Archived Lunations:
Who is the Landlord of Your Soul?
New Moon
January 8, 2008
17 Capricorn 33’
I was wronged and that made me angry. I felt righteous about my position and convinced of my innocence. Since I know the fallacy of opposites, I sought the truth I might be unconscious of, by asking, “What is the message thou hast prepared for me this day?” I get a bit of truth about myself. It unfolded to me like the skin under an opening zipper. I made a couple of decisions that put me in a vulnerable position. My inner instruction told me not to call myself bad, but to see that it was what it was, and E. wasn’t bad either. I could call myself good, I was instructed, but I had to call E. good, too .In this way, the inner instructor told me, you can take your own wisdom and your own folly, not as opposites to be ignorant of each other, but as something that can come together creatively via a bridge.
I could see that in order to get this information I had to be willing to be my best self. I had to get my teeth out of the juicy, tasty, bone of my right vs. her wrong .
Deeper
The fact that led to the fight was that I was paying my rent seven “little” days later than I should have because I had to juggle due to the aforementioned decision. E. did not hold said check as requested and this cost me, and I tried to deduct that from my next payment and she said pay or be evicted. What?! Wasn’t that a bit extreme for the $35 we were talking about, and what’s up with pulling out the big guns on that? That wasn’t fair!
Then I asked to be shown and I was shown. And the inner voice told me that my payments were like her paycheck, and I wouldn’t want to hear nothing about nothing if my paycheck did not arrive by direct deposit on the day designated as payday.
Overextension took you out of the rhythm of the system whereby money flows through you, both in and out, the inner teacher tells me.
This is paycheck-to-payment discipline, and I am used to playing around with it. And deeper than that is the fact I still have a belief in lapses and shortages because that is just how life is.
And Deeper Still
“And who is the landlord of your soul?” my inner voice asks. I recall a quotation clipped from Oprah’s magazine that I incorporated into my collage for 2008, done mid-December:
I must learn to love the fool in me—the one who feels too much,
Talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often,
lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt,
promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.
It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled
masterful tyrant whom I also harbor
and who would rob me of my human aliveness,
humility and dignity but for my fool.
—Theodore I. Rubin, MD
The landlord of my soul is the masterful tyrant—the indwelling disturber of the peace that I might not have identified were I not in conflict with E., and never would have recognized if I did not come to understand that E. was not the problem. It was her thankless (and no doubt fearful and painful) task, to reflect my inner tyrant for me.
My inner tyrant isn’t ranting about paying my rent on time and staying with the rhythm. The inner tyrant is the one who expects lapses and shortages.
I begin to see this subtle thing about Saturn, ruler of the center of the cube of space we call the physical universe and ruler of discipline and dominion. If a person can cling to this simple point, the razors edge shall be negotiated with precision. Inner discipline is not the tyrant or the taskmaster who doesn’t let you have any leeway or fun. Inner discipline let’s you have safe fun, even if it appears to be wild because it is tied to an inner order and timing. You can have all the fun you want, knowing that you are safely tethered and willing to obey that center to which you are tied. Deviating from that center causes chaos. That chaos is apt to be blamed upon another or some system that is not fair to us.
And there is still more about this inner tyrant. She is everything that confines me to a life where flesh rules. She taunts me by telling me that I am getting older and should expect to slow down, harden, and become inflexible and ill. She makes me obsess about food and its affects, so that food intended for pleasure, sustenance, and energy gets mixed with guilt.
This inner tyrant is anything that tells me I am not enough and that I should abandon the next step because all is coming to a fruitless end. The inner tyrant is self-doubt.
It’s winter now. Days are short and nights are long. Press on when the cold winds blow and the nights darkness seems interminable. Persevere through self-doubt. Eliminate blame as it does not empower you. Remember: “Far beneath the bitter snow lies the seed that with the sun’s love in the spring becomes a rose.” (Bette Middler)