Halfway between lessons three and four, I've taken time away from active O&M study in order to tap in, in a different way, to what I hope is divine guidance.  (Short form, I've nearly completed the purchase of a property that I've been coveting for a while, and which I envision using to do many good things for my community.)  This has meant feeling the tap-tap-tapping on my shoulder by an invisible hand trying to get my attention that I need to act on something.  It has meant listening, to find out what it was that needed to be acted on.  (I didn't know it was even for sale.)  Can't really define that listening, but listening with my eyes, intuition, everything, not just my ears.  It's meant believing that my aspiration could be possible, even though, with my everyday awareness, I didn't see how.  I've had to pay good attention to my dreams (about a fairy godmother) which have held clues about how to obtain the property without a good income (as far as the banks are concerned).  And I found a use for the figurative sword whose energy I've been carrying all winter, almost palpably--decisive, driving energy!--to accomplish my goal.  I've had to swallow my pride and replace it with courage, and ask for a few big favours...which were gladly granted!  And go with my gut feelings about whom to deal with, and how. 

I'll give myself an "A" for the good use of intuition.  I'll give myself a "D" for the loss of inner temper when dealing with the banks. 

Yeah, I know, I've been doing calming meditation exercises for how many months, now?  But every other time I spoke with the bank officer, I felt like strangling her through the phone for trying to play cat-and-mouse with me:  giving wrong fax and phone numbers, causing delays when time was short; throwing in extra steps, when it seemed everything was in order; going behind my back for approval for an inspection that would cost triple the original estimate, and which would be unrecoverable money.  And saying that if the appraisers found that the price agreed to was too high, the bank's lawyer could hash something out in the back room with the vendor's lawyer, to reduce the price!  Hello?  Where's contract law?  Where's honour?  I would get so incensed with what she told me through the fake smile that I could hear over the phone, that I would spend hours doing sudoku puzzles to try to occupy my thinky-mind with meaningless numeric patterns.  That worked until I started to complete the puzzles subconsciously, and rage on in my conscious mind.  The whole mortgage application procedure stank so badly that in the end I decided to cut out the middleman and ask for private financing...and got it (thanks, Mom!)...for a mutually beneficial financial arrangement.  We're only out by the cost of a few long distance phone calls, and not by thousands of dollars of unnecessary expenses, skimmed off like cream for fat-cat middle management.

I take exception to having my future dangled and played with by someone who seems to take pleasure in misusing her power.  And I know darned well that having one's guts twisting around for a few weeks is bad for one's health.  I guess I learned that it is unacceptable to remain in such a situation, and nobody should have to submit to that in the name of furthering their own cause in another area.

It's Beltane today.  I am focussing not so much on the sacred marriage of the god and goddess to make animals and plants, but on the sacred marriage of vision to will, aspiration to opportunity, intuition to action.  These marriages will bear much fruit, as will be seen later this year, and in coming years!  And I should meditate on how, no matter how grown-up we think we are, we never cease to be our mothers' children; and though they may rest from working on us for a while, they never abaondon us as projects!