I have been thinking about the idea of being broken.



How so much of our society is predicated on perpetuating our self image of ourselves as broken.  Broken in a way that requires fixing.

Buy this it will fix you.  Without this you will be seen by others as broken.  This will cobble up, plaster over your broken bits.

But is that true?  Are we broken.  Do we require fixing?

I believe in essence we are an exquisite and perfect part of the Divine.  That we are in truth, Divine.

And yet we grow up in this world that perversely does not want us to remember that.  We grow up with ways that encourage us to stay small, not treat ourselves with the ways that Divinity calls for.

So our behaviour, thinking and feeling patterns are sometimes broken.  With things like co-dependence, addiction, we limp along maintaining the veil between us and our Divinity, making our way through the world and aching for something different.


This is where the idea of Akhilandeshvari has been so useful for me... the Goddess who is never not broken.  Never, not being the dreaded double negative.  We are sent on this wild goose chase of trying to hide or fix our brokenness and yet Akhilandeshvari offers us the chance to see ourselves as perfect as we are.


Perfect and broken.  The paradox.  When we can live inside that paradox we are gifted the very thing we are so hungry for - the connection with the Divine.  The more we can live with this sense of being broken and perfect the easier it is for us to glimpse our Divinity. 

It is in this state that we are able to reach into our strongest self and receive the medicine that will take layers off that veil between us and our Divine truth.  We find the things that shift the broken thinking away.  The strong tinctures of self compassion, self care.  The balm of nature.  The ability to receive. 

When we stop spending so much time trying to hide or fix our brokenness we are able to be present to the gifts of this life.  And we get to keep the door open.  ...

What if you could become the woman you always admired?  What if the way you were in the world was congruent with every value and dream you have ever had?  Even the totally impractical ones?  Like saving the world?  What if you were capable of those things.

What if the very things that make you yearn for more - the things about other people's lives that make you achy the way looking at pictures of Georgia O'Keeffe in Abiqui  or Jane Goodall in the jungle make me... what if those things were the pointers to the life you wanted?

What if you started backing yourself and listening to the tiny voice of those yearnings, the whispers of the soul that say "This way, come on darling, this way" and took action.  What if we followed those signposts - not as things that made holes in our lives and made us feel worth-less than we are, but like our pathway to where we were meant to be.

Each of us have different signposts.  My Uncle goes all gooey at the thought of stationary engines.  My husband loves the thought of a long hard walk up hills in the rain.  Find the things that make you ache and yearn and follow up on them.  Follow that scent like a bloodhound.

Little by little as you follow those callings you begin to build experiences that create the life you have always yearned for and before you know it, even in the midst of the mundane, you find yourself living a rich life.

One day about 4 years ago I was home sick with a cold - I was in bed feeling pretty sorry for myself.  I hadn't brushed my hair or had a shower.  I didn't feel like eating and I was sure that UNESCO were going to come in and declare the mountain of tissues by my bed a world heritage area.  Then my girl came in with some lemon and ginger tea.  My girl, tender, finding her way in the world, reached out to me lovingly.  I had to shift some of my discarded jewellery out of the way on my beside table to make way for the tea... shoving the big shiny silver earrings I had made, they in turn pushed into a set of divination cards I was working with.  She had to move a pile of books with her feet , Maeve books, art books and of course Women who Run with the Wolves.... and I suddenly realised...

There I was, being a woman who was worthy of a daughter's tender ministrations.  A woman who was trying to kick her own deeply ingrained martyr lineage so that resting when I was sick was a smarter choice than soldiering on like a dying swan and spreading my germs hither and yon.  A woman who wanted lemon and ginger tea over a glass of wine (although there are days believe me).  A woman who makes good silver jewellery and is proud to wear it.  A woman who reads cards and strengthens her intuition daily.  Who is a loyal friend and nourishes herself from a rich smorgasbord of wisdom.  An artist.  A mother.  A whole-maker.

In that moment I realised that it was good to have heroines like Ms O'Keeffe and Dr Estes.  They help me to continue to believe that it is possible to be all that I dream of... But in that moment I realised I was becoming one of my own heroines. 

And although as of 3:26 on this rainy Tuesday I haven't managed to save the world yet, I know I am a damnside closer to it than I was when I kept turning away the things that called to me because I thought I was unworthy.


What calls you?  What might you be capable of if you listen and take those yearnings seriously?

This morning i was talking with my friend D'vorah.  

About how she knows that the way she turns up in her daily life is her prayer to the world.  About how sincerity combined with gratitude is the antidote to the overculture.  We talked about our work, our families, our revelations and flat air mattresses.  

And while we were talking i stumbled on this truth which felt like an oracular pronouncement; 

"Our wounding around our flesh and blood mothers is calling the Divine Feminine into the World."

By that i mean that we seek mother love - that sense of being accepted of being held and treasured as an innate need. Some of us get it from our flesh and blood mothers.  Some of us don't. 

If we don't get it we never extinguish our hunger for it.  We may suppress it.  We may carry that wound like a placard in front of us.  We may look to soothe the ache of it in all the wrong places, but we always yearn to have that filled.

My deepest knowing in the moment that it came out of my heart and into the world was that those of us who carry that ache and are brave enough, begin to seek.

We look for that all encompassing acceptance and love, that deep well of tenderness that calls to the very best of us.  We seek out the experience of being acknowledged as enough, whole complete and yet so burgeoning with worthiness that the world needs to see us.

In short we yearn to be seen for the truth of ourselves.

And that yearning, that seeking that opening up bravely to find that which is succor for that wound, is only satisfied by She.  By the Divine Feminine.  The Great Mother.

Llewellyn Vaughn Lee says

"The mystery of the divine feminine speaks to us from within her creation.  She is not a distant god in heaven, but a presence that is here with us, needing our response.  She is the divine returning to claim her creation, the real wonder of what it means to be alive.  We have forgotten her, just as we have forgotten so much of what is sacred, and yet she is always part of us.  But now she needs to be known again, not just as a myth, as a spiritual image, but as something that belongs to the blood and the breath.  She can awaken us to an expectancy in the air, to an ancient memory coming alive in a new way.  She can help us to give birth to the divine that is within us, to the oneness that is all around us.  She can help us to remember our real nature."
© 2007 The Golden Sufi Center

By calling forth the anguish of longing from our experience and seeking out that which is a balm to our hearts we call her into being.  We balance our world.

And "by our wounds we are healed".