voice

Tulip by Connor365 on Flickr

Lately, my posts have been flowing one from another, as if writing one allows an insight to surface and wash over me. It feels sort of like a scavenger hunt, where one clue leads to the next, and that one to the next. Maybe that’s not the best analogy, but close enough…

After writing my last post, The You That Takes Your Breath Away, I remembered something I wrote a few years back. It was never shared here on my blog. In fact, I don’t think I shared it with anyone. At the time, what I was writing felt too close to my heart to make known to others. Sometimes, this is exactly what needs to happen; we need to not speak those moments of insight so that they continue to work their way through us.

What I wrote to myself was sparked by this passage from , “Shadow Dance” by David Richo:

“We can even declare that we are what Byron saw: ‘a rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.” Eventually we realize that whatever in us has remained folded up is really that about us that was never loved. This is the sadness in the folded rose of ourselves. What was not confirmed and loved by others, especially our parents, did not have full permission to emerge. It is up to us to find this confirmation now from within ourselves, our relationships, and our spirituality. Joy results from permission to unfold.” (pg 110-111).

“Joy results from permission to unfold.” Wow. How powerful this statement is.

We are the only ones that can give ourselves permission to do this – to unfold those oh so sweet leaves of our being, those that hid away because, for whatever reason, it didn’t feel safe.

Now, we are adults. Now, we can hold these sweet and tender places within our own heart, hear what they have to say and give them permission to unfold, permission to be seen. Perhaps, being seen first by ourselves is the greatest gift we can give to them.

With this permission comes joy. And peace. And, as these parts come back into the light, wholeness naturally occurs.

The other piece is about the exquisiteness of vulnerability. Complete unfolding brings no more separation. When we open to the fullest extent possible, nothing hidden, petals outstretched, there is no longer anything that knows separation, and this can be frightening as hell.

But, our lives are really about the flower unfolding. We yearn to unfold, to blossom into complete nakedness, raw vulnerability that allows one to be seen and known.

This ripe blossoming is also the very last step before the petals fall and the blossom dies. This is our return to the whole, the moment of wholeness that is simply a breath away from death, where death ends our separation from the whole.

At the singular moment when we unfold every ounce of our being and exist at the height of vulnerability, that of out-stretched petals, we know our sense of separate self will fall away. When nothing is hidden, we can no longer be separate. In our complete vulnerability, we open to all and to everything.

There is a peak of each blossom, when it is poised at its pinnacle of beauty. This is our moment of realization of all that we really are. In this moment, our sense and identity as a separate flower falls away and we let go into our true identity as all that is.

When our petals fall and decay, we can grow into the fullness of a human being, wise and unconditionally loving, for who we now know ourselves to be is the life force that compelled the flower to emerge, bud and blossom, the instinctive drive to open fully to the light, the air, the wind, and all of the world around us.

The edge of wholeness, this edge of ripe beauty, happens many, many times, over and over, until we know ourselves to be the beauty itself. Nothing lasts forever. And, it’s in this knowing of our ephemeral nature, that we know what it is to be fully alive.

So, here is what I wrote, back a few years ago:

On The Edge Of Wholeness

Standing on the threshold of the one true moment of existence
I know myself as both blossom and the urge to bloom.
Every ounce of my journey has been to unfold
To follow the blueprint of this flower
From young rosy bud to powerfully stretched petals
From nubile possibility to the height of complete engagement.

As my petals open to the arc of full bloom
my arms stretch open wide and vulnerable
my chest aches with joy and
I am completely available to Life.

It is in this moment of complete openness
I know that I have loved to wholeness
Every ounce of who I am
Even those parts that once felt impossible to love.

Somewhere deep in the recesses of Being
I realize the natural path of this process and
begin to feel the life force that has propelled
my unfolding welcoming me home.

I know there is this one moment
When my petals are at the height of ripeness
The height of the arc of fullness
just before  I turn to the face of release
This moment happens many, many times
And at the same time is a singular moment in my life

I can now see that petals falling is also an act of grace
For as I stand on this threshold of change
I realize it is only by being courageous enough to open
That I have come to know what I truly am

The sunlight and soil of grace have held my becoming all along
my urge to bloom was always at the heart of who and what I am
This urge to blossom is also my urge to return
To the one constant in all of Life, the very nature of all that is.

~ Julie Daley

Just look at the beauty of this inside of this flower. We would never see it if it remained closed.

Image permission granted by Connor365 under CC 2.0

If ever the world sees a time when women shall come together
purely and simply for the benefit of mankind,
it will be a power such as the world has never known.
~Matthew Arnold

What will it take for women to come together in such a way? It’s already happening all over the world. In small ways, and in some very major undertakings, women are listening to the voice that is calling them forth to speak truth and to say, “Enough is Enough”. What if we were all to speak up and speak out, and come together “purely and simply for the benefit of mankind? What do you have to say? Who can you bring together? When will you do it?

What is the source of our first suffering?
It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak.
It was born the moment we accumulated silent things within us.
~Gaston Bachelard

I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung. - Rabindranath Tagore

I came across this quote today in the Heron Dance newsletter, A Pause For Beauty. I like the quote because it is a beautiful metaphor for how we, as humans, spend the days of our lives busying ourselves with everything but singing our song, all the while telling ourselves we are just about ready to sing. We mess around with getting ourselves trained, figured out, processed, firmed-up financially, etc., all to keep ourselves from jumping into the void, the empty space that must be encountered when we agree at last to trust our own, unique song within.

I believe we are doing this as women, too. Not simply individually, but collectively. I can feel in my work with women leaders, both individually and collectively, that we know we have work to do. We know there is a song to be sung as beautiful souls within female bodies. We can feel and sense a calling within to come together in some way to sing a collective song, all the while honoring our own, individual melody.

What is this song to be sung?
What is calling us?
What are you hearing?
What is keeping you busy so that you don’t have to hear the melody within?
When will you sing?
When will we sing, together?

I can feel my song to be a guide for people to see again their inherent goodness, and to awaken to the richness of their unique creative expression. I feel a (sometimes not so gentle) pull to help heal the deep wound we all experience in some fashion with regard to the Mother (our own and the Big Mama Earth) and Her unconditional love for us. What if we were to awaken to the awe inspiring unconditional love that is here for us all the time…here for all of us, every living being? What if we had the courage to feel this love deep in every cell of our beings?

What if we were to be this open, this trusting, this humble, this ordinary?

photo by Julie Daley