By Rona Marx
As a young child, long before my hair started twirling into curls on top of my head, I used to sit and stare at myself in the mirror. My wide unblinking eyes took in the form reflected in the magic shimmer of the looking-glass in front of me, and I was perplexed.
The part of myself who was observing my form was simply astounded at the enigmatic vessel that housed me. My body seemed bizarre to me in its limitations, and the shape and form of it always seemed so unfamiliar, as if it did not really belong to me. Or perhaps I did not belong to it?
Oftentimes, through remnants of tears on my cheeks, my eyes would blink at the bruises and marks on what seemed like a tiny body to my great spirit, terrified at the damage my skin and bones; my blood and muscles could tolerate from the relentless thrashing of a cane.
I remember always being astounded at how swiftly my body could heal itself and how quickly the physical pain would cease. I taught myself very quickly how to hide the emotional pain, and then I sat for hours, wondering where it went and why it did not really ever stop but continued faintly throbbing somewhere in dark depths of the mystery of misery.
My childhood seemed very loud too, and I shrank away from the noise of anger and criticism by covering my ears under the water at bath time – it was the only balm of silence I knew then. Yet, even here I was never safe from beatings.
I would spend a lot of time looking at other people. The shape and form of being human at once horrified and intrigued me. I always wondered if the people around me carried the same pebbles of pain inside of them, just like me? I wanted to know where we kept it, and how deep the river of numbness had to be in order to hide the pebbles of pain so that others would not see them.
I started noticing the moon too. On the farm where we lived, the full moon seemed to light up the entire night sky long after the generators were switched off. But I somehow sensed that the moon had a secret. We could never see all of it. Half of it was always hidden. Long before I ever stepped into a science class, I sensed this.
As a young adult, having married the same brutality and emotional abuse familiar to me from my childhood, I looked up at the full moon again through eyes blurred by tears and the understanding dawned on me; the moon is there to show us who we really are. It is on the dark side of the moon that we hide our pebbles of pain, so that no one can know. No-one must see. We think that the pebbles are safely hidden there.
We naturally present our shiny sides to the world for we instinctively know that this is the part of Self that is acceptable to the people whose orb-space we share. They, too, are presenting their silvery sides to us most of the time, so that we are all, in effect, continuously manoeuvring in a sideways dance of one-dimensionality around each other.
But sometimes, we forget the steps or the music sounds unfamiliar to us so that the dark side surprises ourselves and the other moons around us with a nightmarish screeching tango of anger, resentment, fear, intolerance, violence and judgement. For a long while after these blunders, everything goes so quiet that it seems as if the music must have stopped altogether, but we slowly find our feet and start joining in with the dance again, albeit tentatively.
For reasons yet unknown to me, this past Autumn equinox reminded me of that little girl in front of the mirror again. I wanted to know what lies hidden there in the shadows of the moon, and so I was presented with an opportunity to go there.
The world on the dark side of the moon is very lonely. There are forgotten and suppressed pieces of shadow lying around in abandonment everywhere. Hurt, grief, anger, pain, fear and many other unnameables dwell here in a state of non-acknowledgement, like discarded illegitimate children on the barren streets of the City of Shadows.
Oh, but they make sure that they are not forgotten. In moments when the guards go to sleep, they run screaming and screeching into the City of Light and cause havoc, death and destruction, pelting the shiny shop windows of pretence with their flaming pebbles of molten lava. Their defiant mocking laughter of self-righteousness hangs in the air for a long while after they are chased back into the shadows. There, they bide their time and plot their revenge, for they know the guards will become complacent and sleepy again, and then their tacit attack will be ever more nightmarishly powerful at every opportunity that occasion their return.
I wanted to know them, and I wanted to look at those pebbles clutched in their hands, for I suspected their origin.
Thus, I bravely left the shiny streets of the City of Light on the shimmery silver side of the moon and I sacked the guards at the steely iron gates. I walk without a sword or a shield into the midst of the begging street children of darkness and I made a fire. Our eyes were big and round as we stared each other in the face. Nothing was said. We simply sat for hours and days and weeks until the sight of them did not make me sick anymore. Until I could see them bathed in beauty under the grime of neglect that covered their cheeks and I understood that they are there, along with the children of light, to serve the entire kingdom.
Once the torch bearers of light are allowed to walk hand in hand with the cloak bearers of shadow, the war is over. They belong.
Shortly before my return to the light, I spotted a little girl in a dark corner – every inch of her body covered in bruises and bleeding wounds – carefully collected and clutched to the core of her very being. She hated it there in the darkness, but she didn’t know how to leave.
I gathered her up into my arms and I bathed her wounds with compassion. I applied lavish amounts of understanding to her open flesh and then I dressed her bruises in acceptance. I looked deeply into my own eyes for the longest while, and beheld Divinity.
When the time was just right, that little girl and I smiled and took a walk, hand-in-hand, around the Whole of the Moon.
Being Spiritually Aware is one thing – applying Spiritual Wisdom in our everyday lives is yet another. My writing is dedicated to sharing my insights and my personal learning and growth with my fellow spirits having a human experience in this illusion we call Life. Namaste.
Article Source: The Whole of the Moon
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