Double Standards, Double Binds

I was raised on teachings from the King James version of the Christian Bible. We didn’t attend church. My Mum had a spiritual teacher. We weren’t even allowed to call ourselves Christian (although it was useful at school and I knew the language) and if any of us mentioned anything about “Jesus” she got upset.

Her teacher, Marguerite, taught that ‘in the family’ the word of God comes through the man. I didn’t wonder about that until I was a teenager, or why she had me give darshan (light transmissions) from the front of her classes. In my later studies, I learned the term “patriarchal feminine” as the form in most traditions where woman acquiesce to male dominance because God is supposed to have said so. I honor what others believe, if it helps them to be closer to the Infinite within. I can’t be that though.

I remember the blue-white light I came from. I have actual, visceral memories of being part of that light and infusing some of my essence into the fetal form of this body and others I’ve inhabited in other lives. I don’t need you to believe in reincarnation. I’m not sure I do. It’s just that I remember. I remember the final decision to bring awareness all the way in, just as Mum was birthing me.

She refused to go to hospital. She refused drugs or medical intervention of any kind. She chose to trust in the Infinite. She told me that she had hardly any pain. Her teacher kept phoning the obstetrician to tell him how fast the contractions were coming and he kept saying “Oh, it’s your first, it will take awhile.” It didn’t. A few hours of relatively painless labor, if you can believe Mum, and there I was. She shoved a towel between her legs and walked down the stairs to the waiting gurney that had finally arrived, laughing a little as the ambulance guys made her lie down and strap in.

Decades later, stuttering through tears, she apologized to me for forcing me to try to be perfect. It wasn’t fun. I won’t lie about that. I was raised to have perfect “Christ Consciousness” by people who honored Jesus as a prophet but not as Divine. My light is Infinite and Divine. So is yours.

I told her this. “I was there. I was conscious. I remember that you surrendered completely to the Infinite and wouldn’t let fear or doctors or even Marguerite interfere. My body wasn’t polluted with drugs. I wasn’t smacked on my backside to make me wail. I was brought in tenderly and with reverence and that was all you, Mum. You defied your parents, who wanted you to live at home while Dad was away at sea. You listened when I told Marguerite from in utero ‘I have to be born here’.”

I told her that I would always be grateful and that she hadn’t had to do anything else right after that. Not one thing. That was enough. She apologized more thoroughly citing instance after instance of how hard she’d made things for me. She did. I won’t lie. But I take responsibility for setting that up, for choosing her. Because I knew I would be safe being born there… or at least it would be a good beginning.

I was taught never to hide my light ‘under a bushel’ as Matthew, Dad’s favorite gospel, states. As I got older I was taught not to talk about ‘these things’ to people in the world, to kids at school.

Bushel baskets were what apples came in. Fresh from our friends’ orchards. I thought the expression was funny but I got the point. Be the light but don’t tell anyone. I wish I’d been able to say it to myself that way then.

I did embarrass Mum a few times by answering her guests’ thoughts out loud. Not supposed to be able to hear those things. Check. (but I do) Once I looked up at one of her friends, just as she was about to light a cigarette, crossing my little arms over my chest, saying “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” I never talked like a toddler.

“Why not?” she asked me condescendingly. “Well, Mum is going to have to open the windows and run around with the spray can after you leave and she hates that.” I was ‘talked to’ after that incident. I heard about it for years. More of what ‘we’ don’t say in front of ‘people’.

But why? Is truth a bad thing? I wasn’t being rude. That was accurate. My three-year-old self began to wonder. I never thought I was a child unless I looked in a mirror. Why should I be seen and not heard? Who really saw me anyway?

Dad always says that when I meet someone I have to shake their hand and look right into their eyes and see Spirit there. I don’t know why he tells me that, except he knows I don’t want to touch their hands (because of what I can feel). I act shy because I’m confused, not knowing how to be. I think he likes to practice this and thinks it will be good for me too. Doesn’t he know I see Grace in everyone anyway? Is confused how he thinks we have to be?

Would it be easier to carry apples in something you could see through? Why a bushel? Why make a basket when transparency will do?