most vulnerable…
I’ve been hovering over the keyboard today, burrowing down into some deep writing time and I’ve been sitting with the question of what feels most vulnerable in me right now.
I couldn’t find the words so I went out for a run. As I finished up, I found the tears beginning to flow, once again. These past few weeks have been full of intense energetic days: the full moon eclipse, Solstice, and Christmas. I’ve felt an unnamed vulnerability over these days, a shifting and unsettling as previously buried experiences come up to be seen again.
I came home and tried to warm my body by making chicken soup, and then following that with a long hot shower…a very long hot shower.
I can’t quite put my finger on what I am feeling. Something in me is longing to be nourished, to be deeply fed. I can feel the longing all the way down along my body.
As I stood in the shower letting the hot water run down my back and inhaling the steam into my cold-air-induced tight lungs, I flashed upon the poem that continually calls me back to read it, over and over again. It feels as though there are gems in the words just waiting to be discovered and savored, as I invite the words to work their magic on my soul. The poem, “If You Want to Change the World, Love a Woman“, speaks not to my mind but to the deeper recesses of my woman’s body. The poem calls to me, over and over. It’s as if I read it, but I don’t yet have access to something…
I long for this…
Somewhere in this body, I, too, long to be loved in the way Lisa writes of.
And then, very serendipitously, I came across this quote from one of my favorite books, A Woman’s Worth, by Marianne Williamson:
Some men know that a light touch of the tongue, running from a woman’s toes to her ears, lingering in the softest way possible in various places in between, given often enough and sincerely enough, would add immeasurably to world peace.
And in reading these words again, my body quivers with longing and my heart craves to know this sincerity from a man longing to love me.
I’ve written before about longing to be touched with the tenderest of touch, and I’ve heard from others who instruct me that if I want to be loved in this way I must first love this way.
I know this to be true and…
I then come across this quote, as if Life is dropping me tasty bread crumbs along this path of discover:
“Are you willing to trust love rather than your mind’s protection from hurt? If you are willing, then you will taste the possibility of living a life of love and conscious innocence. This is possible for everyone. Love is the teacher. If you are willing to surrender to love rather than trying to control it, love teaches you who you are.” ~ Gangaji ~
And the pieces fall into place.
I can touch with the tenderest conscious touch. Yet, I know I protect myself from hurt. I long to experience what Marianne speaks of, yet I can’t say I trust enough that there is a deep sincerity in the heart and touch of my lover…and the fear of trusting love keeps me from knowing love.
To be moved in this way, to live a life of love and conscious innocence, I must let love teach me… really teach me… and this scares me.
How does loving a woman change the world?
Perhaps our hearts are protected, afraid to surrender to love, afraid of the shame and humiliation we have suffered over the past milienia. Women aren’t the only ones to have suffered, yet I know, personally, that painful experiences to my female body, have caused me to not trust, when what I long for is to open to the most exquisite touch I could imagine.
A woman’t body is vulnerable. We take a man into ourselves. When we’ve been abused it is hard to trust again.
Yet, perhaps it is a woman’s openness, a woman’s trust, a woman’s receptivity that might heal much of what is broken in our world.
When a woman trusts, when she is fully open and receptive, when her vulnerability shines from within her, what does she create that she does not have access to when she is afraid to trust?
Lest you think I believe this can only happen with a woman and a man, I do not. I have a sense that it is a woman’s openness, a loving and responsive openness to Love that could move mountains, regardless of which gender the woman longs for.
For me, it is a man, so I write from this place.
Can I trust…
that love itself is the teacher?
Am I willing to be the student?
What I now know is that Love must be at the center of my heart…not my partner, but Love. Love, God, Conscousness…whatever name we give it, must be my beloved. When my partner is my beloved, I place my power in their hands, and vice versa. It’s taken me a long, long time to know this.
And when Love is my beloved, and Love is the beloved of my partner, perhaps then we can enter into the vulnerable, soul-feeding place of deep love – where we are both taught by Love.
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And, you?
Do you long to be loved in the way Lisa writes of? In a way that would change the world?
Do you long to experience what Marianne writes of? Something that would bring world peace?
What do you know of this longing? I’d love to know…
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Touch -Â 
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