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Body and Moon, Cycles and Rhythms

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At the bottom of this post, I ask questions of you that I’d really love to hear your wisdom on. I hope you’ll share.

::

In our current faced-paced, and growing faster each day, culture, for the most part we ignore nature’s cycles and rhythms. Most of the rhythms we do follow are man-made: our current-day calendar, 9 to 5, Monday thru Friday, and school to work to retirement, to name a few.

Yet, life moves in rhythms and cycles that are tuned in to each other. The tides follow the moon, birds sing wildly (like they are doing outside my living room window right now) each spring, and women’s bodies for much of one’s life have a cycle that allows it to be a receptive home to new life coming into being.

Painting by my Great-Grandmother from 1899

Somewhere, sometime a while back, I considered how my monthly cycle was tied to the moon. I’m not sure where I read it. I know I didn’t learn it from my mother or in school. And, after my surgically induced menopause at the age of 29,

I never considered, nor was I counseled to consider in my process of recovery, that as I no longer had a cycle, I could follow the moon’s phases instead. I wish I’d known this. Looking back over the past 27 years since my surgery, I can see how I’ve floated a bit, meaning I haven’t really been grounded in a rhythm.

Why is that important? Because as a woman, I am deeply in tune with the earth and with life, and when my own cycle ended with that big long incision, my deeper relationship with life and the earth was cut, too.

Of course, we don’t have to have everything removed to lose touch with our own connection to our body, and in response the connection between our body and the earth. Just living in a culture that no longer thinks of the earth as a living, breathing being causes us to not consider such things.

::

Just yesterday, as part of Sara Avant Stover’s “I Heart My Moon Cycle” month, she shared a video I shot while I was on Molokai. For these 28 days, Sara is sharing stories from 28 women about their moon cycles. I wondered about participating, since I don’t have a cycle…technically, that is. But Sara encouraged me to share, wanting to have stories from women who are in all of the phases of life.

Last week, after years of knowing each other online, I got to spend time with Sara in the flesh. We took a leasurely walk, along with my dear friend, Tara Mohr, into the Presidio land, here in San Francisco. We talked of many things. What I loved, though, was getting to know her presence, getting to feel how she moves through the world grounded in her body. And, we talked about what it means to move with the cycles of the moon when a woman no longer has her own internal cycle. Thank you, Sara, for opening me to consider how my life might be more supported by moving with the cycles of the moon.

Since that day last week, I’ve been contemplating this for my life – what it would mean to move with the cycles of the moon. And, since Sara released my video, I’ve received inquires from other women on how I know when to rest if my body no longer has a cycle. And the answer is, I haven’t know when to rest. I keep moving through my days, as if there is no cycle.

What this brings up for me is wonder about how many ways are we tied to the earth and the moon even if we don’t know it. How are our bodies interacting with the cycles of life, even if and when we continue to move with the culturally constructed rhythms that most likely do not support our full health, full creativity, and full happiness?

I know that simply by being, we can feel our connection to all of life. Our bodies can guide us to remember and re-member. I know how important this is for me as I get older, to listen to the rhythms so that I don’t get so overtired from constantly moving, and just as importantly so that I fully embody the gifts of womanhood, gifts that I am hungering for, and that the world itself is hungering for.

The rhythms and cycles are important to my creativity and what I desire for my work in the world, as well as to the creativity of our world at large.

So my questions of you are:

How do you move with the cycles and rhythms of your body, and the bodies of nature?

If you are in menopause, what cycles speak to you?

If you had a hysterectomy and are not yet in age-related menopause, what have you discovered? I really want to know.

I want to hear your wisdom. I know it will help me to listen to mine.

 ::

I hope you’ll take a look at the stories that women are sharing on Sara’s site. And, I hope you take a few moments to listen to mine. I share a few intimate stories. And, if you listen closely, you’ll be able to hear the birdsong of the island all around me.

image: This image is part of a painting done by my great-grandmother, Clarissa Ruh. I sense she was in touch with the moon.

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Bone Knowing : Wisdom is Real

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Set the Night on Fire

 

The bones know. There is such a thing as bone knowing.

Not too long ago, I went to listen to a man give a talk on awakening and living truth. He’s wise and vibrantly alive. He spoke of not knowing, about how there is so much we really don’t know if we just allow ourselves to be honest with ourselves.

I’ve come to realize that what I’d been holding onto as truth was really just a belief system to help me manage the unknown. Not knowing can generate so much fear. We unwittingly develop a worldview stuffed with beliefs to manage the fear. Yet, when we feel into the nature of the unknown, really feel into it, it’s not so frightening. It’s actually really pregnant with possibility, with aliveness, with the divine. It is spacious and vibrant, a pulsing sea of love without conditions.

It’s funny how we want to put conditions on it, even though we crave and thirst for unconditional love!

During this man’s talk, and then follow-up question and answer session, as he spoke of not knowing, others began to speak to the feeling that they realize they don’t know anything. That’s not quite right – what I heard, was the recognition of a similar understanding, yet what I also heard was a disowning of things we do know. My ears perked up, because in my experience, while I do know this pregnant sea of possibility and silence, I also know that there are things I know, really know, deep in my bones. I could feel myself squirming as the discussion of not knowing kept going – in particular, when I heard this one woman speaking of not knowing and how she didn’t know what to trust.

Something in me had to speak. I had to speak about the wisdom of the bones. Something pushed me to speak.

So, I did. I raised my hand and said, “Yes, yes, I understand about the not-knowing. If I am truthful with myself, there is so much I don’t know. I really don’t know what is going to happen in the next minute, or in the next, or the next. My rational mind thinks it can know, and I can see it’s my mind’s way of thinking into the unknown. I get this.”

“And, there are some things I DO know, some things I know so deeply in my bones, things I just can feel and when I speak of them I feel the knowing so deep that it feels like it’s in the marrow. It’s the feminine knowing, the wisdom of Sophia. It’s a kind of knowing that runs so deep below the surface of things it could be easy to miss, and is easy to miss if I am not in my body. This river of knowing winds its way through my body – through the cells, the flesh, the blood and the bones. My bones know. They know. I know this. I know this wisdom. It is real and alive.”

Then, I asked him, “Can you speak to that?” I was asking him to expand on this idea with his wisdom. He looked at me and said, “I don’t need to. You just did.”

I realized, my bones had spoken. I knew this. I didn’t need anyone to help me understand what I already knew. He knew I knew. He honored this. He didn’t need to say anything. So lovely.

In my spiritual life and the experiences I have searched out in a almost-rabid attempt to ‘wake-up’, I’ve spent many hours, sometimes days, even weeks, attempting to lose myself in the attempt to know the numinous. Looking back, I know none of it has been in vain. In fact, questioning the worth of it is a bit silly, because it is what I’ve done and where I’ve been.

One thing I’ve discovered, though, is that no matter how often or much I experience this transcendent quality of the divine, I still end up back here, alive in this body called Julie. It’s taken me some time to want to be here. It used to be that so much of what I felt in my body was painful. There were so many old fears, wounds, and raw experiences that I just didn’t want to feel or remember. But, something in my life was missing, too. The everyday, seemingly mundane, things were calling to me. Life was calling to me to come back home to here, to the body, to the senses.

There is this Oneness, this vast emptiness and fullness, the transcendent. And, within this Oneness there is this real, human life. There is the spirit and there is matter. Bones know. Wisdom is real.

A woman’s spirituality is really centered in this humanness, this expression of humanity that is at the heart of a woman’s experience. It is of the body, the earth, the bones, and flesh and blood. To know this realm of wisdom, we have to come down into the cells that make up the body; we have to come down into the cells and feel.

Yes, we may find things we don’t want to feel, things that caused us to go up into the head to begin with. Yes, it isn’t just wonderful and light and flowers, but even the things we don’t want to feel are part of this very real gift that is life.

This is the doorway to healing. This is the door to the sacred. This is the doorway to the soul, to the wisdom of the bones. This is the doorway to joy, the joy of an embodied life. This is the doorway to living the numinous right here on earth, right here in these bones that know.

These bones are not separate from the numinous, luminous spirit. The sacred is bone. The sacred is blood. The sacred is flesh. The sacred is woman – all of her beautiful wild self, including the fire, including the fierce, including the, “Hell no, this is not okay and I won’t stand for it anymore.”

Trust the bones for very practical reasons. The bones will guide you as you maneuver through your day. They’ll guide you as you raise your children or birth your creations. They’ll help you navigate your relationship with your honey and make major life decisions. Yes, your rational mind has a purpose; and, when you bring it into right relationship with your bones, you’ll find it’s a powerful combination to guide you through life. It’s a good balance between your own masculine and feminine.

Trust this. Trust you. Trust the body. Trust your voice. Trust the bones as you speak your voice. In fact, let your bones speak. You’ll be amazed at what they know and share.

::

This post was originally shared here as part of the Fall Tribe, ’12, for Roots of She.

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Dance to Break the Chain

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On Sat Jan 26, I participated in a flash mob for One Billion Rising. If you don’t yet know what this is, take a peek here. Short version – it’s Eve Ensler’s vision to have one billion women strike, dance, and rise to end global violence against women. One in three women on this earth will be sexually abused or beaten in her lifetime. One in three. Think about the women in your life. Out of every three, one will have to endure this violence. And, you might even be that one in three. I am.

At this time, 190 out of the world’s 193 countries plan to participate.

You probably all know what a flash mob is. This was not really a flash, but still a mob…about three hundred of us. We gathered downtown, across the street from the Ferry building, and right near San Francisco’s financial district. We were there to perform the dance that Debby Allen choreographed for One Billion Rising to the song, Break the Chain.

Many women and men volunteered their time to help teach, to organize, to set-up, and to ultimately help to put on this day, as well as the other four performances to be held in the next month or so around the San Francisco bay area.

On V-Day, always held on Feb 14, VDay, we will gather again, this time at the Civic Center in San Francisco to do the same dance, and in the evening in Fairfax to dance a 5Rhythms wave – all to strike, dance and rise, in support of ending global violence against women.

On this day, though, I was deeply moved by what I experienced dancing to rise up, in solidarity, to this violence, and to the complacency so many of us seem to have to the kind of culture that breeds it. I’m a dancer. I love the dance. I’ve been dancing for over ten years, now, and lately many of my friends from the coaching world have begun dancing, too. Friends I have known for these ten years danced alongside me.

On this day, the dance was holy – holy moments of dancing with 300 other women and men; holy moments literally dancing to Break the Chain, as well as metaphorically to break the chain; holy moments dancing with my whole body and whole heart for everyone who cannot dance, everyone who is not free.

My friend, Amrit Rai, and her husband Larry came to the city to watch the dance. They are both part of my dance community. I spoke with Amrit after the dance, and she shared her experience of watching. She spoke of the depth of feeling that she witnessed as we danced. Her words pointed to something very similar to what I felt dancing, yet she wasn’t dancing. I asked her to share them here:

 

“When Larry and I first arrived I felt immediately uplifted as the collective field that was forming was one of inclusion and joy. The thought of witnessing a herstoric, dancing event in the financial district environment had me curious. On getting there we were immediately whisked onto the stairs by a couple of women in the crowd. We had the perfect view overlooking the center area where the dancers were starting to gather.

The most moving thing to me was seeing so many familiar faces from the dance community and to see a united moving body– moving together on behalf of women’s rights and freedom.

The dancers and group energy field was infused with heart — I couldn’t help from clapping and singing in solidarity.

I noticed that the dancers were the most moved of everyone in the crowd. Tears, expressions of awe and reverence were visible in their faces and palpable.

My sense of it was that it is important to be a direct participant in such a movement– that the actual embodiment itself makes a deeper commitment to what it is we are standing for, or rather dancing for – being a participant is at the core of the change.

I am happy that the collective WE is bringing light to such basic issues using such potent healing modalities, LOVE and UNITY– so much more energetically potent than protesting, and the embodiment piece is brilliant– wisdom in action!

Resonance informed transformation. Infectious and unifying! I loved it!

I left there with true hope in my belly for a loving and humane world. One in which life is celebrated and every being feels a deep sense of belonging.

 

When we act from our deepest desires, and from our own internal knowing, a powerful force is unleashed.
When our action is grounded in something we truly love, as it is here in the dance for me and for so many of the people in the dance community I am so lucky to be a part of, joy is also released, joy married with a desire to serve healing and life.

Our denial can be great; I know mine is. For me, denial is a many-layered thing. Denial creates a fog that makes it easy to continue functioning in the day-to-day, all the while underneath it we know we are not listening to our hearts, and we are not taking responsibility for the wellbeing of life. When we get into the body and feel, we can no longer deny what is true. The body moves toward life, toward love. The body moves toward healing.

On Feb 14th, VDay, we all can rise. Just think of the shift on our planet when One Billion women (and the men who will take the step forward to dance alongside of us, knowing that violence against women is not just a women’s problem) dance for liberation, dance for the end of the status quo, dance for freedom from violence for everyone, the entire planet will feel it. Think of the joy we will release through our feet, feet that connect with the earth. The earth needs to know joy, too.

Amrit is right: To embody this movement of rising, this movement of solidarity between women and men, this movement of love is an incredible experience. To feel it in your cells, to engage the body in dance, in music and joy, is to bring one’s whole self to stand for change.

What I noticed was that I wasn’t fighting against, but rather I was dancing for a new dawn, a new day. Dancing with my dancing friends, with such beautiful music and moves, for freedom from violence amidst the tall buildings of San Francisco’s financial district was surreal. It was as if two worlds were colliding for me. Dance is something that I do where most of the rest of the world doesn’t see it. To bring so much love and passion out into the street taught me something. It taught me that dance must no longer stay separate form the rest of my life. What I experience on the dance floor is holy. And what I experience dancing out in Justin Herman Plaza was holy. Dance is holy joy.

In the evening of Feb 14th, on V-day, Stacey Butcher and I will be hosting a 5Rhythms wave in Fairfax, a small town in Marin. Kim Rosen, a poet, will also join us sharing some of her spoken word poetry. It will be a joyous rising up, a striking for justice and love. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, please join us. You can sign-up here.

Silence is no longer an option.

::

Break the Chain Lyrics

Lyrics by Tena Clark
Music by Tena Clark/Tim Heintz

I raise my arms to the sky
On my knees I pray
I’m not afraid anymore
I will walk through that door
Walk, dance, rise
Walk, dance, rise

I can see a world where we all live
Safe and free from all oppression
No more rape or incest, or abuse
Women are not a possession

You’ve never owned me, don’t even know me
I’m not invisible, I’m simply wonderful
I feel my heart for the first time racing
I feel alive, I feel so amazing

I dance cause I love
Dance cause I dream
Dance cause I’ve had enough
Dance to stop the screams
Dance to break the rules
Dance to stop the pain
Dance to turn it upside down
Its time to break the chain, oh yeah
Break the Chain
Dance, rise
Dance, rise

In the middle of this madness, we will stand I know there is a better world
Take your sisters & your brothers by the hand
Reach out to every woman & girl
This is my body, my body’s holy
No more excuses, no more abuses
We are mothers, we are teachers,
We are beautiful, beautiful creatures

I dance cause I love
Dance cause I dream
Dance cause I’ve had enough
Dance to stop the screams
Dance to break the rules
Dance to stop the pain
Dance to turn it upside down
It’s time to break the chain, oh yeah
Break the Chain, oh yeah
Break the Chain

Dance Break Inst.

Dance, rise
Dance, rise

Sister won’t you help me, sister won’t you rise x4

Dance, rise
Dance, rise

Sister won’t you help me, sister won’t you rise x4

This is my body, my body’s holy
No more excuses, no more abuses
We are mothers, we are teachers,
We are beautiful, beautiful creatures

I dance cause I love
Dance cause I dream
Dance cause I’ve had enough
Dance to stop the screams
Dance to break the rules
Dance to stop the pain
Dance to turn it upside down
Its time to break the chain, oh yeah
Break the Chain, oh yeah
Break the Chain

Strike | Dance | Rise

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Your Voice is Calling

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Since this is about Voice, I thought it would be fun to speak it: [audio:https://unabashedlyfemale.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/YourVoiceIsCalling1.mp3|titles=Your Voice is Calling]

“Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever.” ~ Nancy Lopez

Listen to the sound of your own voice.

When I first read these words from Nancy Lopez, I read them literally… Listen to the sound of your own voice.

I thought of the moment when I first really heard my voice – when I felt the vibration of my own voice reverberating through my body. It was on a day when I’d done some really deep, intensive emotional healing work. I’d released a great deal of old emotional ‘stuff’ that I’d held in my body for most of my life, and as I heard my voice, I felt resonance, alignment, and the truth of what I was speaking. It felt as if there was no separation between what I was saying, the vibration of my voice, and who I really am.

There was a settled quality to it, and a really straight up and down sense of voice…I guess that would be like a linearity to it. And it reverberated throughout my body. I could feel it. There was a flow to it.

I’m trying to find words to describe an experience, which can be hard.

I’ve noticed that as my practice of dance now heads into an eleventh year, I am beginning to spontaneously sing to the music. While the dance practice is silent, meaning you can’t talk, sometimes we vocalize in the dance. Sometimes, it isn’t singing that comes but grunting, crying, or even clucking…what I call voice-making.

Embodiment is what happens when more and more of the energy of your soul inhabits the cells of your physical body. (That’s how I describe it right now. I don’t know how spiritual masters would define it, but that’s what it feels like to me.) As we become more embodied, we become more awake, more full of light, more vibrant with the Goddess in each cell of our being.

Voice and the throat area are closely tied to creativity and the womb area. I’ve found that when we are immersed in the creative process of different creative outlets, we can spontaneously sing and vocalize. And this is important, because as Nancy shares, as we listen to our own voices, we rise above the Voice of Judgment, we begin to see clearly what we are here to create.

I know that the fear of judgment and criticism has been one of my biggest blocks to sharing my voice in the world. Perhaps that’s why Nancy’s words speak so deeply to me.

What is it to really listen to our own voice? Not just the physical voice, but the words, the resonance, the heart in it, and the love in it?

Yes, love. Your voice has love in it, love for you. It is speaking to you, calling you back into your own heart, back into your womb, back into your own soul. Listen. Listen deeply. Drink it up. Drink it in. Drink in the medicine of your own voice so it can heal and bring light back into your cells.

As Thich Nat Hanh shares, “To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.”

Your voice is calling, calling you home to you.

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Loving Your Femaleness is a Radical Act

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Loving yourself as a woman is vital. Loving your femaleness in a system and culture that is hell bent on conditioning you to hate and fear your femaleness, is truly a radical act.

Yes, hating and fearing femaleness is at the heart of misogyny, and misogyny is at the heart of patriarchy.

In his incredibly revealing book, The Gender Knot, Allan Johnson writes:

“Misogyny plays a complex role in patriarchy. It fuels men’s sense of superiority, justifies male aggression against women, and works to keep women on the defensive and in their place. Misogyny is especially powerful in encouraging women to hate their own femaleness, an example of internalized oppression. The more women internalize misogynist images and attitudes, the harder it is to challenge male privilege or patriarchy as a system. In fact,women won’t tend to see patriarchy as even problematic since the essence of self-hatred is to focus on the self as the sole cause of misery, including the self-hatred.”  (italics mine) (pg 39)

It has taken me some time to understand and see that so much of my own self-loathing doesn’t come from me. It’s learned, and it’s reinforced over and over with the hate and fear filled images and sound bites that circulate each day.

I don’t buy magazines, nor do I have a television. I haven’t for some years. And, I can’t escape these images. Just the other day, I was driving behind a San Francisco city bus, and all across the end of the bus was an advertisement that was misogynistic at its core. Who makes the decisions in San Francisco to plaster the buses with images that continue to pass along these messages that hurt us all, women and men?

Before I proceed, I want to make it clear that Johnson, throughout the book keeps coming back to the point that Patriarchy is not men, but rather the system in which we live, the system that we’ve all inherited. Just using the word patriarchy can be divisive, yet when we all, women and men, begin to see how entangled we are within its web of beliefs and admonitions, we can begin to unravel this knot that causes us all to distrust each other, and most especially ourselves.

Patriarchy is hierarchy where men (fathers) are at the top, and the rest of life, women and children included, are beneath men. Within this structure, we cannot ever see each other on equal ground because the entire thing teaches us there is no equality. By definition, a hierarchy is a system where people and things are ranked, one above another. Wonder why we still don’t have parity after decades? We can’t and we won’t as long as we believe in and buy into this system.

Coming to love our femaleness…

The journey to know one’s true self, to know the soul, is a journey into the dark places where we’ve hidden the things we don’t want to feel or know, and for women, much of what we find here is this fear and hatred of our femaleness. Much of what we discover is that we’ve been taught to hate and fear this, and that others who also have been taught the same project this fear and hatred onto us. And, of course, we discover that we project this onto each other.

But what is waiting for us on the other side of these feelings that have been stuffed into the dark, is a light that knows differently. It is a light that is both beyond this world and at the very center of this world. It is the light of truth, the light of the sacred. But the only way out is through. The only way to the light is through the body, for the body is where we’ve stored all these messages and feelings that together create our internalized oppression.

As we go deeper into the body, we discover that what we are is not even gendered, and that what we are sees the body with the softest eyes of love, the most tender caress of compassion.

Some of my most healing moments have come through clearly seeing, hearing, and feeling the painful messages of my own internalized misogyny railing against the beautiful deep-feeling and sensual aspects of my womanhood. When I began to feel the pain I’ve caused myself, something cracked open. And with each time I can do this, my heart opens wider to my own beauty and worth.

As we go into the body and feel the things we haven’t wanted to feel, more of the soul can come down into the body. More of the light of the soul can enter the cells of this physical aspect of our being. Much like the tree trunk above that is hollow through its center, we, too, begin to feel new shoots of life spring forth form the rich soil of our own creative center. As we clear out, we breath deeper. With each in-breath, the soul comes in to vitalize our cells, and for a split second, with a body full of breath, we know the joy of the soul. And it is here we can feel the love return for our femaleness.

“In your deepest center, you are the stillpoint. You are the rhythm beyond stillness, the feeling beyond compassion, the sexual energy beyond celibacy, the life force beyond death, the vibration beyond inspiration. The moving center is within you.” ~ Gabrielle Roth

And, I would add, you are the life beyond gender. What you truly are is non-gendered, and when we know this deepest center, we behold the body with love, and hold it in love. We hold both men and women in love.

It can be through the body that we come to see that the seemingly intractable nature of patriarchy is nothing more than something we’ve inherited and taught well to uphold.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We are all in this together and we have the creativity and capacity to change this. We humans can create a world so much more whole and loving than the culture in which we currently swim.

We can’t do this for each other, and we can’t even really know what each others experiences are like, but what we can do is walk this together, is hold each other with respect and compassion as we move into a new way of being in the world.

When we see the system for what it is, our relationship with it changes. We can stop participating in our own degradation and oppression.

At the end of all of this it is about relationship – with ourselves, and with each other. It is about connection and vulnerability. It is about seeing each other, and each gender, with these eyes of love.

None of us are unscathed by a system that ranks beings by worth and value, that doles out privilege as if it is inherently true. Deep at the heart of it all, and deep in our own hearts, we know that life itself does not measure, rate, and objectify.

 

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Do I really want that cup of coffee?

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Light up the Earth with your love and quiet joy.

This morning I’ve been writing since the early hours. Lately, over the past few weeks, I’ve been craving coffee, and giving into that craving more often than I’d like. This morning as I shifted to finished one project and got ready to move onto another, I had this very familiar urge to go out and grab a cup of coffee to bring back home.

I have to: I love coffee…especially Blue Bottle coffee served here in San Francisco. I love it, but my body does not. When I operate out of habit, I drink it. When I am conscious enough to consider what I am doing to my body, I don’t. I stop myself from doing this seemingly very average thing that so many people do because I know drinking coffee makes my body feel bad.

This isn’t to say that coffee is bad or good. There are a ton of studies that have been done on coffee – some say it is helpful, some say it is harmful. I know others who love coffee and their bodies have no issues with drinking it. I am not one of them. For whatever reason, my body doesn’t like it.

So, back to this morning, I didn’t step out for that cup. Instead, I made another cup of green tea. My body breathed a sigh of relief – a subtle sigh, for sometimes the body’s indicators are somewhat subtle. I have to be paying attention. And, I know I must pay attention to my body. In fact, just before moving onto that next project, I read this quote by Paul Hawken:

No matter what we do to nature—when we cease doing it, within a nanosecond, nature starts to regenerate. And WE are nature.

In reading these words, I realized this thing I go through, trying to become much more conscious about how I treat my body, what foods I put into it and the movement I make sure it enjoys, is no different than what I must do to become more conscious of how I mistreat the earth.

Habit and habitual responses can be hard to break, especially when we are addicted to them. We may not be addicted to the substance – I don’t drink coffee enough to have a headache when I don’t – yet, we are addicted to the habitual choices, and corresponding feelings, we get from making and acting on those choices. I love stepping outside in the early morning and walking the twenty minutes or so to get my coffee. I love the café and the people in it, and in the morning I love chatting with them. I love the routine. It’s important for me to see what I love about it, because perhaps I can separate out what I love and the things that support me and my well-being from the parts of this habit that do know support my well-being.

The same is true for the habits I have, and the corresponding choices I make, that contain actions that are ultimately harmful to the earth. Can I see where my actions are causing damage to the earth? Might there be things I do habitually, things I love and enjoy but also harm my body, others, and/or the earth, that I can untangle so that the harm to my body, and to the earth ends?

Habits sometimes come down to not wanting to feel, and sometimes it’s just about habitual stuff we do because we aren’t conscious. Can I learn to do without the plethora of choice I’ve become accustomed to? Yes, of course. Absolutely. I am not, nor have I ever been, entitled to have whatever I want. That’s a big one. Just because I ‘want’ it, does not mean it is best for the whole for me to take it…whether it’s the whole of my body or the whole of life. And, who is the ‘wanter’ anyway? It seems to me, the wanter wants to want more than it wants to get. I have to admit, sometimes just getting that cup of Blue Bottle is much better than drinking it.

For me though, the big reminder here comes from Hawkins’ wisdom that life regenerates and renews, and we are life. As soon as we stop the actions that cause damage, nature begins to renew itself and our bodies do the same. Our bodies are intricately connected to the earth. The earth feeds us, supports us, and provides for us. When we nourish our bodies, we nourish her; when we nourish her, we nourish ourselves.

Habit. Awareness. Choice. It’s in my hands. It’s in your hands. It’s in our hands.

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When you receive what is here, you receive the Sacred.

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Inner & Outer

I came across this beautiful image today (thank you Writing Our Way Home). It speaks to me of how it feels to be a human being filled with the light of the sacred. Perhaps the image of the sacred feminine speaks to me more than if it was a masculine representation. And, the fact it is feminine is fitting, for this image speaks to the immanence of the sacred nature of life.

Our inner and outer worlds are continually reflecting upon each other. For me, sometimes I see the beauty out there, sometimes I see it within, sometimes I don’t see it in either place, and sometimes it is everywhere, in everything.

We are human beings, completely fallible and physically imperfect. As we age, the body rusts, peels and detiriorates. Yet, within and without the cells that have come together to be the human we know ourselves to be, for however long we are alive, is a sacred light. While this image is decidedly judeo-christian, our light is of no religion, no culture, no race, no gender. It is undefined, unconditioned, un-everything we continually try to slap onto it so we can ‘know’ it.

Most-Human Moments

I have found that it is in my most human moments – those moments when those qualities I hate in myself, the ones that I least want to own, the ones that are hardest to admit to, can’t be denied – that the sacred is both infinitely far away and infinitely close at hand. It depends on how open I am to accepting what is true about that moment, about who I am, what I am, and how willing I am to fully and openly receive what is here.

When I feel the sacred to be far away, I know I am not allowing myself to be with what is true. Just as I push the truth away, I push the sacred away. If I receive the truth, I receive the sacred. They are the same – the truth and the sacred. To be with one is to be with the other. This isn’t the truth in any political, religious, cultural way – it is what is here. It is the truth of what I am experiencing in its totality, it is the truth of what is right here, right now. We know this truth when we are not denying anything – not necessarily an easy thing to do.

When I see this aging body as it is, when I accept my fallibility, when I am courageous enough to share the wisdom I’ve come to know and how I am being called to serve the sacred (again, not easy things to let go of) the pushing, grasping, and trying fall away and all I am left with is what is here. And, it’s a glorious ‘all’ to be left with. It is all that is. The rest, the pushing, grasping and trying were just the way I’ve learned to obscure my humanness – and I’ve poignantly come to see it is how I learned to obscure the divine.

A month or so ago,

I was in a retreat. We were doing a partner exercise. We were sitting in meditation across from our partner, and then we opened our eyes and were just with each other. I underline just, because this can be one of the hardest things to do…to just be with each other. As we sat, I noticed I was hiding the deeper parts of me. I could see it. And so, with a desire to really go into the painful places, I revealed another layer. Tears came to my eyes. Her expression did not change. Yet, when we finished and we shared what we had experienced in each other, my partner revealed that she distinctly noticed when I chose to reveal, that what first had been a pleasant and fairly deep experience of me, became richer and more human. She experienced my revealing this deeper layer in a way that wasn’t about qualities of me, but instead simply a deeper and richer experience of what I was revealing. It was more human, she said, especially when she noticed my tears.

Just this morning,

I was dressing. I stood naked in front of my mirror. Thoughts crossed my mind about finding a new life partner. Will someone find me desirable? Do I find myself desirable? Is there real beauty here? I take in my image. Gray roots. Wrinkles. A dancer’s body that is both aging and muscular. When I allow myself to see it all, I soften and notice space.

Then, I sit down to write. I’m writing a book. There are moments of clarity, then moments of fogginess. Again, questions run through my mind. Will anyone find value in these word? What door am I not willing to open? What matters here? Why would anyone care? And I found myself wondering how I can really answer these questions, not as a way to avoid but a way to go deeper into the truth. Perhaps there is nothing here in these words. Just maybe there is nothing. Then, I notice when I accept these things, I once again soften and notice space.

I want to share the truth. There is less resistance than there used to be, and there is still some. Sometimes that ‘rust’ is so hard to acknowledge and own – even to oneself. This is what is true right now. This is sacred, too. Even the hiding of the truth, if we can just be with it, can bring more compassion to ourselves. It can be a bypass, and it can be an opening.

Female Embodiment

As women, we live our spirituality through our bodies, through opening to the sacred nature of our bodies. All experience in these bodies is sacred. All of it.

Every way you might describe the sacredness of divinity can be used to describe the sacredness of your female body.

There is no separation between the wrinkling, aging skin of your body and the light-filled, hands-open Love that knows itself through touch on that very same skin.

This Love experiences the aliveness inherent in what It is through the exquisiteness of life itself – the full depth and breadth of life, the full spectrum of you and your experience.

A Practice:

Take a moment to notice how this image reflects you – the ‘you’ you believe yourself to be and the ‘you’ you long to know. Yes, this image is religious, and yes, there is a way to take in the sacredness of the image while letting go of its religiosity. Notice how you can be aware of both. Then, just be with it all – honestly and openly. Push nothing away. Pull nothing toward you. Just receive it all.

 

Image: ‘Judeo-Christian glimpse in Cimetière du Père-Lachaise’ by John Althouse Cohen,
AttributionNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved (CC BY-ND 3.0)

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When words become Word

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Instinctual Pursuit

It’s an odd thing to be on this journey looking for something, following the scent, almost instinctual, toward that which you’re longing to discover and know, only to realize that what you’ve been looking for can’t be known, or understood, or figured out in the way the part of you that’s been searching is fixated on.

This instinctual pursuit feels like the deepest longing for something. It feels like something I remember, a taste of something once tasted, a scent or touch or sound of something I was once with. I’ve come to know that I can’t know this thing that I’ve been trying to understand. I can’t grasp it. I can’t get it. I can’t even see it clearly. I have a sense of it. I have an inner vision of a large vast void out of which things come – like a big womb.

When I relax into this force of creation, like when I dance and thinking stops, instinct takes over and joy flies in every direction that leg, foot, arm, hand, head, hair can travel. All that exists is the dance. The dancer is gone, having fallen into the vast void of the dance.

Relationship

What seems to matter most is the relationship I (or you) have with Creation, where the I is the part of me that has to put stuff out into the world (the part that worries about how I will make a living, the part that cares about the human pieces and parts of life). In this relationship, Creation is that which I can never know but which I clearly experience with every inhale and exhale.

On the dance floor, this relationship between creator and creation has become almost easy. Creator gives way to creation and all that’s left is motion, and in its wake is form, the form of a dancer that’s been danced. I know this. It’s been ten years and I now know and trust this relationship.

The dance floor holds it all.

As I dive more deeply into my writing, my mind has struggled with form, with finished product. After a deep dance last night, I wondered how writing is really dance in disguise, dance in just another form. Can these words be the dance that grace the page? Can they fly out of the void, in any direction they desire, landing in some form that ultimately is meaningful? Does it matter if it has meaning?

Is this when words become Word?

Is Creation like a big dance floor?

Can we know it holds us?

What is your dance floor?

What is your relationship with Creation?

Is there trust? Is there hesitancy?

Is there a willingness to put all four paws on the ground and follow the scent so you can dine on that which you are ravenous for and drink from the infinite source?

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And speaking of all four paws, have you met your four-footed self? Do you long to and at the same time fear her just a little or a lot?

Come join Lianne Raymond and me for the inaugural session of The WildSoul Book Club. We’d love to have you join us for this instinctual journey to that which you hunger for – the Wild Soul.

Take a moment to hear what wise women you know discovered reading our book – Women Who Run With the Wolves. We’ll be sharing interviews with lots of wonderful wise women.

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In the Flesh

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Happy Monday!

It’s sunny and warm (70+) in San Francisco, today! Strange weather for a San Francisco July day.

It’s a busy day here. I’d love to share a few things that I feel may be fun and of value to you. When I looked to see something they have in common, one thing is the word flesh… In the flesh, flesh to flesh, flesh upon flesh.

Just last weekend, I got to spend some sweet time in the flesh with my two sisters, and lots and lots of cousins. We were in the Chicago area for a family wedding. My sisters and I decided to get a mani-pedi together, and decided on the same color polish. It was wonderful to be together. We don’t spend enough time together, so taking time to do some simply things with them made me very happy!

Why flesh? Because the wisdom of the flesh is where we discover the sacredness of this human journey. The wisdom of the bones, the body, the breath is where we discover the roots of our humanity.

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The Feminine Face of Leadership

Join me tonight for a free call on this very important topic. Wendy Rue, of Studio 1010, and I will spend some time conversing on what it means to be a feminine leader during these times of great change, and well as sharing details about our upcoming workshop in Anacortes, Washington.

I met Wendy in the flesh earlier in the year as we began to plan our weekend workshop. She is a smart and savvy woman who is bringing some amazing programming to her studio in Anacortes.

I’m so looking forward to this weekend, because I love to teach in the flesh and just haven’t done enough of it lately. I’d LOVE to have you join us. We’ll dive deep into our bodies in service to you discovering the truth of your being and what leadership and creativity means for your soul.

Details are here or here…

And if you miss the call, I’ll post the recording to the event page on Tuesday, July 31st.

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Are you looking to drop into the sweet flesh of your body?

If so, I’m guest posting over at Lisa Rough’s Sacred Circle. Writing this post caused an ‘all-body’ smile in me!

“As I ponder, a parade of images moves through my mind’s eye; images of the body, movement, glistening sweat, the sweetness of deep darkness, the sensual abandon of flesh upon flesh, and the earthy smell of forest groves. Being alive in the body is how I return to me, where me is the deep-hearted and deep-bellied consciousness that points to the depth of the feminine soul.”

Continue reading... 

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We are being called to show up in person, flesh to flesh, to see each other in our imperfect humanity. 

When I met Lynn Baldwin-Rhoades of the uber-popular women’s site, Power Chicks International, I immediately felt comfortable in her warm presence. Her smile lights up the room and her warm heart invite you in. No wonder she is so good at what she does…in her words, “Community builder, champion of women and lover of dreaming – and achieving – crazy-big stuff.”

So it was a delight to be interviewed by Lynn for her Wholehearted Women series. I share a lot about myself that I haven’t shared yet online.

“One of the ways we are re-discovering the true power of the feminine is by living the truth of ourselves – this is what being vulnerable is all about – not hiding ourselves. Yet, I still hide. There are places that feel just so painful to reveal, so in this process it is also important to know that, to acknowledge it and to, with compassion, ask myself to go further into it.

I certainly don’t do any of this right. I make a ton of mistakes. Yet, and its taken me soooo long to get this, that this is when people actually find me the most attractive…in my deepest humanity.”

I hope you enjoy it.

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I’d love to know what you’re wanting more of…what would you find valuable as you awaken to being Unabashedly Female? Feel free to share in the comments.

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How will you be in your Womanhood?

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Womanhood. The Sacred Feminine incarnate.

For so long, a story of womanhood as less-than has been told, repeatedly, in almost every language. Tongues of both genders have spoken words of feminine degradation. These stories have been woven into the institutions we have to interact with on a daily basis.

They are stories that have been told for many centuries. And yet, that doesn’t make them true.

In life, there is no better-than or less-than, there is only what is…what shines out from the depths of your eyes, what loves from deep in the center of your heart, what moves in the belly of your soul. It is only our minds that want to compare and judge.

The mystery that is creation, will always be a mystery, no matter how doggedly man pursues the ultimate unveiling of creation by way of rational reason. At the heart of the heart, is a sacred mystery, at the center of the womb, a divine purity.

What if the very thing you hide, or try to deny, or apologize for, about being a woman is what ultimately will free you to be all that you already are?

What if the embodied awareness of this pure mystery in every woman on the planet is what is needed for our very survival?

What if?

How would you be with your womanhood?

How WILL you be in your womanhood?

I’d love to know your thoughts to these questions by having you share them in the comments. I feel we all benefit from knowing what is going on deep inside of women. It is time we share.

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