September 2015 – unabashedly female

September 22, 2015September 22, 2015

Developing the Practice of Going Within

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Last night was the first class of ten in the Creativity & Leadership course I teach at Stanford Continuing Studies. I’ve been teaching this course with my wonderful colleague, Hal Louchheim, for nine years now. (Hal’s been teaching this class for eighteen!) The class is highly experiential. Each week, we offer exercises and practices that open the students to their own internal world, the place from which our creativity flows. The class exercises are varied because we all learn differently.

As I led these students through the first exercise, I could feel, really clearly, the depth of trust it takes to go within. I know this from my own experience. When I first began to explore this myself, I was indeed a bit frightened of what I would find when I turned inward. For so long, I’d felt as though there was just a big hole inside of me. Would I find anything inside me? Was there something I didn’t want to see or know?

From a young age, we are taught to look outside for things – answers, guidance, advice, etc. And, in this teaching, we lose touch with not only our own internal knowing, but the idea that there even is an internal world to know. So then, developing trust is a key practice to learning to go within, to access the depth’s of one’s essential creative source.

What else is key? Practice itself. The practice ofÂ learning to notice the experience of being creative by developing the presence and capability toÂ bring it out without judgment and manipulation. And by creative, I mean giving voice (both literally and metaphorically) to the voice within, to what you hear when you go within and listen, then bringing what you hear into form.

This can be where it gets hard. To not judge the process, not judge the chaos, and not judge what we hear when we listen within. To let go of the expectations our minds tend to hang onto in order to feel in control.Â Our minds are so good at judgment, comparison, and critical thinking. Our minds love to ‘problem solve’. But our creativity is not a problem. It can help find solutions to existing problems, but not by attempting to control the outcome through problem ‘solving’. Creativity is our nature, not a problem. If we believe it is a problem, we are believing that what we are is a problem. And, I know many of us learn to believe that this last piece is true…that we are a problem.

As I facilitated the students through the process last night, I came to, once again, realize how vitally important the capacity to listen is. To listen. Not to listen so we can prepare a response. Not to listen so we can win the argument. Not to listen in order to defend or deflect. But to listen in order to truly hear.

To listen in order to truly hear.

This goes for listening to another as well as listening to oneself, to that inner voice that beckons constantly from within.

This kind of listening includes seeing, feeling, and sensing as well.Â It is a whole-body, whole-being listening.

To bring forth a new capacity, we must practice. We practice to bringÂ forth our ability to beÂ nimble and conscious and capable. I am not sure the fear ever goes away, but at least, in being nimble, our practiceÂ helps usÂ to flow with the fear.

Last year, I began to use a new wayÂ to help guide people into this internal world using an ages-old technology – that of the labyrinth. This is what we use in Writing Raw. We go within using the same methodology labyrinth walkers have used for ages. And we listen, feel, sense, and look with our inner-eyes. Our inner world is rich and full, and if we don’t judge it but listen instead, we begin to deepen our relationship with our vast creative resource.

I feel that this is the great invitation of our time: to come to trust the mysterious and intelligent nature of our vast creative potential so that what we create comes from the intelligence of life itself.

Our vast creative potential is life potential, and life lives not for itself. Life lives for life. When we do this, when we listen to life what we bring forth will be for the benefit of the whole, for all of life.

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Unabashedly Female with Julie Daley's photo. Writing Raw begins tomorrow, Wednesday September 23rd.

Writing Raw is a practice…Â a practice in trusting, listening, receiving, and speaking. It’s a practice in learning to trust not only yourself but also your sisters.

While we will write, Writing Raw isn’t really about writing; rather, it’s about learning to go within yourself, deep into your own inner world, then listening for that voice you’ve yearned for a lifetime to hear. Finally, it’s about trusting this inner voice enough to share it into a circle of women, and into the light of day.

Each week, for six weeks, we have two calls. You can come to one, the other, or both. Wednesdays 9:00 am pt and Thursdays 5:00 pm pt.

Each week, you’ll receive an original PDF highlighting a threshold to take you deeper into expressing what is within you.

This circle is powerful, transformative, and fun. I’d love to have you join us. If you have questions, please reach out to me.

September 17, 2015

Purpose is not static. Purpose is alive.

Creativity is a process.

Creativity is aÂ transformative process,Â aÂ process of where the essential Self unfolds itself, continuously. While you are creating ‘something’, the process of making something is creating you.

In the creative process, you ‘go into’ the unknown. When you step off from the ‘perch of the known’, meaning you let go because you have NO idea HOW you are going to do this thing you must do, you go in and down. You enterÂ the creative void. It’s not empty, it’s actually really, incredibly rich and full. It’s pregnant. We don’t know how deep it is nor how long we will be in it. I’d never thought about the sense of falling into it until I read this:

I know this transformation is painful, but you’re not falling apart. You’re just falling into something different, with a new capacity to be beautiful. ~ William C. Hannan

As we create, we can, and often do, feel pain, discomfort, and fear. We know that this process of unfolding brings transformation. We know it on a deep level, but we do not know who and what we will become. That not knowing is frightening. Yet, in the creative process, each time we descend, we reveal more and more of thisÂ true Self. We rescue ourselves out of the abyss of forgetfullness.

I am curious about this new capacity to be beautiful. As I fall deeper and deeper into this unknown place of Self, I am finding life to be more beautiful, even the hard parts.Â It feels as though, more and more, I sense the beautiful, both within and outside of myself, as well as a sense of walking in beauty.

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The creative process is alive. It is a process, meaning it is life unfolding as you and through you. We are alive, and we exist in a world that is alive.

What we create is alive if we create it from a place of aliveness. Each creation carries a transmission of life if we, ourselves, know our own aliveness.

There is aliveness toÂ our existence as human beings. Iâ€™ve known this aliveness. As a child, it was all I knew until I began to replace this experience of feeling alive with mental ideas of being alive. But life wasnâ€™t ever those ideas, really. Ideas of what life is are not the same as life itself. Life has never been what others told me it was, what I’ve told myself it is.

If we are living in our mental ideas of what life is, we don’t feel alive. Instead, the feeling of life divorced from itself is hard, metallic, cold, seemingly almost lifeless, which makes sense. Lifelessness in the midst of life comes when life no longer trusts life, no longer feels safe in its embrace. It is cold and hard, and seemingly brittle, because oxygen is no longer allowed all the way down into the whole of the body, into the limbs and cells.

Life married to itself is rich, fragrant, and giving. It is open-hearted, ‘giving to’ rather than ‘taking from’.

In reality, there is only One life. And, there are infinite life forms. Life knowing life knowing life knowing life. Life could never really divorce itself from itself, but we attempt to do this over and over. We divorce ourselves from others for many reasons, but one of the main ones is the ideaÂ that connection to others makes us unsafe.

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When I think of creativity as a process, as an alive and flowing process, I realize that our purpose for being here is just as alive – and just as much of a process. If we think of purpose as a static thing, we are missing the point by trying to put an alive process into a static idea. Everything is alive, and so is our purpose.

Purpose is flow, it’s the unfolding of who we really are, the essential Self. We are living on purpose when we are living the qualities of our essential nature.

Just as it’s about the journey and not only the destination, it’s also aboutÂ the act of creating and not just the created result. Focusing too much on the end result stifles and constricts creativity, and not only affects the end result but also stifles our capacity to unfold. Having rigid expectations up front, keeps us rigid, not flowing, and constricts our ability to come to know ourselves.

This doesn’t mean you don’t have some kind of intention, but if we hold the intention with spaciousness, and allow for fluidity and change along the way, the process of unfolding is supported by way of creation rather than stifled by it.

Many ‘accepted ways of doing things’ DO stifle and constrict our unfolding. This is how and why the status quo can be so hard to change.

To live purpose, follow the flow of what is alive within you. Pay attention toÂ the experience of being alive. The experience of creating is flow, is life in flow. But itâ€™s not just the creation that is flowing, the creator is, too â€“ YOU, you are flowing. You change, transform, grow â€“ unfold â€“ as you create, as you â€˜makeâ€™ whatever it is you areÂ offering to this world.

To live purpose, hold both these things: what you are creating and your own unique process of unfolding. Allow them to dance together. Allow life to grow you.

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Writing Raw is now open for registration. We begin in one week, on September 23rd.

More than anything, Writing Raw is a process. It is held in a circle in such a way that the unfolding of who you are is just as, if not more, important than the product you output. I created Writing Raw for just this reason, because we tend to focus on the output rather than on becoming. The process of becoming is hugely important.

Writing Raw is a deep dive into this creative process. By consciously turning to go within, you come directly into this rich and fertile void, then speak aloud what has come through you.

If you’ve longed to feel more alive, to unfold and come to know who you truly are, and to speak what you discover then Writing Raw is for you. Take a look at the registration page and read it through. Even if you decide not to join, I know you will learn a lot simply from reading, and listening to, what I have shared. And, if you know of any women that would benefit from joining Writing Raw, please send it on to them so they can join this circle of creativity and discovery.

September 2, 2015September 2, 2015

The Radiance of Life Unfolding

reddahliaatdusk — the radiance of life unfolding

â€¦the body is suffused with wild and vital divinity.
â€¦the sensuous is sacred in the deepest sense.
~ John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

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I go to the side doors of the large room where we are to dance. These double doors are open to the park just across the way letting in the late-summer evening breeze. I lie down on the floor, face up, and gaze up and out the doors. All I see are the branches of the tall pine that stands across the way, branches thatÂ fallÂ across theÂ way between the tree and me.

The first music of the night is soft and slow, and I feel my body soften into the floor. I’ve been dancing long enough now that when the music begins my body begins to dance, even if that dance is simply breath meeting beat.

There is so much here in this moment that I love – truly love. Warm soft wind, music with melody and soul, trees, and others surrounding me who’ve come here to move, too.

As the stresses of the day fall away, I begin to feel my flesh and bones againstÂ the floor in places where my bodyÂ meets wood well-worn from years of feet moving across it and bodies sweating over it.

Here in these moments between the heat of the late-summer day and the cool of evening, between the word-soaked moments of my busy life and the ripe silence of moving to music without conversation, I remember, then feel, the words John O’Donohue wrote before his body passed back into the earth:

Your body is in the soul, and the soul suffuses you completely.
Therefore, all around you there is a secret and beautiful soul-light.

Lying here, I feel this beautiful soul-light. Around me. Around the tree. Around the room. Around the others coming and dropping into silence.

As the music shifts and the tempo picks up, my body rises to meet it and I begin to dance.

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I always love the first moments of the evening dance as I move into flow, relaxing into it like easing into a stream. Toes dip in, then legs, and then I slide the rest of my body down into the cool dark waters of the dance. Each time I dance, these waters cleanse me, washing through the layers of soul that suffuse this body. These watersÂ cleanse me of everything I’ve brought in with me, and over the last few weeks each time I come I’ve brought memories and images of generations past.

My sister and I’ve been going through pictures my mother left behind after her passing, and we’ve come across images of great-great-greats. Moving my fingers across these portraits of faces from five generations prior, I touch more than paper and tin-type. I touch people who gave birth to those who would give birth to me. I touch joy and heartache. I touch youth and old age. I touch promise and defeat. I touch my own DNA.

As I dance, it comes to my mind that they are all gone now. Yet I, their offspring, still dance. My body moves with theÂ wild and vital divinity of one who is alive, fully alive, with breath and beat, sweat and heart. I feel the radiance of life unfolding from deep within me, deep in the hidden places of the heart, deep in the dark of my belly.

I notice the soul-light because the music hits soul first, before it enters my ears. The soul suffuses my body, but the music suffuses my soul.

To be touched in this way by rhythm, to have it touch my soul even before it touches my cells, is to be touched by the sacred. Literally touched. Rhythm and beat to soul, and soul to skin. And when, in the heat of the dance, my skin brushes up against the skin of another, our souls have already met prior to skin meeting skin.

Perhaps this is why it is so hard-to-describe the experience of dance when flesh meets flesh. Perhaps this is why life is so sensuous. It isn’t flesh meeting flesh first. It is soul meeting soul.