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As She Is – A Film About the Feminine, By Megan McFeely

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I am excited to introduce you to my good friend,

Megan McFeely, and…

to Premiere! a segment of her soon-to-be film, As She Is.

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As She Is is a film about one woman’s journey (Megan’s) to discover what the Feminine is. It is her journey. And, it is our journey as women, our journey as human beings. Megan is a filmmaker who is making (what I consider to be) this very important film.

Megan and I have been friends for years. We dance together, and we travelled through India together. We’ve shared some interesting, challenging, and hilarious!, times on this journey to know and live the Feminine.


In Megan’s words,

“WHAT AM I DOING?

I am on a  journey towards the center of my being.  I travel inward to see if I can find myself as I am…not as others or the culture wants me to be.  In doing so I reconnect to the sacred, the inner or the feminine part of myself.

AleMeganRoad2It is the longing for wholeness or the deep question that draws me inward…and holds open a sacred space inside where something can be born.  This journey toward the unknown started with a question because I did not really know. What is the feminine?

It is my willingness to be with the most uncomfortable of places…the emptiness, the silence, devastation, grief and the longing that continuously forges this relationship, teaching me to act from a connected place with greater awareness and responsibility.

I feel this  journey is my responsibility so that I can participate in the future…and become a guardian of life on this planet.

This is a film project about a journey toward wholeness. I continue to learn how to live this connection to myself…a never ending process of becoming.”


I feel strongly that this film is of utmost importance.

To give you a sense of the beauty that is woven throughout this film, Megan has shared this interview with us. This is the premiere showing of a portion of her interview with Aleutian Elder, Illarion Merculieff, about the feminine way of teaching:

The Intelligence of Our Natural Way of  Being, from As She Is - {A premiere!}

 

“The most important lessons in my life – from age 5 to age 13 – I got from experience, my own experience.”
~ Illarion Merculieff

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know how often I speak to this – of trusting your own experience, unmediated – this rich unfolding of the greater intelligence that moves through you.

As you can see and sense, this film is bringing together wisdom much needed for our times from many different sources.

 

What you can do to help bring this film into being:

Over the years, many women have asked me where they might come to know the Feminine. They’ve wondered if there are role models, or archetypes, or images that might help guide them to understand what it is that is unfolding within them, and unfolding in our world.

To me, this is one of the reasons As She Is is important to support. We are longing for something, hungering to know something, yet what this is is not necessarily visible yet in our world. We can know it from experience, yet so much of what we’ve been taught and acculturated to believe clouds our eyes and covers our ears when it comes to knowing.

We want to know, yet where do we go to learn? Yes, from our own experience. Absolutely. And, we also are being guided from many different places, from many wise voices. As She Is gathers and weaves these wisdom voices into one film for us all.

We hunger to know, and for me this is one of the most important reasons to help fund this project. We can help ourselves find this way home.

If we value coming to know wisdom that will help guide us to a better world, we have a way to help make that happen.

If As She Is resonates with you, and you feel this matters to you, please donate – and please share. As of today, March 27th, she’s raised just over $11,000.00 of her $44,000.00 goal. 

It’s going to take some creative, generous gumption on our part to reach the goal in the next ten days. One thing I’ve learned is that how we make things happen now is different than it was in the past. No longer is it up to a few people to create change in the world. Now it’s up to networks of committed women and men, you and me and the people we are connected to, and the people they are connected to.

There are 10 days left  in Megan’s Indiegogo campaign.

$1, $5, $10, $20 – or more – whatever you can give - each and every dollar brings this As She Is closer to completion.

We can be part of helping to bring forth a world where the feminine is valued alongside the masculine, a world where the feminine is valued and lived. We really MUST be the change we wish to see in the world.


Donate and share this Indiegogo link!

Indiegogo Campaign and Film trailer – Watch the film trailer, donate, and help spread the word by sharing. 

As She Is Website: www.as-she-is.org

As She Is Facebook page – Join the conversation on Facebook.

And you can share this post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, or by email to your friends and family.

Thank you, friends, for supporting Megan and As She Is.

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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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Addressed, Not Discussed.

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ravenpoem

 

Raven called to me.
I stood silent, listening.

Raven took flight, then circled in infinity loops.
I stood silent, watching from the center point.

Raven flew away.
I stood silent, remembering.

 …

Bear Witness

The other day, I was walking home and Raven called to me. I knew it was Raven, not Crow, for Raven sings a different song than Crow. I knew Raven was speaking to me, because my body responded to the call. I hear Ravens call everyday. There are many who fly and call in the place where I live. And when I hear these calls, my body listens; yet, my body rarely responds in the way it did on this day.

When my body responded by opening to a conversation, it turned to look directly at Raven. Raven was sitting atop a four-story apartment building, and as my body turned and my eyes came into contact, Raven looked directly at me…then turned away, then turned back, then turned away, then turned back…and Raven’s glance then rested upon mine.

We stood there simply seeing each other without sound for about a minute. As I addressed Raven with my awareness, a beautiful light emanated from all around Raven. And then, Raven took flight and swooped down to just above me, and began to fly in figure eights, with the center point of this infinity sign directly above me. Raven flew these arcs multiple times as I looked open and up, watching with a kind of quiet amazement. I continued to listen, taking Raven in, as Raven spoke to me in song and flight. And as Raven flew away, I could feel the gift left in Raven’s wake. I could feel a remembering taking place in my soul.

I stood there for another few minutes just feeling this remembering taking root, a remembering that never became rational but rather laid itself out in layers, layers woven throughout my being.

I wrote this poem directly flowing this delightful conversation. It flowed from my heart. It flowed from Raven.


Addressed instead of discussed.

I just finished a book that opened a window wider into the reality of this world we live in, this world that includes Raven. I’ve remembered layers of this world, a world my body knows, but one I was not raised in. It’s the world as a vibrant, alive creation; a world where all of life is interrelated.

In Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, Martín Prechtel writes about how all of the adults in the Mayan village where he lived knew the ‘Respect Names’ for ‘deified forces’:

“The same was true for fire, lake, mountains, and many other natural forces. All these things were alive and had to be addressed as kin when in their presence, otherwise they would be insulted. The same etiquette used for humans extended to the world. Thus the things of the world were addressed instead of discussed.”

When I read these words, I stopped reading. I took them in…the difference between being addressed and discussed. I remembered back to childhood, how I felt discussed and not addressed – seen but not heard. I remembered how I felt many times as a woman when I was discussed and not addressed.

One time in particular, when I worked in an office as a department manager, a male co-worker from a different department came into our office, looked around and then said, “Where is everyone?” He meant the men. A few other women and I were very present, very there, but he did not address us.

How many times have I done that to others in my life? How many times have I looked toward a face, or faces, and not seen the soul(s) standing right in front of me?

But it is more than even this. With regard to life, there is a hierarchy of worth and value in our world. It is clear than certain human beings have more supposed value and worth, hence more rights and privilege, than others. And the rest of life? Raven? Crow? So far down on the scale.

Everything alive not only deserves, but is created, to be addressed with dignity and respect. We only discuss things when we are seeing them as things…not alive…simply objects…simply things that we don’t value, or that we feel separate from.

When we address we signal a desire to be in communion with, to learn from, to be affected by, and to affect. When we address another, we open the door to remembering the wholeness of our soul, the soul of the being we are addressing, and the soul of the earth as mother to all beings.

 

Remembering Wholeness

Wholeness knows these things. Wholeness addresses. Wholeness addresses woman with dignity and respect, with love and sisterhood, with a remembrance of connection that happens when we lead with wholeness, not with our wounding.

Like Raven, we can learn to walk in two worlds, the world that doesn’t acknowledge wholeness, and the world that only knows wholeness.

Like Raven, we can engage with life through our bodies, bodies that long to address and be addressed.

To do so means we must address our bodies, not discuss them.

To do so means we listen to our bodies, rather than pretend they are ignorant creatures with no wisdom to guide us.

To do so means we realize that everything has inherent value and that everything is sacred, including our bodies, including Raven, including other women, including all beings, including all of life.

Address life and you’ll see life has always been addressing you.

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May you hold your womb with just as much love, respect, and kindness as you hold your logical, rational mind.

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NewYearPost2014

Life is a mystery –  a big, bold, beautiful, pregnant, gracious, infinite, and sacred mystery.

 

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Life isn’t a logical process. It’s not a machine that we can make run smooth and efficiently. It’s not controllable. It doesn’t bend to our wants. It doesn’t take commands.

Who decided it was a good idea to put the analytical, logical, reasonable thinking mind in charge of trying to navigate life?

Poor logical mind. No wonder it gets so stressed out, so burned out, so controlling and fearful. It’s trying to do a job it just cannot do. How can you possibly use logic and reason to live the mystery and stay sane? It’s learned ways to cope with this job (we all have our ingrained coping mechanisms that really aren’t so great at doing what they are intended to do!), but coping and hanging on just isn’t living, is it?!

No wonder we keep thinking up the same old ideas, creating the same old stuff, digging ourselves as a species deeper into our own worn-out, status-quo ruts. The thinking mind is very good at perpetuating its ruts and stories, dragging out its outdated ideas and beliefs. It’s not good an honoring the mystery because it just doesn’t ‘get it’. It’s not designed to ‘get it’. It’s designed to handle the places where rationality and logic are needed…and there are many places…but it’s not designed to birth what is completely and utterly new. The thinking, logical mind can help midwife the new, but it can’t get pregnant. Pregnancy is for womb’s, the source of the mystery, the source of Life itself.

If we want to birth the new, we must listen to Life and what is trying to be born. If we want to be loving midwifes to what can be, we must feel for new life stirring, feel for the first heartbeats, and be willing to support this new life into being.

Like deep rich soil, like a teeming ocean, the place of gestation shimmers with a wordless, graceful essence we will never fully know; yet, we can know what is emerging from this wordless, graceful ocean as it emerges…as it is born. To do so, we must learn to listen and open, to be ready to bring forth, to be used as vessels for this Love that is Life.

Our bodies know the way. Our hearts will guide. Our minds can rest and when they are needed they can be ready to serve. Every part has a sacred part to play in this mysterious dance, and when they play their natural parts, the really do play.

Find what feels like play – to your body, your heart, and your mind. Find what brings that quiet joy, that aliveness that causes a whole-body smile. Put your ear to the big womb and listen for the heartbeat of life and find the place in yourself where you long to midwife it into being.

This is where the new world, a new way, will emerge…from the dark that we all can once again learn to trust. It isn’t the enemy…it is Life teeming with Life.

And, this is where the old world, the old way, will die back into – the dark that we all can once again learn to trust. It isn’t the enemy…it is Life receiving into itself what has lived its course.

We really do love the New – it’s why we get so excited for these New things like New Years Day. The real beauty is that it is only an illusion that this New Year will lose its newness. Life never loses its newness, just as it never stops letting go into death. They are bedfellows – the New and the Dying. If you feel into this, you’ll feel the whole arc of Life, this shimmering graceful essence.

May this New Year – a construct of the logical mind that need dates, times, goals – be a turning point for us all to become lovers and midwives of the New, the fresh, the playful innocence of Life wanting to know itself anew – and lovers and midwives of the dying.

May you hold your womb with just as much love, respect, and kindness as you hold your logical, rational mind.

May we love all. May we love well.

***

Womb Update!

I’ll be co-leading a day-long retreat with my friend, Simone de Winter, this January 25th in West Marin County. It’s all about ‘A Woman’s Belly!’. It will be the perfect way to bring more health, strength, and creativity to your life by way of your Womb!

Take a look here. If you aren’t in the Bay Area, but know a woman who is, please pass this along.

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Dark and Light: Coming to Trust in the Source of Creativity

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So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. — T. S. Eliot

 

 

Just as the moon becomes fully eclipsed, I enter the center of the labyrinth. It’s about 5:00 am. The labyrinth is lit up a bit by the lights surrounding Grace Cathedral, offering a bit of light to this very dark moment.

As I stand in the center of the labyrinth, I gaze at the moon for quite a while.

 

I stand there, simply feeling.

Something is being remembered.

It feels as if my soul is reaching back into time, and back into other layers of existence or understanding or something such as this. It’s a feeling, and along with it are images of dark passageways. Not literal passageways, but passageways that seem to be showing straights of time and existence.

 

I know I am remembering something, but it’s not a remembering of something in this life or something my mind might understand. Rather, it’s a remembering of the Soul. I can feel the ‘meeting’ between knowing and my Soul. I feel it down deep in the darkness, down deep in the cells, down deep somewhere that I cannot see, but can see by feeling.

And so, my opening to the darkness as beauty, darkness as wisdom, darkness as rich soil of the divine comes in waves of knowing and realizations of not-knowing, too. My mind cannot figure out what this all means, and believe me it is trying to figure it out. It wants to sneak into these divine moments of darkness. It is trying, yet the pull of this deep feeling space is so sensual and so deeply loving.

 

There is a beautiful cauldron of creation from which all is born. And for women, this universe of becoming also resides in your female body, deep in the waters of the sacred center that is held so artfully and lovingly by the pelvic bowl

Our relationship to the dark is how we relate to our own creativity. Creativity is born out of this cauldron of creation. We can’t see what will be born from the dark. We must come to trust in the dark, in creation itself.

Perhaps what we’ve been taught to believe about the dark isn’t true at all, anymore than what we’ve been taught about light. It is out of the darkest darkness that the most brilliant light is born. And brilliant light eventually finds its way back to the dark.

It’s easy to label things light and dark, good and bad, right and wrong because in a world where we are taught that everything is either/or, we come to believe this way of thinking is the only way. But standing in the labyrinth, feeling the moon and earth and sun deeply affect the deep regions of my psyche, I come to know that nothing is as it seems to the mind. And, it is here in this rich stew of remembering that I settle down into my bones, into the center of a matrix that holds me.

If we truly want to live in harmony with life, and with the earth and moon and sun, we must come to know this aspect of ourselves – the brilliant darkness from which light is born.

Notice how many times you hear dark being used as something bad, while light is seen as the good. Notice how you have learned to shy away from the dark while persistently trying to ‘stay in the light’. Just notice. And, notice what you begin to remember when you allow the darkness of your internal world to welcome you home. Notice how it feels.

Stand in the center welcoming this remembrance, however it shows itself. You don’t need an eclipse or a labyrinth to do so. Simply stand in your own center.

In the stillness of noticing, see how what-you-truly-are is already dancing in divine harmony.

::

I’ll be teaching again next June (14th – 20th) at Feathered Pipe Ranch in Helena Montana.

Feathered Pipe is a beautiful place, with wonderful people, delicious food, and land that welcomes you even before you arrive. I’ll be teaching with Michael Lennox, whom I co-taught with last year. Over our week at Feathered Pipe, we’ll explore this beautiful darkness within from which all is born. I’d love to have you join us.

If you register by October 31st, tomorrow, you can take advantage of two discounts. If you pay in full, both lodging and retreat, you receive 10% off the entire cost. If you register with the $300 required deposit, you’ll pay the 2013 price rather than the 2014 price. You cannot combine the two. Correction: You CAN combine these two discounts.

::

I want to share these wonderful interviews with you that I did with three good friends. I love it when good interviewers get you to share some nuggets you’ve never shared before.

  • Rachael Maddox is the ‘ringleader of the Traveling Soul Circus’. Take a look at what Rachael does. She’s truly inspiring. In our conversation, Rachael and I talk about ‘Bringing Ourselves to the World Situation: Natural, Organic, Real :: Age & Meaning’
  • Evelyn Kalinosky is a catalyst and mentor for business women in midlife transition. I loved getting to know Evelyn and the great work she does with women.This interview was for Evelyn’s Conversations That Matter series. Evelyn asked me to share some of the moments of my life that have been big catalysts for my evolution. I’ve shared some personal stuff here.
  • Nikki Groom has been touted as THE copywriter to watch. She writes exclusively for  women entrepreneurs and believes that words should speak to the heart–not just to the head. Our conversation was fun and is deeply engaging…as is Nikki. She’s fun and has a wonderful way with words.

 

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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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Unveiling Untruths about being a Woman

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Heart Remembering by Julie Daley

 

Coming to live the truth of who you are is not about becoming more of something, nor is it about fixing anything. Coming to live the truth of who you are is about stripping away the untruths that you came to believe about yourself.

I’m creating a complimentary guide for women and in doing so I decided to reach out and ask friends, colleagues, and readers to share their answers to this question:

What were you told/taught about what it is/means to be a woman
that you’ve since discovered is not true…and why?

I want to know, because I am clear that even though somewhere we KNOW these things we were told are not true, in our everyday world we are faced with the constant messaging that they are…and so as one friend wrote:

“Thank you Julie for the thought provoking question – my comment here would be – most everything that was shared here resonates with me – these things are not true – the confusing part is – we – or society lives or pretends for the most part they are true and hence we get confronted with them on a daily basis – we suck it up and quietly endure – or NOT!!!! : )”

There’s been such a great response, and women have replied that they are really appreciating reading the responses, that I thought I would ask you, my loyal readers, the same question. You never know when something you share will spark an important insight for other women!

There are a couple of options for sharing your responses:

    1. I’ve included the original questions and comments from both my Facebook page and my personal page here. You can respond directly in the threads if you’d like, and you can read the responses.
    2. You can also reply here in the comments, sharing the untruths you’ve come to see.
    3. And if you’d like your comment to remain private, you can send me an email at juliedaley (@) gmail (.) com or send me a private message on my Facebook page.

Please feel free to share the question with other women you know who have something important to add to the conversation.

I’ll be collating the responses into a downloadable complimentary PDF.

 

Post by Unabashedly Female with Julie Daley.

Post by Julie M Daley.

::

This one caused my heart to break open, because it is one that took me a long time to heal in my body:

[that women are] “NOT made in the image of the divine.”

As if this could ever have been thought, and taught, to be so!

 

I do know that it is helpful for all of us to become aware of this strong messaging we are bombarded with not only when we are young, but also on a daily basis.

While we may not resonate with all of the responses, reading them can help us have more compassion for ourselves, for other women, and for all people as we come to realize that both women and men (and of course young boys and girls) are being conditioned to believe so many untruths that keep us from living the truth that already resides in our own souls.

Thank you for sharing whatever you can! By naming what is untrue, we come that much closer to knowing and living the truth of our beings as women in this world. What we bring to the world, just as we are, is deeply needed in these times.

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In My Skin

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I’ve come here to live in my skin. Not to hide away from life, but to shimmy right up to this ever-so-thin layer of dermis so I can truly touch and be touched.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To relate to life, caressed by breeze, by sun, by dew.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. It’s the only thing that separates what I sometimes believe is me from what I sometimes believe is not me. It’s a tender line, isn’t it? This thin skin – a membrane so thin it defies rationality.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. A soft wrapping around the tender-most flesh, it gifts me with what many only speak of in hushed tones – one of the most joyous experiences of life – that of being touched, deeply, reverently consciously.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To know the true intimacy of life is to know the sublime interaction that happens here. It is so simple, yet so profoundly mysterious. We can describe these bodies in scientific, physiological terms. We can say, “Oh yes, I know how it works.” But when we touch another with our whole being, our whole awareness, at the point of connection there are no words to describe it. Nothing we can say can capture this moment of exquisite intimacy.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To be alive, fully and vulnerably, is to offer this skin to the world. To do so is to allow yourself to be touched by what greets you.

I’ve come here to live in my skin, yet along the way I learned so well how not to live in my skin. Each of us has moments when what we experienced was too much, too painful, or too frightening to feel the immensity of the sensations of those experiences.

Over these past many years, I’ve been taking this long journey back into the body. Along with many things, one thing I’ve discovered is that sometimes what I long to say can only be said through my body. Sometimes, there is no way to say with words what the body longs to say. It must be said with touch, with movement, with song or dance.

Maybe that’s our journey, to come back into the skin. We are here in bodies.  We are alive in these bodies, in this skin that was created to know the sublimity of touch and sensation and life.

Why are we alive if not to fully live in this skin?

 

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Wise Woman Wednesday – Lone Mørch

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Wise Woman Wednesday

Occasionally, I share windows into wise women I know. There is no criteria, per se; rather, every now and then I feel called to share something that seems relevant, beautiful, fun, and of course, wise. We women have the opportunity to amplify each other’s voices, to connect women to each other, to share our stories with each other, and it’s something we must do if women are to come into their wholeness and fullness. Plus, it’s just fun to honor and amplify women.

The wise woman: Lone Mørch

I’ve known Lone for about eight years now. We dance regularly together, and we’ve sat and chatted, many times, sipping chai and eating Indian food as we’ve discussed feminism, the sacred feminine and masculine, and how much we’ve learned on this inward journey to wholeness.

Seeing Red

Lone recently published her first book, a memoir titled Seeing Red. In Lone’s words,

“Seeing Red: A Women’s Quest for Truth, Power and the Sacred is an Intimate memoir about a woman’s search for personal power, a journey of climbing inner and outer mountains that takes her to the holy Mt. Kailas in Tibet, through a seven-year marriage, and into the arms of the fierce goddess Kali, where she discovers her powerful feminine self. As much a memoir about coming into one’s own as it is a love affair with the Himalayas, Seeing Red takes the reader on an unforgettable journey of creation and destruction.

This is the story of Denmark native Lone Mørch’s transformation–a story of love and passion, and also a story of self-betrayal. This is every woman’s story because it’s a dispassionate tale of one woman who knowingly gives up on herself, and who has to fight tooth and nail to reclaim herself. In the end, the efforts are worth it, but she has to strip herself bare, lose everything she’s held dear, and strip away everything she’s ever built in order to see the truth.”

 

I loved Seeing Red. It’s fascinating, funny, and moving. It’s Lone’s journey, yet at the same time, in a very universal way, it is every woman’s journey.

The Interview

Lone and I sat down to talk about Seeing Red, but also about how we find our way by being on the journey, not by waiting until we are ready for it. It’s the journey that seasons us with wisdom and healing.

There are many things Lone and I talked about that I feel are universal for us as we reclaim the deep beauty of the feminine. During our chat, Lone revealed, “The story that lived in my belly was the story of power.” Power in the belly…sound familiar?

Over time, what really compelled me to dive more deeply into Lone’s rich experience is what she discovered in her work photographing women through her company, Lolo’s Boudoir. As she worked with more and more women, she discovered she was doing exactly what she needed to do to see what she, herself, was up against in her desire to affirm her own beauty and sexuality. She was seeing and hearing the same beliefs and messages from each woman she photographed that she heard coming from within herself.

During the interview, Lone shared that she was always looking for beauty,for a space for women to be beautiful. As she was starting to step into a deeper sense of sovereignty, she wanted that for the women, too. As she did so, she discovered she could no longer play along with the “slightly superficial boudoir, be sexy” kind of exploration and experience for women.

“The accumulated stories of all these women and their difficulty in accepting their bodies and their difficultures around sensuality and sexuality were piling up. I was starting to be drained and frustrated.”

Lone could clearly see the underbelly of this society, “how it is image driven and how our bodies and our sexuality have been commodified. We become estranged-from-our-essential nature as women.” She didn’t feel in integrity anymore and began to ask herself, “Can I undo stereotypical images of sexy as I create more images?”

Some of Lone’s words of wisdom from her work photographing women:

“Most women end up being naked and feel the most powerful and the most free.”

“I had to allow myself to be more naked and real and put up the front that I’ve got it going on and perfect. It has taught me how to see. It has taught me that I have to fall in love with each person…”

“It healed my mistrust of women; taught me how no matter the age and stage we are at we end up dealing with the same questions.” 

And, as you’ll hear, Lone learned to trust more deeply in her own creative process. She used to be a planner and now she sees she functions really well in the intimate moment. This is so much of what reclaiming the feminine is…learning to trust our deep creative nature and the feminine nature of the creative process, that of the unknown, the fecund, the emergent.

Listen to our chat here. It’s 35 minutes, so you might also want to download it and listen to it on a walk out in the woods…urban or not.

You can buy Seeing Red here, and discover more about Lone’s work here on her ‘Divinely Furious’ blog.

:::

Lone Mørch, in her words:

I’m an award-winning author, photographer, speaker 
and creative facilitator, driven by a deep sense 
of curiosity, freedom and social justice.
 
I am an advocate for women’s visibility, voice and value in the world. For more than a decade, as a photographer, I’ve witnessed thousands of women heal and transform their body-image and self- perception. I’ve learned that the sovereign path, living from inside out, is the only path to self-liberation. Together, I see us break the chain of invisibility and free our voices. As the patriarchy is falling apart around us, we have the glorious opportunity to re-imagine ourselves and our world in a more feminine, honest and harmonious way. This is the conversation I want to invite you into.
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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.

::

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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