Sunday Scribblings #122 -- Do I have to?

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves."
- an excerpt from Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

I love these words. I love how they resonate in my heart and make me feel. I love the thought of "SOFT ANIMAL OF MY BODY " loving what it loves.

I was first introduced to Mary Oliver by a wonderful Goddess named Dr. Jane Miner who I met at the Green Valley Spa in Utah. She shared with me Mary Oliver's The Journey.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice--
though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug at your ankles.

"Mend my life!" each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,

though their melancholy was terrible.
It was already late enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little, as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,

determined to do the only thing you could do--
determined to save the only life you could save .

These words started me on my journey to find the soft animal within and finally be FREE. It gave me an opportunity to question and explore different paths then what I felt was the "WAY" dictated by our society and enforced by the media and movies and magazines. It made me reassess what I really thought I had to do.

Goddess Mary's words and Goddess Jane's life coaching (her prodding and wonderful questions) gave me permission to listen to that one quiet voice within and turn off all the other voices (within and outside of me) who were directing me how and who to be.

Slowly, slowly, one baby step at a time, I shed the trappings of who I thought I was a

nd what I had to do. I let go of what I thought was aesthetically pleasing and let my true ANIMAL nature come out.

I let my hair grow long, I stopped making it lighter or darker depending on the season and let my natural color and glow return.

No more heels - tee hee!!! and no more back-aches, head-aches, bunions. Finally letting my spine realign itself for comfort and ease of body rather than "having to do" sexy.

No more make-up. No more layers of color to make myself look better or enhance my self. Just me the way Nature intended me to be.

No more perfumes to give me a scent that is not my own. My true scent, my soft animal scent is so very appealing it seems to be attracting all sorts of interesting people & Meows and Bow Wows into my life. Tee hee!!!

And the funny thing is letting go of all these things that I thought I had to do has given me permission to be real. Not having to do any thing has freed up so much energy and time. It's given me the opportunity to find out about ME - what I am passionate about, what revs up my juices, what I truly love. It has freed me to BE instead of do - back to being a HUMAN BEAN instead of a human doing.