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The Hollow Place
Nov. 16th, 2012 02:35 pmSo Sarah started hosting Thursday night vespers at her UU church in Albion, which in this case translates to a meditation circle. I am *ecstatic,* because as you may remember I periodically wax nostolgic about the circle we used to attend many years ago, and lament that we had to leave it due to certain sketchy events. Last night was the second week of Thursday night Vespers, and I want to try to commit to journaling about these as they come because they are always full of beautiful lessons and awakenings and... moments. :)
We open the circle (although it's just been Sarah and me so far because the event hasn’t been officially announced to the congregation) with a short reading, and then briefly sharing anything that's on our mind, to let it go before meditation. Sarah has been reading from the UU book (hymnal? prayer book? :x) and MY GOD the poetry is exquisite. We meditate for about 20 minutes, meditation in this case being the practice of grounding, clearing, and opening yourself up to messages from spirit, your highest self, the universe, the divine, etc. It’s sort of a progressive meditation with inner journeying, shedding of the physical world/perceptions and of the burdens that obscure our awareness of our own magic. Much of the experience for me comes in visions, sometimes in direct messages.
This has been a hard year for me--one of the hardest of my life. I’ve been working hard on healing, evolving, confronting, growing... basically shaping myself into who I want to be, even though usually that means spending a lot of time agonizing over the fact that I’m not there yet. I’m hard on myself (aren’t we all?). I’ve come to realize with much surprise that I’m a perfectionist in my own weird way. Shame and self-criticism are my default reactions when things don’t go smoothly, and then trying to figure out what went wrong, how to fix it, and how to proceed in the future. On paper that doesn’t sound terrible. It sounds logical. But the heart is not logical. The soul is not logical.
( WARNING: Thar be METAPHORS ahead! )
We open the circle (although it's just been Sarah and me so far because the event hasn’t been officially announced to the congregation) with a short reading, and then briefly sharing anything that's on our mind, to let it go before meditation. Sarah has been reading from the UU book (hymnal? prayer book? :x) and MY GOD the poetry is exquisite. We meditate for about 20 minutes, meditation in this case being the practice of grounding, clearing, and opening yourself up to messages from spirit, your highest self, the universe, the divine, etc. It’s sort of a progressive meditation with inner journeying, shedding of the physical world/perceptions and of the burdens that obscure our awareness of our own magic. Much of the experience for me comes in visions, sometimes in direct messages.
This has been a hard year for me--one of the hardest of my life. I’ve been working hard on healing, evolving, confronting, growing... basically shaping myself into who I want to be, even though usually that means spending a lot of time agonizing over the fact that I’m not there yet. I’m hard on myself (aren’t we all?). I’ve come to realize with much surprise that I’m a perfectionist in my own weird way. Shame and self-criticism are my default reactions when things don’t go smoothly, and then trying to figure out what went wrong, how to fix it, and how to proceed in the future. On paper that doesn’t sound terrible. It sounds logical. But the heart is not logical. The soul is not logical.
( WARNING: Thar be METAPHORS ahead! )
