Happy Mother's Day - Whose child are you?

Do we dare to be a child of the Mystery?
Do we dare to take our hand and hold it to the end of the chatter, even beyond a daily meditation practice?

I am daring something new today.
To ask these questions knowing they are my own.

I have started to notice how people sometimes introduce themselves through the identity of someone else.
Or through the ideas of someone else.
Or through a thing, a job, or a place.
We introduce ourselves so often as anything other than this Mystery we live so intimately with.

Two mysteries meeting. Wow. What could be more exciting!

I notice this because for so long I used to think I wasn't enough just as I am, and I proved it too, in some wild ways.

I had to be identified with someone or something bigger and better than just me, or of course anything more interesting than me, a place or an experience. 

I remember when my identity as a painter began to disappear, the experience had become an invitation to something so mysterious, I couldn't take credit for the paintings.

And my identity as a mother. 
And my identity as a wife.
And as a lover.
And as a friend.

A journey sister calls the cause of this experience "the benevolent thief."


 Fear, of course, is to be avoided at all costs. And the cost is a great one. Our mind works overtime to help us steer clear of the abyss of no self.

I noticed today how this makes me feel nervous to meet someone through the identity of another. 
I understand this from my long impersonal quest to be someone else.

I become a little seasick, unmoored as I am in the other's sea...they become my own medicine to find my feet, be this changeling that I am. To feel this intimacy with the unknown, the unspeakable, and the joy of this freedom inherent in being so related to the Mystery. 

The Mystery is our Mother.
The well spring of Creativity.



It is a kind of insanity, to have so many other voices speaking as me. Or so many other people that I would present myself through.

One teacher of mine could feel this need in me so strongly before I myself was even aware of it, and told me, "Barbara, be yourself."