“Our true beliefs are mirrored in our most intimate relationships.”
–Gregg Braden, from The Divine Matrix.
I’ve been having a real knockout drag out with my ego this week. You know how there is this incessant stream of negative thoughts and images that run through your mind; well, that’s your ego. It partners with the mind to record everything that happens in your life and then throws it in your face whenever you feel unsafe or in-dignified or cheated. The Ego keeps you knee deep in your own bullshit. Its like a built-in mechanism whose job it is to convince you that you are separate from everything you want, everyone in your life, especially your family, separate from the human race. i.e. “no one ever gets me, understands me, they always blame me, blah-blah., Ultimately the purpose of ego is to convince you that you are separate from God. Since a part of God is in everyone and everything created and you feel you are separate from everyone then you, my friend are separate from God. Ok, for those of you out there who aren’t comfortable with the word God because of the bad press God has been given in the past–all the wars waged in his honor, the blasé way serial killers and other psychopaths claim God as their sole, soul’s motivation, the current administration…we’ll just replace that word with Source–the Source of all life. It is a truer definition of what, whom God is. Anyway, that is the Ego’s job to make you believe that you are alone; always at harm’s mercy, that no one means you any good, that your heart will only break again: life has no purpose. Most people of certain religious persuasions refer to The Ego as the Devil or Satan. Well, Satan has been kicking my butt all week.
You see there is always a trigger, something or some present life situation that will trigger your personal mind / ego to rear its ugly head. My situation is my upcoming operation; I’m having a hysterectomy. I am about to lose my baby house. And believe me in the eleven years that we have been married, my husband and I, more me than my husband, have heard the opinions of others. Everyone believes he wants children and that somehow I have convinced him that he doesn’t. All of those comments and opinions have been recorded and dully noted deep within the recesses of my mind, believe me I could write an encyclopedia of quotes to go along with the corresponding emotions they have invoked within me. Why would any woman want to deny her husband/ mate/ lover anything? So what are these people, so-called family saying; I don’t love my husband? The accusations bothered me. Did I really not know my husband? What did they see that I didn’t? What did it matter what they thought? Why did I care about them and their opinions when I had my husband’s love and his words: “I don’t want the responsibility of a child.” He never got any of this. People, family never faulted him for anything. So of course wherever there is a hero, there has to be a villain–guess who’s the villain.
Its really no one’s fault. Usually people have sex and get pregnant. We had sex and did not. Now with the end so near (believe me the doctors cannot save it) the ego is letting me have it. I am assaulted daily with a slew of the worst comments playing over and over in my head and how in the past I could have responded and how I would respond now if the situation came up again, and so on and so forth. Maybe the opinionated would have felt better if we had wanted children and had spent money and prayers and time on doctors and procedures and wishes and dashed hopes. If maybe we had focused on the negative: not being able to conceive, instead of focusing on the positive: we still had each other.
There are all types of government breaks for parents, societal rewards for doing as you are told, for being fertile. And our media supports this conditioning. Just turn on the television and everything is geared toward being a parent, well, more toward being a mother than a father. In the commercials, you see mothers doing the laundry, even when the child is damn near grown. Mothers mopping floors, WITH A SMILE NO LESS, after their child decides to shake a carbonated soda all over her newly cleaned kitchen. Mothers eating rice crispies with their offspring, singing-laughing, not a care in the world. And even though I know that this is the way it is in fantasy land, it still gets/ got to my subconscious, the part that grew up playing with baby dolls that ate and pooped, the part that imitated mommy, pretending to cook at the counter of my tin toy kitchen, baking those nasty little cakes in my easy bake oven; the part that was conditioned to believe in motherhood.
Every day, without an alarm, I rise at 8’oclock in the morning, feeding the cats, scuttling around, meditating and lately, seeking solace among the words of Gregg Braden. In his book, The Divine Matrix, Gregg talks about there being Five Ancient Mirrors of Relationship, which are keys to our life, our relationships and how we see ourselves. The first mirror reflects the moment. The second mirror reflects what we judge in the moment. The third mirror reflects what we‘ve lost, given away, or had taken from us. The fourth mirror reflects “our dark night of the soul“, what we really fear. And the fifth mirror reflects our Greatest Act of Compassion. Greg says that all the mirrors are connected and if something is amiss in one area of your life, you better believe you’ll find the same playing out in other areas of your life as well. Our relationships reflect back to us our deepest fears, judgments and loss.
Contemplating those words, I realized that it was my guilt at not being able to conceive, the reality of not fulfilling my purpose, what I had been told by society since I was a little girl to believe was my purpose as a woman; I am supposed to be a mother. Thinking for myself by accepting that I would not be a mother and being honest about not really caring or wanting to conceive did not coalesce with my conditioning. I mean what’s wrong with me? Every woman wants to be a mother; don’t they? Shouldn’t I be fighting this predicament. There would be no one else after me. Nothing left on this earth, no semblance of what is uniquely my genetic code, nor that of my husband. Was it ok for us not to leave anything behind, to fade away without a fight.
My mirror was reflecting to me what I judge. I was judging myself because I was not being a good girl, a good woman, a good wife. Guilt was what I was emoting emotionally to the world and if that is all I am showing the world, that is all that the world will show me. My guilt was being reflected back to me, disguised as comments from family and acquaintances. That was why I got the brunt of all that baby talk and why the criticism and judgment hurt so deep because it was me facing me, my opinion of me. And it is also why my husband was never at fault. He didn’t feel guilty. He had truly accepted the facts, the truth of how he really felt. He truly did not care about having kids, he was comfortable with his choice and accepting of what the present was showing him and he reflected this to the world, so what he got back from the world was comfort and acceptance. It is what it is. We fight with ourselves, not the world. The world is our mirror and the true reflection of our own self-limiting beliefs. It is about us as individuals and our individual purpose for this life. Nothing happens that is not suppose to happen. Get it? I am suppose to have this experience, we were suppose to be child free. It is God’s intention that we think for ourselves, utilize that God divine, God-given free-will. It is not about what society thinks or believes, but what is right for you and I on an individualized level, what is divined for us by God, Source, the Universe. Whatever situation I find myself in I am to have peace. It is right with my soul, because we are one with God, not separate from God. No matter how we perceive or judge the events in the present life as being pleasant or unpleasant, it is as the Universe intended; our life is perfect and believe or not, so is yours.
