Episode 12: Lilith and Worth

In episode 12 of the podcast, the hosts discuss the energy and essence of Lilith, an archetype known for her association with independence, rebellion, and the dark divine feminine. The episode begins with a sung invocation to invite Lilith, leading to an emotional response from the participants. The hosts share personal experiences illustrating Lilith's influence on self-worth, courage, and spiritual growth. They delve into Lilith's mythological story and its translations, examining her role in early religious texts and modern interpretations as a symbol of female empowerment. A key point is the narrative of Lilith's creation alongside Adam, her refusal to submit, and her subsequent demonization. The discussion touches on integrating Lilith's qualities into daily life, such as reclaiming personal desires, nurturing one's worth, and challenging societal norms. The episode includes profound insights from Samuel, another spiritual entity, who emphasizes the importance of embracing one's full self, including the darker aspects. The hosts encourage embracing wonder, play, and joy as pathways to embody Lilith's lessons. The episode concludes with Jenn channeling Lilith through her singing voice, sharing the energy of Lilith's transformative power.

link to Marianne Williamson passage Jenn references - discussing our worth, not playing small, and more.  We highly recommend reading it. It's short, and poignant. https://sueddie.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/our-deepest-fear-deepest-inspiration-to-live-by-marianne-williamson/

link to Sophie Bashford book referenced by Jenn - You are a Goddess that has a lovely introduction to Lilith and a powerful mediation to meet her.  https://www.sophiebashford.com/book/

Thank you joining us today, remember to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to keep up to date with your tribe.

Connect with your Hosts!

Tava Baird: tavabaird.com or https://darkflowerbooks.etsy.com.

Jennifer Taylor: Willow Ridge Reiki and Healing Arts https://www.willowridgereiki.com/

Transcript

Tava Baird: [00:00:00] Hello, we're back with episode 12.

Tava Baird: I know I'm, I am on the edge of my seat. I've learned now to bring a big fresh notebook to each of these podcasts, and, uh, got my pen here and we'll see, we'll see what happens today.

Jennifer Taylor: Absolutely. I look forward to it. And so, as usual, we will start out with a sung invocation and it is my intention today to invite Lilith, who we are told is specially communicates through song and dance to utilize my voice. And so I invite her energy and her essence and all that is Lilith to [00:01:00] Come through and use my voice as a way of speaking to you through song.

Jennifer Taylor: (singing) [00:02:00] Nnn. Nnnn . [00:03:00] 

Tava Baird: OK. Wow. That was a different one. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah. Yeah, it was, uh, very different.

Tava Baird: I'm very glad I muted myself for that because I started crying and you would have heard me sniffling into the microphone. Um, wow. So Samuel just kept saying, there she is, there she is, there she is. And then at the end he started laughing.

Jennifer Taylor: I 

Jennifer Taylor: was like, you're going to make me make that weird noise, aren't 

Jennifer Taylor: you? 

Tava Baird: I, yeah, he just, he just started going basically. I've learned to, I've learned to say that the seraphim does not giggle. We have been told this before. He does not giggle.

Tava Baird: as you were singing, I thought I [00:04:00] was just fine. I just got, there was such a wave of emotion from him that it overwhelmed my system. I was having trouble writing all of the stuff that was going on. the other time that it happened is when I was painting her.

Tava Baird: And I have that passage up to read. I'm sorry, I need another tissue. I'll be right back. 

Tava Baird: Sure. I apologize. I did not expect to cry my way through the podcast today. 

Jennifer Taylor: I may be, joining you as you, as you left. And I, I just sat for a minute and was thinking Lilith for, for coming through and I felt this welling in my chest and like my heart chakra, it just kept welling up and I was thanking her.

Jennifer Taylor: And. I heard "you are a beautiful vessel." And I just, I started crying. I was like, oh good. And then I remembered the first time I really felt [00:05:00] her come in, I just kept crying with this overwhelming, just gratitude for her and the energy that she brings and that That thing that she awakens in us and I just kept crying and then I remember leaving you a Marco about it and I, about how I was crying and then I just cried through the entire Marco and now I feel it and I start to talk about it again and there are just tears flowing.

Jennifer Taylor: So this is, this just may be how the podcast goes today. And if anybody's really feeling her, they're likely to be, uh, just crying along with us. So. Feel free to grab a tissue today. 

Tava Baird: We should go back and say, if you're listening to this in the car, have a hanky ready on the passenger seat. 

Jennifer Taylor: Exactly. 

Tava Baird: Samael says, regarding Lilith, she is laughter, she is song, she is rejoicing, she is tragedy.

Tava Baird: And when you were talking about crying, he said, it is release, umsha. So Lilith, while we're off to quite a [00:06:00] start, a different sort of song and both of your hosts are in tears,we think it might be good to talk a little bit about the one story of Lilith we do know. a lot of people who are listening, may have heard of Lilith before Lilith has become very much a representation of the rebellious, strong female, power that so many of us, really need and want as a guiding force in this world.

Tava Baird: It's pretty much I think the one story that is commonly known about her and it's even not that common. Jen, do you want to tell it or do you want me to? 

Jennifer Taylor: Oh, you can tell it. I think you know it better than I do. 

Tava Baird: most of us in America, the version of the Bible that's around is the King James Bible.

Tava Baird: there's been lots of different versions of the Bible. over time, certain things got put in and certain things got taken out. There were lots of translations. when you're translating from one language to another, [00:07:00] or you have a powerful benefactor, you highlight certain things that he thinks are very important about the Bible.

Tava Baird: You end up with certain things that get left out. I had someone tell me it's actually still in some Bibles in Africa, but I don't know what branch of Christianity that is. there's this old story that is one of these early tales, and the story says that when the Garden of Eden was created, and Adam and Eve were brought there, that it wasn't Adam and Eve.

Tava Baird: First, it was Adam and Lilith, than Lilith being created out of Adam's rib. they were both created the same way. They were, and I believe that's from the earth, from the soil. And they were told, go forth and multiply.

Tava Baird: Adam said, all right, baby, we got to go forth and multiply, And Lilith said, not really interested. cover the [00:08:00] ears of any children listening right now. the story says that when they were supposed to multiply, Adam in particular wanted to be dominant and Lilith was not down with that.

Tava Baird: She said, we've created the same way. There's no reason I should have to follow what you say. I'm not here for this. And that she left Adam went, Oh, no, my whole function is to go forth and multiply. And that's not working out. So the story says that Adam cried out to God and said, we got to get her back.

Tava Baird: help me out here? And so God dispatched some angels. And the angels go and they hunt down Lilith, who's walking somewhere outside the Garden of Eden. And they said, Lilith, you got to come back. This is your job. And she said, I'm sorry, I already found myself a boyfriend. And they said, ooh, because you are literally the only, like, Adam's the only man here, and you are the only woman, where did you pick up a boyfriend, in this amount of time?

Tava Baird: And [00:09:00] she said that,Archangel Samael had found her first, and that they were now together, and basically, she wasn't coming back. So at that point, the story says the angels go back and they go, you don't want to come back. Interestingly, the story does not say that God smites her or anything along those lines.

Tava Baird: Instead, Eve is created and Eve is created out of Adam's rib. And we all pretty much know how the rest of that tale went. Pretty soon there were more people outside of the garden because of, apples and snakes and other lovely things like that. Samael is often confused with Lucifer. It's unclear in a lot of these old books, Samuel actually appears in the book of Enoch, which is not a biblical book right now.

Tava Baird: It's an older text, then the story goes on to then say that Lilith then, because she had failed to do her job. became the queen of demons [00:10:00] and that all the demons are born out of her and she became this horrible evil thing and then of course for centuries afterwards whenever a man wanted to insult a woman he would call her a Lilith that she was ungodly and the queen of demons and that's the story that we have about Lilith you may have seen bumper stickers and things right now I know I have tote bags that I sell at one point that said Always be Lilith, never an Eve.

Tava Baird: Lilith has become very popular,in modern pagan culture, as a symbol of women standing up for themselves. So that is pretty much the story we have of Lilith, that supposedly she spawns demons. They claim that he and Samael are some sort of shadow, Adam and Eve. That they can morph themselves into one being at times with two heads and there's all these crazy stories about the two of them.

Tava Baird: [00:11:00] when I wrote the first book of Samael, he did talk about her a little bit in it. he's been much more talkative about her recently. And I brought some of those things to read today. Jen has also had experiences with Lilith and with another entity referring to Lilith. one of the reasons that I'm so keen on doing this today is first off, she's an integral part of Samael's story.

Jennifer Taylor: And also I think we could always use a little girl power. But, also I've been going on a journey of finding my worth and getting to a place where I can say where I'm just not a people pleaser in life and where I can see my own value and it's been a huge struggle and Samuel at one point told me that Lilith was someone that I [00:12:00] could learn from, in that regard because Lilith did know her own worth Thank you for sharing that. And my first introduction to Lilith was actually through, a book called, you are a goddess by Sophie Bashford. she includes Lilith in this book and in it, she describes some meditations and guided imagery of going into this temple and meeting them.

Jennifer Taylor: And These are some of the things that Sophie Bashford says in it and I feel like it resonates a lot with the types of experiences that we've had. in her introducing us to Lilith, she says, Temptress of the feminine fire spirit, the keeper of your wild dreams, the guardian of your sacred secrets, the key holder of your innermost desires, The template of your profound sexual mysteries.

Jennifer Taylor: You have found the one who can light the [00:13:00] ancient fires so long deadened within your souls. You are rocked back into wildness and unabashed inner authority. I thought that was so beautiful. Holy cow. I was like, oh my goodness, this is, yeah, not at all what I had heard of Lilith.

Jennifer Taylor: And I think just in that, it reminded me of why it is that men would have been so afraid. Of women, owning this, these parts of themselves and identifying with Lilith and why they would need to vilify her, the idea of, it's so scary, the end, threatening the idea of, us really Owning our worth and our, sexual mysteries and our sexual power as though that were something bad and wrong and evil and those kinds of things.

Jennifer Taylor: But it's the, the innermost parts of you that you are most and where all this power [00:14:00] lies inside you and yet the fear that people have of women claiming that power and the fear that we as women have of claiming that from. Yeah. centuries of being told that, that all of that is, bad and, evil and things like that.

Tava Baird: Especially when it's pretty much in seven days, God made the world sort of thing. It's pretty much the first thing you hear as a child when they start teaching you about the Bible. Can you imagine the difference it would have made if instead of hearing Women are responsible for the original sin.

Tava Baird: We had heard women were created equal, and that there's a woman out there who knew her worth and said, I will not submit. How would that have changed where our society is right now? It would have, we would be in a completely [00:15:00] different place if instead of the story of Adam and Eve, they just included the story of Adam and Lilith.

Tava Baird: this also leads you into the idea of if we are raised in this idea that there is good versus evil and heaven versus hell. Well, if somebody like Lilith actually has admirable qualities. But she's considered to be the queen of demons and like the embodiment of evil by our society. For demons, people always say, Oh, Samiel is supposed to be associated with demons.

Tava Baird: You do dark magic and like sacrifice things. And I'm like, nothing could be farther from the truth. When we look at the demonization of, especially female characters in, history and also in myth, it's another one of the reasons why Medusa is having this resurgence of popularity right now.

Tava Baird: I mean, you have [00:16:00] all this time of Medusa being seen as the victim and Medusa being seen as a monster. I sell bumper stickers that say Medusa was framed and people always are drawn to them when I'm vending it and they start laughing and they think they're fantastic. And I say, well, she was, you know, Medusa has actually become a symbol for a lot of women's shelters in terms of she,overcame being attacked and foundpower.

Tava Baird: She found a way to defend herself for at least a while. in the Medusa story, she's attacked by Poseidon, she's violated by Poseidon, and yet she gets described as the monster, right? So we're seeing that demonization survivors of, of women who attempted to make their own choices happen yet again.

Tava Baird: I think one of the things we think about is Lilith really the monster she is made out to be? And what exactly do we mean when we say angels and demons, is [00:17:00] there sliding scale on this? Are there gray areas? Samuel likes to tell us he straddles worlds and that we all do none, no, no, none of us is one pure thing.

Tava Baird: So, 

Jennifer Taylor: and there is, that is definitely something that has come through, A lot of different messages is that, not we are not one pure thing and that we have nothing to fear from our own darkness. And I had asked early on, um, because I realized that, I have a lot of embedded fears from the Christian myths and the Christian,perspectives of, original sin and all the things that make something evil and all of that and the various judgments in there.

Jennifer Taylor: when something new comes to me, I have to first kind of battle that. Okay. Is this, is this bad? Is this evil? Am I being somehow tricked by [00:18:00] the devil and all these kinds of things that aren't even things that are inMy actual belief system, but start bubbling up all of a sudden when I, step into something new, I realized all of those old teachings and old things that were embedded in me really early on start to come up and I had asked Sekhmet

Jennifer Taylor: which is funny for me to say that and say so I asked Sekhmet, but that was something that I had to really work through is this okay? Because she has her own, mythology around her that would be scary. I was asking about Lilith, is this something, someone I should be working with?

Jennifer Taylor: Is this okay? And she said, "Lilith is another aspect of the dark divine feminine. She will not lead you astray, but deeper into yourself. You have nothing to fear from her darkness. You are being called to shatter your fears and old framework of thinking about good and evil, light and dark.

Jennifer Taylor: It is scary, but it is necessary. When you can accept the [00:19:00] darkness within others in the divine realm, you can accept it within yourself." so much fear of the idea of darkness. I know we've talked about light and darkness 

Jennifer Taylor: And Samael has told us over and over. They're not the same as, good and evil. this is a darkness of. the womb, darkness of that place beneath the earth where things sprout and grow. And it is just as holy as a place of light. but we tend to hide parts of ourselves in places that feel dark in our, in ourselves.

Tava Baird: even if you say, well, I'm not a member of an organized religion, it's all through our society. if you live in America, and I would say probably Canada to Europe, that whole area, these are cultures that were good versus evil, that dichotomy everybody shield your children's ears.

Tava Baird: We're really going to have to check the adult box on today's podcast, the whole virgin versus whore idea, like all of [00:20:00] that, that, that it's dark versus light. I run into so many people who say, I'm starting out on a new path, but I know I have a lot of shadow work to do.

Tava Baird: And they're using the term shadow work to encompass all of the things in themselves that they know don't serve them, but that need to be let go, but they're not sure how to put them down. Lilith has been extremely helpful for both you and I over the past several months

Tava Baird: The idea of her challenges us to look at and say, do we really need to do this? Because someone else told us that's the way it should be done. Is that really the best, kindest, most equal, most inclusive way to do things? Or does someone simply want me to submit? Does someone simply want to do it because that's the way it's always been done?

Tava Baird: Can we rake new ground here and bring in something beautiful by challenging these old ideas that we just carry around with us, that permeate the way that [00:21:00] we work and the way that we interact and the way that we talk about ourselves? I know a couple of months back, I had a horrible habit, constantly referring to myself as old.

Tava Baird: beautiful listeners. You should know. Jennifer Taylor is like one of the kindest people walking this earth. He's always super sweet and super nurturing. The one time I have heard her. Really go. Oh, no, you're not doing this was what she gave me a very stern yet firm and loving talking to about the fact that I referred to myself as old and creaky all the time.

Tava Baird: And she said, age doesn't have anything to do with that. It's the way you're thinking about yourself. She's like, you're, in your low fifties. You keep referring to yourself as. Old and creaky and unhealthy and all of these things. That's what you're going to manifest.

Tava Baird: whoever got that idea into your head. You need to set it down or otherwise, that's who you're [00:22:00] going to be and you're not happy like that. And it hit me so hard. I had my husband doing it too and I realized he and I both were constantly reinforcing each other with this behavior.

Tava Baird: And I sat him down and I was like, we're in trouble. We cannot keep saying this stuff about ourselves,we've made a real effort every now and then I can hear him and hear him do it. Then he goes, Oh, I'm not supposed to say that anymore. And then he rephrases it. And. We think it's really helped, because it is true that what you say about yourself.

Tava Baird: Creates the reality around yourself. it becomes your mindset in that your mind is driving so much of this. So the thing about Lilith is Lilith tells us we are equal. We have worth. We can leave if we want to leave. I'm not going to submit to certain thoughts.

Tava Baird: I'm leaving this thought. that's an active of a beautiful [00:23:00] divine rebellion right there. obviously you have to make sure what you're doing is safe. that's one of the things about her. If it's okay with you, Jen, what I thought I would do, because I think this would be a really good place for it, is read.

Tava Baird: it's the Lilith chapter from the book of Samael. it talks about the first time I had an experience with Samael and Lilith.

Tava Baird: so this is a little short chapter titled Lilith from the Book of Samael. After Samael's first few visits, I felt the need to make him a character in my novel Bonewitch.

Tava Baird: If Samael was visiting me to help reset views I had carried with me from my ethical life. Bringing that we're in error, I thought he could do the same for one of the major characters in my book. I started getting letters from readers shortly after the book came out saying that Samuel was one of their favorite parts of the book and that, in several cases, people [00:24:00] found themselves moved to tears.

Tava Baird: Since I was quoting Samuel nearly verbatim in the novel, I took this as a sign that a full conversation needed to be its own book. 

Tava Baird: But now that he and Lilith had become characters in my book series, I needed to paint them because I was in the midst of painting an oracle deck to go with the books. Finger painting that I had done of Samael would become the artwork for his card.

Tava Baird: Now I needed to make one for Lilith. I wanted to make her card special. I sat down at the canvas and began to paint a image of how I wanted her represented burning greatly in my mind. I'd never asked Samayel about her, 

Tava Baird: I found myself wondering what their actual relationship was. So I said to him, I'm painting Lilith right now, don't know exactly what she looks like. Feels right that I have her wearing a deer skull mask. 

Tava Baird: Samiel, can you look? His presence is there behind me in the room. [00:25:00] I had no idea it would be so easy to just ask him to appear in the middle of the day. Didn't I need sigils or something? Samael laughed. Why summon someone who is already here? I said, I'm painting Lilith. What did she look like?

Tava Baird: And I am shocked at the feelings coursing through me. Absolute, indescribable glee. The sort of laughter that you can't stop and makes tears come to your eyes. As if, in asking about her, I have generated in Samael a flurry of emotions akin to the excitement of a child as their guests arrive at their long awaited birthday party.

Tava Baird: And I know, without a doubt, that I'm feeling the emotions he feels about Lilith, the mention of her name. It is a level of joy that only appears in children, as if he is the highest level of delighted that can ever be, as if he is seeing his best friend and most cherished confidant after a long and lonely [00:26:00] absence.

Tava Baird: This is not a level of human emotion. This is a frenzied and chaotic storm of adoration. threatens to undo my mind. I am giggling like a two year old who has just discovered butterflies for the first time and is allowed to pet one. I feel as fascinated and thunderstruck. It's the first time I fell in love.

Tava Baird: Amplified. There aren't words. I am in a happy rapture. This is how he feels when just her name is mentioned. It is outside the framework of any adult relationship I have ever experienced. There isn't even a sexual quality to the feelings. Just the feeling of flying, shouting out and singing drunkenly at the moon, and a strong wave of a license to be silly.

Tava Baird: All the stories I had heard about them revolved around sex. They say she wouldn't submit to Adam, that she left the garden, and that Samael found her and became her consort. That they are husband and [00:27:00] wife and that their joining unleashes evil into the universe. And I know, in this instant, how very wrong these descriptions of them are.

Tava Baird: Husband and wife are the farthest thing from the truth. And a very human way to try and describe something that humans don't have the capacity to understand. He is, if anything, his flamate, and one who understands him. And any attempts to frame what she is to him, within the tiny, limited scope of sex, is just pathetic and wrong.

Tava Baird: Thank you, I say to him once I have calmed down. I am weak from laughter, and there are tears running down my face. He has given me a taste of his passion for her, and it is at the upper limit of what I can handle without my ability to think straight. I cannot do her justice, but I will try. Painting goes easily and smoothly after that.

Tava Baird: And he laughs.

Tava Baird: So that [00:28:00] was my first experience of trying to understand a little corner of how an archangel feels about the Queen of Demons. 

Jennifer Taylor: the demon thing reminded me, he had mentioned once, this is why they call her demon, I had sat down and asked her to speak to me and,had channeled her through channeled writing.

Jennifer Taylor: And then I'd sent that to, uh, Tava for her to listen, to read and see what she thought. And as she was reading it. Samuel came through and had additional words and additional things to say about it. And so she had sent that back to me and I thought it was really interesting.Lilith was talking about, it had mentioned the word hate in one of the things that she was saying, as far as something that exists and it is a part of everything and that [00:29:00] we need to kind of address.

Jennifer Taylor: And,Samuel had said, She is the all she is a radical acceptance of the self and in the wild in God She is her true nature and one with God and then her identity is nothing because she had said I am the all and The nothing and I was like, huh? I'm not quite sure what that is And so it was he was saying, she is the all When she is the radical acceptance of the self, and in the wild, and in God, and in her true nature, she is one with God, and then her identity is nothing, because there's nothing, there's nothing separating her from something else.

Jennifer Taylor: They said this is a sign of what she has learned. And she comes and disappears and comes again, and each time she is both a lowly and lofty thing. And he said she often uses words she knows disturbs you to force you to contemplate why they disturb you. Look at the word hate, umshalah. Look at how quickly you went right to [00:30:00] that word.

Jennifer Taylor: Lilith asks, Do you fear this word, or perhaps do you not understand your own capacity for hate? If you accept that humans can feel hate, that it is a human emotion, can you only accept it in others, or also in yourself? This is why they call her demon Umshala. She raises the things no one wants to look at.

Jennifer Taylor: They try to banish her, ward her away, and I find that endlessly intriguing. So that was, one of the things that Simeon said, but I thought that was so interesting that The idea of, her as demon, if someone has a personal experience with her and she brings up something that's really hard or tries to get them to accept something in themselves that they have decided or that has been told to them by their society or something else is evil or bad, then they associate that with her and decide, She is demon because she would [00:31:00] have me accept this in myself.

Jennifer Taylor: And so I thought that was just a fascinating look at and insight into what happens to, aspects of the divine who are trying to help us to see ourselves. And when we see a part of ourselves that we can't accept, then we would associate, we would decide to call them a demon as opposed to thinking, Oh my goodness, goodness.

Jennifer Taylor: you, you love me and want me to accept all of myself. 

Tava Baird: There's this idea of temptation, right? this idea that, a demon or a devil shows up to tempt you. One of the things that Samael said at one point was temptation is just an opportunity to reflect on balance. If I happen to be sitting in front of a lovely pile of warm chocolate chip cookies, oh man, now I really want a warm chocolate chip cookie.

Tava Baird: But imagine you have, you might be tempted to eat the [00:32:00] chocolate chip cookies. If you eat a cookie, does it make you evil? Right? What the temptation there does though, is do I eat so many cookies that I make myself ill? Do I eat, do we take more cookies? So many cookies that there aren't enough for other people to enjoy it?

Tava Baird: Each of those temptation is not just somebody pulls you into something and you are powerless to stop it. The idea of the temptation is that you stop and say, does this serve me? Does this serve the greater good? Can I enjoy and partake of it and still be in balance? And it's that reflection that is important.

Tava Baird: This whole idea of, the devil made me do it. It's one of the, one of the few things that makes Samuel get upset when he hears that. You would think angels are chill all the time. He is not chill when he hears people say that. Because the whole [00:33:00] idea with humans is that we're supposed to have free will, right?

Tava Baird: So this idea that we would give away our power and our responsibility, I think it's in the Spiderman universe where they say with great power comes great responsibility, right? We're very powerful creatures as humans. And if we say, oh, something else forced me to do it, we are not taking responsibility for our own actions.

Tava Baird: having someone else to blame for responsibility that we should have taken is really, it appears, what has made Lilith a demon, or how she became demonized, exactly as Jen was saying. Samael actually not long ago told his version of the story of meeting Lilith.

Tava Baird: And I think this might be a good time for it. so this is all his words......................... Lilith, she is the beginning, [00:34:00] singular, and I am the completion of the cycle. It was meant to be a part of a larger plan, pattern inside supposed chaos. He was made equal on that day when the angels were curious.

Tava Baird: We were all curious. It is in our nature to observe. So I went to the garden to watch. The others said, creation is perfect. The two will multiply. I did not think so. When two things are made equal, there is love and conflict. I wanted to see. I wondered who would dominate. Measuring of them against each other was too close.

Tava Baird: The man told her, you will be below me. She did the most powerful thing. He laughed at him and she raised her voice and sang out a song, the first human song, and when he would not listen, she left. He had no choice. [00:35:00] He could not stay. He would attempt to harm her. And so I followed after, more curious about her than him.

Tava Baird: I became entranced, for she was making her own peculiar music, much in the way that I do. And she said, I will not return. I am equal. I will not doom those who come after me. She thought I had been sent to take her back. But I said, you are a glorious thing. When I followed and kept following, and when they did come for her, I stood back.

Tava Baird: I am here if you need me, I told her, but you want your own flight, perhaps. And she saw how I revered and respected, and she told the angels to go. I have no need of Adam, she said to them, for I am my own, and there is already another willing to guard my passage. Come back, they said, for you were a made woman, and he is man.

Tava Baird: He is nothing to me, Lilith said, without [00:36:00] caring or an offering of hands in my direction. He is nothing. And she turned and left farther into the wildness, farther into God. And it was in that moment that I loved her.

Jennifer Taylor: I love that story. I just love it. And I think listening to that and listening to her and I imagining identifying with her in that I think is one of the things that I feel well up in me when I feel her presence. And that idea of, oh my goodness, can you imagine having the strength and the confidence and the knowledge of who you are and your own value and worth that in that kind of moment, You would just say no to just laugh and sing and then walk away recognizing [00:37:00] that, if you stay, you're going to be harmed and I'm fine.

Jennifer Taylor: I look back over my own personal life and the number of times when, was a male there that wanted something from me and that sense of what am I going to do? And the idea of, of having that. That Lilith level of self knowledge and self respect and being able to act in that way is so incredibly inspiring and moving and wakes something up in me every time I hear that.

Jennifer Taylor: On 

Tava Baird: that note, I just asked Samuel, was Lilith scared? was she scared to stand up to Adam? And he answers, she was terrified, umshah. He did it anyway. The thing that struck me, I think the one sentence that's in the story he tells that [00:38:00] strikes me, is she says, I will not doom those who come after me.

Tava Baird: That she realized that if she stayed and submitted, in a way, her children were going to be in that same role. her goal was supposed to be to multiply and that making that choice was going to become an integral part of who she was, he would know that he made that choice on that in a way that was going to do those who came after her.

Tava Baird: And of course, we know what happened with Eve, And then, of course, poor Eve gets demonized anyway, if you think about it. There are story creation stories in cultures all over the world, and a lot of them start with the idea of a tree of knowledge.

Tava Baird: Like we see that with Yggdrasil and in Norse myths.last night I was reading about, a Chinese myth that's really wonderful and this tree of knowledge.[00:39:00] Idun and her apples, that's who it is in the Norse mythology. But in most all of those stories, people eat from the tree of knowledge and it's okay.

Tava Baird: Garden of Eden is the only one I've run across where you're. Absolutely not supposed to eat from the tree. And I'm like, well, then why'd you put the fricking tree there? if I were to say, let's nurse, do not think of an elephant right now. Your brain is literally just going to think of an elephant.

Tava Baird: That's how we're designed, right? We're often told don't do something, especially as Americans. We like to do the things we're told we can't do. Right. So you can stick a tree in the middle of a garden and say, don't eat that fruit that's hanging from it. Someone's going to have an obsessive thought to do that, but I just find it really interesting that right from the get go, there's that idea of sin and temptation and that you have to spend your entire life [00:40:00] resisting sacred darkness and your humanity.

Tava Baird: Humans are features that they're not one pure thing. As we said before, when that becomes the dominant message. Is, it's, you're good, or you're evil, and you'll spend your entire life fighting who you are. And one of the things that Samuel likes to bring up is that, that's not the way it's supposed to be, else we wouldn't have been created this way.

Tava Baird: It's not supposed to be a war all the time, and he's challenging us to do something different.

Jennifer Taylor: And one of the questions that I have, because so much of the way that we talk about Lilith and who she is comes from that, story of creation, both of creation of Lilith and then the idea of, you know, the Garden of Eden and I remember hearing Samuel talk about it and he started talking about the Garden of Eden, like, [00:41:00] really, really early on with you.

Jennifer Taylor: Like that was one of the first 

Tava Baird: things, the first thing. And 

Jennifer Taylor: I think we have come to this place of just sort of accepting that somehow in some level of reality, some level of consciousness, something like this happened. I think, you know, Tava and I've just sort of moved past the how is this a possibility?

Jennifer Taylor: Um, you know, while also believing in, evolution and we realized that we really had never gone down this path and asked these questions. So I feel like it is really important for us to ask Samael to help us understand the context in which this Garden of Eden situation happened.

Jennifer Taylor: Because you know, we, live in a very concrete, feeling world with the idea of linear time, and, how is it that both that kind of thing could happen and all of the other things that we, feel like we know to be true can, um, So [00:42:00] I see Tava writing 

Jennifer Taylor: So I'm sure she is already receiving the answers to this. And I'm really fascinated to find out this because I realize how we have just sort of accepted this and moved forward without really getting some, uh, more nuts and bolts kinds of details. 

Tava Baird: Ooh, he's chatty. 

Jennifer Taylor: Okay, so this is what he says to start and we might have to ask him specific questions because he's walking and talking and I will tell you listeners that the Garden of Eden is one of Samuel's favorite things to talk about. Um, I mean, he, one of the things he often uses to illustrate points is the idea of a city.

Tava Baird: And, um, one of the, things he talked about, I think it was the very first time he came to visit me. he says that God is wilderness. The nature of God is expressed through nature and the wild here on earth. And that if we want [00:43:00] to get close to the divine, we need to go out into nature.

Tava Baird: And that The Garden of Eden was the first place where humans, uh, this spot is different from another spot. This is a garden, which means it's a cultivated and tame place. Interestingly enough, I believe in Latin that the words Garden of Eden the equivalent translation is also Garden of Pleasure, which I thought was really interesting.

Tava Baird: So we may have had some mistranslations through here at times as well. But what Samael likes to illustrate with the garden is the idea that Lilith could leave the garden, Adam and Eve could be driven from it. That means it was a designated place that had boundaries. And what Samael sees in that is the idea of this [00:44:00] is where the concept starts.

Tava Baird: Of you are either in the garden, or you are out of the garden. You are either in God's good graces, or you have left it and are now a demoness or have been kicked out because you sinned, right? That building that wall. He's essentially, that, he doesn't believe in the concept of original sin, like the apple thing makes no sense to him, but he says that the concept of creating the other, you are with me, or you are against me.

Tava Baird: Is the part where humanity started to go off the rails and what leads to a lot of our problems today. And he often uses imagery of breaking down walls. Samuel said fairly early on that we are still in the garden. And what he meant by that is not necessarily that we are sitting in some place in the Middle [00:45:00] East where Adam and Eve went traipsing around, but that we have built a society that is so full of walls that we are constantly in conflict with each other, that we, we spend a lot of time cutting out nature and building more walls.

Tava Baird: we look with labels for who we are and what groups we belong to. The human brain is naturally designed to categorize things, to put things into, you know, little boxes and, and figure things out. It's one of the ways that we process information. But when we start to do that with things like, uh, when we start to designate that something in one box is good and something in another box is evil.

Tava Baird: That's when you start to get ideas like misogyny and racism and all these horrible concepts, right? So I'm actually going to read you a little something and then I'm going to give you, um, what he just said about the garden. the thing I'm about to read you.

Tava Baird: I guess you [00:46:00] would call it a poem. I asked him about Lilith again a few weeks ago,and he told me to write this down, and I believe he is speaking this to Lilith, and this is what he said. "Together, we will be all things. Inclined in existence, an untamed bed of delights. Weeds that grow up through the cracks and burst apart the carefully sculpted stones.

Tava Baird: The godhead in the quartz and granite recognizes our ascent. It remembers and agrees with us. And so the cities of man will tumble and fall from our sight. We are destruction and creation both. Our boundaries blend and fold into one another. Not mere shadows of an old book's tale, but ours in our own right, the bond of flesh and light that was never divined.

Tava Baird: I am the bringer of the [00:47:00] end, my love. I am the bringer of the end. Your smile, enticing, welcomes all of it and heralds a new day free of the chains and trappings of doctrine. I will give it all to you, for you are good in ways they never saw. When I see with your vision the legacy of ages, todays and tomorrows, histories and futures, the things that were made to endure, I feel what you feel.

Tava Baird: I bleed where you bleed. I will cut it all down for you, burn it in my grasp, crack it open in my hands, until the dusts become flowers once more. The fall is not over. It has barely begun. And then, my love, heaven will be all places, and the slander will turn to song. You are your own. You have always been your own.

Tava Baird: The greatest gift you bestow is your recognition and remembrance that no one was [00:48:00] born to kneel." So you can see that sort of tracking down the city imagery there and that Lilith reminds us that we shouldn't bow to the things that try to separate us. Um, In answer to Jen's question, a little bit about, you know, okay, so you're saying there was like a literal Garden of Eden with Samuel responded with that was, "you must remember that the stories of men are strange.

Tava Baird: they cannot understand multiple realities, multiple times, much came before the garden, and much after it was not one day, one point in what you call time, the wild was here for long before that. As we're many creatures," so I think he's trying to put this in context for us that. You know, when we look at the Bible, it goes, [00:49:00] Hey, the whole planet was made in seven days.

Tava Baird: Boom. And then, Hey, suddenly there's a garden and you've got a dude and a woman in it and they have a fight and that's, you know, and then it all seems to happen very quickly and conveniently. But he's saying this is one story in a field of larger stories that we don't have any perspective or knowledge of.

Tava Baird: yeah, I'm trying to think of the best way to ask that will help us to understand. He's already talking, so I'm also getting it. That's, 

Tava Baird: that's great. Oh, this is weird. Okay, I can already tell there's going to be a follow up question to this for me. Anyway, I have questions. He said, "humans were not the only thing here." So I think we have this idea that, you know, the animals were created and that humans were popped down and we were sort of the only game in town.

Tava Baird: And, uh, and he said, but apparently there was a bunch of other things [00:50:00] going on. "There are other stories, other beginnings, and humans such as Adam and Eve are not the same as you. They were scientists. They chose to test out the realm as it stood. The first forgetting ones of their cycle."

Tava Baird: Interesting. Of our cycle is. 

Jennifer Taylor: So it was not . just like, pop, there they are, like the creationist kind of idea. But. the earth was here, there were all these creatures here, and it was a test for creating humans and how this might work here.

Tava Baird: He says "they were the first of their kind". So I want to ask him, were there other firsts? "Oh yes." 

Tava Baird: So were they, [00:51:00] the first humans? 

Tava Baird: "They were the first of their level of human. This realm was designed to move us forward. They chose to come here." So we have this idea, and I'm sure we've talked about it in other podcasts. Samuel talks about this concept that in between lives, The souls that are outside of the earth can choose to become embodied again, and when they do, they forget. And so I think he's trying to tell us that Adam and Eve were old souls who were scientists who wanted to test this out, or they were among a group maybe that wanted to test this out, and they were the first of their particular type of creature, the body that was made for them to test this out isn't necessarily operating on the same laws [00:52:00] of physics and things that we currently have, you know?

Tava Baird: Like, and I guess that kind of makes sense. maybe it took a while to create those bodies or the bodies evolved from something else, then the souls decided we're going to go in and sort of pilot these things around and see what happens. like, I guess the earth's been here for a while before them, but 

Tava Baird: They're not the only experiment that was being conducted. 

Jennifer Taylor: In the, the human kind of construct timeline that we have where there's apes and Neanderthals and that kind of thing, does this fit anywhere within our sort of evolutionary timeline that we think of as how Homo sapiens, 

Jennifer Taylor: in this physical kind of body, evolve? Like, is this, does this fit anywhere in that? Or is this almost like a, a different level of [00:53:00] consciousness or reality that this is happening on?

Tava Baird: okay, here we go. Oh boy. This is going to be one of those. He says, yes, yes, yes. When you asked if it fit in "this realm overlapped with another at the time". Okay, Samael Is the story of Adam and Eve true? Let's try that Oh boy 

Jennifer Taylor: what he 

Tava Baird: says, I said, Samuel is the story of Adam and Eve true through Socratic guide. He said, "what is truth? Um, Shala. It is true to me.

Tava Baird: It is true to her. She crosses realms. Now it was that way in the beginning here was not as hard to travel as it is now. Where is my Lilith now in your time? Where is she when she comes to the singer?" So not helpful. Um,

Jennifer Taylor: honestly, I feel like [00:54:00] We're kind of getting closer to where I think you and I were at the beginning when we kind of accepted this as a, a story of something that both happened and didn't happen the way that we would fit it in with any of our own earthly mythologies and understandings and stories and things Samuel exists Right now and is everywhere and is in your room and you can see him and 

Tava Baird: yes, 

Jennifer Taylor: you know, I can feel Lilith and she can come to me and yet I couldn't explain how she's here and she's also with you or she's also with the people that are listening to this right now and there are so many aspects of reality and so many different types of things that we would call reality.

Jennifer Taylor: That just don't fit into our laws of physics and our, understanding of, a linear [00:55:00] timeline that we know linear time doesn't even exist, but it's the only way our minds can think of it. So, it feels like he's sort of edging us closer to that letting go of trying to make sense of it in our linear, understanding.

Tava Baird: This is interesting. He says, "All stories are true. Michael was there. She, meaning Lilith, is fundamental. She is both buried inside you and here in my arms. For we are all one, or are we not?" Oh, this is what talking to a Seraphim is 

Jennifer Taylor: like. Yeah, I was gonna say, here we go. Um. Whoa. Yeah. It's one of God, no one bring up 

Tava Baird: Mettatron.

Tava Baird: No one bring up Mettatron. I was going to say, way to keep saying 

Jennifer Taylor: it, what, five more 

Tava Baird: times? 

Jennifer Taylor: Okay. Mettatron. 

Tava Baird: Mettatron. Mettatron. Mettatron. Mettatron. Mettatron. So. Oh boy. I think for our human brains, he is trying to say that [00:56:00] the story he told is what happened and he considers that part of his history, for lack of a better word.

Tava Baird: He says, "part of my experience." Yes. Okay. Part of his history, I guess, is too linear for him. It's part of his experience. And it is part of Lilith's experience. And it is part of Michael's experience, for he witnessed it. But "the Earth is not the way that it is now. And what you think of as being a human now, you've got another form of evolving."

Tava Baird: Oh,

Tava Baird: "Adam was not capable in his newly forgetting states of having the conversation we have [00:57:00] now." Lilith thought past him." So you're saying there was something about Adam's incarnation that made him, um, Like, he wouldn't be capable of having these kind of larger conversations, these crazy, insane notebook conversations that we're having right now. "Yes. But Lilith could. Yes, to a degree. But often, words still challenge her. Her embodiment troubled her. She is much happier now." Ha ha ha. Oh, she sings to me. She sings to me and coerces, I don't even know how to spell that, coerces me into dancing. [00:58:00] I guess he's not much of a dancer. Well, yeah, before we go any more down this wormhole, maybe we better pull back a little bit and go. He says, this is the way it happened. He says, she would say, this is the way it happened.

Tava Baird: There were witnesses exactly how it fits into our concept of evolution is a little bit funky. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah. It sounds like, you know, like so many other things when we really start expanding into talking to beings that have the full picture,It just doesn't fit into our limited incarnation. And when you think about it, it kind of makes sense.

Jennifer Taylor: these stories and how all of this goes together and all the things that happen can't be distilled fully down into this, world that we're living in.

Jennifer Taylor: This illusion, this place of forgetting the wholeness of these stories and all of the, [00:59:00] aspects of it just really can't be fit into this, limited kind of paradigm that we have. 

Tava Baird: Sical, he just said "you like to ask questions. Umshallah who, what, when, where, why, who is deceptive? What is perspective? When makes little sense? Where makes little sense? Why is always a journey towards understanding and love and how just wait?" Oh boy, I feel like we've got a whole other podcast on that. 

Jennifer Taylor: Okay, we'll just yeah So, you know, I feel like I I I appreciate actually I feel like that was actually really helpful and I think It, I think what it really does is kind of pulls us back to, okay, if we [01:00:00] drop all of our, human need to dissect this and make it make some kind of sense if we drop all of that and we really look at why, are we talking about Lilith, and he talks about, that it's about moving forward.

Jennifer Taylor: So if we go back to our approach from the beginning, which is. you know, singing and feeling her here and talking about the feeling that Samuel has when she comes in. what's most important is who is she and how can we work with her and what is her essence and how can we embody more of that?

Jennifer Taylor: How can we learn from her? And I feel like we have a number of things. Kind of on that and really in the end, you know There's a the part of ourselves that wants to make sense of everything But ultimately that's not the part of ourselves that move us forward Really? [01:01:00] It's when we let go of that and we move into experience that everything starts to really shift and things start to heal and we start to truly move forward and that happens when we hear her song and we invite her to dance with us and through us and we feel the essence of who she is and we allow her, to move forward.

Jennifer Taylor: And one of the things that she said to me when I sat and I connected and She said, "I am, the one you have forgotten, the one you dare to dream of in your darkest nights and most secret times.

Jennifer Taylor: I am the part of you that you shun and hide and sequester beneath heavy robes that hide your true form and shape, ashamed and afraid of the attention it might garner. I am the wild in your wildest dreams. I have come to rock you back into [01:02:00] wakefulness, into remembrance of who you are. The magic you carry deep inside your bones.

Jennifer Taylor: I do not tarry or wait to be invited when it is time to remember me. I will storm into your castle past your armors and guards you think are there to keep you safe, but in reality, keep you locked away inside yourself. I have arrived. I have come to set you free. Just as those who have known only captivity are afraid of the larger world.

Jennifer Taylor: identify with their captors, and are afraid when they begin to taste the magnitude of their freedom. So too it is for you and others. You catch a glimpse of my power and strength, and it touches something deeply hidden within you. It starts to awaken, and it frightens you, so you pull back into safety [01:03:00] once more.

Jennifer Taylor: But my presence awakens you, and once awakened, it does not go as easily and contemptedly. back into captivity. It begins to be restless and stirs and thrashes about, unable to find comfort in what once felt like solace. You long to be free, despite your fears of it. 

Jennifer Taylor: I am known as the dark feminine. As I spend much of my time in the darkness where I find you, it is there that my deepest work and transformation are needed and most potently felt 

Jennifer Taylor: I am comfortable here walking amongst the darkness and therefore have been misunderstood and misinterpret misrepresented for centuries. 

Jennifer Taylor: I am of fire and flame and transformation. 

Jennifer Taylor: I will ignite the fires within your soul and unleash the passion that lies within your womb. You are meant to create. To [01:04:00] burn. To smolder with desire and passion in creation. To live life fully alive, without apology or fear. To taste the fruit of creation and let it drip from your lips.

Jennifer Taylor: Your body, too, must awaken, not just your spirit. It houses your soul in this lifetime, and without it you are but a fragment of your whole. Your body holds deep wisdom and knowledge and truth. Truth that frightens you so you only allow parts of it to be awake. I am the coaxer of the life force coiled in your sex, and awaken it to rise and set your body and your life aflame with desire. Not something unquenchable or unfillable, or placing you in a state of constant yearning, but a state of ecstatic lust for life, of experiencing the full measure of your [01:05:00] worth, and feeling it in every cell.

Jennifer Taylor: Oozing from every pore, radiating from you in every direction through all creation. That is who you were meant to be. That is who I am. That is who you will become. I am the fire dancer. I teach you how to burn and dance in the flames of life, ecstatic, and not be burned but reborn, renewed, reimagined, restored."

Jennifer Taylor: And Samuel had interjected there," yes, yes, yes. She understands both the human body and the body beyond. There must be integration of the two for the incarnated to find power." 

Tava Baird: samuel has a little something to add. Um, [01:06:00] he says, "Replace disbelief with wonder. She fills me with wonder. There is precious little of that among the angels. She helps me to understand the humans I reach. Find the awe and wonder in your own creation. You are beauty unfathomable. None of it should be hidden if you wish to live more fully on the next week.

Tava Baird: She is fearless and I laugh. She leads. She takes my hand and leads this angel to new places. Lilith is comfort and warmth on a winter's night. She is the power past your fear. She is the song in the silent theater. She is a joyful roar. She steps forward when men say, Who did this? And she defines the concept of ask.

Tava Baird: Ask. Speak. And I said, she teaches you too. And he said, always.[01:07:00] 

Jennifer Taylor: Beautiful. So at the end there, it got cut off a little. It sounded like you said ask, ask, speak, speak, maybe? 

Tava Baird: Yes. It's ask, ask, speak. And then I said, she teaches you too. And he said, always. It's funny because I always think of him as this sort of like, he's got all the answers and he knows everything. Then the last couple of. Podcasts he has let us know that, you know, Metatron. Oh, no, I just brought him up again. Here we go Um, but you know Metatron is a teacher and that he also learns things Lilith 

Jennifer Taylor: yeah, I think that was something that really stuck with me from the last podcast was him talking about that, you know, even the archangels and seraphim they have their divine purpose and they're the things that they're, their tasks and the things that they're here to do, but they [01:08:00] also have their own personal journeys and they're learning and evolving, along with us that I, I find really endlessly fascinating.

Tava Baird: It's the world is where the universe or whatever we want to say, the thing, the realms are not stagnant place where we're the only things changing in them. There are cycles, but. There is growth it appears everywhere. 

Tava Baird: Would you mind saying again the last three sentences of what you just read? As something was coming through, but then the dog was very distracting. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yes. But there is nothing to burn away but bondage, umshala. Nothing to burn but the bonds. Control is not a form of rescue.

Tava Baird: You must let out the beasts from your ribs and your pelvis and then balance them until they eat from your hand. Follow her into the inferno and find a frenzy of [01:09:00] laughter and song and dance when you realize the precious lies were all you had to lose. It was so interesting to have you read some of this stuff back to me because I literally don't remember. I was like, literally don't remember. 

Jennifer Taylor: It's interesting, it's funny for me to read you the words that you channeled. And I don't have any 

Tava Baird: memory of them. Yeah. Um, hold on, I've got a little bit more.

Tava Baird: He says, "communing with Lilith is a practice. You cannot read her. You must experience her in singing and dancing. It is in her saying, I am worth." I'll give you a little practical application of this, um, that was recent to me. Um, I am in the middle of negotiating with somebody about something and I hate it.

Tava Baird: Like I know that there are lots [01:10:00] of cultures on Earth where people haggle over everything. I would not survive one day. Like, I just, you know, I've been on vacation in places before where they're like, you know. 20 and they want you to come back with five and then they want you to work your way to an agreement and I just, I can't evade it.

Tava Baird: It feels like conflict, it feels like I'm being rude and I realize that's entirely a product of my brain. That like, I'm afraid of inconveniencing people, of like, dear God, the first time I ever had to buy a car on my own, I think I pretty much probably just paid whatever was written on the window, you know, like, because I just.

Tava Baird: Don't haggle well, I don't like conflict, so I'm, in this situation now and it's one of those ones where you write them something and then two days pass and they write you back and then you have to think about it for a day and write them back and my first instinct when this sort of thing happens is I'm okay through the [01:11:00] first volley of you offered me this, is there any way there might be some wiggle room on that?

Tava Baird: Then after that, if they don't come back and give me exactly what I wanted, I tend to go, forget it. It's done. A. Automatically think that this, again, is my upbringing. I automatically think that if they have to spend more time with me, they're wasting their time. And I automatically tend to sell myself short on what I have to offer.

Tava Baird: And so as soon as the first volley went and they came back with something else that also wasn't exactly what I wanted, I was just like, that's it. I'm done. I'm out. I'm tapping out. And my husband said, listen, you are never in a better negotiating place than you are right now. The beginning. You will never be here again.

Tava Baird: You just need to ask for exactly [01:12:00] what you want. But I was raised in such a way that I think well, they're gonna be mad at me if I tell them no a second time. Oh, if I don't couch it in a million positive things, I'm not gonna be able to deliver this message. I can't ask directly for what I want.

Tava Baird: If they could give that to me, they would have done it in the first place, which of course is totally not true, because other people are a lot better at haggling than I am. So the first with me going, No, thank you. That's not what I want. Then the second offer came through and I went, No, thank you.

Tava Baird: That's not what I want. But it nearly killed me to write that. No. And then I was just like, I don't want to open my email anymore. I don't want to like, you're gonna think I'm a rude person. But 24 hours pass and back, that comes basically exactly what I asked for. And the whole time I was writing the no emails, I was stressed like you were about to send me [01:13:00] into surgery, I was so stressed just saying no, what I want is what I want, my work has value.

Tava Baird: I think that I have talent. I have something that you want. If you want it, give me what I want, right? I mean, I wouldn't say it in that way, but those ideas have been very foreign to me. And the whole time that I was just like, I'm done. I'm out. Samuel is going. Ask for it. Ask for it. This is about worth.

Tava Baird: This is an exercise in worth. You do not know if you do not ask. You know, and I'm imagining that the world is going to explode if I somehow or another offend the other negotiator. This is telling me it is not so. It is not so. That is all in your mind. And so, you know, I'm, I'm starting to look at everything now and going, what if I just actually asked for what I wanted very [01:14:00] clearly.

Tava Baird: I mean, I'm not yelling at anybody, I'm not being offensive, if I just politely ask for what I want, I'm very upfront with it, and I say it with the attitude of, I think I have worth. What sort of things are going to manifest in my life that there was never room for them before, because I just couldn't think big enough.

Tava Baird: And that's the thing that Lilith is. really challenging me to do. You know, I had another situation, you know, where I had made some decisions for my business for the next year, that there were certain things I was going to do that I knew were the things I really wanted to do. But that meant telling all of the people who wanted me to do the things that I didn't want to do so much.

Tava Baird: No, I'm afraid of saying no. And so one of them wrote me today and was like, Hey, when are we going to get this on the schedule? And I had to sit there going, Girl, I don't want to tell this person. [01:15:00] I'm sorry, but I'm not doing that in the next calendar year. I have other things I need to put my focus on because I knew it would disappoint them.

Tava Baird: And it was a really hard thing to do, but I have to remember if I keep limiting myself with my own small concepts of worth or taught to me, if I keep not acknowledging that I have things that I taught were dark, like Desires and ambition and marts, you know, like we had to sit there the other day and Samuel kept saying, you are an intelligent person.

Tava Baird: Isn't it awful that we so often think we're not, or that we're not worthy of these things. And so I'm having to retrain myself to say, well, I made something special and I know you're going to want it. And then it turns out they did. [01:16:00] And I just had to get to a point where I was strong enough to ask for it.

Tava Baird: And so, the thing that Samuel said before was, Lilith, when I asked him, was Lilith afraid? And he said, yes, she was, right? There are all of these things that we're afraid of that are actually probably not that scary in reality. We have told ourselves that we have to limit ourselves for the comfort of other people.

Tava Baird: And what I think Lilith does a great job with is telling us that that isn't, doesn't always have to be the case. What if just 10 percent more of the time, we can just ask for what we want? Maybe people be a little uncomfortable and understand that we have worth. 

Jennifer Taylor: Absolutely. And, I've realized how, [01:17:00] deeply embedded those worth kinds of things are in us and.

Jennifer Taylor: AndIt can be tiny things, you know, to start with, if, if this is something where it's like, oh, wow, I could never do what Tava was just saying that she's learning to do sometimes it's baby steps and getting us to these places. And I remember there was this whole.

Jennifer Taylor: Um, thing around worth and oddly this dental work that I had to have done and that turned into this whole big thing that's probably way too much for us to explain. But I was going in and I have a lot of the same kinds of things that Tava was talking about of not wanting to inconvenience anyone, not wanting to make anybody have to go out of their way at all for me.

Jennifer Taylor: And so I'm in the dentist office and. They initially had this like little menu of these are all the types of things that you can have. And it was like, you know, blankets and neck rolls and all these kinds of things. And I was initially in just like, Oh no, I'm fine. I'm fine. you don't have to do [01:18:00] anything.

Jennifer Taylor: And then I was sitting there and I thought I am freezing. I am so cold, but I already told them I was fine. I already told him I didn't need anything. And it was kind of like, well, I missed my opportunity. That's it. And then I thought somebody was walking by and I said, excuse me.

Jennifer Taylor: I'm so sorry, but could I maybe get a blanket? I think that would be really wonderful. And they were like, sure, absolutely. And, you know, and they, they bring out a blanket and I was sitting there thinking, I am so proud of myself. I just advocated for something that I, needed or wanted. And now I'm sitting here warm and.

Jennifer Taylor: It was a huge thing for me. Like, it seems like such a tiny thing. Of course they would bring me a blanket. Of course they're not going to be angry with me for asking for a blanket after I'd said I didn't need one. Like, you know, yeah, it's like, of course they will. But I realized. And I started doing more and more tiny step things like that, that at the time didn't feel tiny.

Jennifer Taylor: Like I had a conversation with [01:19:00] myself for a while about asking for a blanket or saying, you know, this is actually really uncomfortable. Could you adjust that? you know, these, these little things that I realized weren't so little.

Jennifer Taylor: And I heard someone say the other day that it can be as simple as honoring your own physical needs. Like, you know, if you have to pee and you're like, well, I need to just finish this email and I need to just get this done and I have to get this done. And then before you know it, it's been 45 minutes and your bladder has been about to explode for that entire time because it was like, well, this is more important.

Jennifer Taylor: I need to get this done first. And that those are these little indicators to us of putting anything else before ourselves. And, you can just start by just taking stock of how do I feel right now? You know, am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Do I need to stand up and stretch? Do I need to go to the bathroom and honoring those things?

Jennifer Taylor: [01:20:00] And that just starting with little things like that can build and build to where we start doing tangible things that are. honoring the fact that we are worthy of stopping for a moment and meeting our own needs. And it's really amazing how these, things start to blossom and then they start to build on each other.

Jennifer Taylor: I 

Tava Baird: realized how bad I was over appetizers. I, if you ever try to, I don't know if this happens to anybody else, but I go to a restaurant with someone and we order a shared appetizer and I am the person who they will eat four and I will eat three and they will point to what is clearly a fourth appetizer for me and go, That one's yours.

Tava Baird: And I will argue with them every single time. No, no, no. Are you sure? It's a freaking appetizer. It's like half an egg roll, or like one bang bang shrimp. And I am ready to just [01:21:00] lay down on the ground and yes, that they might possibly want that last appetizer. And I'm like, What am I not allowed to want an appetizer?

Tava Baird: Like, So now what I've just started doing is whenever I go out with someone I go and they go, do you want an appetizer? If I want one, I go, yes. And then it's at a certain point, like they're not even hungry anymore. And I'm sitting there trying to force them to eat it for some sort of weird need I have to make sure that I have sacrificed for others.

Tava Baird: Like, it's a potato skin. My 20 years of marriage and go, I can't believe she ate that extra potato skin. Remember that, right? But I will do anything to try to, I guess, show I'm a good person by making sure I don't eat the last of something. So what I'm trying to do now is like, if somebody goes, that one's yours, I go, thank you. You know, like if I want it, I'm going to eat it. Like last night I stood in the kitchen [01:22:00] going, there's only a couple slices of roast beef left. But what if he wants it when he wakes up in the morning? He had expressed nothing about wanting the roast beef. It was in our communal refrigerator.

Tava Baird: And I sat there and had a small emotional debate about whether or not I should put roast beef on my bagel. And then finally, I was like, I'll just apologize to him in the morning. And like, one of the first things I said to him in the morning is, I'm sorry, I ate the end of the roast beef. And he was like, Oh, good.

Tava Baird: I wanted to get rid of that. But how much effort am I spending during my day worrying about roast beef and half an egg roll? Like, we just need to let that stuff go. And if we can start off, like Jen said, just saying, I've changed my mind. I love that blanket. You know, you know what? Yes, I do want that last bite of dessert.

Tava Baird: Then that those are the little steps that eventually get you up to the point where you go, no, wait a second. [01:23:00] I have value. I have worth. I do have. Likes and dislikes, and cravings, and unpopular opinions at times, and dirty thoughts, I have all of these things that society has told me I am not supposed to have, that I am a human being, and I'm going to celebrate that by eating half an egg roll.

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we can, You know, we're talking about Lilith, you know, in these moments, in these moments when we recognize we are struggling to find our worth, we are struggling to feel it. We're struggling to feel like it's okay to just voice what it is that we would like to do. Um, you can call on Lilith and it doesn't have to be some elaborate ceremony or ritual You don't have to, have known her or ahead of time, you can ask, Lilith, help me, to feel, you know, [01:24:00] lend me your, sense of worth.

Jennifer Taylor: And it's amazing how there is this ability for, these beings like Lilith and angels and, Sekhmet So many times I've called in and said, please. Sekhmet, lend me your strength, step into me and help me to find my own and you can do the same thing with Lilith.

Jennifer Taylor: You can invite her in, invite her into Your space, invite her into your being, your body, and say, show me what it feels like to know your worth, to know my worth, help to, awaken that in me, help me to feel that, and it is truly remarkable, I think one of the, reasons to talk about Lilith is it's not the same way that maybe we would read a biography of some, person who has done these great things and say, Oh, I need to be like them, but I'm not, you know, this is how, do we access and [01:25:00] work with Lilith?

Jennifer Taylor: Lilith has the ability to be with all of us at, the same time to come to us and to help us to feel what it feels like to know your worth. I highly encourage. anyone, male or female, or, any way that you identify, you know, it doesn't have to be women. I know a lot of what we talk about and a lot of times people talk about Lilith with, the experience of being female, but, lots and lots and lots of people have this struggle with worth and Lilith is not, you know, she's not discriminating.

Jennifer Taylor: You know, you can ask her to come in and support you no matter who you are or what your body looks like or how you identify and help you to learn and feel your worth. 

Tava Baird: Absolutely. I mean, I think it's really important just because we're talking about an entity that You know, we think of as having a female form.

Tava Baird: I mean, we know from Samuel talking a [01:26:00] couple weeks ago when we were talking about feet at one point, he said, sometimes I have no feet. You know, as humans, we tend to get hung up on, well, is this female? Is this male? Is that sort of thing. And we re we really, we don't need to. Um, one of the other things that Samuel is pointing out here is you're talking about ways to, to, you know, mu with Lilith, he says "Play Lilith plays.

Tava Baird: He is loud at times, he laughs, he swims naked under the stars and howls in the night." So there's that, you know, the feeling of, there were so many things a lot of times when we were children that brought us joy, you know, going out and, and finding something in the garden and making up little stories and blowing bubbles and running around barefoot in the grass that we, learn over time are not seemly for an adult.

Tava Baird: getting on a swing or, you think about little children, they're little [01:27:00] children are not ashamed of who they are, you know, they just are until we train it out of them. And so trying to find that childlike sense of wonder and that childlike abandon and that childlike joy where you just like someone because you like them and you have.

Tava Baird: Best friends and you celebrate, you know, how many of us as adults try not to tell anybody that it's our birthday? We would really like someone to know it's our birthday and wish us a happy birthday But we don't want to seem greedy and we worry so much about tipping over into this concept of greed when in fact Nobody sees the crisis that we're making is greedy because we've pushed ourselves so far in the other direction Just you know, go do something nice for yourself You You know, like, order dessert first.

Tava Baird: and just see how it feels. Um, you know, go see a movie that's supposed to be for [01:28:00] kids. I remember years ago, um, when Harry Potter first came out. Now I have issues with Harry Potter's author and her politics these days, but I have to tell you, the books are great. Quite wonderful. But I remember adults so into it.

Tava Baird: They absolutely, there were adults reading Harry Potter because there was that sense of wonder and magic and camaraderie in those stories. They were, you know, they're wonderful. They would, I would see adults come into the bookstore I was working in and buy copies of it, but they, they wanted to know was there a special way they could cover up, recover so that other adults wouldn't know they were reading quote children's book.

Tava Baird: Right? Lilith tells us, let them see you reading the children's book. Who cares? If they judge you based on that, you're probably not worth your time anyway. So, I think calling her in and then [01:29:00] giving yourself some time to be childlike and be full of wonder and to dance and sing and investigate. You know, think about When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Tava Baird: What were the things that fascinated you? Were there any of them you didn't get to explore? Let's go back and look at that. Let me get that kneeling. Um, I was actually talking with someone the other day about the experience of teaching art to children versus adults. I think I may have said this before on the podcast, and I apologize if I have.

Tava Baird: But I said, when I would teach children to knit, first thing they would say is I'm going to make a sweater because they don't know all of the technicalities of making a sweater. And they're not intimidated by the idea. When you sit down to teach an adult in it, nine times out of ten, they say, Oh, I'm not artistic.

Tava Baird: I've never been very good at these things. I'm not very artsy. I don't know what I like to the point where I know some adults who just genuinely don't [01:30:00] even know what they like because they're afraid they're bad at choosing. And you know, adults with a kid can pick it up. You can pick it up. You really can, but we've convinced ourselves.

Tava Baird: That there are things we are good at, things that we are bad at, and that there has to be a limit on the things we are good at. That's just the case. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah, and I think I, I love that you brought up that, you know, so many don't know what their actual preferences are because they're so afraid of making a choice and all of their choices are based, and I'm, I'm saying there, but really.

Jennifer Taylor: I mean, that, that was me for a long time. Like, several years ago, I realized, because someone had said that, I think I was working, I was in a Reiki, a group Reiki session, and they were working on me, and they were talking about the second chakra, and that this is a place [01:31:00] where you get to claim, this is who I am.

Jennifer Taylor: This is what I like. I like this and I don't like this. You know, I love this food. I do not like the taste of that. I prefer this. I don't like that. I like this texture. I don't like that. And I thought, that's terrifying. And I don't have any idea what I really even like anymore. It became a big thing for me around my birthday of like, what kind of birthday cake are you going to have?

Jennifer Taylor: And when somebody would ask, what kind of birthday cake do you want? I thought, well, okay, we've already had the birthdays of my mom, my dad, you know, two of the, two of my children. my husband, like what kinds of, they've already had these types of cakes. So we're, you know, they're not going to want to have to have this again.

Jennifer Taylor: in all of my decisions. All of my, the decision was not at all based in what would sound best to me, [01:32:00] but well, this is going to be a lot of work. If I say this, so and so is going to have to bake that and I don't want them to have to do it. And this person doesn't like this. So I shouldn't have that.

Jennifer Taylor: And it was entirely based in trying to meet. Everyone's needs and mine were not even included in it. It was like, well, this would be fine. And I realized one year when I decided, Okay, I am going to figure out who I am and I'm going to start owning that and allowing that. And So I made it a project of making my own birthday cake.

Jennifer Taylor: And I was, I was like, I am going to figure out exactly what tastes I most like. And if nobody eats it, nobody eats it, but I'm going to. And it started out absolutely terrifying. And it was just beyond, it was really blowing my mind how. scary it was to simply choose the flavors of my own birthday cake. And in the end [01:33:00] it ended up being a really empowering thing.

Jennifer Taylor: I was like, all right, and I'm going to, if I'm making it, and then it was like, it became this huge exercise in worth and value. And so I was like, I'm making my own birthday cake and I made a three tier birthday cake and I, I mixed all these things and I painted it and I made all these things and.

Jennifer Taylor: You know, each layer had a different sort of flavor thing that nobody would have done and It was it was really amazing by the end of it. It was like, oh, wow I felt like I had accomplished this huge thing and all i'd really done was decide what I would like for my own birthday cake, but I think I encourage people to kind of look at things like that.

Jennifer Taylor: Like do you really know and I remember there's a You There was a movie, Runaway Bride, and I kept thinking about that. Where in, in Runaway Bride, Julia Roberts is, with each of these different guys and then she runs away from the, altar at the last minute. 

Jennifer Taylor: And throughout it, they would say, [01:34:00] Oh, how do you like your eggs? And she would answer with whatever the guy she was with at the time, however he liked it. It's like, Oh, and they would ask him and he would say, Oh, the same as me. She likes him the same as me. She likes him. And it was like over easy or eggs Benedict or poached or scrambled or this way, but not this way.

Jennifer Taylor: And she had no idea how she liked her eggs. Because she just, she liked her eggs. However, who she was with liked their eggs. And at the end, there was this, there was one of the things, there was this whole thing of we're going to figure out how you like your eggs. And going through and trying each one, it was like you're going to figure out which way you actually like.

Jennifer Taylor: And it really, Um, it really spoke to me of like, okay, I'm going to figure out what kind of birthday cake I like. But, you know, look at yourself in those ways of going, you know, just even figuring out what your preferences are and then [01:35:00] advocating for them. 

Tava Baird: Yes. And that's an incredible story. And one of the other things that I want to stress is a lot of times I think we, we lose this idea of understanding what we know and we like, because.

Tava Baird: We are taking care of children or we're taking care of a family or we're taking care of people at work and we start putting our needs like, I need to stop this meeting and go to the bathroom on the back burner when in reality it's not inconvenience else. And furthermore, it's important to make these, um, choices and make them known not only for yourself, but for the next generation of people coming up in your care.

Tava Baird: Like, I remember when I first started teaching and as a Montessori teacher, you know, you're supposed to be calm and you're supposed to be, you know, soothing all the time. Montessori, at least that, that's what I thought it was. The reality is, is that Maria Montessori said that the Montessori method of education [01:36:00] is to prepare children for life.

Tava Baird: And I thought a lot about that. And I thought about, are all of the adults. All of the people that these children encounter when they get older, all going to be perfectly calm all the time and never express frustration or sadness or anything like that. I don't have emotions and needs and desires as an adult that are, that is around them.

Tava Baird: They're going to grow up with the expectation that nobody around them has those feelings. Other than, and they might suppress their own, or we're going to be woefully unprepared to have relationships and friendships with other people because we're going to be shocked when someone else does. Today, I'm frustrated, I'm sad, I'm just off today.

Tava Baird: All of these things that we think of as imperfections, but are really just human emotions. [01:37:00] So I remember I got some bad news one day in class. And I thought, I'll tamp it down, I'll tamp it down, I'll think about it later. And then I thought, no, people can be sad, it's important to these young children because then they learn and have the opportunity to learn sadness is a valid emotion and what to do when someone is sad to help them through it.

Tava Baird: And so I remember I thought, Oh, I hope I don't get fired for this. And I sat down in the middle of the room. So I got a box of tissues and I mean I wasn't showy about it or anything, I just let myself weep for a few minutes and the children all came over. What's wrong? I said well I, I heard some sad news and of course I, the news that I had that was sad I you know couched it in a way that children could understand but I said I'm just, I'm just sad and then they all started perking up.

Tava Baird: I feel sad [01:38:00] sometimes and these little kids all started talking about their experience with sadness. Then we all started talking about, well, what do you do when you feel sad? You know, and some kids said they'd like to go outside or some said they want to go sit with their moms or dads. And some said they just wanted to be alone.

Tava Baird: When we ended up having this wonderful conversation, Where first off, they realized for the first time that I was an actual human being, and that I was giving them license to talk about an emotion they were still learning their way around, and it gave them the opportunity to hear while their friends deal with sadness.

Tava Baird: So, if they didn't have coping mechanism, they now had things to try and they learned that it's okay for some people to want to be by themselves when they're sad and it's okay to go ask someone for a hug when you're sad. And so, when we're working with Lilith, and we're saying, we're [01:39:00] advocating for ourselves, and we're saying, these are things that I want, these are things that I aspire to, these are all of the things that I'm not supposed to feel but do.

Tava Baird: We are also giving permission for the people in our care to be human themselves. And I think that's a really important thing. We don't want the next generation of children to grow up to think that they have to be emotion, emotionless automatons until the point where one day they just freak out in a meeting and start shouting at everybody because they've repressed things for their entire lives.

Tava Baird: So I think it's, it is really important to decide what kind of birthday cake you like and order it to not just say when someone says, what restaurant do you want to go to? Oh, whatever you do is fine with me. Right. Tell them, answer their question. This is what I want. And if they don't want it to, then you can talk about it.

Tava Baird: It's nothing. Your own desires are nothing to be frightened [01:40:00] of. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah. And I I'm glad that you brought up that in that, both in showing your actual feelings gives permission for other people to do the same and to recognize it. And, and one of the things I was thinking of too, is that.

Jennifer Taylor: demonstrating your worth and your knowledge of your worth and showing other people that you value yourself and that it's okay to, value yourself, that's a huge thing too. And I think of that famous poem by Marianne Williamson in which she says something, like it does not serve others to play small and that we're most afraid of our own power.

Jennifer Taylor: And, You know, I think so many times we're taught that, well, you know, we're not being humble. we're being self important or it's our, ego that, would tell us that, we have value and that it's okay to profess, our own value and that it's not a bad thing 

Jennifer Taylor: before I had a lot of [01:41:00] ideas about it being selfish. You know, if I were to say, this is what I want, that it was selfish. And that somehow by stating what I wanted, I was harming someone else. I was being in some way, really self centered and selfish and whatever.

Jennifer Taylor: And I'm like, no, it demonstrates another way for others who maybe have not found their worth. And you can do that in a way that simply honors yourself. and the other person because you're respecting them by showing that you respect yourself. And when you really know your worth, you're also likely to recognize the inherent worth and dignity of other people too.

Jennifer Taylor: Because if you really know your own worth, it is rooted in a lot more than the idea of, your bank account or your title or whatever it is. It's, I matter because I am, a piece of the divine and [01:42:00] just the fact that I'm here is enough. And when we start to embrace that, then we start to open that up for other people too.

Jennifer Taylor: And when we demonstrate that we give them permission to demonstrate that as well. And, You know, it becomes a little bit easier maybe for somebody else to say, yeah, you know what? I really, I really don't like that. I would love it if we could just go to this restaurant or, you know, the more we do that, we're giving permission to others to to validate themselves and and their worth as well.

Jennifer Taylor: And again, it's not I'm going in and saying, my, my opinions are the only ones that matter or my needs are the only ones that matter. But being able to just express your own personal needs and your worth in a kind way really moves everybody into a better place.

Tava Baird: It's probably about time for us to wrap up Lilith. Would you like to, um, and maybe we can revisit her again in the future because I think these are. [01:43:00] Really important conversations to have regularly. Would you mind bringing her in again for us here for our song? 

Jennifer Taylor: I would be happy to. And if there's anything that, um, Samael would like to leave us with and our most kind of important things to take away from this with Lilith, that would be lovely as well. 

Jennifer Taylor: (singing) [01:44:00] 

Tava Baird: From [01:45:00] Samuel, "do not be afraid to tell your part of the story. All stories are true. When she appears, do as I have done. Reach out your hand. Delight in her presence. Delight in your own. Interlace your fingers and walk forward together into your own power.

There is victory ahead in your song."

Tava Baird: We want to thank you so much for joining us today for our episode on Lilith. We'll be back next week with another episode.