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The Force that compels us to Rise

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Rising for Justice

For many people around our planet, February 14th is becoming associated with One Billion Rising, a global campaign to demand an end to violence against women and girls. We rise as women, as men, as human beings who know another world is possible and who are willing to speak out to help bring about this new world.

onebillionrising2014This year, One Billion Rising was about rising for Justice.*** One Billion Rising is a tidal wave of change IF we understand it is not a fad to take part in and then move on to another, but rather a clear opportunity to verbalize and put into action our desire to end this violence.

For many of us in Western cultures, it’s Valentine’s Day, too. This past Friday night, Feb. 14th, 2014, I had the pleasure and joy of co-hosting a One Billion Rising women’s movement ritual with Stacey Butcher and Lakshmi Devi. Stacey, a 5Rhythms teacher, hosted a 5Rhythms wave; Lakshmi, a singer and songwriter, sang her songs, and invited us to sing as we moved into stillness at the end of the dance; and I shared writings and poetry, as well as recorded spoken-word poetry mixed with a beautiful instrumental song at the end of the dance wave.

Here I share with you what I shared on Friday evening. I hope it inspires you to listen for the deep wisdom inside of you, and feel for the force that will cause you to rise and stand for what you know in your heart to be true, and for a kinder, more tender world where all can live in dignity without fear of violence.

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Love and Justice

Today we celebrate love. Today we rise for Justice. The two are inescapably linked.

When we love Life, Life itself that gives us this life, we cannot help but feel the call for justice in our bones – a justice that honors life itself.

Tonight we are sharing in a movement ritual. As I was preparing for tonight, I wondered what ritual is really about and I found this excerpt from an interview with Joseph Campbell.

“A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.”

Tonight we are here together to move in ritual, as women who desire to rise in service to justice. And, through this ritual, we are here to be reminded of the wisdom of our own lives, the wisdom that is within us, a wisdom that has been within us all along.

We are here to remember the mythology that is at the heart of our lives as women in a world that is so much more than what we sometimes see it to be.

 

So, What is it to rise?

What does that even mean? Rising is a movement upwards. If we are rising, what are we rising up from? And what is behind the rising?

What is the force that compels us to rise? 

The invitation tonight is to dance these questions, to dance yourself open enough to hear a response from within you, a response from your wise self, your Soul.

This wise self is instinctive and instinctual. She is visceral, animal, and primordial. She is feral. She is wide-eyed and sensual.

Your Soul knows how to rise.

Rising is in your blood and bones. It is in your cells. It is in your belly, because love desires to move through you, to rise you up into the world, way beyond what your mind thinks you are capable of. And love desires to move us all to live in accordance with what love desires, not what we desire.

“Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible. To love you have to climb out of the cradle, where everything is ‘getting,’ and grow up into the maturity of giving, without concern for getting anything special in return. Love is not a deal, it is a sacrifice. It is not marketing, it is a form of worship.” ~Thomas Merton

 

Many years ago,

I danced in Mill Valley, on a Tuesday night with Kathy Altman. Leading the class, she did something truly extraordinary…at least it was for me. I remember that night like it is this night. I remember it because I was led to dance a dance where I was so awake, so alive, deep in the cells of my body, that every move was imprinted in my cells.

This dance was visceral. It was instinctive. My Soul danced this dance, and then we wrote this as a way to capture words about something beyond words.

 

Tonight I danced.

Tonight I danced and came alive.
Tonight I danced and cried and pulsed and throbbed.

She told us to make our presence known.
She asked us to step so strongly there was no question we had been there.

She reminded us to track ourselves,
to be so aware of where we had been and where we were going,
so much so that our path wrapped its way around and around us until we were tightly wound balls of Being.

My hands connected,
molasses-like energy stretching from mama earth to the tips of my fingers.
As I perched on my paws, I felt her kindred spirit suck me into her tendrils of love.

Tonight I danced and came alive.
I felt his pulse, absorbing it into my body.
I felt her love, letting it run down my arm and fill my heart.
I felt their joy, knowing it was mine, too.
I knew other as self.

Tonight I danced and came alive.

So, tonight…

Here, together, let us come alive.

Tonight, together, let us dance these questions.

Tonight, remember the wisdom within you, reveal your instincts, feel the desire in your body to dance into its wholeness. Our bodies are creatures, instinctual creatures with hearts, longings, and voices that must speak.

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Later, at then end of the dance as we moved into stillness, Stacey played a song that was a compilation of my spoken words and a powerful instrumental piece by Max Richter, On the Nature of Daylight.

Whatever you’ve been through, whatever life has brought your way, whatever injustices, betrayals, or abuses you have experienced, you have survived.

You are here. Alive. Breathing. Dancing.

Whatever injustices, betrayals, or abuses you have perpetrated, you have survived.

You are here. Now. Alive. Whole.

Breathe this in, really take this knowing in. That you are here, alive, whole, and awake regardless of what happened in your past. Feel this aliveness in every cell of your body, a body that longs to know this aliveness, longs to live its fullness. Allow your heart to expand to the capacity that is its nature. Allow your arms to spread as wide and open as they long to be. Allow your belly to pulse and swell with the primordial creation that infuses your being with this precious life.

You are here, on this earth. You are alive on our beautiful planet. You are whole, a wholeness that is filled from the mother.

And, it is time to bring this aliveness to the world. To bring your wholeness to this world that is hungry for feeling, thirsty for truth, dying to be alive, wanting to be touched.

This is your gift to this world. Your aliveness. Your wholeness. Your breath. Your beauty. And to live this is to live what life is asking of you, what life is asking you to give. It is yours and yet it is not. It is given. It is given to you, through you, so that you can in turn give it forth.

It is this simple. Spend every breath completely, but not just for yourself. Spend it for Life, for others, for what is coming into being, for what is being born.

Be full. Be whole. Be love. Be truth.

 

There is already a mythology and an inherent wisdom within us that knows how to move mountains, and to birth something new.

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Dance yourself open. Listen Deeply. Track yourself. Come back and tell us what you discover.

Allow it to show you where Justice lies, where Hope lives, where Love beckons.Open to this Force within. Dance, listen, and allow it to move you.

I hope you’ve enjoyed and have been inspired by these words.

If so, I ask you to share in the comments below how they’ve inspired you to rise.
I ask you to share with other women and men you know who are ready for similar inspiration.

If you’d like to read about last year’s rising, you can download this complimentary eBook, ‘rise up & reclaim’.

 

*** from OneBillionRising.Org:
ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE is a global call to women survivors of violence and those who love them to gather safely in community outside places where they are entitled to justice – courthouses, police stations, government offices, school administration buildings, work places, sites of environmental injustice, military courts, embassies, places of worship, homes, or simply public gathering places where women deserve to feel safe but too often do not.  It is a call to survivors to break the silence and release their stories – politically, spiritually, outrageously – through art, dance, marches, ritual, song, spoken word, testimonies and whatever way feels right.

Leading Image: LicenseAttribution Some rights reserved by mikebaird

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Awake and Alive with Celebration and Ceremony

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Despacho Ceremony

I arrived home last night after just over two weeks of travel. Not the longest period of time to be away; yet, somehow

The feeling of coming home was wonderful. Even though I was away experiencing wonderful, beautiful, life-changing things, I needed to come home…come deeply home. I mean this both literally and metaphorically, and the two are intertwined.it felt like I’d been gone a long time.

When I walked in the door, I realized just how much the last two weeks had transformed me and my relationship to home. I felt more home than I ever have, and it’s no accident that this comes from profoundly shifting my relationship to the earth and to life.

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I was lucky to spend time on the land in both Alaska and Montana, and I experienced both places as very different in feeling. But, what shifted was how I relate to the land. This relationship has been shifting over time; yet, beginning a practice of active contemplation and prayer to the land, to pachamama, and witnessing how she responds has softened me to what it means to be alive.

During the five days of reatreat at Feathered Pipe, which I co-led with Michael Lennox and Karen Chrappa, the land wove its medicine deep into my bones. From the moment I was asked to come teach, the land began to call. I heard it. I trusted what I knew. I didn’t know how things would unfold, but I could tell the land was calling.

When I arrived at Feathered Pipe, I could feel the softness of the land, and I could feel myself settle into its embrace. I could feel the earth’s open arms.

Over our time there, we held beautiful ceremonies that helped us learn how to weave our love and prayers into the land. I moved from a knowing of earth’s sacredness to an active remembrance of her sacredness, to an active and whole-hearted thank you to Pachamama for everything she gives so graciously, so readily, and with such love.

Remembrance and voice, woven together, weave us into the land. Karen Chrappa guided me to come to know this, how deeply we are loved by the earth, how each of us is her child and how alive this relationship is. When we remember this, and when we actively engage in this relationship, when we are truly grateful for what is given, coming to see through the lies of entitlement and privilege, we begin to hear and see and feel and know that the beauty of the earth is the very same beauty in ourselves.

It can feel like a stretch to consider that the earth is alive and has a soul…yet, it is so. While it can feel easier to know this and feel this when we are out somewhere in nature, like I was in Montana, our task, our very important task, is to come to know this deep connection to our true home right here, right where we live, deep in the city where the concrete covers the dirt, or deep in the suburbs where strip malls line our streets.

This relationship is crucial. Coming back into Pachamama’s embrace through remembrance, through gratitude, through an active celebration of the wonder of life is what helps us remember our true nature as earth and water, fire and air. We humans are not owed anything. We have tried to make ourselves believe that we are, yet somewhere deep inside we know it is not so. Entitlement and privilege cut us off from the nourishment and sustenance that active receiving and remembering offer.

There is no succor in entitlement. There is no relationship when we are steeped in false privilege.

There is no possibility to know the aliveness in our cells that dances in all of life when we keep taking, taking, taking as if there is an endless supply of earth to consume.

Deep in the belly of home we know this to be so, and the soul comes to know satiation when a true and real and whole ‘Thank you’ is lived and offered.

I have not known why my path has been to travel to so many ‘alive’ places. I do know that many places have called to me and I have had the profound luxury of being able to answer the calls. I am coming to see that one of the elements of wisdom growing inside me is this relationship with the land, is this known experience of the uniqueness of the song that each place sings. I am coming to know great reverence for life through this body I’ve been so generously gifted with.

Being here, right here, fully here, is to be in relationship with the earth, with life. Breathing in the belly. Listening to life’s song, and singing to life in return. Receiving what is offered, with gratitude. And, knowing it is all given because life lives for life. We’ve been taught we get because we are ‘owed’, yet receiving is entirely different. Receiving happens when we come to know that the love is infinite. It is a flow. Love asks us to receive, deeply, so deeply that we finally come to know that hole we’ve been trying to fill in our hearts can only be filled by this love.

I am coming to see how little I know, except what I know in my bones, and I know it in my bones because they are awake and alive and grateful with celebration and ceremony. I know my practice will now actively include these things. Something has awakened within.

I’d love to know how you’ve come to know the sacredness of the land and of your own body. I’d love to know how that is for you. Please share with me and with others in the comments, if you feel called to.

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photo by Anne Jablonski

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