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Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Journal Entry from the year 2000
Mary Standing Otter: This was written based on a short excerpt from my journal. The original notes were written about eleven years ago. It has never been shared in written form until now. It is a weak and brief description of an experience I had in ceremony after days of isolation and prayer:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I had been praying for a long time. There was a GrandMother in the west of the Lodge who seemed to be almost tangible. She was dressed in lavender. I had and have seen her many times before and since. I kept closing my eyes, getting a ‘handle’ on her presence and then opening them. I wanted to see her with my physical eyes, perhaps to prove to ‘rational’ self that she was actually there. I could not. After a time I let go of the need to ‘see’ her. I closed my eyes I relaxed, and I allowed myself to be taken by the hand. Suddenly and smoothly I was out of my body and “landed” in the center of a Circle of GrandMothers. Though I could not see the GrandMothers behind me I could feel them strongly all around me and their presence was crisp, solid and completely unmistakable. They were only the slightly bigger than humans yet somehow seemed to be two or three times larger. I realized their power, influence and presence extended well beyond the border of what appeared as physical form. I felt my own expanded Self, smaller than they but still present. There was no fear, no feeling of weakness or comparison.
The GrandMothers around me embodied so much power each one felt like a force of nature in herself. One, covered in robes and skins seemed to be a mountain, solid as rock and yet filled with all the secrets that can live in caves and dark places. Another like an enormous ocean wave poised at the breaking point and so on…
I was surrounded by incredible power but I felt no fear. Their intention was only to hold me in the delicate balance of their individual forces and help me to understand that I was precious to them, as all women are, and that I had a truth to learn that hopefully I would attempt to pass on. And to the best of my ability to place it in words, this is what they conveyed to me:
“You (meaning myself and my peers) think you have arrived. You think you have gained ground in bringing women to an equal value with men in your culture and time, you think ‘equal pay for equal work’ means something but we tell you it does not. We tell you that you have barely begun. All the success you have rests on a fragile foundation. All the so called respect and rights you have gained are built on a foundation designed and built by men. You are striving to prove your worth to men in a game where they have written all the rules and designed the playing field. This can all fall apart in a moment because it is still their game. Understanding must be rebuilt from the ground up. It must begin in the womb and move forward. You cannot raise Truth, as a mother raises a child, when the Foundation of that Truth is a Misconception.”
“Teach the women, all the women, any women. Teach them about the transformative power of their bodies, about their blood. Help them to learn to leave behind the competition and beliefs that are crippling them. Teach them how to heal themselves from the inside out, to heal each other. Begin to rebuild the foundation so our expansion has a balanced foundation.”
The next ten years of my life would be about bringing these Bits of Knowing alive in myself, they would be about learning how to teach such things to other women by creating a sanctuary in which they could teach and heal themselves.
This was the catalyst for Otter Lodge. It was the conception of Sisters In Circles and I suspect, more to come…
There is much more. This is all for now.
Mary Standing Otter
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I had been praying for a long time. There was a GrandMother in the west of the Lodge who seemed to be almost tangible. She was dressed in lavender. I had and have seen her many times before and since. I kept closing my eyes, getting a ‘handle’ on her presence and then opening them. I wanted to see her with my physical eyes, perhaps to prove to ‘rational’ self that she was actually there. I could not. After a time I let go of the need to ‘see’ her. I closed my eyes I relaxed, and I allowed myself to be taken by the hand. Suddenly and smoothly I was out of my body and “landed” in the center of a Circle of GrandMothers. Though I could not see the GrandMothers behind me I could feel them strongly all around me and their presence was crisp, solid and completely unmistakable. They were only the slightly bigger than humans yet somehow seemed to be two or three times larger. I realized their power, influence and presence extended well beyond the border of what appeared as physical form. I felt my own expanded Self, smaller than they but still present. There was no fear, no feeling of weakness or comparison.
The GrandMothers around me embodied so much power each one felt like a force of nature in herself. One, covered in robes and skins seemed to be a mountain, solid as rock and yet filled with all the secrets that can live in caves and dark places. Another like an enormous ocean wave poised at the breaking point and so on…
I was surrounded by incredible power but I felt no fear. Their intention was only to hold me in the delicate balance of their individual forces and help me to understand that I was precious to them, as all women are, and that I had a truth to learn that hopefully I would attempt to pass on. And to the best of my ability to place it in words, this is what they conveyed to me:
“You (meaning myself and my peers) think you have arrived. You think you have gained ground in bringing women to an equal value with men in your culture and time, you think ‘equal pay for equal work’ means something but we tell you it does not. We tell you that you have barely begun. All the success you have rests on a fragile foundation. All the so called respect and rights you have gained are built on a foundation designed and built by men. You are striving to prove your worth to men in a game where they have written all the rules and designed the playing field. This can all fall apart in a moment because it is still their game. Understanding must be rebuilt from the ground up. It must begin in the womb and move forward. You cannot raise Truth, as a mother raises a child, when the Foundation of that Truth is a Misconception.”
“Teach the women, all the women, any women. Teach them about the transformative power of their bodies, about their blood. Help them to learn to leave behind the competition and beliefs that are crippling them. Teach them how to heal themselves from the inside out, to heal each other. Begin to rebuild the foundation so our expansion has a balanced foundation.”
The next ten years of my life would be about bringing these Bits of Knowing alive in myself, they would be about learning how to teach such things to other women by creating a sanctuary in which they could teach and heal themselves.
This was the catalyst for Otter Lodge. It was the conception of Sisters In Circles and I suspect, more to come…
There is much more. This is all for now.
Mary Standing Otter
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