True Belonging – one of the most important things we must find in these times.

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On Belonging.

I’ve been immersed in this topic since last Fall when I was asked to speak at TEDxIsfeld in British Columbia. For whatever reason, it seemed to keep coming up in my mind. That seems to be how creativity works. Things arise out of that big dark void from which everything emerges. For me, it was around belonging and finding a way back to being a human being connected to the land.

At the time, I wrote about becoming indigenous again, or finding my way back to reverence for the land. I’ve never shared that writing. It was writing for only my eyes. I was longing for something. Longing to feel connected, longing to be wise enough to know how to be with the land. Longing to no longer think of just me, but to begin to consider how I can serve the land.

I squirmed writing those words, “becoming indigenous again”. Sometimes words just come out and then you wonder what they’re about.

I know I am not an indigenous person and totally respect those people who are and the difficulties they face. And, I know indigenous cultures have a reverence for the land, and know a deep responsibility to it that many of us who’ve lost our bearings of belonging don’t seem to live. (I will share much of that writing in my new course: Belonging – 21 Days to Find Your Way Home, because it’s at the heart of what it means to be a human being.) It’s taken some time to see that what started as a seed back in the Fall has begun to blossom as new work.

And what has blossomed from that early writing is an exploration into belonging.


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Many of us were disconnected from the land of our ancestors. We’ve lost our connection to the land in a way the indigenous cultures have not. We’ve lost our connection to the matter, to the mother.

 

Many of us are displaced beings. Yet, we all belong to the earth. The earth is our mother. We are her children. 

Regardless of where we were born, regardless of where our ancestors came from, we all belong to the earth. And, I am coming to see that this is what gets us to the heart of being a human being – one who lives her humanity. Of course, I guess there are many interpretations of the nature of humanity. I know it can take dark forms…and I know we are moving to evolve toward a living of our light.

At the heart of coming to know a deeper relationship to earth is coming to know we belong.

I have come to see that one of the most important things we must do is come to remember that we belong. To ourselves, to each other, to the earth, and to all beings. Without remembering belonging, we drift aimlessly, believing someone else will take care of the very real responsibilities we have to life…and belonging helps us come to remember this forgotten imperative of relationship.

I hear from so many women that they don’t feel they belong, that they want to find the place where they feel safe and comfortable for being who they are, for living the values they hold dear.

Is this what belonging means to you? Finding a place where you are a natural part of the community, where when you are simply who you are and live what you hold dear, you feel safe and valued? Does it mean finding a place where you feel you are able to fully give of yourself, fully valued, wanted, and respected? Does it mean finally being able to be of service because you know that in relationship there is a shared give and take?

Isn’t that what any human being wants, to be valued, respected, and able to give something back, to be a part of a community?

We’ve devalued half of life’s qualities – the feminine half that exists in all of life, and we’ve devalued half of the population – women, and at the heart of it all, we’ve devalued, dominated, and controlled the material world, including the earth, animals, crops, air, water, etc. Everything that sustains us has been devalued and harmed, including the very vessels that bring human life forth – women’s bodies.

We don’t see the earth as a living being – we see her as material goods. 

In trying to find our way back, we begin to devalue the masculine. To find fault with it. When what is true is that we are woefully out of balance.

When we look at our culture and the values that seem to be linked to it, it’s no wonder we don’t feel like we belong. Our current cultural landscape is far from balanced, far from a reflection of the beauty we hold dear as women, from the capacity we know as women to nurture life itself.

In a culture that teaches you to conform, you can lose connection to your own values and needs. You slowly forget what matters to you most, and you begin to turn your attention to what will keep you connected to the culture, to what seems as if it will bring a sense of belonging. But this is not belonging. You will never feel you belong when you can’t be who you are. Never. And, somewhere we know this.

Belonging only comes when you are yourself and awake to what is real. Belonging can only happen when you are connected to the real world, to the world that has been here all along.

Our systemic devaluation of the feminine has a direct correlation to how much we feel we belong. When we lose connection to the mother, we lose our connection to matter.

When this devaluation pervades our culture and our internal radar is pointing to this culture for a sense of home, we’ll never find home. Patriarchy causes us to feel out of place because it is out of place. Patriarchy is out of place and alignment with the earth, our home, with the feminine, and with the masculine, and place is where we find belonging.

Everything seems to be coming out of the woodwork. So much violence. So much greed. So much sadness and grief. So much. How can we find our ground, our own ground amidst all of this? How can we touch into what is real when so much destruction is swirling around us?

How can you stay with your values when it seems as if the world that has a voice is telling you they are not valuable? How can you tap into what is real and true for you, when so much around us tries to convince us of what we should believe?

Through the body.
Through the land.
Through the connection with women.
Through the real world.
Through these we find our way back to our own connection between this female body and the earth. 

There is a ‘real world’ in which we exist. The earth and the stars, the sun and the moon, flowers and birds, animals and another’s warm hand. Nature. We are nature.

These are the elements of belonging. Knowing these in our everyday lives is what brings us back to here. And, here is the only place we can truly belong.

This is where we remember who we are, what we came into the world to do, the nature of our unique gifts, and our connection to a land that is not ours to own but rather ours to serve.

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Please join me on April 1st: Belonging – 21 Days to Find Your Way Home. Finding our way to a true sense of belonging may be one of the most important things we can do in these times.

At this time, the course is only for women. I’ve had men ask if it would be for men, too. Perhaps after this first iteration. Let’s see what happens.

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The Feminine: Presence in a Lullaby

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I’ve been wanting to include some examples of the feminine in real life here on the blog, so you can have a sense of what I am talking about when I speak of the sacred feminine. She is revealed, more and more, each day.

I’ve created a new category, The Feminine in Real Life, that will include some great examples of how She is rising in the everyday world.

A Lullaby

The first post is this absolutely gorgeous lullaby in the video below. It cuts right to my heart. Her voice, the words, and what is unseen all come together to create such beauty. It brings me to tears, and to a feeling of deep relatedness to life.

Before you watch,

I want to share these words that I saw just yesterday from Marion Woodman:

“…when we’re talking about that feminine that’s missing, we’re talking about the heart energy. That can fill a room. Certainly in a relationship it’s the energy that holds presence. By which I mean the child comes in or the person comes in, has something to tell you or they have prepared a little bouquet. Have you got the time to see it? Have you got the time to see the love that went into it? Can you hear the anguish in the voice that is talking to you?”

The feminine principle would attempt to relate. Instead of breaking things off into parts, it would say, where are we alike? How can we connect? Where is the love? Can you listen to me? Can you really hear what I am saying? Can you see me? Do you care whether you see me or not?

…it is so difficult… to talk about the feminine because so few people have experienced it. What I’m talking about here is presence, and relatedness.”

The video:

The lyrics:

I Have Never Loved Someone, by My Brightest Diamond

I have never loved someone the way I love you
I have never seen a smile like yours
And if you grow up to be king, or clown, or pauper
I will say you are my favorite one in town
I have never held a hand so soft and sacred
When I see you laugh, I know heaven’s key
And when I grow to be a poppy in the graveyard
I will send you all my love upon the breeze
And if the breeze won’t blow your way, I will be the sun
And if the sun won’t shine your way, I will be the rain
And if the rain won’t wash away all your aches and pains
I will find some other way to tell you you’re okay

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The presence of the feminine, receptive, tender, and powerful: “I have never held a hand so soft and sacred.” “When I see you laugh, I know heaven’s key.”

You can feel the presence as she sings the song. You can see its effect on the people in the restaurant. Tears. They have been touched. She, the singer, is touched by the presence moving through her.

In fact, in the description below the video, the person filming writes of the effect:

“After the concert I finally dared to ask her what I wanted to ask her that morning, to sing us this lullaby that struck me down. It’s Sunday morning, a morning of hangovers. The whole hotel seems suspended in the air. We ask her to get to the bar, to make it sing for her, to sing for her son (for whom she had written this song). We erase ourselves. She, she doesn’t. After we’re done filming, I cry. She cries too.”

Struck me down. Powerful words on the effect of this presence. It is clear that this presence touches everyone. How did it touch you? How does this radiance affect you?

What would our world be like if we embodied this feminine receptivity more deeply? Would we come to know, as experience, that the hands we hold are ‘soft and sacred’, that when we hear laughter from those we love, that we are knowing ‘heaven’s key’? Would we listen, deeply listen?

To embody the feminine in life is to come to know it as experience, not just as an idea in our heads but as real life experience. We haven’t experienced it much, for it has denigrated, called weak.

This is the receptive radiance of the feminine in us all, women and men, that aspect of self that can simply receive and bear witness.

It’s a beingness, and it calls for a not-doing, a letting go of doing so you can be with.

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 I discovered this lullabye (by way of Jamie Wallace) on Amy Palko’s gorgeous post, Whispering Lullabies to the Goddess. Amy’s words speak to the goddess within each of us.

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All of Life is this Wild Eros, Including You

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Today is International Women’s Day.

I’ve been not quite sure what to write. I have mixed feelings about this day.

On one hand, so many women need to know, in a real and grounded everyday way, that being a woman is a beautiful thing, and that they gifts we women offer to the world are worthy and sorely needed – gifts that we offer when we are being wholly who we are as women.

On the other hand, around the world, women still are far from sharing equal rights with men. Here in the United States, we’re seeing how much fear and distrust of women still lurks in the shadows, and sometimes stands in broad daylight. Having a day where we celebrate women can feel so shallow in the light of the atrocities happening each and every day around the world. Sometimes, it feels like we’ve been thrown a bone when in reality those who hold the strings of power have no intention of really offering women equal rights.

Speaking of strings of power,

have you ever noticed that women will most likely never have equal rights in this cultural paradigm? I mean, let’s look at the present day situation. In a cultural construct based on heirerarchy and patriarchy, with a system set up to keep this heirarchy in place, maybe it’s only possible if the actual structures crumble…

Everything eventually dies, including structures and cultural constructs. I see the structure of patriarchy most certainly is dying.

The structures that we currently see in the world as we know it, at least most of the world, are structures that were created with a mindset that the feminine is something to be feared and distrusted…the feminine in women, the feminine in men, and the feminine in the world – basically all of nature. So much of what we see in our human constructs were built on this.

And, if you’ve ever given birth, been witness to earthquakes and tornadoes, the feminine is most certainly powerful. I have birthed two babies, and watched each of my daughters give birth, and the power of the feminine is something to behold, something that brings forth complete awe in me.

The feminine is powerful and awe-inducing.

These structures based on fear of the feminine don’t just exist out there, they also exist within each of us. We’ve internalized them. And, we’ve probably internalized some kind of fear and distrust of the masculine as well, the masculine in us all. And, these internal structures are dying, too. Can you feel this inside you?

Can you feel a new feminine consciousness within yourself?

Why is this important today, on International Women’s Day?

A few months back, I met Marianne Williamson at an intimate gathering. She asked what I do, and I told her the varied things that fill my workday. She seemed to take interest in the course I teach on Creativity and Leadership in Business, and asked me what I would say to women about what they need to know around business.

My response? Two things:

“We are not men.” & “There is a different way to do business than what we see operating in our world today.”

We are not men.

We are not men. Even though most everything in the culture looks at the world through men’s eyes, we are not men. Thank goodness there are men, and thank goodness there are women. We all are here to be what we really are.

I am interested in you knowing this, not because I’ve written it, nor because it seems to be an obvious physiological conclusion. I’m interested in it because the new world coming depends on you knowing it.

Let me say that again…

The new world coming into being depends on you knowing who you are and expressing it through the female body you live in.

What I am interested in today is you knowing you, knowing who you are, knowing what delights your heart, knowing what it is to be fully alive in this world in your female body. Alive and erotic just like the cherry tree, just like the ocean, just like Mother Earth.

All of life is this wild eros, including you.

And, we could most certainly all use a shot of wild eros, don’t you think?

In our personal lives, our relationships, and even in our businesses.

Passionate Business

Business budding with blossoms, business giving birth, business erupting and shaking and crashing its waves upon the shores. Business that neither fears the feminine nor the masculine, but works in tandem with all of life…including the earth.

So many times I see women thinking they have to make a mark on the world that is big and audacious. Nothing wrong with that, and that may be how your mark shows up…and, in reality, we affect the world in many small beautiful ways each day. And, sometimes what happens is those many small ways eventually move into big changes along the way.

In a day-to-day, personal way, my friend, Renae Cobb, sees International Women’s Day from her personal vantage point as a mother to two daughters. She writes of not really knowing what this day is about, yet going on to share just how important an impact she has.

On an international level, the Christian Science Monitor writes of Twelve Innovations that are Lifting Women Out of Poverty.

Women are changing the world, everyday. There are many ways to do womanhood. And many ways to do manhood.

What if we found the courage to put down the project of who we believe we are supposed to be, so we can be who we really are, fully alive, powerfully real, wildly erotic in the fullest sense of the word…unabashedly female.

Part of this being truly you is discovering the rich love women have for each other. I’ve just written about it here.

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I’d love to know what ways you are living womanhood. Consider sharing in the comments. We feast on each other’s wisdom.

 

I’ve recently released my new collection of posts, poetry and audio into a sensual immersive experience, The Best of Unabashedly Female. I’d love for you to take a look to see if it might be of interest to you.

 

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