Experience

I joined the help haiti blog challenge when I heard about it on Twitter. Kelly Diels decided to ask her friends and colleagues to find creative ways to raise money for donating, so she began this challenge. Kelly suggested we all think about how we can contribute, whether it is a service, our time, or anything else we might think of.

While I instantly wanted to be a part of this challenge, at first I didn’t know how I would participate. As I sat with the images coming from Haiti, I felt overwhelmed at the immensity of the situation. I knew I had to donate something, so I began to check out groups that felt donation worthy, meaning those where the funds would be used wisely.

For me, my donation is something I feel must be separate from my business. I don’t want to mix marketing my work with any donation I might make. It’s just what works for me. I have donated to AARP, which will match any donations made. If you would like to contribute to AARP, too, just click here.

That being said, I know there are some fantastic people who have found imaginative and creative ways to offer their services so that they might increase their ability to donate to a worthy cause. If you’re interested in checking these out, visit Kelly’s blog, Cleavage to check it out.

Thank you, Kelly, for bringing together the Twitter community and finding such a creative way to raise even more money to help Haiti.

Tiny Dancer by WickedNeuron, Flickr

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” ~ Martha Graham

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I have been teaching creativity courses for over six years now. When I share the above quote from Martha Graham with my students, they sit mesmerized by the idea that there is a force that moves through them in such a way, and that their job is only to keep it theirs, clearly and directly. Their job is only ‘to keep the channel open’.

Now, I have experienced this life force moving through me many a time. Sometimes it is like fire. Sometimes it is fluid, like water. Sometimes, it feels more like a pressure that won’t rest until it is released through some physical form such as dance, yoga or sex. Sometimes this force simply wants to feel the warmth of the sun and the cool wash of a breeze. And, sometimes this force craves words. It just wants words.

I have understood Martha’s quote for sometime now. Over the last few days, though, I finally got it in my cells. I awoke during the night with the rush and clarity of this epiphany: my only job is to serve this force.

It’s not that I didn’t get this intellectually before. It’s what I teach. Up until this time, though, I have thought that my eog mind could outsmart this force. I have believed that the juicy ideas I come up with are somehow the fruits of this force. I could see that surrender was necessary, but somehow (and I know this is what the ego is so good at) I kept thinking I was surrendering.

My epiphany: I have no idea what is going to come out of this body as it writes, as it dances, as it does whatever it does when I do my job and serve this force. But, even though I don’t know, and this not knowing can scare the hell out of me, I now know that it is the only real love, the one truth. I only exist because this force has something to express and experience uniquely through this body.

When I write, and I have been experiencing this more and more as I blog each day, what comes comes. Words flow. They string together in unexpected ways, sometimes coming full circle in ways that delight me with their mysterious surprise.

I see images, sometimes. I write the words that express these images or I write the words that simply flow from my hands. As I write, feeling flows. It comes from someplace deep within. Sometimes it moves me to tears, as if I am reading something another has written. Sometimes, I don’t feel a thing. I hit publish. Others read. Some are moved. Sometimes I am surprised by this. Sometimes, I get it because I was moved. Sometimes, I am moved, but others don’t seem to be. I never know. It is a mystery.

I just know I must write. I just know I crave words. I just know there is beauty between the words.

I just know I crave music and an open floor to dance. I just know I must move. I just know that beauty flows from the dance. I just know the dance dances me, the writing writes me.

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Each day of December, I am moved by Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge:
Today is Day 26 Insight or aha! moment. What was your epiphany of the year?

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image Welcome New Light by alicepopkorn
cc license

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Best of 2009 Blog Challenge:  Day 25 Gift. What’s a gift you gave yourself this year that has kept on giving?

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The moment you expect something in return, love dies. ~ Ryuho Okawa

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I love this question, because it guides me back to that which, when remembered, is already giving and is always giving. It is the source of all giving. When we give from this place, we wish nothing in return. It is here that love can flourish.

Remembrance. My soul is always calling me back to remembrance. It is the siren song, the wake-up call of the soul. It compels me, if I’m quiet and listening with my whole body, to remember the love in my heart. It guides me back to the heart, to the innermost heart, back to remembrance of love for the Beloved.

This remembrance of life is the natural spring of gratitude, which flows ceaselessly and endlessly.

This remembrance reminds me to be kind and compassionate to myself, to do no harm to this being, and in so doing, the awareness to be kind and compassionate to others, to do no harm to others, also grows and flourishes.

This remembrance floods all things with love, even those thoughts and beliefs that feel void of love.

Today, on the day of Christmas and gift-giving, when many of us around the world remember Christ, remembrance guides me to remember Christ consciousness (or Buddha, Cosmic, Higher consciousness), the inner heart of being in all of life that radiates qualities of compassion, truthfulness, humility and forgiveness towards all.

The simplicity of remembrance cannot be overstated. It is simple. When rembrance calls you, go with it. Let it carry you back. If the desire is true to remember, remembrance will find you and usher you home.

image by Ivan Walsh, Flickr

Day 18 of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Challenge is to be about shopping and spending mad money.

I’m not much of a shopper. I really don’t like it much at all. I can’t spend much time in stores as the experience seems to cause me to leave running for fresh air and green scenery – and, not the green of mad money.

It’s not like I don’t like things. I like them too much. I just don’t like spending time shopping for things.

When I looked back on 2009 to reflect on where I have spent most of my mad money, I realized four things about 2009 and shopping:

1) I began the year with much more stuff than I had in 2008. My mother passed away in 2008. I found many meaningful things that belonged to Mom that I wanted to keep. I brought them home. Over the course of this year, I began to really consider what I own, and how much of it I really needed. I realized, I want to pare down consciously. I’ve got some work to do on this. It’s always been hard for me to let go of things. I seem to bring things in, without taking things out.

2) I became more conscious of the unconscious identity I had adopted (fed my our media and advertising ways) of consumer rather than citizen (shout out to Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money), and the effect that has on not only our planet, but our psyches.

3) I noticed I had a pattern of buying things on sale, or things that were a good bargain, rather than consciously choosing beautiful items that I feel drawn to adorn my body and home with.

4) I desired to spend more of my money on good, wholesome, organic food, which caused me to spend a bunch of money on food.

So, if I have to be honest about where I spend my mad money, I spent it at Whole Foods. It sounds sort of funny as I write it, but it’s so. Shopping at Whole Foods is much more peaceful and green-filled in a whole different way.

Workin’ on moving from citizenshopper to citizenshipper.

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
Day 18 Shop. Online or offline, where did you spend most of your mad money this year?

So, we’re half way through December. And, half way through the Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. I’m stoked that ‘ve managed to blog every day of December. My writing muscles are getting a workout, but more important than that, I have found great joy in this form of play and expression. Each morning when I wake up, I’m not quite sure what I will blog about, other than knowing the prompt. Each time I sit down to post, something comes that delights me. A totally unexpected benefit to accepting Gwen’s challenge.

On to today’s prompt, Tea of the Year. I found two. One for the inside, one for the outside. Of my body, that is.

As a recovering coffee/chai addict (who occasionally falls off the wagon), when I discovered Numi’s Ruby Chai, I found a tea I can have that has no caffeine, no tannins, and steeps in milk to produce a deeeeeelicious cup of look-alike Masala Chai.

If you want something to heat you up in a different way, I discovered Ruby Chai Appletini using this tea. Sounds like it might be worth a try.

The other is tub tea. Tea bags to steep in the bath. Now, this find was a product of searching for a baby shower favor that was to be given out at a lovely little tea party we had for my daughter [beautifully designed packaging of 2009].

A lovely way to steep is to soak in one, while drinking in the other. That is tea bliss.

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
Day 16:  Tea of the year. I can taste my favorite tea right now. What’s yours?

Best Rush of 2009 – 400 foot waterfall – ’nuff said

Waimoku Falls, Haleakala Natl. Park, near Kipahulu, Maui

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
Day 14: Rush. When did you get your best rush of the year?

Place.

As I’ve pondered this word (today’s blog challenge prompt is ‘The best place’), I’ve thought of many places I love:

walking in Tilden Park (I live across the street from this wild heaven)

on the dance floor on Sunday mornings at 8:30 in Sausalito with 149 other sweaty and passionate 5Rhythms’ dancers

sitting on the floor in a puppy pile with my three grandchildren, 2 great-nieces and 1 great-nephew on Thanksgiving

doing yoga in my sister’s (the one and only Molly Fox) incredibly physical, and joyously lyrical yoga class

listening intently to my clients on our coaching calls as they share the most intimate details of their ‘one wild and precious life‘ (prostrations to Mary Oliver)

sitting in meditation with the most amazing teachers Lynn Barron, Amma and Adyashanti

simply being with Jeff, the man I share my life with.

I am struck by these things:

how crazy fortunate I am to be living the life I am living

and

how integral being in my body is to the ability to ‘be’ in any place and ‘know’ how it feels to be there. My body is my doorway to place, because I experience place through my senses. I drink place in with my eyes. I touch place with my heart. I feel place through the cells of my body.

and

The ‘best place’ to ‘be’ in is in this body, this sensuous female body that feels deepy and loves completely.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It hasn’t always been the best place to be. In fact, for many years I wanted nothing to do with this place. I stayed way up in my head, or at times, was nowhere to be found even in the vicinity my body.

Now, after much ‘work’ and lots of great body practices, I know differently. This female body is divine. Not just mine. All female bodies are divine.

I remember being at and Adyashanti retreat when he was speaking about the divine nature of all of life. As I listened, I had an epiphanic experience (fancy way of saying an ephiphany, because I love the word ep⋅i⋅phan⋅ic). I suddenly knew, in the embodied way, that my female body, and all female bodies, are divine. We bring life into life in a myriad of forms. Our female bodies are gateways to this amazing thing we call life. If we are in our bodies, we feel deeply, we connect with the earth.

As this was satsang, when the time came for people to share experiences or ask questions, I raised my hand, was called upon, strode up to the mic, and said, loudly and clearly, “I just got that this body (pointing to mine) is divine”. I suddenly heard a chorus of female gasps arise around the room. I obviously wasn’t the only one who had missed this message growing up.

So in wondering about place, I now see, and taste and touch and hear and feel, that body needs to be in conscious relationship with place, any place, to know it.

As Mary Oliver writes,

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
Day 11: The best place. A coffee shop? A pub? A retreat center? A cubicle? A nook? A BODY!

Image credit: Place of Healing, by Mara on Flickr

Bloom Project

Today, in thinking about which ‘night out’ of 2009 was the best for Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, I realized just how much music has to do with enjoying an evening out for me. More than anything, I get so much pleasure from hearing live music, or dancing to music, or both. All three experiences that made it to my final selection revolved around music.

In the end, though, my choice came down to passion, love, creativity and synergy. I love passionate performances. I love creative expression and synergy between performers. And, I love it when musicians play from the love in their hearts.

My favorite night out this year contained all of these things. In an intimate live concert with Bloom Project, at a small church in Berkeley, I became a fan of improvised music. The October concert was an improvisational duet with pianist Thollem McDonas and saxaphonist, Rent Romus.

These two men are incredible musicians. They are so good at improvisation, that you feel both the synergy of musicians playing as if they have known each other their entire lives, and the flow that comes when perfromers are completely in the moment, perfectly attuned to each other’s next impulse.

Thollem McDonas

Thollem is an amazing pianist, and he is my brother. He is actually my half-brother, as we have the same father, but different mothers. Life is funny. In 2008, both our mothers passed away. When you arrive at the home page of Thollem’s web site, you see a dedication to his mother, Geraldine. Gerry, as we knew her, was a pianist, too, as well as piano teacher who taught for decades. Thollem comes from piano genes, as my father plays as well.

What made this night so special was something less tangible than the incredible music. In listening to him play, I could feel something deeper and richer in his music than I had ever heard before in his concerts. As I sat listening, I was carried back to his mother’s memorial service in early January of this year, when Thollem played Clair de lune live, dedicating the song to his mother. In the five minutes or so that Thollem played that day, he poured out his heart into every note he played. Each note was filled with so much love for his mother. This love was present, again, in this evening concert.

As in most beautiful magical moments, something came together for me that night. Something so simple. I listened to the love for music that infuses Thollem’s notes and I felt his love for life, his love for his mother, and my love for him. This music itself was beautiful, and the experience was unforgettable.

Today, I’m writing as part of a December blog challenge, The Best of 2009, by the lovely Gwen Bell. In this challenge, Gwen has asked us to write about a topic each day, a topic that focuses on the ‘best of’ for this year. Gwen has given us a prompt for each day – to use or not – but today’s prompt, What was your best trip in 2009?, is way too juicy for me to pass by…juicy, because my best trip for this year was the two weeks I spent in Maui.

Ahhhhhhhh… Just writing that begins to bring it all back. The sun, the fruit, the amazing water, Haleakalā, and Hana. Oh, and my Libido dance workshop. Yes, all of these delicious things were rolled up into two weeks in paradise. I personally don’t know how anyone lives there and gets a lick of work done.

The trip began when I read about a 5 Rhythms dance workshop on Libido to be held at Studio Maui over three days in July, one of which was my birthday. How could I resist? Maui, libido, dancing, all to celebrate my birthday. When I told my partner Jeff about it, he was in. You see, his birthday is five days after mine. We just happened to be born the same year, five days apart. We always try to find some great place to go and unwind for our birthdays. While Jeff doesn’t dance, he was more than game to find something to do on Maui for those three days that I would be dancing.

We landed a few days before my workshop was to begin, and started out by just lying on the beach in West Maui. The water was divine and I let myself just melt into it, and into the warmth of the sun. We did nothing. For two days. Swam. Slept. Ate. Drank in the sunshine. Then, we packed up and traveled to Haiku, a small town on the North side of the island.

Dancing libido was beyond description. 5 Rhythms has been my main practice for over seven years now, and I know it is what has kept me sane as I have dealt with life’s offerings: death, birth and all the experiences in between. The workshop invited us to open to, and dance, our libido, what Carl Jung refers to as, “…the energy that manifests itself in the life process and is perceived subjectively as striving and desire.” While we usually think of the more narrow definition of libido as sexual desire, it is really so much more. Dancing this energy of desire and sensuality, creativity and expression, was a very powerful way to open to the sensuality of Maui. Little did I know at this point just how sensual a land Maui is.

Dancing the 5Rhythms is such a compassionate and loving way to exlpore realms of self that have been pushed into the shadow, realms that seem to powerful, dark and primal to allow out in everyday life. The dance is a way to let the body bestow its wisdom and ability to heal upon the psyche. Being in a room with so many other dancers exploring this primal and love-filled energy is a gift of major magnitude, for there aren’t many places in our culture where we can learn to be comfortable with this power that rises up from the core of our nature. I emphasize love-filled, for my experience during this workshop was of the magnitude of the power of this love. Love is at the heart of our life-force, the force the is the heart of all creation.

After the workshop was over, we made our way to Mama’s Fish House – very much a touristy restaurant, but an incredible dining experience, too. My birthday dinner there was most memorable, as my entire being was still aglow from my dance experience.

The next morning we made the trek to the top of Haleakalā. Being on top of the island, looking down into the crater is an experience I’ll never forget. The beauty and power of this place is something you can’t describe in words. I’ll just let the pictures speak for me…

We then made our way back down the mountain and over to the coast, where we picked up the “Road to Hana”…and yes, it is quite a drive! You can buy T-shirts that say, “I survived the road to Hana’. The lush green of the vegetation as we arrived in Hana took my breath away as it lured me into my most animal nature, awakening something very old. I knew I had come home…it was as if I knew I had been here before. The only other time I have felt this totally delectable feeling in my body was when I was in southern India, in Varkala. There is something about the tropical land (Hana is as close as you can get to old Hawaii from what I understand) that just soothes my body and soul and brings me into complete presence with the land.

Each day we were there, we would wake up before the sunrise, walk across the street to Hamoa Beach (yes, our cottage was across the street from one of the top 10 beaches in the world) and swim as the sun rose. Almost every day, we had the beach to ourselves.

Ever since I was young, I have loved fresh fruit. I could live on it. That’s the other thing I loved about this trip. Each day I feasted on the most luscious fresh fruit that we purchased at roadside stands. We were even served fresh bananas, right off the tree, in Haiku, by the woman we rented our apartment from.

The land in Hana just feels so welcoming. In writing today, I realized how certain cultures seem to know they are part of nature, unlike our culture here in the States, where I hear all the time people say they are going to ‘go spend some time in nature. When I was in southern India, I felt completely one with my surroundings, not just a visitor in nature. I felt this same way here in Hana. I could just breath in and drink up the divine force that is both the creator and creation itself. We don’t have to go to nature. We are nature.

Each morning in Hana, I would sit and feel the warm tropical breeze across all parts of my skin and experience the sensations of my sensual animal nature. The sun, the wind, the water, the fruit, and the earth all fed me in a way that felt as old as earth itself. I felt held by the Great Mother, the Big Womb of Life, and began to know another part of me that had been dormant for so many years, perhaps even lifetimes. It was very simple. And profoundly humbling. The earth still holds us, even though we haven’t been such loving, grateful children to Her. In Hana, they are so respectful of the land, the ‘Aina‘. They get that She holds us and they revere Her.

Upon my return from Maui, I realized I now know myself more deeply, more sensually, and more primally than before. It’s all right here within us, this libido that is our creativity, our sensuality, our primal life force. Oh how we try so hard to deny our nature- that we are nature, that we are animals with a big, over-active, self-reflective brain, and a divinely sensual, loving life-force. This is at the heart of wild creativity.

This was my best trip of 2009.

I’ve noticed a curious thing as I inquire more deeply into the awakening Feminine. There seem to be two (at least) threads of conversation around the Feminine: awakening feminine consciousness in both women and men, and finding balance within our own beings between our masculine and feminine aspects; and, women awakening to their own unconditioned, organic way of being, and the natural power that comes from this energy becoming conscious. Unabashedly Female is a place to converse about the latter, to discover together what is coming into consciousness solely through women.

Most of the time, I read about the former, feminine qualities that both women and men are finding again, such as receptivity, collaboration, relationship and a host of others. When this is the conversation, women and men are included together because these aspects are part of coming to wholeness in every being.

Many times when I speak (or write) of the latter, as in this blog, I ‘hear’ people being in the either/or mindset, a mindset that comes from the culture we are swimming win, one based on a patriarchal perspective. Ubiquitous in this perspective is the notion that things are either/or: that one is either for or against; that either something is true or it is not true; that if I speak of one thing, then I am negating its opposite. This either/or perspective shows up often when I write about women and re-discovering our own nature, that of the sacred feminine. It’s as if our conditioning as women tells us we can’t or shouldn’t look at ourselves with curiosity and wonder as different than men. Or, perhaps it is old conditioning about needing to support everyone else rather than seizing the opportunity to REALLY give ourselves time for reflection and meditation on our own nature. Or, maybe it is based on fear and is a way to avoid the looking within that is necessary.

When I write of women being loving and compassionate and wise, I am not negating that men can also these things. When I write of the ‘Mother’ being absent from our culture, I am not saying that the ‘Father’ has been truly available to men.

What I know to be true is that a compassionate, relational humanity is based on a both/and model. In the humanity model we are opening to, one that is becoming more balanced between the masculine and feminine, we will see from a perspective of both/and, where we agree that we are different beings because we are different genders. Through this perspective we celebrate all of life and the differences that flow through our experience because the spirit we are flows through different gendered bodies.

Celebrating differences is celebrating the diversity of nature. It doesn’t mean continuing the sense of separation or the better than/less than  that has been a hallmark of our patriarchal culture. Instead, celebrating the organic truth of our nature allows us all to bring our full selves to the world, to honor the elegant unique simplicity of our design.

The idea of both/and is becoming more prevalent in many places, but I first encountered the power of it in an improvisation class I took a few years ago. We did an exercise called, “Yes, and” where you willingly accept the last improvisor’s choice of action and build upon it with your own. IN other words, you don’t block what they just brought to the experience, but rather build upon it. This experience was an amazing learning opportunity for me in two ways: 1) I got to see how conditioned I was to block, to take in another’s experience and want to change the direction, say ‘No’ to it, find some problem with it, or to see it as an opportunity to disagree with it and come up with something better. While most of this was pretty unconscious for me, the exercise brought it out. 2) By having to accept where the improvisation was going, which meant accept the other’s choice and position, and then finding a way to build upon it and move from it forced me to acknowledge the other person’s AND their experience and find a way to create and collaborate with inclusiveness. It was an experience of connection rather than separation, opening rather than closing off.

I see Both/And | Yes/And as two very similar world views we can hold in these times of deep chaos and churning. There is no limit to what we can create together as a world of human beings yearning for peace when we come together, when we honor where the other person is, when we act with reciprocity and empathy.

What if our design as woman and design as man is exactly perfect?

What if under our conditioning lies the intelligence of our being, an creative and cooperative design that fits together like a 7 billion piece jigsaw puzzle?

What if our solution can only come out of a clear seeing of all that exists right now and a new possibility that can come from everything that is here?

Our evolution as humans depends on the power of Both/And. It depends on the full flowering of the female gender and the male gender, blossoming out from the constricted conditioned attitudes we’ve been holding.