Inspirations from Binah

Purification by psd, on Flickr

The final week of the year has always been one of great purification for me. My ritual is to spend much of the week cleaning my home from top to bottom. Every nook and cranny is scrubbed until it sparkles. On the 31st, I clean my physical vessel as well. Hair treatments, face creams, manicure, pedicure… great care is taken to ensure that my external world is as clean as it can be. There is something about feeling the shift at 0.00 h that is more pronounced when the dirt of the previous year was removed to make space for an influx of clean energy.

This week, I began by moving into a new place. The energy here is crisp, but I have much work to do this week in order to tune it. Transmutation is in the air and I can feel the need to align energy. Like a grand piano, each string will be tightened or loosened, creating my own harmonic balance. Today I begin pulling out my sacred tools with care, thanking each one for their service in 2010 and asking them to create the conditions needed for an abundant and joyous 2011.

But what of my internal world? Purification is an ongoing process, but somehow in this final week it becomes more intense. Sometimes I fight it, holding on to people and attachments even though I know I should let them go. My memories of those years are always speckled with the internal struggle I felt, often overshadowing the night’s festivities.

The cleansing for this year has already begun and I vow to breathe into it, accepting the wisdom and integrating the understanding. Only a few days into the week and two cords have been cut -one was a friend, the other a student. The student I understand, for he is someone that sees a path lined with fear and is pushing too quickly to move through it even though he knows not where he treads. He is standing at the top of his personal mountain, shouting what he feels is necessary to reject the new world order, yet not willing to slow down long enough to integrate the influx of information he is taking in. He is unbalanced force; an overactive Yesod. I pray for his continued growth, for if he discovers how to harness his power, he will be a worthy warrior.

The friend is more difficult to comprehend, but just as necessary. While it pains me to know that he is not currently a part of my life, it was hurting me more when he was. He is on a quest, a valiant journey of self-discovery. I, too, am on a very similar quest. Many times our paths have crossed and lead to nights of scintillating discussion and debate. I have learned much from him, for his mind grasps concepts that mine can only hope to understand. He is a man of great knowledge who is searching for his purpose.

He is also a person that lives in a world very different to mine. Time and time again, I have attempted to penetrate his world in hopes of standing within his inner circle of friends. And while I know that he values what we share, I am not of his ‘kind’. This brings to surface issues I am still working through, triggering wounds from my youth. I have always been able to blend into almost any group for a short period of time –a gift I cherish for it allows me to learn much through personal experience. Unfortunately, I do not have the chameleon’s ability to change my physical exterior, thus even while I feel a connection to the group, I do not make the full transformation to become one of them.

Eventually, the group closes before me and I am left with a small peephole into the clubhouse. I can still see what they are doing, but I am not invited to participate. If I am lucky, I am not rejected completely, allowed to stay on the bench and occasionally called into play. In order to not cause waves, I often bow out gracefully, preferring to see the growth of the group than to stay within it and cause conflict. There are usually one or two good friends that keep my connection to the group alive, allowing me to live vicariously through their adventures, but it is from here that my issues stem.

You see, most people have a group of friends with whom they identify closely. Clothes, music, style of living… is all shared. When you are a chameleon that only connects with individuals, you get all the benefits of the friendship, but none from the group. On the contrary, groups do not like outsiders, so you become one of those people your friend contacts occasionally, meeting only when s/he is not occupied with group activities.

This is what happened once again with my friend. Now I must stress that there is nothing inherently wrong with this arrangement. Many of us have friends we only speak with from time to time and feel extremely connected to. As long as both parties are in agreement that this is the type of relationship they want, it can be healthy and rewarding. The difference here is that it is not the type of relationship I want to have with this person. He is someone I value as a friend and I want to be a part of his life, not just someone he calls when he is bored. So when I felt the familiar surge of emotions of being left out, I knew it was time to retreat and figure out why I once again attracted a friendship different than the one I really want.

This year, I worked in powerful ritual to manifest balanced friendships, where both of us want the same level of contact and depth. This person was a friend from before that work, so I think he slipped through the cracks. The thing is, if I feel the way I do, there is still an open cut, so I retreat into my personal space to figure out why those wounds are resurfacing when I thought I had healed them. Ideally, I should be able to adjust my expectations to match the level of friendship a person is able to offer, but if that is not the case, what do I do? That is on my list of personal work for 2011. Thanks to this year’s work, almost all the friendship I currently nurture are balanced, but this experience has shown me that there is a deeper layer I still need to explore. I only hope that in the future, when we are both healthier, I once again cross paths with this friend to share our adventures of growth and exploration.