Don't look back

I suppose these posts might seem morose. I don’t feel morose, just very aware of the invisible trip wires that exist as I hang suspended in mid-air from my web of creation.

“Don’t look back.” I think of Lot’s wife in the bible: struggling up the hill with her family, leaving her home to go to a safer place. She was an inhabitant of Sodom and Gomorra, infamous dens of iniquity, and the angels had saved her family because her husband had shown courage and grace. Behind her, her home town was aflame and in the process of being destroyed.

Lot’s wife (did she have a name?) looked back. Against instruction, the fleeing woman could not resist turning, one last time, to look at what she had left behind. Instantly she turned into a pillar of salt: immobilized, unable to continue, hooked by regret or nostalgia or a longing for something from her past. Poor Lot’s wife was left forever on the hill as a pillar of salt… I wonder about her.

Why salt? We have Salt of the Earth and it is a scared, purifying substance, much valued in the days of old. Salt is the substance in tears and ocean water. Salt brings out flavour. Why salt?

I amuse myself by spotting and analysing my trip wires. I see how we must leave negativity and free ourselves by moving away without return. I don’t consider my past negative, but I do know that what was, no longer exists and this includes the aspects I would have liked to change.

Like Lot’s wife, I can avoid the opportunity of a whole new reality by staying immobilised in old behaviours. That would deny the gift of the fire. I intend to use it to create an entirely new existence - a positive, clean new way. (I cannot imagine experiencing the total purge of our fire and then trying to reconstruct what was removed. It seems counter-productive. A clean slate is the gift being offered.) One of the ways I do this is to keep my intent pure – salt is traditionally symbolic of this desire.

I think the message for me from Lot’s wife, is not to become rigid with the act of purification that comes from leaving. I could become permanently set up in Resistance To Going Back and therefore still unable to move forward. I must carry my purifying salt with me, not become it.

I shall endeavour to remain fluid; tidal and tearful sometimes, perhaps, but flowing forward with the gift of purification as part of my whole self - not become so attached to the act of purging that I cannot move and become a rigid ‘phalleec symbol’!

I love it when I have become aware of another tripwire, or hook. It enables me to let it go.

Thanks Lot’s wife. I wish I knew your name.