A good friend of mine believes many healers, shamans, witches, were something other than human in most of their other lifetimes. She believes we chose to be in a human body, on this earth, now, because the earth so badly needs us. I was skeptical at first – but that concept would explain so much about why being in a body is sometimes a challenge for me.
I’m an Enneagram 7 – I flee from pain, and part of what I’m fleeing from is physical pain I experienced when I was very young. In my early years in earth-based religion, my joy was to sink into trance and leave my body behind. I thought of my body – my humanness – as something that got in the way of my connection to the sacred. I sought to transcend being human, being of matter.
Then, some years ago, Mooncrone, a sister in one of my spiritual groups, offered a Hecate retreat on the sacredness of being human. When she told me the theme of the retreat – that it’s sacred to be human – I didn’t really understand what she meant. But over the retreat, Hecate gently led me to the understanding that being human wasn’t something to transcend, as I’d been trying to do. It was key – part and parcel – of being effective as a spiritual being and a spiritual leader. Sustainable body – the willingness to accept my body, in every way. Sustainable spirit – the uses and joys of my body as a pathway to ecstasy and connection, with the sacred and with other sacred human beings.
I worked with Andrea Barrett on my MFA thesis, and one thing she told me over and over was “Learn your own individual process, and learn to love your process, because you’re stuck with it. It’s all you’ve got. Learn to make the most of it.” As a daughter of the Goddess and a priestess, I am human. That’s my process. I have worked to do more than learn to live with that process – I am beginning to fully understand that, far from being something that stands in my way, my humanness and my body are the essence of sacred. Pretty basic for a pagan girl, I know – another basic insight that I somehow missed along the way, and am so grateful to be exploring now.
The blessings of Hecate on us all, spiritual beings having an earthly experience.
