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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.

::

 

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.

riseupreclaimbadge275

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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Love and the Nature of Women

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Dancing in the Flames, (c) Holly Friesen

When women’s sexual energies are fully allowed to flow unbridled, without fear of punishment, violation or pain, a different consciousness and reality can and will emerge on this planet. ~Laura Amazzone

On this Valentine’s Day,

let’s not content ourselves with the usual flowers and chocolate, the romantic whispers, or feelings of grief over not having someone to share our lives with. Instead, let’s open our hearts and our bodies to a deeper conversation about love and the erotic, creativity and sexuality, rage and the unstoppable nature of women.

As women, can we really have a conversation about love and not drop deep down into our bodies? Deeper than our hearts. Way down into the fiery cauldron of our creativity.

For some time, now, I’ve written about women’s wild creativity; the instinctual, feral creative side that is different than the rational, linear structure of the patriarchal world we live in. This wild creativity is  an expression that comes from the deep wilds of the body, the creative womb. What flows from this place is what we long to know – our true nature, our deepest nature as women. We can give birth to so much more than babies. The creative possibilities are infinite, but not if we stay up in our heads.

Life is erotic.

We are enrobed in these glorious robes of feminine flesh.

Our flesh and bones are sacred.

New life takes hold, and is nurtured and grows deep within the fleshy walls of the womb.

Somewhere deep within,

our bodies know things we can’t know in our heads, like how the cells of the budding creation receive the light of the soul. Like fruit, the fruit we are is filled with sweet nectar, seeds and succulent flesh.

A fruit is not afraid of its own weight. It grows into its skin fully. It is whole, each part of its body equally alive. ~Gayle Brandeis from Fruitflesh

Like the fruit, we can grow into our skin fully, learning how to wake up each part of our body to its full aliveness.

In her book, Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power, Laura Amazzone writes,

“Regardless of medium, it is essential we create from our bodies, from our experience. Cixous suggests that “women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetoric, regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reserve — discourse. “

Yesterday, I was feeling the rage that is usually buried deep inside me. Rage is always here, yet I rarely want to acknowledge it. Rage about so much; for starters: the suppression of the Feminine, the raping of women, trafficking of children, and our seeming indifference to it all.

“Anger is unacceptable because angry women are women in touch with their own autonomous passion and power, especially in relation to men, and this threatens the entire patriarchal order. ” Allan G. Johnson

Yes,

rage is part of this passion, this wildness that doesn’t give a damn about regulations, code or discourse.

The careful part of me wants to know the love in rage. It wants to know that I can share my rage with how the world is and know it is being shared in love. It doesn’t want to polarize or push others away.

In true love, I don’t have to be so careful.

In true love, I could say what needs to be said, and I wouldn’t be ostracized by women and men for showing it.

If I’m truthful with myself, no words are even close to capturing any kind of sense in this rage. It is simply and purely rage.

I know the conditional aspect of being loved well, that as long as I don’t disrupt the apple cart, as long as I don’t say the things that make others uncomfortable, then I am loved. Part of the conditioned beliefs hold that as soon as I come out rageful about what I see, I will be cast out.

Ah, but there’s the rub. This isn’t love at all. This is a kind of keeping in the tribe, the patriarchal tribe. This isn’t love at all.

So what is loving rage? Where do soul and rage meet?

When I ask this question, I feel it rising in my pelvis, deep down in the bowels of my body.

“Getting angry is socially unacceptable, even when the anger is over violence, discrimination, misogyny, and other forms of oppression.” Allan G. Johnson

Socially unacceptable.

Owning and expressing my rage will cast me out of the culture I know, the culture that is here. And, I no longer want to give life and breath to the parts of this culture that I feel most angry about.

Perhaps it is right to be expelled. Perhaps giving breath to this culture through my silence is simply a way to keep the dying alive a little longer, rather than giving my full awareness and attention to what is wanting to be born.

Can this rage fuel what is wanting to be born? Can it be of service to what is nascent?

Is this where rage and love come together, where “the impregnable language” is learned?

On this Valentine’s Day,

a day about love, let’s drop down into the deepest recesses of our bodies, the Yoni. This isn’t old-school passion and eroticism that is all about enticing, this is about tearing down the walls of that which no longer serves.

This is about an eroticism that exists in all of life, a pushing through the old dry bark, so the tender, delicate blossoms can emerge. Think about the power inherent in that push of Life.

This is about creativity that is inextricably tied to our sexuality.

This is about the light of truth, about not paving over the anger and distrust that exists between the genders, a distrust that is created by the very nature of patriarchy, which is based upon domination and control.

This is about love between the genders, finding a love that is true, that can be born out of the cauldron of a creativity that is wild and not so careful.

This is about love.

I want to know this deep nature of women. I want to know it in me and I want to know it in you.

::

The beautiful painting above is by Holly Friesen. Follow her on twitter at @Holly59

This post is part of the Love Sparks Blogging Festival, where you’ll find many other posts about love.

Laura’s Book, Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power, is available here.

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A Valentine to You, Dear Woman, Dear Friend

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A Year of Great Promise, (C) Shiloh Sophia McCloud

There is a Hassidic saying which goes: “When the moon shall shine as bright as the sun, the Messiah will come.”

Woman through her struggle to understand herself and to articulate the highest values of the feminine principle, could begin to make the moon shine so that it softens the sun-brightness of our present consciousness. In accepting her depression, her suffering, her loneliness, her longing to outgrow the inarticulateness and powerlessness of her past existence, she may accomplish something truly heroic and extraordinary for life, something which humanity in centuries to come will recognise and cherish. Each woman who gives birth to herself and responds to what life is asking her to accomplish, contributes to the survival of our species and the diminishment of human suffering.

~Anne Baring

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Over the past week, I have written about despair and grief, emotions that are far from the flowers and chocolates of Valentine’s Day. And, many of my friends are experiencing a depth of emotion, similar to what I have written.

Deep emotions are part of our experience as women – and, perhaps, it is becoming so every day that passes. Why so, you ask?

As Anne Baring writes on her site, at this time in history, women are birthing a new kind of consciousness. They are vessels for the shift that is occurring

Women share a different kind of love, one that isn’t always reflected out there in the culture. When you know, and feel, this love, it changes your life. May you always know this love is here, as a deep well to draw from, especially in times when you are polishing the moon within you.

::

So, this is a valentine to you, dear woman, dear friend.

May you know the beauty of your own soul.

May you give birth to the radiant You that has been there all along guiding you to this day.

May you trust in Her voice as she calls you to listen to your own deepest wisdom.

May you come to know that you are part of a long history of women who love life and will do anything to nourish and encourage its growth and emergence.

May you see yourself as a Mother, through and through, whether or not you have ever given birth to babies, and may you call forth this Ancient Motherhood within, to love yourself wholly and deeply, first, so you have the energy and strength to share your love with others.

May you always shower yourself with love and compassion, trusting that you are wholly, and holy, female, just as you are.

::

Image courtesy of Shiloh Sophia McCloud. Her paintings are remarkable, as is her work in the world.

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