women's wildly creative leadership emerging from within
This body that lies within my soul
and this heart that connects me to the Divine
were created
to listen,
to feel,
to touch,
to hear,
to taste
to know…
to receive and respond.
A generous inhale infuses spirit into these cells.
A full exhale releases love back into the whole.
I was created to be
a vessel of deep receptivity.
::
So Beautiful. So, so beautiful. And yet…
About the same time I took this picture, I came across this article by Eve Ensler, Over it. If you haven’t read it, do. And, after reading that post by Eve, I came across this one, and these words jumped out at me:
“Vagina is the most terrifying word, the most threatening word, in any language of any country I have ever been to. Even when the vagina is worshiped in theory, as the yoni is in India, it is denigrated in practice. It is more reviled and feared than words like plutonium, genocide and starvation. In many countries the word for female genitalia is so derogatory or disgusting, it cannot be spoken in public. In a few places, there is no word in the language for vagina at all.”
There is a big fat lie of a story in our world, a story that says the feminine is evil, bad, not to be trusted.
We could ask, “Why?”, for the rest of our lives. As Durga points out, dwelling in the negative robs us of our power:
I had secretly followed the “Goddess of Negativity” into her empire. She is a goddess of illusion, seducing us to complain about our life circumstances. She walks into our nights and grows in our dreams of worries and fear. She rules the space. She is a master of pretending to be something different.
She brings up stories and secretly turns optimism into negative magnets. She is a possessed collector of experiences we refuse to consciously digest. Instead we pin them on a fame wall inside a forgotten room of ourselves, and then we leave forever, leaving it alone and unprotected. Negativity knows these rooms and turns our secrets into fearful memories. And because we have left this room to her, she owns our power.
Staying in the place of wondering why keeps us locked in undigested places where we don’t know why we are stuck…
I know I’ve stayed in this place of “Why” for a long, long time. And, remarkably, I don’t move forward when I wait for an answer. The only part that would want to know is the part that does take it personally, because it is the part that believes it is separate from the whole of life and wants to stay separate.
This part doesn’t consciously want to stay separate. And, it’s desire to continue to stay in the illusion of the big fat lie comes from wanting it to change, wanting others out there, most certainly men, to acknowledge it isn’t true. Yet, they can’t tell me what is true. That’s just giving power away, again.
If someone else could tell me how worthy I am, then that same someone else could also take that worthiness away by simply stating something else. I no longer have any willingness to give another person permission to tell me what I am worth.
The only truth is the truth of life, known by way of my experience.
Only I can know what is true, and I can only know that by living what I want to know. By being it, by paying attention, by realizing I am not simply an object but a soul with a female body.
I am unlearning the lies I was fed, by paying attention to my experience, and by feeling the wisdom shared by others to see if it resonates with me. I can no longer take others’ words as truth, and I can feel for resonance with their words, as I did with Eve and Durga’s words.
The only truth is the truth of life, known by way of my experience.
Only I can know what is true, and I can only know that by living what I want to know. By being it, by paying attention, by realizing I am not simply an object but a soul with a female body.
Can I settle down into my body and begin to be aware in these cells that are the vagina?
Can I come to know myself without this story of evil and disgust?
How long will I continue to tell this story? It is buried deep within where I don’t have to feel its effects on my body, my heart, my psyche.
In reality, this place within my woman’s body isn’t even really a vagina. It is simply life.
The word itself carries so much.
Can we reclaim the word and not get lost in the word?
Can we be in the body, really BE in the body?
Beingness is love. Simply being in the body, is being the great love that we are in this female body, without the big fat lie.
This female body holds a great power. It is time to once again know this power, love this power and live this power, for it is not power over another, it is the power of creation and life.
::
I’d love to know your feelings and thoughts. Please share them here in the comments.
This post is part two of a three-part series titled, “Begs the Question. You can read part one here.
“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.†~ Audre Lorde
Hello beautiful!
I wanted to share something exciting with you.
I’m going to be holding a teleclass for Sherold Barr’s Women Heal the World community titled,
“Exploring the Realm of Womanhood & the Rising Sacred Feminine.”
Tuesday, November 29
5-6PM Pacific / 8-9PM Eastern
Cost: $25 Donation to Kiva.org
On the call, we’ll explore the rising of the sacred feminine principle and awakening to the sacredness of womanhood. Sound interesting? I hope so. It’s what I feel compelled to speak and share.
I met Sherold online and then spent some time in person with her at the World Domination Summit last June in Portland. Sherold is a dynamic woman doing wonderful healing work in the world. We’ve had some wonderful engaging conversations like this one…
I sense our conversation next Tuesday is going to be the same.
If you can’t make the call, no worries. The teleclass will be recorded and you will receive and MP3 audio recording.
Consider joining Women Heal the World. There is no cost to do so, and you’ll be connected to women around the world who want to Make Peace, not War.
I’d love to have you join us on Tuesday! See you there.
::
Follow these steps to make your $25 Donation to Kiva.org and join the call:
1) Click here:Â Kiva Lending Team: Women Heal the World
2) Click “JOIN TEAM†or login if you’re already on the team
3) Click “FIND A LOAN†(there are options on the left side to narrow your search)
4) Choose who YOU want to loan $25 to and click “LEND $25“and then click “CHECK OUTâ€
5) You will notice a $3.75 “Optional Donation to Kiva’s Operation Costs.†You may click on “EDIT†and change or remove that amount if you like.
6) Final Step! Please email donation confirmation to:Â sarah@sheroldbarr.com
When you donate to Kiva.org, you are helping a woman somewhere in the world step out of poverty.
I take pictures of flowers. I can’t help myself. Something in me is completely drawn to a flower in the midst of opening to life, it’s soft petals so vulnerable in a what can be a harsh world.
I have this gorgeous orchid in my home. It was a gift and is now in bloom again. As I walked past it the other day, the sun was shining through its translucent petals. The luminosity drew me to it like a moth to flame. In much the same way, when I get too close to such beauty, something in me dies to this beauty.
I posted another shot of this luminous flower online and received a number of comments.
Absolutely gorgeous.
Stunning.
Oh my goodness. Made my heart jump.
Very vaginal in the best way ever.
It was clear that this orchid looks like a woman’s sexual anatomy – vagina, vulva, clitoris, etc.
It seems as though we respond to this flower as something breathtakingly beautiful.
And this begs the question,
::
This post is part one of a three-part series. I’d love to know how you feel…
“Let your eyes remain empty of interpretation and the seeing will occur in silence.” – Mooji
When the eyes caress, just as a lover takes in the one being loved, an immediacy is known.
::
I had a very personal and profound experience a few months ago about seeing, really seeing. And, hearing too. This experience took place in Hana, at Hamoa Beach.
I wrote about for an upcoming book, but this experience wanted to be shared sooner. I couldn’t think of a better place to share it than on Teresa Deak‘s new site, Given to Gratitude. So I have.
I’d love for you to click on over to Teresa’s site and read these words, “So Much is Given“.
I’d love to know what you feel…
The other day, I had a long, lovely conversation with Rachael Maddox. At the end of a long trek by bike across the country, Rachael and her husband had landed in Oakland for a few days, and lucky me got to spend some time with her.
Rachael is beautiful, and her beauty shines both inside and out. She is wise. She is open-hearted. I was touched by her presence.
My time with Rachael opened my mind in an unexpected way, but first,
I was born in the latter part of the 50’s in the United States, a time when most women were housewives, ala Donna Reed (a TV show of the time). While my mother became a single mother in the early 60’s, the majority of women I saw, both in real life and on TV, were housewives.
I grew up with the sense that there would be someone to watch over me, to take care of me, a ‘big-daddy’ kind of sense of the world. Perhaps that’s the big Patriarch out there. After all, the religious traditions I saw espoused a ‘Father in the sky’. My government espoused a ‘Father in Washington’. Most TV shows showed the father as the head of the household making both the money and the decisions.
Looking back it seems odd to me that I would so strongly believe that a male someone, or something, would take care of things, because it was my mother that took care of me, both physically and financially.
Even though I now see and experience (and have for years) that this is not the case, the conditioning is strong. The conditioned mind’s worldview still sees the world this way, or perhaps a better description would be that it hopes the world is this way.
Rachael is more than half my age. Her world view is different, of course, especially because of her age, but also because of her life experience. I don’t want to write of her world view, because that is hers to share. Be sure to read her blog and get to know her. You’ll be glad you did.
What I want to write about is how Rachael and my conversation with her helped me to see things in a new way.
Speaking with Rachael helped to unlock some of this unconscious conditioning about power, and how I unconsciously still hold out hope that someone, most likely a man, will ride in on his powerful horse to save the day, to save me, to save the world.
Many people never have seen this as a possibility.
Speaking with Rachael helped me to see more deeply and clearly that I continue to try to figure out a way to make what I now know is true about my experience (as a woman and the power I know is within me) fit into this cultural structure. It can’t.
This structure is a dream in that it causes us to believe that it is the true nature of reality. The structure exists in our minds, and in the institutions we’ve created with our conditioned minds, minds that believe in scarcity and a hierarchy based on perceived values and worth of different groups of people, and layers of life.
In a culture where we believe in scarcity and hierarchy, privilege and not-so-privileged, it seems as though power is something held over others, or something where some have it and others don’t. That is how plays out in action in a cultural structure that sees power this way.
In this cultural structure, power is to be wielded over others, offered up by those who have when it is in their interest to do so, and to be adhered to by those who don’t have it.
In this cultural structure, there is a limited amount of power, so if one group has it another doesn’t. If one group decides to step into their power, it seemingly takes away power from others.
Notice that in a structure like this, when we believe what the structure shows us, power from within makes no sense. Even if we feel our own power within, our minds tell us things that support the structure rather than our own experience, because our own internal thought structures have been replicated from the cultural structure in which our minds were conditioned.
In our conditioned minds, power from within, power that is available for all, power that works together, makes no sense and can even seem dangerous to express in this cultural paradigm.
One can acquiesce, consent to it by remaining silent, to the power out there, making one seemingly powerless.
One can join the power out there in beliefs, in actions, in thought, making one seemingly part of.
One can fight it, in actions, in thought, making one feel powerful against.
one can feel the truth of one’s own internal power and choose from what is true. One can meet the ‘power over’ out there with ‘power from within’.
In very simple terms I use to try to express something that can’t be expressed, ‘power over’ comes from the fear of the conditioned mind; ‘power from within’ comes from realizing the truth of one’s own experience and feeling and expressing the powerful nature of the life that flows from within.
In recent days, I’ve noticed the Occupy Oakland movement showing signs of many of these ways of being with power. While some small bands of people chose to fight the structural power with power against by using violence, the majority of people have been coming from a place of awakened presence, choosing peaceful protest that comes from knowing they choose to no longer acquiesce to a power structure that does not serve its people.
I know that the only way I can know what is real is what my own heart tells me. And, I know there is no knight riding in to save us.
All that can save us is love, the power of love, the power of the awakened heart. Many years ago, Jimi Hendrix spoke powerful truth when he said, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”
Letting go of hope and opening the heart to the power of love.
The place I find myself in is truly looking within to feel the power of love within. It’s not a projected or romantic love, the kind of I’ve known in my life. This love is powerful and it can almost feel too big to experience. And,
as wise Rachael writes, “We are capable of being love that big.”
And, it means one more step, being love that big in action.
Action can be listening. As a grandmother, a woman who has lived many years, I know I hold wisdom. And, one of the wisest things I can do is listen to the wisdom of a younger generation, a generation that sees things differently, a generation that can help us to wake up. And listen to other races and religions. Listen to both women and men.
Action is not silent. For me, remaining silent has been a place of powerlessness. And yet, the action I want to embody is action that comes out of silence. This action is a natural expression of the power of love. Love this big is an active force. Love this big moves us.
The first few days of November hold deeply meaningful things for me.
November 1st is the date I was due with my first child, Jackie.
She came eleven days later, on November 11, but for some reason I always remember the 1st, too, as if the day I was due to deliver also marked the crossing of a threshold.
Perhaps it was because for eight months this date stretched out in front of me as the day I would become a mother. I remember the feeling of this date being etched in my heart before I knew how my heart would break open to the unconditional love I felt when I first held each of my daughters.
The last day of October and first few days of November also mark a time when the veil between life here and life beyond is thin – then enough to feel and sense life on the other side. Life almost seems to have a magical quality to it during these hours and days.
In these days, I feel a strong desire to go inward, to begin the descent into the darker months of late autumn and winter. This desire to go inward sits awkwardly with the warm sunny days we have here in the Bay Area during this same time.
Yesterday, I spent a part of my day co-working with a few fellow coaches and writers. At the suggestion of Tara Mohr, we began to meet one day a month to work together, to enjoy community, and I’ve come to look forward to simply being with these lovely women.
As I sat in Rachel‘s kitchen, the sun shined so brightly into the room that I could have sworn it was late July. While the heat felt like summer, the warm cozy colors of her home deepened the urge I feel to settle indoors, making a warm cozy space in which to write.
Andrea and her son joined us as we took time out from work to eat. I felt so at peace simply being with friends, eating good food and talking about everyday things. I tend to be a loner, and I’ve been consciously trying to spend more time with others.
The way of women is to come together, and for some reason I learned habits that conditioned me to spend so much time alone. I am learning to come together with women. It hasn’t been easy. And, I long for it.
of getting to know another woman, a woman I first met at the World Domination Summit in June. We met in an unexpected way. The doors of the hotel elevator opened and lo and behold, Jamie Ridler, who I had only known through social media, stood there right in front of my eyes. I witnessed her divine smile in real time.
Just a few weeks ago, Jamie invited me to be a guest on her podcast series. Let me tell you, speaking with Jamie was one of the most ease-filled times I’ve ever experienced. As you’ll notice on the podcast, our conversation was so fluid and effortless.
In this podcast, Jamie also shares some of her own wisdom. And then, further into the recording, Jamie and I speak of creativity and the Feminine, what it means to be creative as a woman.
I’m excited to share this talk with you. I hope you enjoy it, and I’d love to hear what it sparks for you.
A softness that defies language.
An unutterable tenderness.
To touch it requires complete and generous receptivity,
an awareness that is feather-light.
I’m beginning to know this place within,
this place that opens with the
touch of Grace and my
willingness to be loved.
Completely undressed I sit,
In silence I wait with
open heart and a willingness
to let my longing be known.
In this subtlest of subtle places,
I hear the whispers of this woman’s heart.
To do so requires me to leave everything I know
at the threshold into this world.
I am nobody special here,
in fact quite the opposite.
I am ordinary, undressed, and open
simply waiting to return home.
I’ve been a little stuck lately – wanting to step out more fully into the world, fully embodying the Work I am here to do, yet meandering in a place of trying to figure the Work thing out. Business is really good right now, and…
I can see snippets of what that Work is. Although my work with people, mostly women, to help them move toward their vision has found great success already, there’s a place where I have felt somewhat stuck.
Just today, in researching for this post about Margaret Wheatley (who will be speaking in Oakland this Saturday), I came across words she wrote some time ago that seem to directly speak to the place inside of me where a sense of stuckness has been living.
“What if we could offer our work as a gift so lightly, and with so much love, that that’s really the source of fearlessness? We don’t need it to be accepted in any one way. We don’t need it to create any certain outcome. We don’t need it to be any one thing. It is in the way we offer it, that the work transforms us. It is in the way we offer our work as a gift to those we love, to those we care about, to the issues we care about. It is in the way we offer the work that we find fearlessness. Beyond hope and fear, I think, is the possibility of love.”
I usually see insights…meaning, I see images that show me something I’ve not known. In these images that have come to me, I see myself offering this work in love, from a deep place of love that is far beyond me or anything my rational mind could conjure up.
Perhaps like you, I’ve been taught and conditioned to look for results, to see success in my work as something results-oriented. In our current paradigm, that’s how success is measured. Even streams of thought that teach us that success is not based on dollar figures still hold a sense that success is about a certain outcome.
When I read Margaret’s words, “We don’t need it to be any one thing. It is in the way we offer it, that the work transforms us.”, my mind relaxes. I can feel how its been caught up in ‘understanding’ what the ‘one thing’ is that my work must be.
When I read, “It is in the way we offer our work as a gift…”, “It is in the way we offer the work that we find fearlessness.”, I can see my focus has been on the how, on what I am getting done (or not), rather than on the way I offer it and how I hold the work itself.
I sense the how comes out of the offering, the next step comes when I am let go into the love that is there for “those I love, to those I care about, to the issues I care about…”
In the short video on fearlessness I’ve shared with you below, Margaret shares this quote:
“Fearlessness is not being afraid of who you are.” ~ Chogyam Trungpa
When I heard these words, I saw that being tied to the ‘what’ of my Work keeps me stuck.
When I feel the love I have for those I am here to serve, I feel a letting go happen on its own.
Simply offering what is here without any attachment is having to ‘be with’, really ‘be with’ the vast unknown that is at the heart of this love.
It’s a vastness that is terrifying yet in some strange way reassuring because it is the only thing that never changes. It is that which has always been here, unchanging, yet from which change seems to be born from.
I have a sense that who I really am is a love so vast that it scares the begeebus out of me. I’ve had glimpses of this love and I literally can’t hold the glimpse, can’t stay with it because it is too much contain.
I have to laugh at these words as they appear on the page. Of course I can’t contain it. The small “I” seems to think it can do this. This small “I” sees it all as impossible, because the small “I” is not the power behind one’s life-task…
“Our proper life-task must necessarily appear impossible to us, for only then can we be certain that all our latent powers will be brought into play.†~ C. G. Jung, Letters vol. 1, p. 94
I can see that what I sense lies ahead appears impossible, and reading Jung’s words helps me have a sense of why that is. These latent powers within us can come forth when we get out of our own way, in a sense a kind of ‘bowing down’ to the real you that you are, the one you are afraid of. In my experience, it doesn’t have anything to do with the small “I”, or me, that is attached to the outcomes, does want success, or longs to have it be seen or received in a certain way.
That part will always try to control, and it is this control that is creating a sense of stuckness within.
I have dined on Margaret Wheatley’s wisdom many times in my life. I first saw her speak in person in 2005 at one of the Thought Leaders Gathering in the Bay Area. Her wisdom, as she shares in this short video, always opens something new in me…
This Saturday, October 22nd, along with the wise and multi-talented Barbara McAffee, Margaret Wheatley will speak to a community of change-agents in a day-long event titled, A Call to Fearlessness: Discovering Your True Leadership Voice to Create Community and Joy.
Hosted by Bay Area Coaches, this is going to be an event to open your heart to doing work in the world in an entirely different way. Even if you don’t live in the Bay Area, you can still attend via simulcast.
And, if you buy one ticket to attend in person, you can purchase a second ticket for a friend at half price – either in person or via simulcast.
Take a moment right now to taste more of Margaret Wheatley’s wisdom in this article on Eight Fearless Questions. I promise, you’ll come away with an entirely new take on what it means to be fearless.
Have you ever wondered what you are here to do? Perhaps a tell-tale sign of this is what brings you alive…
Last night, while I was writing, I peeked outside and saw the most beautiful clouds. They dotted the sky like a million pillows.
Something about the sky drew me outside, like a call to my soul. I feel that sometimes. I feel the call from the wild world, the real world that’s always waiting for me to snap out of the day-to-day sameness within which the conditioned mind likes to confine itself. So I answered the call. I stepped outside.
The wind was billowing. The sky was filled with a zillion colors. The evening sky had a magical quality to it. As I so often do when I’m reveling in the mysterious unfoldment of life, I took pictures. I love the experience of capturing a moment in life that speaks to me. When life presents such beauty, I meet it willingly with open arms and an open shutter.
This picture, Clouds and Attics, captured the magic of yesterday’s evening sky as it poured itself over the place I live.
A friend of mine, Rachael Maddox, recently commented on one of my Instagram photos, “I love your love for beauty.” Her words resonated deeply. I become intoxicated with something hard to put into words when I witness beauty. I suppose that ‘something’ is love, the divine, the no-word-for experience of witnessing the magic of ordinary life.
When I read Rachael’s words, something opened inside me. A remembering. A knowing. A recognition of what is true for this woman’s soul. I’ve often chuckled at myself, because I take so many  close-ups of flowers. And I never grow tired of doing so.
Even if they all look alike to an eye that only sees the word and concept ‘flower’ when seeing a flower, when I really see a flower, it is wholly unique and in seeing that uniqueness wonder seems to simply appear.
Currently, I am teaching two courses, Creativity and Leadership, and The Whole Woman, both based on a course originally taught at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
In my courses, we talk about purpose as more of a quality of essence we each bring to life, a unique expression of the divine.
To discover purpose, each student lists what they love to do and what they hate to do, and then looks for the qualities inherent in the love-to-do list, and missing in the hate-to-do list. This process is always eye-opening for people.
We are most happy when we are bringing these qualities of essence to everything we do. For me, qualities of wonder, mystery and beauty are must-haves in what I do. They immediately bring me present to the wonder of life as it is, right now, not as I would like it to be. They light up a quiet joy within me, a thick peace that permeates everything.
I find these qualities a must-have for coaching. When I bring them to client calls, I find myself in wonder about my client, always remembering they are a mystery unfolding before my eyes.
To me, that is such a gift. It’s a constant reminder to me to be in the state of not-knowing who this person is, to listen deeply to what is being said, in order to hear them rather than my own mind-chatter about who I imagine them to be.
What do you love to do? What are the qualities of your essence, that when brought to everything you do, bring you fully alive?
Take some time to wonder and discover. And really question what it is you think you love. Move past what you’ve been told you should love, and listen to your body instead. It will let you know beyond any doubt about what you truly love.
If you want to discover more about who you really are, drop me a line at julie at gmail (dot) com, or sign-up to receive my posts by email by completing the box at the top right of this page.
This is at the heart of what I do in the world…
