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The Inward Turn to Self – Waken the Inner Teacher

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In just twelve days, I’ll arrive at Feathered Pipe Ranch. I must’ve taken the Virtual Walking Tour at least ten times since I was asked to co-facilitate this kickoff retreat for Feathered Pipe’s summer program.

(take the tour. the land is breathtaking!)

When I first learned about the Waken the Inner Teacher retreat, I had a sense it was going to be about helping people discover this inner Self at the center of the heart. I had a sense that many who would come would do so in order to dive in for the first time. And that is true. But, what I didn’t initially get was how many would come for the deep bonding that happens as we all take that turn inward together.

Living from the inner teacher is not easy…especially in many of the current cultural climates that continue to suggest others know best and that we should follow the dictates of those in powerful positions.

Yet, during these times, we need to be living from truth. We must begin to live from a lived sacred relationship with all of life. Taking the inward turn to Self awakens us to this sacred relationship with life, with the earth as a sacred being.

Saying yes to follow the Self is a choice I’ve had to make many times over. Sometimes it is easier. Sometimes, not so much. Eventually, it seems there is a quiet and gentle ‘Yes’.

The inner call of Self:

Something calls to us. A voice. A feeling. A knowing. It keeps calling. And, even when we turn away, it never turns away from us.

This that never turns away from us, even when the last thing we want to do is hear its voice, is the inner teacher. But when we do accept that we want to hear it, what helps us to hear it is crafting a relationship to it of trust and wonder. When we come to acknowledge that we do indeed long to know the Self, we begin to feel this longing more deeply. When we ask to hear and realize the silence we find is pregnant with life, we open to truly listening. When we are genuinely filled with wonder and a kind of curiosity of what we might find, we open the door. Sometimes, it happens all on its own. And more often than not, it takes our turning inward with a true intention to want to know.

At this point in evolution, we are all being asked to take this inward turn, the inward turn to the creative heart. And, at this point in evolution, we are also being asked to do this together, in community.

As Adyashanti writes,

“We are birthed into sangha, into sacred community. It is called the world.”

The whole world is our community, our sangha. The entire world holds us and has held us since birth. To know this brings about a kind of peace and relaxing into. And to find a community to do this work, deepens this knowing of being held.

So, I ask you to check-in within. Listen deeply. What does your intuition tell you?

Follow this voice. One of the keys to deepening the relationship to Self is to act on one’s intuition…whichever way it guides you. Intuition is always a yes/no. It either says, “yes”, or it says, “no”. That’s one thing really easy about it.

If you feel called to come to Feathered Pipe, please do. I would love to spend these precious days with you. June 15 – 21. In the beautiful big-sky country of Montana.

We are all teachers. We are all students. We are all finding our way, together.

Or as Ram Dass wrote, “We are all just walking each other home.”

 

 

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The Wildish Within

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The Wildish Within.

That wild alive feeling and knowing that you are

so much more than you present to the world.

So much more vibrant and alive and instinctual.

Awaken this vibrant teacher within…

 ::

I took my usual morning walk today, ambling (yup, I only amble on these walks) down to the business section of my neighborhood to get something hot to drink. I like to sit on the bench in front of my favorite place and simply take in the morning smells and light and sounds. It’s my favorite time of day. These spring days here in San Francisco have been amazingly, so this morning was really warm.

As I sat, I could smell a faint odor of smoke, like something was burning. It was very faint, as if perhaps there was some kind of fire in the distance. As I smelled it, I found myself taken back to mornings in India…mostly in Delhi and Varanasi…during my travels there. The smoky haziness guided me back to the vibrancy of those city streets, where there tends to be small street fires, along with very hazy air.

In some of my work with clients (and of course with myself!), I’ve encountered how we are with chaos and wildishness…how it’s all around us, and how in some places we seem to pretend to keep a pretty good  lid on it all.

I thought about the streets I had just ambled down, streets that have some of the finest homes in San Francisco and beautifully manicured yards with streets routinely swept clean of debris. I thought about how around these parts the wildish is kept at bay. I’m not saying I don’t love living here, nor am I saying that I don’t feel blessed to be living this life. What I am saying is that something inside me felt that familiar longing for the wildish nature that I experienced in India, brought on by the smell. I felt the very palpable longing for the vibrancy and aliveness that come when things aren’t so contained and controlled. Smells are strong reminders for us of past experiences.

I’ve felt the wildish in so many places in the world, and even do feel it in the grove of trees in the nearby Presidio.  This wildish I am referring to is a kind of chaos, a kind of dance that is always happening in life. It’s always happening inside of us, in our bodies, in our souls. When we try to keep it at bay, we have to stuff it down somewhere where we don’t think about it, and perhaps become unconscious to it. We pretend that there isn’t this wildish in our own selves.

This wildish nature is our nature…We know it, even if we don’t let ourselves know we know it.

And, there’s a hankering inside us to allow this nature out, to live it. It is primal. It is creative. And, it is an aspect of life that doesn’t just go away because we pretend it does. I know I have feared it in myself. Yet, when I’ve been with it, when I’ve invited it out, it isn’t what I expected it to be.

When we come into the body, we begin to come back in touch with the wildish.

I know during the short five weeks I spent in India, something vibrant came alive in me. Seeing a world so full of life, and death, reminded me of parts of myself that don’t get much reflection here where I live – these wildlish parts within.

This wildish within – it’s in all of us. Not just women, of course. And, it manifests differently because of the nature of our bodies. For us women, it’s absolutely necessary for us to get in touch with this elemental energy within because as Dr. Christine Page writes,

“A woman’s body is an alchemical vessel that possesses the power, wisdom, and knowledge to bring about transformation and enlightenment. For far too long we have submitted to patriarchal thinking and rejected our body’s seeming imperfections, illogical rhythms, and chaotic expressions. Yet when we stop fighting our body and allow it to do its work, we find ourselves embodying its mysteries and becoming a formidable force that refuses to be hidden or suppressed any longer…” 

 

So…

Do you long to know this wildish within?

How do you feel it? How does it call to you?

What does it cost for you to keep the wildish at bay? How much energy? How much disconnection?

How much joy, love, and creativity are kept in the shadow when you keep the wildish at bay?

 

Come join me on Retreat! Awaken the Inner Teacher

I’ve written on embodiment for a while now, especially as I’ve been on this long journey from the head to the heart.

And, now I’ll be a guide, alongside two remarkable wisdom guides, Michael Lennox, PhD and Karen Chrappa, on how to awaken the inner teacher.

I will be guiding this awakening through movement and visualization. We’ll be inviting out the wildish, waking up the wisdom of the body, this ‘alchemical vessel. This opportunity is for women and men, held at Feathered Pipe Ranch in Montana.

 

*** Retreat Informational Call

Want to know more? Ask questions? Hear what will be happening?

Wed, May 8th, 7:30 edt, 4:30 pdt. Register here for your call-in number and PIN.

 

 

And, if you’re wondering, the wildish within is sacred. It’s not separate from the divine. It is the mystery that is life, the mystery that is you.

 

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A Living Goodbye; A Living Hello

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Life is: Life relating to itself, Knowing itself through relating.

 

Eighteen years ago, today, my husband died suddenly before my eyes. It was quick and shocking.

The grief journey it took me on was anything but quick.

A friend on Facebook just now asked, “How does one say goodbye and go on?”

How do we live a goodbye and grief? How do we live hello and joy? They go together, goodbye and go on. They go together, hello and go on.

For me, I’ve found it’s a living goodbye, and a living hello. It’s all tangled together, in a beautiful, and sometimes not so easy, dance.

Gary’s death was a doorway into awakening to the depth and beauty, the light and dark, the sacred and mundane. It was a doorway into a true relationship with life, because we can’t be in relationship with life if we are not in relationship with death.

I am not romanticizing it. It’s not been easy, nor was it easy for my daughters and family members who grieved Gary’s death. It hasn’t easy for the hundreds of 9/11 family members I worked with, or the hundreds of clients and students I’ve taught and coached. And, I am certain, it’s not easy for you. We all know grief.

If we are looking for easy, we won’t find it in grief, and we won’t find it in life.

Yet, we can find ease. We can find softness and grace. Life is filled with grace if we open our arms to be held in love. Not romantic love, but the love that carries us through it all, even the very painful things we are now witnessing in our world. I write this two days after the Boston bombings. I write this as other  bombings are taking, and will take, place in our world.

Today, I celebrate Gary, our daughters, our four grandchildren, our life together, and the years since that have, I hope, made me a more real and loving woman.

Today, I celebrate you, your grief, your journey, and the way you grace this world.

Today, I celebrate our humanity. In light of all the tragedies we face, the love that we are is greater, by far, than any hateful and violent acts we do to each other.

This I know.

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Capable of Greatness Even in Our Darkest Moments

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This morning I read about the Steubenville rape case. I read that Jane Doe, the woman who was raped, was receiving death threats. My heart broke.

I then went to Wild Writing where we write using certain phrases from poems that Laurie shares as prompts. The first poem read was “Prayer in My Boot“, by Naomi Shihab Nye. The following is what poured out of me. And as I read it aloud, I could feel waves of grief roll through me.

The phrase from the poem is in teal. The lines that begin with ‘For’ are the elements of my Prayer. May it be so.

::

Pray it is universally applicable, because it is. How could Delhi be any different from Stuebenville, India from the United States?

Rape is rape. It tears us all apart.

We are no different here in the US, except we seem to think we are, seem to be really good at turning away, pretending it has nothing to do with us, pretending we aren’t like them. We’re more civilized, more under control, more egalitarian. Everything swept under the rug. Pretending Jane Doe deserved it because she drank too much and tweeted questionable things. Pretending the two boys lives are ruined because they’ve been convicted of a crime that somehow wasn’t of ‘their’ doing.

I pray we see that it is universally applicable because it is and the more we don’t see, the more we refuse to look toward, the more this darkness festers in each and every one of us – Indian and American, woman and man.

For this is our doorway into healing.

For those moments last year in Steubenville when choices were made that led to this.

For that night in Delhi when she boarded the bus with her boyfriend, never suspecting what was about to take place.

For the man in Delhi who suggested she was a whore because she was out at night and suggested her sweetheart was at fault because he didn’t protect her.

For the boys in Steubenville, raised in a culture where we avoid talking about these things, avoid looking right at this rape culture we seem to continue to cling to.

For the girl in Steubenville who woke up the next morning not knowing what had happened to her.

For all the mothers and fathers of these children and young people who in some way tried their best and succeeded, and in other ways failed.

For every young boy and girl, including my four grandchildren, who are learning every day what they must do to belong in a culture that expects certain behavior from all of us so that we fit in and don’t bring attention to our society’s darkest secrets.

For these young girls and boys who still catch glimpses of their souls who know the truth about life, that it has the capacity to be filled with compassion and love, tenderness and integrity.

For all of us who know deep in our hearts that this is not who we are as a species, that we are capable of greatness even in our darkest moments.

I pray that we come to know that this it is universally applicable, because when we know this as a species we will know peace.

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A tsunami doesn’t just stop when the clock strikes midnight!

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Now what?

One Billion Rising is over. And, it has just begun.

I first joined One Billion Rising about a year ago. The day, Feb 14, 2013, seemed so far off. Yet, the vision pulled me in. One Billion women rising. I wondered how that would shift things. I wondered how that would change the feeling on the planet, in our cities, in our hearts.

Altar by Stacey Butcher

Last night, I co-led a beautiful event with Stacey Butcher, a teacher of 5Rhythms. Stacey created a gorgeous dance wave and she led us through it with love and grace. Kim Rosen, a well known spoken-word artist, and a personal friend of Eve Ensler’s, shared two spoken-word treasures that lit a fire in us before we moved into the dance. And, for the last song of the wave, Christine Hodil sang a beautiful song that we all joined in on at the end. Our hearts were opened, moved, fired-up, and lullabied. We were the one billion, and we danced for the one billion. And, there were so many men present, who danced alongside of us, who danced for the women they love, and for the women they don’t even know who continue to face abuse, violence, and harassment.

 

It is jarring to be in a beautiful event such as this, to open our hearts, to invite in the possibility for a world that is different, and then to step back into what seems to be the same old world.

What I do know, now, after witnessing so many women and men across the planet rising and dancing by way of live-streaming and the internet, is that this is no longer the same old world. While on the outside it may look that way, on the inside we are changed. We’ve cracked open the cage. We know something different now. We’ve experienced the fire and joy and creativity that comes when we dance, and come together, and rise.

One Billion Rising IS a new way of life. It’s a new way of being. It’s living unabashedly the fullness of our womanhood.

In practical terms? It’s about allowing out all the parts of ourselves we keep hidden for fear of being abused and harassed.

Our patriarchal conditioning keeps an essential aspect of us locked up in an internal prison…the aspect that is the most powerful and enlivening for our souls. This aspect is nourishing and healing. It is our instinctual, sexual self, that when expressed brings forth playfulness, joy, passion, creativity, and a good dose of fire. It is not easily controllable, meaning our own internal conditioning has to work really hard to control it. It gets exhausting.

You know what I’m talking about, don’t you!?

We’ve internalized the oppressor, so we continue the oppression against ourselves, along with the fear of oppression from outside. Eve Ensler so wisely saw that we have to break the chains ourselves, we have to break out of the cage we keep ourselves in, and dancing is a beautiful way to free this instinctive erotic nature that is both organic to our souls and a sacred aspect of life.

Before I go any further, I want to reiterate, that the erotic as it is understood in the current paradigm, is simply a small thin slice of what it truly is. When I shared my thoughts with one man I know and used the word erotic, his response? “That’s porn.” This is what we’ve been conditioned to think eros and the erotic are.

Yet, what the erotic is is a beautiful aspect of life, this aspect that is at the heart of our creative, sensual, sexual, joyful, and loving natures. And because it is at the heart of creativity and embodied love, it is also the channel that will bring about lasting change, and deep nourishment to a world that has been out of balance for far too long.

And, it is exactly what our world hungers for just as it is what we hunger for. How could it be otherwise?

Life is wholeness. When we pretend we aren’t whole, we aren’t really fully living. 

To dance is to unleash joy.

To dance is to step back into the flow, to move that which has been stuck. 

To dance is also to reawaken our natural relationship to the body, to music, to rhythm, and to the beat of the drum, the beat of our blood pressure, the beat of our hearts.

One Billion Rising is “unleashing a feminist tsunami, an energetic rearrangement of our universal chemistry. the biggest volunteer action maybe ever of women across the planet, a seismic collective remembering of who we are, a calling back of our authenticity, a world dance shaking up our original energy and wisdom.” ~ Eve Ensler

 

So what do I now know that I didn’t know before yesterday, V-Day 2013?

I know that we can come together as women to reawaken our wisdom and nature.

I know that we are hungering to rekindle the fire of our erotic nature.

I know that many men all around us want us to do this. They know they cannot. And they know that it is in all of our best interests to do so.

I know that many women fear this aspect, along with many men. And, I know we have the courage to dance through this fear for the sake of life itself.

I know that dance is sacred, that our bodies are sacred, and that it is up to us to embody this truth.

I know that women have something important to do in this new era that men cannot do and it is time we do it.

I know we’ve stepped through a threshold and we cannot turn back.

I know that women across this planet can come together to rise in service to each other, and to all of life.

I know this. We’ve witnessed it. I felt it last night. I feel it today. I feel it right now.

Margaret Mead wrote, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

If a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world, just imagine what a feminist tsunami of a billion women and men dancing can do. Imagine it. Feel it in your bones. Pray it. Dance it. Paint it. Sing it.

A tsunami doesn’t just stop when the clock strikes midnight!

Take your sisters and brothers by hand and step across the threshold into this new land. And, keep dancing. We must be committed to dancing. We are in this together. Isn’t that a wonderful thing to know! 

::

I’m putting together the pieces I read last night, along with a little something else, into a complimentary ebook for my newsletter subscribers. If you’d like to receive it, be sure to sign up for my newsletter in the top right corner of the page. When it is ready, I’ll send it your way.

::

Here’s the One Billion Rising video from San Francisco. It’s hard to see me, but I’m there. I love seeing myself dancing. I’m so serious here, so passionate. It’s a lovely thing when you FINALLY accept your intensity is a beautiful thing.

 

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Shaken to the Core

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Today is the first day of the new year, 2013.

It is the Year of the Rising of the Feminine principle – a rising that is occurring in us all, in both women and men.

These past few weeks have been intense days of transformation.

On the Solstice, this past 21st of December, Terry Tempest Williams wrote,

“Today is the last day of the world”, so say the Mayans. I believe them. The world as we know it is ending. What has been peripheral will become central. What has been tolerable will be intolerable. And our own gifts held close, must now be freely given. May we meet the future’s penetrating gaze with honesty, courage, and a redefinition of love.”

These past few weeks have brought us events that I would say have focused the future’s penetrating gaze quite piercingly.

 

Shaken to the core

We’ve all been shaken to the core by the deaths of the children and their teachers in Newtown, and the death of the young woman from Delhi, so violently gang-raped. These are not singular occurrences. Intensely tragic, senseless, painful violence such as this continues to happen all over the world.

At the same time, it’s as if a part of us refuses to really look at what is happening. It can be painful to take in the details. It can feel like it will weaken us to sit down with each other, to listen, to open our hearts. It can make us feel as if we are weak, and that to ignore this makes us strong.

Right now, Canada’s Prime Minister Harper is unwilling to sit down with Chief Pence as she continues on her hunger strike. She is asking to be heard, to be listened to, and for her people and their treaties to be honored and respected. And right here in my own country, in the US, so many citizens are coming to feel that the only thing that gets our leaders’ attention is money and power.

Have these things and these ways been with us for a long time? Yes. Have they grown more intense? Seems so. Is the future’s gaze growing more penetrating? Resoundingly, Yes!

Are we paying attention? Are we listening? Are we looking? Are we stopping to feel, to really feel the depth of the grief and suffering that our actions as a species have caused?

We are witnessing the effects of our lives lived through the patriarchy, through cultural and societal institutions and structures that have hardened hearts, taught lessons of separation and domination, supported greed, and fostered fear and fundamentalism.

 

No longer tolerable

For whatever reason, and there are many, we’ve not only tolerated this, as a people we’ve continued to uphold it…until now.

Now, a way of future life is being shown to us and it is not pretty.

And, now, we are at a juncture. Something has shifted. Planets have aligned. Hearts have been opened. Perhaps, blinders have been removed. I know mine have.

We can face what we are seeing with fear, by arming ourselves, literally, or we can face it with, honesty, courage and love. 

We can sit down with those that are asking to be heard, those with wisdom, those who might have something wise to offer. We can realize there are many people suffering, people who perhaps have no way to cope with their loneliness, or people who’ve been so conditioned out of their capacity to feel that they don’t know what to do with the intensity of this world we now find ourselves in.

 

Redefinition of Love

Tempest Williams words ‘redefinition of love’ are crucial.

Love as we have known it has been fashioned by way of romanticisim. This love isn’t real love. It’s taken me a long, long time to discover this for myself. Love isn’t niceness and sweetness. Love isn’t trading something so that in exchange we will have safety and security.

What is love, truly?

What does true love do in the face of Newtown?

How does true love hold what happened in Delhi?

How might true love respond to the wars being waged?

How do we come to know this redefinition of love?

 

Jeff Foster recently shared,

“Waking up means clearly seeing beyond belief
It means fearlessly meeting life without protection
It means sinking into the deep acceptance inherent in the moment
It means letting go of all ideas of ourselves
Including the idea that we are ‘finished’ in some way.

We are never finished
and we are only ever Now.
This is the great knife edge of awakening.

It is easy to fall. I fell many times myself. I have seen many others fall. And I see them falling now.

There is great humility in realising
that we never knew a damn thing.

And that awakening was never about “me”.

 

Meeting life without protection

Some would say this is unwise. Some are advocating for more protection, more supposed security, more rigidity. And, what will this bring us? If I am the last one standing, have I won anything? What will I have saved myself from?

We are here. Somehow, we have gotten to this point. To know love, to redefine it, means none of this is about the ‘me’, the fearful part of each of us that fears connection, that feels separate, that wants to control to manage this fear. The ‘me’ wants the promise of safety, security, a promise that no amount of fire power or political maneuvering can ever bring.

We are all deeply, deeply hurt – more than we seem to understand – by what is happening in our world. I feel we now know just how intolerable what used to seem tolerable has become. The pain of what we are witnessing has become far greater than the pain of denial.

There is something greater than each of us alone. There is a deeper intelligence that runs through life itself. When we are afraid, when we are trying to figure it all out, we can’t hear this intelligence, we can’t feel it move us. But, when we stop to listen, when we sink ‘into the deep acceptance inherent in this moment’, love is here, love that is this intelligence.

 

Giving our Gifts

It is time to giving our gifts alongside our sisters and brothers. We do not have to, nor can we, do this alone. Many movements are springing up in response to these latest tragedies. People are coming together. And, whenever two or more are gathered…there is love.

Tempest Williams offers that ‘And our own gifts held close, must now be freely given.’

And my friend, Filiz Telek from Brave New World, writes,

“I invite you to consider this: Whether we give or hold back our gifts unconditionally now is a matter of life or death for future generations. If it resonates, dig deeper. Begin today.”

For this is life was never about the ‘me’. It is about life. It is not my life, or your life, it is life.

This is the feminine in real life. This is the feminine principle waking up in us all, men and women.

 

And for you, dear woman,

 

Your femaleness is a gift in itself, and loving it is a radical act.

Loving yourself as a woman, loving your femaleness is vital.

Let yourself be shaken to the core. Let your heart break open. Let life in. Take yourself into life.

We are stronger than we think. Our hearts long to feel, to give, to serve. Our bodies know how to heal.

We must do this so that we reclaim love, so that we come to know the healing powers of the female body, so that we once again become lovers of life, givers of our gifts, a species that walks the earth with gratitude and wisdom. We must do this for all the world’s children.

 

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The Sincere Path

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“It’s my contention that there is no sincere path a human being can take without breaking his or her heart…so it can be a lovely, merciful thing to think, ‘Actually, there is no path I can take without having my heart broken, so why not get on with it and stop wanting these extra-special circumstances which stop me from doing something courageous?'” – David Whyte

The Sincere Path

Ah, these words speak to me. In truth, I have had by heart broken open so many times in my life. And, there is so much in this world right now that breaks my heart on a continual basis…if I allow it in. And, there is much in this world right now that brings me great joy.

A sincere path. One of truth and heart. The one that I most resist, because it isn’t ‘my’ path. It is the one that is asked of me.

The times my heart has been most broken are the times when life has happened to me. I am getting more accustomed to handling those things that seem difficult. The place where I’ve been stuck is this place of choosing to walk into the heart-break. Choosing the fire.

I’ve wanted to have it my way. I hadn’t thought of it as extral-special circumstances, but now I see that’s what I have wanted. You know how it is? If only I could choose from ‘this’ menu and not ‘that’ one. If only it could look ‘this’ way, not ‘that’ way.

The sincere path doesn’t come with a menu of choosable circumstances. We either choose to take it or not, and in my life I’ve noticed that the choice is something I must repeatedly make. It’s the same choice, just returned to again and again from wherever forgetting has taken me.

And then sometimes I just get stuck because I don’t want to get sticky. [Thank you, Jen Louden]

It’s one thing to learn to respond to life when your heart is broken open by life. It’s another thing to turn to that which you know will break your heart open and to go anyway, or to head into those circumstances you think will bring you personal pain and go anyway.

This is where courage and trust come in. It is where remembering what I know to be true, and so often forget, that everything is sacred. Everything. Every cell of everything. To remember that what I fear out there, is what I fear within myself is one of the most difficult things to remember because it is not the idea of it that will open me to my sacred path…it is the knowing of it deep in my heart.

I have moments of knowing that all is sacred and those moments are always by way of the heart and never by way of my ego mind. It only sees separation. But the heart, ah the heart. As the bindings around my heart break, my heart breaks open.

I fear being exposed. I fear being censored. I fear being shamed and humiliated.

What I really fear is feeling exposure, feeling being censored, shamed and humiliated. I fear feeling these feelings. I fear the power of them to break me. But can they really break me? Not really. Not what I truly am.

Somewhere I know that a multitude of experiences await me, not just these few my mind seems to focus on.

Somewhere I know that if I meet these circumstances that await me, they won’t kill me.

Somewhere I know that if I sincerely choose the sincere path, what will come are just what I need to experience…not to harm me, but to heal me.

And what I do know is that the more I have deeply grieved in my life, the more joy I am capable of feeling. The more I have opened to the unknown, the more I am surprised by the incredible variety of amazing things there are to feel in this human body.

And, you?

What is your sincere path? Do you know it? Do you skirt around its edges? Do you circle and circle never quite landing?

What don’t you want to feel? What feeling do you avoid at all cost?

Will you allow your heart to break open?

Will you journey with me?

 

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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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The Grand Affair

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Color.

Shape.

Curve.

I love softness, blurry lines, rich deep color.

::

Ripe.

Full.

Intense.

All qualities I love, and

words others use to describe how they experience me.

::

I’ve always loved color…deep rich color.

Something draws me immediately to a flower… especially when

sunshine illuminates the flower’s fleshy petals or

the petals are open just enough to display, yet protect, the tender stamen inside.

How lovely it is to discover that which resonates so deeply with the soul.

::

And, you?

What calls to your soul?

What stirs your heart, quickens your pulse, catches your breath?

What wakes you up with a jolt to remind you you are vibrantly alive?

These things shine back to you the nature of your own being.

::

Everything is waiting for your attention, your love.

Everything is waiting to be seen, felt, touched, tasted and heard by you.

It’s all part of the grand affair, divinely choreographed for your pleasure and perception.

It’s all here to wake you up,

with great aplomb,

to the truth and the beauty of what you really are.

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Inspiration. Transformation. Bright Beauty.

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Hello!

Just look at how this Gerber daisy makes herself known! She is bright beauty.

Only here for a very short time, her bright beauty enriches us all.

Today is Friday, and it’s almost the end of March…so hard to believe. This month was women’s history month and I know there have been some great posts about women and women’s history by friends and colleagues all around the blog sphere.

I have a couple of those to share with you!

::

Garrett Eastman’s blog is Quit Taking It Personally. This month, Garrett has written a series of posts about Inspiring Women. I’ve read quite a few of them. Garrett has obviously taken a great deal of time to write each post about a woman who has inspired him. I am touched by this. I yearn to know men who honor women out loud. Garrett is one of those men. I am honored to call this man my friend.

::

Angela Kelsey, a beautiful writer and dear friend, has collected a series of posts by women and has titled her collection, the Nest-Making Series. These posts are written by other writers, and Angela has done an exquisite job of collating, introducing and bringing this together in a tangible way. I’m looking forward to hear wrap-up post tomorrow!

I’m the featured writer at Angela’s place, today. Here are the first bits of this post that is very dear to my heart:

“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic,
and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.” ~ Adrienne Rich

 

My mother taught me many things: independence, tenacity, artistry, the joy of finding one’s passion and embracing it. She also taught me to fear: intimacy, being abandoned, being alone in the world with huge responsibilities. And, she taught me to keep going even though the fear was here. She taught me both to not trust myself and to deeply trust myself. Of course, she wasn’t the only one who taught me these things. But, as women, what we learn from our mothers is deeply meaningful because of the nature of relationship and connection between mother and daughter; it also holds deep transformational possibilities, for the same reasons.

My mother was an amazing woman, I mean truly amazing… continue reading over at Angela’s

::

As Women’s History month winds down,

How might we take this deep appreciation of women and our history into the days, months and year to come? What have we learned about the nature of women? What have we learned about ourselves?

I know women are resilient. I know women love fiercely.  And, I know women are learning to not only trust their own voices but to also speak them out loudly into a world that is hungering for our true nature, not the nature we were conditioned to believe is female nature.

I know we embody both the light and the dark, and that reclaiming the dark parts is essential to knowing our wholeness. I’ve shied away from the dark parts, yet talk about transforming force? This is where our riches lie.

This Gerber had to make her way up through the dark soil in order to blossom, as do we.

What if we were all to live our lives out loud, exclaiming our beauty simply because it is and we are, just like this bright and vivid Gerber?

::

And, you?

What have you discovered? What is transforming in you? How might your ‘history’ be transformed into awareness of what you really are and what you are here to live?

 

 

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