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Your Body is a chalice for your Creativity.

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So many myths. So many road signs. So many descriptions of how to enter into the divine mystery. It is laid out for us to see. At least as much as it can be…the mysterious part remains just that, thank goodness.

Over the centuries, people have tried to understand what it takes to enter into the unknown. Whether it be the Hero(ine)’s journey, Inanna’s descent, or navigating a labyrinth, those who’ve traversed this terrain have tried to find ways to guide others through. It’s really quite beautiful.

What I’ve found through so many of these myths, stories, and guides is this: We have to let go of something in order for our hands, hearts, minds to be empty enough to receive that which is being offered to us. And, in receiving what is offered, we take charge of the seedling. We become the gardner, the attendant, the one who will love this seed into expression. It is not our task to ask that it be a certain kind or flavor. It is not our task to judge this seedling.

Nor is it ours to question our ability or capacity to be this home of nourishment and growth. We were created for this. Our capacity has been given to us as a sacred task while living in a human body.

As Creatrix, our role is to welcome the creative seed and to give it a place to burrow down into the soil of the flesh so it can be held in the nourishing dark. It must have a home as its shell breaks open and roots and wings grow forth.

Your human body is a chalice always being filled with love, inspiration, and breath. Just as we are breathed, we are filled with the creative force, a force that rises up from the base of the chalice that is the body.

As I’ve been researching how we are guided into the mystery for Writing Raw, my new online writing circle for women, over and over I see the same markers of the map into this terrain. Yes, there are different words used, or different myths that carry the stories. But the relationship is always the same. It is a relationship where we who enter must let go, unveil, or undergo initiation so that we are open and vulnerable enough to be entered into by that which is meant to come in. It is the nature of our dance with the divine.

writingrawpin02AsCreatrixAnd, that is why I am offering Writing Raw.

This relationship we have with the sacred mystery is an important one because if we are not conscious of this relationship in our everyday lives, then we aren’t conscious of the sacred, of the very real presence of love in the world as it is right now. If we are not aware of how to open our hands and hearts to what is being given – not what we want, but what is being offered – then we aren’t in relationship with our intrinsic power as human beings to be a force of good, a force that is moved by love.

It is our relationship with the sacred, with love, that needs healing. If we know the sacred, we see it in everything in our world and in our lives.

It is a great act of love to take the journey within in order to be and live this chalice that you are.

It is a great act of love.

I would truly love for you to enter into this vibrant writing circle for women, Writing Raw. We will be practicing with these powerful ways to enter into this mysterious, sacred circle of receiving so we can truly be these vessels. Take a look. See if it resonates. Reach out to me if you have questions.  Join if it feels right.

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Living the Magic and Wonder of Her

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It was midday on Sunday…

We’d just arrived at Rubi’s restaurant in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Three of us sat down at a table in the back room where the welcome sunlight was streaming through the upper windows. We were to be joined by three other women we’d just spent three days with at the Red Bird Inn, the site of our retreat, Opening to Her. We’d been dancing in the Feminine for these three days. We’d opened to Her, and felt Her there, always there.

I’d co-led this retreat with Amy, and it was the first time we’d worked together. I felt light. I felt full. I felt a great love surrounding us.

At a table next to us, two women were deep in a conversation that was marked with quiet voices and intense feelings. I felt drawn to one woman in particular. In fact, I kept looking over in her direction, then would call myself back knowing it didn’t feel right to keep looking at her. But something in me felt drawn. I was to find out later that the other women I was with felt the same thing.

 

The other three women from our retreat arrived at Rubi’s, and…

We settled in and began to talk. Our conversation was light, filled with interesting things. We were talking about what we were returning home to, and shared stories about synchronicities, connections, and family. We laughed together. There was a sweetness to how we were with each other after three beautiful days together.

I hadn’t noticed that the women next to us had left their table until one of the women, the one I’d been so drawn to, approached our table from the direction of the front room of Rubi’s. She and her friend had begun to leave the restaurant, but she returned to speak to us. She approached the table looking at us, then at me, and asked,

“Are you teachers or something?”

We all looked at each other, and then I responded,

“Yes”.

She then shared with us that she could tell there was something ‘special’ about us, about how we were with each other – (connected and strong) – and that she was drawn to speaking with us because her friend was going through a very hard time and she felt we might be able to offer her friend something that she couldn’t.

Her words implied that she wanted her friend to feel held.

She then asked if she could bring her friend over for us to simply hug and be with. We answered, “Yes”, and then Amy and I stood up to greet them, together.

Amy hugged the friend, and I hugged the woman we’d spoken with. We exchanged names. Then I hugged the woman, and Amy hugged the woman we’d spoken with. As I hugged her, the woman having a difficult time told me her young-adult son had passed away just five weeks before. She said the words with a lot of presence and was clearly still in a great amount of pain. I was struck by her strength. I was struck by the strength of her friend, too.

The woman who’d initially come up to us to ask to connect with her friend hadn’t asked us for help, but rather had seen that there was something in us that could hold and be with her friend’s grief. She said she had been able to do that to a point, but she said she didn’t know what else to do and felt that her friend would benefit from being held by other women who were living something she couldn’t quite put into words.

At this point, the other four women at our table rose up, and one-by-one each hugged the other two women. They were slow, full-body hugs, not sideways hugs we many times offer in our world. The rest of the women at our table didn’t yet know what this woman was experiencing, but it didn’t matter. They didn’t ask. They simply put their loving arms around each woman and held her.

 

This moment was one of the most beautiful and amazing experiences of my life. There was longing and trust. There was connection and love. There was a lived and palpable presence of Love, of Her. It was a loving, nurturing, fully-accepting presence. It filled the room.

We then all said good-byes. The two women left the café, and we sat back down together. We all looked around our circle, a bit speechless at what had just happened. This loving, nurturing, fully-accepting presence lingered, fruitfully and spaciously.

 

One of the women at our table said she felt like she had just witnessed a miracle.

Another woman expressed something similar about our weekend together – that it was filled with magic and wonder.

The feminine is mystery. She is magic. She brings a sense of wonder.

At the end of our retreat, I offered the invitation to live Her, to live this expression of a presence that is life-affirming, real, and true, a presence that comes from being fully awake and alive in our female bodies. When we live this, we know it, and we know it and feel it in others. Even if others are not aware of it in terms of these words, they are still aware of it. We are all longing for it in our world. We hunger for Her. And She is here, holding us all.

The six of us didn’t have anything ‘special’. We were simply aware, in that moment, of this deep presence of Her. We had spent three days together remembering something we’d already known before…Her. And because of this remembering, we were embodying Her. We were living and breathing the dignity of Her.

One of the women at our table shared this as she reflected upon the experience:

 “…That we can be who we yearn for in the world. I cried at the memory of the experience, the privilege of being a part of it.”

She, the Feminine, wove us together, and then we left to go our own way. But now we know we are no longer going separate ways, but rather…

We move in the world woven together, always together, always connected.

 

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Opening to the Pull of the Feminine…Together

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Twelve years ago, Her invitation was strong. It was obvious, but it wasn’t clear. Not to my intellect. Only to my body.

She pulled me down into Her, or at the time what felt like being pulled down into the earth. And She came up to meet me.

I suppose there were times prior to this moment in 2002 when She called to me. I don’t know. Maybe She calls to us our whole lives, or perhaps She tries to reawaken us to Her after we’ve shut down our connection with Her.

I was sitting on a bench outside of a Peet’s coffee shop on the Berkeley/Oakland border, sitting in a little courtyard where I would spend time reading and writing. Really, I was searching. I was in my free fall period, or what some might call the dark night of the soul, where I had no idea where I was headed or what I would be doing with my life. I’d been in this place for some months, yet it felt like nothing was getting any clearer. I was trying to make sense of what felt like a path, but in reality was no path at all. She doesn’t lead you in a straight line. She offers only a bit, just a small bit that leads from where you are. She requires trust.

I didn’t yet have that trust.

I’d been through so much grief and change, and was looking for something solid to stand on. Seven years before, my husband had died suddenly. One year before, I graduated from Stanford University at the ripe age of 45. And, my first grandchild was just over a year old. His first year was harrowing to say the least. Twenty surgeries in that year alone caused it to be a truly trying, traumatic time.

So, on this day, as I was sitting, I began to feel something pulling me down into it. It sounds sort of odd as I write it here, but at the time the feeling was strong, very strong. It was an energy, but was more than that. It was a knowing, a pull, a feeling that something greater than me was calling to me and leading me down into it.

The feeling of down and in was incredibly visceral. It was as if something was wrapping around my legs, something alive and pulsing, something real yet completely unseen. And it was pulling down into the dark, a very dark place.

I feared the dark. I wanted no part of this. That’s the truth.

I remember, distinctly, saying inside to that which was calling me, “Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.” At the time, I felt as if I had been through so much and I simply didn’t want more growth or transformation. I just didn’t. I wanted to rest. I didn’t want what I had a sense it was asking of me. I notice I sensed it was asking something, but I didn’t have the energy to respond in the way I felt I should. No. I didn’t want to.

I feared it, this force. I feared the unknown of it. More than that, though, I feared the power of it.

I’ve found that we don’t get to choose when we are called, but we can choose to fight it…sometimes. At least, I chose to fight it. I didn’t trust this. And that was the crux of the whole damn thing. I didn’t trust this and I knew it was Her. I knew it was the feminine. I knew it was the dark. I knew it.

Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to awaken to the feminine. During this time, I’d felt the pull and the call. I’d been devouring books trying to understand what kept calling me. There weren’t as many books out then, back then. But, part of me still thought it was a romantic idea, an exciting thing. But, I wanted it to look like I wanted. I wanted to control how it all went down. I wanted to control.

Now, I know differently. She’s like a flame that I’m drawn to. She is this ripe and fertile void. She is my Soul. She is the Feminine. She is Goddess. I don’t even really know what She is. I just know I have a longing that is deep. When I acknowledge my longing, tears run like rivers. None of it is intellectually logical at all. But the Soul knows when it is time to come home, and it can be relentless as it pulls us back home.

This invitation. This pull. This relentlessness.

These are why Amy Oscar and I are holding a small, intimate retreat in just a few weeks in Western Massachusetts. This is why.

 

OpeningToHer

 

Because…

We can gather together as women as we are waking back up to Her.
We can come together to weave our wisdom, come to speak what we feel we cannot speak yet aloud, out in the world.
We can come together to share what it feels like to be drawn to Her, and to open to Her.

And in doing so, we learn from ourselves, we learn from each other, and we open more deeply to Her.

Ultimately, I don’t know there are answers…but we can come into a conscious experience of what it means to live and breathe the Feminine in real life.

If you feel called, please come.

If you have questions, please ask.

If you feel pulled and cannot come, or you feel pulled but not to this retreat, open to your heart, to your sisters, to life itself. She will guide you.

And, if you feel called to, please share of your experience of opening to the pull of the Feminine in the comments below. I’d love to know.

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Inevitable Alchemy

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She bangs the bars.
She screams out to be set free.
She’s found her voice after years of submission.

I feel her, past stirring, now demanding.
I see her hands, withered, but coming back to life.
I know her – she’s the banished one.

She’s demanding to be heard.
She’s demanding to know who keeps her jailed.
She’s no longer willing to submit.

Barely out of the shadows, the jailer just stands, keys jangling.
Tantalizing her with the taste of freedom.
Taunting her with her own power, stolen long ago.

I feel the jailer’s tyrannical nature.
I see the jailer’s smirk.
I know the jailer fears what it does not know or trust.

The jailer is a heady mix of misogynistic power and the false sense of security that comes from being able to control something, anything.
Just like her, the jailer is welcome.
Just like her, the jailer is me.

They stare at each other, sizing each other up, taking each other in.
She knows her desire is too potent to be contained.
The jailer sees the inevitability of alchemy.

Image: Twelve Drummers Drumming by Winter’s Magic on DeviantArt.com

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Wide-eyed, Feral-hearted Instinct

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Foxline by oprisco

 

No. I won’t.

No. I won’t.

No. I. Won’t.

 

I woke up this morning feeling a deep, throbbing ‘NO’, deep in the belly, deep in the instinctual flesh.

 

The voice inside would not stop. It had finally found it’s way out.

My solar plexus pulsed.

Power center coming back online.

 

I got up and made tea, and then sat in the early morning hours slowly drinking it, slowly taking it in, down my throat.

I sat down on the cushion for a short meditation…that stretched into an hour.

The throbbing continued.

The solar plexus pulsed…hard.

Power center coming back online. I didn’t know there was this much power to be found in this body.

 

This NO was going NOwhere. It had come home and had NO intention of leaving.

It grew louder, more insistent. Growling. Gutteral. Very Ujjayi.

Throat breathing straight up from the belly.

Power center coming back online.

Sitting in not-so-quiet repose, on the cushion, wired like one of those power stations you see way out in the desert, far, far away from civilization.

A power center too hot and too dangerous for the ‘civilized world’.

Thank God.

 

I’ve been…

Too silent.

Too civilized.

I’ve swallowed too many NOs.

Wide-eyed and feral-hearted instinct repeatedly drowned in an ocean of acquiescence.

 

But wide-eyed, feral-hearted instinct can’t be silenced forever. That’s not how life moves. Death brings rebirth. Eventually, everything comes full circle.

Soul will  shake the concrete off, breathe the cobwebs out, tear the windpipes loose.

Deep-knowing, dignified bones eventually rattle themselves free… 

Sovereign.

Alive. 

Whole.

 

 

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Allow The Dark To Grow You

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illustration by Kristin Noelle

I’ve been aware of the newness of things.
Soft. Fresh. Not quite open.
Something still tucked away, not yet ready to be revealed.

Where is this within you, this ‘something new’ that is not quite ready to be in the light?
Treasure this.
It is a magical thing to stay in the dark, taking in nourishment,
discovering the shape, fragrance, and texture of who you are yet to be.

Don’t rush this.

Allow the dark to grow you.

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Sometimes, we must enter the dark to grow; we must enter so we can, too, be held like we hold. They are one in the same. It is a natural expression of the Feminine to hold, to nourish. Natural.

As we hold, we are held. Take time to come into this embrace, consciously, with reverence…just the way you long to be held and known. She is no different.

Don’t fear the dark. It is rich with nutrients, rich with soul food. Yes, it will strip away; yes, you will be transformed; yes, you will be reborn – if you allow the dark to grow you.

If you allow the dark to grow you, you will bring back to life all that you pretended to put to death; and all that you’ve pretended is life and alive, will die.

 

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Kristin Noelle illustrated this beautiful image of being held in the darkness of the Universal womb. Working from just the few lines at the top that I sent her, she created this powerful image. It speaks directly to what I wanted to share.

Kristin Noelle is a Los Angeles-based illustrator. She creates soulful art that fosters a worldview of trust. Find her at www.kristinnoelle.com and be sure to check out Blessings – a 10-day series of inspired, illustrated blessings.

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Speaking of the power of the female belly, I’m co-facilitating a one-day retreat on the land in West Marin County:

A Woman’s Belly: Source of Health, Strength, and Creativity

Register here

At a wooded retreat site named Paradise, we’ll explore the health, strength, and creativity of our female belly. My friend and colleague, Simone de Winter, is an Ayurvedic Practitioner. Together, Simone and I will weave a day full of belly wisdom and love. It was Simone who led me through the powerful cleanse just three months ago.

We would love to have you join us for this intimate day.

Simone describes what she will offer:

“Ayurveda offers the lifestyle, dietary and herbal support. Yoga is often part of the lifestyle support, which can be in the form of breathing exercises (pranayama), meditation, chanting, mantra, movement and postures. Yoga offers a path to self-realization, freedom from the constraints of the mind. We all know about the role of the mind in health and self-care. And in this pursuit, if practiced in the right way, it can be very disarming for the nervous system. Another beautiful way in which they come together is in the understanding of the subtle body, where the chakras are found. In working with a woman’s belly we work with the second chakra, the creativity center.”

And, I’ll be sharing:

If we are to really be happy in the world, and to live our nature, then we must come into an alive and loving, compassionate relationship with our bodies. For women, this has many difficulties because we’ve been taught to objectify ourselves – to see our bodies as objects, and to relate to them that way. Instead, when we come to experience our bodies as beautiful alive creatures, not objects at all, by listening deeply to them, we begin to express what it is they offer into a world that, I feel, is truly thirsty for the alive, creative expression of awakened womanhood.

We women give birth to many things, not just babies. When we become conscious of this, and when we rediscover how to listen and honor what the womb can bring forth, we begin to live this very natural capacity of womanhood. It’s a matter of listening, honoring, and trusting, and then expressing these energies. In all honesty, we are rediscovering this. After so many centuries of women being disconnected from the creative capacities of the female body, at least in most of the industrialized world, we are coming to realize just how crucial it is that we embody these capacities –that we live them.

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The world will heal when women’s hips speak freely again.

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The music pulses and my hip responds.
It’s my right hip.
She’s clearly talking.
She’s got something to say.
She’s been silent for eons, but now she’s awake.

Hips can be like that.
Especially women’s hips.
They can hold onto words not said, impulses not acted upon, and instincts not honored.
Until, one day, they wake up.

The music is all drums and she begins to thrust.
Just drums.
Just beat.
The drums speak her language and she’s deep in conversation.

Hips and pelvis are sacred territory.
All around the sacrum, deep in the pelvic bowl, lies the glorious instinctive feminine.
She sways and thrusts, drawing divine infinity marks with rhythmic precision.

Her mother tongue is ancient.
No words, just movement.

She’s asserting herself.
She’s uncoiling eons of serpent-like wisdom and sensuality.

She guides me to the wall and makes it clear I must dance against it.
Palms pressed hard against the wood slats, I can feel her power undulating and spiraling out.
It’s as if my entire body wants to experience this power in its cells – all the way out the arms to the tips of my fingers, out my legs to where my toes meet the ground.

She talks and talks and talks.
After centuries of silence, she has much to say.
She’s not going back.
She’s awake now.
She knows her medicine is good medicine.

She knows the world will heal when women’s hips speak freely again.

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You are a Shero, and It’s time to attend The Shero’s School for Revolutionaries.

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For many years, my Shero’s Journey has been unfolding. I’ve been unveiling the deeper, softer layers of myself through the letting go of who I thought I was, and who I thought I had to be.

I’ve come to experience the deep, dark feminine within that is the source of my creativity, sexuality, vitality…my life force. 

 

The Shero’s journey

is about turning within, shining a light on the dark places where we’ve hidden the beautiful aspects of the feminine that were not safe in this world, and reclaiming the fullness and wholeness of who we really are.

It’s about rescuing ourselves from the dark places where we hid what we believed was not sacred, and reclaiming our wholeness.

And, the Shero’s Journey is about living this wholeness in our everyday lives, living the wholeness of love in service to Life.

Our female bodies are made for this. It’s why we are here, leading, loving,and living through these female bodies.

It’s about love. It’s about life. It’s about knowing we belong here on this earth, in this life. It’s about being what we are fully, vulnerably, openly, in relationship to all of our relations…all of life.

It is time for us to live this, knowing we are not alone, telling our stories, hearing the stories and wisdom of others, and coming to truly believe that we have everything we need already. We always have.

It is time.

To that end…

 

Jennifer Louden has…

brought together an eclectic mix of women and men for her Shero’s School For Revolutionaries who have answered the call. I’m happy, and honored, to be one of these 25+ people  interviewed by Jen, along with wise souls like Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Angeles Arrien, Seane Corn, Gala Darling, Justine Musk, Dani Shapiro, Marianne Elliott, Tara Mohr, and more.

The Shero’s School for Revolutionaries will be in session all next week, September 23rd through the 28th. You’ll hear insights and wisdom about what it means to be a Shero and how we must bring our gifts forward in service to healing.

But, this isn’t the kind of school we’re used to. It’s a school for revolutionaries, a school asking you to listen even more deeply to what your own heart knows, to the wisdom of your own soul, to the knowing in your own bones.

This is a revolution of love, of spiritual activism, of the joy of allowing service to heal and transform you.

 

In Jen’s words:

What is calling you these days?  Does it have something to do with healing, with mending, with tending, your corner of the world? Are  you afraid of what calls you, sure you aren’t up for it, sure there is no time, perhaps have no idea where to start? 

If so, what good news! Doubt, confusion and fear are all great signs that you are ready to own your power to take real action. YES, you are embarked upon your Shero’s journey, starting to reclaim what has been lost & bring it back as a boon to your community. Weaving together inner work and outer action. Owning your gifts in service to something larger than you. Discovering your deepest joy.

These are practical, intimate and mystical conversations, designed to support you wherever you are in your journey, you’ll hear about:

  • explore how to start a movement
  • where self-care fits
  • how to take care of yourself financially
  • how to unhook from blame and praise
  • and lots of practical tips for activism and fear management

and much, much more.

 

An intimate conversation with Jen

I sat down with Jen to ask her to share why this is so important to her. If you know Jen online, in person, from her books and blogs, you know how passionate and she is about savoring and serving. Listen in to this short, and wonderful, conversation…

Jen Louden on her Shero’s School for Revolutionaries

[audio:https://unabashedlyfemale.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/SherosSchool.mp3|titles=Conversation with Jen Louden]

The details:
Dates: September 23 -28, 2013
Price: FREE
Where: Sign up online here to have free access to these live-streamed interviews.

You’ll be able to hear my interview on the first day of school, Monday, September 23rd. The interview will be available for 24 hours. I loved doing this interview. Something beautiful comes through. In Jen’s words,

“Julie gives a radiant transmission of someone living her shero journey – it’s like the Goddess is speaking through her.”

 Each interview will be available for 24 hours. If, at the end of the school, you choose to purchase them, you’ll be able to do that for $47. Jen is donating her proceeds, so this is also a fundraiser.

 

And, in the spirit of Sheros, Love, and Sacred Activism,

[Revised Sept 26, 2013]

Registration is now open for my new course,

Becoming a Force of Nature

It’s a blend of:

  • Stanford University curriculum
  • exploration of embodying the sacred feminine
  • practical tools, practices, meditations, worksheets
  • and ways to live what you truly are – a Force of Nature.

It’s a potent, provocative, and practical 24-week deep dive your creative process and your feminine nature.

 

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A Return to Relationship With Life

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“…how calmly, as though it were an ordinary thing, we eat the blessed earth.” ~ Mary Oliver

Seeds are planted, food comes forth…as though it were an ordinary thing.

The moon returns after having gone black…as though it were an ordinary thing.

We open our eyes to live another day…as though it were an ordinary thing.

The Earth sustains us, each day of our lives, and we act as if it were an ordinary thing.

 

Around us, within us, between us, is the sacred.

Every atom is filled with it. And every atom is it.

Every breath is this mystery gifting us another moment of life. It is quite simple, yet life-changingly profound when we come to really take it in. And, yet, we grow to see it as an ordinary thing.

::

Wonder and Awe

The nature of the structures and institutions we live in is one of domination and control over life and that which is symbolic of life-giving power. In these structures, the sacred is seen as something above us, outside of us, and in some cases, something that only certain people have access to. It is also seen, by some, as something that does not exist.

For some time, we humans have thought that we can solve any problem simply through our thinking process, even the problems our thinking has created. It’s actually not very logical at all, but then the logical mind that doesn’t acknowledge reality isn’t very logical.

The logical mind run amuck has a quality of cold lifelessness. There is no heart in it, no warmth. When there is no heart, there can be a feeling of the stiltedness that’s somewhat robotic.

The structures we live in do not give much credence to wonder and awe, mystery and uncertainty. When we’re taught we have to know everything, there isn’t much place for these things. When we’re taught that humans own and can control life, not just land ownership but even going so far as to patent seeds, we’ve lost a sense of any relatedness or connection to life. Rather than being in relationship with the life that sustains us, we’ve come to see ourselves as owners and manipulators of this life…sometimes, all for a profit or comfort or supposed safety and security.

But wonder and awe are absolutely necessary if we are to heal the messes we’ve made here on earth. It is our relationship with life that needs healing, and to me that’s the realm of the sacred. And it’s also largely the realm of womanhood.

Why? Because our very need to control, dominate, and fix life is why we are in the mess we are in. And when we continue to act from this mindset to attempt to ‘fix’ our problems without opening to the mystery itself to guide us back into balance, we continue to seal not only our own human downfall, but so selfishly the downfall of many other species.

Our role as humans is of stewards of this beautiful Earth, and, we’ve forgotten our humble role.

 

Life itself regenerates.

That is part of its mystery, is it not?

Life is intelligent, much more so than any human being. But to know this once again, we must come to remember our place in this vast Universe. There is an intelligence far more intelligent than human beings will ever be. And this intelligence is sacred. This intelligence is what animates all of life. It is the universal life force. It permeates existence. And, we’ve lost our awe for this intelligence. We think we have it figured out. We think we can recite words that capture this intelligence. We think our dogmas explain it.

We’ve been so deeply conditioned to believe that the sacred is NOT in the land, the air, the water, the trees, animals, plants, rocks and yes, people. We’ve been taught to believe the sacred is not in our deep feeling nature as human beings. We’ve been encouraged to believe that the very things we are destroying are simply objects for our use. It’s too easy for our conditioned minds to view life as something we can research, figure out, understand, and even patent, that it is this deep misunderstanding that has brought us to the brink of great destruction.

Furthermore, many of us have been turned off to anything that smacks of religion, or if we follow a particular religion, many of those religions teach that the sacred is above this lowly earth plane. In believing this, we come to push away anything that we believe is trying to tell us what to believe, how to act, or how we must be in order to be worthy of access to the sacred.

 

A reclamation of the sacredness of life is needed.

Words can point to so many things, and they point to experiences we’ve had in the past, experiences that might be positive or negative or both. So much gets tangled up in a word. Yet, this reclamation that can help us heal is an opportunity; it’s the opportunity to come to know what the word ‘sacred’ means to each of us by way of experience…our very own real life experience.

Words are powerful. We can’t name this that can’t be named. But we can each guide ourselves to really look at our own relationship with this that can’t be named. We can guide ourselves to remember our own experiences of moments when we’ve been profoundly moved by this that can’t be named. And these feelings, these experiences, can be acknowledged with a word, a metaphor, a scent, a flavor, a symbol that speaks uniquely to each of us. Something that puts us back in relationship with that which breathes you.

The word you use to describe whatever it is that brings this awe to you matters not. What matters is the acknowledgement that there is something greater than you, or me, or us. What matters is that we find our way back to a relationship with this that is greater than all of us.

 

Consider…

What brings out the feeling that you are connected to something greater than yourself? What brings you back to wonder and awe? What helps you remember there is something greater than you, whether it be community, relationship, humanity, the animal kingdom, Mother Earth…something that compels you to come back to the whole and to wholeness?

When you remember this experience, or these experiences, how do you feel? What do you feel? Where do you feel it?

For me, I notice these things in many small moments, as well as some of the ‘bigger’ life moments I’ve known.

I’ve seen the sacred in those ecstatic moments of my children’s births, or the births of my grandchildren that I was lucky enough to witness. I’ve seen the sacred in those moments of death, pain, and illness of those I love deeply. And sometimes, it’s been the way my arm or hand moves to the music when I dance, or how the warm wind feels when it’s blowing across my face. Sometimes, it’s been the miracle of my grandchild’s small hand with big dimples by each finger that causes my breath to catch.

 

Breath catching is a sure sign of the sacred.

 

Just consider this: You are alive. You ‘eat the blessed earth’ each day. You drink Her waters. You breathe Her air. You are here.

The Earth is this Mystery in form. We are Her.

Let yourself see the amazingness of just this. Then, call it whatever you wish. But, acknowledge that Yes, that something is right here, looking out your eyes, breathing your body, beating your heart. Acknowledge just how close this is to you. And, after really taking this in, acknowledge that what this is is not ordinary at all.

I’d say it is sacred. And, what do you say?

 

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The Gift – Women’s Sacred Power of Creation

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This past weekend, I led a retreat for a remarkable group of women. It was a church sponsored retreat. The women were courageous in their willingness to look within, as well as their willingness to consider the beauty, power, and profound sacredness of living life in a female body. It was truly an honor to midwife such rich and courageous experiential exercises, which brought forth this deep wisdom of the feminine.

My childhood was not filled with religious teaching. My family lineage holds a wide variety of religious traditions, but the day-to-day of my life didn’t contain these traditional teachings or stories. Instead, I was invited to question what life, love, death, and even re-birth were really about. As someone who has reached a point of life where I am coming to understand the wisdom of a life deeply lived, I am grateful I was taught to wonder.

How beautiful true wonder is…childlike wonder…wonder that causes the eyes to sparkle and the heart to open and embrace.

True awakening is a destructive process…so my teacher, Adyashanti, says. And, I can vouch for that. It isn’t becoming anything. It is unbecoming, undressing, undoing. It is shedding beliefs and veils and faces – those faces we pretend our ours, even though somewhere inside we know they are just masks to hide what we believe is the ugly, ugly me that nobody would want to know or love.

As I sat in circle with these women and shared what I know about the sacred feminine and what it has to do with a woman’s spiritual journey, I was, once again, filled with awe by the beauty, tenacity, fierceness of womanhood.

The layers of veils have been heaped upon us through conditioning and socialization.We’ve internalized them. For me, they aren’t necessarily veil-like. They’re more thick and gnarly in how they hide my true and very human humanity.

Every group of women I have led over the past eleven years has been filled with beautiful women that question, deeply, their worth and value. Whether they were groups of women directly affected by 9/11, or women in business, or women who are the web of connection within their church communities, I’ve been struck by how deep the conditioning runs that tells us a number of made-up stories about who we ‘are’, how much ‘space’ we get to take up, and how ‘loud’ our voices can be.

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Yesterday, on the spur of the moment as I was traveling on the bus from downtown back to my place in the outer part of San Francisco, I hopped off and entered into an hour within the gorgeous walls of Grace Cathedral. I walked the labyrinth, lit candles for friends who are in the thick of cancer and chemo, and sat in contemplation and prayer. Again, I am not well schooled in churchly ways. Yet, when I walk into this place, something deep and old and vast comes forth, something that knows all on its own the way of the sacred.

We don’t need to be taught how to be sacred. We are sacred. Perhaps the teachings could simply lead us back to knowing this within… Perhaps this is what they were meant to do all along. 

As I sat, I remembered a beautiful stained glass window I had seen last time I was in the church. So before I left, I went to see it. And, again, I was struck by the juxtaposition of this image alongside the more traditional religious images of the Christian faith. Here, way up high, off in one of the transepts, is this exquisite window named, The Gift, by Narcissus Quagliatta. It is a gorgeous piece of art, and it is offering a different point of view than the traditional stained glass windows of Grace Cathedral.

While I know the point of view I see expressed here is mine, I’m going to share what I see. It’s a point of view that offers us a window into the sacredness of women and of the feminine. This window shows us the sacred creativity that is at the heart of creation, the big vast void out of which everything is birthed. And, this vast void is the very same vast void that is within each woman’s body. It is the place where life comes into being within a woman’s body. It shows us, clearly, that all women contain this. The woman is shrouded for she is all women. All women are one woman.

This IS the gift. Our bodies are not objects. Our bodies contain creation.

Take a moment to consider how your life might have been different if you had grown up with this image as part of your learning. Consider how your life might have been different, as a woman, if you knew your female body was holy and sacred.

This is the power of woman, the power of life and death and rebirth. It is the power of creation. It is the power that has, and still is, feared. It is why our species has tried so hard to dominate and control life…and women.

What matters is that we LIVE this. That we live what we are, consciously. This power is within each of us and when we become conscious of it by seeing through the veils that have kept it hidden from our own awareness, we live it. We embody it. We come to know we are it.

 

 

 

 

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