“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle.
No need to be anybody but oneself.”
~Virginia Woolf
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Tattoo Image: आत्मता मति
share the prayer of you
Do You
Feminine Essence
When I say the feminine, I don’t mean gender. I mean the feminine principle that is living—or suppressed—in both men and women. The feminine principle attempts to relate. Instead of breaking things off into parts, it says, Where are we alike? How can we connect? Where is the love? Can you listen to me? Can you really hear what I am saying? Can you see me? Do you care whether you see me or not?
Now, these are very serious questions. And the feminine is difficult to talk about because so few people have experienced it. The feminine is presence, and relatedness, and a heart that can open so that when you meet another person you actually are seeing that person’s authentic self. What meaning does human life have if nobody has ever seen you?
… The great work of our time is to bring the feminine into this culture. And it’s not an easy path. How does each one of us contribute? Believe it or not, it’s done in the most personal ways. Take time to listen to your dreams, to write them down. Take time to recognise that there are things going on within you that need to be felt, or said, or lived, or grieved. Pay attention to these things both in yourself and in the people in your life. Pay attention to the authentic self.
~Marion Woodman
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#WhyIDoWhatIDo
#ChangingTheWorld
#OneBreathAtATime
Image: Mother and Child
Frances Hodgkins
In Need of a Female Metaphor
Queen Elizabeth I is known to have said,
“I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman,
but I have the heart and stomach of a king.”
Even a woman as great as this, of such astounding achievement and wisdom, felt driven to compare herself, to measure herself with male metaphor. Deep in the psyche even of great women, there has not been a female metaphor for greatness, for strength, for the wisdom which they themselves embodied.
The female Deities had been so slandered, so stripped of essential integrity. Yahweh is after all God, Medusa is after all merely a goddess. We can forgive Yahweh his crimes … this is not myopia. The millennia of patriarchal narrative has left our minds locked up, unable to grasp the Female Metaphor … that she may stand sovereign, not as greater than, but in and of herself: so that, when a woman or a man desires to express greatness, nobility, strength they are able to easily reach for a female image.
~Glenys Livingstone PhD
Down to the Bones
Waves of Her
When your soul was born,
it was like a still ocean that had yet to experience
its infinite life.
Goddess then came to the shore of your soul and
gazed upon the
immaculate splendor that Her divine heart
created.
She then took off her clothes and dove into you.
Nothing on their own have your arms ever done,
the movements of your feet are caused
by the waves She stirred.
~St. Teresa of Avila
A Clearing
“here is the month i decided to shed everything not deeply committed to my dreams. the day i refused to be a victim to the self-pity. here is the week i slept in the garden. the spring i wrung the self-doubt by its neck. hung your kindness up. took down the calendar. the week i danced so hard my heart learned to float above water again. the summer i unscrewed all the mirrors from their walls. no longer needed to see myself to feel seen. combed the weight out of my hair.
i fold the good days up and place them in my back pocket for safekeeping. draw the match. cremate the unnecessary. the light of the fire warms my toes. i pour myself a glass of warm water to cleanse myself for january. here I go. stronger and wiser into the new.”
~ rupi kaur
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#Beautiful
Find Your Door
“I’ll tell you right now,
the doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious.
If you have a deep scar, that is a door,
if you have an old, old story, that is a door.
If you love the sky and the water so much
you almost cannot bear it, that is a door.
If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life,
a sane life, that is a door.”
~Clarissa Pinkola Estes