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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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Her Graciousness Touched Me

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Memorial Day, 2012

Today is a holiday here in the US. It’s Memorial Day, the day we remember those who have given their lives in service to this country. Mid-day, around 2:00, I decided to walk over to the Presidio Graveyard, to sit for a moment in remembrance. I’d read a few things online about the holiday, and so many comments on these articles and posts were political in nature; thoughts about war and whether it was necessary, about which president had caused the most deaths, etc., and I wanted to just get away from all of that and go remember the men and women who have died in service.

The very odd thing is that I couldn’t find the graveyard. I must have made a wrong turn, somewhere. In doing so, I came upon the Inn at the Presidio, a new Inn on the grounds that is stunningly beautiful. I went inside and roamed around to see the Inn.

Alongside me was a woman who was also looking at the Inn. She was dressed, beautifully, mostly in black with a touch of red and yellow, and wearing a dressy hat, the kind women used to wear. She doesn’t live in San Francisco, but she has come to the city many times on Memorial Day to place flowers on the graves of three of her family members – her uncle, grandfather and grandmother. She said she’s been coming for a number of years. She had just come from the graveyard. She seemed introspective and had a gracefulness about her.

As I headed back outside to go to the graveyard, I thought about this woman. I was taken by her dedication to remembering these family members; that she flies from out of town to visit their graves and place flowers. I wondered about how our holidays and rituals can move away from the very reason they were first established and become somewhat generic in nature…about BBQs and  baseball and getting away.

For whatever reason (if any), even though I headed out to find it again, I never did find the graveyard. I felt a little lost, something I rarely am with regard to finding places. I’m usually the one that can find anything simply by my internal radar. I ended up walking for a while, but felt lost amongst all the white wood and red-tiled buildings. I’m struck by the fact I got lost; yet, what seems to have really impacted me, was this woman and her family.

Many times when I write a post, at the very end everything makes sense. I get to the end and the ribbon to wrap it all up appears out of nowhere. No ribbon, here. No sense-making.

Perhaps, my visit was more about considering what it means to remember and to witness how these deaths have touched life. I just keep remembering her graciousness and the very clear way she loved those who died serving.

She touched me. Her graciousness touched me.

 

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A Sacred Duty

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Rose

“There is a relentless search for the factual and this quest often lacks warmth or reverence.
At a certain stage in our life we may wake up to the urgency of life, how short it is.
Then the quest for truth becomes the ultimate project.
We can often forage for years in the empty fields of self-analysis and self-improvement
and sacrifice much of our real substance for specks of cold, lonesome factual truth.

The wisdom of the tradition reminds us that if we choose to journey on the
path of truth, it then becomes a sacred duty to walk hand in hand with beauty.” 
~ John O’Donohue

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When the Soul Ripens

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Ripening

It’s been just about two weeks since my return from Molokai. Things that I experienced there have been ripening inside me. The land holds you. I felt as if I was being pulled down into it. My time there was rich and fertile, salty and soft.

Many of you who followed along with me during this time discovered what it is to belong to the land where you are. Each land has its own power. I’ve wondered what you discovered about your land, both body and place.

We are a land unto ourselves. Our bodies are graced with hills and valleys, sweet water and stars in our eyes.

On Molokai, I saw double rainbows, watched shooting stars, listened to the birdsong, and walked on the land.

I sat with really lovely, beautiful women, and bathed in open-air tubs.

I felt the softness of the ocean water, water that touched and caressed me in ways my body has longed for.

I ate the most divine food straight out of a garden so filled with love that it radiated through the bell-graced gates.

I stood in the swirl of wind and saltwater where Maui, Lanai, and Molokai meet. Here, I felt energy so strong that I felt fully alive, fully pulsing. I felt a joy of connecting, a joy of opening to the wild forces that are bountiful in a place such as Hawaii.

I felt loved. Land and water and sunshine can do that. Place has power. It has character. It is love.

And in all these things…

Something deep awakened and stirred within me…the wildness of my own soul.

I haven’t quite known how to write about my time on Molokai. Yes, I shared my day-to-day with you. And, other more personal things that occurred have continued to stir deep within the cells of this body and soul.

It is good to wait for the ripening before we speak, write or share about something that has not yet worked its way to fruition.

As I felt words stirring and the desire to write, I was listening to this song, Where Soul Meets Body by Catie Curtis. It’s one of the songs on one of the playlists from the Awaken the Wild eCourse.

As I listened to the lyrics, I realized they were telling the story of my experience of opening to this wild place where soul meets body of self and earth, this place where I came to know the land of my body and the land of the earth as one.

“I want to live where soul meets body
And let the sun wrap its arms around me and
Bathe my skin in water cool and cleansing
And feel
Feel what its like to be new…”

I feel new. I feel reborn. I let the sun wrap its arms around me.

“So brown eyes I’ll hold you near.”

I saw, and now see, the brown eyes of this body in the mirror, again, anew each day as if for the first time.

“So brown eyes I’ll hold you near
Cause you’re the only sound I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through this atmosphere.”

Like beautiful globes of fruit, we ripen as we live. We are filled with juice so sweet and love so deep. Coming to know oneself anew is learning to listen to the sound of your own voice, the beat of your  heart, the longing in your belly, the calling of your own soul…the melody that only you are singing.

This is the divine spark within you that sings the song you are here to sing.

“…if the silence takes you,
Then I hope it takes me too.”

This relationship within, between lover and beloved, is the virgin reborn, a woman coming to know herself unto herself. Standing on her own, a whole being, she can truly be in relationship with a world longing to love her.

“I do believe its true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too

So brown eyes I’ll hold you near
Cause you’re the only sound I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through this atmosphere“

And, even though we walk our own paths and have miles to go, we can meet in this place. If the silence takes you, I long to have it take me, too. I can hold you. Here we stand together, whole women, each of us unto ourselves, learning to be wholly and holy real with each other. We’re discovering this together.

And, in this discovery, we also learn how to be wholly and holy real with men, in whatever way we find ourselves in relationship with them.

Whole beings knowing, honoring and loving whole beings.

And, You?

What’s the melody softly soaring through the atmosphere of your soul? Quiet the inner voices that fear you hearing the song you are here to sing, and take some time to listen. ‘Cause I want to hear you sing it.

::

I couldn’t find a great version of Catie singing this song, and even though this is a Death Cab for Cuties song, I love her version. And, if you want to hear the audio, please sign up for Awaken the Wild. It’s my treat. Women and men have loved, and are loving, this eCourse. I hope you will and do.

 

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To Live as I Dance

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A river so deep

Since I’ve been back from Molokai, I’ve been out of sorts.

Molokai is a powerful place. The land there speaks to the soul in a language my mind neither hears nor understands. My soul did, and does, and it’s insisting on changing the status quo.

I discovered an affinity for the land. Yes, I totally had it before…a longing for the land of Hawaii. Now, I know there is a deep river that runs between my soul and that land. A river so deep that the conversation continues even when my body is back home, so many miles away.

So all I can do is dance to the new rhythm pouring forth. I know how to let go into the dance, to trust the dance. For this, I am grateful.

When I first started dancing ten years ago, I had to force myself to stay. I would go, wanting to be there, but when I got there, another voice inside would want to leave right away. I was embarrassed to move, embarrassed to trust my own body’s way of expression.

It took months for me to soften to my own expression enough so that this internal battle began to die down. It took years to begin to feel such deep joy that now feel. It took time and trust. Trust in the dance. Trust in my body. Trust in the soul’s call to the dance floor.

Now, I know how to let go into the dance. For this, I will always be grateful.

I now see there is no difference between the dance floor and the earth’s floor. To live as I dance is now what I hunger for.

Who cares what others think? Do we really care? Deep down inside, do we really care what others think? That fear swims on the surface, but way deep inside where the soul clamors to be free, do we really care? Will that fear of judgment keep us from experiencing the pure joy of movement, of expression, of gratitude for the gift of being alive?

::

And, you?

The soul guides us to rise up and embody our own beauty and nobility.

It pushes and prods. It calls and yearns, and somehow, somewhere, and in some way we begin to listen.

How is your soul guiding you to move? To listen? To touch? To love? To express?

Somewhere within, you feel the call. So dance. Just dance. With music. Without music. It makes no difference.

 

::

Dance when you’re broken open.
Dance when you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
Struck, the dancer hears a tambourine inside her,
like a wave that crests into foam at the very top,
Begins.
Maybe you don’t hear that tambourine,
or the tree leaves clapping time.
Close the ears on your head,
that listen mostly to lies and cynical jokes.
There are other things to see, and hear.
Music. Dance.
A brilliant city inside your soul!

–Rumi

::

 

 

Thank you to Charlie Korda for sharing this video and poem.

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