"A Tale of Two Sisters"

I liken Bound Lotus to a conscious choice to do the 'soul-work' that is imperative to do when one is terminally ill and has no other choice than to do this or die. Though my mother had cancer, I do not. I did have myalgic encephalitis, or CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), severe Asthma, and a number of other problems related to a weakened immune system that left me in a weakened rage at the world's inability to understand how just the acts of breathing and lifting a fork were major undertakings. Many days only the mild exertion of washing the car or vacuuming, or taking a shower would leave me so weak I had to lie down or else I would begin vomiting, or have a coughing fit. The constant fatigue was bone-crushing and often induced a mental fog. I lived in a half-world. Believing I could get well, then chanting Sanskrit mantra, then Reiki, then crystals, then finally strong enough to do Yoga again, vegetarianism, and learning to find joy in life got me physically well. But mentally I'm still raw. I'd rather not elaborate on diagnoses in this arena...

This Bound Lotus practice, it is doing for me what often only gets done when a person receives a diagnosis of terminal illness. There are many "things" which the medical community deems incurable. This practice...it takes me down into my psychological depths "to be with the pain, the wounding and rage that is there - to that place in the psyche..."

The Sumerian myth of Inanna, the Queen of Heaven's descent into the Underworld to save her bitter and angry sister Erishkegal is about change:

"The descent part of the Inanna myth - the going through the gates and giving up symbols of identity, persona, defenses; being stripped, humbled, struck down, and left hanging on a hook, feeling like so much dead meat - is the easy part of the story to understand as metaphor. In our suffering and losses we have all been Inanna. It is much harder to accept that we are also Erishkegal, because she is a combination of disowned, unacceptable, or undeveloped qualities that become known only through a descent, through which we give up illusions, stop denying the truth, and lose our former (often one-sided) sense of ourselves. We may have projected these qualities upon others, or judged, rejected, scapegoated, and distanced ourselves from anyone who exemplified Erishkegal."

Such are the words of Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. as she describes this process of myth. What she had to say next when I opened the book left me with an eerie feeling of reflection on the literal sort of 'disowning' my sister and I have done with each other, my own disowned parts of myself buried deep within me under the shadow of ego, and the 54 flies that visited me through my bedroom window last Fall...

"If I were telling you this myth because you were in the midst of a descent, and you had really listened, it could serve as an initiation story, a metaphoric for the journey that you know something about in the marrow of your bones. It is a story that can be taken to heart, long before the mind knows why. This was the case several years ago, when I told the story of Inanna and Erishkegal to Helene Smith, Ph.D., the director of a cancer research center, who had in the previous few weeks been diagnosed with breast cancer and was just recovering from surgery when I saw her. Helene's research was on breast cancer, and this turn of events might have remained a bitter irony, a mockery that diminished the meaning of her life work, had she not been able to see this illness as a rite of passage.

"Helene told of her experience in 'A Tal of Two Sisters' in a medical center publication (Susan Weiner with Helene Smith, "A Tale of Two Sisters" in 'Ways of the Healer', Fall 1994/ Winter 1995, San Francisco:,Program of Medecine & Philosophy, California-Pacific Medical Center), pp. 8-10.) She recounted that when she heard the story about Inanna's descent, 'I cried for the first time and that was really the beginning of my healing.'

"She went on to say, 'The meaning of the myth has taken me years to fully understand. I had a sister who died of cancer, and I had many difficulties with that relationship [this sister had been an Erishkegal to Helene's Inanna, in the contrast between her life and Helene's professional and personal accomplishments and recognitions in the world], so there was healing that was necessary for me to do at a symbolic level. But also, you see, we are all Erishkegal.'

"Helene saw that the two sisters in the myth 'are really the two sides of ourselves' that we need to bring together, make peace with, and show compassion for. 'It's your negative side that will destroy you positive side unless you are willing to recognize yourself as having both. From there I started meditating, and bunches of flies (those compassionate creatures in the myth who empathized with suffering) came to me in meditation to bring me back from the underworld. It became a real healing for me.' "

Having read this makes me think again about adding 'The Meditation of Change' to my practice of Bound Lotus. This meditation I found on p. 26 of the very same Nov/Dec 2006 issue of Aquarian Times, in which the article on Bound Lotus first caught my eye. It is a meditation to probe the ego to change and unblock the subconscious communication within your own soul to let you see your own maturity and potential for change - to remove doubt about the future. I am no longer afraid of the future, I have doubts about my continued success, and doubt, as Yogi Bhajan said, steals three feet of your auric radiance.

When do I begin this? I already did Bound Lotus this morning, coughing and hacking my way through it, and spitting up loads of pghlem at the end. Gross but true. Spitting up cobwebs it feels like, and always did for the years when I coughed everyday, all day. For the years when I looked in the mirror and thought, "God, not her again!" Well she's back. The side of me I don't like. I guess I'll have to make friends with her. As I say this, I realize that I am now my version of Erishkegal speaking. I don't like the sweet, namby-pamby, New Age Inanna side of me, nor her precious flies come to save me from myself. I killed them all last fall. "And what is all this crap about the color white too?" I think. Black is beautiful too.