Guest Appearance Speaking by Joseph Feusi on Mother's Day 1997. Transcribed from a recording.
I wrote this long ago, but I occasionally still give this to my clients to read. It’s important to realize that we have more gifts than we generally let ourselves acknowledge. One of the privileges of being a Mentor is that when I work with clients, inevitably they come to realize a larger self, a different perspective that allows for much more opportunity, prosperity and happiness. Please read this with an open mind—that maybe you, too, are gifted with all kinds of presents from birth that you have yet to open and realize. It’s been my experience that most people are much grander than they are aware of!
When I think of Mother's Day I think of both Mothers. The one that brought us into the world and we are here today to honor and celebrate her. And also the Sacred Mother that resides in all of us. Today, I would like to talk about the Sacred Mother. She goes by many names; too numerous to mention. First of all, who is our Sacred Mother? To me, the Sacred Mother is the rememberer of the sacred self and the path on which the sacred self walks. She is the keeper of our soul's design and rememberer of the schematic or blueprint of our destiny. She is there when we take our first breath, and she is there with us when we take our last breath. She keeps us in her heart even if for some reason we cannot keep her in ours. She understands. Understanding is her business. She prays for us even when we forget to pray for her. She is always happy to see us, no matter what face we bring her: smiling, laughing, crying, lonely, sad or angry. It does not matter to her. She is always happy to see us. When there is no one else to play with us, she will always be happy to play with us and delights in being called by other names and cast as other characters. When we are young she is even allowed to sit at the dinner table with us as long as it is understood by our parents that she is only imaginary; and then it is safe for them to talk to her, too. When the connection to her is strong in our parents, they are guided by her in supporting the unfolding of our true self. Our parents see brief glimpses of intuition, talent, brilliance and wonder in us and they know that the hidden hand of the Sacred Mother is at work. The Sacred Mother sings sweetly to us in our dreams, and speaks softly to us in our quiet moments. It is she who is heard as the distant drummer that calls us to walk on a path separate from everyone else around us.
I would now like to talk about the dark task of the Sacred Mother. The task of remembering who you are when for some reason you must forget your true self. As our lives unfold, many things can happen to us. We can be brought into this world for many reasons. Our parents may love us very deeply but no one can know our destiny. It can only be unfolded by the granting of the prayer that we prayed before we were born. So even when our parents have our best interests at heart, they sometimes cannot hear our prayer and misunderstand us and our destiny. They were hoping for a good girl or boy and they were not prepared for a child of infinite creativity, as our grandparents may not have been prepared for our parents' infinite creativity. They were hoping for someone to help with the farm and did not know how to feed the heart of the astronomer who would sneak out late at night to gaze at the stars. Our being here may not have involved love. We may have been brought here because our parent or parents were afraid to be alone. Or they themselves did not feel loved as a child and thought we would provide acceptance and love to them that they had missed in their childhood. Sometimes our parents' loss of the Sacred Mother was so painful that they could not bear to see us connected to her. So we took care of them by sending our Sacred Mother away. So in order to survive the circumstances to which we were brought into this world, we had to break the umbilical cord prematurely to our Sacred Mother and in doing so forget that she exists and then disown the destiny that she remembers for us. This separation may be short-lived or last the whole of our lifetime. The separation from her is very painful and we do not do it willingly. The Sacred Mother remembers for us who we really are. She knows that we are not the opinions or the actions that others have or hold against us silently or violently. She is there to help us remember that other people's mistakes in dealing with us do not make us a mistake and that no matter how badly we are treated there is a part of us that is never touched by the negative thoughts and actions of others.
We are not a mistake but a child of the infinite creativity. She waits for a time when it is safe for us to remember her and that which she keeps safely for us. Then she starts to make herself known. In our dreams we become restless. In our lives we become uncomfortable, sad, depressed or angry. We start to lose the will to live out the lies that we had to live by as a child and perpetuate as an adult. As the connection to the Sacred Mother becomes stronger, she guides us to deconstruct the inappropriate life and path that we are following. This may happen one brick at a time or a flash of light like a bolt of lightning. She will recruit friends, teachers, mentors, counselors, self-help classes, yoga instructors and even lovers to the task of awakening our true self. Once you seek her out she does not waste time. Because if you had to forget who you truly are even for one second, it is too long. The Sacred Mother is also very patient. She will wait the whole of your lifetime if that is necessary. She understands that you cannot force high self-esteem onto anyone, even if it would give them a happier life. You can only keep faith in them that someday they will choose to have faith in themselves and ask her for help.
Sometimes the Sacred Mother reappears to us in our later years and this reappearance for men and women is called mid-life crisis. She is no crisis. She is your guardian angel, higher self, and your unlimited potential, all rolled into one. As she helps you to disassemble your inappropriate life, she leaves behind a wake of separation, disillusionment, divorce, alimony, child custody hearings, restraining orders, leave of absences, notice of resignations, house for sale signs, geographical location changes, and transitions of every conceivable kind. She looks for the hiding place of your hidden dreams. The time capsule that houses the forgotten tennis racquet, downhill skis, tap dancing shoes, martial arts uniform, black evening dress, art supplies, musical instruments, incomplete manuscripts, telescopes and all the other things that you have wished for or even bought, but could not give yourself permission to use and demonstrate your talents with. She also guides us to restore happiness, fun, joy, compassion, self-love, intuition, spontaneity, wonder, brilliance, understanding and serenity. All these things and more, she will help you to restore and use as the cornerstone of the new foundation that you will lay to build the house that will house your true self, your true power and the fulfillment of your dreams. All these things the Sacred Mother is waiting and ready to do for you now.
Many people ask me about the Sacred Father and what role he plays in our life. I do not talk about the Sacred Father to them until they have finished their work with the Sacred Mother. I explain that the Sacred Father teaches us how to defend the sacredness of self in us and in others. But if we do not believe that we have a self, and learn how to protect the self without restoring it in us first, we become the sacred self's worst enemy. How can you protect virtue if you are under the illusion that you are not virtuous? How can you defend self-connectedness if you yourself do not believe you are connected? You will start out with good intentions, only to become a slayer of that which you would defend. For a defense that is held by a hand that is not connected to a heart and soul can only separate others from their hearts and souls. So, the Sacred Father inside you halts you as you approach him to see if you have finished your work with the Sacred Mother. If you have not, and persist in pursuing him, he will chase you away, sending you back to her. He does not do this out of a lack of love, but of concern. Because he would teach you how to walk through fire and soar like an Angel, casting off everything that you believe limits you. But if in the heart of your soul you have not learned to love as the Sacred Mother teaches, the limits that your beliefs would set upon you would burn you in a flaming baptism or leave you lying on the ground like a bird with two broken wings. The Sacred Mother teaches you how to have and keep a soul. The Sacred Father teaches us how to be a Wizard. The world is not a safe place when you have Wizards without souls. So you are sent away. If we are afraid of the greatness that the Sacred Mother would bestow upon you, believing that you are undeserving, then you become vagrant children estranged to the Sacred Mother and Father, cast into a world ruled by the laws of scarcity — passively or aggressively competing with each other, oftentimes violent, physically, and emotionally. Because of a belief in limited resources, out of touch with our true self and the true nature of the universe. So busy trying to stay alive that you have forgotten that you once knew how to live and that you still do.
In "The Prophet,” Khalil Gibran wrote, "We are all arrows in flight on the path towards the infinite." Khalil Gibran also wrote, "We are a boundless drop to a boundless ocean, we are infinity looking at its own reflection in a mirror. We are infinity and we are the mirror." Marianne Williamson famously wrote, "We ask oneself, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?" This is the question that the Sacred Mother is prepared to help you answer. Many of us in this room and in the world are seeking out our Sacred Mother and reconnecting with her. And as she holds us to her breast and she nourishes us back to the person we were born to be, it is my belief that the Sacred Mother has been waiting for us as a race of beings for many thousands of years. So in celebration of the Sacred Mother in you: Happy Mother's Day!