Soul Desire: Love (Part 3 of 3)

Almost 20 years ago at my friend Mary's house, I asked Jesus into my heart. At the time I had no idea what that even meant, I just knew my friend really wanted me to, so I did. I prayed, wanting to make her happy and not knowing what I was doing or that this was what people did to become Christian. I just wanted her to like me.

Truth is that I've never been much into Jesus, or Christianity for that matter. I am much more interested in mysticism, esotericism, and Paganism that predates it. I can’t reason being a part of something where the mysterious feminine isn't exonerated in its fullest form. My body and my being is so beyond sacred, I don’t want to look up to a man-figure. I want a wild, loving woman to lead my spiritual path. I want to feel my body as welcomed and sacred, not dirty and forbidden--a true embodiment of the Divine feminine.

"Men finish the journey into manhood through a woman's refinement. That means all of the Divine feminine. The chaos and the nurturing mother." ~ Vito Mucci

Women too find their womanhood through the Divine feminine and I have never felt it more clearly than right now. I love what is, all my imperfections and yours. I love the wild storm as much as the calm sea. I love the rain and the sunshine. Sometimes my love looks like hugs and kisses and sometimes it looks like boundaries and harsh truths. (In my cat's case, a water bottle spray.) It's sometimes really pretty and other times really ugly. This love and heart is Sara-la-Kali and Mary combined, full of shadow and light.

So, for my 33rd birthday I took a pilgrimage to remember the Divine feminine that resides in my heart. The word pilgrim comes from French pilegrim meaning "crusader, foreigner, stranger." It implies being a stranger somewhere we don't necessarily belong. And that was what my heart had become. I wasn't belonging to myself...I had lost my virginity and ability to find the divine within.

I found it again with my lover and lover's lover looking at The Lady and the Unicorn. And again outside a tiny church in the south of France gazing at Sara-la-Kali. I glimpsed it when a gypsy read my palm. I found it on a horse with one of my best friends in the wild Camargue. And then it was there when I returned from my trip in San Francisco (everyone knows we leave our hearts in SF after all) to celebrate my 33rd birthday.

In many cultures it is 33 where our soul finally chooses this life, and with it our purpose. The number is associated with the angelic realm and the Ascended Masters and numerologically is about manifesting our desires. It was the year Jesus died on the cross and the Buddha (also a Taurus) became enlightened under the Bodhi tree.

While I have no interest in enlightenment or being Jesus, (though it took me living at an ashram and asking him into my heart to learn this), I did feel this birthday preparing me to more fully move into my life’s work and my soul’s greatest evolutionary potential. I didn’t come here to be perfect or for a purely spiritual experience. I came here to learn to be myself. And even more difficult, to love whomever that is is any given moment.

“Don't go into a relationship with an empty heart, and expect your partner to complete it for you. No heart can ever be complete without the presence of unconditional self-love.” ~ Edmond Mbiaka

I used to hate that desperate girl, the one who couldn't move on and had sex with men who didn't love her. The one who does anything to be liked. I hated how she was so hungry for attention, so eager to please just for a glimpse of affection. The one who spends money to fill a void or eats tons of sugar. I can finally I say I love her. I no longer blame her for wanting to be loved, it’s what we all want the most in life…to love and be loved in return (thanks Moulin Rouge). She was too young to know that love had to begin with her, she had to love herself first. And not just love, but worship. She didn’t need Jesus or her parents or a man…only to feel and receive the love that was divinely hers.

I believe we come to Earth to learn to love others and ourselves unconditionally. It is our life’s purpose and a life-long path of getting rid of everything (or learning to love) within ourselves that isn't love. It took me 33 years to know that’s why I am here, in this body with this heart and now I can't go back to unknowing. The word love comes from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root leubh- "to care, desire, love." It is indeed an old, old word (PIE pre-dates Sanskrit) and has cognates in Sanskrit, Slavonic, and Lithuanian suggesting it's meaning to be more closely related to "desires," "dear, beloved," and "song of praise."

My divine desire for myself is to sing my own praises. To know that my virginity has been reclaimed and with it a new femininity that is more embodied and wild. As I entered the chambers of my heart, I emerge a new woman ready to receive and love herself. A love that requires true vulnerability to self and others. A moment where I welcome myself into my own heart and am filled with the divine Goddess (and Jesus if he can hang with her).

Marion Woodman in Pregnant Virgin puts it beautifully, "Initiated into womanhood without losing her virginhood, [she] gives birth to herself, to the man, and to all of creation--a new world radiating with new light."

This is my soul/sole desire to radiate with my Divine feminine heart in all of its virginal, wild love.