One of my favourite christmas presents ever, alongisde a Wendy House, a set of 'Jacks' (remember them?) and a hammock.....was a SLINKY. It appeared as one of the last presents to emerge from the end of my father's long, thin, green and white striped rugby sock. Left over from 'his days at Oxford' it gave Father Christmas more character somehow. The idea of him using all his old socks for stuffing presents into I mean....
When most of my girlfreinds got soft, pink, flowery pillow cases to delve their arms into, I was shoving my hand entusiastically to the bottom of a scratchy old, darned rugby sock. I was happy with this though. It appealed to my tomboy tendencies, along with climbing trees, sitting with my legs open (completely inappropriate in my mother's eyes but so obviously comfortable in mine) and wittling wood.
I remember the feel of that slinky...
The strong wire spirals and the way that, even the small ones, walked confidently down the stairs, often with an occasional wiggle.
I would sit there at the top, heels drawn in to my bottom, arms hugged tightly around bent legs and chin resting on knees, watching it as it moved downwards........again and again and again. I suppose it was slightly diferent each time or I was a child very easily pleased.
Sometimes the momentum would overtake the coils and it would crash and bump down to the bottom of the staires making a loud bang on the parquet flooring. Sometimes the slinky would halt, all the spirals closed, small and immovable, one on top of the other... When that happened i'd hop up and start the movement off again, pulling the spirals apart in a wide semi-circle and dropping them down onto the next step.
Like the coils of a slinky, more often than not on the spiritual path, we find the same lessons keep coming around again and again. We think we've 'got it' only to find that 6 months later, BOOM, we are reminded of the same thing. Each time we begin to appreciate on a deeper level whatever the lesson is. We start to feeeeel in technicolour rather than just intellectually understand in grey.
One of the 'wires on the slinky' that keeps coming around for me is the idea of surrendering to all that life has to offer. In fact, one of the mantras that I work with regularly is "there is nothing wrong." It is one way to stem the ego's constant but niggling attempts to convince me otherwise.
To follow is an extract from 'A Return To Love' by Marianne Williamson. (A book detailing her own personal reflections on the principles of 'A Course in Miracles' and is beautifully clear).
For women with more than their fair share of male energy, it is an inspired description of the need to balance the masculine and feminine principles. Sun - Moon, Shiva - Shaki.
"We've basically been taught that it's our job as responsible adults to be active, to be masculine, in nature - to go out and get the job, to take control of our lives, to take the bull by the horns. We've been taught that that's our power. We think we're powerful because of what we have acheived rather than because of what we are. So we're caught in a Catch 22: we feel powerless to achieve until we already have.
If somebody comes along and suggests that we go with the flow, maybe lighten up a little, we really feel hysterical. After all, we're total underachievers as is, as far as we can see. The last think we can imagine doing is becoming any more passive than we already are.
Passive energy has its own kind of strength. Personal power results from a balance of masculine and feminine forces. Passive energy without active energy becomes lazy, but active energy without passive energy becomes tyrannous. An overdoes of male, aggressive energy is macho, controlling, unbalanced, and unnatural. The problem is that aggressive energy is what we've been taught to respect. We've been taught that life was made for quarterbacks so we exalt our masculine consciousness, which, when untempered by the feminine, is hard. Therefore, so are we - all of us, men and women. We've created a fight mentality. We're always fighting for something: for the job, the money, the relationship, to get out of the relationship, to lose weight, to get sober, to get them to understand, to get them to stay, to get them to leave, and on and on. We never put away our swords.
The feminine, surrendered place in us is passive. It doesn't do anything. The spiritualization process - in men as well as women - is a feminisation process, a quieting of the mind. It is the cultivation of personal magnetism.
If you have a pile of iron shavings and you want to arrange them in beautiful patterns, you can do one of two things. You can use your fingers and try to arrange the tiny pieces of iron into beautiful, gossamer lines - or you can buy a magnet. The magnet will attract the iron shavings. It symbolizes our feminine consciousness, which exerts its power through attraction rather than activity.
This attractive, receptive, feminine aspect of our consciousness is the space of mental surrender.
The right relationship between male and female principle is one in which the feminine surrenders to the masculine. Surrender is not weakness or loss. It is a powerful nonresistance. Through openness and receptivity on the part of human consciousness, spirit is allowed to infuse our lives, to give them meaning and direction. The female allows this process and is fulfilled by surrendering into it. This is no weakness on her part; it is strength."
It feels so great to surrender to the masculine in such a way.
Perhaps one should do it more often...?
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