Solitude of Self

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I don’t want to convince you of anything.

I don’t want to make you understand how I see things.

I don’t want you to think I have something you don’t.

I don’t want to have to be something I am not in order for you to like me or believe in me.

I used to. When I am unconscious, I still do.

What I do want to be is in relationship with you, and to do that means we each must be who we really are.

How can relationship ever really happen when we are pretending?

 

Falsity breeds separation.

We’ve been well taught how to be something we are not. And, the invitation is always here to drop all of that and simply be what we are.

I used to think it would be lonely here in this solitude of self. I now know it is full and rich.

 

Rilke wrote this:

“And this more human love (which will fulfill itself with infinite consideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding and releasing) will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle: the love that consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other.”

 

May we be these ‘two solitudes who protect and border and greet each other’ – with ‘infinite gentleness and kindness’.

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Woman’s Tendrils of Wildness

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Somewhere, I learned to be careful rather than carefree. At some point, I learned to think rather than intuit or feel. Along the way, this girl’s wispy tendrils of wildness went way underground, deep down into the depths of the dark places where she learned to put away her very natural, very powerful, and very threatening erotic nature.

Carefulness is not a helpful strategy for a life well lived.

Thinking is good for many things (math, taxes, logic), yet when it runs the show we feel dead inside.

Living what is natural and organic to the soul is what unfolds a life that both sings and serves.

::

Woman’s erotic nature is powerful, yes; but threatening? Only to those who want to control and dominate life.  

The nature of the Feminine principle is the full cycle of creation, all the way around the circle from creation to destruction. For something new to come, something existing must die. This is threatening to those who want to pretend that they continually feed structures based on perpetual growth, never ending profits, unlimited and unsustainable consumption.

There is no such thing as perpetual growth without eventual decay. We know this in our bones and in our cells. When something grows wildly, feeding on itself to keep growing, it is cancerous and eventually leads to its own death.

We can pretend half of life’s cycle doesn’t exist, yet pretending doesn’t make it go away.

In the same way, we can pretend our erotic nature, our power as women, doesn’t exist. We can hide it away thinking we’re fooling everyone, especially ourselves, but this doesn’t make it go away.

Our erotic nature is nature. It doesn’t disappear; we just keep it down. Or, we share it in a small sliver of the way in which it is meant to be shared. Or we allow it out in acceptable ways – acceptable to those who want to control eros.

Keeping our nature down hurts us all, men and women, for no one is happy, truly happy, when life is being controlled, when our hearts our closed, and when our bodies are seen as objects rather than living, breathing creations.

But, the erotic is not simply for sexual pleasure – it is the force that animates all of life and eventually destroys it as well.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower   
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees   
Is my destroyer. ~ Dylan Thomas

Destruction eventually happens anyway. We all die. But while we are living, if we tuck our fullness and power away into the dark., the power to create, to love, to voice, to serve, we over and over again destroy our own capacity to be fully alive vibrant beings here to offer to life what we’ve been created to bring forth.

What does it really mean to serve life?

Just as the leaf doesn’t refuse to fall from the tree in autumn, so, too, must we let go of the need to hold on.

To make an offering of your life to life is to live.  Allowing what you really are to become, to flow, to die…while you are alive, is to serve.

And, by the way, it is here in the allowing that we rediscover and live these wispy tendrils of wildness, this eros and joy.

Image is Tendril: LicenseAttribution Some rights reserved by Hamed Saber

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Women and Power – Wisdom Learned from Omega Institute’s Conference

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Labyrinth at Omega Institute

This past weekend, I was very lucky. At this point in my life, I can see how blessed my life is. I have so much, not necessarily as material things, although I don’t lack there, but more importantly in opportunity. Over the past years since my late-husband’s death, my life has changed dramatically. His death, and some other life-changing experiences that I’ve written about before, catapulted me into a life of longing and searching for something I thought I needed, something I thought I did not have already. Sometimes, it takes searching out there to discover what you were searching for has been here all along.

This search has taken me to so many beautiful places and lands. It has allowed me to meet many wise people. I’ve been able to take in many words of wisdom, words that somewhere I already knew, but had no access to. We all have this within, yet sometimes we need guidance to find that which already resides in our own soul.

I share this sense of blessedness, because I know along with it is a responsibility to embrace what I’ve been given and offer it back to the world. Nothing is really ours. Everything is a gift, a gift to in turn be given again.

This past weekend, I once again found myself in a place where much wisdom was offered, much emotion was shared, and so much courage was modeled – Omega Institute’s Women and Power conference. Women such as Sister Joan Chittister, Sally Field, Eve Ensler, Isabelle Allende, Elizabeth Lesser, Jennifer Buffett, Majora Carter, Loung Ung, Pat Mitchell, Chung Hyun Kyung, and so many others, shared deep life experiences and the wisdom they’ve discovered from living them. There are so many things I soaked up over the weekend, so many AHAs, that it’s hard to resource it all into one post. But there are some moments that stood out for me.

Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler spoke of the multitude of atrocities perpetrated on women and children that she’s witnessed. In her words, “There is no word. I have not come close to finding the language to describe what I have seen.” 

She also spoke of the Cassandra myth, and how it is a curse that keeps women silent because we are considered lunatics when we tell the truth. {I will write more about this later}. Eve went on to mention the ways we break spells and curses:

1. We have each others’ backs. We stand with each other. We speak out immediately if we see a woman being labeled in such a way for speaking truth.

2. We create communities of love where we can tell our stories and be held, cuddled and loved. She shared The City of Joy in The Congo as an example.

Eve also mentioned that a part of the curse was this… She was waiting to be honored, loved, valued and approved of by the Patriarchy…and then she would would win…and she then wondered, win what? This was an AHA moment for her, and she realized there was no winning, but more importantly this was preventing her from living as ‘her full crazy self’.

Elizabeth Lesser

Elizabeth Lesser, author of Broken Open, spoke of the one thing she’s found from sitting with so many wise, alive people who’ve come to teach at Omega. She shared that no one person has the answer, no one can handle idolization, and it is our shared core humanness that has sets us free. She also shared how destructive it is when we “indulge in the habit of comparing”, and that, “No one is living the life you think they are.” She mentioned that Eve Ensler told her, “Everyone is just making it up, including presidents of countries. Everywhere I go, its just people making things up. You can do it, too.”

One last thing Elizabeth Lesser shared is her experience that “when you fully occupy yourself, vast reserves rush in to fill the space that was filled with self-doubt.”

Sister Joan Chittister

Perhaps the most amazing talk for me was the conversation between Pat Mitchell and Sister Joan Chittister. Sister Joan had an amazing transmission, so much that I, and the two women I was sitting between, had tears streaming down our faces through most of what she said. At one point, the woman on my left and I just turned to each other simultaneously and hugged each other. There was so much truth in Sister Joan’s words, as well as passion and fire, that my soul and heart just opened right there.

Her call to us was a call to speak up, to make others feel uncomfortable every time we speak, and to not stop speaking out. She shared with us the falsities of our current day, offering that the culture is not the place to look for truth. Her words, “Religion tells us who we are, and the media tells us who we are supposed to become.”, served to let us know to stop believing these sources of so much false cultural conditioning that does not serve women or anyone.

Insightful comment posted on the sharing board.

My takeaways?

Power, the power spoken of at Omega is the power of life, the power to serve life, the vast life force that is within each of us. Our power as women is to serve life, to serve the life that permeates all of existence, and to know that all of existence is sacred.

Our power is not like that which has been wielded over others to dominate and control. Our true power, the power that flows through us when we are embodying the feminine principle is the power to serve, and it is inclusive, holding, and connecting, and it weaves life together in a supportive bond.

Over 500 women sat in that hall over the weekend, women who are all vibrantly wanting to be part of this healing wave that women must step up to offer to the world. We, you and me, are not alone, sister. We are not alone.

What do you trust in so deeply within yourself that allows you to step out and speak out?

For me, I trust in my own creativity, my own sacredness, my own ability to be with whatever arises because I know that what I am IS the ability to respond to life with love. And, now I know I am also part of a global sisterhood that is rising. We are rising.

 

 

 

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Celebrate and Radiate the Feminine, Without Apology

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Communication

Celebrate and radiate the feminine, without apology.

One of the messages I learned early on as a young girl was “Don’t be so full of yourself.”

I remember hearing these words. I think many parents in the 60’s valued modesty, yet this was a false modesty. Instead, what this message really taught me was to hide myself, to not trust myself, to tone myself down and my light.

The verbal message came from many people I knew, including my parents, yet it seemed to be communicated non-verbally in some very insidious ways by the both the men and women in my life. I’ve always wondered if this stemmed from wanting me to be polite, to be modest, to be something that wouldn’t cause jealously, but most importantly something that would keep me safe. I don’t really know all the underlying messages but I do know the effect on me, even to this day as a grown woman – that it is not okay to adorn myself with beauty and to be fully beautiful from the inside out, to glow, to radiate to be full of the life force that is constatnly wanting to move through me.

As I type this, I feel a sense of something akin to shame. After all, at my age I should be over this. Right? How could I, a mother and grandmother, still feel these feelings?

For one thing, we swim in a sea of these feelings, beliefs, and ‘rules’ that we aren’t supposed to be our full and radiant sensual creative selves. We live in this fishbowl of women’s sexuality as something that is here for the enjoyment of men, rather than a core aspect of our own sacred radiance.

Don’t call attention to yourself, and don’t dress in a way that will call attention to yourself. The underlying messages are also that I am not safe if I do dress in a way that is adorned, beautiful, sensual, alive…light-filled.

To celebrate this body is to celebrate life and the sacred.

To celebrate all that moves through me is to celebrate the sacred.

Why is it hard to…?

I’ve wondered why sometimes it is so hard for me to adorn myself with beautiful objects. It’s something to do with these messages…and they seem to be all tangled up…the messages that is.

The word adorn has a couple of meanings, and when I looked it up I was surprised to find the implication that to adorn something means ‘to enhance the appearance of something by adding something unessential’.

Enhancement of appearance isn’t what I am talking about. No, not at all. What I am talking about is celebration. Remembering beauty and its sacredness. Remembering the life force as something to honor.

One of my strongest memories of my time in India was seeing the women dressed in their saris and jewelry. They were completely adorned in brilliant color, sensuous fabrics, and all manner of jewelry. As they walked alongside the roads with baskets on their heads, they cut such a beautiful image on the landscape. As they rode on the back of bikes and motorcycles, their clothing draped then in beauty. They were covered, yes, and absolutely sensuous in the beauty of their form.

Just a few weekends ago, I bought a new pair of flip-flops. They are very plain and all black. Except for a big (albeit fake) diamondy kind of bling. They are fun! And when I wear them, I can feel just a squeak of something left over from my early conditioning. It’s as if there is still a ‘mismatch’ between the sparkle of that bling and a leftover part of me that feels anything but light-filled. I notice that this part is much smaller than it used to be, which is fabulous. And, noticing what is still remaining helps me to heal it.

I have no interest in wearing stuff to cover this radiance. Sometimes, I think we wear a bunch of shiny stuff to hide our feeling of ‘not-so-shiny’. Or sometimes we can pretend to be light-filled with lots of words and bravado. The place of stretch for me is to notice when I feel, even in the slightest, that I owe somebody something when I embody my full self, when I am ‘full of my self.’

Think about how we tell ourselves to breath deeply, taking in the Self that is Spirit, that is breath. Can we breath so deeply that every cell remembers what it is, remembers it’s sacred nature? We can only do this if we are willing to be full of our selves in the most basic sense of the words.

There’s a reclaiming happening within me of the fullness of myself as a soul and as a soul in a woman’s body. I feel a very real and palpable instinctive desire to adorn this female body with beauty and beautiful things.

Can we be full of the Self in celebration for what we really are – sacred, beautiful, creative, sensual, erotic in all the ways life truly is? There are many who want to shut this female power down, and they are trying to find very definite ways to control it. Yet, it continues to want to make itself known. Of course it does. Life is longing to be in balance, to honor itself in all forms. Can we serve life in this way, honoring and adorning the sacredness of the feminine as it moves through us, and as it is manifested in our world?

This image touches me deeply. Two women (one old and one young) are exchanging something beautiful…flower petals. To me, this symbolizes an offering of wisdom, an exchange of beauty, and most likely something more symbolic.

This image also shares something about passing down this wisdom from those of us who have lived long enough to realize life is too short to honor anything that does not feel right in the body, does not feel right and good and loving to the soul.

Can we help young women know what it is be full of themselves without apology, and with the direct knowledge they owe nothing to anyone?

This image moves me to offer my hand in forgiveness to you for all the ways I’ve helped keep the lies alive that continually tell us that our wholeness as women is something to keep in, to be ashamed of, to hide, to be jealous of…and ultimately to owe somebody something for. It is not. It does not belong to anyone, nor is it here solely for anyone else’s benefit or pleasure. It is the Divine’s gift to us to be alive in these bodies of sacred expression.

And, you?

Can you own your sexuality, your fullness, your beauty, your attractiveness and know that you do not owe anybody anything?

Can you celebrate all that it is to be woman?

Can you adorn yourself in whatever way truly allows you to celebrate this flesh, these bones, these cells?

For me, this is a practice – a practice of adornment and celebration.

Photo by saikatmuk | Attribution Some rights reserved

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Women’s Sacred Seeds

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Women Remembering

I created Unabashedly Female because I could see the need for women to remember their true nature. I could see that women are different from men, yet we’ve been trained to be like men and even to distrust our female nature. And I could see that the remembering of what we are is absolutely crucial in these times.

As I began to deepen my own spiritual work, I met Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, listened to what he was sharing, and read some of his many books. I began to understand, and then experience, the sacredness of my own female body.

This talk, Honoring the Sacred Substance in Creation by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, is a fundamentally important talk for women and the whole of creation. What he shares is a vital key to restoring women’s understanding of the offering we can, and must, live for the sacred light in creation to be strengthened and sustained.

From the video:

“What the Patriarchy has done so effectively – the level of disempowerment has been so fundamental because they have actually stopped women from being even aware they have this sacred substance in their own bodies. So, because they are not even aware of it, they can’t use it. A certain feminine magic has been denied life. The depth of the censorship, once you look at it, is so fundamental to be terrifying.”

If you were treated just an object, something in you would start to die. Many women complain now about being treated just like an object, but they don’t take the next step, which is to reclaim the light in them that belongs to the sacred and honor it in creation.”

One of the reasons so many of us women are questioning who we are is because we are needed right now. As Vaughan-Lee goes on to say, “Women carry the seeds of healing and rebirth.”

Please watch and listen, not from your head or rational mind, but listen with your whole self, heart, body and soul.

 

About Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

He is a Sufi Spiritual Teacher. From my understanding, Sufism existed before the other religions. It is a path…a path of loveVaughan-Lee was recently interviewed by Oprah on Super Soul Sunday, and shared these words about Sufism:

“Sufism is a path of love. The Sufi is a traveler on the path of love, a wayfarer journeying back to God through the mysteries of the heart. For the Sufi the relationship to God is that of lover and Beloved, and Sufis are also known as lovers of God. The journey to God takes place within the heart, and for centuries Sufis have been traveling deep within themselves, into the secret chamber of the heart where lover and Beloved share the ecstasy of union.”

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When you receive what is here, you receive the Sacred.

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Inner & Outer

I came across this beautiful image today (thank you Writing Our Way Home). It speaks to me of how it feels to be a human being filled with the light of the sacred. Perhaps the image of the sacred feminine speaks to me more than if it was a masculine representation. And, the fact it is feminine is fitting, for this image speaks to the immanence of the sacred nature of life.

Our inner and outer worlds are continually reflecting upon each other. For me, sometimes I see the beauty out there, sometimes I see it within, sometimes I don’t see it in either place, and sometimes it is everywhere, in everything.

We are human beings, completely fallible and physically imperfect. As we age, the body rusts, peels and detiriorates. Yet, within and without the cells that have come together to be the human we know ourselves to be, for however long we are alive, is a sacred light. While this image is decidedly judeo-christian, our light is of no religion, no culture, no race, no gender. It is undefined, unconditioned, un-everything we continually try to slap onto it so we can ‘know’ it.

Most-Human Moments

I have found that it is in my most human moments – those moments when those qualities I hate in myself, the ones that I least want to own, the ones that are hardest to admit to, can’t be denied – that the sacred is both infinitely far away and infinitely close at hand. It depends on how open I am to accepting what is true about that moment, about who I am, what I am, and how willing I am to fully and openly receive what is here.

When I feel the sacred to be far away, I know I am not allowing myself to be with what is true. Just as I push the truth away, I push the sacred away. If I receive the truth, I receive the sacred. They are the same – the truth and the sacred. To be with one is to be with the other. This isn’t the truth in any political, religious, cultural way – it is what is here. It is the truth of what I am experiencing in its totality, it is the truth of what is right here, right now. We know this truth when we are not denying anything – not necessarily an easy thing to do.

When I see this aging body as it is, when I accept my fallibility, when I am courageous enough to share the wisdom I’ve come to know and how I am being called to serve the sacred (again, not easy things to let go of) the pushing, grasping, and trying fall away and all I am left with is what is here. And, it’s a glorious ‘all’ to be left with. It is all that is. The rest, the pushing, grasping and trying were just the way I’ve learned to obscure my humanness – and I’ve poignantly come to see it is how I learned to obscure the divine.

A month or so ago,

I was in a retreat. We were doing a partner exercise. We were sitting in meditation across from our partner, and then we opened our eyes and were just with each other. I underline just, because this can be one of the hardest things to do…to just be with each other. As we sat, I noticed I was hiding the deeper parts of me. I could see it. And so, with a desire to really go into the painful places, I revealed another layer. Tears came to my eyes. Her expression did not change. Yet, when we finished and we shared what we had experienced in each other, my partner revealed that she distinctly noticed when I chose to reveal, that what first had been a pleasant and fairly deep experience of me, became richer and more human. She experienced my revealing this deeper layer in a way that wasn’t about qualities of me, but instead simply a deeper and richer experience of what I was revealing. It was more human, she said, especially when she noticed my tears.

Just this morning,

I was dressing. I stood naked in front of my mirror. Thoughts crossed my mind about finding a new life partner. Will someone find me desirable? Do I find myself desirable? Is there real beauty here? I take in my image. Gray roots. Wrinkles. A dancer’s body that is both aging and muscular. When I allow myself to see it all, I soften and notice space.

Then, I sit down to write. I’m writing a book. There are moments of clarity, then moments of fogginess. Again, questions run through my mind. Will anyone find value in these word? What door am I not willing to open? What matters here? Why would anyone care? And I found myself wondering how I can really answer these questions, not as a way to avoid but a way to go deeper into the truth. Perhaps there is nothing here in these words. Just maybe there is nothing. Then, I notice when I accept these things, I once again soften and notice space.

I want to share the truth. There is less resistance than there used to be, and there is still some. Sometimes that ‘rust’ is so hard to acknowledge and own – even to oneself. This is what is true right now. This is sacred, too. Even the hiding of the truth, if we can just be with it, can bring more compassion to ourselves. It can be a bypass, and it can be an opening.

Female Embodiment

As women, we live our spirituality through our bodies, through opening to the sacred nature of our bodies. All experience in these bodies is sacred. All of it.

Every way you might describe the sacredness of divinity can be used to describe the sacredness of your female body.

There is no separation between the wrinkling, aging skin of your body and the light-filled, hands-open Love that knows itself through touch on that very same skin.

This Love experiences the aliveness inherent in what It is through the exquisiteness of life itself – the full depth and breadth of life, the full spectrum of you and your experience.

A Practice:

Take a moment to notice how this image reflects you – the ‘you’ you believe yourself to be and the ‘you’ you long to know. Yes, this image is religious, and yes, there is a way to take in the sacredness of the image while letting go of its religiosity. Notice how you can be aware of both. Then, just be with it all – honestly and openly. Push nothing away. Pull nothing toward you. Just receive it all.

 

Image: ‘Judeo-Christian glimpse in Cimetière du Père-Lachaise’ by John Althouse Cohen,
AttributionNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved (CC BY-ND 3.0)

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WildSoul Book Club

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“The real miracle of individuation and reclamation of the Wild Woman is that we all begin the process before we are ready, before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us. We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answers, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking.” ~Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Clarissa Pinkola Estes knows the Wild Woman. Reading her words sends shivers of knowing up my spine and down my legs.

It is time for the Wild Woman in us all to wake up.

It is time for our four-footed self to find her stride, and discover the cadence of her voice spoken from the deep womb.

It is time.

The heart of my work

At the heart of my work, is the reclamation of the wild soul. There is much to reclaim – her power, her innocence, her voice, her creativity, her instincts, her desire and her playfulness. Much of the past ten years of my life have been spent to find my way back to her, and I know so many of you have been engaged in a similar exploration.

Dr. Estés’ words, above, speak directly to a decision to reclaim even though there might be voices inside of us telling us it is not yet time, for whatever reasons those voices seem to come up with.

There is no right time. There is only now, and it is time. We can’t know the language she speaks ahead of time. We must simply say yes to her and open to her call…that voice, that pull, that gnawing that’s been trying to get your attention.

There are reasons for the pack

Responding to this call of the wild, is much more tasty, touching and transformational when done in the company of other wild women.

I invite you to join The WildSoul Book Club. The Book Club weaves together the best of a women’s group, a traditional book club and a deeply fulfilling personal development course. This is the very first time we are coming together as a group and I’d love for you to be a part of it.

Our inaugural book is Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ classic, Women Who Run With the Wolves. September marks the 20th anniversary of the landmark book for women.

Lianne Raymond and I will be leading the group. Lianne is a beautiful soul. Her site speaks of living with Wild Abandon. She is a woman of wisdom and integrity, and I am truly honored to weave our work together in service to you reclaiming the wild, four-footed self within you.

Wise Women Interviews

We know that diving into a book such as this can feel daunting, especially on your own. To give you some idea how this book has impacted women, we’ve interviewed a number of women about their experience reading the book, and how reading it impacted their lives. The interviews will be shared over the next few weeks leading up to the beginning of the 10-week course. Our very first interview is with Ronna Detrick, a spiritual director and an excavator of women’s stories. In her interview, she speaks about how  Women Who Run with the Wolves opened a door in her soul and how that connects to her life work.

You’ll find Ronna’s interview, as well as the great conversations we’ve lined up, here where I offer details of our book club and how you can join.

I am so excited to offer this. Everything in my soul is saying, “Yes”, to this journey. We’ve plans to offer other books down the line that can wake women up the our power, a power to serve life, to live a full of full feeling, and a life where we know we are sacred expressions of a creative life force that longs to know itself through each of us.

Whether or not you decide to join us, and I hope you will, develop and deepen your relationship with your wild soul. Give her voice. Invite her to move. Your life will never be the same…and that is a good, good thing.

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The Sincere Path

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“It’s my contention that there is no sincere path a human being can take without breaking his or her heart…so it can be a lovely, merciful thing to think, ‘Actually, there is no path I can take without having my heart broken, so why not get on with it and stop wanting these extra-special circumstances which stop me from doing something courageous?'” – David Whyte

The Sincere Path

Ah, these words speak to me. In truth, I have had by heart broken open so many times in my life. And, there is so much in this world right now that breaks my heart on a continual basis…if I allow it in. And, there is much in this world right now that brings me great joy.

A sincere path. One of truth and heart. The one that I most resist, because it isn’t ‘my’ path. It is the one that is asked of me.

The times my heart has been most broken are the times when life has happened to me. I am getting more accustomed to handling those things that seem difficult. The place where I’ve been stuck is this place of choosing to walk into the heart-break. Choosing the fire.

I’ve wanted to have it my way. I hadn’t thought of it as extral-special circumstances, but now I see that’s what I have wanted. You know how it is? If only I could choose from ‘this’ menu and not ‘that’ one. If only it could look ‘this’ way, not ‘that’ way.

The sincere path doesn’t come with a menu of choosable circumstances. We either choose to take it or not, and in my life I’ve noticed that the choice is something I must repeatedly make. It’s the same choice, just returned to again and again from wherever forgetting has taken me.

And then sometimes I just get stuck because I don’t want to get sticky. [Thank you, Jen Louden]

It’s one thing to learn to respond to life when your heart is broken open by life. It’s another thing to turn to that which you know will break your heart open and to go anyway, or to head into those circumstances you think will bring you personal pain and go anyway.

This is where courage and trust come in. It is where remembering what I know to be true, and so often forget, that everything is sacred. Everything. Every cell of everything. To remember that what I fear out there, is what I fear within myself is one of the most difficult things to remember because it is not the idea of it that will open me to my sacred path…it is the knowing of it deep in my heart.

I have moments of knowing that all is sacred and those moments are always by way of the heart and never by way of my ego mind. It only sees separation. But the heart, ah the heart. As the bindings around my heart break, my heart breaks open.

I fear being exposed. I fear being censored. I fear being shamed and humiliated.

What I really fear is feeling exposure, feeling being censored, shamed and humiliated. I fear feeling these feelings. I fear the power of them to break me. But can they really break me? Not really. Not what I truly am.

Somewhere I know that a multitude of experiences await me, not just these few my mind seems to focus on.

Somewhere I know that if I meet these circumstances that await me, they won’t kill me.

Somewhere I know that if I sincerely choose the sincere path, what will come are just what I need to experience…not to harm me, but to heal me.

And what I do know is that the more I have deeply grieved in my life, the more joy I am capable of feeling. The more I have opened to the unknown, the more I am surprised by the incredible variety of amazing things there are to feel in this human body.

And, you?

What is your sincere path? Do you know it? Do you skirt around its edges? Do you circle and circle never quite landing?

What don’t you want to feel? What feeling do you avoid at all cost?

Will you allow your heart to break open?

Will you journey with me?

 

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The Whole World is Alive in Play

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“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ~ Buckminster Fuller

And so it seems fighting the structure that is patriarchy is not where to put our energy. Fighting something only keeps us attached to it, and there seems to be enough fighting going on in this world already.

Instead, what is this new model? Bucky Fuller was into building things. The old model that is dying was built up during the Industrial Revolution. It’s been about mechanization, about thought, and about a large serving of the masculine.

Birthing

What is coming, though, is very different. What is new is not about mechanization and won’t come about by building it. It will come about through birthing. Yes, that’s right. BIRTHING.

We are giving birth to the new consciousness. Women hold that archetype, whether or not we birth babies. And this new consciousness is being born by women who are rebirthing themselves into a conscious knowing of the sacred feminine.

This new consciousness is not about women taking over, it’s about coming into balance, about healing the earth and realizing our roles as stewards of life. It’s about realizing the sacredness of life, in all of life.

What will it take for us to relax into the delivery? Anyone who has either given birth, or who has witnessed a baby being birthed, knows the mother basically has to surrender to the birth process.

Hanging on makes birth, and life, painful and intense. And letting go, receiving the birth, brings a little more ease. Maybe. Either way, birth brings transformation.

Play

I remember how I transformed after having each child. Birth transformed me in completely unexpected ways. The birth of any creation through us transforms us. We leave the old behind. There’s a kind of death, and from that death the new is born. The whole world is alive in play. Why would we be any different?

I’ve noticed that one of the hardest things for me to relax into is this sense of play; a sense of flow and ease, of not having to have a label for everything. I have been in a place of in-between for some time, now, and it isn’t so easy to navigate. I make it hard. I try to put solidity to flow, firmness to malleability, exact labels to what it is I will be doing, and perhaps it is as simple as I am doing what I am doing, whatever name I give it, whatever I call myself.

And then I see that we know what we know. If we are really truthful with ourselves, we know. Can we trust ourselves and this knowing? This is the question, because the answer is crucial to birthing something new.

I’ve shared some words about trusting yourself… you know what you know… over on Andrea Olson’s site, A Multitude of Things. Please read on…I think it will speak to you.

And you?

As always, I’d love to know what you think, what’s happening in your life and how you’re experiencing this process of birth and re-birth. I hope you’ll share them here in the comments.

With love, Julie

 

 

 

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Erotic Visionary: Following the Instinct of Love, Joy & Creation

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Connecting with life.

I’ve just returned from a beautiful weekend retreat at Ratna Ling retreat center, near Cordoza, California, a spot in the coastal mountains of northern California. The land is so beautiful here. The retreat time was short, yet filled with so much wisdom and learning. I learned so much about myself, how I hold back from a truly fulfilled life of truth and transparency, and ways to access my instinctual self more readily. All of this so amazingly fits in with my last post on being an erotic visionary. I thank you for sharing that post, and also thank those of you who shared yourself in the comments of that post.

At the retreat, I loved the exercises we did to discover ways in which our instinctual selves are so accessible and so ready to be expressed more fully. In one particular exercise, we were asked to go exploring in twos. Our explorations were to notice and follow our instincts through our senses.

It’s amazing what happens when we allow our instincts to guide us. My partner and I spent thirty minutes exploring the land around Ratna Ling center through our senses, allowing ourselves to follow our instinctual impulse.

We climbed into the center of huge redwood trees hollowed out by fire. We stroked moss covered bark and the insides of charred redwood trees turned silky over time. We found the tiniest red flowers sprouting from minute lichen. We delighted in a Yucca plant in full flower. We took turns sharing with each other what we were immediately drawn to.

What was I drawn to?

Beauty, Color, and Life.

Contrast, Joy, and Tenderness.

The intense color contrast between sunlit orange Tibetan prayer flags and the bright blue skies that canopy the hills of northern California, just miles away from the Pacific Ocean. When I had first arrived at the center, I was delighted by these flags. In giving my full attention to this delight, I gazed at this contrast and realized how much I LOVE color, light, and contrast. This love has been with me from as far back in my life as I can remember.

The tenderness of flower petals, how the light shines through them, and how they so fleetingly exist in a world where everything dies, where everything in creation eventually dies.

The experience of the impulse itself and the very simple, yet oh so important, joy of discovery what life is displaying just around the corner… discovering what lies at the other end of the instinctual impulse.

Eros

We have these impulses all the time, yet how often do we allow our eyes to simply land on what they want to see, our hands to touch what they long to feel, our ears to listen to that which they long to hear?

We are so strongly socially conditioned to inhibit our instincts. Yes, some of that conditioning is a good thing; AND, some of that conditioning inhibits the soul from freely expressing itself in the world, of following the instinct of love, joy and creation – eros.

When we follow this instinct, we connect with life and with the earth. When we trust our instinctual selves, we rediscover an aspect of self that we buried so long ago.

Learning to trust this instinct, and guiding others to trust this instinct as well, is where my work is leading me. My work is shifting in a direction not yet fully formed, which is exhilarating. I’m following the trail of where my soul is calling me, where the instinct is leading me.

And, you?

If you had fifteen minutes to follow your erotic impulse with a friend, where would your instinctual self lead you? Take fifteen minutes today to follow this erotic impulse, whether with a friend or alone. Notice the feeling of the impulse, the pull of what you are drawn to. Notice where you stop yourself. Just notice what it feels like to follow the instinct of love, joy and creation.

Then, come back and share with us what you discover in the comments. I look forward to learning from you!

 

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