LunarMusings

Chain of Women And Fall Reading

"She often told me about other girls or women, linking me time and again into the chain of women.  I began to feel I belonged to an invisible sisterhood that transcended past and future into eternity."

~Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi

I have been really feeling this in the last week or so.  I think its a combination of the Season and how much it invigorates me, but leads me inward as well.  There have been deaths, grieving, gatherings, emails, art, sharings, and all of them seem to take place either in physical circles or in the ritual spaces that women seem to connect through in the ethers.  I'm feeling the red thread that connects each woman, past, present and future to one another, in our intuitive, body wise, soulful core.  I feel cloaked in it, beckoned to it as if the entire Season wants to be dedicated to being immersed in ritual, dancing through the Inbetween places and moving through the portals of time gracefully, but wildly.

I feel the chain of women, that invisible cord of sisterhood that ties us all together, calling.  Do you feel it?  And if so, please share... 

Fall Reading: Grandmother's Secrets

"A woman is the guardian and hostess of the earth.  As the bearer of life, she stands closest to birth and death, thus closest to life and to the earth.  This linking, life itself, is a woman's true space."

These are the first few lines in Grandmother's Secrets: The Ancient Rituals and Healing Power of Belly Dancing.  I love this book, and the pearls of wisdom and truth that fill each page have me purring.  The quote above is truly the basis for my spirituality and practice, so to read it as the opening of a book that focuses on the alchemy of women's bodies dancing...well lets just say I am home.

I have been practicing the Tantric Dance of Feminine Power, for over 9 years now, and movement and the potency of feminine wisdom it unleashes has been such a guiding revolutionary force in my life.   And when I am not practicing, I have been fortunate to live in a community with a vibrant Belly Dance element thriving here, that lets me savor the beauty and power of an adorned woman moving to the life giving rhythm of her hips.  Finding this book now just seems part of the dance for me.  Another morsel, another crumb along the path of this life, that affirms the truth that lies within.

"As I have suggested, the story of one's life as it is written in to the body can be retold and understood in the intense moment of dancing.  Thus belly dancing becomes a source of inspiration, a means of collecting and strengthening oneself, and a clear and dynamic way of discovering one's wishes and understanding oneself, no matter how insecure and doubtful the future may be."

Indeed.

Wellness Wednesday: The Gestalt of Aging

Photo taken of our friend Tanya and I by  Jonathon Brown at Farewell To The Flesh.

This Wellness Wednesday post is more open processing then anything else as I am finding myself deep in the thick of things these days.

"I am proud of being fifty-eight, and still alive and kicking, in love, more creative, balanced, and potent than I have ever been.  I mind certain physical deterioration, but not really.  And not a all when I look at the marvelous photograph that Bill sent me of Isak Dinesen just before she died.  For after all we make our faces as we go along, and who when young could ever look as she does?  The ineffable sweetness of the smile, the total acceptance and joy on receives from it, life, death, everything taken in and as it were, savored - and let go. Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.  Somewhere in the Poet and the Donkey, Andy speaks for me when he says, "Do not deprive me of my age.  I have earned it."

~ May Sarton in Journal of a Solitude

This word Gestalt - any of the integrated structures or patterns that make up all experience - is a powerful one. I've always felt it to represent the full present evidence of the culmination of experiences of something, whether that be emotions, dynamics, spiritual epiphanies, or the whole of life's day to day occurrences.  And of course being a body worker, the reality that our physical bodies are a mapping or recorder for every experience we ever have, emotion ever felt and belief held, is one that resonates deeply with me.

May Sarton goes on to say, "If a woman has artificial flowers in her house, flowers that need dusting twice a year but never die, she is closing herself off from any understanding of death.  And if a woman has to remain thirty-nine for years on end, she is arresting her won growth as surely as if she were a Chinese lady a hundred years ago and had bound her feet."

Any of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I started to have some challenges with getting older just before my 35th birthday.  And since then it has shifted, continued and evolved in a myriad of ways.  It had never included my appearance, but as you all know, my latest decision to let my hair grow out has added this new facet to this struggle I have been having.  The picture above?  Thats me right now.  Grey hair about 6 inches long now, and although most days I forget, or don't seem to notice it anymore, pictures like this bring it home in a big way. 

So of course, in comes May Sarton into my life.  I'm still pouring over this small book, going back to passages I have underlined and using them for spring boards to journal entries.  There is so much in it that has help me dive deeper into this year of transmutation I have been on.  And today's quotes have been on my mind for weeks now.

My deep soul really resonates with the truth she speaks of here.  The reality that our bodies are the makings of all we experience throughout our lives, and this is something that is quite beautiful to me and also inspiring.  How many stories of pain and self loathing have I read on the bodies of people I have massaged over the years?  And the bodies that were vibrating with joy and life, and gusto, regardless of age.  Each of their outlooks on life matching their body shape and texture and rhythm perfectly. 

I think about this as I look at myself, my face, my body.  Thinking of the parts of my life that cause me to cringe at my age, things not yet done, regrets that had somehow been such a foreign thing to me in my 20's that are now a part of my adult reality.  I look at my hair now and its evidence of this advancing age, it is no longer a number that keeps reminding me that time is ticking, its on my body as well.

And as I have struggled with this, I have also had the opportunity to spend time with women in their 60s.  Vibrant, young, beautifully natural and beaming 60 somethings that are still making love, still running, doing yoga, still learning and embracing life with a curiosity that seems like the most gorgeous revelation to me.  

And I want this.  This awareness that my story is my own, and my aging body a revelation of that story.  Not aging as withering away, but aging as gathering, filling, adding complexity and beautiful details to this woven story that is my life.  A story that holds beginnings and endings, and neither one of those are things to be feared or avoided.  I continue to evolve as an art piece that reveals itself through my mind, my face, my body, my hair, and how I move in the world.

You know... I was asked a while back by someone who didn't really understand the concept of dread locking my hair, why I would choose to do this.  Locking this very awareness, this time in my life where I am continuing to move deeper into myself, is an energy I want to bind myself to, commit to, and announce to the world as my Way.  I'm still learning to dance with it, but I embrace the Gestalt of my life as it stands today and as I continue to consciously weave it.  Letting my age gain me the layers of a woman fully living, beautiful through out all her stages, not because of what she looks like but because of what she embraces and savors fully.

Making Myths of Our Lives

"I have said elsewhere that we have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by weather, woe, or work can - if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough - be turned to account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being, what the hazards are of a fairly usual, everyday kind."

~May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

*I don't think I will ever let this book go.*

Wellness Wednesday: Soul Making

In her Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton writes the phrase, "...freedom for soul making."  This phrase felt like such a juicey morsel I not only underlined it, circled it and turned the corner of the page to come back to, i also wrote it in my journal in big letters that have sense turned into a mandala of sorts, as I keep doodling around it. 

As I kept reading, I found the following passage referring back to the phrase above:

"It is only when we can believe that we are creating the soul that life has any meaning, but when we can believe it - and I do and always have - then there is nothing we do that is without meaning and nothing that we suffer that does not hold the seed of creation in it."

I so resonated with her thoughts here, and it is how I have lived out my entire life.  I don't know where it came from for me, but even as a little girl I found my self drawn not only to the examined life, but to the notion that growing my soul was the most important thing.  It has actually been like breathing air.  So essential it happens without even thinking about it.

So in the last month as we have been living here in Maui, I have had more cause for really looking at the life that Jon and I are living out together.  I think that in some way he and I would describe it a bit differently, but in essence we have set out to live a life of freedom and exploration.  Freedom from 9-5 jobs that don't suit our souls, but rather suit a conventional culture that we don't feel we want to belong to and the ability to explore this great big world in our one small life.  

Along the way, we have gotten quite a few mixed reactions, the subject of which I will surely write more about in the future.  But what has been with me this week is this notion of 'Soul Making'. I have always known I was on a path of personal growth and healing, but 'Soul Making', gives this state of living a very rich dimension that resonates deeply.  

I think about all the things I do in my day, and that I do in my life that all serve this end.  This blog, my self care, my yoga practice, my mantra practice, my art, my writing, my relationship, my friendships, my travels, my cooking, my tarot practice, and my down time.  Then there are the smaller brush strokes like the way I gaze into the vast Ocean, or smell the scent of flowers in the air, or how I close my eyes and pause when I have just taken a bite of something extra delicious.  All of it is in service to the continual evolvement of my soul.  And I know that you too are the same.  Those that come here and resonate with what I write about are on the same path.  And for me to find these words written by a, May Sarton, fellow soul traveler, just enriched my languaging of this life experience.  And I know that adds to the my over all wellness. 

Please share with me the ways you make your soul. What comes up for you when you think of the idea of actively creating your soul throughout the course of your lifetime?  I think I want to really sink into this deeper

Summer Reading: May Sarton

There has been so much on my mind since being here.  May was a month of work and gestating in many ways, and I find that I am still in much of that.  Being on the island has continued to slow me down and help take the details of my life and unravel them for inspection. 

One of the things I have been sitting with is this blog.  Actually, I've been sitting with my writing in general.  Wondering what to write, what not to write.  Sitting with reactions to things I've posted that seem to sit outside of what others have projected onto me.  Its a challenge most bloggers face I think.  And in many ways it affects the writing voice of the blogger. 

While mulling this over, I have been reading May Sartons book, Journal of a Solitude.  This book feels like a journey through the deeper recesses of my soul.  So often while savoring her words I have found myself feeling Seen, not so alone in my more temperamental introverted parts.  I feel like I should just write here for all of you all the passages I have underlined and made notes on, but for now, its just this one.  A re-affirmation of what I have always felt.  And a much needed reminder of what it is that I am about and strive for in my art, my words and my life.

"My own belief is that one regards oneself, if one is a serious writer, as an instrument for experiencing.  Life - all of it - flows through this instrument and is distilled through it into works of art.  How one lives as a private person is intimately bound into the work.  And at some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth.  If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilty, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and as artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked."

I stopped reading and closed the book at the end of this passage.  Closing my eyes, I just let it sink in and nodded to myself.  Yes.  And its been a message that has come up several times since reading this passage.  Today I spent a good portion of the afternoon doing Tarot Readings, and this theme of going naked came up twice for two other clients and then again for myself.  Its as if, as a writer/artist/authentic person, we need to come back around every so often and place our hands on the touchstone of this truth to remember who we are and what exactly we were placed on this earth to do this time around.   

"Be willing to go naked."

Yes.

I am willing.

Dragonfly Dreams

I have been dreaming of Dragonflies lately. Out of no where they seem to be making appearances in my dreams, buzzing around, landing on my shoulders, following me where ever it is that I wander in the dreamtime. I looked up Dragonfly Medicine and well... it all so divinely makes sense (I found this online, and regretfully in looking through various tabs I lost track of where I got this.  If this is yours please let me know and I will credit you.)

"Dragonfly embodies a stripping away of all the beliefs that say we cannot do this or that, achieve a dream or goal, it is to remind us that anything is possible when we really get the understanding that we are part of Spirit and as such we have the power to manifest anything that we desire. Dragonfly is the keeper of dreams, the knower within that sees all of our true potential and ability. Dragonfly strips away the illusions that say to us we cannot achieve our dreams and goals, that we are not worthy or capable when in fact it is our birthright and our true power to create anything we choose!"

Our Souls know exactly what is needed to reveal the affirmation we need at the right time.  It never ceases to amaze me and humble me.  Out of my dreams this journal and a few pieces of writing have emerged, and continue to do so.  Even though I lose track of where I am going I am getting the message loud and clear that the path ahead is indeed there and I am still on it.

I have posted this journal in my shop.  It very much wants to find its home in the hands of a fellow dreamer.

Blessings and sweet magic in your dreamtimes...

My Sacred Life Sunday: Of Women and Wolves

My Sacred Life Sunday

From my readings in Women Who Run With The Wolves:

"Because women have a soul-need to express themselves in their own soulful ways, they must develop and blossom in ways that are sensible to them and without molestation from others."

and

"In a single human being there are many other beings, all with their own values, motives, and devices.  Some psychological technologies suggest we arrest these beings, count them, name them, force them into harness till they shuffle along like vanquished slaves.  But to do this would halt the dance of wildish lights in a woman's eyes; it would halt her heat lightning and arrest all throwing of sparks.  Rather than corrupt her natural beauty, our work is to build for all these beings a wildish countryside wherein the artists among them can make, the lovers love, the healers heal."

I am sitting deep with this today.  Everything in this book takes me to a deeper terrain, a slower pattern of sifting through the details for my makings.  But this wisdom gives me much pause.  I have always thought of the lessons in balance in my life to be about how to give each of my Self parts equal time, each of the commitments, loves, responsibilities in my external life equal attention.  And even after realizing that balance is always dynamic and sometimes one aspect of my life gets more time, attention, priority then others for a time, and then later that shifts again, I still operate from a place that keeps each of these aspects in nice and neat boxes.

I am wondering now how to allow room for all of it.  At once, one at a time, several now, not later... whatever authentic configuration wants and needs to happen in any given moment.  Can I allow for the reality that today my artist self and my lover self and cranky self were very wide awake?  Two of those aspects of me were sorely stifled today, because my brain was so intent on shutting up anything that would deviate me from the task at hand. 

The Woman Mystery here is how to dance with it all as it spontaneously comes up in any given moment.  Or actually, the mystery is not to lead the dance at all, but hold space for it to unfold as is best and as it serves the higher purpose of my full expression as a Woman in this life. 

I take this with me into my week, into my art, into my loving, healing, cooking, and whatever else comes through in me.

Blessings from very muggy Long Beach.  :)

My Sacred Life Sunday: Reading

My Sacred Life Sunday

I am reading this again for the third time.  Its been quite a while and it feels like coming home to an old and significant friend.  I am circling with sisters again after a long break, and the Sacred Space created by a circle of Women is so potent.  It pulls me back into the bones of my femininity. 

I believe every woman should have this book and read it quietly to herself as a meditation, to her sisters in tones of importance, secret keys revealed, and to the young ones in a voice of potent knowing.  This book is a soul reclamation.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D shares in the very beginning of the book,

"We are filled with a longing for the wild.  There are few culturally sanctioned antidotes for this yearning.  We were taught to feel shame for such a desire.  We grew our hair long and used it to hide our feelings.  But the shadow of Wild Woman still lurks behind us during our days and in our nights.  No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed."

and

"Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics:  keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion.  Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance, and strength.  They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack.  they are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances; they are fiercely stalwart and very brave."

All this by page 4. 

As this new cycle of seasons begins, I encourage you to give this book to yourself.  If, like me, you have already read it, read it again.  Let this be a path back to the heart of your core as a woman.  Lets allow the path for our unfolding freedom and wildness to begin again!

I am so feeling this in the air.  So in-tuned to a drum beating in the far distance, beckoning a huge shift back into the truth of who I am... the Truth of who we are as Women.

Now, I know that my soul brothers out there come and read this blog from time to time.  My intention is not to exclude you, or discount your Sacred Wildness.  But for this day, with this book, I send this note to my Soul Sisters.  Hold space for us as we make our way into more of who we are.

Blessings to all of you,
e

Book: Live What You Love

I finished reading this great book last week.  The Blanchards set out to live a life outside the box, and have had countless businesses, a restaurant and live in both Vermont and Anguilla, because its what their hearts have lead them to.  They tossed the usual 9 to 5 life for one lead by passion, joy, and creativity.

Its inspiring to read stories of couples that find a way to live big, adventurous and outside of the box. Its what Jon and I are striving for. 

I find all sorts of fears that come up when thinking about cutting free and living abroad with no sense of time, or need to return to a job.  Its been such a potent way to really look at all the things we, especially in the US, mistake for necessity and the way things have to be done.

But once the blinders come off, what better way to live life then intuitively, then to be guided by the murmurings of the heart? This is my vision, my desire, and my aim.  It scares me and excites me to think of all the wildest dreams and notions as possible.  And then there is the Beloved.  A person with his own wildest dreams and notions.  Its quite a ride to the heart of matters trying to find a way to make room for it all.

Its our work now.  Its what we are in... the stirring of our hopes and dreams and needs and trying to come up with the perfect batch of a life for us both to live together.  Dreaming for one is different then dreaming for two. :)  And this journey has and continues to be such a Divine teacher for me.  And I am grateful that along the way, books like this one get dropped into my lap to gain inspiration from and to receive messages from the Universe that it. is. possible.

Its a fun easy read... go check it out!