by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés: Dear Brave Souls: The Light. If the Mountain of Life is dark, the smallest star of Light, is still the Key
that makes that seeming dark Door swing open to reveal the inner Mountain of Light that belongs to us all.
It is cold tonight here, the kind where first your hands get cold, then your toesies, then your nosie. A little like a dog with chilled paw pads from running in the snow. I run my hands in warm water, my wrists too. I dry them carefully. Then I am warmer.
And I’m warming up a little pot of soup of plump yellow corn and green hatch chiles on the stove.
And I just put on the soft, two times bulkier than one’s feet, wookie-socks. You know what i mean.
And the purple old-lady bulkyknit cotton sweater with long sleeves that drape down over my hands, for they must think old women have very long arms. Perhaps from trying to embrace so much over time.
And the little space heater shaped like a white owl, [seriously], is on low here at my desk. It has a soft little whirring sound. And blessed heat to offset the floor drafts in this old room.
My grandson and I just returned from the southwest where we saw the worst and the best of many living and dying things, old crashes and new dreams rising strong; Trampas, Chimayo, Truchas, Arroyo Hondo, Arroyo Seco, Santa Fe, Tesuque, Taos, Eagle Nest, Questa, and more.
Last night as we drove hard back to home at midnight, we stopped my black pickup up on the pinnacle of La Veda Pass. Rolled out to look at the jillions and jillions of stars.
El nieto said, wow. And more, he said wow. And more of the wow word. And I felt ancient as I am, for all our young and old who have kept ‘the royal road’ intact despite all challenges: profundity and awe straight to the heart. Grandson, lighting up his spirit like a murmur of fireflies up there on the mountain top in the blue snow, black mountain… and wind chill below zero.
I know you know this. What is cold can be made warmer, both from outside and from within. One has to put actions to it.
Whether to become warm when it is so cold. or cooler when it is too hot, the oppressive is like a fog and storm of life, and it is often dense and hard attempting to walk in that swale of fierce face wind…
flame or chill.
Yet, there are diamonds flying through that swale, diamonds lighting this old wick of my heart.
And there are for you too, blazes of light in every dark that like lanterns, large and small, help to light your way. Pay close attention. Closer.
For the billions of stars we see that shed a dusty Light to see by, are but one tiny tiny light in the vault of heaven that when multiplied over and over and over, pushes back the dark.
We too. Same. Tiny tiny Light is Beauty, and when multiplied by us, through us, with us, over and under and all around us, we are the Illumined.
‘Follow the Light’ is not the cliche some have understood it to be. It is very real and ancestral instruction.
And yet, it is only ⅓ of the critical phrase. The next 1/3rd is this: Yet, more so, Stand in the Light…
and the last 1/3rd is this: Be the Light>
Not only follow, not only let what and who is filled with Light lead you forward, but you, stand in the Light, for it is your best most insightful Force. And too, Be Light, also, lead others forward in true pathways to the best of your higher abilities and talents.
In my life, I’ve been in darks so dark brought on by who and what, I could play Für Elise on the ribcage of the behemoth. But even in the dank dark, one has choice to lay in the dark in perpetual lament, or to make something from having been swallowed by some kind of walking black bag.
One decides how to proceed forward and outward and inward, for your life, my life, is a custom job… but/ and
for thee also, I wish this: Despite the challenges, the Remedios of Beauty are all around, to be taken in by you, no matter what is too much or not enough… to make somehing of it, to note the tiniest point of Light– to walk in Light, to Be that.
For that tiny point of Light is the heart of Beauty… and I know it is paradox, but that Light is Beauty and Beauty is Light, is also the aperature that will help to release us, no matter how many dives we take, no matter how many stumbles, frustrations, heartaches…
for Light is also known as Esperanza, the tiny star of Hope that was found wet and nascent, that is newborn, curled in the corner of Pandora’s box that carried also the challenges of the world.
To reclaim the story of Pandora for you, I would assert unequivocally, it is not a story of ‘punishment for curiousity’ as it has been trivialized, but more so, straight from my mind and heart to yours, a root story…
to tell us, imbed in us anew that the world is the world, and we are born into it along with The Light, Who is also known as Beauty, who is also known as The Angel of Hope…
Hope not being an idle tra-la, but rather a set of step by step actions created in good faith, by you, in order to make the ‘dreamed of future’ come more and more True.
I send love. Think of these things. And hold the Power of the Tiny Light to your heart. Multiply it when, where, how, as you can, will. Walk in Light, Who is also known as Beauty, Who is also known as Esperanza, precious Hope that is no fantasy, but a set of planned actions to bring the dream into being– more and more.
dr.e
