This post has been percolating a few days and I’m still not in on the plot and yet, I am given to sit down in front of the keyboard and let the fingers fly and let curiosity be my guide.

Oh. this is fun! I love a mystery.

Two days ago — a gorgeous northwest day — as I was climbing a steep path I was looking at the seemingly human need to right, to be smart, to compete and win. I flashed back to my youth: carrying books to school so fellow classmates would recognize my intelligence; needing to have the right answer and to have it first; how it broke my heart and scared the life out of me when I failed.

Failure was not acceptable. It meant that I wasn’t smart enough, hadn’t worked hard enough, that I would never be chosen for the top team, would always be that one, the odd girl out. I would never be enough unless I remained eternally vigilant. If I didn’t watch it, I wouldn’t just let myself down, I would fail God and never be allowed back home.

So I worked harder and my brain kicked into overdrive to make certain that I covered every angle not once or twice but infinitely. I don’t imagine I was the only one who always inserted the word ‘not’ in any thought of being enough. Being nice, being kind happened now and again, but it wasn’t my default. Surviving was.

At times I can still see this protective mind working overtime. It was well honed and had an insular, acutely engrained purpose so it hangs around even though it’s retired. Now I smile and caress that little girl and tell her how sorry I am that she experienced such heart-wrenching and truly menacing pain. I thank her for her resilience, her willingness to abide, for surviving her stay on planet earth amidst it all. I share my gratitude for the lessons her life gave me, the lessons that allowed a level of freedom for her elder self that the younger knew was possible but couldn’t access.

How do I know she knew? If she hadn’t, she would have crumpled in a dark corner at the thought of such unredeemable damage, and died. I think that’s true for many empaths who incarnate here. Consciously or not, we are wired to know.

There is so much to learn about our world and its pain from this story. What would happen if we treated each other like I learned to treat my own little girl — little Gayle, for that was her name before Gayle became Amaya, before I was granted the key to that previously inaccessible freedom?

Aren’t we all desperately trying to find our way home? Hearts are breaking, have shattered in hopelessness. Some aren’t hopeless but feel it approaching and act out, project their pain, reach for something, anything to hold the felt sense at bay. We can’t see it because it doesn’t look the way we think it does. We are looking through our eyes, through our resident dogmas, not our hearts. People are crawling into the deepest corners of some dangerously black rooms, absent of color, of light. They are hurting. They are scared.

I know that space. I think we all do if we are honest. But for the grace of God, I might still feel the pull, the draw to draw down, to shrink into a ball and howl.

Today that howl looks like conspiracy theories, unreasonable support of evil leaders. It looks like little boys dressed up ready to make war not love in their own country. It takes the guise of self-absorption, righteousness, narcissism on parade. Let us see it for what it is. It is a cry for help. perhaps a last cry before the room goes dark.

“This that is, the Source of all, has as its imperative your metamorphosis, your full transition from a fuzzy little caterpillar to a glimmering butterfly. It will not stop until you victoriously return home as the king of kings, the Buddha, the all. You. Cannot. Fail.” Card #40, Implacable Imperative — The Wild Child