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Softer and More Real

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photo yin yang

 

“The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves.

…

I am not saying that we should love death, but rather that we should love life so generously, without picking and choosing, that we automatically include it (life’s other half) in our love. “

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrow

 

Twenty-one years ago, today:

How can I walk away from his body, knowing I will never see him again? I stroke his hair, golden with light. He looks so old, and yet he looks young again, too, young like when I met him. He’s always been so alive, so full of everything. He didn’t do anything half way. He was intensely loving and intensely alive. A million memories flash before my eyes. When we married, and I said, “’til death do us part”, I wondered when that might be, even if only for a split second. And now I know. Death has parted us and I now know it is time to go.

It is hard to take this last look and give this last kiss. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I touch his face, trying to capture the memory of him into the layers of my skin. His golden hair is the last piece of his body I touch before I turn to walk away.

 

April 17th, today:

Looking back, it’s been a long, long time since I said goodbye, yet through these years of journeying to find myself, to wake up, to come to some realization of who and what I am, I’m discovering that I’m also coming to know in a deeper way who my late husband Gary was, to have ‘a more perfect understanding’ of who we both were and are.

Yes, his death was painful. It was a tearing apart of two souls. And, it was also a tearing apart of places where we held each other up in this life, where he was my ground and I his.

It was also beautiful in that it opened me to a larger view of what it means to be a human being. No longer protected from pain, I found myself, as Joanna Macy describes in her interview with Krista Tippett, “dipped in beauty”. I remember lying on my bed, racked with grief, and realizing that I was experiencing a profound beauty. It was puzzling at first because those two things didn’t seem to fit together – painful grief and beauty. But there it was – the distinct experience of the beautiful.

Sometimes we have to know the deepest pain and grief of death in order to feel the most glorious joy and aliveness of life.

Now, twenty-one years later, as I sit more fully in my humanity, I see what a powerful teacher death can be. To live many years with this significant loss is an opportunity to not deny death but to carry it with me as I live. When I turned 47, the age Gary was when he died, I felt grateful to be alive. When my daughters married, again I felt so fortunate to be there to witness those important rites. And, when each of my grandchildren came into this world, I relished the moments much more than I might have if Gary had been there with us, too. Because death is a part of life.

There’s a bittersweetness to life when you carry death with you. By ‘carry’ I don’t mean to hang onto because I’m not willing to see reality. Rather, I mean living with the knowing that I am alive and he is not, and that his death helps me to remember that totality of this existence.

Gary’s death woke me up to that deep longing inside to want to know who and what I am. His death brought me more into life. I don’t know how my life might have unfolded if he had lived, but I do know that I would not have seen the deep, deep beauty that is inherent in the heart breaking open. His death also brought me to come to appreciate him more. The deeper I come into myself, the more I realize how deep he was and how much of him I never got to know. And, through his death and the profound grief I encountered, I’ve been able to be with the parts of my life, and in the world today, that have been, and are, truly heartbreaking since that day I said good-bye.

I share this with you as a celebration of the whole of life, as a remembrance to hold the whole of life with great love. I feel death can make us softer and more real.

 

 

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Earth: Before I was named I belonged to you.

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I’ve been on the road for ten days, now. First Anchorage, Alaska; now Helena, Montana. Both new places to me. Both places that have offered windows into the sacredness of this Earth we call home.

In Alaska, I had the fortunate opportunity to fly around Mt. McKinley, and Denali National Park…and even to land on a glacier. I mountain biked around a teal blue lake. The land there is powerful. Big mountains. Open sky. It is beautiful. And, the almost-endless light caused me to crave the dark.Darkness never really came. Still light out at midnight went against everything I’d ever experienced about day and night and how they are ‘supposed to’ weave together. I couldn’t ever really get a good night’s sleep. All of the light is a lot of energy to take in. A lot of masculine energy: big light, big mountains, big contrast.


In Helena, it is different. Very different. Immediately upon arrival, I felt a softness. Before being shown to my room, I walked into the garden and just sat for a few moments. I took in the purple iris, the bleeding hearts, and the lilac. One by one, three cats came to greet me. Each one found a spot in the sunshine to stretch out into. The aspen were quaking in the breeze. Everything felt soft and welcoming.

Here in Helena, at the Feathered Pipe Ranch, the power of the land has called to me since I was first asked to teach here about seven weeks ago. I could feel the land calling. I sensed there would be a deep connection. There is.

Each place has its song. Each place has its scent. Each place calls to us in its own tongue.

What an experience to feel the big contrast between these two places. Lately in my life, I’ve experienced so many new places. It’s as if I am being invited to witness the uniqueness of our Mother, how she offers something so astoundingly different depending on where you sit. And, how she, and the brightness of the sun and sky, dance together within this experience.

Some of this can be known by the mind as data and fact and details. Most of it can only be known by feeling our relationship with the land, and by being willing to listen deeply to what is here.

Consider this: everything you receive in order to live comes from Her, from life. Your food. Your water. Your air. Your life. You came from Her and you will return to Her.

I came across this poem, by way of Filiz Telek. Oh how it spoke to me as I stood on that glacier. Oh how it rumbles through me as I sit witnessing Mother Robin feeding her young with their mouths gaping wide, waiting to be filled. In fact, as I watched, one little one sat so long with its beak wide-open, that its head dropped down over the nest into a sound sleep.

::

Earth, isn’t this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?
Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly
there’s nothing left outside us to see?
What, if not transformation,
is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love,
I want it too. Believe me,
no more of your springtimes are needed
to win me over—even one flower
is more than enough. Before I was named
I belonged to you. I see no other law
but yours, and know I can trust
the death you will bring.
See, I live. On what?
Childhood and future are equally present.
Sheer abundance of being
floods my heart.

Rainer Marie Rilke
From the Ninth Duino Elegy

Soon I’ll be sharing much of the richness and beauty I am experiencing here at Feathered Pipe. Stay tuned.

With love, Julie

 

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Solitude of Self

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I don’t want to convince you of anything.

I don’t want to make you understand how I see things.

I don’t want you to think I have something you don’t.

I don’t want to have to be something I am not in order for you to like me or believe in me.

I used to. When I am unconscious, I still do.

What I do want to be is in relationship with you, and to do that means we each must be who we really are.

How can relationship ever really happen when we are pretending?

 

Falsity breeds separation.

We’ve been well taught how to be something we are not. And, the invitation is always here to drop all of that and simply be what we are.

I used to think it would be lonely here in this solitude of self. I now know it is full and rich.

 

Rilke wrote this:

“And this more human love (which will fulfill itself with infinite consideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding and releasing) will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle: the love that consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other.”

 

May we be these ‘two solitudes who protect and border and greet each other’ – with ‘infinite gentleness and kindness’.

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Solitary Impulse

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Creative Impulse.

This phrase kept running through my awareness as I danced on Sunday morning. Many of you know, since I write about it fairly frequently, that I dance every week, and have for over eight years. My practice is 5Rhythms, and on Sunday mornings 150 of us faithful practitioners come together to ‘Sweat Our Prayers’.

5Rhythms is a moving meditation where you dance the 5 rhythms that Gabrielle Roth discovered are at the heart of being human. In the practice, the mind is invited to let go as the body is invited to move on its own, without the normal constrictions the mind and thoughts place on it.

This past Sunday, I moved. I sweated. I let go. And in the space of these two hours of dance, this phrase kept repeating itself.

Creative Impulse.

Creative Impulse.

Impulse.

Impulse.

As I danced,

I was consciously aware of the impulse that came from somewhere deep within my body.

The impulse came up from the dark space within. When followed, the impulse guided me in a fluid movement, where there was no mover, just movement, just expression.

Deeply dropped in the body, I was aware of the impulse as a free and alive movement of energy, a never-ending stream of pulsation coming into being, then flowing out into expression and falling away into nothingness.

I was aware of the impulse…until I was more aware of my mind. Thinking. Judging. Comparing. Deciding it didn’t like the way I was moving. Deciding I looked clumsy. Deciding it didn’t like the music, or how others danced. Judging, comparing, deciding. Stopping the flow. Stumble. Stepping on my own toe. Ouch.

And what did I do then? I began to move again. Dropped back into the beat. Felt the impulse. Moved.

I’ve danced long enough to know this. But what was important this time, was a really bright awareness of this process of stopping, stumbling, being clumsy.

I came home and

considered what had happened and how it translates to life, because right now I’m stopping myself from allowing this impulse to move through me as it wishes. On the dance floor, I feel safe and comfortable to express, except for those moments when the thoughts come in.

In my life, I don’t feel that safety, even though, in reality, I am just as safe. I mean, who knows what people are thinking of me as I dance. Who knows what judgments are flying, what stories they make up about me? Who knows? I certainly don’t. But I feel free there, free to move, to listen, to express.

I know this creative impulse is always here. It’s always moving up and out of the deep darkness of the inner place. When I write I can feel it. And, when I write I can feel the sudden move of the mind behind the impulse that stops it.

As I am known to do,

I looked at the word impulse, because for me an impulse feels like it sounds. It is a pulse that moves out of me, one after another, but so closely together it is fluid.

As I looked up the word in the thesaurus, these other words showed up as synonyms:

Desire.

Drive.

Pulse.

Pulsation.

Thrust.

Beat.

Signal.

Stimulus.

Urge.

Force.

Pressure.

Impetus.

Whim.

Wish.

Itch.

Inclination.

Yen.

Bent.

Spur.

In simply reading them, I feel the impulse. Try it. Read them again, and feel how they feel in your body. Feel the words move through you. What do you discover?

For me, there is a resonance with the feeling of spring, of emergence, of a pushing up through soil, of a seed emerging into the light. There is also a sense of body function, inspiration, breath, pulse, desire…all pointing to a wide open sense of eroticism, of creation at its core giving birth in each moment to a new moment.

The practical side of this,

is seeing of how many ways I stop the flow with minuscule thoughts, tiny aberrations in the fluid movement of time and creation, where I attempt to stop what is happening, where I clog up the pipes, sit back and think rather than stay in the fluid motion of action that comes from within.

The flow stops when I don’t feel safe, for whatever reason. Sometimes, I’m still amazed at how important safety is for the ego, how it looks for that at all costs.

Not that we must be in motion all of the time.

In the dance, there are many moments where the impulse moves in tiny, tiny ways, even to a point of pure stillness, where what is moving is simply respiration, sweat dripping, maybe even a muscle trembling ever so slightly, a finger with a tender pulse, a ever-so-slight movement of the eye.

These moments happen all the time in life, where there is a pause, a breath, maybe even a languishing time of being still, silent, inward-turning.

This impulse is intelligent and wise.

It is the same impulse that moves through us all, yet how it expresses through each of us is different. And, how it expresses through women is different than men, for the female body is different than a man’s body.

This impulse knows something our minds can’t know. And right now, this impulse is guiding us to truthful action if we are willing to trust it to move through us.

I know this is happening in my life. I’m making choices that aren’t comfortable, aren’t cozy, aren’t safe. And in doing so, I find myself stumbling, hesitating, maybe even stepping on my own toes, missing the beat of the music, bumping into others I love and care about.

What is it I trust in

as I move out in directions I don’t know? There is a footing inside, a place that never changes, something I know is there. I don’t have a word for it, really, but Rilke does:

“But your solitude will be a support
and a home for you,
even in the midst of very
unfamiliar circumstances,
and from it you will find all your paths.”
My solitude. That place of aloneness. Only I can feel the impulse, can know its movement, can taste its insistence, can bow to its fortitude. Only I can give breath to it, can trust the pulse inherent in it, can allow it to inspire me forward.
As it is for you. Only you can know this in yourself. It is a place of great aloneness, yet we dance together all the same.

That’s okay. All that matters is that we keep dancing, keep breathing, keep moving our feet, letting the impulse move us, trusting that our own solitude is exactly the footing we are standing on, even when there is nothing underneath our feet.

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Alive and Awake: part three

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The more alive and awake I become, the more embodied I am, the more I cannot hide: from myself, from life, from the truth. And even though part of me would like to hide, who I really am keeps bringing me closer to this place: awakening to the power of the Feminine, the power of Her, the power of the Mother.

This is where our power lies as women…in our bodies. Bodies tied to the Earth, alive like the Earth, and awake like the Earth.

Being in the Body…

is vulnerable. Very vulnerable.

Being alive is a vulnerable proposition.

Being wholly alive as a woman in a misogynistic culture can feel overwhelming when you’re tuned into the energy that is held in the shadow of the culture.

There is an implicit (and in some places explicit) physical threat to women who speak truth rather than follow the dictates of the culture that would ask us to keep silent. The level of obvious threat is relative to the level of freedom we have in the culture we live in. The level of not-so-obvious threat is not quite so relative to that freedom. Sometimes, in some cultures, even though things look pretty calm on the surface, underneath we feel the unspoken waves of hatred and anger that misogyny breeds.

In this female body, I know I am susceptible to harm, to hurt, to invasion. I know, because I’ve experienced it. I know because many of my friends and other women I’ve met have experienced it. I know, because women all over the world are experiencing it right now.

Many of us have learned to protect our vulnerability in this physical world with a tough exterior. Many of us have learned instead to find ways to be small, to take up little space. In so many ways, we’ve learned to hide this soft, soft place inside so it can’t be hurt, and to protect this body that can be the target of people who take their aggression out on the female form.

Men, too, have beautiful soft places of vulnerability, and this culture has taught them well how not to show them. And in a culture where it is part of the very foundation of the structure for men to hold power over women, how they experience vulnerability is different than how women experience it. Different.

Every woman…

finds a way to stay safe in a culture where she is not safe simply for being her full self. We cut away parts of ourselves. We become silent, stuffing down the words we would say in a heartbeat if we felt we could. We become like men. We even adopt attitudes and beliefs that keep other women down, and that take away our own sovereignty. We trade truth for being wanted. We give up hope of ever knowing ourselves for who we really are. We pretend we can’t hear our own selves crying out.

Even though there are many women who’ve adopted ways of being I don’t agree with, I can see why they’ve adopted them. I don’t have to agree with a woman to understand how vulnerable she feels in this world.

There is upheaval happening on so many levels, both internally and externally; individually and collectively. We’re experiencing destruction and creation, death and re-birth, together. The deeper I drop into my body, the more I feel the upheaval that’s here right now.

In the body,

we are in tune with what is here. In the body, we are fully connected to the Earth and each other.

In the body, we have access to the wild and feral self, the intuitive and instinctive realms where we know things our minds could never understand.

In the body, we come back in tune with our sacred creativity, the primal Yes of creation, the Mystery.

Anat Vaughan-Lee, in a closing reflection titled, “Making the Way for the Feminine” at the 2008 Conference “The Global Peace Initiative for Women” in Jaipur, India, shared these remarks:

The feminine, whether the feminine quality or women themselves, holds the secret of creation, which is the light hidden in matter. This is very important to understand; that if one is to do any real spiritual work at this time of global and ecological crisis, one has to realize that the feminine holds the unique understanding of the sacredness in matter and also how we need to reawaken this aspect in life.

The feminine is both the feminine principle or quality, and also women, all women. It is both important for men to reclaim the feminine within themselves, and for women to remember, and reclaim, who we really are. To quote Anat, again:

Woman has to remember, reclaim who she is and by doing so, reclaim, midwife, the reawakening of the spiritual understanding of life. And I am also reminded of what Mother Teresa said: “We serve life not because it is broken but because it is Holy.”

Just like life, our bodies are sacred.

Embodiment can be remembering, living and serving this sacredness that lies at the heart of womanhood.

It’s an invitation that awaits our reply…

If you missed them, part one and part two will offer more about this invitation.

And, you?

I’d love to know how you experience this sacred creativity within you as a woman.

If you enjoyed this three-part series:

I’m in the process of putting these three posts, and more, into an ebook on embodiment. I invite you to send me stories of your experience, of how you see embodiment in your own life, for inclusion in the book. It is all completely confidential, of course.

Thank you, as always, for your willingness to participate here with me. I learn so much from what you share.

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Bodily Fruit

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Apple
Apple

What you think you’re seeking, is seeking you. You think it’s your Idea, your dream? It’s Life’s… seeking to express and emerge by means of You. For this you have been called. For this you have come to bear witness, full witness to the Glory of The One that is YOU. ~ M Morrissey

And I would add, you have come to bear fruit, ripe fruit borne from The One that is YOU.

::

Reverb10 Day 16
Prompt: Friendship. How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst?

::

Wounds of the Feminine

This year has brought numerous realizations of this bearing witness; bearing witness to Life seeking to express and emerge by way of this Being in a female body. Much of this realization has been through women friends.

One of the most occluded areas of consciousness for me was in this place of love for other women, for love of woman.

There is no need to go through the ‘whys’ of this. Suffice it to say, past wounds of the feminine had grown great crusty scabs around my heart.

In my friendships with women, I’ve felt both joy and a kind of trembling fear at the possibility of dropping my defenses. I’ve been keenly aware of a place in my heart that was both longing for intimacy and fearing the exposure.

This year brought opportunities to trust that this was a place of great learning for me. And, in letting go into the places that held both fear and deep longing, I’ve found such a sweet, yet powerful, love. It’s a kind of love that is only available between women, because it is intrinsic to women. In this connection from woman to woman, I have come to know a part of womanhood that had been disowned.

Bodily fruit.

This love is tender, yet powerful.

This love is a mirror of purity, for women are pure in a way that is very practical: we are created with the body wisdom to bring the sacred into matter, the soul into human life.

This love makes my knees buckle for it tells me of the power that is at the heart of the receptive, nourishing, ripe and earthy female body.

In a passage that makes me swoon every time I read it, Rilke writes:

Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit…

We bear bodily fruit, whether or not we bear children. This fruit requires nourishment from the body and soul. Life lingers in us, because life has created our bodies as vessels of creation. Life dwells here in these hips and thighs and breasts. When I open to this deep relationship with another woman, I feel this ripeness in her and in me.

This ripeness tells of a disowned knowing of what it is to be woman, tales long-forgotten in a masculine culture.

In these times, we are begin asked to remember this body wisdom. We are being asked to heal this place of wounding between woman and woman.

My friends are teaching me beautiful things about womanhood, precious powerful things about what we can awaken, enliven, and bring forth in ourselves to heal the crusty scab-bearing wounds of our times.

It is the blossom that brings forth the fruit. The blossom comes right out of the gray, hard bark of the tree. Somewhere within the tree itself lies the kiss that brings forth the apple. We women are no different. Somewhere within us lies the kiss that will awaken our ripeness, our bounty, our gift.

Can we open to, and receive, Life’s kiss?

::

And, You?

What wounds are you willing to heal?

Where do you feel Life’s Kiss upon you?

How have your friendships with women opened you to this bounty within your own Being?

::

Image courtesy of midnightcomm, under CC2.0

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This More Human Love

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Some day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer signify merely an opposite of the masculine, but something in itself, something that makes one think, not of any complement and limit, but of life and existence: the female human being.


 —– This advance will (at first much against the will of the men who have been outstripped) change the experiencing of love, which is now full of error, will alter it from the ground up, reshape it into a relation that is meant to be of one human being to another, no longer of man to woman. And this more human love (that will fulfil itself, infinitely considerate and gentle, and good and clear in binding and releasing) will resemble that which we are with struggle and endeavour preparing, the love that consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.” ~Rilke

::

For me, the hope of all this work is for woman to become that which she naturally is: sacredly creative, wildly passionate, compassionately loving, innately life sustaining, and vibrantly alive.

This natural being flowers when she is not keeping herself small, apologizing for her existence, silencing the words she knows must be spoken, and dismissing her own value.

This woman values what she loves, deeply and reverently.

This woman sustains life, in whatever way she must, because that is her life currency.

When woman realizes she is already this woman, the world will change.

And in turn, for man to know himself as he naturally is, by his inherent design. Fully loving, protective of life, all of life. Naturally honoring, respectful, and vibrantly alive.

Ultimately, for me, the goal is for woman and man to bow down to the sacredness in each other, to stand alongside each other, each in their own fullness and independence, each honoring the natural design of the other, in order to provide a loving world for every child, for every animal, for every being we share this amazing earth we call home.

And this more human love (that will fulfill itself, infinitely considerate and gentle, and good and clear in binding and releasing) will resemble that which we are with struggle and endeavor preparing, the love that consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.” ~Rilke

What other goal could there be other than to become what we are capable of becoming ?

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Greetings!

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Welcome to Unabashedly Female!

133235475_e2838d4a52_m.jpg We are living in a time of deep change. Wisdom beyond our individual knowing is calling us forth to remember what we are and to discover a whole new truth of what it means to be female. This new truth will come from our own experience, from a remembering of the past and the archetypal images of the fullness of the Feminine, and by allowing our wholeness to return, a wholeness that embraces those parts of ourselves that have seemed to dark to allow into the light. But all of what we hide from ourselves must be brought forth if we are to know the truth of our being. We can know the simple elegance that we are.

As Rilke wrote many years ago in Letters to a Young Poet, “Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement or limit, but only of life and reality: the female human being.”

This is an invitation for us as women to dive into a discovery of who and what we are, to live into the question, “What it is to be Female?” and to come together so that we recognize (re-cognize) what we know deep within.

photo courtesy of Pandiyan

 

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