Clarissa Pinkola EstÃ©s – unabashedly female

October 15, 2012October 15, 2012

Little Flares of Coiled Delight

“Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film.”Â ~ Ansel Adams

The other day I had to pick up a new headset for my iPhone. I was down in Palo Alto, so I headed over to the Stanford Shopping Center. This is one of the most beautiful outdoor malls ever created…mainly for the flowers planted all around the center.

I hadn’t realized just how out-of-sorts I was feeling until I saw these Dahlias. As I stopped to really look at them, I realized just how much joy seeing the beauty in flowers brings me. They bring me home. I begin to breathe more deeply. I being to smile a soft smile. I feel joy, that soft easy joy that is such a field of contentment. This joy is the joy of an open aware heart that meets life without expectations.

Returning Home

In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes about the periodic need of women to go home, to return to the soul. Sometimes, we need to really get away to some place earthy and enchanted to remember the depth of what we are, and sometimes we can find a mini-retreat of sorts to reconnect to the soul.

As I continued to meander through the mall looking at flowers, I found this one. From the front, it is gorgeous in its openness. It’s not at all symmetrical. It has its own unique arrangement of petals. I loved that about it. Then, (and I don’t know what possesssed me to do this!) I looked behind it, at the back of it, and lo and behold! – there were these beautiful little curls that you see in the top image. I think she invited me in…

Seeing the coiled flares of delight she’s got going on behind her, sort of like under her skirts, caused me to wonder (I love the word wonder) what flares and curls and pink petals I’ve got stashed away, just waiting for a moment when the light shines upon them calling to them to come out of hiding. I know it’s something to do with bawdiness and laughter, delight and belly-shaking glee.

I know I’m shaking off the voices that have caused me to continue to believe that logic and reason reign supreme over delight and wonder, that having things figure out is much more important than settling down into the utter delight of not knowing a damn thing and being open to the delight of discovery, that clarity of argument will always win out over the powerful peace that comes when something is just what it is without the need to get anyone to understand. Ha…how totally devoid of delight, glee, and eros these voices were that I came to internalize!

How about you?

What coiled tendrils and flares are you keeping to yourself? What would others see if you were to give us access to those parts of you you’ve yet to unfurl, that you long to unfurl? Notice the uniqueness in this beauty. Where, and in what, does your uniqueness just wait to be invited out?

Where is that bawdiness in you, the place where delight, desire, and a good belly laugh are all that’s needed?

What mini-retreat might you have at your fingertips just waiting to take you home, back into the arms and lap of the goddess who delights in those little flares of soul?

August 21, 2012

WildSoul Book Club

“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 EstÃ©s

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. EstÃ©s’Â 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 PinkolaÂ EstÃ©s’Â classic,Â 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, aÂ spiritual director and anÂ excavator of womenâ€™s stories. In her interview, she speaks about howÂ 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.

July 3, 2010January 30, 2012

Dig

“When you go out next, take a look at the dirt at the side of the road. Blonde dirt, ochre red dirt, black dirt, brown dirt, yellow dirt, clay white dirt, green dirt. Then, look inside your house. Most everything in it came from the dirt first. Our Mother is everywhere: metal, plastic, paper, glass. Don’t tell me you have no ideas. Dig.”

~Tending the Creative Fire manuscript, byÂ Clarissa Pinkola EstÃ©s

…

Last Thursday, I painted with Chris Zydel, (@wildheartqueen for you twitteraties).

Chris leads Process painting. Beautifully.

…

The Process began with picking my paint colors and brushes.

For me, this process was about digging. The painting I did didn’t come from the top of me. My head. It came from someplace deep down in the darkness, someplace where the paint flows like honey, like blood, like dirt…I guess that would be mud.

As Chris said right from the beginning, it’s not about the painting, it’s about the process, about what’s happening within you as you choose colors, choose brushes, face the white paper, become the conduit for seed to sprout from the dirt, and for the mystery to come to life as creation.

At the very root of it all, it’s a big mystery. I didn’t know what would come out on the paper. I don’t know what it is or even what it means. It just came out. It’s as simple as that.

I noticed, as I painted without a plan and without a story, that it was fun. I had fun simply watching it all happen. I felt playful as the color changed the paper from white to painted. It was spontaneous. Joyous. Innocent.

It was a lot like the painting I did as a child at pre-school, where long tables were made from saw horses and wood, long tables that held clean white butcher paper.

Back then, I just LOVED to see the paint flow onto the paper. That’s the part I remember most. The colors. The mixing. The colors mixing and turning the paper from white to painted to creation.

…

Sometimes, what is flowing wants my mind to join in, so the creation can have meaning, can be shared with words, can have a different kind of impact. Sometimes, there’s no invitation to the mind to join in. I like those times. They’re empty. Nothing here but dirt and digging.

…

I could try to make something up about what it means, but why?

Dirt is where it all comes from.

I just dig.

February 20, 2010August 25, 2010

Sacred Flesh and Bones

The body is like an earth. It is a land unto itself. It is as vulnerable to overbuilding, being carved into parcels, cut off, overmined, and shorn of its power as any landscape. The wilder woman will not be easily swayed by redevelopment schemes. For her, the questions are not how to form but how to feel. The breast in all its shapes has the function of feeling and feeding. Does it feed? Does it feel? It is a good breast. ~Clarissa Pinkola EstÃ©s

I picked up my old and tattered copy of Women Who Run With The Wolves again, just the other night. This book carried me through a tough time in my life, a time when I was hurting from a break-up that took me by surprise. In my healing process, I decided I needed to learn how to stay by my own side, no matter what, no matter how shiny the object of my desire was over there. That need to hop the fence can be so seductive. Reading EstÃ©s’ classic, I took my own hand in mine and walked deeper into the wild forest of me. Her words spoke to my soul in a way no other author has…except, perhaps, Marian Woodman.

The body like earth. A land unto itself. Vulnerable. Overbuilt, overmined, cut off, carved into parcels. Shorn of its power. Wild women. Breasts. Feeling and feeding.

Ahhhhh. Back in the land of the wild.

My mind went back thirty years to motherhood, to the times when I nursed my two babies. Such wondrous moments those were. I loved being a mother to babies. I loved nursing. I can still remember the feeling of the milk letting down when my babies cried. The connection between cry and breast, hunger and milk. All on its own, my body responded to my little ones’ cries for nourishment. The wisdom of the body, especially the female body that can bring life into life, can hold it while it grows, and can then birth it into being, is a mystery. It is sacred.

But even if we never feed our children from our breasts, or never have children, they are still wonderful parts with which to feel. Yes, our lovers can enjoy them; but we get to feel life through our breasts, sensations that let us know we are sensual creatures, that we love what we love.

When we are no longer focused on being the object of desire, but rather the subject, we can enjoy our bodies as the wild woman, the woman that knows her instincts, feelings and body from the inside out.

Desire, pleasure, feeling, aliveness. The body brings us into direct experience with life, back to our senses.

EstÃ©s writes:

There is no ‘supposed to be’ in bodies. The question is not size of shape or years of age, or even having two of everything, for some do not. But the wild issue is, does this body feel, does it have right connection to pleasure, to heart, to soul, to the wild? Does it have happiness, joy? Can it in its own way move, dance, jiggle, sway, thrust? Nothing else matters.

These words go right to my soul.

When we see the body as an object to be manipulated and controlled, we are cut off from our wildness, from our instincts and intuition, from our power as women.

When we know our bodies as sacred flesh and bones, blood and heart, we open to how we can experience life through this body. Each cell can awaken to its divinity when we are willing to begin the descent, from our heads where we’ve been taught to live, back into the body, the only place where aliveness dwells.

It is through right connection to our own pleasure, through honoring the sacred within us, through embracing our design as women, that we find right connection to the wild and step into our power. Yes, others can enjoy our bodies, and their enjoyment will be so much greater, when we first are the subject of our own desire, when we hold ourselves as sacred, for we are the sacred feminine in physical form.

And, you?

Does your body have happiness? Does it know joy?

How do you experience right connection to pleasure, heart, soul and the wild?

I’d love to know what your experiences have been.