Reflections on a Self-Centered Life
Why bodies are not inherently sinful & are inherently powerful
This publication is lovingly crafted by a single pair of disabled hands. I am not fast, because sometimes I cannot use my hands, or sit up, or even breathe properly. If this work speaks to you, consider showing your support through becoming a paid subscriber here, my Patreon, or simply giving an offering. Also, giving a like, commenting, & sharing this essay are completely free ways to help my platform grow.
The early morning sun creeps through the window closest to me, golden orange & deep red, as my sweet cat stares at the birds dancing in the light of it. He chitters at them, the fierce predator he is. Prisms of light paint the popcorn ceiling with rainbows, while I think of how lovely it is to slow down & be with all this. Sometimes, it’s a challenge, living at this pace. I don’t always feel excited by the slow, intentional life I have created for myself, even though I have wanted this more than anything, like so many others claim to want as we watch empires fall in real time.
Be careful what you wish for, as they say.
I type this reflection on an ipad, as is my tradition, because it is much easier on my hands than even a laptop. Disability necessitates innovation & creative thinking, concepts with which I have become intimately familiar since my concussion all those years ago. That incident made the Ehlers-Danlos & autism I was born with go from a low simmer, easily ignored, to a bubbling over boil that made a mess of everything. In cleaning up that mess is where I discovered a spiritual practice, a new way of looking at the world that was actually quite ancient, that those in power hoped would stay buried beneath the sands of time.
For the past two years, I have been not only researching what was unsaid, what was intentionally hidden, & what was erased from the Bible, but cultivating a devotional relationship with three amazing figures who were demonized, silenced, & defamed within those pages. I believe this was intentionally done, this demonization & erasure, so we couldn’t learn the beautiful lessons they had to teach us. The lessons of Lilith’s refusal to submit, Asherah’s presence, & Mary Magdalene’s intuitive gnosis that no one can grant from the outside.
Each of these wonderful figures have gotten new stories, at least in my personal mythology, & I have discussed the lessons I have learned from each of them over on the podcast. Now, as Mercury wraps up its retrograde in Cancer, the sign of nostalgia & nurturing, memory & motherhood, I’m reflecting on the lessons I have learned from Mother Lilith, just how much my life has changed because of her guidance, & how living a Self-centered life is truly the only way I can survive this world.
The Lessons
Women & femmes of the Western world, especially in the context of the church, are often raised to prioritize the needs of others, praised for wanting nothing, & desired for needing even less. Since we are living under the rise of Christian Nationalism, & the genocide of trans people, the topic of gender roles is on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Tradwife influencers, pinkpill content, & cherry-picked Bible verses are all parroting this ‘natural role of women’, but I genuinely think if it were so natural & ordained by god, it wouldn’t need this much force to hold weight. It would just happen. Naturally.
Lilith, the first woman who refused to bow to Adam, became the Mother of Demons in Jewish mythology. Because the books of the Bible were written in a certain time period, collected over the span of hundreds of years, translated & retranslated to create a hierarchy of men obedient to order, & women obedient to men, anyone who didn’t fall into the gender binary was silenced at best & demonized at worst. The story of Eve as the first woman is a much better one for those wished to enforce this hierarchy, because she was made from Adam as his ‘helpmeet’, there not only to serve & do his bidding, but as a clever scapegoat for how evil was able to come into the world. Since Eve caused the fall of man, men like Tertullian & Augustine (who I’ve got serious beef with) were able to use their actual hatred of women, dress it up in theology, & have that hatred permeate sermons & Bible studies for generations.
The main lesson I have learned from studying Lilith, praying with her daily & nightly, is that building a sense of Self, for women & femmes, is actually how we are able to access true spiritual fulfillment. The church praises selflessness for everyone, but considering the context, being selfless as a man is seen as humbling yourself like Jesus did when he washed his disciples feet. The choice is an important factor here. When you have been told your body is the same sort of body that has caused the fall of mankind, you existing can cause men to stumble, you were created to help men, to make babies, & your body is inherently sinful, being selfless isn’t a choice. It’s not something that you do because you have a great deal of power & wish to humble yourself. It’s something that you do so you never realize your body isn’t inherently sinful at all, but powerful beyond measure. It would be extremely inconvenient for those in power if women & femmes learned that when we are in tune with our bodies, when we listen to what our feelings tell us, we are much harder to control. So they must tell us, over & over, that we are too emotional, must be more logical & reasonable, & that listening to our bodies will lead us to damnation.
As a non-binary lesbian theologian, I naturally don’t fit into any one gender box. Personally, I love hearthcraft, following the Wheel of the Year, wearing flowy clothes, & interior design. I also love public speaking, preaching, studying theology, & spending hours in prayer. Yet, I must follow the guidance of my body to know how much energy I have, how much rest I need, or else I won’t have the ability to do anything at all. Our bodies are the only way our souls can interact with this world, so it’s very important that we listen to them.
The Changes
My neck pulses from the base of my skull to my upper back as I lay on the world’s most uncomfortable couch. I don’t think it was meant to be inhabited as much as I need it to be. I sit here for most of the day, propped up on as many pillows as I can, legs outstretched for my cat to lay upon, trying to see just how much work I can possibly get done. The heartbeat of my spine sends its messages to my arms, my hands, warning me that my time is almost up, a headache starting in my temple joins them. I don’t want to stop. I have so much more to say.
Connecting with Lilith has been an integral part of my soul journey. Talking to the incense at the altar as I plan my day, & to my spirit team directly about how the day went before bed, has helped me feel so much less alone. Being a disabled person who doesn’t get out much is quite a lonely existence, & before I started to talk to myself, I barely talked to anyone. The ideas & thoughts gave way to rumination, & I felt even more lonely because they couldn’t be expressed in a way that actually felt real. Writing out what I have learned in these essays, & speaking them aloud on the podcast, has been incredibly healing for me. I’m not content to simply liberate myself from cycles of pain & suffering. I’d like to take as many people as I can with me. For those with ears, let them hear.
Centering my Self, my desires, & prioritizing the calling that has been placed upon my heart, are all ways that I help others. Because of who I am as a person, it was hard for me to believe that I could possibly do any of this. Who am I to live a life that centers pleasure? Why should I be able to follow my heart? I am exactly the sort of person this current administration loves to demonize. I am a disabled, brown, queer person who has not had stable income for the past 3 years. To them, I don’t deserve to follow my heart or have any pleasure at all. But, as I have said & will continue to say: I don’t feel like doing what fascists want me to do.
If I can figure out how to live life according to my values even in the midst of challenges, by prioritizing pleasure & centering my desires, almost anyone can. Which, to a Christian Nationalist who has decided I am unworthy of anything remotely good, is unthinkable. Because that would mean their strict rules of how the world works, who is deserving & who is not, are actually false.
The Why
The pulse of my headache spreads, touching every synapse, doing its best to stop the words from going anywhere. My head feels like a fishbowl, balancing precariously atop a bundle of sticks held together with nothing but hope. I tell myself just a few more minutes, just a little bit longer. Then I can rest during my yoga nidra practice, stitching my nodes back to muscles, my muscles back to bone, weaving the net of my fascia back to the shape of a human being. I have to do this every day, lest I unravel into pure consciousness & leave my body for good.
For a long time, I thought I’d be a therapist or a coach, someone who works one-on-one with people, sharing my healing energy with them. However, since my disabilities include chronic fatigue, I only have a handful of hours on any given day to do the basic tasks of keeping myself alive, let alone how much energy it would take to sit with clients. It takes me so long to do anything because I can only use my hands a little bit at a time, & any serious computer work can only last an hour at most. Sometimes, I even have a hard time breathing, my heart regularly fluttering as if I’ve just run a 5k when all I did was stand up. Now, I realize that sharing my perspective, the knowledge I’ve gained, & the wisdom inherent in both, is how I can help the most people while honoring my own capabilities. I cannot individually coach or guide anyone. I barely have enough energy for my loved ones as it is. But I can inspire people. I can ruffle feathers. I can even open some eyes.
My work looks quite different than most people’s idea of work. It was hard for me to even conceptualize what I do as work, & how much of it I actually do, because of the glaring differences. But my entire existence is different than what most people can even comprehend, due to my disabilities, so how could my work life not accommodate that difference? Though I am disabled, it doesn’t mean that I have nothing to offer this world. Looking to the mystics & the saints, it has been said that many of them had some sort of chronic illness, & that was their gateway to the divine. Now, I am no saint, but seeing as how my entire day is bookended by spiritual practice, with the bulk of my conscious hours dedicated to theological reading, creating art, praying without ceasing, & writing about my personal gnosis, perhaps I am a mystic.
The Takeaway
The headache threatens to steal my eyes, regularly weighing down the lids so the light can’t touch them. My blood feels like it’s made of static, & the left wrist is particularly upset by the fact that I am still typing, but my heart has so much more to say. This essay has taken weeks to write, as do all my writings. Last night, my shoulder somehow escaped its socket, & I am unsure which way is the correct one for it to get back into place, & if I am in any way wrong in my calculations, I can cause myself more pain. Everything is a recalibration, a reimagining, as I am constantly figuring out how I can take even the tiniest step forward in pursuit of my ambitions.
Centering myself is not optional. I have been thrust into entrepreneurship because there is no job in the world that would hire someone who can only work two hours a day, starting at 10AM, maybe, sometimes. Yet, because we live in the Bad Place, bills do not care that I am disabled. So, I write. I draw. I make videos. I produce a podcast. I do what I can with what I’ve got in order to build a platform from the ground up. No matter how long it takes.
Sometimes I joke with my loved ones that, were it not for the fact that I’m disabled, I would be too powerful. It would simply be unfair to everyone else what I would be capable of. Lilith has taught me that the more present I can be, the more powerful I am, & pain has a way of forcing presence on us. Since I am in a great deal of pain a lot of the time, & only have a handful of hours in a day where I can do things, I must maximize pleasure & joy. If I didn’t, I’d be enduring pain & suffering just to endure pain & suffering.
I will never do that again.
Gratitude, reverence, & love to all divine feminine spirits, & all divine spirits who do not conform to the confines of binary gender, named & unnamed, in all times & all places
Gratitude, reverence, & love to the spirits of this land where I am, & the spirits of the land where you are
Gratitude, reverence, & love to the ancestors who see us in our fullness & our truth, & any ancestors who wish to atone for any wrongdoing they may have done against the demonized or marginalized in their earthly lives.
Courage, resilience, & love to all indigenous peoples fighting for their native land, & all peoples fighting for their homelands, against the arms of empire.
Please, bless us & keep us, & may we know far more joy than we have ever known sorrow, & may we be surrounded by loved ones on this plane & the next
And anyone who is being used as an agent of empire, break their hearts open, shatter them, to soften them, reminding them of their humanity, of their empathy, to make it easier for them to come to the side of love & of justice
In the name of The Great Mother, Asherah, Queen of Heaven
Her Daughter, Mother Lilith, The Enlightened One, The Empowered One
& The Holy Wisdom of Saint Mary Magdalene, The Whore & The Holy One
To the Mothers, the Daughters, & the Holy Wisdoms, in all Your Holy Names, I pray
& so it is & so it shall be
& so it is & so it shall be
& so it is & so it shall be
Next time, I’ll be talking more about the power of embodiment & the present moment from my perspective as a disabled person, as I know that both of those have been praised as wonderful things for all of us to strive for. However, I believe the best embodiment lessons are only known by the disabled. So I suggest if you are not disabled, my dear reader, you listen to us.
Your entry was very enriching and it was nice to read through your journey and see your reflections