A Love Story

She finds herself in a place that makes no sense. The people around her do things, mean things, thoughtless things all the time. Why did they act this way? Where is the Love? She knew in her heart that Love was key – the juice of the Universe. But she couldn’t find much love here. Just confusion and fear and pain.

Spirit Bear 🐻 came to her and comforted her in this crazy place. Bear stayed with her for years, protecting and comforting her whenever things in this crazy place got too painful and confusing. But gradually, over time she got sucked into the confusion around her. She made the mistake of thinking that the adults around her knew what they were doing and she started trying to do what they did, act how they acted. Bear was still there close, but she simply lost touch somehow. 🐻 Bear slowly faded from view.

After years in this place, she acted like she belonged. She was still so confused but she pretended that she knew what to do. She forgot about Bear. And she forgot about the power of Love. She became caught up in vying for power and status and money.

But one day she looked around and saw how empty her life was. The power and the status and the money didn’t fix anything or make this place any less horrible, any less confusing. What was the point of all this?

She began searching for “the point”. First at church, then in meditation and spiritual books  and healing modalities. 🐻 Spirit Bear drew closer then, but she didn’t really notice. She was too busy searching for “the point.”

One day in the midst of meditation, a beautiful, ethereal light being 🌟 came to her and showered her with love, so much love. She was left shaken and wide awake. Oh yes! Love was the point! She remembered now. She connected with this beautiful star being many times and felt better. She began to write , filling journals with thoughts and feelings about  her life  and all her questions about this crazy world. But sadly over time, she got distracted and pulled back into the chaos and craziness of the world again. She stopped writing. She stopped connecting with her star being. She forgot.

This remembering and forgetting happened again and again to her through years of living in this crazy place.

Then the dreams came. She dreamt of another life as a Native American woman who lost her love and wandered grieving until she was healed by Mama Earth 🌎.  In this other life, Mama Earth taught her to open up and love again.

She dreamt of this other life again and again. She LIVED an entire other life in her dreams!

The dreams shook her to her core. And they loosened the grip the crazy world had over her. She wanted to know more about this dream woman and her life. She learned how to explore dreamspace so she could explore this other life, this other reality. And her Spirit Bear soon showed up there in dreamspace.

She wept when she saw 🐻 Bear again. She held on and melted into Bear’s fierce softness. She began consciously calling Bear to her every day. And she began taking her troubles and questions into dreamspace. There she found answers – specific answers that fit for her. She began to slowly unravel her confusion and get glimpses of “the point”, her point.

She began to 🖌 paint and dance 💃 just for the joy of it. And the more she did those things, the more she felt like herself – her real self. She began to sing 🎶, first humming then joyfully making up little melodies that she sang to herself. She remembered how much she had loved painting and dancing and singing when she first came to this place. She remembered. And she began to love again.

And one day while she was happily playing with paint, her star being returned showering her with love – Big Love that cleared away even more confusion. And she could remember who she was and what mattered when she first came to this crazy place. She remembered her point.

Image: Goldi Goddess by Nancy L

What If?

Am I all that you project
and expect of me?

Am I

a good girl
and vicious brat?

a selfless oracle
and manipulative witch?

a perfect partner
and selfish cunt?

a great mom
and controlling bitch?

a clueless child
and wise woman?

WHO AM I?

What if I fit
all of your labels
and none of them
at all?

What if you see
what suits your reality
instead of
who I truly am?

What if
I am who I am
and no one really
knows me at all?

What if I am here
to be my own truth
without needing
you to agree?

What if I allow myself
to be free
to simply
be me?

~Nancy L

The Beloved

The Beloved has no body now on Earth but mine.
The Beloved has no hands on Earth but mine,
The Beloved has no feet on Earth but mine,
Mine are the eyes through which the Beloved
streams compassion to the world.
Mine are the feet with which the Beloved is to go about
healing, loving, and serving all beings now.
Mine are the hands with which the Beloved is to bless all beings.

~ Saint Teresa of Avila

☾☽

(adapted for every tradition by Andrew Harvey)

Embodied Joy

Embodied Joy

Yesterday I danced in the kitchen and felt JOY.  Earlier this week, I watched a funny movie and felt JOY moving through me as I belly laughed again and again. Last Saturday I got sweaty hiking up a mountain and felt JOY.  And who could forget the sex that left me breathless with JOY?

I think I’ve had it all wrong about JOY. For years I believed that JOY was an emotion that lives in the heart. If you had asked me what JOY was a month ago, I would have said something about JOY being a loving emotion of the heart. But now I’m beginning to think JOY is a full body emotion. JOY is embodied.

Why are little kids so JOYful? They live in their bodies!  Little kids don’t think their way through life, they jiggle and wiggle and dance through life. Life is a full body experience for little kids. Why are many adults so serious and JOY-less?  I’m guessing it has a lot to do with thinking their way through every experience.  By adulthood, body has become secondary to brain and life loses a lot of its JOY.

When I manage to get out of my head and allow myself to experience life through every sensation in my body, JOY spontaneously bubbles up inside of me. JOY fills me.

Hmm, even the language we use to describe JOY is body centered; we are JOYful = our body is full of JOY. We don’t feel JOY so much as fill with it!

Life is a full body sport. So, now I am on a mission: I want to embody JOY as often as possible. To feel myself fill with JOY every day. My body already knows how to do this. I simply need to get my head out of the way and allow my body to do what comes naturally.

If you pass me on the street next week, I hope I’m wiggling and jiggling with JOY.

I Stand with Standing Rock

Maced Woman at Standing Rock         Original Image by Kelly Daniels, Modified by Kat Williams
   Maced Woman at Standing Rock                   Original Image by Kelly Daniels, Modified by Kat Williams

“On one side is the unquestioned assumption that land is merely a warehouse of lifeless materials that have been given to (some of) us by God or conquest, to use without constraint. On this view, human happiness is best served by whatever economy most efficiently transforms water, soils, minerals, wild lives, and human yearning into corporate wealth. And so it is possible to love the bottom line on a quarterly report so fiercely that you will call out the National Guard to protect it.

On the other side of the concrete barriers is a story that is so ancient it seems revolutionary.  On this view, the land is a great and nourishing gift to all beings. The fertile soil, the fresh water, the clear air, the creatures, swift or rooted: they require gratitude and veneration. These gifts are not commodities, like scrap iron and sneakers. The land is sacred, a living breathing entity, for whom we must care, as she cares for us. And so it is possible to love land and water so fiercely you will live in a tent in a North Dakota winter to protect them…” 

~Robin Wall Kimmerer & Kathleen Dean Moore

☾☽

❤️  LOVE YOUR MAMA  ❤️

☾☽

Find Robin and Kathleen’s entire article here: The White Horse and the Humvees—Standing Rock Is Offering Us a Choice

Standing in Our Power

Me
A Younger Me

The Republican candidate for President is in trouble for his sexist behavior again. An old tape has surfaced. On the tape, Trump can be heard bragging about how he can grope any woman he wants. He boasts that he is rich, so he can simply grab women “by the pussy.”

When women across America express their disgust and outrage, Trump dismisses his comments as “locker room talk.” According to him, what he said was no big deal – “just words, people.”  Trump claims lots of men talk like this. And the most bizarre part? Many men (and even some women) in this country agree with Trump and dismiss his vile comments as simply dirty talk.

1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. Assaulted… But grabbing women by the pussy is apparently no big deal to a lot of people. And if a woman objects to Trump’s comments?  Well, she is simply “overreacting.”

Kelly Oxford knows better. She was quite disturbed by Trump’s comments. So she went on Twitter last Friday night and asked women to tweet to her about the first time they were assaulted.  “They aren’t just stats. I’ll go first: Old man on city bus grabs my ‘pussy’ and smiles at me, I’m 12,” she wrote.  By the next day, Oxford was receiving  a flood of first-person accounts of sexual assaults. And by Monday afternoon, nearly 27 million people had responded or visited Oxford’s Twitter page.

(Source: NY Times article by Jonathan Mahler,
For Many Women, Trump’s ‘Locker Room Talk’ Brings Memories of Abuse)

What is a woman to do in the face of this endless stream of sexist abuse? How will this ever stop?  And what do I tell my daughter?

Anyone who reads my blog, knows that I am a big proponent of love. I write often about the healing power of love. But what can love do in the face of this aggressive sexist behavior?  And what is the best response a woman like me can make in this situation? These are the questions I have been chewing on for the past few days.

Here is where I am at today:  Yes, we absolutely need to come from a place of love — this world desperately needs more love. But we must love ourselves first.

We must love ourselves from a place of POWER — a place where we stop minimizing ourselves by apologizing for our own needs, feelings, and opinions. We must love ourselves deeply, and own our power. Then, and only then, will we stop allowing other people to trivialize us.

We matter. Our needs, feelings and opinions matter. It is time for us to embrace how wise and powerful and important we truly are to the world.

Our time has come. We must not be silent any longer. It is time for us to stand up and say NO MORE!  This crap is NOT OK.  It is time for us to stand in our power and say NO to this type of bullshit.  And you know what else? This is exactly what will change the world – woman after woman standing in her power and speaking her truth.

Can we love ourselves enough to stand in our power and DEMAND honor and respect?  It is time. We must do this, for ourselves, and for each other.

Everything is the Path

Life is Messy

Here we are in our humanness, in our grumpiness, in our glory, in our sexiness,
in our dirty dishes, in our exhaustion, in our irritation and in our genius.

Gradually, with practice, we begin to see that the way
life shows up is not an error or deviation from Her.

There is nothing to quickly overcome so we can get back to our lives
and back to our spiritual path. The Goddess reveals that all of this is Her;
all of this is holy. There is nothing we need to get rid of.

Everything we experience is the path.

~ Chameli Devi Ardagh
Awakening Women