Day 9 Committed To Self- Emerge

All the self actualization in the world is not going to change that we have birth order, family of origin, cultural affiliation, economic status and conditioning, it is certainly not going to change that we are born a specific gender. I may be a spiritual being having a human experience but this demands the humanity to be fully experienced, imperative to the completion of what it is I am doing here, without it I learn nothing, the spirit is no further along. This is what this whole commitment is about, in a rather obtuse way, fully viewing my own humanity, without judgement, as much as possible, from the place of witness. It is my gender which lately seems to hold the key to my purpose.

The archetype of the Queen has been very alive for me lately. I am coming out of a period of feeling very small, like the chrysalis, full of potential but still questioning my place as a fierce warrior womyn of this time. How am I to be the Queen, take impeccable care of myself, while still honouring and supporting the King. Putting me first by only a margin to carve a way for the necessary and beloved Divine Masculine. Where is the job of the Priestess? It use to be in the temple. What happens when the temples are all gone and we Queens are too consumed with the work to build our own? This is not the order of things anyway, not according to the archetype. Within the archetypes there are some to build and some to do the worshipping, Queens lie in the middle, bridge builders.

To laugh often and much,
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better,whether by a child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived----
This is to have succeeded.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is my work, I take my work very seriously. I take success very seriously. It seems to me this sums up nicely the work of the archetypical Queen...no? And so from the Queen archetype which lives within me, the Priestess emerging from Chrysalis, from this place I wrote the following poem yesterday. Written to the human manifestation of the Divine Male, the archetypal King in all his manifestations:

Winged found feet

Devotion to dance is devotion to me.
Me as the butterfly emerging, veil winged. 
Living vulnerable truth, a warrior of the heart worn out front, 
beating, beating, beating.

"How dare you!" 
twisted face,
red behind panels of frustration, and feared smallness....

"How dare you?,"
I ask, righteous, full plumed,

“How dare you show up here at my hut to be blessed,
seek me out as your Queen, your Goddess, and then tear me down out of fear?”

Courage is not the absence of fear they say but acting in spite of it.
I say it is holding the fear, facing it, caressing it and saying,
"It ok baby boy".
smoothing hair here, and ruffling it there.

Tolerate the urge to run from what you called in.
Saying you are not ready to face you, is bravery, not defeat, if only you could see this,
or maybe you do?

I love you, 
King to my Queen, 
I would be remise in my vow to you, in my devotion of you,
if I did not turn these veils upward ever-so slightly, 
catching the wind to lift me, 
and tear apart the green yellow shards of light, pulling till pink,
breaking, open at last the starry sky, 
in all its vast dark easiness. 

The view up here is simple, expected, full of familiarity.
I know this place.
Just as you do my dear King.
-Bernice Raabis

Tomorrows new moon will bring intentions of stepping forward again, into my femininity, into the dance of being lover, mother and mystic.
And so it is.

“What does the butterfly symbolize to you?“ is the question in 12 days journal #187

(This post is dedicated to KD, my fellow Shakti Bhakti sister, who sent me Definition of Priestess for Today's Times. Scroll down to the bottom of this link to read the comments)