Welcome to Hades, to Hell, to the Burning, Isolating Sea of No Redemption.
Is this a familiar place for you? It is for me, especially in the middle of a sleepless night.
The Entombment
How do you inwardly bury yourself or parts of yourself? Just choose one of your entombed parts…there are probably many. Is it the part that is filled with love to give, talents to express, hungers to nourish, wounds to heal?
The Entombment of the body of Jesus Christ was an elaborate ritual of cleansing, oiling, praying, singing, wrapping the divine body with reverence and placing it in the tomb with the deepest love.
How elaborately to you prepare your parts for burial? If you are like me, it is not just elaborate, the preparation is grandiose in self-cruelty. I soil my inner parts with disregard and shame, I oil my inner parts with self-disgust, I curse and grind my teeth, and finally I rip away any final shreds of self-worth and kick myself into the bottomless pit of self-hatred.
What original sin do I see in those parts of myself?
The Descent into the Realm of the Dead
Can your luminous I consciously descend into the pit of self-hatred bringing self-compassion and self-forgiveness to the suffering parts of your soul? Can this spirit-filled self reach the bottom of the pit and shine warmth and light into all the darkest crevices?
This is not a dramatic deed. It is a tender deed arising from within your Holy of Holies.
All the Hosts of Heaven watch you with awe as you do this.
Bringing the Righteous into Heaven
When you have descended to the bottom and seen these unloved parts of yourself, imagine a harmony permeating these lost parts. The Logos within you opens up and emits a cosmic, yet uniquely personal hum filling all the newly lit spaces of your inner hell with a redemptive sounding. Can you simply turn now and begin the ascent as the reunited wholeness of yourself?
Yesterday we received some impressively heavy news that has turned our plans for the year ahead completely upside down and inside out. I had to look at mistakes made and face a familiar doubt and self criticism. I wondered if what I spent the last few years building was real – did it really have worth. Suddenly all the grateful emails were filed in the folder of fancy and all I could attend to were the little signs that I was careless and negligent. Somehow, however, I went to sleep last night with an authentic letting go and this morning, I am swept with a sense of possibility. Seems like a process that should have taken place today and into Easter morning – but it is early yet. Still plenty of entombment to experience. I am moved by this image of storing away all the parts of me that I don’t like. And then beginning the ascent. Here goes!
Lynne, these Easter messages are vey profound and inspiring. Thank you. Today’s message is particularly meaningful and the image of descending to reclaim the condemned parts of ourselves is both chilling and beautiful. It inspires courage and hope within my heart. It encourages me to go deeper and not turn away from anything I find. “All shall be well, in all manner of things, all shall be well.”
The courageous words, inspirations and symbols you offer, have led me into my pit. In the darkness at the bottom I let go and allow myself to experience the “tender deed”. I will rest in the underworld before I rise anew to face the dawn tomorrow. I wonder who will greet me and not know me?
The parts of me that are defeated and gone dead are resting in their tomb, no longer have any hope of fixing themselves. The part of me that never left my heavenly home reaches down to awaken them, for she needs them to have any presence in this realm.
The original sin that I find in the depths on this hellacious Saturday is worthlessness. It’s a sin I covered and hid from, a sin that dominated, that selected the clothes I wore, the words I spoke, the people I chose to associate with. I place it in an honorable burial ground. Put a headstone on it that reads, here lies Worthlessness – It served it’s purpose. It’s days are done.
I can visit the honorable burial ground when I need to, only to observe a master no longer welcome.
Lynn, How do you do it? How did you “know” I had a sleepless night? I am grappling to get my bearings…
Dear Lynn and others who gather at this time,
Thank you for these profund messages and questions and ideas for contemplation.
On Easter Saturday a person from my life of two moon nodes ago (38 years) came into my orbit at our city museum where I work part-time. We were very close for 4 or 5 years and after I betrayed his trust and left him we have had little contact.
Seeing him stirred up old powerful feelings and I was filled with remorse and shame.
On reading your message and questions later that day I realised that I have entombed a lot of my unresolved feelings of guilt and shame and when I go down to stir the pot,, wow, it is powerful and awful and overwhelming. I could only see my shortcomings, I couldn’t find compassion for my suffering and searching self. Just self-disgust as you say, and self-hatred..
So I read your Holy Saturday message several times, trying to discover something new in this dark pit. I began to imagine loving that part of me that was so unpractised in love, so unable to express how I felt, so inadequate to the caring of both of our souls that was needed at the time.
It was uncomfortable and not pleasant and I longed to escape into a story, I picked up The Secret Garden and longed for the healing and resolution that comes in that story.
I wrote and contemplated and felt so horrible.
On the evening of Easter Sunday I felt some relief from the agony of stuckness in past mistakes.
I find now that something has shifted, lifted, moved.
Your question ‘Can this spirit filled self reach the bottom of the pit and shine warmth and light into all the darkest crevices?’ and naming that ‘This is not a dramatic deed – It is a tender deed arising from within your Holy of Holies’ guided and illuminated my way.
Thank you for this opportunity.
Love and courage to all who suffer and search
Judith (ps I am in transition from Judy)