women's wildly creative leadership emerging from within
The innermost places of the heart are unspeakably beautiful.
I’ve wondered what is like to travel there, to taste the utmost delicacy of life.
This woman’s protective shield has allowed her to not feel the pain that might
deliver her to the threshold of this most honest place.
Until now.
As I settle more deeply into my time here in Hana, I feel the softness of this land bringing out the soft, supple places in my body and heart. My soul responds to the beauty and fragrance of this Frangiapani, collected on my walk this morning. There was no clear sunrise, but rather a cloudy and warm drizzly beginning to this day.
I can feel the pull of this place, a pull that tugs at the core of my body, pulling me down into Her. When I arrived and realized I had been called here, that this place had called me, this pull made itself known.
In some ways, it’s like the pull you feel on your whole body as you stand in a wave being drawn back to the ocean. The pull of the tide is mighty.
This pull feels like it’s pulling me down into this place, whatever this ‘place’ is. I don’t know. Yet I know the feeling as it pulls not only on my body, but on my heart as well.
And, sometimes, She’s not gentle at all. As I exited the surf the other day, a wave with a punch lifted me up and tossed me down without warning. I landed on the side of my head. I felt woozy. I felt disoriented and had to sit to collect myself. I remembered a good healthy respect for nature that I had forgotten.
As I walked the beach this morning, one thing was very clear. No matter how much I try to make up a strong strand of meaning in my life, I could clearly see, there is no meaning…at least not one that I might make up. Oh, yes, I will still try to make it up, ’cause that’s what minds do.
Yet in this place of tropical bird calls and sweet Frangiapani spread out across the ground, I find when I simply be in my body and open my senses to every layer of experience that presents itself, I know no meaning.
In feeling the pull to this place, I know no meaning, but I listen and witness. I am opening. There’s a softness in this opening, a palpable tenderness. I also am aware of my fear of my own power, a power I see all around me, in the waves crashing against the shore and in the volcano on whose base I am sleeping.
The feminine is mysterious. She’s contradiction. She’s unreasonable. And, so am I.
Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground. ~Martha Graham
On the dance floor, something there is an opening for movement, for something to move through me.
It is a holy act.
I began to dance the 5Rhythms nine years ago. The practice has changed my life. It has moved me deeply. It has been a midwife to the rebirth of my soul. It has been the container for the natural move toward wholeness within me.
As a child, I was a figure skater. I skated from the age of seven to sixteen. Looking back, if my mind body connection had been as vibrantly alive as it is now, skating would have been such a joy. Instead, it was always something I felt I had to work hard at, but not hard in a joyous way, hard in a “I’ll never be good enough, so I have to prove myself” kind of way. As a skater, I was never in my body. I was uncomfortable in front of the audience. I was shy. I was stiff. I loved skating, and disliked performing.
When I dance, the performer leaves. There is no performer. There is only the dance and the music, and even when there is a dancer, she isn’t performing, she is joyous in her expression.
I think of dancing in life. How living from the dance could hold just such a shift in everyday life. Dance as the simple, yet profound, metaphor for living my life. Moving as the Mover moves me. Feeling the song that’s playing and surrendering to it, rather than complaining if I don’t like the song, or attempting to take over the DJ’s job.
Image by normalityrelief shared under CC 2.0 
Some rights reserved
“There’s a moon inside every human being.
Learn to be companions with it. Give
more of your life to this listening. As
brightness is to time, so you are to
the one who talks to the deep ear in
your chest. I should sell my tongue
and buy a thousand ears when that
one steps near and begins to speak.â€
— Jalal al-Din Rumi
Image: Moon Some rights reserved by WiderAngle on Flickr
“Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Though the gifts of the wildish nature come to us at birth, society’s attempt to “civilize” us into rigid roles has plundered this treasure, and muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls. Without Wild Woman, we become over-domesticated, fearful, uncreative, trapped.” ~Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
Yes, we have the gifts of this wildish nature at birth. And, we are conditioned out of them.
I was a wild child…and then I learned to be very careful and very cautious. I wrote about this in a post titled, Wild Child. I shared it as a guest post. And, I forgot to tell you…
Ooops.
I realized this when another woman I follow and love, Amanda of Kind Over Matter, posted her Friday’s Lovelies and included my post, Wild Child. I could see that more people would know about this post…a post I really love, that feels like a deep soulful dive into the essence of this woman’s journey…yet, I still hadn’t told you.
So, I’m rectifying this.
Wild Child was part of the Oh These Wild Women series at Roots of She, a site by Jenn Gibson.
I love this post, because in writing it, I tapped into something very deep and old, something wise and wild and free…exactly what Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. writes about. Upon finishing the post, some things have become more clear. I’ve even decided to return to Hana for my birthday in a few weeks, to reconnect with the land.
Both Roots of She and Kind Over Matter. They’re two beautiful sites that contain a bounty of beauty and fun for you to savor.
If you read Wild Child, I’d love to know what you think. There are already some beautiful comments there. You can add to the conversation by leaving a comment there, here, or both places.
With gratitude,
Julie
You are here.
Softly,
Joyously,
Persistently,
Reminding.
A one-way conversation
Until I choose to let go
Into the rhythm
Of your pulse.
Much fear has been tossed around
About the inherent weakness of
The tendermost layers
Of your expression.
Yet, I find these places
To be filled with the
Sweetest longings
I can know.
Tendermost places
Lend themselves
To melting into,
To letting go,
To receiving and giving,
To going home.
Yesterday, I wrote about Grief, Growth and Beautiful People. I wanted to introduce you to a very important book about grief and moving toward beauty through grieving.
Over the course of the past 24 hours, grief has been on my mind. Beauty has been in my awareness. I’ve wondered about the seeming incongruousness of our world that is easy for a human mind to justify, but so hard for the heart to hold.
The incongruousness of a world we’ve created where some have so much more than they could ever, ever need, and others are dying from lack of clean water, food, or love.
Yes, this is the world we humans have created, the world based on our ideas of how things should be.
It’s okay to have so much since I’ve worked hard for it, I’ve done what it takes to make it, and others haven’t. Why should I care or share?
It’s okay to not have to think of others, because I’ve been born into privilege, and privilege means I don’t have to consider those who aren’t privileged.
It’s okay for me to legislate my beliefs into law because I know better and am right.
I, too, have thought these thoughts and believed these beliefs throughout my life. I was born into privilege and for most of my life, even though I knew on some deep level that those privileges hadn’t been earned and weren’t part of the natural world, I really never looked beneath the covers of that privilege to see what was hiding underneath.
the natural world we humans are so damn lucky to be a part of, has no beliefs written upon its pages. In reality, there may be incongruencies there as well, but if we look very closely and are very honest with ourselves, we can’t even say we understand this world, our place in it or why we’re here…or for that matter, who and what we really are. It’s really all conjecture.
What is clear is that we’re out of balance. It feels as though our structures are out of balance, and our way of life is out of balance.
Yesterday, after a lovely conversation over coffee downtown with fellow coach Heather Mills, I decided to walk home along some of the most beautiful scenic streets of San Francisco. Heather and I had talked about how easy it is to forget we’re a part of this natural world when we’re surrounded by the cold and steel secular structure of our man-made surroundings. Concrete gray surrounded us as we talked, and nowhere immediate in our gaze was there green or blue, or any other bright color of Mother Earth in our gaze. I had shared with Heather about the feelings I encountered when I returned home from India a few years ago. I had been struck by how cold and lifeless it felt here compared to the devotion-laced air I breathed in my travels there, and this recognition had brought with it great sadness.
I stopped to watch the cable cars, gazed at the Fairmont Hotel and surrounding buildings with beautiful design details, and wandered the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. As I almost always do when I walk, I was snapping pictures along the way. It’s a form of meditation for me, because as I look through the lens, even the lens of this quirky iPhone, my artist eye has a chance to behold what it sees with a sense of color, balance, composition, intrigue and surprise.
I felt the contradiction between seeing beauty in these concrete creations, while also feeling a sense of estrangement. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what feels so lifeless in them. I looked around at the people I was passing and we all seemed to be so intent on something else other than what was right in front of us – this beautiful sacred creation of life itself that constantly invites us to be amazed. In some ways, what brought me back to the beauty of creation was this quirky artist’s eye…the one that stops to look and feel and compose…and then share images into the interwebs by way of my phone.
In yesterday’s post, I shared this quote:
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” – Elizabeth Kubler Ross
I felt a welling up of grief and the tears began to flow. So much beauty. I am swimming in so much beauty, and so much of the time I’m lost in my thoughts and beliefs and fears about the world, my place in it and what might happen. So much of the time I believe what I feel in my surroundings rather than feeling what is deep in my heart.
I thought about how things might be if we lived in a world inhabited by seven billion beautiful people…
Seven billion people who have found their way out of the depths of suffering, struggle, and loss.
Seven billion people filled with appreciation, sensitivity, compassion, gentleness and a deep loving concern.
Seven billion beautiful people.
As Kubler Ross writes, beautiful people don’t just happen. We become beautiful people by feeling, seeing and knowing the depths of suffering and what it means to be human.
our doorway out of our current predicament is the same doorway into our awakening to the beauty we are, to the beauty of each other, to the beauty inherent in life itself.
Perhaps the fix we’re looking for, that congress is trying to legislate, that our politicians are fumbling to express is really as simple as coming to remember the sacred by feeling the depths of our own suffering that is right here, right now. Maybe, through this doorway of remembering, we might feel our way into a world of enough, of connection, of deep loving concern for all beings.
All the distractions we feed ourselves are done so we don’t have to feel. There is no human being on earth that does not suffer; yet there are many human beings who have learned, very well, how to not feel.
Privilege, like oppression, is infused with suffering.
Having too much, like having not enough, is infused with suffering.
Believing we know who we are, like forgetting who we really are, is infused with suffering.
Not feeling our own suffering is infused with suffering.
Perhaps we are on the threshold of this shift, right now, and our doorway in is to feel the depths of the grief that is right here in front of us.
After all, it can lead us from suffering to beauty, to compassion, to “gentleness and a deep loving concern”. It can lead us from separation to connection. It can lead us to all that is sacred within ourselves, and to a remembering of what is at the sacred heart of life in each other, all seven billion of us.
And, I know first hand, that fully grieving leads to joy and peace… a sweet simple joy, a lighthearted love of life.
What would it be like if the world were filled with seven billion people consciously grieving the state of our world, the loss of awareness of the sacred, our sense of separation, our fears of each other…grieving the very real suffering that exists right now?
How would things be if seven billion people felt this sweet simple joy, a lighthearted love of life that comes from remembering the sacred?
People all over the world feel grief every day. They face circumstances I could not even imagine. They see horrors, they know suffering, they live with grief.
Many of us who know abundance and plenty, enjoy freedom others could never imagine, and have our health are also experiencing grief about what is happening on the planet, although we may not be able to put in words what is happening.
In my short travels in India, even though many there I saw lived with so much less than what I have in my life, I also saw joy, a kind of joy I see here less and less.
I have a sense children already are, for as children we are still in touch with what’s real. Most children see through the illusions their parents have about life, but don’t know how to deal with the discrepancy between what they see and what their parents claim is reality.
I know all I can do is to continue to feel, continue to grieve what we’ve done to our world.
How have I contributed? How do I continue to be unconscious? What can I offer that I am not yet offering?
And, can I remember the sacred in the everyday moments of life?
…
What would it be like for all seven billion of us to walk through this doorway into awakening? Perhaps there would be seven billion people who’ve come to realize the inherent beauty that’s always been at the heart of who they really are.
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” – Elizabeth Kubler Ross
Yes, beautiful people don’t just happen. And, what can open our hearts to the beauty of life, making us beautiful people, are the events that every human being experiences throughout our lives. Living is a vulnerable proposition. It’s what we do with the experiences, how we hold them, if we are open to the gift of them, that awaken the soul to its true richness and beauty.
We all experience suffering.
On a retreat with Adyashanti, he once explained that suffering is our doorway in to awakening. And I would add, to our beauty.
Difficulty in life is real. We all, every human being, experiences what Kubler-Ross writes about.
And, it is these difficulties that are the pathway to a broken-open heart. In my experience, I’ve felt heartbreak many times. And, when I’ve fully felt the loss, when I’ve allowed grief to take me in to the depths of that feeling, riding the line of its experience in my body, that is when my heart breaks open to the beauty inherent in these times of life.
I’m writing today to let you know of a beautiful ebook I’ve been blessed and honored to be a contributor to:
is an offering by Alana Sheeren. An offering from one woman, and her fellow broken-open-hearted friends, that guides you through the many facets of the journey of grief.
Alana started writing at LifeAfterBenjamin.com after her baby boy, Benjamin, was stillborn last year. She has been in the deep process of grief, sharing some very intimate moments along the way.
This guide is not only beautifully designed and put together, it’s also filled with so much wisdom about grief and the process of grief.
The guide is written by Alana, designed by Shenee Howard, with artwork by Diana Nelson and supplemented with contributions from Christa Gallopoulos, Dyana Valentine, Emily Lewis, Erica Staab, Gail Larsen, Karen Maezen Miller, Roos Stamet-Geurs, Vera Kate Hadley and me.
Grief takes many forms and appears, many times, when we least expect it.
I wholeheartedly recommend Alana’s guide.
With love to Alana, and to you,
Julie
I believe in the erotic and
I believe in it as an enlightening force within our lives as women.
I have become clearer about the distinctions between the erotic
and other apparently similar forces.
We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal.
I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force,
a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.
And when I say living I mean it as that force which
moves us toward what will accomplish real positive change.
~Audre Lorde
:::
In these days of change, where destruction is so present and many wonder what is next, discovering the enlightening force Lorde speaks of is the rich invitation at hand.
Can we, as women, remember and re-member this force within our bodies and within our lives?
It moves within because it is the deepest life force. To come into alignment with it is to align with life.
Sexuality is not simply having sex. It is awakening to our nature, returning to the wholeness of the feminine, and remembering that at the center of our female bodies lies the void of creation.
We embody the creatrix, the void out of which all arises. To turn our attention inward, to the innermost recesses of the heart and the birthing capacity of the feminine, opens us to re-member this force.
Can we feel life moving within? Can we begin to trust what we see, especially when it is not visible to the eye?
Yet, I learned at a young age to cut them off before they really blossomed in my consciousness; my intellect learned to come in quickly and try to rationalize and explain these unexplainable things.
As a woman, I walk in ways not understood by the intellect. These ways, these feelings and knowings that are irrational to the intellect, but exquisite morsels to the soul, are calling to me to listen. There is no time to dawdle. They call me to play in the stream of deep healing and honoring.
:::
Image: Sun Spot with Light Rays, Let it Shine Some rights reserved by Torley
