Patti Agapi – unabashedly female

Reverb10 Day 05
Prompt: Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

This is a rambling post, and I’m rambling, trusting that where I end up will bring us full circle…in some way.

Today I read Tia Singh’s post for reverb10, wherein she wrote these words:

…write as if I had a million in the bank, and nothing to gain from my writing.

Bammo. These words hit me hard. They zinged me, I mean ZINGED me!

I have learned to allow myself to write deeply here. I still sometimes get the occasional stomach tightening when I hit ‘Publish’, a good thing because it means I’m uncomfortable with something being seen, but for the most part, I realize I’m now a little too comfortable…most of the time.

I’ve pushed myself this year. I’ve shared things I thought I wouldn’t share. It didn’t kill me. In fact, it was freeing. Freeing to unveil myself here, to the women and men that read me on a regular basis.

I still have a ‘thing’ about writing about my personal life. About sharing my stories. I’ve told myself for a long time that others don’t want to know stories of my life, that telling things about my daily life is a little too narcissistic. And yet, I know how important it is for women to share their stories.

I’ve been swimming in the shallow end with a book I’m writing. I’ve dived in the deep end a number of times, only to climb out of the water and sit by the side of the pool, to grab air, to sun myself, to feel the comfort of the ground beneath me. The deep end seems to be where the juice of the book is. Yet, I resist. I come up for air before big chunks of work get done. The scramble and chaos of writing something about these parts of my life, these parts of me, churn me around, so I surface for long periods on end.

Like Tia’s words, Patti’s image spoke to me the moment I saw it. Recognition. Half the face light and beautiful, full of color and life, sort of like the shallow end where the light pierces more readily. The other half dark, chaotic, unknown. She’s veiled. I’m veiled.

What’s inside here? inside of me?

Veils can be beautiful. They can create an aura of mystery, of exotic sensuality. But, perhaps that’s mainly in the movies. The veils I see in the real world seem to hide women. I don’t know what it is like to have to wear a veil…a burka. I don’t know that experience.

I do know what it is to be veiled in my own way, for I fear exposure.

I fear exposure, and yet, I have a choice. No one is veiling me, except myself.

Somewhere, the dark holds promise for me. I’ve been told often enough in spiritual circles that shadow work brings light.

I’ve been in the dark enough times to know it can be a fruitful trip. But then there I go again, expecting a gain. Can I dive into the deep end without expectation of gain? Can I unveil myself, not only to me, but to you, without expectation of gain…or expectation that you’ll like what you see…that I’ll like what I see?

This book that’s been lurching around inside me now for far too long feels very deep and raw. Now I know that’s a good thing. And, it scares the crap out of me.

But it has to come out.Â Tia’s words, especially ‘nothing to gain’, spell freedom to write. When I read her words, I realized I’ve been holding on to the idea that there will be something to gain if I get it right. Not just personally, but also collectively. I’ve put a shitload of pressure on myself to ‘get it right’. And in the pressure to get it right, nothing comes out, nothing gets written.

If I am true to the writing, if I write what wants to be written, then I must give up my expectations of gain for me, of being understood, of being liked. What wants to be written isn’t about me. It’s the me that holds back, not what wants to be born.

I’ve had a vision for some time now. I see something that feels hard to explain to people. I see a land where women come out of the dark, out of the shadow of men, out into the light so they can see themselves as they are, as beautiful sacred beings. We are different than men. We have been told we are less than, second-class. Women all over the world are being treated in ways unimaginable, right now.

Women, whom these atrocities are being acted upon, are sacred beings. We bring life into life. We are sacred beings because the soul of a newborn life enters the world within a woman’s body. I’ve experienced this. I’ve given birth. I’ve witnessed my daughters both give birth. I’ve watched death come and take those I love. I’ve experienced the love that is present at both moments of birth and moments of death.

As Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee writes,

“The light of the soul of the world needs the participation of all who are open to this work. But part of our redemption of the feminine is to acknowledge that certain work can only be done by women. The interconnections of life belong to the wisdom of the feminine and a womanâ€™s body holds the knowledge of how the worlds interrelate. Masculine consciousness imaged a transcendent divinityâ€”the feminine knows how the divine is present in every cell of creation. Women know this not as abstract knowledge, but part of their instinctual natureâ€”in the womb the light of a soul can come into physical form. Life is standing at the edge of an abyss of forgetfulness waiting for the light of the world to be born. This birth needs the wisdom of the feminine, and women must take their place in this time of great potential.”

â€” Spiritual Power, page 62

Life is standing at the edge of an abyss of forgetfulness waiting for the light of the world to be born. This birth needs the wisdom of the feminine, and women must take their place in this time of great potential.

An abyss of forgetfulness.

Am I willing to remember? Am I willing to take my place? I KNOW, from my own experiences, that the divine is present in every cell of creation. I KNOW this. I FEEL this. I’ve seen many deaths and births, and know how the worlds relate.

I know these things of which Llewellyn speaks, because I’ve lived them. We women all know these things. They are in the stories of our lives.

We’re waiting for the light of the world to be born. We are in darkness already. There is destruction, war, greed, torture, passivity, unwillingness to feel. And it’s all right here in my unwillingness to stay in the deep end, until something new emerges.

I can’t know what will emerge from my own dive. It is mine to take. Exposure. Chaos. Nothing to be gained. Everything to be gained.

How can I know what I am capable of unless I let go and see?

How can I know what women can offer, if I’m not willing to see what I have to offer?

I’d be foolish to believe I have let go of this. It’s a process of letting go. And letting go. And letting go.

Marianne Williamson says we no longer have time to preach or sing to anyone but the choir. I know you beautiful women and men know all of this. What I know I now am asking for is a community of women and men to walk with, side by side, as we do whatever is being asked of us by that which wants to move through us, by that which wants our freedom, by that which is dying to be born.

Will you join me? Can I join you?

Veiled is by Patti Agapi. You can see more of Patti’s work on Flickr. Thank you, Patti, for permission to share your work here.

Roots, by Patti Agapi

The female human being is being born anew. She is coming into existence and we are midwifing her birth. Our ways of wisdom and powers of mystery were hidden well. They’ve been buried treasure for centuries. Now, it is time to listen, to remember, to recognize, to join together the vast humanity of woman. It is time to listen to the sacred sound that is uttered when we remember as the One that we are.

Rilke spoke of this new female human being. He spoke of the humanity of woman in letter seven of Letters To A Young Poet.

“This humanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it.”

I love to bring the brilliant work of many women together, in one place, to be savored, allowing the flavors to enhance each other, the poignancy to fill our hearts and wake us up.

I discovered the beautiful work of art above on Twitter. The artist is Patti Agapi. When I saw Patti’s drawing, I cried. I know this feeling, well, the feeling that Roots inspires. Head down on the warm Earth. So much a part of her that there is no distinction between where I end and where she begins. Held by her. Listening to her. Knowing there is no difference between the divinity in her and the divinity in me.

When I listen to her, I hear her anguish. And I feel her love. I feel myself as part of the Big Mother, and the home she offers up in every moment.

My last post, Life is Erotic, was met with so many lovely, rich comments. Your comments meant so much to me as that post came from such a tender place within me. One comment in particular, by Holly Friesen, spoke to this connection between the earth’s body and our bodies:

“The more deeply I feel the earthâ€™s body, the more I realize my own bodyâ€™s deep connection to herâ€¦we are one and the same being, both pulsing with a rhythmic life force that is flooded with eros. It is only when we strip away all this beautiful entangled life force that we are left with a trivial, vulgar view of eros. Eros in her full beauty is entwined throughout ALL of life; the flowers, the buds, the rivers, the rocks and our own bodies. It is only when the deep rift between sexuality and spirituality can be reunited that we will be fully whole. We feel this beautiful flow of life force most fully in the spring when the cyclical awakening and birthing is in full force!! Ah, what the spring does for the cherry trees is a joy and a miracle to behold!”

We are one and the same with the earth. The same divinity that looks out your eyes flows through her rivers. The same divinity that hears the birdsong in the early morning light flaps its wings to ride the waves of the wind. The same divinity that longs to remember its own wholeness opens its petals to receive sunshine, rain and the bee’s love.

The following, by Zsuzsanna Budapest, is from her book, The Holy book of Womanâ€™s Mysteries.

This is God, children, listen up well.

The beautiful blue planet, our mother, our sister.

She moves with 200 miles per second, yet imperceptible; she moves with the quiet of the lakes and the
rushing of her rivers, the vast expanse of her oceans, the echoes of her mountains.

This is God, children… listen up well.

Lift your eyes to the heavens, and you behold her sisters, the stars, and her cousins the suns and nebulas, and fill your senses with her infinite beauty.

This is God, children… and she has made no other heaven but the heavens where you already reside, and she has made no hell except the one you insist to create for yourself.

Here is paradise. Here is destiny. Here is infinite grace. This is God.

When you seek her she is beneath your feet.

When you seek her, she is food in your mouth.

When you seek her she is love in your heart, pleasure in your body.

You share her heartbeat.

Earth Day is upon us in a few days. But rather than seeing earth as something we celebrate once a year, perhaps we might open to what she offers to us in each and every moment, meet her with reverence, listen to what she is saying.

Her wounds are our wounds. Her delights are our delights. Her ability to regenerate is our ability to regenerate. How we feel about our bodies and what we say to them, she ingests. How we treat her, we ingest.

I have spent a lifetime saying very mean things to this body, my body that provides me with life. I have spent a lifetime worrying about how I look, with occasional silent wishes to slice some flesh off here and there, hoping to achieve some ideal that I can’t achieve. I am no different than any other human being, I suppose…at least any other woman that grows up in this culture of female objectification. And I know men don’t escape the pain of this either.

Objectification of any sort just keeps us believing in the dream of separation, the dream that is at the heart of the pain we all experience. And what is waiting for us when we awaken out of the dream of separation?

Here is paradise. Here is destiny. Here is infinite grace. This is God.

You can see more of Patti Agapi’s work at here.

Tag: Patti Agapi

UnVeiled

…write as if I had a million in the bank, and nothing to gain from my writing.

Listen Up Well