Reflections on a wonderful weekend

I have just recovered from running my first weekend workshop introducing people to the Motherpeace tarot deck. This had been on the way for a long time but by last Friday I was distinctly lacking confidence. This is of course nothing new. Every time I do something there is a voice in the back of my mind, telling me that I am not good enough- that I do not know enough - that I am a fraud and this time I will be found out. And yet, as soon as i get started and into the flow, the doubts slip away and the words and actions emerge with a seeming effortlessness. This is what happened on Saturday and Sunday. I connected with something above and beyond me - Goddess.

I do not know whether this doubt will ever leave me and perhaps i do not really want it to. One one hand it seems to imply a lack of trust but on the other it could be a safeguard against taking Her for granted. Or believing that i can be somehow immune from error - some sort of pagan infallibility - that it is coming from me and that I am therefore something special.

Which i am not. At times I crave approval and at others i can retreat into the cave and isolate myself from true contact with any other human being - wrapping my misery and self-pity round me like a blanket. Thank Goddess these times are getting shorter and less frequent but they can still ambush me.

Something has definitely shifted. The doubts I had last week, although uncomfortable, were not at all paralysing. I was able to see them from a sort of distance and see that they were old scripts that I no longer need to rehearse. Acknowledge and honour them, yes, for they keep me from floating away on some insubstantial cloud of self-importance. They force me to look for a while and see if what i am planning to do is a result of the search for ego-gratification or a true expression of the vision I have been granted.

I now accept that I am a tarot reader - that when I read there are three parties to the conversation and that Goddess is present for us both.

As She is increasingly present in my everyday life. When I turn to her, She is there. And when I say Goddess, I mean Inanna. This blog is dedicated to Her and in it I try to express what I believe and in this expression trust that I am serving Her. Often, this can make me feel uncomfortable as I know that at times I express minority opinions - or opinions that seem to contradict accepted orthodoxies. And sometimes my opinions are plain, downright wrong - nothing other than prejudice - the result of lazy thinking. Nothing, I say, however is the word of Inanna - I am not a channel - it is just my opinion and experience

In the end I am forced back to the stark reality. Either Goddess, and in particular, Inanna has called me or I am deluded. I cannot see any other explanation of my experiences. I do not believe I am deluded (although totally aware that truly deluded people may feel the same - an infinity of mirrors in that thought) so must assume that I have been called. Problem is, the Lady of the Labyrinth is very niggardly with Her information and just when I think I am getting emerging into the new I find myself back in the dark, again restricted to putting one foot in front of the other.

However, it seems to be becoming easier all the time to trust that the path is right. There are labyrinths within labyrinths as I climb out of the underworld. It is not a simple linear journey but is a series of lesser descents as old habits have to reassessed and new ones adopted.

And it is a road that I must walk.