The Mystic's Heart

I can’t stop this feeling of grief and dread within me. I can’t stop feeling like my longing itself will lead me to the fate of the little girl with the red shoes.*

I can feel the sleepy headed avoidance washing over me. There is something deep I’m attempting to avoid.

A fighting of the energies, emerging. A suppression of what grows wild within me.

I can’t stop my mind. My ego. My human awareness attempting to control all that is growing wild within me.

Perhaps not ALL but much of it.

I deeply long to feel safe and protected as I allow ALL that I deeply long for. And my Holy Grandfather comes into my mind.

I feel his protective and blessing presence. I feel his joy at the fulfillment of my longing. And again, I feel his presence with me.

“Rest easy my child. You are safe. You are loved. You are OK in allowing your allowing and it’s fulfillment.

Your longing is the heart of God reaching into this world. Like hands sifting through sand or reaching down into the soft, moist earth.

Enveloped by and animating all the elements.

Breathing Life into life.

I deeply long to roll in and commune with it all.

To jump into the leaf pile of Life with abandon.

To just Love it ALL.

*The little girl with the red shoes is a reference to the story of The Red Shoes in Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D. These reflections were part of an inquiry into longing and the wild woman archetype using The Red Shoes as a point of departure. The inquiry occurred while participating in an extended group journey led by Wendy Havlir Cherry, author of The Mistress of Longing.