The Feminine: Presence in a Lullaby

Share

I’ve been wanting to include some examples of the feminine in real life here on the blog, so you can have a sense of what I am talking about when I speak of the sacred feminine. She is revealed, more and more, each day.

I’ve created a new category, The Feminine in Real Life, that will include some great examples of how She is rising in the everyday world.

A Lullaby

The first post is this absolutely gorgeous lullaby in the video below. It cuts right to my heart. Her voice, the words, and what is unseen all come together to create such beauty. It brings me to tears, and to a feeling of deep relatedness to life.

Before you watch,

I want to share these words that I saw just yesterday from Marion Woodman:

“…when we’re talking about that feminine that’s missing, we’re talking about the heart energy. That can fill a room. Certainly in a relationship it’s the energy that holds presence. By which I mean the child comes in or the person comes in, has something to tell you or they have prepared a little bouquet. Have you got the time to see it? Have you got the time to see the love that went into it? Can you hear the anguish in the voice that is talking to you?”

The feminine principle would attempt to relate. Instead of breaking things off into parts, it would say, where are we alike? How can we connect? Where is the love? Can you listen to me? Can you really hear what I am saying? Can you see me? Do you care whether you see me or not?

…it is so difficult… to talk about the feminine because so few people have experienced it. What I’m talking about here is presence, and relatedness.”

The video:

The lyrics:

I Have Never Loved Someone, by My Brightest Diamond

I have never loved someone the way I love you
I have never seen a smile like yours
And if you grow up to be king, or clown, or pauper
I will say you are my favorite one in town
I have never held a hand so soft and sacred
When I see you laugh, I know heaven’s key
And when I grow to be a poppy in the graveyard
I will send you all my love upon the breeze
And if the breeze won’t blow your way, I will be the sun
And if the sun won’t shine your way, I will be the rain
And if the rain won’t wash away all your aches and pains
I will find some other way to tell you you’re okay

::

The presence of the feminine, receptive, tender, and powerful: “I have never held a hand so soft and sacred.” “When I see you laugh, I know heaven’s key.”

You can feel the presence as she sings the song. You can see its effect on the people in the restaurant. Tears. They have been touched. She, the singer, is touched by the presence moving through her.

In fact, in the description below the video, the person filming writes of the effect:

“After the concert I finally dared to ask her what I wanted to ask her that morning, to sing us this lullaby that struck me down. It’s Sunday morning, a morning of hangovers. The whole hotel seems suspended in the air. We ask her to get to the bar, to make it sing for her, to sing for her son (for whom she had written this song). We erase ourselves. She, she doesn’t. After we’re done filming, I cry. She cries too.”

Struck me down. Powerful words on the effect of this presence. It is clear that this presence touches everyone. How did it touch you? How does this radiance affect you?

What would our world be like if we embodied this feminine receptivity more deeply? Would we come to know, as experience, that the hands we hold are ‘soft and sacred’, that when we hear laughter from those we love, that we are knowing ‘heaven’s key’? Would we listen, deeply listen?

To embody the feminine in life is to come to know it as experience, not just as an idea in our heads but as real life experience. We haven’t experienced it much, for it has denigrated, called weak.

This is the receptive radiance of the feminine in us all, women and men, that aspect of self that can simply receive and bear witness.

It’s a beingness, and it calls for a not-doing, a letting go of doing so you can be with.

::

 I discovered this lullabye (by way of Jamie Wallace) on Amy Palko’s gorgeous post, Whispering Lullabies to the Goddess. Amy’s words speak to the goddess within each of us.

Share

A Vessel of Deep Receptivity

Share

Cuero by Saguayo

This body that lies within my soul

and this heart that connects me to the Divine

were created

to listen,

to feel,

to touch,

to hear,

to taste

to know…

to receive and respond.

A generous inhale infuses spirit into these cells.

A full exhale releases love back into the whole.

I was created to be

a vessel of deep receptivity.

::

some rights reserver under cc2.0 – by saguayo

Share

Love of Woman

Share

“…this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love.” ~David Whyte

I want to write about love.

Between women.

Love between women that was never part of the world I grew up in.

Love between women that defies the (il)logic of patriarchy.

Love that is outside the acceptable norm of patriarchal society.

This love between me and woman has been a long time coming.

To love woman in this way goes against unspoken rules.

It pushes up against learned fears.

And it compels me to belly-up to the place of trust, where the tenderness of past hurts reveals its pink flesh.

This love is far beyond simply promising not to put other women down.

This love is far beyond knowing that supporting another woman does not diminish me.

This love is more simple than all of these thinking things.

This love comes from the place deep within my body that is the radiance of the living, breathing essence of the sacred, divine feminine.

To love woman is to know the purity of the place made ready for new life, whether or not this place ever produces new life.

It has taken me a long time to learn to love woman – in myself, in others, and in its most essential form, the sacred, divine feminine.

::

This post is in response to The Summer of Love Invitational, where the lovely Mahala Mazerov has invited bloggers to write about loving kindness.

Share

Masculinity, Divine Feminine & Creation

Share

I came across this video yesterday, courtesy of Chameli Ardagh. This young man, Molina Soliel gives me so much hope that one day we will all come to know, honor, and live the divine feminine and divine masculine in ourselves, in others, and in all of life.

Molina is an artist of the spoken word. Molina speaks to the truth that “without women, none of us would exist.” “It’s women who give life.” To hear this strong, passionate, beautiful man speak about both the masculine and feminine within him, within other men, within us all, makes me smile really brightly.

Share

Rumi, Women’s Leadership & Love

Share

 “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” — Rumi

This is the first of a series of posts on this topic of Rumi, Women’s Leadership & Love.

To be a leader, one must truly feel what others are feeling. To be a leader, one must be able to truly love those she leads. How do we learn this most necessary trait? By feeling, deeply, the depth of our own experience. By allowing our own hearts to break. Many spiritual teachers speak of the necessity of allowing one’s heart to break open. It’s not that the heart will break. It cannot break. It must, however, break open, meaning that all the bindings that have grown around one’s heart must give way so that the heart can thrive in its natural expansiveness. When one’s heart is free to be, it is as large, and as expansive, as the whole of the Universe.

Feeling the depths of shame and humiliation from our own experience of being marginalized, disrespected and humiliated generationally is key to women waking up to our fullness and wholeness. Both our lightness and our darkness must be brought back into consciousness if we are to be wholly female and embody the sacred feminine that we are.

Every midwife knows
that not until a mother’s womb
softens from the pain of labour
will a way unfold
and the infant find that opening to be born.
Oh friend!
There is treasure in your heart, it is heavy with child.
Listen.
All the awakened ones, like trusted midwives are saying,
welcome this pain.
It opens the dark passage of Grace.

~Rumi

Opening to the pain of our experience as women, individually and collectively, is our passage to Grace. It is paramount that we open ourselves to feel, deeply feel, that which has been projected onto us over the centuries of oppression. There are many layers to this feeling. How much of our anger, shame and disowned power can accumulate before the dam breaks? We can use this pain as the way into Grace, the way into the opened heart, the way into the depths of our humanity. This humanity has become ripe and fragrant with our own capacity to walk side by side men, no longer simply a complement or accessory, but rejoicing in our sovereignty and self respect.

When we are able to feel the depths of what has been internalized within our own beings through the generational oppression, our hearts will move into an awakened state of love for ourselves, for other women, for men, for all of life. And, when we come to embody this love fully, for ourselves, and for others, every cell of our being will be filled with Grace.

Blog Widget by LinkWithin
Share