婦女圖 - Woman

Artist: m-louis/takato marui, under CC 2.0

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Each individual woman’s body demands to be accepted on its own terms. – Gloria Steinem

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This body, this female body, is divinity all dressed up in robes of feminine flesh.

Too often, way too often, this beautiful garment has been shamed and humiliated, objectified and used, scorned and belittled – the most hurtful damage done by the very one who wears it.

I now experience something different. I know that I, the one that sees all this, is not the one who scorns. The one that scorns is the only self I used to be aware of…the false self that mimics all she ingested and ingests, heard and hears, saw and sees.

The true self, the self that sees this all with such love and compassion knows I am dressed in the finest of flesh.

Yes, flesh. Flesh is divine. This feminine flesh is divine. It robes a home where Spirit and matter are brought together in a miraculous way. Creation has made this humble home for life to come into being by way of this womanly body.

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I used to apologize for myself over and over. It was simply a habit borne of some belief that I couldn’t take up space in the world. Somewhere I learned that I didn’t belong to this world that seemed to be a man’s world. A world run by men, where men called the shots. Men belonged. Boys became men, but girls seemed to stay girls in this world. At least that’s what I learned by way of listening and watching as grown men and women would refer to men as men and women as girls, even women who were old and wise and beautiful.

I rarely apologize for myself any longer, but I am still too polite. It’s a hard habit to break. Politeness has its place, but politeness can also be another form of apologizing.

I see women apologizing for themselves over and over. I hear them say such harsh words about themselves. I want to just hold them and tell them what divine and sacred beings they are, just as I longed to be held, while having these loving words whispered into my ear.

When I feel the old familiar pangs of not belonging to this world, I find the nearest tree, flower, furry being or baby…something that reminds me of the immense variety of beauty there is in this world. Something that reminds me of the innocence that is at the heart of life. Something that reminds me that the world is owned by no one and that because it is owned by no one, we all belong to this place. Every living thing belongs to this place. We all reside in this “house of belonging“.

When I remember this, I remember what I am. A sacred being. A woman. A creation created to bring sacred life into being in infinite ways.

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This being female is delicious. I’ve migrated down from my head to my heart to my belly to my womb. I feel the earth here. I feel my weightedness, the weightedness that connects me to the earth, the feminine to the feminine. It’s as if I am ripe with love, and the juiciness of the fruit weighs me down in a grounding, sensual way.

There is a fierceness here in this womb. A fierce love that protects life at all costs. A fierceness that ensures the life entrusted to this womb will be fed, nurtured, warmed and loved.

I’ve witnessed this fierce love in my daughters as they birthed their babies. Birthing is fierce love in action. Fierceness on the part of life as it charts its own course of labor and delivery, a course the mother has no say in. Fierceness on the part of the mother as she opens herself to the most vulnerable, tender and terrifying unknown she might ever experience. Fierceness on the part of the  baby as it travels the short distance from womb to the world, but a distance that can take hours and days to navigate. It is all born from love, from the deep love of life wanting to birth itself anew in an infinite variety of forms and ways.

I’ve witnessed this fierceness in my daughters as they care for their babies in the day-to-day, doing whatever it takes to make sure their children feel safe, loved and cared for.

I’ve witnessed this fierce love in my mother, as she did whatever it took to raise her three daughters. I witnessed this fierce love in my mother as she fought to stay alive, to stay connected to those she loved even into the last hours before her death.

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From this place, from this womb that is a microcosm of the big womb that is in constant creation, I know that the most important ‘job’ I am here to do is to protect and nurture life, all of life, all babies, all children, all men and women, all furry beings, and all the other myriad life forms. It is to live with this awareness, consciously infusing all that I create with this fierce love.

The awareness that I’ve found deep in my womb has brought me into the stark realization of all the ways I haven’t nurtured life, the ways I have added to the pain that earth, this home I belong to, is experiencing. This awareness has shown me that all my choices affect how the human race will continue to evolve, or not, and just how much power we humans have come to posess; power to love and power to destroy.

I don’t have some fancy big job. It’s insignificant and yet completely significant. Each of us has this capacity to bring forth this fierce love into being at this time. The ways in which we bring this fierce love for life into the world may seem small and insignificant, but when we all realize the capacity we have for fierce love, something can shift.

I am one of those older women now. I am not a girl, but a wise woman, a woman that knows she is more powerful than the culture would have me believe. I am a woman robed in feminine flesh. It is part of what it means to live and love in this ‘house of belonging’.

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And, you?

Tell me about your finest garment. I’d love to know what it is to be robed in your divine flesh.

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This post on self-awareness is part of Dian Reid’s blog challenge, as well as Bindu Wiles #215800 blog challenge.

A Woman - Bangkok

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Born of her mother, giving birth to her daughter who would, in turn, become the carrier and custodian of life, she could feel connected to an immemorial past of mothers, and an immemorial future of daughters, each a transmitter of the life process, each surrendering to an experience more mysterious and powerful and demanding than any other, requiring as it were, her submission to an instinctual process which, ineluctably, as the vehicle of life, she served. ~Anne Baring

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I know all human beings are creative. I teach this. Every time I teach, over the period of ten weeks, my students go from believing they are anywhere from not creative, to mildly creative, to somewhat creative – to knowing and trusting in their personal, internal creative process. Period.

All human beings are creative. Yet, I find the ‘creativity = artistic’ beliefs in this culture, on the whole, to be frustratingly entrenched.

When you think of creativity, does it have to do with painting? writing? art in some way?

Do you believe you are creative? If not, when did you lose touch with your creativity. If you do, how did you hang on to it? Or when did you reclaim it?

Just wondering. ‘Cause I have something really important I want women to realize within themselves.

“surrendering to an experience more mysterious and powerful and demanding than any other…”

Women are powerfully creative. We are born with the capacity to bring life into being. To birth life into life. Requiring our “submission to an instinctual process” that we cannot, the least bit, control.

I submit that women’s creativity is mysterious and powerful enough that anything and everything has been done to get us to forget the power of this process that is intrinsic to our gender.

And, I’m not just talking about birthing babies. I’m talking about an internal power we hold, as women, that could rock this world if we really got how powerful we are. And, if we could come together, as a gender, to honor, revere and support each other, fully, to wake up to this power within, the world would never be the same.

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Today, Marianne Williamson wrote an open letter to Sarah Palin. I was deeply moved by the grace and eloquence that Marianne showed in both her willingness to bridge the gap between her and Sarah, but also in her ability to articulate her way through what could be rough waters. In my opinion, Marianne was able to offer an invitation to enter into conversation with Sarah, a conversation between two women of faith.

What I loved about this most, though, is the example Marianne set of how to begin to come together as women, in a way that can begin to engage our powerful creative abilities, together as a community of women, especially when we might hold such polar opposite political views.

Each of us women is “…a transmitter of the life process…” whether or not we birth babies. Each of us is the microcosm of the glorious macrocosm that is the Big Womb of Life.

It’s time we find a way to come together to honor, revere and reflect this mysterious and glorious creativity we all embody. Somehow, someway we can realize we’ve all been conditioned to the hilt; we’ve all found some way to survive in this culture that does what it does to suppress women because it is terrified of this natural, most mysterious female power.

We can find solidarity, even when we hold such differing views. I know we can. I sincerely hope Sarah is willing to meet Marianne in this conversation. I sincerely hope they both can hold this space. I ardently hope I can find the grace and eloquence that Marianne showed today, so that I, too, can somehow begin to help bridge whatever chasms lie between all the women of the world, the carriers and custodians of life, regardless of our conditioning or our political points of view.

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Whatever it takes to ensure there is a future worth living for all the world’s children is worth it. Whatever it takes to reclaim this power as women, we must do it. I don’t know how we will do it, but I know this deep mystery that is our female creativity does know.

It is time for our awakening to our instincts, letting go of our judgments, and setting free our deep river of love for each other as women.

image by Ronn ashore : creative commons license 2.0

Best of 2009 Blog Challenge: Day 21: Project. What did you start this year that you’re proud of?

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This year, I began again to write the book I stopped writing five years ago. I stopped writing it when I realized I still had to live much of what the book was to be about. I put it down. It was not time.

Since then, many things have transpired. Life has been full of many twists and turns. My mother was diagnosed with cancer. After a two-year journey with cancer, she passed away last year. My two daughters have given birth to two new grandchildren. And, as I look back, I now can see I have lived into the book. The book is so ready to be born.

This is my project. And, the funny thing is, part of the book has to do with realizing that we must, as women, put down ‘the project’ – that project that keeps us on the never-ending treadmill of trying to be better, more beautiful, sexier, younger, thinner, more perfect, more successful, more fill-in-the-blank if we are to discover who and what we really are underneath all the beliefs that we aren’t enough. I call it ‘the project’. So, when I read Gwen’s prompt, I chuckled at the irony, at least for me.

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“Woman is the radiance of God; she is not your beloved. She is the Creator —you could say that she is not created.” ~Rumi

When we put down that project of not being enough, something that has always been within begins to move and stir and reawaken.

I am excited to birth this book, and to begin to teach the course that is directly intertwined with it. It has to do with women’s creativity, with the life-giving mystery that is within you, and within every woman, and how you and I and all women can awaken, and step into, this natural power, a power that is serves all of life.

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“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” ~Jimi Hendrix

Jimi was pretty wise. Life is Love and Love is Life. There is no difference. The force that creates is love, it is life force, and it is nothing like the pretty picture we humans have been painted. It is powerful beyond measure, and it scares the hell out of us.

All we know of power in our minds is what we’ve been conditioned to believe. This conditioning is what we have been ‘taught’ by others, by their actions and how they have treated us. We, in turn, have ingested this conditioned worldview about what power is and the effects of power.

When I speak of power to women, of stepping into our power, of becoming more powerful, many women immediately resist the idea of owning their own power. When they speak of the reasons why, it is because they see power as a bad thing. They see power as something that oppresses, degrades, imprisons and destroys. They speak of the way power has been used in their lifetimes to maintain a status quo that keeps an elite group of people powerful, while denying vital life-sustaining resources to others. They cringe at the thought of being powerful if it means they must be like those they have witnessed wielding power.

For us to step into our power as women, we must look to something else to know what true power is, and that something is Life, a power that flows out from within.

When I think of life force, the first thing that comes to mind is a seedling growing out of the ground. Imagine what force it takes for the tiny seedling to push its way through the dirt, through everything that stands in its way of reaching the light. The force that fuels the seedling to reach for the sun is Life finding its way.

Life finding its way is power, power from within, power rising up out of the dark, the power of life exploding into existence.

If you look at the dictionary definitions, there are a ton of definitions for the word power. Words can only point to something, and when we try to use words with each other, more often than not what a word points to for me might be very (or even slightly) different for you. In addition, many words hold memories of our experiences that we attached to the word, and with a loaded word like power, this is especially true.

If we, as women, step into our power, we must first be wise and conscious of our intentions and of the source of our power. We could simply imitate what we’ve seen in this male-centric world, but then we would simply be creating more of what we already have.

Power over others, the way we have been conditioned to see power used, serves to sustain separation and suffering. Utilizing power to keep others powerless ultimately keeps us all powerless and separate. Just look at our world today. The world of human beings is filled with separation, loneliness, and violence. This is the kind of power that keeps many women from wanting to be powerful, or even believing they can be powerful.

Instead, let’s engage our wisdom to tap into what we instinctively and intuitively know about power. When we consciously look at what we know to be true in our experience, we bring this knowing into wisdom, and that sources generative power from within.

Women have been the power source and creative agents of the continuation of the human species from the beginning. Without a womb, humans would not exist.

I have had the glorious opportunity to witness the birth of two of my grandchildren. I have two daughters and they are both now mothers. To witness labor and birth is to witness true power, the power of Life giving birth to itself.

In labor, a woman surrenders to the powerful forces of Life finding its way into life, into light from out of the dark. If you have given birth or have witnessed it, you know what I mean. If the mother-to-be surrenders and works with the powerful forces that are working within her, Life will do what it does so well…bring the new baby into existence. If she struggles with the process, something we humans do on a daily basis, the process can be more painful, but the process continues anyway, in spite of her struggling.

Life force is always flowing, finding its way. If we don’t align with it, life still flows but we find it much more painful, in so many ways.

When we align with the force of life, we are no longer trying to resist our soul’s natural expression. This life force is our creativity. When we express it, without resistance, what we express is beautiful and powerful beyond measure.

This power frightens us because our rational mind is not in control of it. We want to control it but we can’t. When we try to control it by resisting it, we only make ourselves sick. Consider how painful childbirth could be if the mother-to-be actively resisted the baby coming into being.

The really important piece here is to learn to trust this power, this expression, this creative life force. To have faith in it is to surrender to the natural expression of power, a power that sustains all of life.

If you have never birthed a baby, please don’t listen to the cultural forces that tell you you’re not a mother, and you can’t be fulfilled without being a mother. When I use this example in courses I teach, it can be emotionally difficult for women who have not birthed a child. We, as women, must come to honor the fact that we are all mothers. Women can birth so much more than babies, and we do it all the time. We can mother more than just our own physical babies, and the ability to truly love all of life unconditionally is the power that flows out from within.

I have used the example of childbirth purposely here, because women’s bodies know this process. A woman’s body, regardless of whether or not she ever physically gives birth to a child, contains the intelligent substance and process to create and grow new life and to bring it into being. This powerful process is completely mysterious to our rational minds. Our minds will never figure out how this works…hence the mystery. But, when we honor our bodies, and the intelligent mystery within, we align with the life force that engages this mysterious creative process inherently available to women.

Knowing this and experiencing it within brings wisdom, wisdom that is needed NOW.

By aligning with the power within, by this mysterious life force that is our creativity, we are capable of growing and birthing that which wants to be created, that life force that is finding its way. This is the power we must step into as women. This is the power of life-sustaining creativity. It’s generative in that it supports life, nurtures the mystery that is life, that is love, that is the most powerful force because it is existence itself.

Can you imagine how things might shift if we realized this power within that is yearning to flow out into the world?

Can you imagine what might be created if we held all the world in the center of our hearts, hearts that are aligned with this creativity?