What an adventure this pregnancy has been. And how totally wonderful and scary that I am in this blessed place, on this life-changing precipice, yet again!
Each pregnancy is different. For me this one in particular has been about unweaving and sweeping out some of the most nagging and difficult thought patterns and threads of my early life. It has taken a great deal of staring my not-so-lovely habits based on bogus, self-demeaning beliefs in the face.
What has happened after all these weeks and months of hard work is that this baby has asked me to make some serious and heartfelt room not only for his emergence, but for -- drum roll, please -- my own exalted one.
Yes, any way you slice it, giving birth is a spiritual and transformative process and it starts even before conception. Whether we take advantage of this special time, however, is another story, and with my first pregnancy eight years ago, I didn't appreciate my opportunity for metamorphosis in the slightest. I simply checked out.
With my second, two-and-a-half years ago, I was more inclined to go deep, but ended up on bed rest and was too afraid to do much inward work. Hence, the steady roll-up-my sleeves kind of journaling, meditating, yoga practicing, breathing, intuiting, and connecting that has occurred this go round is pretty much unparalleled. With less than three weeks to go, I feel like I haven't seen anything yet.
Ironically, here's what has also dawned on me: To unseat and dismantle the binding thoughts and obstacles to joy that we have had since our own conceptions does not at all require being physically pregnant with a baby.
It requires being pregnant with ourselves.
An OB-GYN once said to me that when women in their late 30s crave babies, they are likely craving their own rebirths, their own self-creation, unhindered by the turbulent, murky swells that threaten our unique, ecstatic development into fully actualized beings. I'd like to extend this notion of longing for rebirth far beyond the 30-something woman, and offer it to every one of you.
We can, male or female, young or old, gay or straight, uproot the tough, errant stuff we've been programmed to live stream to ourselves our entire lives. We can all un-birth the grossness and negativity of the past and claim fulfillment and bliss as our birthrights.
Right now, this very instant is indeed ripe with the possibility of rebirthing you, on your own delicious terms. But you have to be willing to do the work. Are you?
Through zen sitting practice, I have been taught to experience every breath, every moment as a both dying and being-born one, a simultaneous falling away and profound rising up. In the dying away, we shed and discard all our cruddy baggage. In the rising up, we reveal our naturally elated selves, and we have this chance every single bleeping minute! How much more fantastic does it get?
Please, as my final bid for the next three months, I urge you from my deepest, most alive, and thumping heart, to resurrect yourself. Go ahead and take that longed-for leap. Find the bravery and the guts to un-birth all that old crap, then RISE, RISE, RISE!
I can't be there to physically catch you, as midwives do when catching babies as they first arrive into this gleaming world, fresh from their mothers' wombs. But I will be there in spirit, cheering you along, as you catch your own newborn, reborn self and cry out with delight in all that shimmery wonder at the wholly, holy rebirthed YOU.
I'll of course be doing the very same.
In sweet rebirth,
Maggie
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