I'm having an unexpectedly profound Mother's Day and thought I'd write something about it.
When I logged into Facebook today, I wasn't surprised to see a lot of conversation and sharing related to mothers, something all of us Earthlings have in common. One of my friends had posted something about missing her mom and looking for a photo from a family event that had taken place before her mother made the transition. I was really taken with the idea of uploading some photos to honor my mother and grandmothers.
Earth is not an easy planet to live on, let alone mother on. Some of the challenges were discussed in depth by panelists on Up With Chris Hayes and the Melissa Harris-Perry Show this morning (video and articles are up at these websites -- see entries for today, May 13th, for some worthwhile viewing and reading). On this Mother's Day, I found it interesting to think about the recent eruption of discussions focusing on women and arising from the political stew being stirred in this election year of 2012. In spiritual and professional dimensions of my life, I've noticed much discussion about women in society and the role women may play in the next evolutionary phase of life on Earth as well.
My favorite picture of me and my mom: we're on the back porch of our farm house near Wakefield, Kansas.
I've had the opportunity in my professional training and practice to explore my mother-lineage and relationships in depth, and to hear the experiences of many colleagues and patients in that very important "first relationship" with their own mothers (and, in some cases, their children). Today I found myself remembering an especially profound experience while doing the contemplative psychotherapy program at Naropa University.
Tantric tradition speaks of five different principles, categories, possibilities or "families" of energy, and the Maitri Space Awareness practice involves practicing five postures in five rooms of different shapes and colors to evoke these energies. In this instance I was practicing in the ratna space. Ratna energy is associated with (among other things) the element of Earth, balance and nourishment, fertility, equanimity. I love this image of ratna energy in Cutting through Spiritual Materialism:
Ratna is so ripe and earthy, it's like a gigantic tree which falls to the ground and begins to rot and grow mushrooms all over it and is enriched by the weeds growing around it. It is a log in which animals might nest. Its bark begins to turn yellow and its bark to peel off, revealing an interior which is very rich and very solid. If you were to attempt to remove this log in order to use it as part of a garden arrangment, it would be impossible because it would crumble and fall apart. It would be too heavy to carry anyway.
It was in this energy field that I suddenly felt myself connected with my mother-lineage through a chain of beings that linked back to the first human woman on Earth and then to Cosmic Feminine Principle itself. A quality of this connection that emerged was a deep sense of the sorrow and suffering of humanity -- including that endured by womankind from patriarchal repression, oppression and exploitation of women and Feminine Principle on Earth -- all held generously within that same kind of strong, fertile and earthy space of a rotting, life-giving log. I felt this experience had literally changed me at some molecular level.
Great Grandma Bailey, Grandma Gertrude, Mom and me in Wakefield, probably 1947.
On several occasions since then, my ratna experience has come back to mind for further reflection, as it did today during the process of uploading these photos of my mom and grandmas. I didn't anticipate what would flow from this in a very vivid and heart-centered exchange with them across dimensions of space and time. I became aware of them, all smiling down into my energy field, acknowledging with loving equanimity the failures and accomplishments I've had as a soul through the ages. They looked happy together, and I sensed that whatever negative leftovers they might have felt for one another in their last turn on Earth had been forgiven. I felt that their presence at this particular time was more than just a Mother's Day exchange. They were signalling new possibilities for relationship with them and, more universally, with Feminine Principle.
A dynamic relationship with my mom did not end when she died at age 42. I have connected with her in dreams and meditations many times since her transition. From "the other side" she gave me instructions for what I later learned was essentially the practice of Tonglen. She was a catalyst for my interest in what some now call the field of subtle activism. When my grandmother became ill one summer, my mom told me telepathically -- before we even heard a diagnosis -- that grandma would be making her transition from Earth fairly soon. This was indeed the case. Today was the first time, though, that I felt to be in such vivid interdimensional communication with my grandmas.
Me and my Grandma Jo at my grandparents' farm near Wakefield: possibly 1948, around the time of my first birthday.
It's almost not Mother's Day anymore so I'm going to stop here. This has been one of the most eventful and memorable of them, for me. I'm sure the meaning of these experiences today will continue to unfold, but for now it feels like something really good happened, and I thank my mom and grandmas for their part in it.
At the same time I'm holding the awareness that today was very difficult for too many mothers on Earth -- single moms who are being marginalized, moms who have lost a child to illness or violence, moms in war zones and moms with kids in war zones, and on and on.
Here's a quote I saw that shines some her-storical light on Mother's Day and seems like a good way to enter the day after:
Mothers' Day Proclamation
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870
