Verses 16, 26: “When he [Lot] lingered, they [the angels] took him by the hand, with his wife and daughters, and because the Lord had spared him, led him on until he was outside the city… But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she turned into a pillar of salt.”
The Western Mystery Tradition affirms that the Divine Essence pulls us forward, leading us on the path of enlightenment. We do the seeking and the work of gardening our psyche/souls, but God Within/the Self draws us to feel, image, and desire that which we need for the fullest expression of our soul.
We are moved forward by innate urgings, desires, and impulses that prompt us to grow and live more wholly who we are. Analytical psychology talks about this as the individuation instinct. Carl Jung stated our libido/life force has a direction it naturally flows unless blocked.
The soul is teleological (purposeful). We are pulled (or pushed) forward to develop and grow. Nothing in nature stands still. It is either dying or growing! This is true of our body, minds, and spirits too.
Sometimes, we are reluctant to move! We know we need to give up a way of doing (or not doing) something, leave a relationship (with another, a place, a job, etc.), or take action on an idea or desire. We feel the prompt from “the angels” within that show up as intuitions, gut knowing, visions, etc. Our reason and evaluative functions see changes we need to make in our habits, thoughts, home, psychic and physical environments. Yet, we stay where we are, doing the same thing, and we wonder why nothing is different! Like Lot, we may hear our inner angels directing us and still put off taking the needed step.
When we postpone or delay, we may find ourselves being pushed out of a situation or pulled into something new. Suddenly, we’re doing something we never thought we’d do. We may be in a relationship we never imagined for ourselves. We may be forced into new circumstances by another’s choice (our employer, our spouse, a friend, the driver in the lane beside us) or an unanticipated event (accident, illness, gifts, love). Such happenings take us to new territory in our inner and outer worlds. As “they [the angels] took [Lot] by the hand…and led him out…,” we too are led.
When we first see the hurt, confusion, disappointment, or angst in ourselves or others, we may feel immobilized. There is a rooting in the human condition of limitation and the reality that creation and destruction coexist. We have to be able to bear knowing the destruction we’ve left behind.
Growth always involves death; something ends for the new to come. Where we are curious and look backwards, instead of forwards, like Lot’s wife, we are humbled. Salt is an alchemical symbol for the earth. To be earthed is to be humbled, to be grounded in the realities of being human. No new is born unless the existing passes away.
Inner Reflection
Take a few minutes to notice where you are feeling led in your life. What are the angels of intuition, unanticipated circumstances, unbidden visitors of feelings and desires, etc. saying? Where are they pointing? What is the loss that is coming? Where are you being led to a new place of living? Notice where you feel humbled and grounded in the process. Set sacred intention to follow the lead of God Within.