“I am Londolozi and the message I have for you is to defy gravity.”
When Martha Beck asked the 12 wayfinders who accompanied her this past May/June to South Africa as part of her STAR program to drop into wordlessness and to hear what the sacred ground and spirits of Londolozi were trying to tell us, each of us received our own unique message. Mine was “Defy Gravity.”
Martha had told me during a conference call prior to departing for this trip that she was so excited to meet me because I was “the exact archetype” she wrote about in her book, “Diana, Herself.” The story is fiction, an allegory, about an average woman with a less than perfect past, a conflicted present, and a feeling that she’s an insignificant little girl. This character embarks on an adventure that awakens her to her power and makes her realize she is limitless. Diana initially refuses to believe in her power because she feels that to do so is arrogance. But as Martha explained, the true definition of arrogance is to claim oneself. Culture and language and society have translated the word to mean something that’s negative. Diana must kill the good girl within to become who she is meant to be.
Martha’s book as well as Londolozi’s message both resonated with me. Actually, the word “resonated” doesn’t do the transformation justice. “Enlightened” is more truth. Something within me clicked. And similar to the lyrics of “Defy Gravity” from the Broadway musical “Wicked”: “I’m through accepting limits cuz someone says there so…”
Two things take us away from our true nature: Socialization and Trauma. Questioning, ceasing to follow the rules, healing the traumas: this is how we awaken and become our true selves. For me, I’ve been tracked by and tracking madness my whole life. I’ve regarded it as evil, bad, something to be ashamed of. I had been socialized to believe it to be so. What I now know with certainty, just like Elphaba in Wicked, is that magic and madness are partners. And one can’t get to the magic without going thru the madness. For without predicament – without the madness – there is no need for enlightenment. And that enlightenment is freedom.
In Wicked, Elphaba and Glinda together are limitless: embracing, loving, and surrendering to what is – all of what is – allows for a power that’s unlimited. The shadow for me, like Elphaba, has been in not trusting the magic and fearing the madness. Both are within me. Both are who I am. And now I finally know that both together are a powerful force that’s been within me all along. And it’s now time to let it out. Like Diana, I am the embodiment of the whole universe. Like Elphaba, I am magic, I am unlimited, and I am ready to fly and to defy gravity.
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