Dear Friend,
The seagulls wheel overhead, their cries mixing with sounds of a passing car radio. This far inland their numbers are sparse, compared with the flocks that would follow the bin wagons in my home town.
I grew up by the sea, you could watch the sun setting from our landing window as the salt waters of the Solway Firth turned salmon pink and gold. Scotland lay like a blue finger in the distance. On a clear day you could make out the shape of a small forest and in my childhood imagination I’d wonder about the people in the towns over there. Were they looking out across the water at us?
My Dad told me about an old footbridge that connected our side of the Firth with the Scottish mainland. How men would cross to go drinking in Scottish pubs, dropping drunk into the water on their return. I have no idea if that is true.
He also told us that the accordion player on the street corner was in fact a millionaire. I recall his dusty looking suit and long white hair as he played for coins. The old man had a vitality and mystery to him that gave Dad’s story some credibility. I have no idea if that is true either.
Because it came from my Dad I just took it on face value.
While we’re kids, we’re absorbing the assumptions around us. We create our own inner mental map of the world and place ourselves into the worldview we form.
The culture tells us who we are. What we can hope for. What’s out of reach. By the time I arrived on the scene the dominant belief was that the divine was something far away, separate and distant, watching and judging, but probably not real. An idea that had had its time. Unscientific, a hangover from the past. There were rules you had to follow to be in favour with a distant Deity, mostly things you weren’t meant to think or say or do. At any rate you were on your own and at least you had the privacy of your own mind. What went on in there was of little consequence to anyone but yourself. If I had bad thoughts I could punish myself before anyone else got to it. If I did bad things I could hide them. Things were as they were and that was the end of it.
Do well in school and get a good job.
The steel works had need for workers and we were being prepared for a life of meaningful routine. Encircled by the news cycle, living by the rhythms of the television schedule, birthdays, religious holidays, family outings, weekends and football matches. The maps we made part pre-fab part of our own making.
Then there was the sea. Wiping the slate clean, the salt winds roaring in our ears. Something powerful calling in the rolling waters, the rain like knitting needles on your hands and face.
We’d collect mussels from the shore and peri winkles that tasted like snot. They’d be boiled alive in a big aluminium pan on the gas stove.
The steelworks hooter punctuated the week days so you’d know when the men were breaking for lunch. It was an orderly life, made so by women and men.
Beyond it all, a shining mystery we label God, Source, the Divine, Spirit. Unseen, in all things, and within us. Wanting only our conscious attention. That we light the flame within and see through the dark.
The surface of life can be stormy, deeper down in the stillness within you encounter a nice feeling akin to a mother’s love. A feeling of safety, being held, regarded with affection and protected.
You could call this aspect of the divine, Divine Mother.
That we must do something or change ourselves to earn this. That we are not loved, that we do not matter. That it is crazy to rely on the power and protection of something you can’t see or understand. All are limiting beliefs.
Ask Divine Mother to make herself known to you. Make your demands of her. She sends practical help and is glad for you to turn your attention her way. Call her by any name. It doesn’t matter that we do not understand, what matters is that we are understood. What more are we looking for other than this feeling of being safely in our own skins?
We can’t rely on the false self to bring us peace, it has no peace to give.
It can be extremely uncomfortable peeling away at the layers of it, especially so nearing the core where we find nothing solid to cling on to. We’re used to clinging.
Better to cling to beauty and truth and a determination to be kind. Dropping judgements and complaints as best you can.
Finding out through experience is the reason we come into this world.
Our limiting beliefs are not faults, they are more like learning devices. The trick is to notice them for what they are, feel how it feels to believe in them and ask yourself would it better if I did not believe this? How would it be better?
The greatest gift is the realisation of who we are beyond the images in our minds.
Ask Divine Mother to reveal herself.
Just ask.
Pester her if you must.
Throw tantrums.
It’s okay.
Reject what you find to be false and give it to her, she knows what to do with it.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey