Under a Bushel…

Wiggling into my light blue hand-painted Mexican chair, I quietly faced the parents of most of my friends, some of their parents, and a bunch of others. Grownups, all of them, students of light. On my little chair, I had a clear view of most of their kneecaps. I didn’t mind. I wouldn’t have known to be intimidated even though I was painfully shy around ‘world’ people. I’d figured out early on they couldn’t see me.

I watched golden light begin to fill the house, whose front room had become a classroom on this and many other days. We didn’t make it shine. The light poured in, that was all. We simply sat to welcome it.

A bit later, as Marney explained egoic concepts and the importance of letting them go, she turned to me, in my little chair on the floor in front of everyone. “What dissolves these for us, MaryBeth?” she asked, knowing somehow they would all stop thinking to listen. “Holy Spirit” I answered.

It wasn’t a standup routine. It wasn’t rehearsed. I knew what I knew and transmitted what I transmitted. Anyone could see that… or maybe not. I think that was when I began to get sad.

I was born in this house that belonged to my Mother’s teacher. Marguerite had been there to catch me at my birth, baptized me, and stopped the grownups in the room from tittering and telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about, though I didn’t know that yet. She’d done this from day one I’d find out years later.

I remember sitting there looking at all these people, wondering why they pretended not to hear each others’ thoughts. Why they claimed not to see the energies they were throwing around the room and at me, specifically.

“Hi MaryBeth. Your Mother gave me your email address.” the email read. ‘I’m putting together a book out of Marney’s tapes from the Bryden Road classes and I wanted to use your input.” I wanted to use… I was already backing up, but kept reading.

“You were such an inspiration to all of us. We all wanted our kids to be like you.” Mmhm. “I wanted your permission to paraphrase what you said for my writing and include your words in my classes”.

Absolutely not! My body reacted before I could respond. I was almost shaking. Forty years later, and a few custody battles between silly people over those early reel-to-reel canisters and she wants my permission to speak for my two-year-old self? To edit the light? No! No one gets to do that! That was between me and “Holy Spirit”! No way! I felt my adult body recoil the way my two-year-old one had then. Another piece to clear.

I took a deep breath and responded in what I hoped would be a professional manner. “Dear Bev, I would appreciate it if you would not use that material. What came through me at that time was direct from Spirit, as you know, and it feels disrespectful and wrong to change those words or to put your spin on the transmissions. I ask you to honor my request not to use my voice in your work.

The projections of all of you (the adult class) were very difficult for me as that child. It wasn’t that you wanted your children to me like me, it was that you were jealous and envious of me and Mum and our closeness to Marney. I wish it hadn’t been so, but it was. I appreciate your kind email but please do not use my words. I do not give my permission. I wish you well.”

She didn’t know I knew about the ‘custody battles’ nor had she ever fully realized the depth of her obtuseness. No one who wears that quality ever does. Bev is a good person, as people tend to be. She and her family seemed to think they could move into town and claim ownership of Marguerite (Marney), her teachings, and of all of us who studied with her. Like many charismatic types, they convinced most of her students that this was a good thing. That was when I was thirteen. That was when I bowed out for good and always. Grateful for the teachings, not willing to compromise what I knew and how I rolled to fit their agendas.

There was an alcove next to the side door of our house in the woods. One night we sat there, scrunched up in the dark, my best friend Alix and I. She and her family had returned from Germany the year we were 6 and 7. “MareeBett!” she shouted, running toward me across the lawn. I was a little overwhelmed. Her accent was strange but her smile I remembered. Within an hour or or so we were playing together. Since then we’d been inseparable. Here, in our dark little hideaway that felt invisible to the world, we shared confidences. She was ranting about the spiritual community and how things were messed up. I stated, matter of factly, “It all started when Bev and Dave moved to town”. Her mouth dropped open, all the quarters falling at once. “Well, hell with that!” she stage-whispered, grabbing me around the shoulders in a supportive hug. “What do we do?” she asked, looking to me for some kind of game plan. “What can we do?” I responded. “First they’d have to listen.”

Bev’s reply to my email actually made me laugh out loud. “Oh, I didn’t think little kids were aware of that stuff”, meaning the projections, envy and jealousy. I responded “If you don’t think children are aware of ‘that stuff’ then you have no business teaching children anything, much less consciousness!” I never heard back from her of course. She wrote the book and taught her program anyway. I never read it so I don’t know whether she used my words or not. Probably so. And I’m sure Marguerite’s teachings help people.

Another slat in the bushel slid into place. Blinking, I peeped through the cracks. Self-imprisonment is a funny thing. Here I was, teaching egoic dissolution, as I had been all my life, but from behind the curtain, like the Wizard of OZ. No megaphones. No party tricks or special effects. I wasn’t interested in the Siddhis this time. Did everyone think I was a fraud? Did I?

I decided it didn’t matter and soldiered on. I did the work I’d come to do, releasing the bushel I’d allowed others to build around me, not seeing yet that as one slat vanished, others took its place. I hadn’t yet found the key.

I didn’t come in hiding, but something happened. I was here to understand it and why.