Women Weaving Voice into One

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Life force is a flame within.

Creativity is this burning desire to express something into the world, into form, to live something true.

Anat Vaughan-Lee writes, “We do not always know what it is or how to articulate it, but deep inside there is a longing, a longing to live according to a true calling.” We all have this longing, a quality of the feminine.

What I’ve seen over the course of the past twelve years facilitating creativity through courses and coaching is how difficult it can be to allow this expression to come through when we are ‘comfortable’, meaning when our lives aren’t challenged, when we seemingly have what we think we want, what makes us feel safe. But this fire isn’t about comfort, because our lives aren’t about comfort. No, the fire is about expression, and most often there is nothing comfortable about expressing this into the world. Makes sense. It is fire. Fire burns. Fire clears away debris. Yet, in this discomfort we live what our soul is here to live.

What happens when the fire smolders? When it sits in our belly, circling around and around trying to find oxygen to burn but our breathing only goes down to our chest? Fire needs oxygen. It needs space to move. It needs fuel to burn. What has to be thrown onto the pile to fuel the fire?

What has to go? Is it safety? Is it surety? Is it looking good, ensuring we don’t rock boats?  Is it not wanting to see reality as it is, right here, right now? Is it not wanting to feel? Is it not wanting to take responsibility for ourselves and the health of our world?

There could be many things that need to go. I know that is true for me. The desire for safety in my life has been my number one piece of fuel. Yet, in that desire for safety, something completely understood considering my past, I am thinking of only myself. And in doing so, I smolder the flame.

What I’m discovering in holding my Writing Raw circles, and in being in active communion with other women writers, is that there is a fire in women to speak, a fire burning to bring forth what we know into this world through words, through voice. And, I know this because I am a woman and this fire is in me. This fire for voice is a longing to declare what we know and see. It’s a fire to stand on even ground, as a full human being, with a voice that carries across to others, with something to say. And this something comes on its own – if we go within to the source – our own soul.

I just read a 2012 New York Times article, Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry, by Eliza Griswold, and in this piece I see clearly just how this strong this fire is when freedom is taken away. And conversely, I see how comfort smolders the fire rather than stoking it. [The piece is long and well worth the time.]

In this article, Eliza Griswold writes about Mirman Baheer, a women’s literary society based in Kabul, Pashtun poetry, and about how women from the outlying regions of the country where freedom for women is tightly constricted sometimes take amazing risks for their words to be known and their voices heard. 

“Pashtun poetry has long been a form of rebellion for Afghan women, belying the notion that they are submissive or defeated. Landai means “short, poisonous snake” in Pashto, a language spoken on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The word also refers to two-line folk poems that can be just as lethal. Funny, sexy, raging, tragic, landai are safe because they are collective. No single person writes a landai; a woman repeats one, shares one. It is hers and not hers. Although men do recite them, almost all are cast in the voices of women. “Landai belong to women,” Safia Siddiqi, a renowned Pashtun poet and former Afghan parliamentarian, said. “In Afghanistan, poetry is the women’s movement from the inside.”

Traditionally, landai have dealt with love and grief. They often railed against the bondage of forced marriage with wry, anatomical humor. An aging, ineffectual husband is frequently described as a “little horror.” But they have also taken on war, exile and Afghan independence with ferocity.”

 

Poetry is a powerful force in areas where women have so few avenues for self-expression. Poetry is written by women all over the world. Many women speak out, writing powerful poetic pieces that come directly from their souls, and these poems ignite the fires within us.

But so many of us don’t voice our soul’s expression. We long to speak what we sense is smoldering within, but we don’t. And, I’m not talking about being talented or convincing another. I’m talking about being expressed.

Before I go further, I want to be clear I am not wanting to co-opt something so gorgeously belonging to these Afghan women writing Pashtun poetry. And, I’m not equating our lives as western women to these women in the article. Not at all. What I want to do is find the thread that links us together, and find a vehicle of expression that allows for these words to come forth as they desire to do through each of us.

There is a thread that weaves through all of us women – a red thread – a thread of longing – a thread of power and passion – a thread of creative expression that lives and breaths the feminine embodied.

Whether the constriction of freedom is on the outside or whether it is in our internalized beliefs that we aren’t free; whether the threat of harm is obvious and clear, or is veiled and not spoken, this longing to live something, to express this flame of life into the world, is trying to shoot up into life, to live.

What if poetry, one example being these two-line Landai, is the way the feminine (and women) moves from the inside?

What if poetry is simply a word to describe the soul’s language? A language that flows from the heart, that is fired from longing?

We can get stuck in and fixated on our ‘idea’ of poetry as what we’ve known in our experience, yet discovering this form of Landai really opens up my own notion of what poetry ‘is’.

And, the way the Landai are ‘safe’, her’s yet not her’s, makes me wonder. Does our tendency in the west to fixate on ‘owning’ our creativity, our words, get in the way of our creating? If it flows from Source, what greater honor could there be than speaking aloud these words?

This ‘not owning’ individually, but collectively instead, is a quality of the feminine itself, and it would then make sense that women would naturally and instinctively embody this in writing that flows from within.

This ‘her’s yet not her’s’ is an expression of the whole rather than the individual, and it is an expression of giving over one’s needs in service to caring for the whole. 

My friend, Megan McFeely, a filmmaker exploring the feminine through her film, ‘As She Is‘, writes, “More sooner than later we (you and me) are going to have to accept that the rights for the health of the WHOLE are more important than the rights of the individual.”

Is not wanting to cede our individual ‘rights’ that we so strongly hold tight to in many parts of the world, nor letting go of what we believe we ‘own’, getting in the way of a powerful voicing of the soul’s expression – individually AND collectively?

In all expression, there is Source and there is the vessel through which Source expresses. We are each vessels through which Source flows. In this way, our expression is ours but not ours.

Can we women here in the west learn something from this? Can we write poetry that is ours but not ours?

I believe so, and I believe what we can learn is critical to our voices being heard.

The voice within pulses through this flame. We feel it. We can try to turn away from it, but the longing is strong. In the article, Meena, a young woman from Gereshk, Afghanistan writes,

“I wish I had the opportunities that girls do in Kabul,”… “I want to write about what’s wrong in my country.”

Then Eliza adds,

Meena’s father pulled her out of school four years ago after gunmen kidnapped one of her classmates. Now she stays home, cooks, cleans and teaches herself to write poetry in secret. Poems are the only form of education to which she has access.”

Can you feel the fire? The fire to keep learning, to communicate, to express? the desire for freedom? No matter how the flame is tamped down, it still tries to ignite.

Complacency silences. Guilt for having more ‘whatever’ silences. But if we don’t soon throw our individual wants and ownership onto this smoldering fire, what is in store for us? Creation is much more intelligent than our egos. The seed of what is new is trying to break through the ground, as sometimes what cleans the forest floor quickly and efficiently is a raging fire.

I go back to the beginning, asking myself these questions…

What is the fuel you need to offer to this flame of longing within?

How might giving up ownership free you? 

I offer them to you. And then,

Find a circle where you can write that which is yours but not yours, and voice it aloud, and then give it over.

 

:::

writingrawpin02And, if you want to join Writing Raw, a circle in which to write and speak your words aloud, read more and register here. We are beginning Jan 13th, but you can join in anytime.

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Rich With Sacred Becoming

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Rich With Sacred Becoming

 

“To discover who she is, a woman must descend into her own depths. She must leave the safe role of remaining a faithful daughter of the collectives around her and descend to her individual feeling values. It will be her task to experience her pain…the pain of her own unique feeling values calling to her, pressing to emerge. To discover who she is, a woman must trust the places of darkness where she can meet her own deepest nature and give it voice…weaving the threads of her life into a fabric to be named and given…sharing it with the women around her as she comes to a true and certain sense of herself.”  ~ Judith Duerk,

Strung together like lights that lead us down into this darkness, these words speak to me. From these strands and strings of word-lights, I feel the pressing – the ‘pressing to emerge’.

 

Rich With Sacred Becoming

Like watery, primordial pools
where the emergent reveals itself,
slowly,
chaotically,
at first without any known pattern or meaning,
I,
too,
shimmer with the barely known.

Like chthonic, fecund soil,
rich with sacred becoming,
I,
too,
reek of sacred humus,
ripe with nutrients of rebirth.

Like stardust still cooling from the star’s demise,
I,
too,
glow with decay.

Turning my attention inward,
to the pool,
the soil,
the ashes,
the temple teeming with life,
I open to it,
feel it,
receive it,
allow it to fill me,
feed me,
nourish me.

Little in the collective
honors my soul’s humus.

Everything I learned as a faithful daughter
chides my appetite to turn inward.

Yet,
my appetite for the truth
is stronger than
my need for austere approval,
if I turn to the appetite,
the hunger,
the longing.

The revelation comes on its own,
at its own pace,
without aid,
if I honor the insistent
invitation of breath
to deliver my soul,
down,
into my cells.

The birth comes,
on its own,
the child’s pulse
closely tied to the
heartbeat of earth,
if I inhale with expectancy
to be filled with
that same stardust,
the black water,
the dark humus of sacred becoming.

::::

I invite you to journey with me into these sacred pools, this fecund soil, this still-too-hot-to-touch stardust.

In Writing Raw, we cross the threshold into this dark humus of becoming and write what we find ‘into a fabric to be named and given…sharing it with the women around her as she comes to a true and certain sense of herself.’

This is the beauty, and gift, of Writing Raw. It is a circle where you can share, with women around you, the opportunity to come to a more ‘true and certain sense of’ yourself.

I hope you will join me, if it feels right. It can feel right and feel frightening. It can feel right and we can feel shy and unsure. All of these can be true.

Find out more about Writing Raw, here. And, be sure to email me if you have questions that feel important to ask in order to honor this ‘pressing to emerge’.

::

Thank you to Judith Duerk for her ability to express something so important in words, so many years ago, so far ahead of the times.

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Deep-Bellied Places of Woman

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Deep-Bellied Places of Woman

 

i listen with awe to

the sound of women’s souls

painting their lives in

words across the page,

each voice different

as she spills her heart into

the moon’s sure embrace.

 

i drink in the brew and see

the rock-solid foundation that is

woman taking shape again

across this land,

meeting mother earth’s

undulating curves

ragged peaks

soft, still waters

with her own.

 

mother earth has missed

our honest voices,

out truth-telling,

spoken in spite of unspoken

yet so-very present

threats of harm

if

we dare tell the truth of our lives.

 

she is hungry for this

bedrock of soul

to lie up against

the outline of her body,

her soul.

 

she has missed us knowing her this way.

she has missed us knowing ourselves in this way.

 

we are remembering, together.

always, together.

 

(c) Julie M Daley, 2014

 

written during Writing Raw, Fall 2014

 

:::

 

Writing Raw, Winter 2015 is now open for registration, with an early bird price until Dec. 31, 2014

I would love for you to join us. The circle is already forming.

image is ‘gori, the fair one’ by anurag agnihotri on flickr under cc 2.0 license.
no changes were made to this beautiful image.

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Being With: Reflections on 9/11 and Sandy Hook

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What I am going to share here is based solely on my experience – what I’ve experienced personally. As we come to the 2nd anniversary of Sandy Hook (tomorrow, December 14th, 2014) I’ve felt a strong urge to write this. These are my reflections.

 

As many of you know,

I worked with people directly affected by 9/11 for over three years, from ’03 – ’06. In the first year or so, I coached a large number of family members who’d lost love ones in 9/11 as part of a larger program they were taking, which comes out of the same core program I teach. Then, during the second year, I taught a couple of those courses and continued to coach.

Following these courses, I was hired to design and teach a dating relationship class to women who’d lost their spouses/partners in 9/11. Over eighteen months, along with my colleague Julie (yes, two Julie’s teaching together), I had the truly lovely experience of working with these women to discover a way to bring a new loving partner into their lives while also still grieving their loss. It is not true that we have to put our grief away in order to date again. We can find a partner who is willing to enter into a relationship with us even if we have experienced major loss.

Over the time I worked with these many family members, I found we as Americans to be supportive and truly desiring for there to be healing for these families. In fact, there was so much public attention around 9/11, many of these family members had a hard time finding a way to grieve privately – something we all need when going through the grief of traumatic events. We need our privacy, while also needing to know we are part of a larger community that is holding us firmly in love and respect.

During these years, 9/11 was still very much in the news, not only news of the American response to the attack, but also news about the family members and things they were beginning to do in the world.

When I would speak about my work with people in general, people engaged in conversation with me about it. There was a willingness to talk about it. It had affected all of us in a profound way.

This past Winter and Spring, along with two other women, I had the incredible opportunity to teach the same course again, but this time to people directly affected by the tragedy at Sandy Hook School, in Newtown, Connecticut. It was the first time the course would be offered, and I was asked to join-on because of my experience in teaching this material to so many diverse populations over the past twelve years. I won’t share anything about the experience of teaching there. It is too private, too personal, and requires a great deal of respect and confidentiality.

What I want to speak to is the difference in how I experienced our response to this event as Americans compared to our response to 9/11. It feels vitally important to do so.

I remember when I first heard about Sandy Hook. I was preparing to be on a Mastermind group call. We all got on the phone together, but I couldn’t continue. I almost couldn’t speak at all, the shock was so great. I excused myself from the call and sat down and sobbed. The shock and grief hit me hard, like I know it did for many Americans and many others around the world. What happened at Sandy Hook was something horrendous – so many very young children being killed in such a violent way. Still to this day, it is hard to truly think about what happened with full consciousness. I can only imagine it, based on what I have heard and read.

So as I prepared to teach, I began to really sit with the whole experience, not only what happened that day, but how we as Americans had dealt with it since that day. I first knew I would be teaching prior to the 1st Anniversary of Dec. 14th, 2012. I began to watch how we as a country spoke about this event. I noticed, especially as I mentioned to others I would be teaching, a marked difference in the responses to Sandy Hook versus the responses to 9/11.

I’m not here to compare them as better or worse. But I want to talk about how they were, and continue to be, different. I’ve thought a lot about why they would be different, based on my own experiences and reflections. Obviously, in many ways, 9/11 was a much larger event. More people were killed in 9/11. And, our largest city was affected not only by the deaths, but also by many injuries and fallout from the towers falling, as well as the ongoing fallout from illnesses and trauma. I understand this. I am not comparing the two events on scale. I am comparing them because they are two events I’ve been involved with on some level, and because I’ve noticed things simply from my own perspective as an American and as a human being trying to make sense of how we continue to turn our hearts away from the level of violence we experience here in our country.

In 9/11, the perpetrators were from the outside. They weren’t ‘one of us’, which made a clear distinction where to put our care and attention – on those affected by the attack. We could do this because those affected could be marked distinctly from those who were responsible for the attack. The event was horrendous, yes, and we drew a clear line of distinction between who was ‘bad’ and who was ‘good’.

With Sandy Hook, though, the person responsible was not only one of us, an American, he was from the community of Newtown. Suddenly, this dark, horrendous event was not outside of American soil, it was right here in our backyard, right here in our own culture, right here in our own family.

In 9/11, we could focus our anger and outrage on ‘others’, but with Sandy Hook we could not. There was no other. There was a barely-adult boy who was one of our own.

I noticed how people responded differently to me when I would speak of the work with 9/11 families versus the work in Newtown. Our faces tell a great deal.

But what I truly noticed was how quiet our country has been about the entire event. For the first few weeks, we heard a lot about it. Then, we went quiet. At first there was great outrage, then there was little. I know not everyone has been quiet. There are mom’s groups working to dismantle the power that gun lobbies have, as well as the many groups that have helped to bring healing to Newtown, one of which was the center that hired us to teach. But the media and our politicians, as well as most Americans do not talk about it. I think this points to something important, not only collectively but individually.

When we can point the finger at someone else, it is much easier to be actively vocal about things. We can look at them and ‘other’ them so that we create a firm separation of us vs. them.

But, when we have to look at ourselves, it becomes much harder to accept. Whether it is our country collectively, or ourselves individually, to do the deeper work means we must come to look within ourselves, and within our own culture. This is where many of us tend to shut down, because we don’t want to see what we are capable of. We don’t want to see the darkness that lurks right underneath our noses. We’d rather ‘other’ each other, believing it will solve our problems if we just grow more armor, more separate, ‘securing’ ourselves behind beliefs that somehow separation from each other will keep us safe from some imagined possible transgression in the future, or from a past hurt we’ve never been able to truly look at.

I never spoke about this with anyone during my stays in Newtown. That wasn’t why I was there. But, it’s been on my mind for a year, and in my heart. There is a very important learning here for us – very important. Every situation, every person, can be a teacher if we are willing to learn.

And, it’s not just what happened at Sandy Hook. It’s happening over and over and over here in our own country. Whether it is one of the multiple school shootings since Sandy Hook, or the recent events in Ferguson, NY, and Cleveland, or any of the other violent events in our country, we must begin to talk about what is here right in our own backyard. We must begin to talk about how we treat each other, and in turn how we defend ourselves so aggressively against each other. And, we must talk about shame and silence.

The healing we can offer each other is great. It is powerful. And it is needed. But it won’t happen if we can’t talk about it, if we can’t see that what is ‘out there’ is also right here in our own backyard; if we can’t see that everything outside of us in others is right here within ourselves.

I believe with Sandy Hook we felt fear, but more importantly we feel shame and guilt. It’s like a cover of silence descends over the event, a shutting down, a turning away.

Shame is a nasty beast. It causes us to go silent. It causes us to defend. It causes us to separate. It causes us to shut down, to lash out, to vow never to trust. I know. I’ve done a lot of personal work with shame, as have many of you. Guilt does the same things.

The funny thing about shame and guilt is that we go unconscious. For the most part, we don’t even know we’ve gone unconscious. We don’t realize how we’ve not talked about, nor faced on a deeper level, that which has caused us to feel shame, guilt, or fear or whatever else we might be feeling.

Think about it. How hard is it for you to think about Sandy Hook and what happened there? And how might that difficulty be affecting not only those affected by the event, but also your personal ability to heal as well as our collective healing?

And, when we won’t look at something, what are we making more important than creating a culture safe for our children, a culture of peace?

Is our fear of discomfort in facing what feels like a mountain of things we don’t want to see or feel keeping us from being who we need to be to create this change?

What are we valuing over life itself?

What matters is that we need each other. Life isn’t easy. We are vulnerable as human beings.

I know, after working with so many people over these years, that we heal, we create much healthier families and communities, when we open to each other and ask for help and give help. When the larger community we are a part of acknowledges it has our back, that it knows we’ve suffered and that it is here for us, we feel held and can heal. We are reminded we are not alone. Whether this larger community is our own family, our friends, our town, the country in which we live, or our global family, it is the same. And in this way, the larger community heals, because when we offer ourselves to others we heal, too. We grow, too. We transform into more compassionate and kinder people, and a more compassionate, kinder nation.

To do this we must stop and be present to what we’ve created as a society. Together.

When will we be with the hard and difficult feelings?

When will we begin to ask the hard questions that can lead to transforming the culture in which we live? 

When will we be with each other?

The time to create community to face these things is now. It is too much to bear alone. That’s why we have each other. We cannot do it alone.

 

 

 

 

 

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Life is Breathing Us Awake

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Weaving

Since the Ferguson’s Grand Jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson, I’ve been reading, watching, listening. I’ve been taking in all of this information, thinking that if I just take in enough, somehow I’ll understand.

And then, I stopped. I suddenly felt so full, as if I’d eaten this huge meal and knew I needed to digest it. I’d filled myself up. And in doing so, I realized why I had writer’s block for the past few weeks.  I write from my heart, and instead I’ve been swirling in information. So, I let it all settle.

Diane Arbus, the world renowned photographer, once told her students, “You must learn not to be careful.”  I imagine they were learning how to see, how to listen to the world through the lens, and she was advising them to take risks to become the photographers they were meant to be. I see our opportunity in a similar way, here in our country.

We are learning. We must learn not to be careful…so careful we don’t enter into conversations, we don’t listen deeply to others’ stories and even listen for what is under their words so we can hear what is in our hearts. We are experiencing a huge upheaval in this country. We cannot afford to sweep it back under the rug. We must address this. And, we’re going to mess things up along the way. That I know. It’s what we do when we are learning. But we let our hearts be our guide, we can do this.

For the last twelve years, I’ve felt this internal tug, the call of the Feminine. I truly haven’t known what I’ve been doing or where it would take me. And yet, deeper than all of that doubt was the knowing that everything that was happening to me was taking me closer and closer to what is real within. And, closer and closer to a lived knowing of our interconnectedness.

The feminine holds everything, loves everyone. She doesn’t discriminate. She weaves and connects us all together. She is the weaving. As the feminine rises, as She awakens, She is trying to weave us back together…to wake us up to this beautiful, vast, numinous Mystery that is at the heart of our existence.

 

Then, while digesting,

Life proceeded to show me what I was really longing to know. Something Oriah Mountain Dreamer shared on Facebook led me to read this interview by Tami Simon of Sounds True with James Finley. Finley is a master of the Christian contemplative way. As I read these words from Finley, I was stunned…

“… and then the big life-changing event for me, which was a little thing- It’s one of these things: I was at the monastery, and Thomas Merton gave me permission to spend some time alone in an abandoned sheep barn, and I would go up into the loft of this abandoned sheep barn, and the doors of the barn were always open and looked out over this meadow. It was in Kentucky, it was very hot, and I was walking back and forth, saying the Psalms. The experience, to me, was that what we tend to think of as the air is literally God, that I was walking back and forth through God, breathing God. There were no emotions connected with it. There were no images. It was like a matter-of-factness to the divinity of air.

I don’t know how else to say that. It was just that I was walking back and forth through God, breathing God. And it was clear to me that, no matter where I would try to run from God, I’d be running away from God, in the God that I was breathing and was sustaining me. And this air, this oceanic God that I was breathing, knew me through and through and through and through as compassion, just endless compassion without boundaries. It was just-I know no words to describe it.”

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…stunned because this is exactly what I experienced in India in 2006. Walking along the river Ganges in Varanasi, I had the same experience – I was breathing in God because God was in the air – God was the air, God was everywhere. And in this experience, just after experiencing it, I used the word God to describe it, which for most of my life I had not. 

As I read James’ words, my entire body shivered with this memory, and as I looked out into my living room where I was sitting reading, I could feel that I was swimming in God…inside and out. I had the experience, again, that there was no need to run toward, or away from, God because everything is God. There was no more looking for God, or for Love, because everything is Love. Everything. Inside. Outside. No more distinction between the two.

I stood up to look out my window as the sun was beginning to rise over the city. Everything outside my window was God, and not the God that I learned as a child – a man on a throne – but God as Life. Inside and outside, everything was God.

I suddenly felt compelled to go outside, to walk to the park to see the sun rise…to stand at the top of the steps to witness it.

Within minutes,

Dec0114Sunrise01I was standing atop the many steps as the sun began to peek through. I recalled what Oriah shared:

What would it look like to give my heart/myself away
in love with every word, every sentence, every story?”

And, as I stood watching this sunrise unfold over the next
fifteen minutes, I could feel how the Mystery, this Great Love, was giving itself away, offering itself as this gift of a sunrise.

With each breath, I was offered this gift. 

Everything given. Everything offered completely, given away completely.

No taking was necessary on my part, because it was, and always is, given, offered completely, wholly, holy.

I walked to the local cafe for tea, and sat outside on the bench watching people pass by, and the most remarkable thing happened, but not remarkable at all, really. My heart was blown open and as I looked out my eyes I knew God was watching the world through my eyes. I could feel the love of Life for Life, for each person, each being, each particle, each cell. There were no fireworks, no bells and whistles. There was only Love for everything being witnessed. There was no me, no them, no separation, yet there was still my humanness experiencing this profound Love for everything I was taking in from this spot on this bench.

“Infinite Love that gives itself away with every breath.” 

Infinite Love being given with every breath.

“The experience, to me, was that what we tend to think of as the air is literally God, that I was walking back and forth through God, breathing God.”  

Infinite Love being received with every breath.

And then, two days after this profound experience, I heard the news, and saw the words, over and over and over,

“I can’t breathe.”

“I can’t breathe.”

“I can’t breathe.”

 

We are both givers of this Infinite Love and receivers of this Infinite Love.

And yet, we learn to choke this Divine breath from another.

We learn to leave each other, dying, alone.

Life doesn’t give itself away to only some. Life gives itself away to each one of us, to every being, to all of Life.

The path of the sacred heart, the path of Love, is not about not being angry. Anger is the fuel for change. Anger that rises up out of the depths of this great Love that breathes us is one of the most powerful catalysts for creativity if we feel it within ourselves and listen for what it underneath it. It can be the most powerful creative impulse. I have been feeling mine and I know it is fuel to help us make change in the world. 

I know of one powerful being who threw a righteous fury in a temple when He could no longer take the injustice.

How do we move forward?

As Oriah wrote,

“What would it look like to give my heart/myself away in love” with every choice I make?

And these words from my good friend, Megan McFeely, who recently wrote this powerful piece:

“I believe we are all empowered…our work is right inside us. An evolutionary impulse is living through us because life demands freedom for all. It is our birthright and we have the power to act.”

“Life demands freedom for all. It is our birthright and we have the power to act.”

This IS ‘an evolutionary impulse’. Life is trying to weave us back together.  

Life is breathing us awake.

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Do we dare live our sacred humanity?

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OliveTreeUnderStarlight

 

We are the sum of our ancestors
Our roots stretch back to blue-green algae
They stretch to the stars
They ultimately reach the void
This history is inscribed in our psyches
Silence and solitude enjoin us to remember
Our whole and great body.
~ Joan Halifax

Listen to the audio…

 

Our whole and great body. The sum of everything that has existed is within us, each of us and every one of us.

We cannot escape this earth. She is our home, our mother, our world. No matter how hard we try to escape, with thoughts of heaven, realms of light, any place other than here, this place is we are born, it is where we live out our lives, and it is where we will die. Our bodies are made up of her. The food we eat comes from her. Our lives are spent here on her. No matter how smart we think we are, how much we believe we can control her forces, or how much we attempt to destroy her, she remains our generous mother.

Roots that stretch deep down into the humus, the incredibly rich, humus, deep earth of the ages… all the way through the center of the earth to the stars, to the void of creation.

Perhaps the way to the stars is not by escaping earth in rocket ships of metal technology…perhaps the way to the stars is through this deep rich humus, the matter that is this human earthly existence. How different is our earth from the stars? Our flesh is made of stardust. Our bones are ancient sacred sites. Our blood is liquid light.

Perhaps it is only by becoming fully human that we find the place of wholeness, the place of everything, where starlight infuses flesh, and love for everything embraces our fears. If we become quiet enough, and maybe even alone enough, we finally settle into our bones, into the depth of gravity that allows us to understand that we are part of something so much greater than our fear of ourselves…and each other.

 

Do we dare open our arms and hearts wider when there is so much violence and greed?

Do we dare live joy when there is so much suffering?

Do we dare feel the depth of love that is available for all of life when so many of us generate hate?

Do we dare remember our flesh is made of stardust and our blood is liquid light?

Do we dare settle all the way down into our flesh and bones, giving ourselves over to this one precious life?

Do we dare be here, all the way here, no longer trying to escape to somewhere else?

Do we dare plant ourselves, here, in this deep-of-the-ages dirt, paws, claws, and all?

Do we dare be fully human, infused with liquid light?

 

Do we dare be fully human, living our sacred humanity?

I say Yes.

It is our sacred humanity that will heal us back into wholeness, heal us back into earth’s family, heal us back into this web of life that stretches back to the ancestors, back to the stars, back to that from which everything is born.

It is by living our sacred humanity, here, right here, rooted in the earth, that we will remember what we truly are.

 

Image is ‘Starlight Under Olive Tree’, by MgPixel  under creative commons 2.0

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Shaking Off the Concrete: A Wildly Alive and Fiery Force

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This Big Old Wild and Lovely Tree

A few weeks ago, as I was walking down the main street of my neighborhood business district, I came upon a scene with men in suits, men in hard hats, and men with chain saws. They were watching and talking, gesticulating and sawing. This big old wild and lovely tree had grown too big for her ‘place’, her roots uprooting the concrete sidewalk that had been placed all around her when she was young and still manageable, not her full-grown, wild-self nature.

As I stopped to watch, I heard one of the men in suits talking about the tree say, “It just became too much for the street here, too much to contain. We had to cut it down. We’ll dig up the roots, cut them out, and pave over the hole. It will be much cleaner.”

She couldn’t and wouldn’t be contained in that too-small spot she was given, decorating the fancy-shopped street along with a few other chosen trees, spaced neatly and orderly along the way. She was trying to shake the concrete off, trying to grow into her full potential, following the seed’s instructions that were at the heart of her becoming.

Now, enough days have passed by that all signs of the tree are gone, except for the sidewalk squares that are obviously new concrete, sitting right up against the old. There won’t be any more ‘growing things’ in that spot. We must maintain a controlled-enoughness at all times.

 

Pave Paradise

Now, I’m sitting, waiting for my Darshan with Amma.  Amma is the Indian saint who’s travelled the earth hugging others with unconditional love. I’ve been graced with her hugs many, many times, and each time is different.

The temple is filled with Shakti. My body is filled with fire.

As I wait, I hear a voice inside, an insistent voice, a fiery voice that is clear about what she wants. Shake it off. Shake everything off that is not true. Strip me bare of everything that hides my nature, that hides who I really am, like concrete laid out in large archaic patches across Mother Earth, keeping her bound, her bosoms unable to rise and fall with those magnificent in-breaths and out-breaths she takes as she prepares meals for her children.

As I see this almost-furious voice laying claim to what is true, I see that I am this strong core with deep roots, a core that is unshakable and roots that hold me steadfast to the earth.

I’ve been paved over. I was wrapped with concrete, laced with rebar that holds the paving in place, maintains a strict form, and certainly doesn’t allow any big bosom breaths to shake up the status quo.

You know that old Joni Mitchell song that croons, “We paved paradise and put in a parking lot”? Yeah, that one. Sometimes, that’s what this body of mine feels like – like paradise, a flesh and blood paradise, a conscious, aware, breathing, desiring paradise that’s been paved, made into a parking lot full of concrete, straight lines, and all sorts of rules as to who owns it.

 

Feral Flesh

Enough rules about ingress, egress, and regress will cause
any wild woman to forget that she was ever feral flesh.

And not the kind of feral flesh that old ‘parking lot attendant’, the one who believes he knows the ‘lay of the land’ and the rules about who gets to use this used-to-be-paradise, would want you to believe. No, not at all.

THIS. This body, this feral flesh – feral as in completely and utterly in tune with the seed of her becoming – flesh as completely and utterly part of this existence we call life, matter infused with the love and vitality, inspiration and creativity, vibrancy and expectancy that anything completely alive knows – this feral flesh, this desiring paradise, still remembers, still feels, still knows it is good and whole and necessary.

The Soul can only know what it is to be fully alive in this life by way of this body. A paved over body cuts the tree down, uproots the roots – at least in our psyche. Our doing this causes great pain to the Soul. But when we turn back to Soul, when we show we are ready to let the Soul lead, the Soul returns, shaking concrete off of roots, untwisting rebar, unveiling her nature, the trunk and roots begin to emerge.

As Amma takes me into her arms and I feel her presence, I can tell she’s heard my Soul’s request. She hugs me with a force I’ve not felt before, her jackhammer of love hitting against those thick slabs of forgetfulness and severed connection. She’s tearing away the untruths just as this fiery voice requests.

These two wildly alive and fiery loving Divine Beings seem to have a direct line to each other. It is my job to get out of the way and let Nature do its work.

You don’t have to be in Amma’s presence for Nature to help shake off the concrete. Nature is ready and willing.

::

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Experience Becoming a Force of Nature!
I’m offering my course, Becoming a Force of Nature, over the summer, running from June 2nd through September 3rd, 2014. Our first call is on June 4th, with the first module being released on the 2nd, to give you time to go over the material.

This time, I’m offering the first module and call (June 4th) to EVERYONE, free of charge!

Sign-up here to receive the module so you can experience the course. I know you will learn a great deal just from Module One.

 

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No Longer Spitting in the Face of God

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woman with a basket of mandarins

What is woman?

She is woman.
She is not an imitation of man.
She is not made from man.
She is unique unto herself.
She isn’t perfect, yet she is sacred.
She is the vessel from which life is born.
She isn’t superior to man, nor is she inferior.
She is the female human being.

::

To denigrate women is to spit in the face of God. ~ Desmond Tutu

We live in a culture that has, for centuries, maybe millennium, denigrated the Feminine…and as walking embodiments of the Feminine, women and girls are living, breathing targets of this fear and hatred of the Feminine – also known as misogyny.

Allan G. Johnson writes in The Gender Knot:

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

 

Allan Johnson also writes,

…patriarchy is not simply another way of saying “men.” Patriarchy is a kind of society, and a society is more than a collection of people. It also involves as one of its key aspects the oppression of women.”

 

Patriarchy is NOT men. It’s a system. It’s a system we are born into. It’s a system we all hold up, and continue to breath life into, when we don’t question the assumptions we hold about men, women, and power, and about how we are in the world with each other.

It’s a system we give power to when we don’t question how we value ourselves as women, and how we value womanhood.

It’s a system we help to keep in place when we ‘hate our own femaleness’.

It’s a system that continues to control how we view ourselves when we don’t question these internalized misogynist images.

 

This isn’t about men vs. women.

Not at all. We often think when one attempts to have a conversation about this subject matter that we are blaming men, but if you read further into Johnson’s book (which I hope you will!), you will see that attempts to subvert these discussions are ways to keep this kind of system alive and well.

And if we focus on the self-hate, we are doing exactly what Johnson mentions – not seeing the mechanism of patriarchy at work.

 

This post IS about…

…the images we, women and men, carry around within ourselves of the Feminine, women, and the value of women.

This post IS about…

…the places within us that are outside of the realm of patriarchy.

 

We are all, men and women, given images when we are young of what a woman is and what a man is. In a world (for the most part – some indigenous cultures do not do this) that has denigrated the Feminine for centuries, it would make sense that our images of the Feminine would be less than helpful at best, and downright misogynist at worst; and our images of men would be championed (although as we’ve explored coming to terms with equality for women over the past decades, there’s been a lot of mud slinging both ways.)

Of course, as I’ve been writing this over the past few days, the writing has been working on me. What initially began as a more cerebral exploration and post, soon became very personal and emotional for me. As I sat with, something I try to do when I am writing a post, these images that I hold of myself, these misogynistic images I’ve ingested over my lifetime, I began to truly grasp the depth of this programming by a system that is misogynistic to its core.

Some of the images I see in my own psyche about myself are deeply misogynistic. Of course they are. I’ve been swimming in this system my entire life. I’ve been ingesting these images from the time I began to be conscious of what was around me. We wonder why it is so hard for women to love themselves. We don’t have to look far. We just have to be willing to look inside, into the depths of what we’ve come to believe, and feel, about our womanhood, and about our female bodies.

And, men do not escape the pain of this culture. Not at all. The Feminine is within them. And, their mothers, sisters, daughters, friends are women. When they hold these misogynistic images within their psyches, they must deaden the pain of knowing that the women they love deeply are walking, breathing, embodiments of this Feminine that is so feared and so hated.

 

Instead, if we are willing…

What we can is come to know the images of what it is to be female that lay outside the realm of patriarchal conditioning. These images come to us as we honestly, and wholly, ask the question, “What is it to be female?”

We can question what we’ve believed to be true. We can look directly at the images we hold of ourselves as women, of other women, and of the Feminine itself.

Inquire into the images of the Feminine that YOU are carrying around within you. Look inside. What images are YOU holding of woman? What images do you believe to be true about you and your femaleness?

This is what matters, because when we hold images, and we all do, they are the images we offer to others about ourselves. They are the images we give to others, mostly unconsciously, that tell others about who we believe ourselves to be, how much worth we believe we have, and how the people in our lives should treat us.

The images of self and gender we hold that speak to self-hatred are not natural. They are not native to us.

Images of self-hatred are not native to us. Images of self-hatred are not native to that place within us that has never been under the control of patriarchal thought and conditioning. 

We are love.  And, we can be fierce love. When we begin to hold images of ourselves as women worthy of dignity, respect, and love, we begin to view ourselves differently. I’m not talking band-aid images – I’m talking a real and true transformation of the images we hold about ourselves, other women, and the Feminine. When we find these places of dignity, respect, and love within ourselves, we begin to know something new, something real, something sacredly creative.

Anne Baring writes,

“The recovery of the feminine principle is the key to the transformation of our world culture from decay and disintegration and progressive regression into uniformity, banality and brutality, into something longed for and extraordinary.

Woman’s own awakening to the realisation of her value is part of the recovery of the feminine principle. It is as if a momentous birth is taking place in the collective psyche of woman. This birth may be experienced as something that is deeply perplexing and difficult as well as something exciting and challenging. As woman gives birth to herself, to her unique individuality, to the emerging awareness of her value as woman (not an imitation of man), the feminine principle will also emerge in the consciousness of humanity which for so long has suffered from its repression and rejection.

Woman, whose essential nature is to respond to suffering and need, is now responding to life’s own need and is experiencing herself as the vessel of transformation in which a new consciousness is being born.”

 

A woman is reborn as she gives birth “to her unique individuality, to the emerging awareness of her value as woman (not an imitation of man).

We are reborn when we ask the question (with a longing to listen so we truly hear the answer), What is it to be female? We are reborn in the space from which we listen. This isn’t woman as imitation of man, or woman born from man’s rib. This is, as Rilke wrote, “the female human being.”

 

 As Woman

When I come to know myself as Woman,
as sacredly female outside of patriarchal control,
I am held in the lap of Love,
I am back in the garden of Earth,
I breathe in the fragrance of Life,
I eat of the fruit of Wisdom,
I am no longer a stranger in the holy land,
the only land in which I am truly alive,
the land of my own body,
the realm of my own Soul.

::

image from Flickr Commons: Woman with a basket of mandarins, 1920-1930,
Photographer: Unidentified, Location: Queensland, Australia; No known copyright restrictions

 

 

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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.

JesMegBehindScences


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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The Force that compels us to Rise

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forcethatcausesustorise

Rising for Justice

For many people around our planet, February 14th is becoming associated with One Billion Rising, a global campaign to demand an end to violence against women and girls. We rise as women, as men, as human beings who know another world is possible and who are willing to speak out to help bring about this new world.

onebillionrising2014This year, One Billion Rising was about rising for Justice.*** One Billion Rising is a tidal wave of change IF we understand it is not a fad to take part in and then move on to another, but rather a clear opportunity to verbalize and put into action our desire to end this violence.

For many of us in Western cultures, it’s Valentine’s Day, too. This past Friday night, Feb. 14th, 2014, I had the pleasure and joy of co-hosting a One Billion Rising women’s movement ritual with Stacey Butcher and Lakshmi Devi. Stacey, a 5Rhythms teacher, hosted a 5Rhythms wave; Lakshmi, a singer and songwriter, sang her songs, and invited us to sing as we moved into stillness at the end of the dance; and I shared writings and poetry, as well as recorded spoken-word poetry mixed with a beautiful instrumental song at the end of the dance wave.

Here I share with you what I shared on Friday evening. I hope it inspires you to listen for the deep wisdom inside of you, and feel for the force that will cause you to rise and stand for what you know in your heart to be true, and for a kinder, more tender world where all can live in dignity without fear of violence.

::

Love and Justice

Today we celebrate love. Today we rise for Justice. The two are inescapably linked.

When we love Life, Life itself that gives us this life, we cannot help but feel the call for justice in our bones – a justice that honors life itself.

Tonight we are sharing in a movement ritual. As I was preparing for tonight, I wondered what ritual is really about and I found this excerpt from an interview with Joseph Campbell.

“A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.”

Tonight we are here together to move in ritual, as women who desire to rise in service to justice. And, through this ritual, we are here to be reminded of the wisdom of our own lives, the wisdom that is within us, a wisdom that has been within us all along.

We are here to remember the mythology that is at the heart of our lives as women in a world that is so much more than what we sometimes see it to be.

 

So, What is it to rise?

What does that even mean? Rising is a movement upwards. If we are rising, what are we rising up from? And what is behind the rising?

What is the force that compels us to rise? 

The invitation tonight is to dance these questions, to dance yourself open enough to hear a response from within you, a response from your wise self, your Soul.

This wise self is instinctive and instinctual. She is visceral, animal, and primordial. She is feral. She is wide-eyed and sensual.

Your Soul knows how to rise.

Rising is in your blood and bones. It is in your cells. It is in your belly, because love desires to move through you, to rise you up into the world, way beyond what your mind thinks you are capable of. And love desires to move us all to live in accordance with what love desires, not what we desire.

“Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible. To love you have to climb out of the cradle, where everything is ‘getting,’ and grow up into the maturity of giving, without concern for getting anything special in return. Love is not a deal, it is a sacrifice. It is not marketing, it is a form of worship.” ~Thomas Merton

 

Many years ago,

I danced in Mill Valley, on a Tuesday night with Kathy Altman. Leading the class, she did something truly extraordinary…at least it was for me. I remember that night like it is this night. I remember it because I was led to dance a dance where I was so awake, so alive, deep in the cells of my body, that every move was imprinted in my cells.

This dance was visceral. It was instinctive. My Soul danced this dance, and then we wrote this as a way to capture words about something beyond words.

 

Tonight I danced.

Tonight I danced and came alive.
Tonight I danced and cried and pulsed and throbbed.

She told us to make our presence known.
She asked us to step so strongly there was no question we had been there.

She reminded us to track ourselves,
to be so aware of where we had been and where we were going,
so much so that our path wrapped its way around and around us until we were tightly wound balls of Being.

My hands connected,
molasses-like energy stretching from mama earth to the tips of my fingers.
As I perched on my paws, I felt her kindred spirit suck me into her tendrils of love.

Tonight I danced and came alive.
I felt his pulse, absorbing it into my body.
I felt her love, letting it run down my arm and fill my heart.
I felt their joy, knowing it was mine, too.
I knew other as self.

Tonight I danced and came alive.

So, tonight…

Here, together, let us come alive.

Tonight, together, let us dance these questions.

Tonight, remember the wisdom within you, reveal your instincts, feel the desire in your body to dance into its wholeness. Our bodies are creatures, instinctual creatures with hearts, longings, and voices that must speak.

::

 

Later, at then end of the dance as we moved into stillness, Stacey played a song that was a compilation of my spoken words and a powerful instrumental piece by Max Richter, On the Nature of Daylight.

Whatever you’ve been through, whatever life has brought your way, whatever injustices, betrayals, or abuses you have experienced, you have survived.

You are here. Alive. Breathing. Dancing.

Whatever injustices, betrayals, or abuses you have perpetrated, you have survived.

You are here. Now. Alive. Whole.

Breathe this in, really take this knowing in. That you are here, alive, whole, and awake regardless of what happened in your past. Feel this aliveness in every cell of your body, a body that longs to know this aliveness, longs to live its fullness. Allow your heart to expand to the capacity that is its nature. Allow your arms to spread as wide and open as they long to be. Allow your belly to pulse and swell with the primordial creation that infuses your being with this precious life.

You are here, on this earth. You are alive on our beautiful planet. You are whole, a wholeness that is filled from the mother.

And, it is time to bring this aliveness to the world. To bring your wholeness to this world that is hungry for feeling, thirsty for truth, dying to be alive, wanting to be touched.

This is your gift to this world. Your aliveness. Your wholeness. Your breath. Your beauty. And to live this is to live what life is asking of you, what life is asking you to give. It is yours and yet it is not. It is given. It is given to you, through you, so that you can in turn give it forth.

It is this simple. Spend every breath completely, but not just for yourself. Spend it for Life, for others, for what is coming into being, for what is being born.

Be full. Be whole. Be love. Be truth.

 

There is already a mythology and an inherent wisdom within us that knows how to move mountains, and to birth something new.

riseupreclaimbadge275

Dance yourself open. Listen Deeply. Track yourself. Come back and tell us what you discover.

Allow it to show you where Justice lies, where Hope lives, where Love beckons.Open to this Force within. Dance, listen, and allow it to move you.

I hope you’ve enjoyed and have been inspired by these words.

If so, I ask you to share in the comments below how they’ve inspired you to rise.
I ask you to share with other women and men you know who are ready for similar inspiration.

If you’d like to read about last year’s rising, you can download this complimentary eBook, ‘rise up & reclaim’.

 

*** from OneBillionRising.Org:
ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE is a global call to women survivors of violence and those who love them to gather safely in community outside places where they are entitled to justice – courthouses, police stations, government offices, school administration buildings, work places, sites of environmental injustice, military courts, embassies, places of worship, homes, or simply public gathering places where women deserve to feel safe but too often do not.  It is a call to survivors to break the silence and release their stories – politically, spiritually, outrageously – through art, dance, marches, ritual, song, spoken word, testimonies and whatever way feels right.

Leading Image: LicenseAttribution Some rights reserved by mikebaird

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