This is Larry Merculieff. He speaks  on indigenous elder wisdom and modern day personal to global challenges.

I feel this is one of the most important videos of this time. It is over fourteen minutes long, and it is worth watching many, many times. From this talk:

“Most men and women, and even many spiritual leaders, have forgotten why women were considered sacred. Because, like a hologram inside of their bodies is the direct and exact sacred condition as the womb in the center of the universe, that is physically manifested in their womb.”

“Women, now, are being called to restore their own center of power, because even with all of this violence that has been done to women for thousands of years, you still hold this sacredness in your bodies…in the womb.”

“There is a sacred vibrational field inside of the woman that we have forgotten to honor that is the place of all the things born. Nothing new can be birthed without woman.”

“There is a way out of this and it is going to be led by women.”

“Without restoring the sacred feminine, nothing new is going to occur in this world. Nothing. We can’t think ourselves out of these problems.”

::

Please share with me how this video moves you, as a woman, as a man.

And, please share this with others.

sun spot with light rays, let it shine

I believe in the erotic and
I believe in it as an enlightening force within our lives as women.
I have become clearer about the distinctions between the erotic
and other apparently similar forces.
We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal.
I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force,
a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.
And when I say living I mean it as that force which
moves us toward what will accomplish real positive change.
~Audre Lorde

:::

In these days of change, where destruction is so present and many wonder what is next, discovering the enlightening force Lorde speaks of is the rich invitation at hand.

Can we, as women, remember and re-member this force within our bodies and within our lives?

Our sexuality is as natural as breath.

It moves within because it is the deepest life force. To come into alignment with it is to align with life.

Sexuality is not simply having sex. It is awakening to our nature, returning to the wholeness of the feminine, and remembering that at the center of our female bodies lies the void of creation.

We embody the creatrix, the void out of which all arises. To turn our attention inward, to the innermost recesses of the heart and the birthing capacity of the feminine, opens us to re-member this force.

Can we feel life moving within? Can we begin to trust what we see, especially when it is not visible to the eye?

I see things.

I know things.

Ways are shown.

Yet, I learned at a young age to cut them off before they really blossomed in my consciousness; my intellect learned to come in quickly and try to rationalize and explain these unexplainable things.

As a woman, I walk in ways not understood by the intellect. These ways, these feelings and knowings that are irrational to the intellect, but exquisite morsels to the soul, are calling to me to listen. There is no time to dawdle. They call me to play in the stream of deep healing and honoring.

Trees speak.

The sun shines.

Life pulses.

:::

And, you?

What do you hear?

Image: Sun Spot with Light Rays, Let it Shine Some rights reserved by Torley

I originally wrote this piece for Amy Oscar and her wisdom series – a series of thirteen posts by women whose writing she enjoys. Amy’s series wrapped up on Monday, and after the fact, I realized that you may not have read what I shared. So, I’m offering it here. Do go and check out Amy’s blog. Not only are there some fabulous posts in this series, but Amy’s blog is one I regularly read and thoroughly enjoy. I have a sense you will, too. I’d love to know what you think of this post, how it affects you, and what you feel about it.

::

I sit here poised to write.

My good friend Amy Oscar has asked me to contribute a post on wisdom to her spring collection of works by bloggers she loves to read.

I feel honored. I value and respect her work. I want to write something good, something fresh, and something alive.

So, I sit still and listen to my body. I close my eyes and ask my body what wants to be shared. This is where aliveness is, not in my thoughts about what I am feeling and desiring, but in the direct experience, in the cells of this body. Alive. Light. Numinous. Awake.

My body speaks of fertility, of abundance, of the rhythms of nature. My body knows these rhythms, even if my mind has forgotten.

I am aware of how much our culture fears the wildness of women, our wild nature. So much so, we have all but destroyed the home where we live, our beautiful Earth, in our quest to control and dominate this wild nature.

Feral and fertile, women’s creativity and sexuality are intertwined, like a long, long braid of gold. We know this deep in the center of our cells.

As Isadora Duncan wrote, “You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.”

The body knows this.  It knows we were once wild, and it knows we believe we’ve been tamed. Old traumas and unwelcome emotions are trapped in the body, trapped until we realize the soul’s longing to be free.

As I begin to write,

I can sense my strong sexual energy and a passion for creation. I feel deeply and I am happiest when my body is set free to express this passion through movement and dance, when I paint and the colors run freely on the paper, when words, whispered from someplace unseen, come to rest, together, in a way I could never have planned.

Women are different than men. Yes. We are different. It is not only okay to say that, it is imperative we see this. Why? Let me share a story with you.

A while ago,

perhaps six years or so, I took a class called mess-painting. Mess painting is a kind of process painting, where you use tempera paints, brushes and wall street journal pages to burn through layers that keep you from your deep creativity.

In the six-week process, I painted in my own apartment, in a tent of plastic sheets that I hung from the ceiling. This is a very messy process. I painted six days a week, at least twenty paintings in a session, where each painting was created in the span of two minutes.

In mess painting, the process is to cover one full sheet of Wall Street Journal paper (the ink used doesn’t run) with paint using brushes and any of eight specific colors. That’s it.

It’s a very physical process. You have to move quickly. There is no time to think about what colors you want or how they should go on the paper. There is only enough time to move the brush to the color then to the paper, allowing something more present than thought to choose which color and where to place it.

About four and a half weeks into the process, I suddenly felt a very different energy begin to move through me. It felt wild and untamed. It felt animal and soulful. I had the overwhelming urge to drop the brush and dive in with my body. I painted with my fingers, hands, and elbows. I couldn’t get enough of my body into the process.

I painted until the energy quieted. And then I wrote this:

When I mess-paint, I come alive. I can’t wait to pull out the colors and begin. When I am painting I am totally engrossed. I love to see the colors mix together on the paper, to see what transpires in a given session. I find I can’t get enough of me into the mess – hands, fingers, fingernails – I am so taken with the paintings that I keep watching them as they dry, dying to see what beauty is there. What are the qualities of my painting? There is an energetic pulse to it. I can feel my soul coming through me. Does it come charging through me like a tiger? Does it spread itself on the paper with love and softness, or even reckless abandon?

It is akin to intimacy – when there are no longer any barriers between another and me: when clothes are off, small talk is quieted, distractions are gone, and there are only the two of us in conversation. The language is intimacy. The “words” are infused with love and deep meaning. There is a direct channel open where truth and soul are shared without reservation, without holding back. Passion, desire, and love all come pouring forth into this conversation between two beings. That is the incredible connection and intimacy that I long for. That is the juice I find in painting. When I create art, it is an individual act. It feels like connecting with myself in a deeply intimate way.

As I read again what I wrote then, I can feel the joy I felt in the liberation of this fiery self. I can feel the love and aliveness, and my soul’s desire for connection and expression. The direct connection between creativity and sexuality is right there and so plain to see.

I’ve been taught

to fear this power, to fear my feral side, my passion, my fire, my ferocity and uncontrollability. I’ve been taught well to fear chaos, yet it is from chaos that anything new is born. And while I was taught this, it is me that keeps it under wraps.

Chaos was wildly singing during that painting session.

Chaos is here, right now. Chaos is ushering out the old and inviting in the new. The old way is dying. Something new is coming. And we have no idea at all what that is.

It is time.

It is time to open deeply to this wild nature as woman. It is time to know it, to invite it out, to welcome it to express. It is time that we see the feminine cannot be reawakened by only knowing the feminine principle in both men and women. We must also honor the spiritual nature of women, the nature that flows through women’s bodies in ways it simply does not in men.

I’ve struggled to articulate my deep knowing that we women have this precious opportunity to come to know the sacred within the cells of our own bodies, how our bodies serve spirit in ways men’s’ bodies cannot, and what this direct experience and realization might do for the evolution of human consciousness.

And in my struggle to write about this, I happened upon an article written last year, by one of my favorite authors on this topic, Hilary Hart.  Hilary writes,

“This spiritual insight into the created world inquires into the nature of women’s bodies, and asks if the receptivity of the vagina, the spirit/matter-integrating capacity of the womb, the nourishment of our breasts, reflect an esoteric dimension that receives energy, serves the infusion of spirit into the physical world, and feeds life in a way men cannot.

Do our bodies show that we offer different gifts and have distinct roles in our collective spiritual evolution, just as they have different roles in the material realm?

While answers to these questions are not easy to come by, asking them opens us to an intriguing and compelling line of inquiry into an entire new spiritual territory – the spiritual nature and power of the incarnated world.”

I know…

I know the spiritual nature and power of this physical world by direct experience.

I know it because I’ve experienced it by way of the body’s cycles, by way of menstruation, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding my daughters.

I know it when I remove myself from the places where I tend to be most in my head and go into the places that call to the wild succulence of my body.

I know it through the direct witnessing of the deaths of those people in my life I have profoundly loved and the births of those bright angels who are now vibrantly part of my life.

I know it because I have witnessed the cells of my own body come awake again, after a long, long sleep.

It is not mirrored in the collective consciousness, yet that does not negate it one damn bit.

It is neither valued nor protected in the linear, masculine-centric institutions of our culture, whether they be political, medical, legal or religious, yet we know this way down deep in our cells.

When I read Hilary’s words, clarity flows from the connection between my own knowing and her clear articulation. A gap that had been is now bridged.

It’s as if I have been hovering above my own knowing, not quite ready to drop down in all the way. It’s as if I’ve been held up by old beliefs that still infused my awareness, beliefs that kept telling me that the sacred is somewhere else, somewhere up there, and certainly not in this female body.

We don’t need to transcend our bodies to know the sacred realm. And we don’t need to look out there for our power as women. All we need to know is here, right here, within us. It’s already here.

My body has guided me through this writing. It has taken me on the journey of discovering something wholly new.

Our way is the way of the body. Our bodies are sacred and pure. Our creativity and sexuality are physical manifestations of the creative power of the sacred. Whether or not we ever physically give birth to a child, our bodies are vessels for new life. This is the “spiritual nature and power of the incarnated world.”

::

And, you?

I’d love to know of your experience of the “spiritual nature and power of the incarnated world.”

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.

Creative Impulse.

This phrase kept running through my awareness as I danced on Sunday morning. Many of you know, since I write about it fairly frequently, that I dance every week, and have for over eight years. My practice is 5Rhythms, and on Sunday mornings 150 of us faithful practitioners come together to ‘Sweat Our Prayers’.

5Rhythms is a moving meditation where you dance the 5 rhythms that Gabrielle Roth discovered are at the heart of being human. In the practice, the mind is invited to let go as the body is invited to move on its own, without the normal constrictions the mind and thoughts place on it.

This past Sunday, I moved. I sweated. I let go. And in the space of these two hours of dance, this phrase kept repeating itself.

Creative Impulse.

Creative Impulse.

Impulse.

Impulse.

As I danced,

I was consciously aware of the impulse that came from somewhere deep within my body.

The impulse came up from the dark space within. When followed, the impulse guided me in a fluid movement, where there was no mover, just movement, just expression.

Deeply dropped in the body, I was aware of the impulse as a free and alive movement of energy, a never-ending stream of pulsation coming into being, then flowing out into expression and falling away into nothingness.

I was aware of the impulse…until I was more aware of my mind. Thinking. Judging. Comparing. Deciding it didn’t like the way I was moving. Deciding I looked clumsy. Deciding it didn’t like the music, or how others danced. Judging, comparing, deciding. Stopping the flow. Stumble. Stepping on my own toe. Ouch.

And what did I do then? I began to move again. Dropped back into the beat. Felt the impulse. Moved.

I’ve danced long enough to know this. But what was important this time, was a really bright awareness of this process of stopping, stumbling, being clumsy.

I came home and

considered what had happened and how it translates to life, because right now I’m stopping myself from allowing this impulse to move through me as it wishes. On the dance floor, I feel safe and comfortable to express, except for those moments when the thoughts come in.

In my life, I don’t feel that safety, even though, in reality, I am just as safe. I mean, who knows what people are thinking of me as I dance. Who knows what judgments are flying, what stories they make up about me? Who knows? I certainly don’t. But I feel free there, free to move, to listen, to express.

I know this creative impulse is always here. It’s always moving up and out of the deep darkness of the inner place. When I write I can feel it. And, when I write I can feel the sudden move of the mind behind the impulse that stops it.

As I am known to do,

I looked at the word impulse, because for me an impulse feels like it sounds. It is a pulse that moves out of me, one after another, but so closely together it is fluid.

As I looked up the word in the thesaurus, these other words showed up as synonyms:

Desire.

Drive.

Pulse.

Pulsation.

Thrust.

Beat.

Signal.

Stimulus.

Urge.

Force.

Pressure.

Impetus.

Whim.

Wish.

Itch.

Inclination.

Yen.

Bent.

Spur.

In simply reading them, I feel the impulse. Try it. Read them again, and feel how they feel in your body. Feel the words move through you. What do you discover?

For me, there is a resonance with the feeling of spring, of emergence, of a pushing up through soil, of a seed emerging into the light. There is also a sense of body function, inspiration, breath, pulse, desire…all pointing to a wide open sense of eroticism, of creation at its core giving birth in each moment to a new moment.

The practical side of this,

is seeing of how many ways I stop the flow with minuscule thoughts, tiny aberrations in the fluid movement of time and creation, where I attempt to stop what is happening, where I clog up the pipes, sit back and think rather than stay in the fluid motion of action that comes from within.

The flow stops when I don’t feel safe, for whatever reason. Sometimes, I’m still amazed at how important safety is for the ego, how it looks for that at all costs.

Not that we must be in motion all of the time.

In the dance, there are many moments where the impulse moves in tiny, tiny ways, even to a point of pure stillness, where what is moving is simply respiration, sweat dripping, maybe even a muscle trembling ever so slightly, a finger with a tender pulse, a ever-so-slight movement of the eye.

These moments happen all the time in life, where there is a pause, a breath, maybe even a languishing time of being still, silent, inward-turning.

This impulse is intelligent and wise.

It is the same impulse that moves through us all, yet how it expresses through each of us is different. And, how it expresses through women is different than men, for the female body is different than a man’s body.

This impulse knows something our minds can’t know. And right now, this impulse is guiding us to truthful action if we are willing to trust it to move through us.

I know this is happening in my life. I’m making choices that aren’t comfortable, aren’t cozy, aren’t safe. And in doing so, I find myself stumbling, hesitating, maybe even stepping on my own toes, missing the beat of the music, bumping into others I love and care about.

What is it I trust in

as I move out in directions I don’t know? There is a footing inside, a place that never changes, something I know is there. I don’t have a word for it, really, but Rilke does:

“But your solitude will be a support
and a home for you,
even in the midst of very
unfamiliar circumstances,
and from it you will find all your paths.”

That’s okay. All that matters is that we keep dancing, keep breathing, keep moving our feet, letting the impulse move us, trusting that our own solitude is exactly the footing we are standing on, even when there is nothing underneath our feet.

Reverb10 Day 29
Prompt: Defining moment. Describe a defining moment or series of events that has affected your life this year.

::

I had a couple of very strong  realizations just a few weeks ago that have shifted how I see myself and my work in the world.

The End of a Chapter

I am done with a period in my life that’s been very internal.

Since 2002, I’ve been engaged with learning my new line of work: that as coach, teacher and writer. I spent many years as a systems analyst for a financial institution. Then I went back to school. I studied many things, and focused on designing experiences, mostly of the interactive digital kind.

When I left school, I knew that what I had just been educated to do, was not my calling. In other words, the tools I gained are directly useful in my new work, but being an interaction designer was not how I was to share my gift.

I spent some time after school grieving a lot of things I hadn’t yet grieved. Like dirty dishes, grief doesn’t go away on its own. It wants to be invited in to sit a spell until it has been fully integrated.

Then, I began to train in my new chosen field: that of teacher of creativity and personal coaching. I wanted to really know the coaching profession, to become well qualified to do this work. When people entrusted me to walk with them as they turned to look within, to unearth their deepest longings and to move through the painful ways they keep themselves stuck, I wanted to be able to be of service to the unfolding of their true self and the gift they are here to give. Fully. I’ve followed this desire as it took me through years of training and education and my own deep work.

Suddenly, after a great deal of training this year, I could feel that I am done. I know my work.

And, I am done with a more internal focus. It had not yet felt right to be moving into the world in a more visible way. And now it does.

The moment when I came to see this was so clear.

::

There is No Separation

I am a very lucky woman to have two daughters and three grandchildren, with one more on the way. As I was working to deepen my coaching and teaching abilities, I kept feeling pulled between my personal and professional worlds.

I am blessed to have both my daughters and their families close by. Completely blessed. And, I am the one grandparent here, which means much of the grandparent duties fall on me. I’ve loved this and I’ve felt torn between these two parts of my life.

In another moment of clear seeing, I finally could see, in a very real and palpable way, that these are not two separate things, but rather than one infuses the other. My work with women is enriched by my deep love for my children and grandchildren, and the time I spend with them informs my work. My work with women enriches my time with my children and grandchildren.

And, finally, my writing has been infused with much wisdom I have gained from my experiences with my family.

Of course they are all intertwined. How could I not have seen this? Sometimes these insights are so simple, yet so very profound.

Now, I feel integrated and ready for what life has in store for me, for where life will call me to go, for who life wants me to be with.

::

There is a truth at the heart of the way life moves. As Kahlil Gibran wrote:

‎“Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only before the truth.” ~ Khalil Gibran

This is my life in all its intricate complexity; yet at the heart of it, it’s all quite simple.

I used to think there was a way life should look and that I would see that way out there, reflected back to me through how the culture shows it.

These two realizations in these past weeks have deepened my faith in my own aibility to trust when to shift, when to move and where to flow to next. Somehwere inside, I knew it wasn’t yet time; and now it is time and life is showing me the way.

Life asks us to flow with it, to follow its lead, to trust in life’s nature.

Everything that has happened in my life has been rich fodder for this gift I’m to give. Nothing was for naught. Everything has informed.

Nothing is wasted, everything is in order, and it’s all sacred.

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?

::

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.

Blossom Time by AussieGal

The erotic impulse and the creative impulse are inextricably intertwined. ~ A Stassinopoulus

…

I’ve been teaching, rather I should say facilitating, creativity courses for a number of years, and I’ve noticed some interesting things about creativity.

We are educated out of our creativity. Sir Ken Robinson speaks eloquently of this.

We’re born creative. It’s our nature. Yet, only 2% of adults believe they are creative.

Creativity isn’t an act of the thinking mind – it’s an act of nature, and that nature is most accessible by way of a mind embodied, by way of the heart and soul.

Creativity is a flowering, an urge from within, an explosion of life force that propels the seed up through the ground, the baby out through the mother, the cherry blossom to bloom, the seed of an idea into an innovative force.

Creativity, Love, Sexuality, Sensuality are all aspects of our true nature – the life force that flows through us.

Our biggest block to allowing this force to flow is our fear of losing control, which is also our fear of the ‘little death’, the ‘die before you die’ that is at the heart of awakening and the expression of the sacred.

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Our creativity is our nature, a nature that is wild, unfettered, feral, and unpredictable, just like our sexuality. Totally unpredictable, yet so necessary to life joyfully lived. It can feel frightening, yet so full of the very thing our souls are thirsting for:  a full cup of life’s eroticism.

Our need to control keeps our true nature at bay. It keeps us in a kind of limbo, where we long for the freedom to create, yet at the same time, telling ourselves that others hold the key that can unlock that freedom.

The freedom is ours if we’re willing to let go of control and allow life to move us.

An Issue of Authority

No one can give the green light to life to move through us, but us. Each of us can speak the quiet, yet powerful, ‘Yes’ for Life to take us on the ride it has planned for us.

For me, Life is God. It is the mystery. We give many names to it, because we want to understand it, to know it, to have some insight into it so we can ‘know’ it and control our experience in some way.

One of the ways I try to control (in a fairly unconscious way) is looking for permission to create what I really want to create. Of course it isn’t so literal when it shows up in my day-to-day life.

As my dear friend Jeanne says, “It’s an authority issue.”

I wonder, when did I put someone else in charge of me? When did I give someone else the key to my feral self, my wild unfettered creativity? When did I hand over the rights of my body, my soul, my power?

At one point in my youth, I traded my power to create for safety and love. Smart choice for a little one that was too young to survive on her own. Until it became conscious, I didn’t realize how often and how much I was trading my voice for all the things that kept me connected.

The only thing is, that kind of connection isn’t real, nor is it true. That kind of connection is a not-so-helpful trade-off of power with another that keeps us both locked up in the search for safety, rather than the expression of what wants to be known.

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The deeper I dive into the creative fire, the more I know this connection between the erotic impulse and the creative impulse. The desire to know the mystery that is at the heart of my nature shows itself in many forms.

There are many out there that wish to hold the power over my body, my femaleness, my sexuality, and this feral female instinct. How long will I go along with that crazy-making agreement?

This woman’s body belongs to no one. This woman’s wild self is free. I am fortunate in this. I live in a place where this is still so, even if others are banging drums to change that.

It is up to me to set the impulse free, to write it, to dance it, to sing it, to speak it. And to enjoy the eroticism that life offers, not as a woman that is simply here to please a man, but a woman here to write her life.

The men I honor and respect revel in that writing. They celebrate the coming together of the creative impulse and the erotic impulse in all women, for in doing so they set their own creative impulse free, as well.

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In my post on Extending Love, I wrote of learning to love everything, beginning with that which felt the easiest to love. My own sexuality hasn’t been the easiest, yet if I am to write my life, it is one of the most important places to extend my love.

Lucille Clifton writes of magic hips, hips that hold the cradle of creativity in women.

Maya Angelou knows this well:

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

How would I describe this cradle of creativity, this place of the source of infinite generosity and abundance within my own body?

We’ll see what the mystery brings…

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Image courtesy of AussieGal on Flickr, under Creative Commons 2.0 License

“When you go out next, take a look at the dirt at the side of the road. Blonde dirt, ochre red dirt, black dirt, brown dirt, yellow dirt, clay white dirt, green dirt. Then, look inside your house. Most everything in it came from the dirt first. Our Mother is everywhere: metal, plastic, paper, glass. Don’t tell me you have no ideas. Dig.”

~Tending the Creative Fire manuscript, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

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Last Thursday, I painted with Chris Zydel, (@wildheartqueen for you twitteraties).

Chris leads Process painting. Beautifully.

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The Process began with picking my paint colors and brushes.

For me, this process was about digging. The painting I did didn’t come from the top of me. My head. It came from someplace deep down in the darkness, someplace where the paint flows like honey, like blood, like dirt…I guess that would be mud.

As Chris said right from the beginning, it’s not about the painting, it’s about the process, about what’s happening within you as you choose colors, choose brushes, face the white paper, become the conduit for seed to sprout from the dirt, and for the mystery to come to life as creation.

At the very root of it all, it’s a big mystery. I didn’t know what would come out on the paper. I don’t know what it is or even what it means. It just came out. It’s as simple as that.

I noticed, as I painted without a plan and without a story, that it was fun. I had fun simply watching it all happen. I felt playful as the color changed the paper from white to painted. It was spontaneous. Joyous. Innocent.

It was a lot like the painting I did as a child at pre-school, where long tables were made from saw horses and wood, long tables that held clean white butcher paper.

Back then, I just LOVED to see the paint flow onto the paper. That’s the part I remember most. The colors. The mixing. The colors mixing and turning the paper from white to painted to creation.

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Sometimes, what is flowing wants my mind to join in, so the creation can have meaning, can be shared with words, can have a different kind of impact. Sometimes, there’s no invitation to the mind to join in. I like those times. They’re empty. Nothing here but dirt and digging.

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I could try to make something up about what it means, but why?

Dirt is where it all comes from.

I just dig.

Spring, by Julie Daley

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I’ve become enamored with the idea of what can be created when we bring people, ideas and creations together, combining creative impulses, drawing upon each other’s spark. This is the second of two posts to explore this idea. Who knows, maybe there will be more!

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A few posts ago, I wrote about Spring. Just as Spring is in the air, writing about Spring was, too. A very recent blogger acquaintance, Jeanie Miley, stopped by to read my post. Just prior to my post, she had visited Renae Cobb to read her post about Spring. Jeanie was inspired and whammo, “it just popped out” (the it being an amazing poem) into my comments section. Jeanie literally wrote a poem and left it in the comments. I was blown away by what I read and wanted to share it with you, so you could be, too.

It’s funny. Many months ago, I wrote a post titled Make Love to Life as if it were Your Beloved.

Now, through Serendipity, Jeannie graced this blog with this fresh, in-the-moment poetry, brought about the spirit of collaboration, through one woman sparking another into her own creative genius.

Here is Jeanie’s poem. It is sensual and free, full of eros and light. At the time she wrote it, she didn’t leave a title.

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