For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter
…………………….
I am the silence that is incomprehensible and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.
The Thunder, Perfect Mind, from The Nag Hammadi Library
Do you often think to yourself, “If I could just find some time to sit still, to gather all of me into one still point, then I could get a grip on my life; then I could feel or create or have a libido again”? Do you wish you could have a few moments to practice self-acceptance, to say hello to the aspects of yourself that are homely, repellent, catty, judgmental, lewd, lonely, or sacred and to be with them, even hug them, or at least acknowledge their existence?
Mary Wheat confesses in her essay “In the Middle,” in Rattle Those Dry Bones,
How do I achieve wholeness, integration, and reconciliation of my thousand different selves? My journey moves inward, deep into myself, into soul, the glue that binds body and mind together…. I must learn to recognize the strangers within, to greet and welcome selves I do not love, to feed and water each part of myself. Yet my interior hospitality is often shallow; I am shy and frightened of so many of my selves. I learn that nourishing each part of myself is hard work, counterintuitive to my comforting image of nurture.
The time to provide that interior hospitality has arrived. You need no longer resemble a pack of playing cards scattered in a game of Fifty-Two Pick-Up.
The following meditation on gathering the whole can be used in several ways. You can record it before your retreat with music in the background. You can read a bit, close your eyes, visualize for a few moments, then come back and read a little more. You can read it several times, relax, and replay it in your imagination, loosely following the narrative. You may wish to do this meditation in writing or with spontaneous painting.
Prepare
See Resources.
Meditative music.
A plate or tray or large sheet of paper.
Your journal and pen and drawing materials.
Objects and images that represent your various selves.
Put on some meditative music that soothes you and helps you go into your center.
Curl up somewhere comforting in your retreat space. If it is summer, you might sit outside in a patch of tension-melting sunshine. If it is winter, you could wrap yourself in a soft blanket and sit by a fire or a tray of candles. If you have a rocking chair handy, use it. Don’t limit yourself by being even slightly uncomfortable. Take all the time you need.
Rock yourself. Close your eyes. Say to yourself, “I invite all the parts of me, forgotten, loved, hurried, ignored, and disliked, to gather together. All are welcome.” This is your intention. Do you mean it? Rock and ask yourself if you really want to slow down and bring all your selves together. If you wish, change the intention to reflect what you really desire and are willing to do, and repeat that intention aloud.
When you are ready, say softly to yourself, “Sh-sh-shh” or “Hush” or some other motherly, calming sound. Gently, lovingly, shush away all busy thoughts. You are making room for your selves by becoming still inside. Keep shushing and rocking until you feel calm and quiet. Don’t beat yourself up if it feels like it takes forever or if you can’t do it. Don’t worry. There is all the time in the world.
When you are as still as the moment before sunrise, allow an image of a round table to arise in your mind’s eye. What is the table made out of? What does the surface feel like? (You don’t have to see it clearly; you can sense it, feel it, see shadows.) There are chairs around this table. What do the chairs look like? Straight backs? Soft, oversized, leather? Or is each one different? Take a moment to feel the shape and texture of a chair. Notice how empty the chairs are. They are waiting.
If you are willing and want to, invite the part of yourself that you call the responsible self, the self you are most familiar with, to come sit at this table. Ask her to sit down, take a moment out of her busy day. Give her a chance to talk. Is she carrying anything? Let her tell you what role she plays in your life. Ask her how she feels about that role.
When you have spent enough time with this part of yourself, you may wish to ask the part of yourself you love the best to come and sit at your table. Be open to whoever arrives. Touch her if you can. Tell her all the things you love about her. If she is not the aspect that you are most familiar with, ask her why.
When you are ready, ask the part of you that judges others to come to the table. How does she enter the room? How does she carry her body? Ask her what her role in your life is. Ask her how she has been judged. Listen with an open heart to whatever she has to say. See if you have a gift to give her.
It is time to ask the part of you that is still a child to come sit for a while. What age is the child who appears? Does more than one child wish to come to your table? Give her a gift, something you always wanted. Treat her as you would a child you adore but perhaps don’t feel completely comfortable with. Give her time to warm up to you. Ask her what she needs in order to feel nurtured. She may not be able to respond clearly, and you may have to guess, but do ask. Reassure her that you will take care of her on this retreat.
Ask the part of your self that pushes to get things done to come to your table and sit awhile. You may or may not be familiar with her. Invite her to sit down and have a well-deserved rest. Ask her what she needs to help her know when to push and when to let go. You might want to massage her neck or feet or to meditate with her. Let her be critical and push you away if she needs to, but persist in your welcoming.
See if there is a do-nothing, laid-back, or lazy self that could make her way to your table. You must breathe and wait for her to appear. And you must silence the pusher and judge for this one to appear. What does this self have to say? What gift is she willing to give you? What does she need?
When you are ready, ask the part of you that is critical of you and the other selves to come on in. Look closely at her. What or whom does her face resemble? How does she carry her body? How does it feel to sit near her? Ask her what she needs to be nurtured. Ask her what she needs to feel loved. Ask her what she fears happening if she stops criticizing. Welcome her and love her the best you can.
Is there a warrior inside you, a spirit that defends, demands, stands up for you and others? Invite her to the table. She might have helped you come on this retreat, so you might want to thank her. How do the others feel around her? Is she hard or easy for you to see and speak to? Remember to ask her what she needs to be nurtured.
How about the pleaser, the nice girl, the lady? Surely she doesn’t want to miss a party. What is she wearing? What does she do when faced with all these parts of yourself? Or have you already met her as your responsible self? She may be part of your responsible self but also one in her own. How does it feel to be with her? Comfortable, familiar, irritating? Be sure to ask her what she needs. Sit with her until she can tell you. Be patient. Remember, she is part of you, too.
Who is lagging behind? Who is hurt, hiding, almost extinct? Draw the vulnerable child or another hidden self into your room. Kind words, an averted look, or remembering to rock your body may help this one to appear. Do not block her entrance by chastising yourself for ignoring her until now. Embrace her with an open heart. Ask her what she needs to be nurtured. She may not have words. She may speak in images or feeling bursts. Offer her your understanding. Sit with her in stillness for a while.
Could you entice your highest self, your spiritual nature, to your table? Can you feel her light? Does her shape or even her appearance surprise you? How do you feel sitting near her? Do the others react in any way? Ask her what she needs to be renewed. Ask her what messages she carries from other realms.
Where is your physical self? The aspect of you that has a vulva and a sex drive, that has fantasies, desires, moist places? Does she dance into the room, shaking her hips? Or does she slide shyly into her chair, legs crossed? When was the last time you listened to her needs? What does she want on this retreat?
Can you call in your most loathed part to sit awhile? She is an aspect of yourself you despise. She is the most secret, most hidden you, the part that if someone else saw, you are positive they would have nothing to do with you ever again. Let whoever comes be okay. Stop judging for a moment. Can you find anything to appreciate or like about this part of you? Try to hold to your intention to welcome all. Try to see her beauty and usefulness and to offer love. What role does she play in your life? What warmth can you offer her? What gift can she give you? Why is she part of you? What does she need?
Open your heart and imagination more. Whom do you wish to summon? Whom are you afraid to see? Who has a message for you? Allow anyone and everyone who wishes to join you, and without whom you would not be you, to come to your table. All are equal. All are welcome. Name them as they arrive. Rock and shush and invite. Take your time. Someone shy but very important may be waiting in the wings to come sit but only if she sees that you mean it, that you are slowing down, honoring all, making room, reserving judgment.
Allow your various selves to communicate with one another and with you. What will cultivate wholeness and acceptance? Again, the images and the words may not be clear. Let the answer flow through you. There is no need to control or force. Watching and welcoming are your touchstones if you start to feel lost or if you feel you are pushing the experience.
Shush. Rock. Hold the tension of gathering the whole. Listen.
Step back and see the whole. Open your arms and gather them all in. Ask if everyone will hold hands. See the circle. Say a prayer to the Divine asking that all these selves stay with you, that they help you on your retreat. Ask for a blessing for each self, a specific gift of help, guidance, or love. Thank everyone for showing up.
Come back slowly and with soft eyes. Write or draw your insights into your congregation of self.
Making a Mandala
Investigate your retreat environment for objects or images that represent each of the selves that came to your table, and draw, paint, or collage a symbol for each self. Your pleaser girlie self might be a tube of lipstick. Your warrior self might be a picture of a woman protesting nuclear weapons.
See Portrait of Your Authenticity: Prepare for how to do a symbol scan.
Draw a large circle or use a tray to represent the table. Make it large enough to hold all the representations of selves you might find or make. Arrange your symbols around the plate or paper in whatever order feels good, making a representation of your whole.
Place in the middle of your mandala an image, words, a poem, or a combination of these things that represents for you wholeness, balance, the Divine.
Meditate on your round table, your mandala, your medicine wheel. Ask the center for guidance on how to bring all of you into accord. Journal for a few minutes about this experience, these images. What can you do to maintain this wholeness when you return to ordinary life?
Leave your mandala where you can see it throughout your retreat. Keep it intact and in a place of reverence where it will not be disturbed or ridiculed.
You might want to build a shrine around it or include it on your shrine. Invite additional insights through meditation and journaling with it.
Stories
This was part of Sandy’s one-day retreat.
I was interested in meeting my authentic self. In my visualization, she came to the table quickly. I was very upset to see she was not perfect. She is human with rough edges and jagged places. It was so hard to accept her and sit there with her because of this. She is really pissed off at me because I’ve rejected her for so many years for her faults.
We grabbed hold of each other’s wrists. I was clear I was never going to let go no matter what the struggle. I was open enough in the beginning to see some of the things she likes—walking, the beach, to be alone. But I kept coming back to “She’s not perfect.” I was so afraid I would find out things I didn’t like about her, I kept shutting down. She told me she wasn’t interested in revealing her good parts because she wanted me to embrace the whole. I was clear I was committed to doing that, but I still kept shutting down. It was a struggle but also very profound to sit there with her.
Susan did the visualization as part of her retreat.
My table was large with many people/parts from various stages of my life present. Lots of little children were at the table. One was especially cute and made me laugh aloud. There was a teenage self and lots of older selves there.
The strangest self was the critical self. It came in the form of a cockatoo—white with a dark beak. Its criticism was in the form of pecking. I tried to get this creature in a human form, but that just wasn’t to be. Everyone else was female and looked like me at some period in my life. There was one exception. My higher self came in the form of pure, brilliant white light.
This whole group was a lively bunch. They sat around together and it felt very comfortable, and whole, somehow. I think the overall sense was one of a peaceful gathering, even with the mean-spirit part present. The brilliant light seemed to be the predominant energy. It was like a huge umbrella, except it was on everything and everyone at the same time.
For Long Retreats
Do this exercise at the beginning of your retreat and then repeat it at the end, noting new insights or seeing if your visualization changes. Consider using the mandala-making portion as an ongoing practice for your entire retreat, keeping an eye out for symbolic objects to add to it and going back from time to time to work with the symbols.
For Mini-Retreats
Take five minutes to visualize the round table with only one chair. Invite the self you most need to be with to come sit for a while. Spend a few moments being together. You may talk or exchange gifts or not.
See Retreat Plans: A One-Day Well-Being Retreat.
For Retreats in the World
Read the visualization, then venture out in the world to look for images and tokens that represent your selves. Gather these to compose a mandala later. Or make a mandala in the forest or on the beach, using found and created symbols. Watching such a mandala be washed away by the sea or visiting it later, after wind and rain have changed it, can be a powerful meditation on the transience of life.
For Retreats with Others
Take turns reading the meditation to one another, or have one woman read it, then separate to work on your mandalas. You can also tape the meditation, listen to it together, then paint, write, or dance your perceptions at the same time. Or each woman does the practice alone, then all can come together to explain your mandalas to one another and to add symbols to one another’s to represent additional selves or qualities you recognize in your friends.
For a group that has been working together for a while, try making living mandalas using people to represent different selves. In centered, sacred space, have someone read (or record and play back) the meditation, then each woman takes a turn directing a mini-play of her various selves. She picks a woman to describe one self, places her in the circle, and instructs her on how to play that character, talking, gesturing, acting out whatever behavior she feels fits. When her mandala is complete, the woman whose mandala it is stands in the center and listens to what each woman would like to say to her. She finishes by asking all her selves to hold hands and chant, “We have gathered together. We have slowed down. Everyone is welcome. We can hold the center.” Repeat this until each woman who wants to has created her circle of selves. End the entire practice with a song or a big hug.
A practical point: you need a group of at least eight to do this but no more than twelve. You must limit the amount of time each woman takes to set up and direct her mandala. No less than fifteen minutes is needed, but you could take up to an hour. With a group of ten, this exercise could easily take three hours or a whole day.