Member-only story
How Am I Doing?
Yemanja is an orisha, originally of the Yoruba religion, who has become prominent in many Afro-American religions. Africans from what is now called Yorubaland brought Yemaya/Yemoja and a host of other deities/energy forces in nature with them when they were brought to the shores of the Americas as captives. She is the ocean, the essence of motherhood, and a protector of children.
Gwyllm Llwydd
*
The need to know the meaning of MY life comes from an ego that insists I’m something special, set apart from the life around me. But the ego has it wrong: the truth is that I am “only one thing among many.”
Life is inherently meaningful, and I can share in that meaning when I’m animated by the fact that I participate in that miracle. Once I abandon the ego-fantasy that my tiny atom of life is the one to worry about, I can know the comfort that comes from being welcomed as a “friend” by the great family of being.
The question “How am I doing?” also comes from our old friend the ego, whose questions are forever flawed! What matters is my intention to hold myself and others “in the glow of ripeness” — that is, in the faith that together we can bear good fruit.
Parker J. Palmer
*
