A Heart as Light as a Feather (in a world where genocide still happens)

It’s autumn here in the northern hemisphere, which means it’s Libra season - the season of the archetype of Justice, personified by Goddess in various forms. In India right now, the celebration of Navratri (meaning nine nights) has been in full swing, celebrating the homecoming of the ten-armed, lion-riding Ma Durga after slaying the Buffalo Demon Mahishasura. Durga epitomizes the power of uncompromising Justice.

The presence of the Egyptian goddess of Justice + Balance, Ma’at - symbolized by the balancing scales of the Libra glyph - is also palpable during this season. She is the female counterpart to the scribe-god of magick, the natural sciences, commerce and communication, Thoth.

Along with Thoth, Osiris – the god-king of the Underworld – and other figures, Ma’at was present at the important mythic ritual of the weighing of the heart in the Hall of Truth, which was a fundamental rite of passage for the soul in ancient Egyptian culture.

                                     Vignette of the weighing of the heart ceremony from the Egyptian Book of the Dead,                                          Thebes, Egypt, 1275 BCE

When a person died, they would pass on to the Hall of Truth in the Underworld. Here, their soul – symbolized by the organ of the heart – was placed on one end of a set of scales. On the other end was the feather of Ma’at, an ostrich feather which adorned her head. If the heart was heavier than the feather, the soul was not permitted to pass on to the afterlife, known as the Field of Reeds, a place of blissful, peaceful, redemptive existence and expansive evolution.

A heart not as light as the feather of Ma’at would be devoured by the ferocious-looking Amenti – a deity with the face of a crocodile, the front of a leopard and the back of a rhinoceros – fittingly referred to as “the Gobbler”. There was no eternity of hellfire, damnation and suffering for the ancient Egyptians; simply a reabsorption of the soul back into the primordial state of undifferentiated non-beingness through the portal of Amenti’s jaws. An unconsciousness if you will, to mirror the state of unconsciousness of the soul at its final weighing ceremony.

And what of this light-as-a-feather-heart-soul? What were its essential qualities?

The soul is here to experience all the myriad glorious, terrifying and mundane expressions of its chosen incarnation via simultaneity- specifically, through the process of including + transcending (or going beyond) all that it experiences. This is also the mechanism through which it expands or evolves.

When it arrived at Ma’at’s balancing scales of Justice, a heart-as-light-as-a-feather had not only transcended resentments, turmoil, victimhood and unforgiveness; it had also, through a gradual process of awakening during its lifetime, come to include all dimensions of its incarnation - which is to say, it had lived, felt and experienced Life fully. It had stayed awake and receptive, and had arrived at its final weighing free from the heaviness of bypassing + repression, and false identifications with narratives of victimhood.

This is what set its ongoing evolutionary trajectory in motion.

The symbol of a heart as light as a feather continues to be something of a mythological north star for me. Meanwhile, here we are in a world where genocide is happening. Intellectually refusing to name it as such, bypassing the grief + rage of it in favor of a saccharine expression of love + light or otherwise excluding it from our reality is not going to make the heart-soul as light as a feather.

Authentic love + light does not repress, deny or bypass the darkness. It is not afraid of it, but opens up to it in order to participate in its transmutation and integration. Authentic love + light knows the darkness as itself, also. This is also what Grace is, the essential frequency of the Divine Feminine.

Equally, the heart will inevitably be much heavier than a feather if it’s holding on tightly to storylines of us vs. them, of identifications with anything other than the eternal courage, curiosity, creativity and resilience of the soul - and of having stayed true to the sensational practice of living + embodying those qualities as the vehicle for its evolution.

Meanwhile, here we are, a year after that fateful October 7th date. How has your heart grown in its capacity for simultaneity (which is inseparable from its capacity for Love)?

How have you been digesting the stark and Nature-aligned Truth that persecution and unresolved trauma beget the same? Crucially, this is something that humanity as a whole has to confront, acknowledge and grow out of at this time. If existing governments and power structures refuse to acknowledge this, mature and act accordingly, then it is our radical responsibility to divest from them and collaborate to create our own evolutionary movements.

Do you find yourself intellectually questioning the Truth that this is genocide, this continuing and mandated extinction + expulsion of Indigenous people on + from their lands - which are an extension of their bodies? (Ask your heart, it won’t lie.)

Do you find yourself speaking of love + light, of peace - while numbing yourself to feeling and processiong the grief and rage of internationally bankrolled genocide?

Or, do you find yourself in some dungeon of hatefulness and resentment towards this or that ‘side’?

Do you find your own hidden layers of victimhood and persecution being triggered and activated? If so, invite them in, include and witness them. Open and soften your heart to these shadow-parts, without becoming them and identifying with them.

Or, is your experience something else entirely?

It’s beyond the scope of this email to document the many nuances of how this past year has been moving through our individual nervous systems. All I know is that I’m right here with you. My heart is certainly not as light as a feather, yet. But attuning to this symbol, and to the moment-moment by invitation to simultaneity, through the heart-soul-body, is my devotional practice.

Whatever the permutations of our experience, let’s make the commitment to check in with our hearts, and with our bodies’ capacity. They know + feel the Truth - beyond any intellectual manipulations, repressive bypassings and alluringly false identities of perpetual victimhood.

This is not about the homogeneity of everyone agreeing with each other. Nature and evolution require the balance of biodiversity. Rather, it is the devotional practice of surrendering to and being led by the heart-soul’s felt-sense wisdom, and not weighing it down with the mind’s externally conditioned, approval-seeking ways.

More to say on the symbol of the heart as light as a feather, so this is likely a part one. Part two will be about the radically creative, uncomfortable and life-affirming commitment to unhooking from the mandates of external power structures, and following our inner authority.