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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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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 The thinking mind is very good at perpetuating its ruts and stories, dragging out its outdated ideas and beliefs.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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Remembering How to Live is The Great Work of Our Time

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sanfraciscobay

The reason why the universe is eternal is because it does not live for itself.
~ Lao Tzu

You can feel the lineage of love as you read these words; a lineage to the future. Life is always in flux, always becoming, always giving birth to itself and then dying away.

Maybe, just maybe, this is why we humans are facing extinction. Too many of us live for ourselves – solely for ourselves… and maybe for our immediate loved ones.

When we live this way, we are not living the eternal Tao.

We are not living The Way.

We are not living in harmony with Creation.

 

The Creator created the People of the Earth into the Land at the beginning of Creation and gave us a way of life. This way of life has been passed down generation-to-generation since the beginning. We have not honored this way of life through our own actions and we must live these original instructions in order to restore universal balance and harmony. We are a part of Creation; thus, if we break the Laws of Creation, we destroy ourselves.

~ from the Council Statement at CaretakersOfMotherEarth.com (the Spiritual People of the Earth, of North and South America, working in unity to restore peace, harmony and balance for our collective future and for all living beings).

 

I have found myself with my ear to the ground over the last several years…sometimes literally, but mostly metaphorically. I’ve found myself drawn to listen deeply to the Earth.

I’ve found myself in odd places at odd times because I heeded the call of intuition and guidance: an early morning labyrinth walk during a full-moon eclipse; a pilgrimage to Ireland where I walked on sacred land and sat with the holy flame of Brigid (and arriving to be with this flame only happened because of a dozen synchronistic moments aided by at least six other human beings); a muddy walk up the side of Haleakala, the dormant volcano of Maui; praying at the burning ghats in Varanasi, India.

Each place on our Earth has its own song. Each place has its own rhythm and cadence. Each place can guide us to remember our place in the Family of All Things.

sanfranciscobaysunsetfullmoon

Look up into the autumn sky.
Lay your hands on your heart and attune to what is really happening here:
There are yellows coming into existence that have never made their way into this dimension.
There are oranges, reds, and purples that have been sent to remind you of
how rare it is to take birth within the particles of love. ~ Matt Licata

 

I am blessed to have had the resources to listen and go. I know this. I also know this is part of what I am here to do – to reconnect deeply with our Mother, to find, once again, the roots of my indigenous connection to Earth, the beautiful being who is the source of my life.

None of these things were for me. It’s taken me some time to come to know this. I’ve lived as if they were. I see clearly now that anything given is not for us to keep. Just as the Universe does not live for itself, it does not give to itself to keep for itself. Everything given is given to be given again.

I know I am privileged to  have done these things, and with this privilege comes responsibility to live what I’ve been shown and given. Many of us find ourselves in this place right now. It’s the nature of the time in which we live. We have a deep responsibility to not live for ourselves, but to live for and serve all of life.

In listening, I’ve come to see that what is truly holding us is not the culture or institutions that we humans have created. What truly holds us is the fabric and flesh of life here on Earth. Mother Earth does not live for herself. She lives for her children. But, she is struggling mightily right now trying to support us. We are, and have been, tearing down the very fabric that gives us life.

In my own life, I fight the learned, conditioned reaction I have to live for myself – my wants, my desires, my way. I have to be truthful about this. There is a strong, conditioned, trance we live in that reinforces this as THE way to be. But it is just that – a trance…a trance of the ego.

This trance is leading us to our own demise. Why? Because ego doesn’t really want to get…it wants to want. It has a voracious appetite because it does not want to be satisfied. That is the nature of ego – to want. It’s why when we are mired in ego we feel like we have a hole inside of us the size of Jupiter – a hole that cannot be filled no matter how much stuff we stuff into ourselves and our lives. In our culture, we want unlimited and unfettered growth. Our institutions will do anything to prop up this unnatural never-ending growth. A cycle of growth without death and decay is unnatural – it is not in accordance with Creation.

Instead, when we live as the Universe does, we’ve remembered our rightful way of living as a part of the Whole. I see ‘remembering’ our rightful way of living in Creation as the great work of these times for so many of us who have forgotten what it is to be a member of the Family of All Things; remembering what it means to not live for ourselves, but to live for life.

When we are ‘wanting’ we aren’t really happy, no matter what the ego tells us, because behind the whole setup is the mechanism to never get that which we believe we want. What is real is the longing that is underneath all of this wanting. It is the longing to remember that we have taken ‘birth within the particles of love’.

It is indeed rare and when we live the wonder of this rarity, we live the eternal Tao.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Bodies of Grace

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The Feminine Heart

” Women can acknowledge the earth’s deep sorrow and wounding, and through the heart offer it back to God who is the source of all sorrow and all joy. It has been said that God enters through a wound, and through the earth’s sorrow a healing can take place; the consciousness of divine love can be infused in to the hidden places of the earth as well as into the bodies of women. This love can link the two worlds in a a way that has not happened before. Through that connection activated in women’s bodies through their sanctification of their own and the earth’s suffering, grace can flow into the world.” Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee

 

I read these words and something old and deep comes forth. It is a remembering of something that once was. It is a soul’s remembering of a time when women and the Earth were conscious, living sisters.

I’ve been doing this – acknowledging the Earth’s sorrow and wounding. I weep. Yet, I’ve not been offering it back to God. I’ve had a funny relationship with God, one where I don’t quite trust. It’s no wonder I don’t quite trust…God. Yet, I trust Love. I trust Life. I trust in my creativity. And, somewhere deeper than my mind, I know God is not different from these that I do trust.

There was a time like that when we were sisters with the Earth, or perhaps we were her daughters. And these times are asking for us to remember this relationship…with her, and with each other.

 

There is much suffering and chaos in the world right now. There has been for so long. People have asked me if they really need to turn to look at this suffering. I say, “Yes”. I know many women who have no time in their day to do this. Between a job that keeps them running, children to care for, a home to clean, and many worries about how they will feed their children, or if their children will be safe, they have little left for themselves. THIS is a form of deep suffering. I know these women are exhausted.

But all of us women who DO have the time, the resources, the consciousness, and the awareness of our current plight can sit with the earth’s deep sorrow and wounding, and offer it back to the Divine through our feminine hearts. We can sit with the suffering of our sisters, too, knowing how deeply connected we are to each other. And, we can offer a hand to our sisters, offering to help lighten their load in whatever way we can.

Women feel sorrow and we feel joy. We feel deeply. We know suffering and we can feel it in the Earth if we listen and sense. Our ability to feel and sense is a sacred gift. We’ve not been taught about the sacred ways a woman’s body can heal and feed and nourish, yet they are real and true. Somewhere deep within we know this, deep in our bones.

Our hearts and bodies CAN do this, can be the conduit for healing. We are that powerful and that blessed in love.

This IS our sacred spirituality, our sacred role in these times.

So many of us have been turned off by religious dogma that is less about the Sacred and more about control. We turn away from a sense of the Sacred because we’ve been taught that we as women are anything but Sacred. But this is not true. It’s a big fat lie.

So many of us have been taught that what we can’t see or prove is worthless. But do not believe this. Come to honor what you know.

Mother Earth can re-teach us about the Sacred. How can we look at her beauty and not know the Sacred in our own hearts? How can we sit down to a meal of warm food and not realize that She gives us everything and does not ask for anything in return?

It is time to quit believing in or fighting against the patriarchal dogma that keeps our faces turned away from the beautiful gift of being alive in a woman’s body…and the gift of being alive at all on this glorious planet. It is time to re-kindle our relationship with Life. It is time to be in service to her and to all the world’s children.

What is important is that we remember how deeply we are connected to the Earth as women, and that we feel what is here in this connection. Don’t shy away from it. Move into it. Allow yourself to be surprised at the depth of what you can feel and how deeply you are loved…you will feel sorrow and you will feel deep joy.

::

If you’d like to join a community of people on Facebook who are praying for our Mother Earth and for all the Earth’s children, please come join the Praying True group on Facebook. “Praying True is a worldwide community for everyone who wishes to give back to the earth with simplicity, loving intention and compassion. Our vision is to bring back love to our human relationship with All That Is, to encourage people to pray regularly for our world in whatever way flows through each person, creating ritual from the heart and in the moment with what is at hand. Then afterward, to share their truth through art making of any kind, posting it here to inspire others to honor the gift of life on this beautiful planet.”

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When we love the whole human experience, we are the miracle.

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You have been taught many ways
To mend your broken heart.
But have you asked your heart
If it wishes to be mended?
::

We are a species teetering on the brink. War, Fukushima, financial markets collapsing, global warming, governments in complete dysfunction, etc. We have pushed our ways of greed and control and domination so far that we may have pushed ourselves right over the brink.

Power wants to promote fear, and asks us to believe that love, tenderness, and compassion are weak. But they are not. A broken open heart is not weak at all.

Yesterday, Author Andrew Harvey shared this on his Facebook page:

Dear Friends,

It is time for everyone to become aware of what is at stake in the unprecedented crisis of Fukushima. Please turn to the website below and share the information with all your friends.

In this shattering time, I find three things essential: deep prayer, profound attention on loving everyone in our lives with intense compassion, and renewed commitment to go on serving whatever circumstances God may decide to be necessary for our transformation.

Ground yourself in your divine consciousness, surrender to the mystery and pray for deeper and deeper trust in the alchemy of divine wisdom. Do not be afraid, for the Living One is never closer to us then in our hour of deepest need.

Love,
Andrew

 A few years back, I worked with Andrew Harvey through his Institute for Sacred Activism, where he taught us to blend our deep love for the divine with the creative impulse within us for activism.

I don’t know the truth of what is happening at Fukushima. I don’t know that any of us truly know. On one hand, it sounds like what could happen could be absolutely devastating to the human race, as well as so many species and flora, water systems, etc. On the other, it doesn’t serve us to become filled with fear about something that hasn’t happened.

Yet, these three things:

  • deep prayer
  • profound attention on loving everyone in our lives with intense compassion
  • renewed commitment to go on serving whatever circumstances God may decide to be necessary for our transformation

are needed simply because we’ve reached a point of crisis that our thinking just can’t resolve. Whether it be in response to Fukushima, or so many of the other grave situations we have created on our planet, these three things are exactly what we must do.

I would add that the third one - whatever circumstances God may decide to be necessary for our transformation – is what is at the root of our creativity.

As Osho wrote, “God is in the new.” The new is where transformation happens. And for anything to be truly creative, it must be transformative, meaning we acknowledge we do not know…and then we step, willingly, into the unknown.

::

The other morning, I was lying in bed waking up and contemplating how much my soul loves beauty – and then I felt the most amazing love holding me…love from the inside. It caused me to weep, the kind of tears that simply run out your eyes and down your face.

In response, I wrote this:

When beauty comes to live in your heart, love is the child that is born.

And then, I wrote this:

As I was waking up this morning, I realized something. I realized that what I love – true, deep, cell-vibrating love – breaks my heart open, makes me smile from my whole body, and in one single flash takes me home to what I’ve longed for and searched for all my life.

My heart does not want to mend right now. Rather, if I allow myself to go there, my heart continually moves toward grief, toward feeling what is here, toward love. It continues to move toward finding the deep well of organic compassion that the deeper recesses of the heart knows well.

::

I went to bed last night with a heavy heart. My heart has broken open so many times in my life, and last night my heart was heavy with the grief of what we’ve done to this beautiful world we’ve been gifted to be a part of. My heart was heavy with thoughts of what my children and grandchildren will experience in the coming decades. And, I realized that I am much closer to the end of my life than the beginning, even not knowing when my day to die will come. And in that realization, something softened. I realized I have lived a good life. I’ve been gifted with so much. It is easy to be in the habit of wanting more and more and more, yet in that moment of seeing a very possible painful future for my grandchildren, I realized that even if I spent the rest of my life in conscious service to the divine to be a source of love, I could never repay what I have been given.

 

Then, I awoke in the middle of the night with a very clear picture of what must happen. I was shown something profoundly simple, yet incredible beautiful. It wasn’t an image (or promise) of everything being okay. Instead, it was an image of what we are truly here for in these times.

I could see that we are here to LIVE the Miracle – to BE the miracle. The miracle isn’t outside of us. The miracle is us. Living from love rather than fear is the miracle. Living as prayer. Moving from being meaning making creatures to love making creatures.

As I lay in bed, I remembered what The Course in Miracles says about miracles – that a miracle is the shift from fear to love.

Our lives can be an offering of this shift. But to really live this, we can’t choose what we love. If WE are the miracle then the shift from fear to love must be with our whole being for the wholeness of life.

 

When we love the whole human experience, we are the miracle.

 

When I discovered unimaginable beauty in the deep waters of grief, I thought I was going crazy at first. How could I feel beauty in this place? But when I let myself love that beauty in grief, I began to feel real and whole again. I felt as human as I did when my daughters were born, when I was alive with both physical pain and sheer unimaginable joy.

It was hard and it was beautiful. Right now we are living in hard and beautiful times, but we will only know the beauty and the full human experience if we feel what is happening, and we open to the whole spectrum of human experience. It’s the beauty of being human…not just in the good times, but in the hard times as well.

Those of us who’ve been sheltered for all of our lives with entitlement, privilege, and safety have known life from only these places…but life is a vulnerable proposition. Underneath a life of relative safety and ease, the rest of life’s experiences lay dormant simply waiting to be known. If we are to love life, it means loving the whole of life…the entirety of what it can mean to be a human being.

This is the miracle. Living this love in the midst of the turmoil, and feeling what it is to be connected, alive, human beings who love this planet, love each other, and deeply love life – right in the shadow of death.

It’s not to romanticize it. That’s not it. I wasn’t romanticizing Gary’s death. The very real living of the grief, the feeling of it deeply, there was the beauty of being human. Not just in good times, but in really, really hard times as well.

After all, death is always here…even when we pretend it isn’t.

::

A few months ago, I went to hear the visionary author, Charles Eisenstein, speak in the city. After his short talk, the audience asked him what it will take to make the shift from our current situation to the kind of world so many of us envision.

His reply? “It will take a miracle.”

As the audience took in his reply, my sense was that people wanted something more substantial. They wanted to be told of something they could do. That’s just my sense, but it’s what I felt. Sometimes that feels easier…just tell me what I can ‘do’ to fix things, and then everything will be okay.

But that isn’t what is true here. Although action is needed, it’s not the action we are used to taking that will shift us, because our current thinking keeps us acting in the same old ways.

As I saw what I saw last night, I had the ‘Aha’ around miracle. We’ve been conditioned to believe miracles occur outside of us, by some miraculous hand and that hand bestows them upon us. Instead, I see that what is new for us human beings is to come to know that our very lives are miracles, that when we shift from fear to the love that is at the heart of what we are we are a living, breathing miracle.

To face whatever comes with love is to love this human life – all of it, without condition, without demand – not just the pretty pictures, but the whole of it.

When I’ve been in deep grief in my life, what has happened every time is that I came to a place where I asked to be relieved of my own self-focus and self-concern. Each time I could see that the ways I focused on my own worries and fears simply got in the way of my ability to be helpful to those around me who really needed me. In those moments, when I prayed for this release, it was given. In that giving I came to directly touch, and share, a love that had no fear.

There is nothing for us to be waiting for. We ARE the miracle wanting to be lived. And, as Andrew Harvey says, “the Living One is never closer to us than in our hour of deepest need.”

 

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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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The status quo and the status quo keeper are in Cahoots!

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The status quo is only interested in one thing – keeping the status quo the status quo.

Whether it’s our own internal status quo, a community status quo, or a cultural status quo, at the heart of the status quo is a built in defense mechanism for maintaining things as they are. By definition.

You can see how hard the status quo works to maintain the status quo. You can see it in yourself, and you can see it in the culture at large. Even when a big part of us doesn’t like what is happening, there is a part that wants to keep things EXACTLY AS THEY ARE. That’s the inner status quo keeper.

We all have one. Yup, we all do.

For a moment, just feel your internal status quo keeper. Get a sense of how it will do almost ANYTHING to keep things the same as they are right now…forever…and ever.

And, get a sense of how it feels to fight against the status quo keeper. How does it feel? Like a battle of heavyweights going a full 15 rounds?

Fighting the status quo only gets the status quo to dig in its heels deeper.

And…consider the cultural status quo…the culture you live in. Consider how intractable some problems are. Racism. Misogyny. Religious intolerance. Homophobia. The devaluation of our planet. Greed…just to name a few.

Something in our culture, and within us, is trying desperately to hang on to the ‘way things are’ – the way we as a species has been living on this planet. We are in cahoots, whether we want to see it or not.

This something is really good at rationalizing. Really good at it. It rationalizes all over the place why this ‘one little thing’ won’t hurt, or that ‘way of doing things’ isn’t so bad.

This something is powerful, and NOTHING will ever come out of this something that could upend itself or its way of life.

No thinking out of this something will ever bring about the end of this something.

 

This is so important to get. Really important. Nothing will ever come out of the status quo keeper that will end the keeper.

 

So what do we do?

What resource do we have as a species that can show a new way out of this seemingly intractable mess?

Our creativity. Yes, creativity. Not art. Not artistic talent. Creativity, the essential nature of each and every human being, and of all of life.

Life is a creative process. Life in general, and our lives. We are creative beings. I’m not talking problem solving. That’s almost always more of the same thinking…trying to solve rather than allowing, receiving, trusting in a deeper knowing.

The status quo keeper doesn’t like creativity. Not at all. It doesn’t like anything that knows that the unknown is a place of fertile possibility, an unfathomable mystery. The status quo keeper doesn’t like mystery. It holds up logic and reason as the sole arbiter of problem solving. And the more we try to ‘solve’ our intractable problems with more intractable thinking…well you get the picture.

Just look at what’s happening at the top ‘leadership’ positions in the United States. So many keepers trying to keep their idea of what is right and logical in place. At the heart of it all, there’s an ‘established order’ of things we have somehow all agreed upon…even if it was by simply being born into this culture. Institutions and systems all based upon some kind of agreed upon way for human beings to ‘run’ things.

 

We know we are failing and we don’t know what to do about it – but creativity does. Creativity is outside of the keeper. It sees the status quo and it sees the keeper of the status quo. And the keeper knows it.


What can upend the status quo? Creativity. Life. The wisdom of the Body. Embodied Creativity. Sacred Creativity.

We are life and when we embody our creative nature, we know we are deeply connected to life and our wisdom flows in harmony with life. We know we are living in a sacred world, and that we are sacred.

Talking about creativity can get people riled up. Much has been made about how creative people are crazy. They see things differently. They are a little out there. Yup. That’s the point. Don’t we need to see things differently? Is doing the same old thing, getting the same old outcome NOT crazy?

Creativity is a direct challenge to the status quo. It is a letting go of what you want, in fact perhaps even a letting go of the ‘you’ that wants it. It is getting out of the way of what wants to be born.

A creator is an activist. A creator activates something within that is much more intelligent than the status quo keeper – ANY status quo keeper.

Why? Because life is never stopped long enough to become a status quo. Life flows. Always. Life births, grows, dies, and is reborn again. There is no status quo. Everything is in flux. Change is constant.

 

I share this here because we’ve just begun our 24-week deep dive into embodied creativity for women – Becoming a Force of Nature. A force of nature is unstoppable because nature is unstoppable. It flows, moves, creates, lives, dies, and is born again. A force of nature is always transforming…and when we live from our creativity so are we.

I’m calling all women activists to come along
on the journey, but activists who are
willing to lean in to life itself, to nature, for nature.

 

Life lived through human beings CAN be in harmony with nature, rather than attempting to control or dominate it. The status quo keeper is into control and domination.

Take a look at the course. Listen to our Kickoff call, an hour long call where we experience a deep meditation, and talk about the deep erotic nature of women and the feminine, a nature that is at the heart of sustained change.

You’re not too late. You can register through midnight pdt tomorrow night, Tuesday October 22nd. 

If you feel the urge, the nudge, the knowing that you belong in the course, please follow it.

It’s really good material. I know. I’ve taught it for eleven years now to a wide variety of people in a variety of situations, and I’ve seen the transformation that happens. We’re a beautiful group of women and we’d love to have you join us.

Right now, we are being supported in untold and unimaginable ways to help us make this shift as a species. It is time for this. 

 

 

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Body Talk and Let’s Talk

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I’ve three fun things to share with you. But first, this:

~~~

I am in the middle of the launch for my new course, Becoming a Force of Nature. I’m excited about teaching it here online after teaching this material for so many years. And, I’m nervous. Why? Because I’m finally mixing this Stanford curriculum with my very personal experience and wisdom about the sacred feminine. I’ve wanted to share this, but I’ve been filled with a voice that asks me, “Who are you to teach this?”

The reason I’m finally offering this course is because I came to see that I have experienced what I’ve experienced, and that is what I teach from…not only in the Stanford work but also the accompanying material around womanhood, the feminine, and what is needed in our world today. And this is the heart of the course…coming to know Self by way of your own experience. It is time to come home to ourselves, to what WE know, not what another tells us is so. This has been the most difficult thing for me to do – to not look outside of myself for answer. I still do it – and my coach lovingly guides me back.

This morning a friend on Facebook shared a link to my course with words that showed how much she believes in me. She wrote, ‘She’s the real deal.’ I read these and I wept. She caught me off guard. It was out of the blue, not requested by me, but solely an action from her heart. And in a flash the voice that usually shouts fraud was silent.

Somewhere inside each of us is a small voice that so worries that she’s a fraud.

I remember being in my third week at Stanford, sitting in a room with a group of non-traditional students. Our advisor asked us to close our eyes and then to raise our hand if we answered the following question with yes: “Do you feel like a fraud?”  I raised my hand without a second thought. I mean, of course I was. I didn’t belong there. She then asked us to keep our hands where they were and open our eyes. I did, and lo and behold every single hand was raised. We all looked at each other and burst out laughing. Every single one of us felt like a fraud.

No one is immune from this.

So when my friend shared her confidence in me and my work this morning, her gesture soothed that small voice and filled my reservoir just a little bit more. I don’t know if it ever gets filled. I think that’s why it’s so important for us to champion each other, to delight in each other’s successes, to know that each of us has our own unique gift to share and that when each one is shared, the whole tapestry can finally be woven together.

When we stand in our own ordinariness, in the truth of our own experience, just as we are, as vulnerable as we can muster, the fraud voice has no place to stand.

A force of nature is unstoppable. Yes, we are forces of nature; yet, when we don’t trust our own knowing and wisdom, we stop ourselves.

And, when we don’t have a web of sisterhood to hold us, we can feel amazingly alone out there in the world doing the work we are here to do.

How about we find one woman each day and somehow, in some way, champion her? Tell her the truth about what we see in her. It has to be the truth, ’cause we know it when it’s not and it only then feeds the voice that believes it’s a fraud.

Thank you, Aime Miyamoto, for championing me. And, thank you to these two friends below, for including me in your latest creations.

~~~

My friend, Kristin Noelle, asked me to share something for her ‘My Body is my Guru‘ series. And, of course I said, Yes. You know how I am about the body. And when it came time to write it, my body wanted to have a big say in it. Of course.

I was writing about the body being the teacher. It had a few things to say. And that’s what the post is about…my body beginning to converse with me in a way it never has before.

From the post:

My body hungers for beauty and connection. It thirsts for the sun and wind. It feels exquisitely alive when it is touched, and is touching, with beautiful attention.

In listening to my body, I begin to understand in a deep way what it means to be a human being. The body is the human being. It is the creature. It’s the wild and furry feral cat that slides along her back just to feel the sunshine on her belly, or the fish that used to swim underwater for huge periods at a time, or even the snake on the dance floor that undulates along, moving in rhythmic motion.

You can read the entire post here.

And while you’re there, take a look at Kristin’s work on Trust. It’s beautiful. She is a trust coach, and writes, speaks, teaches, makes art, and listens deeply, all to help trust grow.

~~~

My friend and colleague, Dian Reid, has released her new eBook, Summer of Authenticity: Fully Alive!  Over the summer, I took part in her series, and now she’s put all of the stories together in one place for you to download for free. There are many great stories here, and many of my online friends are included.

From my story:

These words are moving in cycles, weaving things in and out. This post isn’t linear. And neither am I, nor are you. We are human. We aren’t reasonable. Nor is life. We are sensual, sensing, feeling beings. Long before humans were reasoning, analytic thinking creatures, we responded to life, to rhythms, to change instinctively, intuitively and skillfully, weaving together everything that happens in our experience. We still have this skill.

To be authentic human beings, means this, too: to come back to our animal selves, to sniff the scent of what’s here, to notice when we feel off, to feel our longing, and to notice when we are in tune with, or out of tune with, nature. 

I love Dian and her work. I was able to meet her in person this summer when she came to San Francisco for a weekend getaway with her partner. The three of us shared a bottle of wine together at the ferry building, overlooking the bay. We talked and laughed. It was one of those times when everything just flows with ease.

Dian coaches women around owning their authentic voice and using it to create transformational shifts in both life and business. She is bold, real, and very generous.

~~~

Tomorrow, October 10th, I’ll be hosting an information call for my new course, Becoming a Force of Nature. I’ll be sharing a bit about why not only finding our creativity but also bringing it into the world is so important at this time on the planet.

Thursday, October 10th, Noon PDT
Dial-in Number: (712) 775-7100
Access Code: 1005863#

I’d love to have you join me. I think we’ll have fun. And if you can’t, the call recording will be posted on the course page here.

A quick reminder: the early-bird price of $599 is good until Sunday, October 13th at 9:00 pm pdt. The price then increases to $799. There is a installment plan option if you’d like as well.

Sign-ups are going well. We have a beautiful group of women gathering together for this 24-week journey. I know it is going to be rich and full and lovely.

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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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Money: A Love Story

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Money: A Love Story. A brand new book by Kate Northrup.

I’m happy to offer this review of Kate’s book, something I rarely say yes to. It’s not what my blog is about…for the most part. But when I was asked to review it, something inside me tugged at me telling me there was something deeper here for not only me personally, but for you, the beautiful women and men who want to read what I share here. So, I said, Yes.

Money was one of the most painful areas of my life growing up.

I still am working on healing the underlying issues around money. Money itself is just a placeholder for value…and what we learn when we are young around value, worth, and love, of ourselves, others, and things, gets projected onto those pieces of paper. Poor money. It’s really weighed down with so much stuff… confusion, pain, and shadow…all of the usual suspects.

I received the book about two weeks ago, and to be entirely honest, I have thoroughly, and thoughtfully, read the words and completed the exercises through page 60, and that’s out of around 200 pages.

Kate’s book has delightfully struck a deep chord within me.

I had hoped to have it read all the way through, and to have done all the exercises within these two weeks, but my relationship with money feels like the crazy tangle of freeway overpasses that guide drivers through the maze that is Los Angeles’ freeway system. And, as Kate states in her book, don’t bypass the exercises. In fact she notes that it might take a full year to really move through whatever the book surfaces.

So, I decided to share with you exactly why I am wiling to do that with her book.

 

Here’s the thing about Kate’s book, Money: A Love Story.

There is something in her book that speaks to me on a level other than words. I have a sense it is her transmission, those unseen but deeply felt qualities you experience when you read another’s words or listen to them voiced.

The book is light. Her tone is welcoming. As I experience it, there’s a feeling of being loved and supported.

What comes through so clearly is Kate’s unwavering confidence in both her own wisdom and in the possibility that I can do this, that my relationship to money CAN be transformed into one of love.

Perhaps part of this is that I am ready to take this journey with money. Perhaps it is partly that I respond well to a container that deeply holds me in love and confidence. Perhaps there are many reasons I don’t even yet know for why I feel so positive and open about Kate’s book.

 

Money & Self-Worth

I know my money story is deeply tied up with my own sense of self-worth. I’ve come a long, long way in how I feel about myself, and I sense that’s why I am ready for this.

None of this work around money and self-worth is easy for any of us. But, together, in a container of love, we can heal.

A couple of things I’ve come away with already that have allowed me to access deeper feelings.

In the first handful of pages, Kate shares something she learned from Nicole Daedone. Kate suggests looking back at your whole story, your life story, finding a way to “fall in love with your story”. She goes on to write, “be grateful for it”. And, she mentions seeing yourself as the heroine of your story. When I read these words, I cried. It’s not like I’ve never heard these words before. But, for whatever reason, as I read them from Kate, I suddenly felt everything in me relax as I saw how truly accepting the entirety of my life brought an immediate sense of peace. And then, I could see how strong I’ve been in my life in my ability to respond to a great deal of adversity. Loving my story allowed me to not be at odds with it anymore. It allowed be to have nothing to fight against any more. Yes, so much of the work I’ve done prior to this has probably helped. Yet, I wonder if that’s so. Is there a place where we can simply just accept. After all, the reality is that our lives are what our lives have been. Without the extra stories we lay on it, our life story is our life story.

Through this doorway we can set it all down, so we can be here, now, in this moment, living and breathing in a place of wholeness rather than fracturedness around money, and worth, and love.

The other suggestion she offered was to see what our whole life story has taught us. I could see how incredibly resilient I am. I could see how strong and committed I am. And, I could see how incredibly I persevere in my life. I have these great skills, and sit’s because of the events of my life that I have learned to be so (and maybe I came in with just a tad bit of strength, too!).

I have done a lot of work in my life to heal, and I’ve healed so much within me. The work I do here at Unabashedly Female is a testimony to that. I know we women have learned to devalue ourselves and how the sacred feminine moves through us. The feminine has been denigrated. And, now, in some ways, the masculine is being denigrated as well.

All of us suffer because of this denigration of life, and our stories around money mirror this. If money is simply an exchange of value between people, how we value ourselves and others holds the key to a healthy loving relationship with money.

There are many, many messages, and messengers, out here reflecting back to us how it is time for the money story of humanity to be healed. Deep in our hearts, we are generous compassionate creatures. This I know.

 

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Dark Times? Stay steadfast to the wisdom of your heart. You are in beautiful company.

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When I was a teenager, I would sit on my bed and listen to the folk songs of my era. Late sixties, early seventies was a beautiful time when much of the music offered a new way of seeing things. There was an energy in the air of Love, of the possibility of living differently.

I remember the feeling in my heart. I remember feeling this deep connectedness to Life.

I remember the Beauty.

I remember hope, a hope that seemed to have a powerful life of its own.

Lately, I’ve been listening to this music again. The Beatles, Neil Young, James Taylor, Carol King, Crosby Stills and Nash, were some of my favorites. When I listen, I feel those same feelings of connectedness and hope. But along with those, I also feel a steadfastness that comes from age and wisdom. I now know, as experience, things I only dreamed of back then. I now know that it is possible to make this shift to peace, to compassion, to Love.

::

As a species, we are facing, and have been facing, choices that demand we find a new way of being, living, and creating in this world. The old way of domination and control have brought us to, not only other beings’ actual extinction, but the brink of our own.

I know it can be hard to stay with what you know in your heart when all around you are images, feelings, words, and rhetoric that attempt to manipulate and intimidate you to disbelieve what you know.

Do not listen to those voices that try to condemn you for your open and compassionate heart.

Do not listen to those voices that keep trying to push the illusion that might makes right, that toughness will always win out over compassion, reconciliation, and tenderness. 

Don’t listen to those voices, AND don’t close your heart to them. Those voices are inside you, too. They are inside all of us.

“The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart.
The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.”
~ Carlos Santana

Compassion, reconciliation, tenderness, and resiliency are qualities of the heart and they can be fierce in their commitment to love.

::

Stay with your heart. Hold beauty there, the beauty that constantly graces us in each moment. Even in these difficult times there is beauty. And, beauty is not what we’ve been taught to believe it is. Beauty is all around us, in every moment, and you know it when you encounter it by its fiercely tender powerful effect on your being.

The forces against awakening to our oneness with all of life, both inside of us and outside of us, are still functioning from a belief of separation, one that manifests in forms of tribalism that many will tell you is how human beings are. Period.

But this is the opportunity at hand: to realize, both inside and out, that what we truly are is not this behavior that’s been lived out by humans over thousands of years. What we truly are is love, is compassion, is the One that breaths all of life.

The future for our children and their children is bleak if we do not make this leap of consciousness.

People will say over and over and over (I hear it all the time) that what we see in the world right now is proof of what we are. But do not believe it. Much of what we see in the world right now are the EFFECTS of believing what we’ve believed. We see now are the forms that our thoughts and beliefs and fears have created. AND, if you look and feel, really look and feel, the bright green new shoots of something new, very new, are here. They are the sprouts of a new way coming into being. Perhaps these sprouts have sprouted from the seeds that we sown back during those years of the music that guides us to something different.

::

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” ~John Lennon

When you doubt yourself, remember you are ‘not the only one’. You are in beautiful company. By staying steadfast to the wisdom of your heart, you invite others to join you. They will feel your steadfastness.

Until recently, I would let the words of others cause me to question my wisdom, what I know in my heart and soul. No more. There is no time for that.

Look at the new. Feel it in your body, in your heart, in your soul. The new is what is coming into being. Allow these shoots to spring forth in your heart. Allow them to perfume your words, your acts, your prayers, your song. Allow them to guide your action in the world. As long as you follow the truth in your heart, you do not have to know where you, or we, are headed. You cannot know. But your heart can guide you.

May you know that you are always graced with beauty even in what seem to be such dark times. Hold beauty in your heart. It is a form of prayer for your more loving, fiercely loving, nature to pour forth.

::

ps This post was fueled by darjeeling tea and serenaded by sixties music. If you sit still and listen, you just might feel that transmission.

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