Last month I took the most bold and brave action of my life. Following the call of my soul and Divine guidance, I left a beautiful home in a community where I was deeply supported. I also left my mate of nearly 15 years, a man whom I love deeply and yearn to remain connected to. I sold or gave away most of what I owned, put the majority of what was left in storage, and moved a few possessions, one very spicy Border Collie, and a hazy dream of a different kind of life into a 22’ camp trailer. I then proceeded to drive away from everything I’ve known for the last dozen years.
There are myriad reasons I made this choice. The two that moved me most firmly into this space of unknown and and unknowing are a prayer that was answered in a way I'd not have chosen and a vision that came to me several months after the prayer. Both were unequivocal, delivered in the way that messages from Spirit so often are, with little regard for puny human desires and immense love for the human holding so tightly to them.
The prayer was spoken in September of 2023, upon my return from an unlikely catalyst for utter life upheaval--the Montana Tango Festival. As I prepared to leave the festival, I realized I felt replete, full in every possible way. It was as if I had been exposed to a drenching rain for four days, and only after the monsoon was I able to see how much desert I had been holding inside of me.
In the fashion of Pandora, once I had let this realization loose from its box, I was unable to put it back. Suddenly I could see so clearly what, days before, hadn't even registered as a mystery. One Wednesday afternoon I believed my life to be full and fully aligned. The following Monday morning, the dry areas of my soul soaked and satiated, I was unable to return to this false perception. Where once there had been a mirage in the desert, a shimmering image of enoughness, now the rains had revealed the truth: my life didn't fill me up. I had allowed vast stretches of my inscape to go unwatered for so long that the hard, dusty desert soil had come to feel normal. Now, full of lush and luscious wetness, I knew I could never return to this drought.
Once home, I sought connection with All That Is and spoke a solemn prayer. To say the words aloud felt brave. I believed I knew precisely what was being requested, and I was well aware of the power of Divine to deliver to those willing to receive. In the coming months I would learn that the courage to speak the words was but a drop in the ocean of daring that I would swim as my prayer was answered. "I am done living this life," I said. "Please help me burn it down." I asked this in earnest, with honor and gratitude for the power of such a request. Still, and always, I remain human. I had some ideas about what "burn it down" meant. So did Source. Our ideas were not the same.
In the winter of the same year, I was grated a vision. In it, I am walking along The Edge. This is a space I sometimes access during meditation, appearing as the edge of a cliff in the carmine desert. There is nothing leading up to The Edge but red dirt. There is nothing to be seen at the bottom, looking over The Edge. In the distance, beyond it, there is only a vague suggestion of what might lie on the other side. The only feature I can see clearly in these visions is The Edge itself, jagged and imposing, the point where a long fall begins.
I understand The Edge to represent the boundary of my known world. This uneven and seemingly unforgiving border is the margin of my current reality, as I am capable of understanding it. It is the terminal point of my comfort zone. I am taken here when the time has come to meet that edge with courage, to expand my current understanding and experience evolution. In this vision, as I walk along The Edge, I am laying down an armload of things. The things have no concrete shapes or identities, but I understand them to be all the things. My possessions, identity, relationships, expectations, goals, attachments. When I have emptied my arms, I walk to The Edge and fall forward.
The message is unmistakable. I have asked for the life I am living to be transformed. I have been shown the path of transformation. The task set before me is to release my hold on everything and walk to the boundary of my known world. Once I've reached The Edge, I am to jump.
I continued to receive similar messages as 2023 drew to a close. Oracle card readings spoke of death and rebirth, the end of seasons, a time of evolution. The messages I received in meditation and through automatic writing continued to tell me the time had come to let go and fly. Then, on New Year's Eve, Divine arrived to push me.
On the final day of the year in which I had prayed for my life as I knew it to burn, my love and life partner moved out of our shared home. We spent the next several months in discussion and exploration, seeking enough common ground to stand on side by side. In early spring, we agreed such a plot of land did not exist. What I had never planned to let go of had, instead, released me. I accepted this answer to my prayer, acknowledging that I was receiving precisely what I had requested, but this was no victory. When I imagined myself after the fire I had called, I did not envision myself standing alone. That vision belonged to Source.
Left with nothing to do but move forward with the unexpected unfolding of my prayer, I sorted and packed, cried and cursed, planned and grieved. In mid-July of 2024, I loaded the last of my things into the trailer I call the Catalyst, heading off toward whatever lay beyond The Edge. As I drove away from my home, where my love stood on the porch watching me go, I reflected that I had, in fact, managed to accept my Universal task. I had let go of all the things, walked to The Edge, and stepped off. Literally driving into the unknown, I said aloud “OK, I jumped. You fuckers better catch me.” The reply was instant and crystal clear: “Oh, no. This is where you learn to catch yourself.”
The hell you say! But of course you do. In a blink of my tear-soaked eyes, this answer registered and was joined by the realization that I'm not the least bit surprised. Isn't this, after all, where we’ve been heading all along? If the last decade of my life were a doctoral program, the decision to walk to The Edge and jump is my final exam. And the theme of my dissertation can only be Repairing the Relationship With Self.
Throughout my 40’s, I have been making my way down this path, one mincing step at a time. The farther I travel, the more clarity I have in hindsight (and isn’t that always that way?). From my current vantage, I can see how I have folded myself away time and again in my life, denying my power, allowing others access to me when they had failed to earn that right, giving up on myself. Looking back from The Edge, I see not one lifetime of moving away from myself to get closer to others, but many. Lifetimes of longing, seeking a connection that would fulfill and misinterpreting the comfort that came from the closeness of others. Repeatedly believing that this was what I was seeking, this connection with another. It must be the love and attention of this human (versus the string of other humans that have come before) which will assuage the longing. In what now seems a prequel to the rain in the desert, this pattern was so deeply entrenched that I was unaware of it. Until I wasn’t.
Several years ago, in a lightning strike moment that tore me open such that I could never be rearranged in quite the same shape, I was called to a dark space in my heart center. Within this darkness I found that a betrayal by another was eclipsed by my own self-denial. (Read more in Dear Diary.) Following this profound understanding, I began exploring my pattern of turning away from my own value and wisdom. Inch by inch, I gained ground, moving closer to a full and fully self-supported expression of myself.
The more I opened to this healing and explored the places where I’d been hurt in life, the more I was able to see how I had walked to, and continued to stand in, those places. That doesn’t absolve others of their responsibility for any mistreatment they may have directed towards me. It simply recalls my personal power. A warrior is not responsible for the slash of another’s sword. But unwilling to raise her own shield, she will surely be cut down. After lifetimes unshielded, I now choose to become my own shield maiden.
All of this focused healing, and still I didn't see it coming. I'd assumed that I was to trust Source to catch me once I'd found the courage to fall. But it makes perfect sense. If the path of homecoming ends at The Edge, only one entity could be charged with arresting my fall. The reply that came so swiftly when I called out to be saved was an invocation of sacred self-defense.
The hell you say, and of course you do. This is not a freefall, a plunge into unprotected depths. It is a trustfall. What happens after I step over The Edge was never the point. It was trusting myself enough to put everything down and take the step that mattered. The plunge taken, I am free to fall into my own arms, to finally understand how it feels to catch myself. This is, after all, where we've been headed all along.
Photo credits, in order of appearance: Leio McLaren, Art House Studio, Vincent Guth
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