Three Spirals of Awakening: A Coffee Invitation, A Sacred Text, and the Pain of Being Misunderstood

I could also have titled this chapter: When a Kind Comment Stings: Listening Through the Spirals of the Present, the Past, and the Pattern

It began with a simple offer: I invited an Airbnb guest for coffee.

He had seemed kind. Gentle. Respectful. A professor from Taiwan, teaching tourism at the university. Still single in his sixties, he told me, because he wanted to care for his 90-year-old mother. Something about that moved me. Perhaps it reminded me of my own lifelong devotion to family, my own sacrifices, the invisible lineage of women and men who choose service over personal freedom.

When I invited him to share a cup of coffee, I expected a warm yes. Instead, he replied:

                                  "It is not a burden for me."

A perfectly polite answer. Kind, even. But something in me recoiled.

And before I could understand why, I heard myself say:
"Then let us not go."

Spiral One: The Personal Trigger

I walked away from that moment, disturbed by my own reaction. Why did I say no to someone who had said yes?

Because it didn’t feel like a yes, it felt like an obligation. A favour. A duty.

Not joy.

I didn’t need him to serve me. I didn’t want to be a burden. I simply wanted to feel that he wanted to be there. That it would bring him joy.

His words reminded me how many years I had spent being the unacknowledged burden carrier. The one who made things happen. Who never asked for too much. Who carried both silence and sorrow in her basket.

That tiny phrase: "It is not a burden" — it touched an ancestral ache. The ache of carrying weight no one sees. The ache of being told, in subtle ways, that your presence is negotiable.

Spiral Two: The Collective Wound

Still stirred by the encounter, I reached for a book that always meets me in the deeper layers: Learning From the Ancient Ones: Truths to End Domination and Control by Sharon Riegie Maynard.

I opened it and spent hours with pages 141 to 226. The words on those pages cracked me open again:

“You have played lesser roles in order to keep the secret of women and the strength protected. You have come to believe that you are the roles. After being in the fear and cruelty used to force your mothers and grandmothers into subservience, you have come to believe you have no value.”

I wept. Not for myself alone, but for my mother, who lived most of her life under my father’s dominance. For both my grandmothers, who carried a silence I now recognise as survival.

When I look at the family tree hanging on my bedroom cupboard, I feel them watching. Not judging. Simply witnessing me now, as I witness them then.

It also brought up another spiral of memory: the women who turned on each other in the end days of Kiki Design AS. Bankruptcy, disappointment, competition, and legal betrayal. I had thought those were business wounds. But now I see they, too, were reflections of ancestral patterns — women clawing at each other for space in a male-defined economy, still trying to prove their worth.

We’ve all played these roles. And we can stop.

Spiral Three: The Systemic Pattern

A few days later, I reread Chapter 35: The Roots of Control from A Listening Grandmother. It echoed Sharon’s words with a different tone, but the same thread:

"Patriarchal culture is not just about men leading. It’s about an energy that dominates, controls, constricts, dismisses, and abuses... It doesn’t just come from human history—but from ancient galactic origins."

This system isn’t just out there. It’s inside us. It shows up in our friendships. In our email threads. In the pressure to be agreeable, to always meet others' needs.

That became clear again when I received a message from a friend:

"I do think we should talk about the situation... us not being able to make an appointment that honours both needs."

There it was again. The subtle message: You are not meeting my needs. Something is wrong.

And I replied:

"I think before we do so you ought to read Chapter 44 of my book titled Gratitude... And remember, my needs and your needs are different."

Not defensive. Just clear. And yet, I noticed: I see this friend more than I really need to, partly because I admire her courage to keep going despite her struggles. But admiration is not an obligation. And compassion is not consent.

This is the work now: To listen more deeply to my own boundaries. To express them not with apology, but with alignment.

The Center of the Spiral: Alignment

As I stood inside these three spirals—personal, ancestral, systemic—I came to a quiet knowing:

I am not here to compete with the system. I am here to soften it from within.

This includes the system of my own responses. This includes the system of my own inherited silence.

It is no longer time to carry what isn’t mine. It is no longer time to perform joy when what I long for is reciprocal delight.

And so I bless the man from Taiwan who said, "It is not a burden." I wish I had held him better. I wish I had said, "Thank you. But I think I was hoping to hear: It would bring me joy."

But perhaps this was the real conversation we were meant to have. Not at a café table. But at the altar of awakening.

A Final Reflection

Sometimes, it is the smallest moment—a sentence, a glance, a pause—that opens the door to remembrance.

That’s how the Field works.

That’s how listening beyond logic begins.

In spirals. In truth. In love, without flinching.

And maybe this chapter is not just mine. Maybe it's a spiral you, too, are walking.

Would you like to sit and speak it aloud?

XX Lian