alive and awake – unabashedly female

July 13, 2014

Do we dare live our sacred humanity?

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

Listen to the audio…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do we dare be fully human, infusedÂ withÂ liquid light?

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

I say Yes.

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

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

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

January 29, 2011January 29, 2011

Alive and Awake: part three

The more alive and awake I become, the more embodied I am, the more I cannot hide: from myself, from life, from the truth. And even though part of me would like to hide, who I really am keeps bringing me closer to this place: awakening to the power of the Feminine, the power of Her, the power of the Mother.

This is where our power lies as women…in our bodies. Bodies tied to the Earth, alive like the Earth, and awake like the Earth.

Being in the Body…

is vulnerable. Very vulnerable.

Being alive is a vulnerable proposition.

Being wholly alive as a woman in a misogynistic culture can feel overwhelming when you’re tuned into the energy that is held in the shadow of the culture.

There is an implicit (and in some places explicit) physical threat to women who speak truth rather than follow the dictates of the culture that would ask us to keep silent. The level of obvious threat is relative to the level of freedom we have in the culture we live in. The level of not-so-obvious threat is not quite so relative to that freedom. Sometimes, in some cultures, even though things look pretty calm on the surface, underneath we feel the unspoken waves of hatred and anger that misogyny breeds.

In this female body, I know I am susceptible to harm, to hurt, to invasion. I know, because I’ve experienced it. I know because many of my friends and other women I’ve met have experienced it. I know, because women all over the world are experiencing it right now.

Many of us have learned to protect our vulnerability in this physical world with a tough exterior. Many of us have learned instead to find ways to be small, to take up little space. In so many ways, we’ve learned to hide this soft, soft place inside so it can’t be hurt, and to protect this body that can be the target of people who take their aggression out on the female form.

Men, too, have beautiful soft places of vulnerability, and this culture has taught them well how not to show them. And in a culture where it is part of the very foundation of the structure for men to hold power over women, how they experience vulnerability is different than how women experience it. Different.

Every woman…

finds a way to stay safe in a culture where she is not safe simply for being her full self. We cut away parts of ourselves. We become silent, stuffing down the words we would say in a heartbeat if we felt we could. We become like men. We even adopt attitudes and beliefs that keep other women down, and that take away our own sovereignty. We trade truth for being wanted. We give up hope of ever knowing ourselves for who we really are. We pretend we can’t hear our own selves crying out.

Even though there are many women who’ve adopted ways of being I don’t agree with, I can see why they’ve adopted them. I don’t have to agree with a woman to understand how vulnerable she feels in this world.

There is upheaval happening on so many levels, both internally and externally; individually and collectively. We’re experiencing destruction and creation, death and re-birth, together. The deeper I drop into my body, the more I feel the upheaval that’s here right now.

In the body,

we are in tune with what is here. In the body, we are fully connected to the Earth and each other.

In the body, we have access to the wild and feral self, the intuitive and instinctive realms where we know things our minds could never understand.

In the body, we come back in tune with our sacred creativity, the primal Yes of creation, the Mystery.

Anat Vaughan-Lee, in a closing reflection titled, “Making the Way for the Feminine” at the 2008 Conference “The Global Peace Initiative for Women” in Jaipur, India, shared these remarks:

The feminine, whether the feminine quality or women themselves, holds the secret of creation, which is the light hidden in matter. This is very important to understand; that if one is to do any real spiritual work at this time of global and ecological crisis, one has to realize that the feminine holds the unique understanding of the sacredness in matter and also how we need to reawaken this aspect in life.

The feminine is both the feminine principle or quality, and also women, all women. It is both important for men to reclaim the feminine within themselves, and for women to remember, and reclaim, who we really are. To quote Anat, again:

Woman has to remember, reclaim who she is and by doing so, reclaim, midwife, the reawakening of the spiritual understanding of life. And I am also reminded of what Mother Teresa said: “We serve life not because it is broken but because it is Holy.”

Just like life, our bodies are sacred.

Embodiment can be remembering, living and serving this sacredness that lies at the heart of womanhood.

It’s an invitation that awaits our reply…

If you missed them, part one and part two will offer more about this invitation.

And, you?

I’d love to know how you experience this sacred creativity within you as a woman.

If you enjoyed this three-part series:

I’m in the process of putting these three posts, and more, into an ebook on embodiment. I invite you to send me stories of your experience, of how you see embodiment in your own life, for inclusion in the book. It is all completely confidential, of course.

Thank you, as always, for your willingness to participate here with me. I learn so much from what you share.

January 24, 2011January 27, 2011

Alive & Awake: part one

Woman with a Crescent Moon (or) The Eclipse, by Paul Albert Besnard - 1888

She eclipses the moon. And in response, it’s as if the moon highlights the darkness of the feminine mystery that surrounds her.

The Moon. The Dream World. Mystery.

Last night, I slept within a vivid dream world. The overarching theme of the dreams was the simplicity of life when we live from the truth.

Simple, yes. Painless, no.

I dreamed of the body and it’s relationship to truth. In my dream, I became completely embodied. All the way home. Conscious throughout. The further down I went into the body, the clearer the truth was.

In my dream, when I arrived at the very bottom, so to speak, of my body, meaning I was conscious all the way down from the hairs on my head to the ends of my toes, and in every cell in-between, the truth was sparklingly clear and radiant.

If I attempted to do something that did not come from this truth that my body knows, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t act. My body stood steadfast, while my mind argued like a sullen child.

Then, even my chattering mind dropped away. I was only conscious through the body, but in every cell. All there was was truth. All action came from truth. I didn’t fight myself. I didn’t fight others. I just lived from the wisdom of the body.

In this place, full embodiment meant full truth. There was no choice but to live truth, to act from truth, to love from truth.

I could feel the peace that moved throughout the body as I moved in the world.

Coming down into the sacred flesh and bones that was home for me, I could no longer pretend I’m not powerful beyond any kind of human measure; I could no longer stay quiet in the face of the violence that others face every day; I could no longer choose false safety and security over right action. Choice and action were a fluid dance that flowed straight out of conscious awareness.

In the light of morning, I sat up in bed with a new understanding of the power of embodiment.

Next…

In part two of this three part series, I will move deeper into the body and the power it offers to us if we’re willing to come home to it. The body knows. The body remembers. The body could tell stories, all the stories of my life from before I was born up to this very moment.