Eleven Things

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Reverb10 Day 11 Prompt:

Things. What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011?

1. Patriarchy. I’m tired of this game. Why play?

2. Wearing the ‘Consumer’ label. “Be a global citizen with your money, rather than a consumer.” ~Lynne Twist

3. My rose-colored glasses. Time to ditch these babies and see what’s really going on.

4. Dance belongs only on the dance floor. I’m takin’ it to the streets!

5. Stuff I got because it was cheap or on-sale. Time to fill my home and adorn my body with only what I love.

6. The ‘Being brilliant, audacious, and beautiful is vain’ Story. A funky old story (thank you Puritans).

7. Being careful. This isn’t full of care, now is it?

8. The Rules. They’re just made up, anyway

9. ‘Spiritual = Nice, passive, push-over’. Hat tip to Andrew Harvey and his Institute for Sacred Activism for lighting a fire under me on this one!

10. The dimmer switch in my heart. ’nuff said.

11. Being a writer and not an author.

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Wiser and Softer

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IMG_2080
Glendalough

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. ~ Rumi

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Reverb10 Day 10 Prompt:
Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

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My wisest decision this year was to travel to Ireland. My decision to go was based solely on intuition and trust. I trusted something felt, something unseen. Something deep inside called me there.

Jeff wanted to go to Maui. We’d had a very foggy summer and he was ready for warm sun and water. I went there last year and loved it. And, even though the moist land of Hana called to me, Ireland called to me in way I couldn’t analyze or understand. I just knew I had to go, and Jeff willingly agreed.

We saw much of the Republic of Ireland during the two weeks we were there. The land was enchanting. The people were some of the friendliest I have ever encountered in my travels. We saw many sites of the Sacred Feminine and soaked up the Land of the Goddess.

There, in this lush, wild land, the earth welcomed me home.

It is wise land. It felt as if it held a wisdom ripened over thousands of years. It affected me in countless ways – some seen and obvious, and some unseen and mystical.

The land of the Goddess seeped into my cells. That’s the only way I can describe it. Even now, months later, sitting in my home in California, I can feel her in me: the peat of Connemara, the rockiness of the Burren, and the wild heather of Glendalough.

Ireland was a great teacher. She polished my heart and taught me to trust in that which can’t be seen. She taught me to trust in that which is felt and known, yet can’t be explained in any logical way. She taught me to know that her wildness is my wildness, her beauty is my beauty, her sensuality is my sensuality.

I became wiser and softer in her care.

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Come Alive

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Summer is Dancing
Summer is Dancing

Reverb10 Day 09 Prompt:
Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010?
Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

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This Invitation:

Each week, I accept this invitation to a raucous revival, a moving meditation, a chance to Sweat My Prayers. It’s a party. It’s a scene. It’s my church.

along with 149 other dancers, I

drop into the music

put my body in motion

leave the confines of my mind

breathe through my feet

dance my barefoot way to that wild and feral place I long for during the week when I’m out in ‘the real world’.

The music is eclectic. Motown. World. Jazz. Classical. Indian. Country. New Age. Old Age. Aquarian Age.

No food. Only water. No small talk. No talk at all.

This party is silent.

Our bodies talk.

‘We speak from the heart, not from the tongue.’ {M Franti}

This is sacred space.

Sweat drips.

Bodies slide and flow past each other as if choreographed finely. Something is directing things, but it’s no mind at all.

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This wild place within:

I’ve tried to put into words how it feels to go to this wild place within.

It’s so foreign to this made up world we move in day in and day out.

In this place, my body is the earth’s body, and her body is mine.

Dancing, I can feel her power move through the cells and sinewy places within.

She comes up through the feet and out the exhale.

Her anguish makes itself known in my own heart, and I breath it in knowing her anguish is mine. How could it not be?

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Today, I found my way to this powerful post by Holly Friesen:

Singing Rocks and Howling Wolves

Five years ago while painting in the woods, I had an encounter with a wolf. That creature’s golden eyes pierced through my heart and opened up a much neglected wild place within. My life tore open in ways I could never have imagined prior to meeting with his feral gaze. I started to paint ferociously. My “safe” lovely watercolor landscapes could no longer contain the wild energy that I felt building within. I began to paint larger, then I changed mediums, first oil and now acrylics. I left behind any people, places or habits that could not support this new passionate energy surging up through my body and spilling out onto the canvas in a frighteningly violent manner. Several months into this explosion I was diagnosed with breast cancer and in between daily radiation treatments I would paint, paint, paint. I walked through the woods and started to experience the earth’s body as my own. I recognized a deep connection that I had always understood intellectually but now I was feeling it inside my own body. This is now the place I paint from, that deep wilderness within. A wilderness that sings, and screams and howls with terror and beauty. Yesterday was one of those days in the studio where the earth’s voice just came flooding through my body and bursting onto the canvas in all her textures, shapes and forms. I am in love with paint and all it teaches me about this bond with the earth, and that wolf keeps howling deep within.

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Within seconds of reading Holly’s words, I was transported to this wild place within where I “experience the earth’s body as my own”, this place of the dance where I

Come Alive:

.

Today I dance and come alive.

My hands connect, molasses-like energy stretching

from mama earth to the tips of my fingers.

As I perch on my paws, I feel her spirit

suck me into her tendrils of love.

She tells me to make my presence known.

She asks me to step so strongly on her

that there’s no question I am here with her.

.

She asks me to track myself,

to be so aware of where I am and where I am going,

so much so that my path wraps its way around and

around until I am simply the dance.

.

Today I dance and come alive.

I feel his pulse, absorbing it into my body.

I feel her love, letting it run down my arm and fill my heart.

I feel their joy, knowing it is also mine.

How could it not be?

.

Today I dance and come alive.

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Singing Rocks and Howling Wolves shared here with the permission of Holly Friesen
The image, Summer is Dancing, is by Alice Popkorn shared under CC2.0.

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Behind The Eyes

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Beauty appears when something is completely and absolutely and openly itself. ~Deena Metzger

Reverb10 Day 08 – Beautifully Different.
Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.

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I tend to not like to compare myself to others. I used to do it often. I found it never brought me much peace of mind – in fact, it brought me the opposite.

So, today’s prompt stirred something up inside me about being different and how that ties into being beautiful. I prefer to look at being beautiful from the quote I shared by Deena Metzger – that beauty appears when we are being completely and absolutely self.

We are all different from each other, yet I can’t tell you how I’m different from you. I can be different in the things I do, the places I’ve gone, the life I’ve lived. These are measurable things we can see from the outside. They tell me nothing about who and how and what you really are, nor do they tell you about me.

I only know how I am. Any comparison would simply be either comparing myself to what I think the ‘norm’ is, or what I think makes you You. And, again, I don’t think conjecture helps me to know what makes me beautiful.

Yesterday, I had a beautiful twitter love fest with some of my favorite tweeps. What they shared with me shed some light on how they see me and what it is I do that lights them up. So, I do know others see me in a certain way.

I also know it doesn’t serve anyone to hide our light, our brilliance, our heart. When we don’t try to hide ourselves, when we are simply what we are, our beauty appears.

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What I love.

When I am really being me, I can range from being totally silly to totally serious. I do like to wax on about serious things.

I love the esoteric. I love math. I love touch.

I love devotion, and being devotional to the Source of Life. When I am, I’m filled with a love so radiant, I feel totally and completely full. Nothing is needed or wanted.

I love to dance. Hard and long. I dance the 5Rhythms. Two hours with 150 people dancing at our max…in silence. Heaven.

I love beauty, and creating beauty.

I love working out really hard, where my body gets completely heated up. I can feel the toxins releasing, the muscles relaxing, the sweat cleaning me out from within.

I love to love people, you know, the kind of love where you find you appreciate everything about them because it is who and what they are.

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Somewhat of a rebel.

My life has been pretty unusual, far from the ‘norm’ of this culture.

I attended Stanford as a non-traditional transfer student. I was 42 when I entered as a Junior. I stayed three years, so I could go to Florence to study. While I was in school, my first grandchild was born. I was the first grandmother to graduate with an undergraduate degree from my department.

While I was there, I was involved with other transfer students. We put on orientations for others in the same situation. One day I was speaking to a young woman, another student. She was all of 23. She was asking me all about my life, and I was sharing. I mentioned something about my life being really different. I think she could sense my reticence about that, and she said something to me that I’ve never forgotten.

She said, “There’s more than one way to do life.”

What a brilliant statement. Somehow, the words she shared allowed me to settle into the differences between my life and those of the majority of the undergrads there. Her words invited me to drop the feeling of being so different simply because my life had taken a different trajectory than most.

Her statement also points to doing vs. being. We can see things about people from what they do and how they live their lives. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to really know someone, especially if they’re reluctant to be real, to be truly themselves. Most of us try to be something other than what we are, because we learned at a young age what we were wasn’t enough.

When one is willing to allow their radiance to shine, to be wholly themselves, we begin to catch a glimpse of the brilliance, the luminosity that lies behind their eyes.

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It’s Serious Love.

I have a story to share with you about coming to know my beautiful self.

A few weeks ago, I had a photo shoot with one hot photographer, Siddiqi Ray. I mean, look at her art. Really.

Siddiqi loves your pictures right out of you. It’s serious love.

According to her site, I’m one of her perfect clients because I hate(d) having my picture taken. I can now add the ‘d’ because with Siddiqi, I loved having my picture taken. For anyone who really knows me, they know what a transformation that is.

Siddiqi came up to San Francisco for an afternoon for client shoots. She brought the most amazing make-up and hair artist with her. This woman made me up and did my hair in a way that I felt adorned and adored, rather than being made up to hide my flaws. Big difference.

Then, after I had been adorned and adored, Siddiqi began to take pictures. After a few shots, she sat down across from me and proceeded to do a soul reading. This was not your average reading, because where she took me, as she spoke softly and clearly about what she saw, was straight to that which is clearly and deeply me.

by Siddiqi Ray
by Siddiqi Ray

Straight to my soul.

Bammo.

I dropped right down into this place of complete knowingness and serenity.

She spoke of what I am her to do, and it was directly in line with what I know.

THEN, she took my picture. And she captured me, from deep within my eyes.

Bam.

Boom.

Dropped down in.

The eyes don’t lie. To me, this is beauty. Not in how we’ve been taught to see it, but rather because it captures me, so completely, so totally. I don’t have to tell you things about me, you can see into me, into a place where we know each other completely and utterly.

For being someone who hate(d) having her picture taken, I didn’t even have to really stretch to take this in, because they did it with such integrity and truth.

One thing I know about me is that I have a vision. When she took this picture, Siddiqi was sharing how she saw me and I was clearly standing in the vision I’ve been shown.

We can try to tell each other about who we are, but words can never really capture the depth of what can be seen behind the eyes.

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A Love of Being Active

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Today is Rally for Girls’ Sports Day! Across the web, bloggers, tweeters and Facebook users are raising their voices in celebration of the far-reaching benefits of athletics participation for girls. My post today is in support of this initiative by National Women’s Law Center’s Rally for Girls’ Sports: She’ll Win More Than a Game campaign.

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My Sports Background

I have a diverse sports background. In school, at least until my high school years, I played both organized sports at school, and was a figure skater during after-school hours. I experienced both team sports and the individual sport of figure skating. Both are so important to a girl’s development.

In team sports, I loved the feeling of camaraderie that came from being on a team that had to work well together. I especially loved field hockey. I learned to trust that if I failed, someone would pick me up, and if someone else failed, I could pick them up; and even that failure wasn’t ever really failure.

Figure Skating was a completely different experience. There were long hours of practice alongside others, but very much focused internally. My favorite part was doing figures. Figures are no longer part of the compulsory events, but when I was young they were. I never grew bored doing figure eights over and over and over. I loved the intense focus and precision, and learning to control the movements of my body on skates so well that I could create a figure eight that looked like I had been around only one time…at least in some places around the eight.

Sports taught me perseverance, resilience, healthy conditioning, self-reliance, teamwork, and most importantly, the love of being active.

Being a Whole Individual

All that being said, I think one of the most important things being involved in sports gives to girls (boys, too) is the realization of how important the body is to being a whole individual. Rather than walking around like a lollipop, where so much importance is placed on thinking and the mind, being involved in sports can give girls a lifetime love of exercise and appreciating one’s body in a good healthy way.

As an adult, I’ve found my love of sports has evolved into dance and yoga, with some weight-lifting to keep my bones in good health. I know my early experiences feeling healthy and strong in sports have stayed with me. I treasure feeling strong and having a healthy woman’s body.

I’ve found in working intimately with women to help them regain a sense of self-respect and worth, while deepening the connection with body wisdom, the relationship with the body holds the key. While experiences around the body in sports can be both positive and negative (mostly depending on how the adults involved relay body image), learning to appreciate one’s body and what it is capable of, is invaluable to girls and women everywhere.

If you feel this is an important issue for girls everywhere, join this important campaign,  Sign-up here.

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Remembering Self

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Reverb10 Day 07
Prompt: Community.
Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010?
What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

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For four years, now, I’ve taught a course at Stanford Continuing Studies on Creativity and Leadership. I teach the Creativity part, and my colleague teaches the Leadership portion. The two topics intertwine throughout the ten weeks.

The course is based on a course from Stanford Business School called Creativity in Business. It’s highly experiential, as a course in creativity needs to be. Creativity can’t be taught. Yet, it can be facilitated. Exercises, guided visualizations, and great theory all combine to open students to their deepest creative resource within. This course helps guide students to begin to trust their creativity.

Community of Students

What really deepens this trust, though, is the community that’s created over the ten weeks. It’s created because students are willing to share about themselves, about their experiences with the material, and about how they are changing as the course progresses.

Each week we do experiential exercises. After the exercises, the students share with each other, and then share with the entire class. Not everyone is comfortable sharing, but many are, and the class is richer for it.

In addition, each week the students have a ‘live-with’, which is a practice for the week that helps them bring the course to their daily lives, both personal and professional. The ‘live-withs’ are ways to be in the world. For an example, the first week the live-with is “Have No Expectations.” They spend the week living the practice, then come back to class and share their experiences.

Last night, the ninth class out of ten, we covered the topic of Prosperity and Self-Worth. In our class, we see Self as Essence, as the source of one’s creativity. This Self is perfectly ordinary, not special at all. We each have a unique essence that is ordinary, and at the same time, totally extraordinary.

In this particular class, we do an exercise that allows each student to really be seen, seen for who they are rather than the person they think others want to see. You know what I mean there, right? That person you pretend to be, the one that you think others want to see.

An important part of this exercise is to see others with your heart, rather than simply with your eyes or your mind. Seeing with the heart awakens compassion and soul.

Last night, as this exercise was taking place, I could feel the energy in the room grow more vibrant, more alive. As each person was being heard and seen, their own unique qualities were being reflected back to them, and their inner light began to radiate out. It was very palpable and completely amazing to behold.

The students left happy and joyful. Some even sat around talking to each other for quite a while, even after my colleague and I left the room.

We need to connect.

This is what community does. True community, where each person is seen through the heart of the other, allows for connection, for remembering Self. Community creates a place where fragmentation can heal, both collectively and individually.

We are meant to be in community, to be in relationship. We need community to know ourselves, by way of the reflection through another who is open, attuned and present to us.

We need to be connected. Our souls wither when we’re not.

As humans, we suffer from the illusion that we are separate beings. Living in a culture where we’ve been taught to do it on our own, to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, to ‘man-up’, we’ve suffered greatly. We’re vulnerable in life. We’re vulnerable in our human state. We need each other. And, we women truly need each other right now to re-discover our true nature and the gifts we’re here to give.

In 2011, I long to create a community of women to teach this same curriculum to. I envision combining the creativity work with discovering the wisdom of the body. It will be a community of women gathered together to discover this true nature as souls in female bodies.

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In Tune With The Whole Of Life

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Hello, I Love You, by Zenera
Hello, I Love You, by Zenera

Anytime you think of sexuality, you’ve got to think of your whole life.” Cornel West

Reverb10 Day 06
Prompt: Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

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Love.

This year has been about making love. And, I’ve used my heart, my body, my mind and my soul

Now I know most of us have been taught that making love means having sex with someone we love. But, I want to break open the tiny sliver of a way in which we see sexuality, sensuality, the erotic.

The way we currently see sexuality is limiting, yet it is so much more. Collapsed and hidden within our culture’s definition of sexuality are sensuality, longing and desire, passion and beauty, and touching to deeply connect.

Let’s take women’s sexuality today – so many women see pole dancing as a way to find their sexy selves. Connecting with our fire in this way isn’t a bad thing at all. It has helped so many women tap into a part of their nature and give it breath. And, yes, it is just one way. And, it can be limiting. It is also a way that can fit into this culture’s view of women – as sexual creatures, even objects, that are here to serve men’s erotic fantasies. The pornography industry is big business. It has a particular view of women, and it isn’t a pretty one. This industry has become ubiquitous in our culture. Its perspective has infiltrated mass media.

When we see ourselves through this perspective, is it serving our wholeness, is it serving how we see and value ourselves? This doesn’t mean trying to eliminate this view, but rather opening up to our whole lives, a sense of wholeness as souls here to love life, to serve with our whole being

I want to open up our view of our sexual energy so we see what’s been hidden. There is a fire in the erotic, a fire that can serve our work in the world.

What if our sexuality could be informed by our intentions, not our conditioning?

I see the possibility for a profound shift for humans: to open our point of view around love-making from an act in the bedroom to all of our acts in the world. To know ourselves as erotic beings in a way that is whole, loving to self, and in tune with the whole of life.

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A story that captures the essence of what I’m wanting to convey:

This man in India is a man of the Brahman class. As a Brahman, he is not supposed to touch people who are beneath his caste. What he does is feed the poor, the homeless, the destitute, the old people who have no one. He cooks each day, then delivers the food, even feeding some people by hand, the ones that can’t feed themselves. He also explains how he loves these people. He is shown bathing them, giving them haircuts and shaves, even massaging their feet. His actions show great love. His voice speaks great love. He is showing these people great love in each action. His touch seems to indicate that he is loving them with tenderness, true compassion and caring.

His actions so clearly show what I am trying to convey. His love infuses his actions.

You might ask why I call this making love, and not simply doing good works. You might find it confusing to mix up sexuality, sensuality and the erotic, and doing work in the world with great love.

All of this can be confusing, because trying to communicate with each other through words is limiting at best. Words come with baggage. We collapse distinctions around words, causing them to point to a mixed-up jumble of conditioning, experiences, beliefs and desires.

For me, this opening up of our minds to our own soul nature is crucial if we are to rediscover our whole nature as sensual, sexual, erotic loving beings, and find the fire and passion to unleash our greatness.

I’m wanting to explode open our limited conditioned ideas of sexuality and making love, for buried in them is our fire, our passion, our power. We are so much more than objects that can be sexy, if we do all the ‘right things’.

Here in our culture, many times when we see people touching we immediately think in terms of sex and sexual attraction. We make up stories about touch. Yet, touch is one of our most amazing senses, and one of the most amazing gifts we can give another. To touch and feel in the heart at the same time, brings a closeness unique to the sense of touch.

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Somewhere, eros and sex got mixed up.

Somewhere, love was thrown into the mix, making things downright messy.

From Wikipedia:
Éros
(ἔρως érōs[2]) is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. The Modern Greek word “erotas” means “intimate love;” however, eros does not have to be sexual in nature. Eros can be interpreted as a love for someone whom you love more than the philia, love of friendship. It can also apply to dating relationships as well as marriage. Plato refined his own definition: Although eros is initially felt for a person, with contemplation it becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person, or even becomes appreciation of beauty itself. Plato does not talk of physical attraction as a necessary part of love, hence the use of the word platonic to mean, “without physical attraction.” Plato also said eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros.

eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth…Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros.

Audre Lorde wrote this of the erotic:

This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.

She adds this:

When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences. …

But this erotic charge is not easily shared by women who continue to operate under an exclusively european-american male tradition. I know it was not available to me when I was trying to adapt my consciousness to this mode of living and sensation.

We can choose to see what perspective we are operating under. The European-American male tradition has choked the life out of women’s eroticism, out of our sense of our erotic, sensual selves. It’s put it all into narrow confines and wrapped the words sexuality and sex around them. Everything points there, and yet in reality, that simply isn’t so.

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A soul that can give of itself to the whole of life.

2010 has been about discovering for myself, what it is to be a sensual, erotic being. In making love to life, I am beginning to re-member the sensual and erotic nature within my being that I cut out because it didn’t fit into the cultural tradition in which I was raised. I began to earnestly make love to life, to let go of the small narrow ways I see myself, so I can open to the erotic nature of the soul and of life itself.

What is it to be a soul in a human, female body, a soul that longs to remember its wholeness, the beauty of the world in which it lives? A soul that can give of itself to the whole of life?

Bringing our whole selves to our work, to helping give birth to this new paradigm means re-discovering our nature, a nature that can bring the joy, the eros, the love back into a world starving for what we have to give. We can unleash a passion that fuels our work, so we give our whole selves to it, not just our small, timid egos.

I am in the midst of this making, a making of how I live in this world, how I see myself and what I can truly do, so that it isn’t quite so overwhelming, but rather a natural extension of my nature.

Let’s allow ourselves to notice the fire that was hidden, the passion and joy for life that have been tucked away in the bedroom, or that have become non-existent in our lives, because we believe they can only come out when we’re having sex, or feeling sexy.

Let’s allow each other to discover this for ourselves, to not judge how we do so, but to know we’re all on this journey together, in service to the emergence of the sacred feminine within us.

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Image courtesy of Zenera, under CC2.0

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UnVeiled

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Veiled, by Patti Agapi
Veiled, by Patti Agapi

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.  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 woman’s body holds the knowledge of how the worlds interrelate. Masculine consciousness imaged a transcendent divinity—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 nature—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.”

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.

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The Undoing

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alba a settembre
alba a settembre, by francesco sgori

Don’t just do something, stand there! ~ Rochelle Myers

Reverb10, Day 04
Prompt
: Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

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In the creativity course I teach, one of the most important ways of being is to ‘Pay Attention’. It is one of the keys to living a creative life.

Standing there.

Being still.

Coming to our Senses.

::

For me, in this body, in this life, the real wonder of it all is that I am alive. That I exist at all. That this body breathes on its own, that the heart beats on its own, that thoughts come and go on their own.

Wonder doesn’t need to be cultivated. Wonder is present when I stop trying to manufacture things with my mind that already exist in a much more real way.

It is the doing, the trying to make things a certain way, that get in the way of the direct realization of what is already here. Like Grace. Wonder. Awe and amazement. Humility. Love.

If there is anything I do, it is the undoing. The unraveling of efforting, the trying, pushing to make it happen.

It is to stop, stand still and receive what is being showered upon us. Right now. Right here. With a wide open heart and body.

When I do, wonder is already present.

::

So here is the paradox. There is a doing, but it is an undoing.

Recipe for Wonder.

Time: None
Ingredients: None
Skill level: You must be a beginner. If you’re not, remember you are.

Stop.
Stand Still.
Look.
Listen.
Feel.
Touch.
Sense.
Taste.
Smell.

Feel your feet on the ground.

Allow This to hold you.

Open your heart.

Open your body.

Receive.

Know whatever it is you know, deep in the cells, down in the body.

::

The Queen of Wonder, Mary Oliver, says it all:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

~from When Death Comes

Image, alba a settembre, courtesy of  Francesco Sgori, under CC2.0

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This Place of Invitation

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Anjali, by Ramona Klee on Flickr
Anjali, by Romana Klee on Flickr

Reverb10 Day 03 Prompt: Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

::

I really like this prompt. Just reading it takes me back through so many experiences of 2010. As I do, I discover that, in general, I feel alive much of the time…much more than I used to before certain experiences awakened me to a different way to be in life.

Feeling most alive isn’t always the same as feeling good. For me, it’s not about peak experiences.

That being said, as I went back through the year to pick one moment, my mind went to peak experiences (it’s hard to teach an old dog…):

Traveling in Ireland and climbing Croagh Patrick alongside barefoot teenage boys or standing on the peat in Connemara or hearing live Irish music and feeling my body light up with the joy of music from the heart…all immensely pleasurable experiences. My mind also searched for other highlighted moments of the year, something that stood out as different from the others. As I sat with so many choices, my time to write ran out as I had to head out the door for yoga.

::

Today, the teacher asked if we had any requests for class (something she does when the class is small). A number of requests were voiced. Then she mentioned that usually when she asks that question, someone pipes up with ‘Power Yoga’. I realized that’s what I wanted today…to sweat hard and to push the boundaries of what my body can do. So I raised my hand to make it clear that’s what I wanted.

She laughed.

She obliged.

She seemed to fill all our requests taking us from intense twists, to shoulder openers, to hip flexor stretches, to optional Chaturanga, and even a one-legged Chaturanga for me, the one that wanted power yoga.

Then she led us into pigeon pose. And here in the intense opening of pigeon pose, I remembered the prompt for today. I sat with the question of what it is to feel fully alive as my entire pelvic girdle was responding to the invitation to open.

I could feel the tightness of those muscles hanging on as if to say, “It’s up to us to keep things under control.”. And, balanced with that tightness, I could feel my skeleton resting on the ground, responding to the muscles saying, “It’s okay. I’ve got it. You can let go.”

Alongside this conversation between the muscles and the bones, there was another conversation. I noticed that feeling of something deeper, what I can only call deep awareness, holding my mind as it flitted about, trying to manage the perceived pain of the stretch in which the body was engaged. This deeper place, this place of serenity and constancy simply invited me to let go, to drop in. I found myself dancing between simply being this place of invitation and being the mind with it’s manic need to manage the experience.

And then it happened. I let go. The muscles gave it over to the bones. The mind let go into the heart. The heart dropped into the body. Something deeper just held it all. And in this moment, I felt the physical palpable opening of the hips, where groin crease relaxed into thigh, and bones settled into the mat. Hot sweat dripped, while pain settled into sensation. Struggling to hold on let go.  Cranial fluid softly pulsed. Joy surfaced on the waves of breath.

It all became simple. Personality acceded to Self.

In this moment, I could feel muscles held by the bones, and bones held by the earth. I could feel the mind held by the heart, and the heart held by the body.

One let go into the next, and before I knew it I felt deeply alive. Human. Open. Trusting.

Invitation.

Invitee.

Invited.

Acceptance.

Simple.

::

image, Anjali, by Romana Klee on Flickr (cc2.0 license)

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