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Extraordinary Women, Prosperity and Reverence

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Happy Friday, Loves!

I was sitting in my car this morning. I suddenly felt a strong sense of the miraculous nature of life…just being here is a miracle. When we’re not judging what is happening, a soft sort of joy and love is present. I hope you fill these weekend days with times to simply soak in the wonderment all around you.

I wanted to share some wonderful conversations that are happening, conversations of which I’ve loved being a part…Extraordinary Women, Prosperity and Reverence.

As I look at the overall sense of these writings, I can feel the thread that runs through them – that everything is already here, nothing is missing and nothing here doesn’t belong here. When we stop striving, pushing, and efforting, we begin to sense the immediacy and fullness of life; we feel the fullness of our own radiant life force, and we know we are intimately dancing with the divine.

When we intimately dance with the divine, we come to know the extraordinary simplicity that lies at the heart of being what you already are, and in this place prosperity and reverence organically flow.

Life, itself, is the miracle.

I hope you find something worthwhile and meaningful to you in the words being shared in these conversations. I really value the work each of these people are doing in the world.

::

Productive Flourishing’s : Extraordinary Women Change the World

Productive Flourishing has been hosting this two-month core conversation on Women’s Empowerment. Women and men from all over the Web have written about this important topic and the posts are amazing. Product Flourishing is a site for flourishing in life and in business. Discover more about Charlie, Angela and the rest of their superb team.

My contribution is Unabashedly Be Who You Are, which I also shared on HuffPost Women…a quote from this piece:

“Consider how much energy it takes to cover up who you really are, constantly try to convince yourself that who you are pretending to be is who you really are, then attempting to be that in the world. No wonder we are only living a small percentage of our power!”

::

Bridget Pilloud’s : Peaces of Prosperity

Bridget is an amazing bright light. She’s wickedly intuitive and generous beyond compare. This project on Prosperity is brilliant. In Bridget’s words: “I’ve gathered  35 of my favorite writers, speakers and sages to share their perspectives on prosperity. And I’d like for you to share your perspective too!” Bridget will be offering a complimentary eBook with all of the posts. Be sure to sign up for it.

My piece for Bridget’s wonderful vision is titled In The Arc of Orgasm…

“what could be a more prosperous life than living the full arc of creation – both many, many times, and one big long arc of a life fully lived, fully alive?”

::

Eileen Pardini‘s: Profiles on Reverence

Eileen’s site is an altar to the sacred, to beauty and reverence. I was honored to be profiled by Eileen, a woman who exudes reverence and humility. Eileen has some unusual and creative offerings to dive more deeply into a life of reverence and soul.

From my piece:

“In our culture, to pay reverence is to bow with deep respect. But what happens often is a kind of outward projection of one’s own worthiness, holiness and purity onto another person. When this happens, there is no balance between the inner and outer worlds.”

::

Each one of these conversations is filled with many wise voices and awakened hearts. I hope you enjoy them and discover some new people to connect to and engage with in the process.

Please know how much I love knowing you are on the other end of these words, that you are here reading them. This, too, is a miracle; that you and I are in relationship – two souls dancing with the divine.

Love to you,

Julie

 

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Erotic Visionary: Following the Instinct of Love, Joy & Creation

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Connecting with life.

I’ve just returned from a beautiful weekend retreat at Ratna Ling retreat center, near Cordoza, California, a spot in the coastal mountains of northern California. The land is so beautiful here. The retreat time was short, yet filled with so much wisdom and learning. I learned so much about myself, how I hold back from a truly fulfilled life of truth and transparency, and ways to access my instinctual self more readily. All of this so amazingly fits in with my last post on being an erotic visionary. I thank you for sharing that post, and also thank those of you who shared yourself in the comments of that post.

At the retreat, I loved the exercises we did to discover ways in which our instinctual selves are so accessible and so ready to be expressed more fully. In one particular exercise, we were asked to go exploring in twos. Our explorations were to notice and follow our instincts through our senses.

It’s amazing what happens when we allow our instincts to guide us. My partner and I spent thirty minutes exploring the land around Ratna Ling center through our senses, allowing ourselves to follow our instinctual impulse.

We climbed into the center of huge redwood trees hollowed out by fire. We stroked moss covered bark and the insides of charred redwood trees turned silky over time. We found the tiniest red flowers sprouting from minute lichen. We delighted in a Yucca plant in full flower. We took turns sharing with each other what we were immediately drawn to.

What was I drawn to?

Beauty, Color, and Life.

Contrast, Joy, and Tenderness.

The intense color contrast between sunlit orange Tibetan prayer flags and the bright blue skies that canopy the hills of northern California, just miles away from the Pacific Ocean. When I had first arrived at the center, I was delighted by these flags. In giving my full attention to this delight, I gazed at this contrast and realized how much I LOVE color, light, and contrast. This love has been with me from as far back in my life as I can remember.

The tenderness of flower petals, how the light shines through them, and how they so fleetingly exist in a world where everything dies, where everything in creation eventually dies.

The experience of the impulse itself and the very simple, yet oh so important, joy of discovery what life is displaying just around the corner… discovering what lies at the other end of the instinctual impulse.

Eros

We have these impulses all the time, yet how often do we allow our eyes to simply land on what they want to see, our hands to touch what they long to feel, our ears to listen to that which they long to hear?

We are so strongly socially conditioned to inhibit our instincts. Yes, some of that conditioning is a good thing; AND, some of that conditioning inhibits the soul from freely expressing itself in the world, of following the instinct of love, joy and creation – eros.

When we follow this instinct, we connect with life and with the earth. When we trust our instinctual selves, we rediscover an aspect of self that we buried so long ago.

Learning to trust this instinct, and guiding others to trust this instinct as well, is where my work is leading me. My work is shifting in a direction not yet fully formed, which is exhilarating. I’m following the trail of where my soul is calling me, where the instinct is leading me.

And, you?

If you had fifteen minutes to follow your erotic impulse with a friend, where would your instinctual self lead you? Take fifteen minutes today to follow this erotic impulse, whether with a friend or alone. Notice the feeling of the impulse, the pull of what you are drawn to. Notice where you stop yourself. Just notice what it feels like to follow the instinct of love, joy and creation.

Then, come back and share with us what you discover in the comments. I look forward to learning from you!

 

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A Glorious Tribe of Erotic Visionaries

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You’re my tribe.

This is a conversation I’ve needed to have with myself for quite a while, now. So, I’m gonna have it here, and share it with you all, too. You’re my tribe.

I’m going to out myself… in service to helping me know, and hopefully any of you out there who are in the same place, that I am indeed part of a remarkable tribe of visionaries.

Sometimes, it is easy to think everyone else has it together, everyone else is completely comfortable in their work, no one else hears that inner critical voice…

The fact is, I’ve had an incessant voice in my head that has driven me somewhat bat crazy with its insistence that the stuff I write and teach about is ‘out there’, a bit ‘too much’, ‘too sexual’, too crazy, over the top, not important, too esoteric, not what people are willing to pay for, that people won’t ‘get it’ … you get the picture.

women’s ways of knowing

the mystery and the unseen world

ways of the heart

the sensual, erotic nature of life

raw and wild creativity…

are out there, a bit wacko, not all that important…

WOAH. Doesn’t that look odd?

Just hearing myself say these things aloud, on paper, on this computer screen remind me of how powerful our inner critics are, how desperately they want to keep us safe, tied to the tribe, one like everyone else.

And…we no longer have the luxury of listening to this voice.

Isn’t it just flat-out crazy?

how our inner-critics keep on pushing that old boulder up the hill, no matter how much feedback we get that we are doing our work in the world?

How many times I have heard in the past month from people who are writing about the feminine, God, spirituality, love, kindness, women’s rage, the plight of life here on earth, and who’ve also expressed fear about speaking out, fear that friends will think what they are saying, writing and sharing is weird and out there.

Right now, so much of what fills our airwaves still reflects the old paradigm. It still mirrors old ways of being, ways that denigrated the feminine, saw only the logical and reasonable as valuable, and so on.

What we share from our hearts, what we teach to our clients, what we write on our blogs, the ways we do business, are all creating a new world, a new way of being with each other. This IS the new paradigm.

The idea that what we are saying, writing and teaching is weird to the old way makes sense. It IS Weird, different, new to the old way. And, isn’t that perfect? It means this IS a new way.

An Enlightening Force

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

Think of the Suffragettes and their amazing work to bring the vote to women in our country. They worked for decades, facing all sorts of backlash from so many. What gave them such incredible determination to work toward this goal for so long?

I wonder if it was this enlightening force that Lorde wrote of…

The thing is, we’ve reached a tipping point. I can feel it. There are so many of us doing this work to bring women’s wisdom forward to serve life.

What if?

What if we just realize that the voice inside doesn’t really want us to stay quiet… it just wants to be listened to, heard, loved? What if it wants to know that we are surrounded by those that understand us, those that love us, those that will stand by us as we do our visionary work in the world?

What if we make sure we tell others we support their work, champion and advocate for them, send them a little love note every now and then, remind them they are not alone…

It’s both an inside job – realizing our wholeness within, and also an outside job – finding the people in our lives who truly honor and support our work in the world… our tribe.

Heal within:
Slip your inner critic a love note… tell it that you now know and realize you are not alone…you are part of a glorious band of creative lovers of life telling a bold new story of a new way of life on earth…

Reach out to others:
We are not alone. We are not individual bodies, swimming alone upstream against an immovable force. We’re all together… a glorious tribe of erotic visionaries with an eye for beauty and a deep vast love for the sacredness of life…and we are held by life itself, life that at its core is love.

And, you…

If you see yourself as one of this tribe of erotic visionaries, a woman who feels this ‘enlightening force’ in your life and is working to accomplish real positive change in service to life, please share this in the comments!

Please let me know, let us all know, so we can see just how big and luscious this tribe is!

 

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Touch as Prayer in Motion

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“What if you knew you’d be the last to touch someone?”
~ Ellen Bass*

I read these words. My mind flashes back.

I was the last…as he was dying; then, as he lay dead.

So many times, I’ve wished I could have known what was coming so I could have said what (in hindsight) I would liked to have said.

My mind flashes forward. I no longer touch him and I am not the last.

::

I find endings so damn hard.

Some sweet part of this personality hates letting go of those I’ve loved…those final letting goes that happen when I must part from the bodies of those I’ve loved.

Some dead. Some alive.

In the hardness, I go a little unconscious and do things that (after the fact) I wish I hadn’t done. I tighten up against the impending ending and leaving.

Yes, yes, I know they stay with me. In my heart. Their spirits always here. Yes, yes, I know. And, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how my body will never be with their body in the same way.

Body to body… touching, connecting, loving, making love. So many times, my touch on the skin of my lover has been unconscious AND so many times my touch has truly been a prayer in motion.

“…before you make love to a woman or to a man, first pray — because it is going to be a divine meeting of energies. God will surround you. Wherever two lovers are, there is God. Wherever two lovers’ energies are meeting and mingling, there is life, alive, at its best; God surrounds you. Churches are empty; love-chambers are full of God. If you have tasted love the way Tantra says to taste it, if you have known love the way Tao says to know it, then by the time you reach forty-two, love starts disappearing on its own accord. And you say goodbye to it with deep gratitude, because you are fulfilled. It has been delightful, it has been a blessing; you say good-bye to it.”
~ Osho

“…you say goodbye to it with deep gratitude, because you are fulfilled. It has been delightful, it has been a blessing; you say good-bye to it.”

 

These words are so foreign to this sweet part of me that has such a hard time letting go. It has been delightful. It has been a blessing. Can’t it continue? Forever? Can’t I hold you through eternity?

My soul knows the answer is, “No”. My soul knows this No. To know the deepest joy in a moment of touch, I must know the ending of that touch. To know the deepest joy in the full inhale, I must know the letting go in the exhale.

Life in the body is life in limitation. Learning this makes it all the sweeter. Not necessarily easier at all, yet all the while sweeter.

Knowing touch is a momentary kiss of skin to skin sweetens the magic.

I can hover over the past (I do) as if I can still touch it…but that touch is not touch, it is remembering how it was to touch.

This sweet part wants to hang on, fingers curled; but, fingers curled tightly can’t touch… again, … anew.

Uncurling brings open palms and fingertips ready for new skin. 

And the old loves still breathing? I’m learning to touch with the tenderness of friend.

In the end, touch is prayer in motion. It comes and it goes, as everything that moves does. And it all moves.

::

* I found this here. (Thanks, Laurie!)

 

 

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Wise Woman Wednesday : Lianne Raymond on Love

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I am delighted to share something with you.

My friend, a beautiful and wise woman, Lianne Raymond, has just released her video of a talk she gave in March. When I first watched this video, I was deeply moved.

I love it when women tell their stories. I love it when women share each other’s wisdom. I love it when we come to know the deep wise ways within our own soul by seeing and hearing this wisdom expressed through another woman.

I’m not going to say much more. Lianne’s words speak volumes. To know more of Lianne’s work, visit her website and read this poem she recently shared.

Be sure to share your feelings and thoughts with Lianne in the comments.

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This Body is My Vessel of Belonging

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Have you ever had a day where everything around you sparkled? Where everything was so vibrantly alive? Where there wasn’t even a question in your head about anything because you were simply alive, aware and awake?

That’s how yesterday was for me. Perhaps it was a combination of dance (my early-Sunday-morning ritual), brunch outside with beautiful friends, a crazy-gorgeous day in San Francisco with a temperature of 80+ degrees, and time spent cleaning my home and cooking good food. And, perhaps it was one-on-one time with my grandson on Friday, a time to just be with him and to see the remarkableness of his unique soul and how it already shines through at 3-years old.

What I know, deep in the belly, is the more I come home to this woman’s body, the more I know I belong to this earth. This body came out of the earth and it will return to the earth, and while I am alive in this body, to know I truly belong is to know I am part of the earth. When I know this, when what I am settles down into the body and fills the cells of the body, I am no longer thinking my way through life, I am alive and I see everything around me as the same unutterably beautiful aliveness.

Yesterday, I came across this brilliance by John O’Donohue (someone I tend to quote often as he was entirely wise):

“In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act.”

Beauty isn’t what we are constantly told it is.

Beauty is the sacred appearing gloriously and unabashedly as the form into which it is born.

And when we experience beauty, this appearance of spirit enlivening matter, even if just for a split second, we remember, we awaken to our true nature and we surrender to this nature all in the same moment.

One place I so often experience this is when I commune with flowers, especially when the light flows through their petals. Just last night, as I was walking home from the grocery store, I passed by my neighborhood florist shop and stopped to look in the windows. All last week, the shop was filled with at least six different kind of peonies. Big, huge bunches of peonies lined their old oak tables. I took photos. I sat and just looked, while tears filled my eyes. The proprietress knows me, now, and she came over for a second just to stand with me as we both admired the fullness of beauty we were witnessing. But last night, the shop was closed and the only peonies left were those that filled two vases sitting in the front window. They’d been left in the front window for the weekend, just to delight the senses of passersby like me.

These peonies in the window were in their last stages of blooming, with the petals already a little bit translucent, as happens when the decay begins. I was captivated by the mix of such intense beauty and short life span…how for just a short, short time these blossoms poured their uniqueness forth into the world, only to soon return to the earth.

We are like this. It’s what makes life so precious and amazing…the luminosity, and the numinous presence that looks out from behind your eyes.

We belong here because we are this. It has taken me all my life to come home…55 years of wandering to realize I am home. This body is my vessel of belonging.

My gift is to help guide women to come home to this body, right here, right now, and to open to this deeply erotic field in which we live, and create, and love. To know we belong here and have such beautiful gifts to share with this world that is hungry for our wisdom, our nature and our love is the gift that is waiting to be received.

This is the feminine in real life, and it is deeply practical. We can’t fully give our gifts until we are fully here. When we are fully here in the body, we are no longer fighting being fully alive, no longer fearing what might come in the next moment.

::

And, you?
What is your gift to give in this life?
How fully do you feel you belong here, on this earth?
What can help bring you home to this knowing that you belong and are an intrinsic part of the life that is breathing you?

Take some time today to notice what brings you home into your body, into your vessel of belonging. Notice when you are already here, already aware of the aliveness of life. And, notice if there is resistance to being fully here.

::

I’ve included this amazingly sensual song from yesterday’s dance (thank you, Claire!). I hope you enjoy it.

 

Jericho by Weekend Players (Pursuit of Happiness, ’03)
The lyrics speak to what I’ve written here. When our senses are filled with life, with Source, with what we really are, we see things as new, as continually coming into existence and then back into non-existence.



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This Vast Embrace

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To know, and live, that you are both supremely sacred and absolutely human is the magnificent gift of being alive.

This seeming paradox, this knowing in the heart that you are sacred and so very loved…and knowing that you are completely fallable, vulnerable and human, is beautifully painful and vitally freeing.

Within our divinity there is infinite space for our infallibility, limitation and humanity. That which is holding us, holds us  with such tenderness and love, and in this vast embrace there is finally a place to feel, then let go of, shame, humiliation, fear and fighting.

As I write this to you, I am sitting in a profound peace. I just moved through the deepest feelings of shame. These are old, old feelings finding their way to freedom through very wet and profuse tears.

The love I had always longed for, I’ve found in this vast embrace. There is room here for my humanness.  The paradox is resolved. I am both human and divine. One holds the other with a spaciousness that is infinitely vast and utterly present.

Why write about something so personal? Because I am not just me. I am you. And, you are me. We wake up to these realizations when we share them with each other, when we see there is nothing really special about them at all, that things have always been this way.

::

And you?

Please share with us your stories of this vast embrace, even when you feel nobody would want to know. We do.

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Softening into the Silk of the Soul

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“I burned in the unutterable beauty of being alive.” John Peale Bishop

The Vast Embrace

Last night, I sat on a park bench, on the top of a hill in San Francisco that looks out over Alcatraz and Angel Island on one side and sweet city neighborhoods on the other. I watched as dogs played, lovers walked hand in hand, and the sun found its way down to the horizon.

As I sat, I was drawn into an unutterable presence. No words. Just softness and a few tears. Wind blew across my face, gently drawing me deeper into this presence. A big presence. A wordless presence. A loving presence…a love that burns away most everything it touches. There was so much power there…a full, vibrant, pulsing power.

I felt happy. I felt joyful. I felt a bittersweetness.

I felt love brush against my skin and the silk of the soul’s caress.

::

My old way of trying to muscle stuff into being can’t hold a candle to this powerful presence. Muscling anything grows old. It has never made me happy. Whomever first thought that striving, pushing, forcing, fearing, and dominating life and people and things could result in a happy life was crazy…

Believing that life could be controlled and dominated and forced into submission is crazy-thinking. Perhaps it feels like it will work…at least for a bit. But, ultimately, not a chance.

What we humans do to try to control is cah-ra-zy. In setting it all down, we ultimately open to what is being offered.

Open heart. Open arms.

Setting it down takes a quiet, “Yes”, not a big, clamoring noisy, “Yes”.

I remember my teacher telling me this. I wondered what it would be like to finally simply answer, “Yes”.

For so long, I’ve fought this…and, I can see the fighting is futile. And while I can’t say it won’t pop up again, the “Yes” is getting quieter.

Opening to the vastness of life feels out of control, but then it is. It is out of the control of the one who fights it. Control has never worked, though. Striving, pushing, forcing has never worked…not in the way I thought it did.

What I now know of love and desire has taught me that it is far more powerful than anything I, the small me, could do. All my flailing against myself has only caused me pain.

The inner battle, struggle, and fighting against that thing inside that seemed as though it would be too much has been exhausting. Laying down the fight eventually comes.

I know I don’t know, yet somewhere…deep…down… when I soften, I am held by something. A vast, silent, unfathomable nothing that is something. And, that, makes all the difference.

::

And, you?

What are you experiencing?

How do you feel this pull?

How might you soften into this vast embrace?

 

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