Conversations with Yin and Yang
© 2010 Howard McQueen
YIN, on her very first, inaugural leg of her Journey, offers an outpouring
It was not very long ago
that I was hospitalized and sedated,
all the inner pain and confusion.
A dreading, a deep sense of ending my life felt so near.
A memory of the kindness,
my husband keeping me company,
deep into the night
till in my exhaustion,
I would slip into blessed sleep.
I’ve been a nourisher all my life,
nourishing two children,
now my mother …
I felt a deep connection with a male friend.
I sensed flirtations and urges within him
that caused me to close down.
I felt like I was muted, gagged, unable to utter a word.
He then, without any notice – disappeared.
My hopes for continued connections with him, gone,
seemingly dashed on the rocks.
Threatened – withdrawing – presuming rejection – depression.
This is the cycle, the pit of despair I often find myself stuck in.
I was sexually abused in my childhood
by my father.
I told my mom and in her fear,
she left him.
My dad took me, just us two, for a car ride
out on a solitary sparsely populated country road.
He urged me to recant my story -
I would not.
I thought my life would likely be forfeit during that ominous car ride.
Instead,
In the police station the following day
My dad’s life was forfeited,
taken away by his just after dawn
massive coronary heart attack.
The only life I’ve known thus far
is to be a heads-down nurturer of others.
I dearly want all those I love to be well
AND
I know,
for me to become whole,
I must continue this journey
to now somehow get a handle and nourish myself,
to call forth deeper parts of myself to awaken.
I am fearful of so many things,
as I take this set of baby steps forward into the unknowing.
YANG pauses to take a long sip from the well
YIN, you are now sipping from a straw,
this journey is revealing to you.
It dips into new dimensions of spirit, of freedom, of trust.
What you are not yet aware of
is that this straw has penetrated deep into you,
connecting your being into the infinite well of spirit.
Your mind, cynical and seemingly bruised,
obsessing over painful memory fragments,
will, on its own accord, never have a clue,
will never understand straws or spirit wells.
Your heart, however, intuitively knows
that it has found
Its headwaters for the soul,
the unconditional source for cleansing and healing Self.
The mind, always distracted,
unable to fathom spirit,
by itself,
only knows to focus on asking its
ongoing nervous-generating questions:
How will I ever make my own way …
The heart, connected through the well of spirit,
KNOWS.
Has vision to see through the darkness
and shadows and fears.
It intuitively senses
LIFE WILL
resolve and manifest each day
that you stay
present to your divine journey,
intimate with nourishing
and integrating
these emergent aspects of yourself:
- Your child self,
the child self you know,
intuitively,
how to hold in unconditional, loving embrace.
- Your intuition,
the inner parent, nourisher and guidance counselor,
that the journey is constantly queuing into arising,
like the fully empowered sun peeking through
its slow-motion sunrise.
You are warming,
your hardened shell of past held pain-trauma cracking,
allowing the infinite love of God to work its way inside
all the way in, and to shine all the way through,
cleansing every aspect
of all you’ve ever defined as you.
As you now begin to accept
full authorship for your story,
it shifts from a plot of
me and my inherited pain
and nourisher-of-others,
to this unbelievable ever-expanding love story,
this sacred,
humble,
human rite-of-initiation and passage,
this rising above the pain of the world,
to radiate an intoxicating love,
organically grown through opening to
everything and everyone on your journey,
seeing pain and suffering present
in virtually everyone,
knowing in your heart
that others will awaken,
and like you,
take up their own journey.
Many will radiate the new found vitality of spirit,
learn to unconditionally love
and share their compassion
for a world bathed in inherited pain and suffering.
Perhaps this is the training ground,
the ideal conditions for humanity’s awakening,
for the golden age of spirit to be born.
Yang does not know all the answers,
but knows to trust his authenticity,
to live in the heart,
radiating and expressing love and compassion
and leave the rest up to the great unfolding.
Dear Yin,
know through every cell of our body
that you are,
have been
and will always be
unconditionally cherished, adored and loved.
