women's wildly creative leadership emerging from within
The innermost places of the heart are unspeakably beautiful.
I’ve wondered what is like to travel there, to taste the utmost delicacy of life.
This woman’s protective shield has allowed her to not feel the pain that might
deliver her to the threshold of this most honest place.
Until now.
As I settle more deeply into my time here in Hana, I feel the softness of this land bringing out the soft, supple places in my body and heart. My soul responds to the beauty and fragrance of this Frangiapani, collected on my walk this morning. There was no clear sunrise, but rather a cloudy and warm drizzly beginning to this day.
I can feel the pull of this place, a pull that tugs at the core of my body, pulling me down into Her. When I arrived and realized I had been called here, that this place had called me, this pull made itself known.
In some ways, it’s like the pull you feel on your whole body as you stand in a wave being drawn back to the ocean. The pull of the tide is mighty.
This pull feels like it’s pulling me down into this place, whatever this ‘place’ is. I don’t know. Yet I know the feeling as it pulls not only on my body, but on my heart as well.
And, sometimes, She’s not gentle at all. As I exited the surf the other day, a wave with a punch lifted me up and tossed me down without warning. I landed on the side of my head. I felt woozy. I felt disoriented and had to sit to collect myself. I remembered a good healthy respect for nature that I had forgotten.
As I walked the beach this morning, one thing was very clear. No matter how much I try to make up a strong strand of meaning in my life, I could clearly see, there is no meaning…at least not one that I might make up. Oh, yes, I will still try to make it up, ’cause that’s what minds do.
Yet in this place of tropical bird calls and sweet Frangiapani spread out across the ground, I find when I simply be in my body and open my senses to every layer of experience that presents itself, I know no meaning.
In feeling the pull to this place, I know no meaning, but I listen and witness. I am opening. There’s a softness in this opening, a palpable tenderness. I also am aware of my fear of my own power, a power I see all around me, in the waves crashing against the shore and in the volcano on whose base I am sleeping.
The feminine is mysterious. She’s contradiction. She’s unreasonable. And, so am I.
I believe in the erotic and
I believe in it as an enlightening force within our lives as women.
I have become clearer about the distinctions between the erotic
and other apparently similar forces.
We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal.
I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force,
a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.
And when I say living I mean it as that force which
moves us toward what will accomplish real positive change.
~Audre Lorde
:::
In these days of change, where destruction is so present and many wonder what is next, discovering the enlightening force Lorde speaks of is the rich invitation at hand.
Can we, as women, remember and re-member this force within our bodies and within our lives?
It moves within because it is the deepest life force. To come into alignment with it is to align with life.
Sexuality is not simply having sex. It is awakening to our nature, returning to the wholeness of the feminine, and remembering that at the center of our female bodies lies the void of creation.
We embody the creatrix, the void out of which all arises. To turn our attention inward, to the innermost recesses of the heart and the birthing capacity of the feminine, opens us to re-member this force.
Can we feel life moving within? Can we begin to trust what we see, especially when it is not visible to the eye?
Yet, I learned at a young age to cut them off before they really blossomed in my consciousness; my intellect learned to come in quickly and try to rationalize and explain these unexplainable things.
As a woman, I walk in ways not understood by the intellect. These ways, these feelings and knowings that are irrational to the intellect, but exquisite morsels to the soul, are calling to me to listen. There is no time to dawdle. They call me to play in the stream of deep healing and honoring.
:::
Image: Sun Spot with Light Rays, Let it Shine 
Some rights reserved by Torley
If you could picture your intuition as a person, what would he or she look like? If you sat down together for dinner, what is the first thing he or she would tell you? ***
…
*** question posed by Susan Piver as part of the Trust30 writing challenge.
First Buds by John-Morgan licensed under CC2.0
The task for women is to consciously live their unique connection with the earth. The earth needs to stay connected with consciousness. Matter is so dense, and consciousness vibrates at a much finer frequency, and matter needs consciousness. You can look at it as women providing a way for the earth to be conscious. ~ Angela Fischer, shared by Hilary Hart in The Unknown She
Last year, the United Nations designated April 22 International Mother Earth Day. I didn’t know they had inserted the word Mother…nice.
I’ve spent a fair number of hours in these past weeks taking walks in the park across the street, a park filled with redwoods, creeks, a lake, all sorts of furry, scaly and winged creatures, and even a merry-go-round.
On my walks, I’ve been noticing how the earth is so alive, so available, so nourishing. As I walk, I feel the same aliveness is me, in the body, and I notice how deeply connected I am to her. I notice that as I am acutely aware of my own consciousness in the body, my awareness of her deepens. and vice versa.
What is this deep connection women have with the earth?
Friends left some beautiful comments on my last post, Earth’s Embrace:
Colette: This is the most important thing we can do for Gaia today…simply engage with her.
Marjory: The Earth comes even more alive when we truly see and feel Her.
She comes alive, and we come more alive. There is a deep relatedness between women and the earth.
I’m feeling something different for earth day could truly bring us all more vibrantly alive.
Coming to know the earth in this manner, woman to earth to woman, can help us all to awaken.
Rainer Marie Rilke wrote:
“Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves.”
Immediate.
Fruitful
Riper.
Pulled down beneath the surface.
In our depths.
In our bodies.
Open and receptive to life.
Surrendered to life entering.
Creating and birthing new life.
As of the earth,
so as of women.
::
The old Irish saying, “May the road rise up to meet you” is a wonderful experience when you can really feel the earth meeting your foot.
When I consciously walk on the earth (in the happiest moments, I am barefoot), it’s as if the earth is meeting each footstep, meeting the foot, coming into relationship with each step. The earth is not just a lump of dirt…it is alive. It meets us, especially if we meet her, giving her our love with each step. I’m not sure the Irish meant that, but then perhaps they did.
One practice I give my coaching clients is that of ‘Lotioning’. I want to share it here, because it is such a lovely way to awaken the cells of the body with awareness and love.
::
While to many, these practices may not seem as important or practical as what we’ve been taught to do on Earth Day, and everyday, anything that brings women into closer communion with the earth may be some of the most important ways we pay reverence and respect to this beautiful home that provides for us day in and day out.
I’ve discovered a direct correlation between how awake I am in my own body and how aware I am of the earth’s aliveness. The more aware I am of how little respect and love I’ve had for this body, the more aware I am of how unconscious I have been of the earth and all she provides.
May the earth rise up to meet you and may you come to know her as vibrantly alive and awake, and may we all come to know, in the cells of all matter, how sacred life is.
Yesterday, as I do most days, I walked in the woods across the street from our house. But before I set out, I took a moment to capture some of the sights in our own yard. This one picture speaks to me in so many ways.
The heaviness of fruit is, many times, how I feel. My hips, my thighs, my belly all weighted down, pulling me close to the Earth’s embrace.
Just as these gorgeous fruity globes display, I, too, am imperfect. Blemishes here, spots there, a not-quite-symmetric fleshy shape enrobes me.
And while I can feel heavy and weighted, if I am willing to be vulnerable, I notice I am bathed in a light that is tender and fragrant. If I open to the nourishment available to me in any moment, I can feel it enter my skin and bring sustenance to the cells that crave its touch.
All around me I am reminded of how the Earth provides. And, all around me I am reminded of how I take from her, almost always without any conscious gratitude of what she offers up without hesitation.
The Earth is alive. I hear her in the breeze. I feel her in the redwood trees outside my house. I taste her in every meal I eat. I know her as I know my own body – sometimes acutely aware, sometimes completely unconscious.
I hope to come to know her body through mine, to give back to her in some way for all she continually offers up to me, to my children and their children, and to all the world’s children.
Look into these eyes.
Even in a picture, you can see eternity looking back at you.
These eyes are unobstructed by personality. That hasn’t been formed…yet.
Something alive is smiling back.
There’s no attempt to hide from being seen.
No trying to be more than what he is.
No fear that he is not enough.
…
Last week, I became a grandmother for the fourth time.
Each time is just as wondrous.
Each child a pure miracle.
Each one completely unique.
…
I’ve fallen in love with my new grandson.
[This is not him here, in this picture. His parents get to share him with the world.]
He is so sweet and so beautiful.
I wonder who he is and what he’ll love to do.
…
I was thinking about this, that once, a long time ago, this was me.
And you.
Unobstructed radiance.
No sense of not-enoughness.
This is what the sacred looks like when it hasn’t forgotten that it is sacred.
This is what the sacred looks like when there is no concept of ‘sacred’.
And, even when we do ‘forget’ and replace our awareness of life with our concepts of life,
the same eternal radiance is looking out our eyes, very much still aware of our true nature.
…
As I held my grandson for the first time, I knew I was in the presence of this radiance.
I could feel it.
I could see it.
I could sense it.
It wasn’t a perfect moment, and it wasn’t perfectly still or quiet at all.
He’s a newborn baby crying, farting, sleeping, and gurgling.
He’s alive.
That’s the point, if there is a point.
…
Look in your mirror and, without trying to see, see what is there. already there.
awake.
alive.
eternal.
The personality wants to think it is something other.
Notice, just notice, that you already know you aren’t something other.
You are the same as what is looking at you from these glorious newborn’s eyes.
…
image courtesy of Flickr: Some rights reserved by miss pupik
As a side note, no, this is not my grandson. I don’t share my grandchildren’s images here on my blog. That’s for their parents to enjoy.
Close to the Earth.
Full and ripe.
My body is cooking something up.
She’s been with something unseen and unknown.
She’s been kissed by Creation.
Supple and supine, she dances in the dark.
With quivers and shivers, she responds to an unseen touch.
There is something I know, but don’t yet know.
Something moves within her,
silently waiting to bring forth great light into the world.
Receptive and soft, my heart places trust in
that which knows of things to come.
Sandilee Hart is an artist. Her Brighid’s Dawn graces my last post, Fire and Soil, where she shared this comment:
And in another very synchronistic moment–
This morning, as I was quickly getting ready to launch out the door & a busy day, I was still thinking of your posts, the birth of seeds, Brighid’s realm, the new moon…. I was giving a quick wipe of the sink-drain, and out came a little seed- sprout with a green heart leaf and a spiral end-root. I could not have been more surprised & delighted to see symbols that are special to me. Their very presence switched everything into waking dream mode.
Even though I knew the origin of the sprout had to be from rinsing out the cockatiel’s water dish with a stray seed there, it was still a marvel to me of symbolism and impeccable timing. Sometimes, things like this just put me in the most wonderful alignment and help me tune in & pay attention. Sure enough, the day was full of remarkable symbols-messages, spirit nourishment, laughter, and loving connectedness with others.
a man I loved and admired passed away. Emmett Murphy was 89. He lived a long, long life. He had been a POW in WWII. I can feel myself not wanting to let go.
Imminent death and precious new life have been on my mind since Sunday. Upheaval. Seeds. What is dying. What is being born? What is birthing?
February 1st, was St. Brigid’s day. Another lovely reader, Kelly, posted a comment in Fire and Soil:
My mom always used to say that St Brigid was the seed-planter – the saint we all needed to rely on for rebirth, hope, and warmth.
I didn’t know, until Kelly shared it, that St. Brigid was the seed-planter. The more I researched St. Brigid, the more synchronicity I’ve discovered.
According to Mary Condren on IrishTimes.com, Brigid was also known as Brigid the Weaver:
Before mass media and travel, and great political rallies, societies were held together by fragile threads, and weaving tools signified a key responsibility: that of weaving the precious webs of life and tending the bonds of community.
She goes on to say:
Like community activists and nurturers, Brigit wove the fragile threads of life into webs of community. She invented a shriek alarm for vulnerable women travelling alone, she secured women’s property rights when Sencha, the judge, threatened to abolish them and she freed a slave-trafficked woman. Above all, her bountiful nature (23 out of 32 stories in one of her Lives concern generosity) ensured that the neart (life force) was kept moving for the benefit of all and was not stagnated by greed.
Brigid’s “bountiful nature … ensured that the neart was kept moving for the benefit of all and not stagnated by greed”.
This morning, when I saw Sandilee’s heart seedling, I could see that new life is always sprouting, just as death is always coming.
The neart is always moving, especially when not stagnated by greed, by holding tightly to that which is not ours to hold. Brigit’s generosity is a symbol of the flow of life.
One of the most difficult lessons for me in this life has been to let go of what I wanted to hang on to. Over and over in life, we are all asked to let go of those things we don’t want to let go of. Even when they go, I’ve found I am still hanging onto them somewhere within, through some thread, some grappling hook, some way of staying connected, even if it is a sense of guilt, grief, or loss. When I’ve felt the grief, when I’ve allowed it to work its mysterious healing, I begin to move again along the current of life.
We’re all greedy for things in our own way.
The web of life and its interconnectedness is all around us. Like Brigid, women are weavers, and when we live the way of the feminine, we know this. We see the symbols in the everyday, we notice the synchronicities, and, like the earth, our nature is bountiful.
In upheaval, there is leaving and there is becoming. The changes in these days at hand can feel so big, so violent, so new, especially when we don’t know what lies just past this very moment.
Perhaps it is the fragile weaving we each must do, those webs of community that need tending, the neighbor that could use our shoulder to cry on, or the business step that awaits to ensure that the person that most needs your service has access to it.
Maybe we’re looking to be the savior to many when the next thing that awaits us is to simply notice what is wanting to be tended to.
In these past few posts, I’ve written about what has showed up, and in doing so, many threads of the web have become obvious. In fact, perhaps it is all simple one big net…Indra’s net, which “symbolizes a universe where infinitely repeated mutual relations exist between all members of the universe“.
More than any other post I’ve written, this one has woven itself through my fingers. I’m even a little bit lost in the web of it all. I can see it, yet it is too big for me to know the whole.
Sri Aurobindo, the visionary of modern India, said:
‘It is only the woman who can link the new world with the old.’
Somewhere we know this, and somewhere we already know now. It’s in our bodies. It’s in the web of life. It may take retraining ourselves to come back to our instinctual knowing and wisdom. It’s not another way we have to try to be perfect, but rather it is a knowing that is already within us, a seed of life simply waiting for us to remember.
What you think you’re seeking, is seeking you. You think it’s your Idea, your dream? It’s Life’s… seeking to express and emerge by means of You. For this you have been called. For this you have come to bear witness, full witness to the Glory of The One that is YOU. ~ M Morrissey
And I would add, you have come to bear fruit, ripe fruit borne from The One that is YOU.
::
Reverb10 Day 16
Prompt: Friendship. How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst?
::
This year has brought numerous realizations of this bearing witness; bearing witness to Life seeking to express and emerge by way of this Being in a female body. Much of this realization has been through women friends.
One of the most occluded areas of consciousness for me was in this place of love for other women, for love of woman.
There is no need to go through the ‘whys’ of this. Suffice it to say, past wounds of the feminine had grown great crusty scabs around my heart.
In my friendships with women, I’ve felt both joy and a kind of trembling fear at the possibility of dropping my defenses. I’ve been keenly aware of a place in my heart that was both longing for intimacy and fearing the exposure.
This year brought opportunities to trust that this was a place of great learning for me. And, in letting go into the places that held both fear and deep longing, I’ve found such a sweet, yet powerful, love. It’s a kind of love that is only available between women, because it is intrinsic to women. In this connection from woman to woman, I have come to know a part of womanhood that had been disowned.
This love is tender, yet powerful.
This love is a mirror of purity, for women are pure in a way that is very practical: we are created with the body wisdom to bring the sacred into matter, the soul into human life.
This love makes my knees buckle for it tells me of the power that is at the heart of the receptive, nourishing, ripe and earthy female body.
In a passage that makes me swoon every time I read it, Rilke writes:
Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit…
We bear bodily fruit, whether or not we bear children. This fruit requires nourishment from the body and soul. Life lingers in us, because life has created our bodies as vessels of creation. Life dwells here in these hips and thighs and breasts. When I open to this deep relationship with another woman, I feel this ripeness in her and in me.
This ripeness tells of a disowned knowing of what it is to be woman, tales long-forgotten in a masculine culture.
In these times, we are begin asked to remember this body wisdom. We are being asked to heal this place of wounding between woman and woman.
My friends are teaching me beautiful things about womanhood, precious powerful things about what we can awaken, enliven, and bring forth in ourselves to heal the crusty scab-bearing wounds of our times.
It is the blossom that brings forth the fruit. The blossom comes right out of the gray, hard bark of the tree. Somewhere within the tree itself lies the kiss that brings forth the apple. We women are no different. Somewhere within us lies the kiss that will awaken our ripeness, our bounty, our gift.
Can we open to, and receive, Life’s kiss?
::
What wounds are you willing to heal?
Where do you feel Life’s Kiss upon you?
How have your friendships with women opened you to this bounty within your own Being?
::
Image courtesy of midnightcomm, under CC2.0
