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Standing Out

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Tulip A friend posted this quote on FaceBook this morning, and I just had to share it here.

“Why are you trying to fit in when you were born to stand out?” ~ From the movie, What A Girl Wants  

I like to think of standing out as simply being what you are, the truth of what you really are. The ego is all about hiding or ‘being seen’, but there is another alternative…simply being true to your own being, without worrying about what others think of you.

A teacher of mine, Aydahshanti, says freedom only comes when we allow others to have their own opinion of us, without worrying about changing it or controlling it. This leaves us free to simply be. The tulip above, one of many I had in the house over Easter, is a great example of this. It is standing out, being itself, being beautiful and vibrantly colorful. It is simply being what it is.

What if you were to allow yourself to be unabashedly you? and, of course, unabashedly female!

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Your Experience as a Woman

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I have found some wonderful new books, which focus on the transformation of consciousness in which we are smack in the middle of. Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness, by Marion Woodman, has opened a flood of light deep within my cells. Woodman is an incredible prophet of the sacred feminine consciousness rising in women and men.

I’ll write more about her book in the next few posts, but right now I want to share another great book, Women of Wisdom, by Tsultrim Allione. Allione was a Buddhist Nun, but she renounced her vows because she felt the pull to become a mother. Her life has been extraordinary, and she shares so much of her experience in the newly revised edition of Women of Wisdom.

Within the pages of Women of Wisdom, Allione speaks to the reason I created this blog, Unabashedly Female. In my own experience, I could see that what was, and is, happening to me as part of consciousness awakening was reflected nowhere in the cultural stories of the world I live in. Everything we see, the stories we hear, are all part of a culture that is male-centric and still highly patriarchal. The structures and systems in place were designed with men in mind to fill their needs. We, as women, are inundated with messages that, at their core, come from these systems and structures.

Allione writes, “We try to relate our experiences to the stories of others and thereby edit our perceptions according to what fits.” (Women of Wisdom, pg. 83) Allione then quotes from Womenspirit Rising:

Women have lived in the interstices between inchoate experience and the shaping given to experience by the stories of men. In a very real sense, women have not experienced their own experience. There is a dialectic between stories and experience, Stories shape experience; experience shapes stories. Womenspirit Rising, pg. 228

If the stories we swim in reflect male systems and experience, then we never really become conscious to our own experience, what is happening to us if we continue to look to these systems for reflection. This, coupled with the understanding that the ONLY thing we can truly know is our own experience, is mana for our souls, for when we become aware of what keeps us circling in our own illusion, we can begin to wake up from it. 

For the sacred feminine to awake and rise within our own consciousness, we must wake up to the stories we have believed and aligned ourselves with, and realize they are not our stories. The truth is what is happening to us in our own experience, both individually and collectively. Part of what we do as humans is try to make sense of our experience, and if we hold it up against our conditioned world view, then we make links and assumptions that lead us to conclusions that can never be true, at least in an absolute sense.

Being Unabashedly Female is allowing ourselves to really look within at our own experience and trust that it is true. Being Unabashedly Female is about trusting ourselves, trusting our experience and opening to the transforming energies that are within our physical beings, that primal matrix of creation that resides within women. Being Unabashedly Female is also about coming together as women to share our stories and experiences so that we may develop a deeper understanding of what is happening within and without.

Unabashedly Female is ultimately about aligning with the awakening sacred feminine within all of life, and supporting a newfound respect for women and men to live together as balanced beings in our own right, knowing that our own truth can only come from within. As beloved Amma said in a talk over six years ago, “men and women must bow down to each other.”

And, we must bow down to Life, to all of Life. We CAN live into a way of life where we honor and serve the sacredness in each other, and in all of Life.

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A Power such as the world has never known!

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If ever the world sees a time when women shall come together
purely and simply for the benefit of mankind,
it will be a power such as the world has never known.
~Matthew Arnold

 

What will it take for women to come together in such a way? It’s already happening all over the world. In small ways, and in some very major undertakings, women are listening to the voice that is calling them forth to speak truth and to say, “Enough is Enough”. What if we were all to speak up and speak out, and come together “purely and simply for the benefit of mankind? What do you have to say? Who can you bring together? When will you do it?

 

What is the source of our first suffering?
It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak.
It was born the moment we accumulated silent things within us.
~Gaston Bachelard

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The Soul of Coaching

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On Wednesday evening, I had the pleasure of attending San Francisco Coaches Holiday Party. I was looking forward to attending simply because I love these people, my friends who also happen to coach. From the moment I walked in the door of my first meeting, I felt welcomed and part of something bigger than just me coaching my clients.

The party was intimate and engaging. The guest speaker was Harriet Simon Salinger, one of the founders of SF Coaches. The first meetings were held in Harriet’s home over ten years ago.

This was my first opportunity to meet Harriet, and I found her intelligent, witty and completely accessible. Her talk was centered around holding two questions, a very ‘coach-like’ thing to do. The questions were, “Where do old coaches go?”, which brought quite a round of laughter around the room, and “What is the Soul of Coaching?”. The second question we entertained with our table mates before bringing the discussion back to the room at large.

I found this discussion fascinating. What is the Soul of Coaching? We had numerous ideas and thoughts, just sitting with them all and not trying to actually answer the question. I found this question still intriguing me last night while I worked out. Some fresh insights then entered my realization.

I could feel, at a deep and profound level, that the Soul of Coaching is the immense capacity for human beings to consciously experience the depth and breadth of who and what we are, and in this experiencing and conscious reflection of our experiences, we awaken the parts of ourselves that have been repressed, hurt, or believed to be not good enough. In this awakening through conscious action, we not only create our lives from choices based on that inner compelling pull, but return to the wholeness that always has been present within.

I see this as the Soul of coaching, because it lies at the very foundation of our practice. We hold our clients as whole, and we hold that they have their own answers, and we hold that their awakening to wholeness is a natural and ‘given’ expression of the very nature that they are, that humans are deep at our core. As I coach, I know that every client has their own seed of wisdom that when watered and fed, and loved unconditionally, will express their unique nature.

While coaching started out with an accomplishment and success mindset, I see that goal is still valid. What has changed is what accomplishment and success mean. For me, over the past five plus years I have been coaching, my own notion of what coaching really is has changed and morphed. My work with clients has honed my skills and my vision for what coaching is and can be, and for what I know I am uniquely skilled to offer those clients that are meant to work with me.

What does this have to do with being Unabashedly Female? Everything. I see the wholeness that you are. I see the unique beauty and power that is inherent in women and men. I see the critically important need for all of us, both men and women, to live our unique gifts and to express them in the world. Life is intelligent by design, and each of us has a role to play in this design. If any one of us is living from beliefs that what and who we are is not enough or is bad somewhere deep within, then we are hiding our gifts away, gifts that must be shared for our world to be balanced and in harmony.

Women have been conditioned to believe that we are bad simply by design. That somewhere our design as women is sinful and dirty. I can’t tell you how many women I have spoken with that feel this deep within, but don’t have the consciousness to express it until we work together or at least talk about it. And, many men have spoken of the unconscious beliefs they hold about women, too. These beliefs hurt us all. They hurt both men and women. They are part of the shadow of our culture and world, and are played out every day in violent and degrading scenarios. And it all stems from conditioning. None of it is really true.

The Soul of Coaching is about holding us all as the vibrant, creative deeply loving beings we are by nature. When a coach holds you this way, you begin to hold yourself this way. When a coach calls you forth to be this nature in the world, you begin to express this nature. When you learn effective tools and practices that help you to live this nature, then you begin to live the life you were created to live.

If you are intrigued at all by what this post shares, please contact me at juliedaley at gmail.com. I would love to begin a conversation with you about how to step into this magnificence that you are.

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Your Unsung Song

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purpleflower.jpg

I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung. – Rabindranath Tagore

I came across this quote today in the Heron Dance newsletter, A Pause For Beauty. I like the quote because it is a beautiful metaphor for how we, as humans, spend the days of our lives busying ourselves with everything but singing our song, all the while telling ourselves we are just about ready to sing. We mess around with getting ourselves trained, figured out, processed, firmed-up financially, etc., all to keep ourselves from jumping into the void, the empty space that must be encountered when we agree at last to trust our own, unique song within.

I believe we are doing this as women, too. Not simply individually, but collectively. I can feel in my work with women leaders, both individually and collectively, that we know we have work to do. We know there is a song to be sung as beautiful souls within female bodies. We can feel and sense a calling within to come together in some way to sing a collective song, all the while honoring our own, individual melody.

What is this song to be sung?
What is calling us?
What are you hearing?
What is keeping you busy so that you don’t have to hear the melody within?
When will you sing?
When will we sing, together?

I can feel my song to be a guide for people to see again their inherent goodness, and to awaken to the richness of their unique creative expression. I feel a (sometimes not so gentle) pull to help heal the deep wound we all experience in some fashion with regard to the Mother (our own and the Big Mama Earth) and Her unconditional love for us. What if we were to awaken to the awe inspiring unconditional love that is here for us all the time…here for all of us, every living being? What if we had the courage to feel this love deep in every cell of our beings?

What if we were to be this open, this trusting, this humble, this ordinary?

photo by Julie Daley

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Coming back to my Self

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I just re-connected with one of my best friends from my childhood. We grew up in Palo Alto, California before Silicon Valley came upon the scene.

If you have ever been to the Bay Area, you know the geographic beauty that we enjoy here. It is a beautiful place with an amazingly vibrant and diverse culture. Growing up here was a treasure in itself.

I remember days of riding my ten-speed in the hills that rise up between Palo Alto and the coastline. I remember growing up with people who were intelligent and thoughtful about the world we live in.

Just yesterday, this best friend sent me a picture. She has been scanning old pictures and came across this one. pic-00222-julie-and-cara-02.jpgI am on the left. Just seeing this image brought back a flood of feelings and memories of a time in my life when I felt so connected to the world around me, especially nature through all the time I spent outdoors.

As I thought back to this time, I realized how important these years are. It’s during these times that we have a glimpse into our deeper nature and a sense of our place in the world. Once we grow up and move out into the world, and into making a living, most of us lose contact with our own internal knowing, because we believe we have to conform to our culture and society to make it. And, we believe that conformity requires letting go of who we really are and what we truly want to do with our lives.

It’s not that we consciously choose to go against our authenticity, but rather we are conditioned to do so.

Seeing this picture and remembering that time in my life, with all the friends and experiences it held, re-affirmed who I am and what compels me to action today in my life. I know that my work with women to awaken our connection to the Earth and our connection to each other is exactly what I knew somewhere deep within me when this picture was taken.

Think back to your youth, those years when you wondered what your life would hold.

What did you envision?

Who did you see yourself to be?

Are you honoring that deepest place within you, that place that speaks to you quietly, but insistently?

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Opportunity in Chaos

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We can’t expect our leaders to be what we are afraid to be ourselves. We can’t expect our leaders to take actions that we are afraid to take ourselves. We can’t expect our leaders to take us where we refuse to go on our own accord. It is up to each one of us to recognize within what we are searching for in our leaders. If we truly want our candidate to win and succeed then we must embody that which we are asking of our leaders. We must be willing to walk the path with them. As I see it, this is the meaning behind Gandhi’s quote:

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

We have all, men and women, been highly conditioned by our parents, cultures, religions and society at large. This conditioning is the basis of our personal ego. This ego has its own gods (beliefs and opinions) and these gods are the ones the ego believes all should follow. For example, with regards to the Hilary Clinton vs. Sarah Palin debate, on one level we may believe that the way Hilary carries herself in the world (beliefs, character, background, actions) is better than the way Palin carries herself…or, perhaps, for many others that Palin is “better than” Hilary. It all depends on the way we have been conditioned. But, conditioning is conditioning. Period. All conditioning is a box that has been created to keep each one of us in conformity and a false sense of security and safety. And, even though we have outgrown our conditioning, we keep choosing and acting from it so that we stay part of the ‘tribe’.

We are on the brink of something new, something fresh. What is required is true leadership from each American. We must quiet the fearful cries of our egos so that we may hear our own truth and ‘be’ this truth in the world. This does take trust in our own wisdom. It means taking a stand for what we know to be true within our own being. It means responding rather than reacting. It means questioning our reliance on our leaders to be responsible to us when we haven’t found our own means of being responsible to ourselves. It means becoming citizens again, citizens of not only this country, but citizens of our world.

There is an amazing opportunity presenting itself. We have the opportunity to heal the cultural distrust between men and women, and between women themselves. This distrust has been passed down from generation to generation as part of the cultural conditioning. It has been part of our cultural shadow for hundreds of years and for this distrust to heal, the shadow needs to be seen, acknowledged and personally owned. What we fear within ourselves we project out onto others. How does the shadow show up for you? What are your deepest fears about women in positions of power? How are you judging the women and men involved in the campaign rather than objectively looking at their qualifications? In what ways do the candidates, and their opinions and beliefs scare you? In what ways do you align with them?

Right now things feel chaotic. They are. This election has suddenly, and beautifully, brought in new voices, the voices of women, voices that have for too long been kept quiet. Things are changing and the change feels overwhelming to that part of us that wants to ensure our own beliefs will win.

But, in chaos is opportunity. How can we use this amazing opportunity to create something new and fresh in our political and cultural landscape with regards to women and men leading together?

True creativity, something truly fresh and innovative, can only come into existence when we trust in our own nature and in what we know to be true for ourselves.

Here are a few thoughts I have with regard to the current dialogue regarding women and the elections:

  1. As women, we can choose not to disrespect another woman simply for holding other views and opinions. We need to own our projections. We must separate out what we hate and fear about the ‘other’, and what we disagree with about their position. What we hate and fear about the ‘other’ is what we hate and fear about ourselves.Our cultural conditioning is misogynistic. This means both men and women have been conditioned to see women in ways that are belittling and demeaning. It shows up in subtle ways, and we are all guilty of it. If we can see our own part in this and consciously find a way to heal whatever it is within ourselves that feeds this dynamic, then we will be actively embodying the change we hope to see in those who lead our country.
  1. As women, we can recognize that we have all found a way to survive in this male-dominated culture. We continue to rely on our conditioned strategies to stay in the fold, whatever fold we have found to rely on be it Democrat, Republican, or Independent. Our parties seem to have become tribes that keep us seeing ourselves as different and separate than those of the other tribes.It helps to own that we are all clinging to our worn out strategies and beliefs, ones that no longer truly serve a society that is moving towards a different perspective of power and prosperity.
  1. Why should we be surprised that women running for office would hold wildly differing views? Men have for centuries, and women will, too. Can we separate out gender from clearly defined positions and platforms? Yes, it would be amazing to have a woman in office, but to vote for a candidate simply because of gender would truly be a mistake if we don’t genuinely agree with the positions the candidate espouses or the integrity with which they lead.
  1. Can we choose to not act out of fear and negativity? Everywhere we look, something is feeding our fear. Everything is about ‘fighting’ and winning the war on fill-in-the-blank. This perspective of fear and fight continues to cause us to see the world in which we live as an enemy to be conquered rather than an environment that can sustain us if we see ourselves in relationship with it rather than dominators.
  1. We each must step up to the plate and be willing to be in action. We must be that which we are asking of our leaders. This means finding and claiming our own authority to act from our integrity and authenticity, those qualities that define successful visionary leaders. Then, regardless of who wins in November, we will be walking our talk and living our values…being the change we wish to see right here in our own backyard. Doing this brings forth the peace within that we are looking for out there.

Hopefully, we can open to a new way of seeing our personal role in this election, and beyond it to the rest of the world. How will we hold our relationships with other women, especially those who hold differing views? Can we agree to disagree, while maintaining a sense of compassion and respect for each other as women? Can we begin to build and nurture the humanity of women, a web that connects us to each other and to the sacred feminine?

Can we refuse to do to each other what has been done to us as a gender for hundreds of years?

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Unabashedly Female at the DMV

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So, I had to get my Driver’s License renewed the other day before my birthday. The last time I had entered a DMV was four years ago on my birthday, and the experience was not a pretty one. I spent three hours in line waiting…a good lesson in why it is smart to get an appointment time. This time, I decided to go to our local DMV in El Cerrito, a town just north of Berkeley where I live.

What a glorious experience I had in the El Cerrito DMV. Now that may sound like an overstatement…glorious and the DMV together in one sentence, but I have to tell you, the people there SO ROCK.

First, I was greeted by a young woman who was obviously hip, wildly creative and unabashedly female. She was the friendliest person I have encountered in a long, long time. And, it was genuine. She greeted me with a sincere smile, gave me a number and showed me where to go next.

I took my seat and waited for my number. Just THREE minutes later, I was called to window 20. As I approached the window, I was greeted by another young woman, who looked directly at me, said, “Hi, can I help you?” and seemed to genuinely mean it. I told her what I was there for and she got to work.

As she was looking up my records in the computer, I noticed a faded flyer from 2005 posted between window 20 and window 19:

Shirley Chisholm

The flyer grabbed my eye because I had just been reading about Shirley Chisholm and her intelligent and courageous way that supported her in becoming the first African-American woman elected to Congress and the first major party African-American candidate for President of the United States. Then, I read the quote on the flyer, “Tremendous amounts of talent are being lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.”. I wondered to myself how much that statement is still true. I read all the time that the playing field is now even and women have so much at their fingertips that wasn’t there before. But, I also know that our patriarchal acculturation is woven into our daily lives in so many insidious ways. It isn’t spoken of, but it has made its mark on our psyches (both women and men’s).

I told the young woman waiting on me that I loved that quote by Shirley Chisholm, and she answered back, “Me too. I want to get a tattoo of it, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to shorten it so it will fit on my body!”. We chuckled together and I tried to picture where you would put it and how it would look winding its way around her arm. Then, I asked her if I could borrow a piece of paper to write it down on, and she said, “How would you like a copy of it? I’ll photocopy it for you!”. Such service at the DMV! She was not only serving me promptly and courteously, we were sharing a moment relating to each other as women, realizing the importance of honoring another woman who had made a difference in each of our lives.

As she finished up her work, she then directed me to the window to have my picture taken. I had forgotten that I would need to have my picture taken, and started to put my hand to my hair in hopes of doing something miraculous with it between window 20 and window 6. As I did so, she looked at me and said, “You are a beautiful strong woman, don’t be worrying about your hair.” I took her advice, and stepped to window 6 where I just stood there and smiled big, feeling my strength and beauty, and knowing all the talent I have has nothing to do with wearing a skirt.

I made a promise to myself, then and there, that I would let this talent fully shine.

Who knew you could get so much from the DMV?!

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No Longer Silent

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Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. ~Martin Luther King Jr.
 
I heard this quote used on a TV show tonight and hearing it stirred me to write. I think this is an extraordinary quote, but then it is from an extraordinary man.
 
The word silence has many definitions. One, is the absence of sound or stillness…one way we speak of the sea of the unmanifest potential of the Universe. But, silence, when it is how we keep ourselves from speaking our wisdom, is one of the most insidious ways in which the status quo stays in control.
 
When I read King’s quote, I can feel the truth in it. Becoming silent shows up in many ways. Becoming silent can happen when a sense of the ‘enormity of it all’ overtakes the inner impulse to express oneself in the world, or when a desired outcome is attached to the impulse to express. The struggle within to want to control what happens in the face of our own expression can silence the expression itself.
 
What matters to me is the awakening of the sacred feminine in all women, the divinity within each woman that can bring forth life into this world, whether it is a beautiful new human being or another form of expression of this sacred feminine. This matters to me. This is the basis of this blog and all the work I do.
 
I revel in my client’s awakening to the ripeness that awaits them when they ‘get’ that they are divine and that their bodies are a manifestation of the sacred feminine. I also see that this awakening in women spreads through all beings. The men they love, the children they hold and the life they nurture all heals when women begin to heal the divisions held within. Coming to wholeness spreads knowing and healing to all they touch.
 
What matters to you? What would it take for you to no longer be silent? How are you expressing that inner impulse now in your life?
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Transmuting Anger to Love

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Blue Tara ~ Goddess of Liberation

“Blue Tara, or Ekajati, is associated with the transmutation of anger. A Protector expressing ferocious, wrathful, female energy who destroys all learning obstacles producing good luck and swift spiritual awakening. She removes fear of enemies, spreading joy and good fortune.” (source: Seasonal Salon)

If I am going to be unabashedly female, I must be present to what is here. Anger is here…again. To be honest, I don’t know what to do with this anger. Anger wasn’t something I learned to feel or express, but it certainly is here.

Anger for the way women and children are treated. I sense rage underneath a pretty veneer of good and appropriate behavior, not only on my part, but in the world at large. I sense many women feel this rage at something we can’t quite name, or perhaps don’t know how to name. I am sure many men feel this, too. I know some of it is my own anger, while I know much of it is the collective rage, a rage carried over from centuries of oppression of the Feminine.

My mind can’t understand how this anger and rage can be expressed without hurting another. I don’t want to simply spew more negativity into the world…there is enough already. But, I know I must feel this anger. It is here. And, I feel compelled to do something about what is happening all over our planet. While I feel small compared to the problems, when I feel this anger arise, there is at least something moving, something stirring rather than the complacency that comes when I feel overwhelmed by the problems I see.

In my writing, I have been stymied by the anger that comes up. I am clear that I don’t want to blame or rant or rave. I want to move from the love I know lies deep within my heart. Yet, I don’t yet know the fullness of how love can show up, the ways in which it can move and stand in its fullness as the truth.

I do know that love can cut like a knife of truth. I have seen it. When I stayed at Amma’s ashram in India, I witnessed Her love over and over. Even in moments of Darshan, when she was hugging someone with infinite tenderness of the Mother, she would occasionally express this knife of truth (what I might call anger or something like it) towards someone when it arose. But, here the expression was clean. It cut through the haze of ego like a knife, cleanly without a lingering trace of guilt or blame. Her love flowed through the entire experience. Witnessing its expression took my breath away. I had never seen the beauty in truth of expression like this before.

From my own experience, I know that pure love follows the true expression of anger. When anger is experience fully, without identifying with it, and without allowing one’s conditioning to feed off of it, it transforms into love.

I now know this transmutation of anger to love is what Blue Tara represents. For thousands of years, Blue Tara, and the other goddess forms, have represented this transmutation because anger blocks the way to expression of truth and love. There have been deities to express this because this is part of our path to awakening, to discovering the truth and wholeness of what it is to be female.

There is so much fear amongst women about being angry. No woman wants to be the angry bitch. Yet, we must feel the entirety of what is here, without identifying with it. We are not our feelings or thoughts, yet they move through us. When we block the negative ones, we block all of them. Our hearts are big enough to hold the entire universe…I know we can hold the feeling and expression of this anger, too. Perhaps then it will be like letting the air out of a balloon, slowly, little by little, rather than letting it get so full that it pops.

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