Babette’s Feast
When I woke up at 3am, I remembered what I left unhealed the night before. Life has many agents to deliver the messages. We just have to pay attention and subsequently address them with loving care. My neighbor brought one of these gifts which I slowly realized I have to unwrap because it was pervading everything. I was feeling like an impostor in many professional and creative situations which created a feeling of smallness, inferiority, and ultimately stuckness. The more I ignored it, the more it turned into a swamp. Have you tried moving through a swamp? It is full with sludge and invisible phantoms. Feeling into that during this early hour, I jumped into healing. First, I moved through the rejection upset which still shows up in my reality albeit with less rawness. As much as I have peeled the layers, I do have a fear of rejection which combined with the impostor syndrome, keeps me in immobile position in certain scenarios. Why do I still reject myself? What does that even mean? These were the questions that were rapidly firing in my mind. I dropped into my heart, and the answers started to appear. I wasn’t completely accepting myself. That was clear! I can’t feel like an intruder and be accepting of my Essence. I wasn’t really seeing my Divinity or believing I am deserving of God’s love. If I was created in the image of God, I was not honoring that image. I was not in reverence of God hence myself. So vast is God’s love that he places me in settings that I would wind up being rejected over and over again until I learn full acceptance of myself which involves the shedding of shame.
SHAME: Should Have Already Mastered Everything
Who taught me this dysfunctional belief? Why is it so rooted in me that after thousands of mirror exercises, I still fall into its trap?
There is nothing to perfect. It is impossible to shine in every sphere or all the time. God chose for all of us to carry one particular spark/purpose. I don’t need to pretend and show up inauthentically to fit a particular paradigm of societal acceptance. That is a recipe for lostness, inadequateness, and misery. That is how slowly but steadily, I begin to feel like an impostor. My heart fire dies out. I become a drifter. What’s the alternative?
The alternative is to step into the imaginal realm and see the Big Picture (chasm). The movie Babette’s Feast was brought to me to help me face this upset. It is not the type of movie, I will naturally gravitate toward, but I am learning to listen when the nudges are delivered. The focal point of the story is a speech delivered by one of the characters at the feast which happens closer to the end of the movie which points to the fact that our lives are not linear but rather spatial and that our kind acts and unkind acts, our impulsive choices, our misalignments and repetitive patterns, anything and everything surrounds the apex. It looks like a mandala- the sacred center/ the neutral space. Some of the steps we take either move us toward the imaginal realm or the human realm. We need both to complete the circle. A person who is rich in essence but has not developed a strong vehicle for its expression in this world is, in Gurdjieff’s words, a “stupid saint”.
The general who delivers the speech starts with a verse from Psalm 85, “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.” Then, he continues, “ Man in his weakness and shortsightedness believes that he must make choices in this life. He trembles at the risk he takes. We do know fear. But no, our choice is of no importance. There comes a time when our eyes are opened, and we come to realize that mercy is infinite. We need only await it with confidence and receive it with gratitude. Mercy imposes no conditions. And lo! Everything we have chosen has been granted to us. And everything we rejected has also been granted. Yes, we get back even what we rejected. For mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.” As Cynthia Bourgeault comments, “As soon as one relaxes spatially and allows the larger picture to fill in, suddenly the mercy reappears, like the full moon from the darkened clouds.”
