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Drawing Close to Soul

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Raising Her Hand

the too-full bud
learned never to speak out in class
was the weird one
showing up the other kids
learned to raise her hand
as late as possible
not because she didn’t know…but because she always did
too many years tight in the sheath of fear
then light came knocking
love crept through the frail stem
now
she’s raising her hand
she’s gonna raise every banner, every petal, every talent
open it up to the sun.

Bard Judith / Judy Alkema, 2013, shared with permission

~~~

“I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me–that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”
~ Anne Lamott

 

The emptiness and discomfort. The mess. I know these, well. To be honest, I know them often.

If we are honest, are any of us certain? We are living in powerfully uncertain times.

Funny thing is, I know about creativity and the creative process, and about how it feels when I’m in the unknown. It feels crappy. And, it also feels invigorating and beautiful and alive, too. Somewhere we know things are cooking inside, in the dark, in the womb.

And, I know that if I simply sit in and feel the discomfort, that at some point ‘light’ comes in. It reminds me of the moon. How it goes black. And for a time it is void. And then we begin to see it again, even if it is just a tiny slice. If we didn’t ‘know’ about the moon, meaning understand that how it works, would we still just believe that it would return?

So what’s happening in the mess? in the discomfort and darkness? A lot. Even if we aren’t conscious of it, much is taking place. Just like in the ground when a seed is planted. And, just like the moon when it is void. The moon hasn’t disappeared. But we cannot see it.

After seeing this quote, I was working on the copy for my new course, Becoming a Force of Nature. I was scooting right along and then suddenly I compared. Myself to others. My course to others. My copy to other copy. And, boom, I suddenly had a billion, zillion thoughts swirling in my head, thoughts that seemed to make the discomfort even more uncomfortable.

Comparison is one of the worst things for creativity. It just kills it.

 

So, I stopped working on it.

I stopped. I just set it aside, made dinner, tidied up, read my book*, and got ready for bed. As I settled into bed, I reflected on the fogginess I’d found myself in. I felt the discomfort. And, I asked for guidance. Whether it be a dream, or something else, I actively asked to be shown what I didn’t yet know. I asked for something to come to light my way. With that, I turned out my light and went to sleep.

In the morning, as I often do, I posted a photo of a flower to Facebook (the one above). As I shared this flower (the one at the top of this post), I found myself typing in this description:

“I love this stage of unfurling, when that first petal shows itself in full.
It’s a vulnerable place that we humans know, too.
Yet, look how gorgeous it is to begin to reveal.”

I woke up feeling much lighter about this place of vulnerability. What I chose to share was both intuition and muse.

And then… Boom. Boom. Boom. Suddenly, clear things appeared to light my way.

My friend shared that they felt in this place, too. I asked her how it felt, and she wrote,

“It feels beautiful, sacred, inevitable. And exposed, tender, vulnerable.
The precursor to full bloom feels like an intense risk.
And yet, it’s the risk I can’t afford not to take.”

And Judy shared the poem at the top of this post, titled Raising Her Hand. It caused my breath to catch. Here it is, again.

Raising Her Hand

the too-full bud
learned never to speak out in class
was the weird one
showing up the other kids
learned to raise her hand
as late as possible
not because she didn’t know…but because she always did
too many years tight in the sheath of fear
then light came knocking
love crept through the frail stem
now
she’s raising her hand
she’s gonna raise every banner, every petal, every talent
open it up to the sun.

Bard Judith / Judy Alkema, 2013, shared with permission

 

Friends messaged me privately. They wrote about how the light came to them…and they knew nothing about this quote above.

 

Another friend, Kelly Letky, shared this post where she offers,

“And you, yes you, the one who says I am lost. Look into your heart. There are flowers growing there, right now.

Bloom.

Wonder.

Wander.

Breathe.“

And then I knew. I could see how the flower unfolding fit so beautifully with my new course.

And, with that, I was back on track. I had a much better sense of what women are feeling with regards to allowing themselves to give way to the delicious, yet sometimes frightening, wild life force that courses through us…this wild force of nature.

Life is a mirror reflecting in an infinite number of ways and directions.

 

What about this opening…

this unveiling of ourselves, our true selves? That vulnerable place we feel when we decide to reveal another pink layer of soul we’ve never shared with the world. Are these places as tender as the wound we’re trying to protect? Are they strong and vital and ready to be known and seen? Does the tenderness come from the wound itself, rather than from the fresh soul flesh exposed?

Perhaps the real lesson is to come to live this this wisdom from Meister Eckhart: ‘the ground of the soul is dark.’

It is this rich dark from which everything is born. When I come to uncertainty, I am being invited into the ground of the soul. I wonder if this has to feel uncomfortable? I wonder if I can open to it in a new way, without all of the things I ‘make up’ about it?

Wondering reminds me of what Kelly shared, “Look into your heart. There are flowers growing there, right now.”

This impulse to blossom is strong within us. It is the force of nature pushing its way to birth and growth. When we try to deny it, it causes us pain and suffering.

Eventually the suffering of denial becomes greater than our fears of who we might be if we do reveal ourselves.

This is the place I am interested in, this place where discomfort seems to be so, but in closer light perhaps it is the drawing close to soul that is really causing this dis-ease because to know soul we must be shaken and transformed. The shell of the seed must crack and be destroyed so what is within can grow forth.

~~~

Today, September 18th, is the opening day for The Business of Soul Telesummit, hosted by Jennifer Urezzio. I’m honored to be one of over 32 speakers sharing wisdom about being in the spotlight. My interview is titled “You Belong in the Spotlight.” and I talk about … Belonging.

The telesummit is free and you sign up here.

~~~

Revised Sept 26, 2013:

My new course, Becoming a Force of Nature, is open for registration. There will be a set number of openings as this will be the first run. And as the first run, it will be priced lower than subsequent offerings.

If you’ve read my work for a while, you know what I’m about. While I’ve taught many places, this is the first big course I’ve offered online.  I am really excited about it and I’d love to have you join me.

* The book I’m reading? (Marianne Elliot’s, Zen Under Fire, which is fantastic!)

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Money: A Love Story

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Money: A Love Story. A brand new book by Kate Northrup.

I’m happy to offer this review of Kate’s book, something I rarely say yes to. It’s not what my blog is about…for the most part. But when I was asked to review it, something inside me tugged at me telling me there was something deeper here for not only me personally, but for you, the beautiful women and men who want to read what I share here. So, I said, Yes.

Money was one of the most painful areas of my life growing up.

I still am working on healing the underlying issues around money. Money itself is just a placeholder for value…and what we learn when we are young around value, worth, and love, of ourselves, others, and things, gets projected onto those pieces of paper. Poor money. It’s really weighed down with so much stuff… confusion, pain, and shadow…all of the usual suspects.

I received the book about two weeks ago, and to be entirely honest, I have thoroughly, and thoughtfully, read the words and completed the exercises through page 60, and that’s out of around 200 pages.

Kate’s book has delightfully struck a deep chord within me.

I had hoped to have it read all the way through, and to have done all the exercises within these two weeks, but my relationship with money feels like the crazy tangle of freeway overpasses that guide drivers through the maze that is Los Angeles’ freeway system. And, as Kate states in her book, don’t bypass the exercises. In fact she notes that it might take a full year to really move through whatever the book surfaces.

So, I decided to share with you exactly why I am wiling to do that with her book.

 

Here’s the thing about Kate’s book, Money: A Love Story.

There is something in her book that speaks to me on a level other than words. I have a sense it is her transmission, those unseen but deeply felt qualities you experience when you read another’s words or listen to them voiced.

The book is light. Her tone is welcoming. As I experience it, there’s a feeling of being loved and supported.

What comes through so clearly is Kate’s unwavering confidence in both her own wisdom and in the possibility that I can do this, that my relationship to money CAN be transformed into one of love.

Perhaps part of this is that I am ready to take this journey with money. Perhaps it is partly that I respond well to a container that deeply holds me in love and confidence. Perhaps there are many reasons I don’t even yet know for why I feel so positive and open about Kate’s book.

 

Money & Self-Worth

I know my money story is deeply tied up with my own sense of self-worth. I’ve come a long, long way in how I feel about myself, and I sense that’s why I am ready for this.

None of this work around money and self-worth is easy for any of us. But, together, in a container of love, we can heal.

A couple of things I’ve come away with already that have allowed me to access deeper feelings.

In the first handful of pages, Kate shares something she learned from Nicole Daedone. Kate suggests looking back at your whole story, your life story, finding a way to “fall in love with your story”. She goes on to write, “be grateful for it”. And, she mentions seeing yourself as the heroine of your story. When I read these words, I cried. It’s not like I’ve never heard these words before. But, for whatever reason, as I read them from Kate, I suddenly felt everything in me relax as I saw how truly accepting the entirety of my life brought an immediate sense of peace. And then, I could see how strong I’ve been in my life in my ability to respond to a great deal of adversity. Loving my story allowed me to not be at odds with it anymore. It allowed be to have nothing to fight against any more. Yes, so much of the work I’ve done prior to this has probably helped. Yet, I wonder if that’s so. Is there a place where we can simply just accept. After all, the reality is that our lives are what our lives have been. Without the extra stories we lay on it, our life story is our life story.

Through this doorway we can set it all down, so we can be here, now, in this moment, living and breathing in a place of wholeness rather than fracturedness around money, and worth, and love.

The other suggestion she offered was to see what our whole life story has taught us. I could see how incredibly resilient I am. I could see how strong and committed I am. And, I could see how incredibly I persevere in my life. I have these great skills, and sit’s because of the events of my life that I have learned to be so (and maybe I came in with just a tad bit of strength, too!).

I have done a lot of work in my life to heal, and I’ve healed so much within me. The work I do here at Unabashedly Female is a testimony to that. I know we women have learned to devalue ourselves and how the sacred feminine moves through us. The feminine has been denigrated. And, now, in some ways, the masculine is being denigrated as well.

All of us suffer because of this denigration of life, and our stories around money mirror this. If money is simply an exchange of value between people, how we value ourselves and others holds the key to a healthy loving relationship with money.

There are many, many messages, and messengers, out here reflecting back to us how it is time for the money story of humanity to be healed. Deep in our hearts, we are generous compassionate creatures. This I know.

 

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A Well So Deep

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A well so deep.

I’m finally beginning to see that this emptiness,
can never be filled.

Not long term,
that is.

Oh, for a moment, yes.

A moment when the sun comes through the petals and illuminates them as though
they were filled with silent kisses from the stars.

Or, a moment when a warm, sweet breeze ever so gently blows across my face and I am lifted up
just a mere breath above the ground, captivated by the softness of divine breath against flesh.

Or, a moment when I’m dancing with another and our hands come to meet,
together,
just so,
skin to skin,
in a way that could never be planned or calculated or anticipated.

This longing hungers for the emptiness and the emptiness feeds the longing,
and somewhere
between the two I dance.

::

inspired by this beauty by Irwin Keller of Itzik’s Well

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Dark Times? Stay steadfast to the wisdom of your heart. You are in beautiful company.

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When I was a teenager, I would sit on my bed and listen to the folk songs of my era. Late sixties, early seventies was a beautiful time when much of the music offered a new way of seeing things. There was an energy in the air of Love, of the possibility of living differently.

I remember the feeling in my heart. I remember feeling this deep connectedness to Life.

I remember the Beauty.

I remember hope, a hope that seemed to have a powerful life of its own.

Lately, I’ve been listening to this music again. The Beatles, Neil Young, James Taylor, Carol King, Crosby Stills and Nash, were some of my favorites. When I listen, I feel those same feelings of connectedness and hope. But along with those, I also feel a steadfastness that comes from age and wisdom. I now know, as experience, things I only dreamed of back then. I now know that it is possible to make this shift to peace, to compassion, to Love.

::

As a species, we are facing, and have been facing, choices that demand we find a new way of being, living, and creating in this world. The old way of domination and control have brought us to, not only other beings’ actual extinction, but the brink of our own.

I know it can be hard to stay with what you know in your heart when all around you are images, feelings, words, and rhetoric that attempt to manipulate and intimidate you to disbelieve what you know.

Do not listen to those voices that try to condemn you for your open and compassionate heart.

Do not listen to those voices that keep trying to push the illusion that might makes right, that toughness will always win out over compassion, reconciliation, and tenderness. 

Don’t listen to those voices, AND don’t close your heart to them. Those voices are inside you, too. They are inside all of us.

“The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart.
The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.”
~ Carlos Santana

Compassion, reconciliation, tenderness, and resiliency are qualities of the heart and they can be fierce in their commitment to love.

::

Stay with your heart. Hold beauty there, the beauty that constantly graces us in each moment. Even in these difficult times there is beauty. And, beauty is not what we’ve been taught to believe it is. Beauty is all around us, in every moment, and you know it when you encounter it by its fiercely tender powerful effect on your being.

The forces against awakening to our oneness with all of life, both inside of us and outside of us, are still functioning from a belief of separation, one that manifests in forms of tribalism that many will tell you is how human beings are. Period.

But this is the opportunity at hand: to realize, both inside and out, that what we truly are is not this behavior that’s been lived out by humans over thousands of years. What we truly are is love, is compassion, is the One that breaths all of life.

The future for our children and their children is bleak if we do not make this leap of consciousness.

People will say over and over and over (I hear it all the time) that what we see in the world right now is proof of what we are. But do not believe it. Much of what we see in the world right now are the EFFECTS of believing what we’ve believed. We see now are the forms that our thoughts and beliefs and fears have created. AND, if you look and feel, really look and feel, the bright green new shoots of something new, very new, are here. They are the sprouts of a new way coming into being. Perhaps these sprouts have sprouted from the seeds that we sown back during those years of the music that guides us to something different.

::

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” ~John Lennon

When you doubt yourself, remember you are ‘not the only one’. You are in beautiful company. By staying steadfast to the wisdom of your heart, you invite others to join you. They will feel your steadfastness.

Until recently, I would let the words of others cause me to question my wisdom, what I know in my heart and soul. No more. There is no time for that.

Look at the new. Feel it in your body, in your heart, in your soul. The new is what is coming into being. Allow these shoots to spring forth in your heart. Allow them to perfume your words, your acts, your prayers, your song. Allow them to guide your action in the world. As long as you follow the truth in your heart, you do not have to know where you, or we, are headed. You cannot know. But your heart can guide you.

May you know that you are always graced with beauty even in what seem to be such dark times. Hold beauty in your heart. It is a form of prayer for your more loving, fiercely loving, nature to pour forth.

::

ps This post was fueled by darjeeling tea and serenaded by sixties music. If you sit still and listen, you just might feel that transmission.

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Unveiling Untruths about being a Woman

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Heart Remembering by Julie Daley

 

Coming to live the truth of who you are is not about becoming more of something, nor is it about fixing anything. Coming to live the truth of who you are is about stripping away the untruths that you came to believe about yourself.

I’m creating a complimentary guide for women and in doing so I decided to reach out and ask friends, colleagues, and readers to share their answers to this question:

What were you told/taught about what it is/means to be a woman
that you’ve since discovered is not true…and why?

I want to know, because I am clear that even though somewhere we KNOW these things we were told are not true, in our everyday world we are faced with the constant messaging that they are…and so as one friend wrote:

“Thank you Julie for the thought provoking question – my comment here would be – most everything that was shared here resonates with me – these things are not true – the confusing part is – we – or society lives or pretends for the most part they are true and hence we get confronted with them on a daily basis – we suck it up and quietly endure – or NOT!!!! : )”

There’s been such a great response, and women have replied that they are really appreciating reading the responses, that I thought I would ask you, my loyal readers, the same question. You never know when something you share will spark an important insight for other women!

There are a couple of options for sharing your responses:

    1. I’ve included the original questions and comments from both my Facebook page and my personal page here. You can respond directly in the threads if you’d like, and you can read the responses.
    2. You can also reply here in the comments, sharing the untruths you’ve come to see.
    3. And if you’d like your comment to remain private, you can send me an email at juliedaley (@) gmail (.) com or send me a private message on my Facebook page.

Please feel free to share the question with other women you know who have something important to add to the conversation.

I’ll be collating the responses into a downloadable complimentary PDF.

 

Post by Unabashedly Female with Julie Daley.

Post by Julie M Daley.

::

This one caused my heart to break open, because it is one that took me a long time to heal in my body:

[that women are] “NOT made in the image of the divine.”

As if this could ever have been thought, and taught, to be so!

 

I do know that it is helpful for all of us to become aware of this strong messaging we are bombarded with not only when we are young, but also on a daily basis.

While we may not resonate with all of the responses, reading them can help us have more compassion for ourselves, for other women, and for all people as we come to realize that both women and men (and of course young boys and girls) are being conditioned to believe so many untruths that keep us from living the truth that already resides in our own souls.

Thank you for sharing whatever you can! By naming what is untrue, we come that much closer to knowing and living the truth of our beings as women in this world. What we bring to the world, just as we are, is deeply needed in these times.

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In My Skin

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I’ve come here to live in my skin. Not to hide away from life, but to shimmy right up to this ever-so-thin layer of dermis so I can truly touch and be touched.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To relate to life, caressed by breeze, by sun, by dew.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. It’s the only thing that separates what I sometimes believe is me from what I sometimes believe is not me. It’s a tender line, isn’t it? This thin skin – a membrane so thin it defies rationality.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. A soft wrapping around the tender-most flesh, it gifts me with what many only speak of in hushed tones – one of the most joyous experiences of life – that of being touched, deeply, reverently consciously.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To know the true intimacy of life is to know the sublime interaction that happens here. It is so simple, yet so profoundly mysterious. We can describe these bodies in scientific, physiological terms. We can say, “Oh yes, I know how it works.” But when we touch another with our whole being, our whole awareness, at the point of connection there are no words to describe it. Nothing we can say can capture this moment of exquisite intimacy.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To be alive, fully and vulnerably, is to offer this skin to the world. To do so is to allow yourself to be touched by what greets you.

I’ve come here to live in my skin, yet along the way I learned so well how not to live in my skin. Each of us has moments when what we experienced was too much, too painful, or too frightening to feel the immensity of the sensations of those experiences.

Over these past many years, I’ve been taking this long journey back into the body. Along with many things, one thing I’ve discovered is that sometimes what I long to say can only be said through my body. Sometimes, there is no way to say with words what the body longs to say. It must be said with touch, with movement, with song or dance.

Maybe that’s our journey, to come back into the skin. We are here in bodies.  We are alive in these bodies, in this skin that was created to know the sublimity of touch and sensation and life.

Why are we alive if not to fully live in this skin?

 

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Weather Report for Today: Hips, Hands, & Heart

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“Movement never lies.
It is a barometer telling the state of the soul’s weather to all who can read it.”
Martha Graham

The truth is close at hand. Just move and you will know it.

::

Today at dance, a different teacher played the music and guided us through our two-hour practice, a teacher I’d not yet danced with. As with each 5Rhythms teacher, he played a unique blend of music and guided us in his own unique way. And as has always been the case, my dance today was another unique expression of where I am, right now, a as a soul, dancing with another 149 other souls, to another unique soul’s musical selections.

I think back over my eleven years dancing the 5Rhythms as a moving meditation practice and how my soul has moved over those years. If my thousands of dances had been recorded and put into one long stream, it would be a long weather report showing the changes in the state of my soul over the years – and there have been infinite state changes along the way.

When I first started dancing all those years ago, I felt called to it – even though it freaked me out to dance, freeform, without steps, in a room full of strangers. I kept showing up, week after week. This taught me so clearly how we know where our soul wants to move even if we fight it or fear it.

Yes, I felt embarrassed often. Yes, I even felt like I might die of embarrassment – and I didn’t. Something pushed me to go. Something without words. It was instinct. It was knowing. It was intense.

Eleven years later I can’t imagine not dancing. I can’t imagine not knowing the people I’ve met through dance. I can’t imagine not having come to know myself so much more clearly. I can’t imagine not being more deeply awake in the cells of this body. I can’t imagine NOT knowing that this powerful joy is possible to know on a regular basis.

Joy comes even when my soul is in the middle of stormy weather, because the joy comes from movement itself, not from being ‘happy’.

Movement is like that. It shows us what’s up inside. It shows us how we are unfolding.

Creative expression is movement through the body. Whether we’re moving the pen across paper, brush across canvas, feet across the floor, the body loves to move and the soul loves to express. We are creative beings by nature.

But here’s the thing.

Anyone or anything that tells us our expression, movement, disposition – basically the expressions of who we are – should be all sunshine and blue skies all the time doesn’t know a damn thing about weather.

Being human is not always sunny and blue skies – not if we’re truthful.

When your hand is moving across the paper or your feet across the floor, don’t stop your soul from moving the weather at hand – or foot. Let your soul pour rain onto the paper, or dance a dark star-lit sky across the floor, or move strong confident wind across your vocal cords.

We are nature. Why should our movement and creative expression be any different than the weather?

It only is when we try to control it by hanging onto it, forcing it, or telling a big story about it that we stop the weather from rolling out across the plains of our lives.

Let your expression move and you will come to know clearly, and beautifully, exactly the state of your own soul and a profoundly grateful joy. Our hips, hands, and hearts know what’s going on inside and they’ll be the first to report the weather if you’re willing to move.

 

 

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Feel Her

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photo by Anne Jablonski

 

There is one thing we MUST do right now if we are to survive as a species…if we are to respond to the mess we’ve made.

One thing.

We must begin to feel, deeply. We must open our hearts to the world, to each other, to the Earth.

To do that we must find our way down to our bodies. To the heart. To the soul.

We cannot bypass, either mentally or spiritually.

We have to re-learn how to feel what is here. We’ve been so strongly conditioned out of our natural feeling state, and yet, when we do feel, we respond.

Our hearts are meant to feel. We are designed to feel. It’s how we relate to each other. And, it’s how we can re-learn to relate to the Earth, for She is alive.

Imagine for a moment the Earth as a radiant being. She breathes. She feeds. She is alive. Now, for a moment, consider everything that has been done to her and is being done to Her, all across Her body. Let yourself feel. Her pain is our pain. We are not separate from Her. We are born from Her and we die back into Her. There is no way we cannot feel Her pain, and there is no way She cannot feel ours. We are in relationship with Her. The only way we don’t feel it is if we are not conscious in the places where those feelings are experienced: in the body, in the heart.

No one is going to feel this for us. No one is going to take care of this so we don’t have to. It is our responsibility as Her children to care for Her. We are the only ones who can stop abusing Her and protect Her from more abuse.

Deep feeling leads to responsiveness. When we are open in relationship we see and hear and come to know each other.

You have a relationship with Her. Your body is waiting. Your heart is waiting. Mother Earth is waiting with open arms. She always has been.

Love Her. Share your joy with Her. Bring Her an offering. Sing Her a song. She loves song.

 

::

EARTH MOTHER PRAYER SONG
(Click on the link above to listen to the song)

Dear Earth Mother come to me
Allow me in thy prayers.
May this moment speak to me.
Allow me to prepare.
Come Dear Mother be with me,
The sweat that we partake.
All who enter in your womb
Seek within your grace.
BLESSED MOTHER
Hold this Earth,
The mountains at your feet.
The lake behind us sources us,
The trees keep company.
In this mix may we partake
And taste of your sweet space.
Divinity will come through us,
Today we can embrace.
See as far as you see,
Hear as far as you hear.
Be as far as we can hold
And laugh and sweat and eat.

 

During our Waking the Inner Teacher retreat at Feathered Pipe, one morning this song came through Tracey, one of the women on retreat. We’d been singing and giving thanks to Pachamama all week. We’d begun to remember, and deepened that remembrance with profound practices of gratitude to Her. And so, we all sang Tracey’s song. It was a beautiful moment (reflected in the image above). After our time together, Karen Chrappa recorded Tracey’s song and I share it here, both lyrics and recording.

[Recorded at The Creative Arts Studio with Karen Chrappa, Stefanie Lipsey, Tracy Warzer, Lorraine Aguilar, Aimee Schiff; Sound edit by Abhita Austin of Hidden Chapel Studios.

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You are a Celebration in a Body

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The Declaration of You, published by North Light Craft Books,
gives readers all the permission they’ve craved to step passionately into their lives,
discover how they and their gifts are unique and uncover what they are meant to do!

I’m honored to share this Celebratory post for Michelle and Jessica‘s brilliance and brilliant book.

::

Take a look around you. Everything is alive: the Earth, trees, flowers, the sun, moon, and stars. Everything is alive, including you. This might seem like a ho-hum, big-yawn, tell-me-something-I-don’t-already-know kinda thing. In fact, most of us go through our day-to-day without even a second thought of what an incredible mystery this whole thing called Life really is. But when we get it – (really get it) – how amazing it is that we are here, alive, something happens inside of us. We begin to feel something. This something is like awe, or gratitude, or even reverence for something we can’t begin to name, but we know it because we sense it. It can feel immense. It can feel wordless. It can feel infinite.

It’s this ‘Something’ that we are in relationship with, and it’s a very, very intimate relationship.

When we allow ourselves to really stop, to just stop and listen, to stop and notice, we see we are in this silent, vibrant, alive, and immediate intimacy. This ‘Something’ that breathes you is breathing you because you (yes YOU) are an essential piece of this dance of Life. In fact, this ‘Something’ is celebrating you with every breath. It’s filling you with inspiration with each inhale.

When you declare You, when you take that step to surrender to who and what you already are, you begin to become intimate with not only this Something, but also with You. And, just as the relationship with this ‘something’ is tenderly intimate, so is this relationship with the You who’s been here all along.

Here in this intimacy, you can see just how much you ARE a celebration to that which breathes you. You, exactly as you are and how you are, without fixing, without making yourself smaller, or bigger, without achieving anything, ARE the celebration.

This isn’t just another blog post about…

loving yourself as you are BECAUSE you are fabulous or shiny or the one here to give everyone else the key secret so they can succeed at whatever it is they are doing. No, this isn’t that.

Nor is it a post to remind you that all you have to do is envision everything just as you want it and you’ll get it because you want it.

Nor is it one that will tell you that you can make six figures this year (and next year seven) because You are the cat’s meow. While this may happen, and of course you are the cat’s meow, this post is about something really, really simple…and entirely practical.

Life created You just as you are. There’s a seed imprinted within you. Each soul is a seed and everything sprouts, grows, blossoms, and sometimes fruits as it grows from within that seed. The sun showers it with light, the rain plumps it up with moisture, and the Earth feeds it with nutrients and love so it can be what it is created to be – a celebration of Life in its own unique imprint.

Life is THAT creative. Yes, it is. And, you are that Life so You, too, are THAT creative. Just as you are an expression of this erotic, passionate Life, whatever you give creative birth to is an erotic, passionate, explosion of this very same Life.

So, You soulful creature you,

What would life be like if you Declare that You are evidence that Life has chosen to celebrate itself in a very unique way and that Life will only be celebrated once in this way through you?

If you don’t declare You and LIVE this declaration of You, Life won’t be celebrated in the way it was intended to be.

By declaring You, Life will live itself through you in exactly the way it’s mean to be lived, giving exactly the gifts that are meant for all of Life to experience, and providing the piece of the pie that can only be offered by way of…you guessed it…You!

And while we are talking about You!, let’s talk about that beautiful, sacred, creation that is your female body. Your female body IS a celebration of the sacred feminine in flesh and blood. Flesh, blood, bones…all of it…and all of You. There is no need to control your body, in fact controlling it only keeps the lid on your body’s own way of celebrating.

Life is too intelligent to make mistakes. It is too wise and whole to create something that is not meant to be here, nor meant to be witnessed with love and celebrated with delight.

Maybe you hear voices that try to tell you this is selfish or self-serving or something along those lines? When they get loud and insistent, tell them you hear them and their point of view, and then tell them they, too, are part of this declaration. Everything, and that would be EVERYthing is part of this creation…even those voices that can drive us crazy with their constant barrage of worry and judgment. A funny thing happens when you listen while they declare their own point of view: freedom happens. Eventually they become free, too, as they relax, come into the fold, and come to know they belong.

Perhaps that’s all any of us want…is to know we belong, exactly as we are.

 

The bottom line…

You are here, as You, in your body. You belong here. Just as the sun and the moon, the ocean and trees, and everything that breathes, just as all of Life belongs here because it is here and because it is Life, so do You.

You are a member of the largest completely functional (in it’s own crazy mixed up, sometimes entirely dysfunctional way) Family ever created – Life.

You ARE a You and an Us. You are in relationship with everything around you, including You.

So, let’s celebrate! To You! To We! To Life!

::

images from DeviantArt

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A Return to Relationship With Life

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“…how calmly, as though it were an ordinary thing, we eat the blessed earth.” ~ Mary Oliver

Seeds are planted, food comes forth…as though it were an ordinary thing.

The moon returns after having gone black…as though it were an ordinary thing.

We open our eyes to live another day…as though it were an ordinary thing.

The Earth sustains us, each day of our lives, and we act as if it were an ordinary thing.

 

Around us, within us, between us, is the sacred.

Every atom is filled with it. And every atom is it.

Every breath is this mystery gifting us another moment of life. It is quite simple, yet life-changingly profound when we come to really take it in. And, yet, we grow to see it as an ordinary thing.

::

Wonder and Awe

The nature of the structures and institutions we live in is one of domination and control over life and that which is symbolic of life-giving power. In these structures, the sacred is seen as something above us, outside of us, and in some cases, something that only certain people have access to. It is also seen, by some, as something that does not exist.

For some time, we humans have thought that we can solve any problem simply through our thinking process, even the problems our thinking has created. It’s actually not very logical at all, but then the logical mind that doesn’t acknowledge reality isn’t very logical.

The logical mind run amuck has a quality of cold lifelessness. There is no heart in it, no warmth. When there is no heart, there can be a feeling of the stiltedness that’s somewhat robotic.

The structures we live in do not give much credence to wonder and awe, mystery and uncertainty. When we’re taught we have to know everything, there isn’t much place for these things. When we’re taught that humans own and can control life, not just land ownership but even going so far as to patent seeds, we’ve lost a sense of any relatedness or connection to life. Rather than being in relationship with the life that sustains us, we’ve come to see ourselves as owners and manipulators of this life…sometimes, all for a profit or comfort or supposed safety and security.

But wonder and awe are absolutely necessary if we are to heal the messes we’ve made here on earth. It is our relationship with life that needs healing, and to me that’s the realm of the sacred. And it’s also largely the realm of womanhood.

Why? Because our very need to control, dominate, and fix life is why we are in the mess we are in. And when we continue to act from this mindset to attempt to ‘fix’ our problems without opening to the mystery itself to guide us back into balance, we continue to seal not only our own human downfall, but so selfishly the downfall of many other species.

Our role as humans is of stewards of this beautiful Earth, and, we’ve forgotten our humble role.

 

Life itself regenerates.

That is part of its mystery, is it not?

Life is intelligent, much more so than any human being. But to know this once again, we must come to remember our place in this vast Universe. There is an intelligence far more intelligent than human beings will ever be. And this intelligence is sacred. This intelligence is what animates all of life. It is the universal life force. It permeates existence. And, we’ve lost our awe for this intelligence. We think we have it figured out. We think we can recite words that capture this intelligence. We think our dogmas explain it.

We’ve been so deeply conditioned to believe that the sacred is NOT in the land, the air, the water, the trees, animals, plants, rocks and yes, people. We’ve been taught to believe the sacred is not in our deep feeling nature as human beings. We’ve been encouraged to believe that the very things we are destroying are simply objects for our use. It’s too easy for our conditioned minds to view life as something we can research, figure out, understand, and even patent, that it is this deep misunderstanding that has brought us to the brink of great destruction.

Furthermore, many of us have been turned off to anything that smacks of religion, or if we follow a particular religion, many of those religions teach that the sacred is above this lowly earth plane. In believing this, we come to push away anything that we believe is trying to tell us what to believe, how to act, or how we must be in order to be worthy of access to the sacred.

 

A reclamation of the sacredness of life is needed.

Words can point to so many things, and they point to experiences we’ve had in the past, experiences that might be positive or negative or both. So much gets tangled up in a word. Yet, this reclamation that can help us heal is an opportunity; it’s the opportunity to come to know what the word ‘sacred’ means to each of us by way of experience…our very own real life experience.

Words are powerful. We can’t name this that can’t be named. But we can each guide ourselves to really look at our own relationship with this that can’t be named. We can guide ourselves to remember our own experiences of moments when we’ve been profoundly moved by this that can’t be named. And these feelings, these experiences, can be acknowledged with a word, a metaphor, a scent, a flavor, a symbol that speaks uniquely to each of us. Something that puts us back in relationship with that which breathes you.

The word you use to describe whatever it is that brings this awe to you matters not. What matters is the acknowledgement that there is something greater than you, or me, or us. What matters is that we find our way back to a relationship with this that is greater than all of us.

 

Consider…

What brings out the feeling that you are connected to something greater than yourself? What brings you back to wonder and awe? What helps you remember there is something greater than you, whether it be community, relationship, humanity, the animal kingdom, Mother Earth…something that compels you to come back to the whole and to wholeness?

When you remember this experience, or these experiences, how do you feel? What do you feel? Where do you feel it?

For me, I notice these things in many small moments, as well as some of the ‘bigger’ life moments I’ve known.

I’ve seen the sacred in those ecstatic moments of my children’s births, or the births of my grandchildren that I was lucky enough to witness. I’ve seen the sacred in those moments of death, pain, and illness of those I love deeply. And sometimes, it’s been the way my arm or hand moves to the music when I dance, or how the warm wind feels when it’s blowing across my face. Sometimes, it’s been the miracle of my grandchild’s small hand with big dimples by each finger that causes my breath to catch.

 

Breath catching is a sure sign of the sacred.

 

Just consider this: You are alive. You ‘eat the blessed earth’ each day. You drink Her waters. You breathe Her air. You are here.

The Earth is this Mystery in form. We are Her.

Let yourself see the amazingness of just this. Then, call it whatever you wish. But, acknowledge that Yes, that something is right here, looking out your eyes, breathing your body, beating your heart. Acknowledge just how close this is to you. And, after really taking this in, acknowledge that what this is is not ordinary at all.

I’d say it is sacred. And, what do you say?

 

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