1992 - First Year at a Four-Year University

To continue the journey . . .
I worked very hard for several years at mending the damage done to me (by myself and others) in my childhood and adolescence (more about that later; included sexual abuse). I did group and individual therapy, of several different varieties, I read widely, I wrote out my process in my journal, and I slowly began to recover from the hurts that had driven my teen years. Part of that healing involved getting my life together in more outward ways; I held down jobs, I went to school, and gradually I made a plan for the future that involved getting a doctorate.
When I transferred from community college to a four-year school, I was in a very good place, emotionally and spiritually (if not financially!). Well, judge for yourself!

July 31, 1992 (23 years old)
Kris (my neighbor when I moved away to attend college, who became a very close friend) came over yesterday. She was talking about happiness, and how it eludes her, and abruptly she asked if I was happy, then said I seemed like I was. I thought about it, and I said that I wouldn’t call it happiness – that it was more contentment, and peace with myself. It came out easily, but I amazed myself. You know, it’s true! I am at peace, and I am no longer striving for “happiness,” whatever that is. It seems that happiness is based on circumstance and is transitory. What I seek, and what I’ve found, in part, is an inner joy. It stays, no matter what the circumstances are.
I think that’s what Mom was trying to tell me all those years ago. But she said I would only find it in Jesus, and she was wrong about that. Perhaps it only comes when you try to follow Light, and I think Jesus is only one branch of the Light. There are others. Mom just never looked for any other kind of light. I kind of want to tell her something about it in a letter. I think she won’t really believe it, but she might try.
The other thing I’m wondering about is this: So many writers say that we change the world with our beliefs. I mean the real earth. That because we believe in scientific laws, they are true. The question is, could we bring back the old goddesses just by believing in them? Wouldn’t it be great? Or would it be awful? Maybe those gods and goddesses really belong to those times, and would not serve the same purposes in this time.
But what about the new goddess of the future? The future that begins today? Could we bring her to life? Is she already here, and I just haven’t found her? It’s hard to believe she can be worshipped indoors. But in the cities, where would people go to worship her? I just know I want her in my life. I hope that she will find me. In some ways I feel like I’ve been marked for some kind of service. J [my sister] thought so too. She thinks that the powers of Light and Darkness were battling over me when I was in my teens, and she believes I must be on my way to some thing special. In some ways I agree with her, even if it does sound really conceited.

August 18, 1992
Dad and I had another conversation about Christianity. I was so emotional from everything that has happened that I almost cried when we were talking about condemnation. He makes me want to be a scholar just so I can argue better with him. The thing is, I’m sort of tired of arguing about Christianity. If people want to believe it, it’s okay with me. I don’t consider it my job to un-convert them. If they are really Christians, it’s a good thing to be. I only argue to retain my disbelief.

I went to a small state university that felt like a private liberal arts college, where I was lucky to have excellent professors. In this first year, my fall was one amazing semester, in which I took two Religious Studies courses and a physics class designed to give non-majors a solid understanding of important and cutting edge physics without making us learn the math. The things I learned in one class intertwined with what I learned in the others, making possible key insights that still shape the way I understand the universe.
I was also majoring in anthropology and learning the values of cultural relativism. Through those experiences as an undergraduate, I came to the conclusion that there were many valid faiths. I formed the opinion, which I still hold, that all religion is an attempt to reach God (however defined or conceptualized), and that each one will likely bring you closer to Her/Him/It if you practice it diligently. But I also saw the wisdom of my mother’s advice not to try to piece a religion together out of parts of others; if you do that, you run the risk of picking only the easy stuff, and never maturing spiritually.


August 31, 1992
I am going to use you as a sort of rough draft of my paper. It is really questions about an essay by Thomas Berry. What it’s saying is that we see everything that happens in our lives differently, based on how we view the human condition. He says that humans, as we are born, need a new birth, or a lot of fixing, before we are anything to be proud of. He says that our main task in life is to handle the pain of our existence, while we search for a way to give our lives meaning. The ultimate purpose for human life is for us to bring this meaning to everyone, thus completely elevating the human condition.
I agree with him to a certain extent. I believe that the purpose of my life is to search for true meaning, and I certainly find that people who are not searching for meaning are unsatisfactory beings. However, I find myself protesting when I read the words “impose on it a saving discipline.” I guess I don’t like the idea of any discipline being imposed on me. This seems to imply that other beings are wiser than me, and will tell me how to be saved. I feel that finding our own paths to transformation is an important part of that transformation.
It reflects my experience in that I have found that in the midst of my joy at being alive, there is always a sense of tragedy. For me, this tragedy is how humans have managed the extraordinary gifts we’ve been given, how the human condition has been used in a destructive direction so often. I also find myself in Berry’s statement that we are unsatisfactory until we have experienced a spiritual birth. I mentioned above what in the essay contradicts my experience.
My experience of the human condition is that it is a journey in search of ultimate truth. On this road there is almost constant pain, but there is also much joy. It seems that we can even begin to find joy in pain once we feel we’ve had a glimmer of what the ultimate truth, or meaning, is. To be a person is to walk along this road, going down wrong paths sometimes, falling down frequently, making mistakes and, it seems, occasionally being struck by lightening from the sky. The purpose of all the mistakes is to learn more. Some of us go slower, some make more mistakes, but we are all on this learning journey.
I respond to this condition by trying to learn as much and as quickly as I can. I try to be philosophical when I fall down, and see if I can figure out what I tripped on. In the last year or so, this last section of the road, I think I must have been struck by lightening, but instead of damaging me, it sort of just electrified me, and made it possible for me to experience joy. Or perhaps I just saw a road sign that showed that I was on the right path after all.

September 1, 2992
Religion [my first introduction to comparative religion course] was better today. We discussed our papers (didn’t have to turn them in) and got into a very interesting talk about the human condition. He said that at the base of who we are, or the situation we find ourselves in is this: we are only aware of ourselves when we are aware of something else, and at the same time are aware of a larger thing that encompasses both. I-Other-All type of thing. He was saying that all the religious traditions involve this awareness. The struggle, or the tragedy of our situation is that we have ambivalent way of being capable, in our awareness, of being separate, or being connected. We usually end up at some point in the separateness, with the knowledge and longing for connectedness. This is what religion is about, W says. I agree. Or at least, I see what he means and I can’t find anything to argue with him about here. It rings true.
And of course Physics was wonderful. We mainly talked about different kinds of energy. He explains everything so well! And in such a way that he makes it fun to listen to him. You couldn’t possible space out during his lectures. He explained chemical energy so that I understand it, and Wednesday we’ll tackle nuclear energy. I know I’ll get that for the first time, as well. I’ve been thinking how wonderful it is to have complete confidence, for the first time, that all of my teachers know way more than me.

September 9
Elizabeth (my old therapist) called me on Sunday, and I felt so disconnected from her. I feel like I’ve gone beyond what she is capable of seeing. Some of the things she said are true, such as when I told her how good I felt lately, she said that the spiral would turn again, and I’d go back through the shit. That’s true. But what she didn’t say or seem to understand is that since it is a spiral, the shit will be on a higher level. I don’t think I’ll go back to where I was. I know she was trying to prepare me, but why does she have to concentrate on the negative? She recognizes I’ve changed, but I don’t think she sees how great a change it’s really been. Sometimes it feels like healers, having achieved the healing they meant to do, have a hard time letting go.
I was thinking that this is really a hard time, in that I can’t pinpoint how I’m growing. I don’t mean hard. Scratch that. It’s just that when I think about what I’m doing, or how I feel about things, I can’t point to anything in particular and say, “That’s what I’m working on.”
It’s more that I’ve said “Yes” to this journey, this adventure to find myself. All I can really point to is how I feel at peace with myself (for the most part), and this sense of wonder I have. I guess there are some other, more objective things, but all the changes are so subtle, or so they seem to me.
One of the things in the myth book [read for a course called “Living Myths”] says that some people “seek to disentangle themselves from the roles that are not essentially who they are” [Leonard Biallas]. I feel as if that’s exactly what I’m doing. Yesterday we were talking about Jung’s extrovert/introvert theory, and my thought is that in my youth I played a role of being extroverted, but in truth am an extreme introvert. As I disengage myself from my various roles, my outside begins to look more like my inside, and anyone can plainly see now that I’m introverted. The other, more major role that I am dropping is victim.
7:30pm. I just got home from Physics lab a while ago. My mind is totally blown. We were talking about how big our universe is: The minimum estimate is 1025 X 15 billion light years. It’s so huge, so much bigger that I can even conceive of. I feel very insignificant. What possible difference does it make what I do with my life? I’m one of 5 1/2 billion people living on a speck of dust circling a mediocre star in a tiny galaxy. I have to think about all of this really seriously. I think I’ll go listen to Santana and try to figure it out.

September 10
Well, I wouldn’t say I figured anything out. Dreamed about the problem all night but can’t remember particulars. I ended up sleeping sideways in bed with blankets all a-jumble. It’s something I guess I’m going to have to live with for a long time. These aren’t easy questions. I called Joe [an old engineering friend] and spoke to him a little, but his answers weren’t satisfying. I may have to speak to Dr. B about it, or maybe Dr. W. Or both. I guess maybe Joe did help, because he mentioned how particles (photons) communicate with each other over vast distances in some way that we don’t understand. If that’s true, then perhaps I can use it to help me see how I’m connected to the rest of the cosmos. Anyone who doesn’t feel the way I’m feeling at some point doesn’t really understand the vastness of the Universe.

September 15
In my myth book, he puts it this way, “We gradually rename reality and totally reorient our entire person to it. We say yes to the new reality, consent to the growth and change in our selves, and act on our new perceptions.” Also, “It is the taking on of a strength within us, and yet beyond us . . . becoming aware of my potential and saying yes to it, somehow related to my ability to transcend myself in relation to the world” [Leonard Biallas] Isn’t that beautiful and desirable? He’s talking about the spiral journey. Since I am taking this journey, it seems that this “saying yes” is a crucial part. I want to say yes to my potential. I don’t want to stay stuck in feeling bad about myself.
One of the clearest ways I see to start effecting this change is to study. To study until I feel great about myself, and learn how to live with those good feelings.

September 25
Last night the sky was so clear. I located the Northern Cross, but that’s it. Still, never seen it before. Then I woke up at 4am and saw another beautiful, bright constellation. I think maybe it was Orion. I just looked in my notes and it was! It was such a magical moment, because I had opened my blind before I went to sleep, and Orion literally woke me up. It was so bright. It was weird how I knew it was Orion, too, because I never knew what it looked like before. When I saw it I just KNEW! Then I went back to sleep and dreamt about it. The dream was so religious. I was being told what Orion meant, what he stood for, etc. I wish I could remember now. What an amazing experience.
I’ve always wanted to be able to look up at the stars and know where things were – what those stars meant to the people who looked at them a thousand and more years ago. Now I’ll be able to. This is such and awesome semester. Truly – I am filled with awe. What a wondrous universe I live in. I’m glad I’m a human being, even if all that means is that I’m a bunch of carbon chains floating on a fleck of dust around an average star. This is a beautiful fleck of dust. I love our star, our Sun. And most wondrous of all, I love being who I am. All my faults and fears and neuroses. I am unique and I am a fantastic thing – a human being.
Joseph Campbell said that what we are really searching for is the experience of being alive, not meaning. But I think if one has the experience of being rapturously alive, one understands the meaning of that aliveness. And vice versa. Right now, this month, I feel rapturously alive! And I think I understand the meaning. Not consciously, or cognitively, but I feel the meaning.

September 28
I prayed last night. It’s been awhile since I truly directed my thoughts to the Goddess. It felt so good. I remember when I was young and prayed to God, I always wanted something. Well, maybe not always, that isn’t fair to my young self. But it felt so good to realize that all I wanted was to be enfolded in her arms, to feel Her presence through the day, and to make myself a vehicle for her Light.
That’s how I like to think of the way I fit into John’s [a friend – not boyfriend, who was struggling] life. He keeps saying that if it weren’t for me he wouldn’t have done what he is doing [seeking therapy]. I know that isn’t true. But I’m thinking maybe the Universe used me as a catalyst, and if so – I love it! I want the Universe to use me like that whenever it feels like it! While I was praying I was thanking the Goddess for that, and asking that it continue to happen, and also for help in never taking credit myself. I know intellectually, of course, that it isn’t me, but it is a human fault to be proud.
I want to always remember and live what Krishna said, “The work is yours to do; not the fruits thereof.” . . . wouldn’t it be a wonderful life if I could truly and completely open myself to that Power, and let it flow through me, ,let it use me for its own purpose, never for my own advancement, or for secretly thinking I’m better than other people? But to do it for the simple joy of being filled with Spirit, and the joy of being used for a higher purpose.
I think the goal of my life should be to keep turning myself over to this power. To give myself up, and let myself go. To do my sacred duty for the sake of duty itself, not for anything I might gain from it. Of course, what I get from it is joy, and I do feel that reward every time I do it. I love that feeling, and perhaps that is what really motivates me. I don’t know ho to get away from that. I think it is okay, though. Maybe that joy is supposed to be our natural state, and when we do our dharma we return to it.

October 16

[This passage comes at the end of a description of a conversation with Phil, a friend who had just returned from a protest at the Nevada test site where the first atom bomb was detonated, Kris, and Jennifer, another new friend.]
Phil said that at the test site the sisters were incredible. They locked arms and no amount of police could separate them. The men were being walked over to the police buses, but the women had to be dragged. When he said that, Jennifer said, “Women are powerful. We are the ones who are going to save the earth.” It’s amazing how just reading a lot of Goddess material makes me feel so huge – so full of power. What would the world be like if little girls were all exposed to the stories of wonderful, powerful Goddesses during all the years of their growing up? Wow! We would be so assertive, so strong!
I woke up feeling so good this morning. I’ll have to make it part of my life to touch base with the Goddess every day. Joseph Campbell stresses the importance of having a sacred place and to go to it every day. He’s not the only one. I’ve felt that I needed to for a long time, but I haven’t consciously done it. I’m going to start. Maybe get back into doing rituals, too. They really are empowering. Such a simple thing to do, and it will help me get through the coming season.
In the past, I’ve had problems with faith, but that is going away. I’ve seen now how filled I am just from praying. How much more will the Goddess reveal herself to me if I invoke her in ritual? I’ve said before that my spirituality is more eastern, but I’m realizing that there are places in me that can’t be touched by meditation alone. And I don’t feel alone in the Universe, like there is a path I follow all alone, like a therevadan Buddhist. I feel the presence of some Other.

October 18
Just remembered part of a dream. I was heir to a huge fortune, but I didn’t believe it – had been a nun in Rome, called back to take my mansion, etc. There was a room I wasn’t supposed to go into – went in – there were tons of everything – jewels, perfume, food, etc. My mother had loved some red stone – don’t remember now. There were also sapphires and emeralds. I had a whole group of friends exploring with me. Sometimes I was one of them watching me. There was a dog who was really a person, turned by sorcery into a dog. I could understand him. Sometimes I was him.
There was a shrine to my mother in this room – beautiful. I couldn’t figure out if it was real – me being the heir – because there was so much trickery – things seemed so contrived to make me believe I was. There was an earlier part of the dream where I was the mother – I don’t remember it clearly. Remember being beautiful, powerful and rich. A witch, with a witch husband who was gorgeous. We wore beautiful, elegant clothes, which was strange, because later, when I was the child, I spoke to my dead mother saying, “You really dressed in paisley” or, “You had a paisley heart” or something like that.
Where in the world did that dream come from? What does it mean? When I was in it, I had a feeling of familiarity with it, as if it was a dream about a story I once read. But now I don’t remember any such story. It was a tragedy/mystery. Something tragic happened to me as the mother, and the daughter-me was supposed to resolve it somehow. In the background of the dream (I never saw them) there was a cook, and butlers, other servants. They were all guiding me somehow to what they wanted me to see. Never knew if they were benevolent or cruel.
Wow. What an incredible dream. It has a Persephone/Demeter flavor to it, but I can’t get at how they are related. They just feel as if they are. There was some point where I was picking flowers. Why does Rome keep popping up in my dreams? It isn’t the Rome I visited, exactly, but some kind of archetypical axis-mundi-mecca-world center-type thing.
Is it about my real, earth-mother-human-mother – or the mother part inside me? Or the Goddess Mother? Garnets. That was the red stone. There were also other things in jars – no one had been in that room for years and years, supposedly, but there were things in jars that were still alive – like the fish. I couldn’t figure out if it meant my mother had been a powerful sorceress, or people were playing tricks on me.
Were flashbacks to when I was the mother. So in love with the husband. Were they both killed? I don’t know. Why was I, the daughter, a nun? Maybe shows deeply spiritual? Was also a choice – I wanted to go back to Rome, had given up all earthly ties, taken vow of poverty, and here were all these riches being forced on me. The unseen servants seemed to be telling me that being a nun was training for the early part of my life, but now I must take my rightful place, assume my power. Seems like there is a lot in there I need to unpack.

October 19
[In reference to the work I was doing for the Living Myths class – where I was completing an assignment in which we were to identify the central myths of our lives]
It all fits in with this Dark Lord thing I have. I wonder if it is true – that once I marry the Dark Lord inside myself I won’t be attracted to his human replica. Whoa! I just realized something! My black times correspond almost exactly to the times that Persephone goes to live in the Underworld. I can’t have been doing it on purpose, sub-consciously, because it never even occurred to me to connect myself with Persephone before last week. What does this mean?

November 3
[In reference to a phone conversation with my childhood friend, G]
She is so psychic! Or rather, we are so psychic when we are together. Last night she told me that she sees in me a combination of dark and light, that I hold all these things together inside myself. Those are my words, but that was the gist. Isn’t that amazing? That was without her and I ever talking about how that is my goal. She’s never read my Living Myth papers, which are almost completely about that struggle for me. Later on in the conversation she said she saw me as being in this dark place, and she said, “You know that Indian goddess with six arms?” I was completely stumped for a second, because I was thinking Native American. Then I just went, “Oh my God!” as I realized she meant Shiva, or Kali! She didn’t even know what Shiva represents, or anything! When I told her he was the Destroyer, and that dancing he’s doing is maintaining the Cosmic Order, and that he IS a representation of how life/death, black/white, etc. go together, and that I had just written a paper about him, we both freaked!! That is so WILD!
And we had been talking earlier about how I’m getting closer to the Goddess of Death, the Morrigan, Persephone, the Raven of Panic – and who is Shiva’s shakti but Kali – the Terrible One. This is just blowing me away. I get so empowered when I speak to her. I feel intensely beautiful and strong – invincible. I feel her doing more than supporting me in my goal to incorporate the Terrible side of the Goddess – she’s telling me I already am who I want to be!

November 6
I have many thoughts on what we are learning in there (intro to comparative religion). On Wednesday he invited Rabbi Shornberg to speak to us, and I really learned a lot about how a reformed, liberal Jew sees Judaism. One of the things he said was that Israel means “Man wrestles with God.” He sees this as THE main point of Judaism. And he told us all these stories to back that up. He said, “I don’t care if the Torah says that homosexuals should be ostracized or stoned to death. EVEN if God said that, it is wrong!” I think that is really cool. He said Jews say their prayers in the name of all their ancestors except for Noah, because Noah didn’t argue with God to try and save all the other people. He just blindly obeyed. Rabbi Schornberg says blind obedience is NOT what Judaism is about.

Clearly, 1992 was an amazing year for me in all kinds of ways. Looking back, it was one of the best years of my life. So many things were new to me, and I was soaking up everything I could, learning from so many different sources, and feeling something for myself other than hatred or disgust for the very first time since childhood. It was a watershed year.