthritis so go in small stages up the inclines, resisting the temptation to say this is madness and give up. I do what I can, and embrace and enjoy whatever progress I can make...