On May 21st of last year, 2 days from now, I left to fly to Spain to walk 170 kilometers of the El Camino de Santiago. Almost a year to the day. So this time last year, I was making the final preparations, walking, getting packed, and preparing myself to leave my family for an extended period of time. How different it is this year! Now I am on my own inner journey, following La Camina of my belly.
I wrote something down the other day that I believe Christiane said, "My body is my map." There's something profound here that I want to explore.
When I walked El Camino, we had little guide books that gave us each daily stage of the journey, in approximately 25 kilometers sections. The author included an altitude map (so you'd know how much you were climbing and descending each day), each town along the way with albergues (pilgrim hostels) and hotels, restaurants, a few pictures, a description of this stage. In essence, each stage was mapped out quite thoroughly for us. You knew where you'd be going, what albergues to expect, how far it would be,what the terrain would be like, etc.
I love maps, looking at them, seeing how where I am relates to the information on the map and how what I am experiencing is reflected in the map, and how the map reflects what I am experiencing.
So where's my map for the La Camina?!
I would love for someone to say "Here's the map of La Camina. Let the map show you the way to heal your belly. Everyone's map is different, but this is a magical map that can show YOU how you are going to get from here to there. If you follow this, you are going to be okay and get exactly where you want to go, and you're going to know where you are each step of the journey."
Too bad that the Feminine just doesn't work in the same way! She says, "You have your map. You have always had your map. You don't need a piece of paper. You just need to be with yourself, honor yourself, listen to the wisdom of your body, and follow the paths revealed through your body."
Sometimes that can just feel so difficult. I want a map on a piece of paper that I can look at, decipher, know where I am going to go that day and how long it should take me to get there!
What do you mean honor myself? How do I listen to the wisdom of my body? Can't you just tell me what I need to know?
Can you relate to this? Or am I the only one who wants to be handed a map?
I remember on the Camino Sue would encourage us to keep the maps in our backpacks and just follow the Camino. She wanted us to experience it very directly without an intermediary to reflect or translate our experience in any way. Whatever the Camino offers that day, we experience it. That was so challenging for me to do. I received comfort in knowing how much I would climb or descend that day, how far we would be walking, and what our final destination for that day would be - at least where we intended to get to. Once I knew that, I could relax into and experience the journey.
What would it be like to just experience the journey, without any expectations or any input into what that experience might look like?
As I breathe into that question, I viscerally feel that it would look like La Camina, the feminine journey where you follow your heart and the impulses of your body, and receive its wisdom and guidance. I wear a silver piece on my necklace that is the first symbol of Rumi or something like that. It is a spiral that moves out of a straight vertical line behind it and that also has a curved top to it, somewhat like a small "r". I wear this necklace just about everyday, and I wore it last year as I walked the Camino and journey up the Celtic Camino. I also wore a shorter necklace with a pilgrim's silver scallop shell that my step-mother gave me for my 50th birthday. Today I wear it with a tiny medallion of Green Man that I bought and received at Rossly Chapel in Scotland.
The feminine journey is a spiral that is always pulsating and moving. You may think that you have learned that lesson or resolved that issue, only to experience it again at a different level. Same area of the spiral, but on a different rung, closer to your core. I like the vertical piece behind the spiral. For me, it is my stake in the ground, my commitment to the journey. It is the intersection of the spiral and the stake that magic happens and the journey begins. Actually, where my journey begins. It is the place where my commitment and intention cause a particular, unique unfolding - where I intersect with the grand, divine feminine and create the map of my own journey.
This is why there is no external map. There cannot be. Each person's journey is unique and very personal. So the only place one can access a guide and a map is within that which is most unique and personal to us and is also the truest and most authentic reflection of our soul - our body.
Our bodies are our maps. My body is my map.
So what does this mean and how do I access, and translate, my body?
What is it saying to me? What does it want me to know?
Let's start with the obvious. There is a split down the middle of my belly, and also, it is my belly that I am always aware of. When I check in with my body, the first place I always go to is my belly. It is my barometer for how I feel about myself. If my belly feels at peace, then I am at peace. If my belly is not bloated or big, then I feel acceptable and present myself more comfortably in to the world.
What does this mean? That I hold a lot of stuff in my belly and allow it to dictate to me how I feel about myself.
I give a lot of power to my belly, don't I?
What if I decide to love, honor and accept myself no matter what? What if I don't make it about my belly, but about me, the true self that is not my body? My body is a reflection of my spirit and soul, not the other way around. I am not my body. My body is a vehicle for my soul. I will go further to say that it is the perfect vehicle for my soul to fulfill my soul's contract and lessons for this lifetime. I believe that. I know that. And still I can resist the lessons that my body offers me, and not want to look at the map of the journey that if offers!
The split in my body reflects the split within mySelf. My body truly is the perfect reflection of me, for me.
I am not sure where to go from here. OK, I have this split. Where does the map lead me to next?
I am pulled inside, into the depths of my belly. My body wants me to go the space behind the organs in my belly, to the quiet dark space that lies just inside my sacrum. Is that word at all related to "sacred"? Is there a sacred space within all of us? It is a quiet space behind the "stuff" - the shame, muck and gunk.
What does it want me to know? That this is how all of my belly can feel - quiet, clean, peaceful. It just is. No drama, no story, no trauma. It is calling on me to heal the shame, to bring light into my belly, to love and accept my belly just because it is my belly. It's a paradox. I am to love and accept my belly just because it is my belly, and at the same time, I to cleanse it and allow the light to shine back in. I have to get that it's not about fixing anything that is wrong. Nothing is wrong. There's nothing to fix. The paradox lies in this - shining the light in a place that has gotten filled with darkness, and that is calling to be healed. This is where I can get really confused. But I have a glimpse into that I get to shine lots of love and light into my belly, and that is the seed for healing the shame. It is not about removing something that shouldn't be there. It is about offering love, love and more love no matter what my belly feels like or looks like.
This is a very fine line for me. I get it; I don't get it. My body just keeps asking that I return and continue to show up, and honor the map.
Susaya!
Sahara
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