Archive for November, 2009

I was reminded this weekend that I am a healer.  I’ve always known this, but haven’t always wanted to own it.  I think there are a lot of us out there.

I don’t have to say a word.  Just my presence, a smile, will sometimes awaken the desire in others to offer up their wounds for me to kiss.  If I offer more, such as a hug, a home cooked meal, a conversation, or god forbid an invitation to stay in my house for some days, the healing can be more wild and wooly.  But opportunity for healing nonetheless.

Healing is not always pretty.  In fact, I frequently find that healing requires that it will hurt more before it gets better.  This is true whether resetting a broken bone (OW), ripping a scab off an infected wound (OW), or re-opening a heart hurt that has been glossed over by a desire not to feel pain.

We went camping to the coast for the thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S.  There we met a lovely family while strolling on the beach.  There was an instant connection, a feeling of wanting to get to know these folks.  Conversation led to enjoyment of each other, and we got together for dinner that night.   

In a very short time over delicious food, our conversation turned to deeper heart matters, such as love, marriage, relationship, commitment, priorities, and family.  Our sharing turned very personal, very quickly.  Old hurts started pouring out as well as the tears.  For some reason, the fact of the four of us sitting together opened up a safety zone within which the swirling energies of love could stir up and cleanse what was unsaid in each of us, and healing could occur. 

I don’t find this unusual; in fact, it seems to be the way it goes most of the time.  I know from personal experience that, when the ideal factors are present, alchemy can occur.  Sometimes the chemistry in a group is not so ideal for transformation, but for another purpose.  Perhaps an example might be a social gathering that is intended for networking or making friends.  But I always hunger for the chemistry that allows true and deep opening and therefore healing to happen. Not adept at the “how about this weather” types of conversations, I seem to need to know the precious soul of a person in five minutes or less.

I hesitated several times in writing this because I don’t want to sound egotistical.  To say that I am a healer could very well incur the wrath of those who don’t understand the subtle energetic nature of healing, or those who say that healing is a dying art or not needed in the world.  To be a healer necessitates that some will not trust you.

But others can say that they are a lawyer or a gardener or doctor or a writer or a chef….so why not say that I am a healer?  I don’t pretend to understand it fully….far from it.  But, at a very basic molecular level, this is what I am.

I notice after 44 years that my good friends are pretty brave people.  Or maybe tenacious.  Or in the case of my husband, very very forgiving.  I’m intense, and not an easy person to be friends with.  There is something about my presence that reveals the wounds, makes those hurts rush to the skin and inflame the face, where the person who possesses them then has the choice to yield them to me and therefore relinquish their smallness to love, or to hang on to their construct and fight.  And interpreting their discomfort as something that I have done, they will sometimes judge me for having innately, unknowingly called the pain to the surface.  Frequently I am projected upon…as a maker of conflict, as stupid, as difficult, as fill in the blank.  It makes me think of the man who called the flounder to the water’s edge…the fish came from deep within the sea to grant the man’s wishes.  But eventually the man asked for too much, and when the wishes were taken away, he projected onto the fish as the cause for all his ills.

I don’t feel understood by many people.  I sometimes feel I am a wild force too big to be contained, and that the only safe course of action for someone who wants to be near me is to surrender.  Of course, the nature of free will beings is to resist this, even in times when their well-being may depend on it.

Perhaps it is the abundant amount of mothering energy I seem to have embodied since I was a little girl….friends in school would confide in me, seeming to know that I was a present listener.  My body has always been on the rounder side, like the Great Mother archetype…soft arms for hugging, all breasts and hips, large lips and hands for kissing and holding, long feet for holding me up and grounding me to this earth, long wild and wavy hair, and big blue eyes that seem to take you in unconditionally, pain and all.  I was born to be a Mother.

I don’t have many close friends.  I am blessed with a host of devoted readership around the globe.  I am associated with esteemed international colleagues.  I have many, many soul sisters, and a few soul brothers.  Perhaps this distant closeness that is created by the digital age is a way that I can feel my kinship with others without their having to be so close to be as to get burned by my healer’s presence.

My beloved and my two children must have souls of steel, or rather more accurately, the tensile strength of love and many, many lifetimes of soul wisdom, in order to be with me every single day.  Of course, my sons will leave someday and go into the world, and our relationship will change.  But my Beloved…goodness, the resolve it must take to love me and choose again and again to remain.

I feel best, safest, most sane when I am around others who value honesty and integrity as I do.  Who are honest with themselves about how they feel, who look their own darkness in the eye, name it, and choose to do what it takes to heal it.  It is a courageous path that many do not take.  But those are the people that I want to know in the world.

a story about searching for one’s lost tribe

Wingapo Cheskchamay (“Welcome, All Friends” in Powhatan language)

I share this excerpt from my book with you now because I have lately struck a chord in some of my posts….there are others besides me who do not feel that they fit in, and are looking for their tribe.

Being “lost” is a kind of dramatic tale to weave…..it appeals to many. There are certainly lots of stories in history of “lost tribes” and their tragic search to come home.

I am a prime example of this in a genealogical sense….I see no separation between what lives in my blood, what lives in my mind, and what lives in my heart…..the greatness of my spirit holds all aspects of myself within its hands.

However, I choose that my having been “lost” has brought me many gifts and learnings, and that in the end, I have not been “lost” at all.

An excerpt from “The Blue Eyed Indian”
By Licia Berry www.liciaberry.com
Copyright 2008

“My European ancestors were among the first to arrive at the remote barrier islands of what is now called North Carolina’s Outer Banks. In the 1500’s, the islands were alive with the Croatoan Indian hunters and fisherman who scoured the maritime forests and the rich waters for bountiful fish and game. When the fair-skinned people with the blue eyes arrived from the giant crafts on the water, my Indian ancestors were intrigued, and being polite, welcomed the visitors to their island. They feasted together, they showed the guests their lovely island (like we would for any tourist to our home town), and eventually, some of them fell in love.

Some of the fair skinned people feathered into life with the Indians; others went north to create the English settlement of Roanoke Island. This settlement later became “The Lost Colony”, when, fearing they had been abandoned by the English and needing help to survive, they returned south to live with the friendly Croatoan Indians in what is now Buxton, NC. These are the people I come from.

When the next larger waves of Europeans would arrive to the New World a generation or two later, they wrote with their quill pens in their journals of the peculiar “Blue Eyed Indians” they encountered along the North Carolina coast.

As more Europeans arrived, the goodness of the land on the Outer Banks was coveted for its rich resources and its location as a close ally to the ports in Virginia. The Indians began to feel the conflict that these fair skinned people brought into their midst. Skirmishes broke out, and eventually, the fair skinned people overtook the islands that had been occupied by Indians for 10,000 years.

The blue-eyeds among the Indians had a choice to make; were they white, or Indian? They would lose their lands on the island if they sided with their red-skinned kin….Would they survive if they sided with their European blood? For some, the call to explore the blood of their parents or grandparents, those who had come from far across the waters, brought a certain sense of longing, and they stayed with the whites. A few elected to go with the tribes, who retreated inland to nurse their wounds and to make plans about how to carry on. Some went north to now Virginia to be absorbed into the great Powhatan nation; others remained in the woods and wetlands of inland coast and eventually disappeared into the trees with their culture. The Croatoan had lost their best fishing grounds, lost many of their children and suffered humiliation after opening their arms and hearts to these fair-skinned people. But those who were part Indian, those who elected to stay with the Europeans, lost the precious knowledge and support of their Indian culture.

Generations of Europeans came to the Outer Banks and settled on this wild coast, making their living fishing those waters once enjoyed by the Powhatan, and scavenging off of the hundreds of ships that floundered on the Diamond Shoals, earning the nickname “The Graveyard of the Atlantic”. My father’s side of the family still remains on this remote outpost, miles off the mainland of our country. They speak in a soft brogue that reminds of me of Scotland, England and a faint tongue that is lost, the language extinct except for a few words. They are stoic and stubborn, refusing to leave the island when hurricanes bear down on the fragile sands. They also don’t like to admit that they are part Indian.

In fact, I didn’t know that we had any Indian blood until I was in my thirties, when a rebellious aunt whispered to me of our history. I have observed a bigotry and arrogance in some of these noble Hatteras people, as if they are better than every one else, perhaps because of what they have survived as they eke out their livings in this harsh place. I have never understood this stubborn need to protect our “heritage” as all-European (or, all white as they would say). Perhaps when they were forced to make the decision to be “white” in order to keep their homes and land on Hatteras Island, a psychic door closed on any other possibility.

But I was different.

All of my life the spirits of the wind, the water, the rocks and trees and earth have spoken to me. As a child, I was a wild nature girl; tangled hair and dirty face were my costume….I fought taking baths and showers, preferring to remain sister to the dirt. In frustration and in answer to my defiant nature, my mother chopped all my hair off at age 6. I tried to get lost in the woods and never could, because I knew the way home. The animals were my guides and messengers. The forest whispered of its love for me. The universe supported me, and Nature was my friend.

Yet, I was so different than the family who surrounded me. I didn’t fit; when I spoke of the subtle energy that I tapped into, I was ignored or strongly corrected. I wasn’t hearing and sensing and seeing those things; I was making things up. I got quieter about my feelings, but they never went away. Under the protection of the dense brush and out of sight of my elders, I performed ceremonies to honor dead birds or lizards that I found, to listen to and guide the ghosts that needed help to find their way home, to dance with all of creation as my cohort in life. No one had taught me these things; I just knew how to do them. And then came my initiation into the shamanic world….”

To be continued….

“When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”  -Adrienne Rich

There is something about having an audience that provokes an artist (of any kind, whether writer, musician, visual artist, actor, etc.) to rise to the occasion and express themselves.  I find this to be what will cause me to sit down and write, sometimes more than the need to express, itself.  But the need to express today is strong.

When I was a little girl, I had a vivid imagination.  I imagined worlds and dramas and tragedies and great tales of heroism.  I sometimes told these stories during show and tell in 1st grade, interweaving the facts of my life with the fictions in my mind.  These acts of creativity were unappreciated for what they were, however.  The era, the lack of knowledge or understanding in the family I grew up in, and the location of backwoods North Carolina where I grew up had little appreciation of normal child development, and so I was labeled a Liar.

That label followed me around for many years….again, doing what normal children do to sometimes cover up their mistakes, to try to look good in the eyes of those who have the power, to try to minimize the punishments for falling down, I sometimes did not tell the truth.  No, I did not take a cookie.  No, I don’t know anything about the candy in Grandmom’s drawer being gone.  No, I did not take the few coins on my father’s dresser.  It is absolutely true that I did those things.

Later in life, as I understood some of the crazier events that happened to me in my family, I began to see that labeling me as a “Liar” was a brilliant, if unconscious, strategy.  No matter what excellent grades I brought home, no matter what awards and accolades, my identity at home would be one of not being trusted to tell the truth.  And so, when I did understand the importance of speaking out about my early life and dealing with it head on, I would have an inner conflict set up even before I started.

I wonder now if there is a different standard for boys and girls when they do the inevitable and make up a reality, or lie.  Are boys expected to be “naughty” and therefore not stigmatized about lying?  Are girls expected to be pure and chaste and innocent, and so if they act out in ways that children do, they bear the brunt of unfair discrimination?

I remember a particular day when I was 11 years old, when I was caught in a lie (I cannot remember what it was, perhaps the stealing the change on the dresser thing), when I was sent to my room.  I lay on my bed and cried for a long time, feeling a sense of injustice and not being understood.  My parents did not give me an allowance, so I did not have money to buy myself little things like candy or toys.  At the time, I didn’t intellectualize the fact that children need to feel a sense of power and control over their lives in some aspects as they begin to enter adolescence, a healthy, normal development, and that my taking the change from my father’s dresser was an attempt to have some power.  I just knew I felt zero support and understanding in my world.

My father came up and sat on the bed with me for a long time, speaking the importance of telling the truth and how all we have in this world is our reputation.  It may surprise some of you to know that this was one of the most beautiful gifts my father gave to me in our twisted, convoluted history together.  While he raged and sexually preyed on me as a drunk at night, when sober, he became the kind of man my inner masculine wanted to model myself after.  His sharing of his concept of honor made such a deep impression on me at that age that I am touched by his teaching to this day, and part of my moral code and devotion to truth I attribute to this conversation.  How interesting and ironic that my dear father, whom I love and hold in my heart despite everything, would coach and prepare me to reveal what he did to me.

Perhaps I was at the age that I began to understand the difference between truth in the consensual reality and the truth of my imagination.  Perhaps at age 11-12 the child’s brain is capable of conceiving what that means.  Already a prolific writer and winning competitions for my essays in school, I had some sense of the worlds that I had access to through my artistic ability.  I began to learn that I was intelligent, and that the way I put words together had an impact and inspired people.  But add the complexity of what had been done to me in the name of satisfying sexual greed in the dark of night, and the desperate need to keep the secrets in an alcoholic family, and you will see how the telling of the truth has become a very loaded topic.  The gravity of the truth began to shine clear, and the heavy weight to burden me.

What is the truth?  Is something true if we don’t want to look at it?  Is it true despite our attempts to deny it?  What are the ramifications of pretending something isn’t true when it is?  These are all questions that I have wrestled with in endless cycles since I began to wake up.

To this day, I have an obsession with truth.  To the point that if I try an experiment and say something that is NOT true, such as “My name is Beth”, I will start coughing.  I can’t do it.  My inner barometer won’t let me speak or write something that I don’t personally experience as true. 

I have examined many spiritual traditions as well as modern physics and understand now that there are as many realities as there are perspectives, and all are valid.  I also know (and experience) that if a reality is unobserved it may as well not have happened. 

Additionally, I understand that there is some modicum of truth that we can all agree to, if we are willing to acknowledge it.  While my family has given slight, grudging acknowledgment of the sexual abuse and no acknowledgement of the alcoholism I encountered as a child, there is great resistance to me talking about it.  Does this make it untrue?

In my desire to be a loyal daughter, I have censored myself for many years, even though the truth has leaked out in ways through my writing and art and conversations.  Even in therapy I have protected my family as a “good daughter should”, revealing only parts of the story, perhaps the parts that I could handle revealing to myself.  I love my family, as people and as having been the sieve through which I arrived in this world.  I would not be who I am without them.  I have even attempted over the 21 years that I have been in conscious recovery and healing work to actually heal my family, out of my love for them and desire that they, too, be free from the sickness that bound us.  They have been unresponsive, however.

Now, the bird that has lived caged in my throat must be freed, and I am going to talk about my life openly and unapologetically.  I will censor no more.  I choose not to become a raging fanatic for a cause, because that would be out of balance.  Yes, I am a survivor of sexual abuse and an adult child of alcoholics, but that is not my identity or the sum total of who I am.  Not by a long shot. 

My desire is to tell the truth in a measured, grounded way, honoring myself, with the intention and purpose to heal and to give permission to others to acknowledge the truth within themselves, no matter how heinous it may be to see.  I know from my own life journey of looking at these truths that therein lays the path to integration and Wholeness.  And an even deeper appreciation of The Truth.

(Author’s note: It is interesting to me to see how my thoughts and writing style have evolved over years of time.  I see that there is still some use to the writings below, so offer them for your perusal.  Perhaps an updated version will follow!)

The Gift of Gratitude

How Giving Thanks Raises Our Vibration

By Licia Berry, 2004, originally published on www.liciaberry.com

The woman feels herself sinking into the familiar deep well of despair as she watches the nightly news.  She knows where this will go; she will be hit in the gut with absolute hopelessness, and in response she will find something to eat to fill the gnawing in her belly or she will pour herself a glass of alcohol to numb the pain.  Or, she will go upstairs to her bedroom and cry, wringing her hands over the state of the world, and fall asleep in tears.  This road is all too familiar to her; it goes nowhere good.  Then, something quietly dawns on her.  She hears a subtle voice; something tells her that she doesn’t have to choose this road, that there are others.  She makes a small move that begins to break the pattern she has lived over and over.  She goes into the room where her dusty sewing machine sits in the dark.  She pulls out a pattern she abandoned a long time ago and begins to sew, with devout attention and precious care, as if her very emotional well being depended on it.  She feels a bit better, a little at a time, then notices when two hours have flown by that she has been completely absorbed in her creative work.  She hasn’t thought about the horrific state of things for even a moment.  By making a leap out of the familiar, she has cut a new pathway.  She has made a new choice.  And the more often she takes the small step to do something different each time she goes into reaction about something, the easier it will be to have power over her response.

What happened when this woman made the choice to do something positive in the face of her despair?  Her body and mind were accustomed to going down a particular road…in fact; our bodies begin to expect us to go down certain path in the face of certain stimuli.  It is as if we train ourselves from an early age how to respond to emotional stimuli, mental challenges, physical difficulties, and even trauma.  But we always have the choice in how we respond, no matter how automatic our responses may feel.

“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend… when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present — love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure — the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.”
Author: Sarah Ban Breathnach

We all experience moments in our day when something unexpected arises, or we don’t achieve a desired outcome.  We can perceive these situations as negative, positive or neutral.  Our attitude towards the event is not pre-ordained or automatic, although it may feel that way due to its being conditioned in our bodies for our entire lives.  In actuality, how we respond is our choice.  When faced with a potential shift in our attitude, there arises a single moment of decision about how we will handle it, what I call a “choice-point”.  We can choose whether we will tumble down the rocky hillside of victimization, ending up bruised and battered at the bottom, or we can choose to look at the situation as a learning opportunity, asking ourselves questions like, “What is the gift in this situation?  What message has the universe brought to me?”  By examining the situation from a larger perspective, we realize that we do indeed have a choice about how we respond.  And if we do go down the victim road, we can always stop and focus on what we are grateful for to bring us back up.

Scientific studies have confirmed what the sages and mystics of earth’s history have been telling us all along.  Gratitude, prayer and love carry a high vibration, whereas despair, anger and fear carry a low vibration.  Our bodies carry vibrations that change with our thoughts and with the vibrations we encounter as we move through the world.  A person whose body is wracked with disease is suddenly cancer-free after several hundred people prayed for him. A partygoer may show up grumpy and feeling anti-social, but winds up giving up the grumps because everyone else at the party is having a good time.  I may intersect with a rude person in a store, whose vibration is quite low due to their anger.  My body’s vibration may fall into a lower state if I allow myself to be triggered by this person.  Or, I can consciously choose to respond to the situation with love and maintain a high vibration in the face of the rudeness.  If I am around this person long enough and I focus on maintaining my high vibrational state, the other person’s body will be affected by MY vibration.  By the end of our interaction, whether we have said anything to each other or not, his vibration may have risen to the point that he is not angry anymore. This is the principle of resonance.  In layman’s language, the principle of resonance says that when there are two differing vibrations, one will rate of vibration will soon resonate like the other or they will move towards each other and meet in the middle.  This can mean that a lower vibration cannot remain constant in a sustained field of higher vibration.

This principle of resonance is played out beautifully in our physical bodies in the phenomenon of kidney stones.  We know that kidney stones are hard little calcifications that have to be passed through the body or surgically removed.  However, a recent technology now uses very localized doses of high vibration, aimed at the kidney, to actually dissolve the kidney stones.  The kidney stones are reduced to their smallest particles and passed easily through the body.  We can think of this as an example of how a low vibration, no matter how solid it appears, can be changed by focusing high vibration onto it.

Another example of this phenomenon of changing the vibration of something that seems unchangeable is the study done in 1993 by the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy in Washington DC.  This National Demonstration Project to Reduce Violent Crime and Improve Governmental Effectiveness brought approximately 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs to the United States national capital from June 7 to July 30, 1993. A 27-member independent Project Review Board consisting of sociologists and criminologists from leading universities, representatives from the police department and government of the District of Columbia, and civic leaders approved in advance the research protocol for the project and monitored its progress. The study, led by John Hagelin, PhD., showed a 25%-48% decrease in violent crime during the time period of the study.  The conclusion that can be drawn was that the high vibration of the 4000 meditators infiltrated the DC area, and that the low vibration of the aggression causing violent crime could not be sustained in the high vibrational filed created by the meditators.  (For more information on this study, go to http://www.istpp.org/crime_prevention/ )

A beautiful example of how our thoughts change vibration is evidenced in Dr. Masaru Emoto’s work.  He has documented, through remarkable photographic techniques, water’s response to positive and negative thoughts.  (Remember that positive feelings such as love, gratitude and prayer carry a high vibration, where as anger, sadness and fear carry a low vibration.)  In the case of a highly polluted river in Japan, the water photographs show a diffused, disorganized water molecule group.  When the very same water was blessed with prayer, the water formed exquisite, organized crystal shapes.  His research went further when he placed written phrases on bottles of distilled water and left them overnight.  Water responded to these phrases similarly; the water which sported the label “Thank You” formed beautiful symmetrical crystals, where as the water that carried the “You Make Me Sick” label responded with a discomforting display of pockmarked blobs.  As is evidenced in Dr. Emoto’s work, our attitudes and thoughts are reflected perfectly in the structural integrity of the water.  The really interesting implications of Dr. Emoto’s work lie in considering that human beings are more than 70% water.  If these thoughts affect a bottle of water so powerfully, how do our thoughts affect us and each other?  (See the website www.hado.net )

Even when some things may not be going the way we want, we can find other things in our lives that ARE supportive and be thankful for those.  And this will raise our vibration.

I was in a situation recently where I was reminded of this truth.    My family and I have been traveling now for almost a year in a motor home.  We recently encountered issues that have necessitated taking our home in to a dealership for repairs.  What was supposed to have been a simple overnight repair became a two-week ordeal.  Because we are living in the RV, we have been unable to access the things that we normally need to live our daily lives.  After a week of “not having a home”, I became triggered into feeling “homeless” and victimized.  While this would seem a reasonable response to the situation, I was miserable.  Life looked a whole lot less wonderful because of the state I was in.  I was in a low vibrational field of hopelessness, anger and depression.  After a few days of hanging out in this state, I remembered that I had other choices. I looked around me and was reminded that home is where the heart is; I have my beautiful family, we are together, and we are healthy and well.  AND, I was reminded that my Spirit is my true home, and that nothing can ever take that away from me.  Choosing not to identify with the low vibrational state, I slowly felt my perspective shift as I focused on how grateful I am.  It literally took me 10 minutes for my perspective to shift radically into feeling like I was basking in a ray of warm love.  I could not wipe the smile off of my face (nor did I want to!)  I see now that if I want to be happy in my life, there is great wisdom in choosing to be grateful and look on the bright side!

In addition to feeling better, being in a high vibrational state brings a clarity and focus that is not present in low vibrational states…we can think of acting out in anger and regretting later what we have said, or how people who are depressed feel fuzzy headed, as if they cannot think clearly.  This clarity that comes with high vibration suddenly brings everything into focus.  What is important becomes very pointed and clear!  And from this place we can make better decisions in our lives – decisions that make a positive contribution to our own well-being as well as the well-being of others and the planet.

And, if you don’t have enough reasons to consider feeling gratitude on a regular basis, consider this additional benefit, noted by Christiane Northrup: “Feeling grateful or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life.”  Here we see the principle of resonance yet again, as well as the law of attraction.  If we hold a high vibration, not only do we shift the rate of vibration around us, we attract similar vibration.  If you want more true love in your life, radiate true love.  If you want more kindness shown to you, overflow with kindness towards others.  If you seek more abundance in your life, look for the abundance that you already have and shower gratitude upon it.  (And remember that abundance is not only measured in money!  It is also love, health, freedom, creativity, wisdom, experiences, inner satisfaction, caring, giving, receiving teachings, giving teachings, blue sky, rain, good food, friends, time, togetherness, good books, options, loyalty, growth, family, manifestation, spiritual help, wide open vistas, sunrises, sunsets, trees, birds, animals and plants, air, water, fire, space, the stars and planets, and this beautiful earth which holds and sustains us!)

So what can you do to raise your vibration?  There are many resources you can draw on.  Some examples are mediation, reading holy texts, creating, dancing, singing, moving your body, celebrating, laughing, praying, making a list of the things in your life you are grateful for and thanking each of them, and of course setting the intention to raise your vibration.  Almost anything that takes you out of your usual pattern of heading down “Victim Road” will point you in the high-vibe direction.  And you and the world will be a better place for it.

The response I’ve received since publishing my last entry about my desire to have “my own room” has been so interesting, I felt it merited a little more airtime.  Some have written to accuse my husband of not wanting to share power (sorry I told on you in my blog, honey!), others have responded that they feel this same urge but won’t allow themselves to have it, and most others just say, don’t worry, it’s coming.  Mostly, my own response is what is of note.

The night of the day of the aforementioned conversation, Pete and I talked again.  This time, I experienced him more receptive to my desire.  He listened attentively to my feelings, and reflected them back to me.  No negation, instead good listening, which made me feel safer to share what was happening with me.  We dealt with some real things and got to common ground.  He and I are on the same page, which is a relief to me.  SO, now that the immediate “perceived obstacle” is removed, what is really going on?

I did not ever have my own room, except maybe for the couple of years before my sister was born (and I’m not even sure about that).  Not whining, just sayin’.  When I moved to college, I had a shared dorm room.  It was not until I was a junior and moved into a duplex at age 20 that I had a room of my own, and began to taste what it was like to be master of one’s own space.  Of course, I met Peter when I was 21, and have not had my own room since then.

Now what I want is my own room, but not a bedroom…..what I want is a room that is MINE in which I can do what I WANT without being interrupted or distracted or have to move somebody else’s stuff.  JUST MINE.  And what I have realized is that I sound like a 3 year old kid!  MINE, MINE, MINE!

Well, I am not going to judge that inner 3 year old, but I am also going to include the perspective of the wise parent inside, who will temper the 3 year old’s insistence with some wisdom.  I am reflecting about why I feel I need an office to do the work I need to do, how I can proceed with that work to the extent that I can (without the office) until it manifests, and finally, what other ways I put things in front of my just getting DOWN TO IT.  This is all worthwhile reflection.

I wrestle with my inner logician, who says, “You are not making enough money to justify the expanse of renting an office.”  Also, “You are a mom and only have the hours between 9 and 2 (when BNO  -Boy Number One-  gets home from school) to do your work; does it really make sense to rent an office that will be empty so much of the day?”  And, “You’re a writer, why can’t you just sit on the couch and write there?”  And so many other perfectly sound reasons not to pursue this desire to have my own space.  Whew, all of this inner wrestling makes me tired. 

But there is a wiser voice, too, that is NOT defined by logic, but adds to logic in a feeling sense….it says that it is good and right to begin to bring this into my life because my timing is right.  It says there is nothing wrong with indulging this desire, and that it is in fact good for me to do so.  It says that I am freeing up and emerging in ways that will support the expenses and my desire to also benefit the financial well-being of my family.  I am also told it is indeed part of the universe’s desire for me, and that I will be supported.

So, I will balance the needs of my inner logician with the urging from my spirit to have the space in which to develop the things I will offer this world.  In the mean time, I will move forward and get some things done, even if my outer environment is not exactly the way I want it.  I will move forward and trust……It’s a-gonna happen.

Journaling this morning….11-19-09

I’m feeling sad lately not to have an office space that is my own room.  Licia’s space, where I can work on art and writing.  Crying about it this morning.  I am told this relates to being a teenager and not having much of my own, including my own room or private space.  Of course, Peter is worried about the money, and I think of this too.  I know my writing will not yield much in the money department for a while, but have been guided to create some teleclasses and local classes, so this should pay for any office I rent.  I am told it will be March of 2010, now.

What does it mean to have a quiet, dedicated space for me to do what I want to in?  I am definitely needing to relive being a teenager and fill up that empty reservoir.  Of course, Peter is correct in citing that I have had my own space, in Asheville, in the apartment in Del Norte, and in the gallery space.  And I loved having those spaces, especially the Asheville one, because it was purely mine.  The Del Norte spaces I liked less because it was shared, and not quiet.  I can understand that he sees me needing an office or studio as unjustified spending because I don’t bring in the money.  I say this to myself every day, as a matter of fact.  What can I do for money?  Why haven’t I made money before to the extent that it supports my having a space?  Why does it have to cost my family for me to have this?

But I also think that I am coming into a new space in my life because my kids are getting older and needing me less.  Before, I always had them in the back of my mind, and if they called from school or the years I home schooled them, it was me that ran to serve, me that got interrupted, me that multi-tasked.  They have always been my top priority, and that has been as it should be.  Peter doesn’t understand this because he has been able to be away and dedicated in his job.  I know he is under so much pressure being the bread winner for our family, and I am grateful for this because it has enabled me to raise the boys and truly be there for them.

 But now, they are getting more involved in things and doing their own thing…and I am needing to have a quiet, uninterrupted place where I can leave my things, not have to move from couch to chair to bedroom, where I can walk in and out and leave projects in motion, a space that is mine alone.  Is this too much to ask for?

Perhaps that is what I have been doing with the blog and websites over these years…defiantly creating a room of my own, in which I get to be the boss, I get to decorate the walls with Kiss posters if I want, I get to have control over something that is only mine, for a change…..making my presence felt and trying to do it in ways that justify expense or my existence in the world….by trying to make money for my family, my offering services to humanity for free for years and years….what if I am allowed to do it just because I am worth it?

Today I spoke to Peter about how much I enjoyed using his home office as a dedicated space while he was gone to Colorado this last week.  Of course, my stuff needed to be moved in order for him to resume working in his office space.  I understand that.  But when I was expressing my need for my own space this morning, Peter interrupted me to argue with what I was saying, rather than to listen deeply to what I was trying to say.  Apparently, it hurt my feelings because now I am not smiling at him.

Here’s what I know: I am emerging.  I need space in which to do that.  I am always going to be the mom and wife and partner in this family, but in the few hours that I can, I need to have my own space in order to do the work I’m meant to do in this world.  For reasons that I can’t seem to logically explain, it is hard to do that in my house due to all of the interruptions and noises and distractions and things beckoning at me to complete them.  Even when I had my own office space, it had to be about building a business, and that conflicted greatly with writing, which is not a money producer for me (yet).  Plus, I was still very much mom to my boys…I did not have the mental space unoccupied that I am starting to feel freeing up now. 

NOW, I feel as though I might have a chance to have the focus and the drive and the discipline to write those books that have been hounding me every moment of my existence to be written.  It could not have been so before without it costing my family something…I feel now it would be a benefit to my family for me to get these things done.  I am a nicer person when I write, and feel better about myself when I get a chunk of writing done each day.  And it is so much more doable to do these things in a dedicated room of my own.

Here is what I want:  a big room, like a studio, or a couple of rooms…one is comfy and soft, and this is the Writing Room as well as where I would see clients.  The other is the Art Room, where I will have tables and shelves and organized bins with my art supplies in them.  I can leave art projects out on the tables because we will not have to use them to eat dinner on.  It is inviting, and yummy, the way I always decorate my spaces.  When I walk through the door, I instantly relax and take a deep breath.  It is quiet in this space…no noisy neighbors, no shared walls with a corporate office or rap music producer or a college kid with stereo.  It’s my universe, and I feel full ease and permission to be me.

Universe, please send it my way.

You know that I am ALL about the journey….everything I write in my life is about the journeys I undertake, whether from un-awareness to awareness, a place on a map to another, or the immense journey one undergoes to reclaim themselves for healing.

I was particularly moved when I read my friend and colleague, Anne Marie Bennett’s book, “Bright Side of the Road-A Spiritual Journey through Breast Cancer”.  While I don’t have personal experience with breast cancer (and hope I never do), I was eager to read her account of going open-eyed into the abyss of taking responsibility for one’s own healing and learning the lessons along the way.  I was not disappointed. 

I know Anne Marie through our mutual love of the written word and through our love of art and the amazing pathway to our deepest selves it provides access to.  She is an artist and Soul Collage facilitator, and an utter delight to know.  But underneath her smiling, kind exterior, there is a warrior woman who fully claims herself as precious.  This decision to love herself completely is what she faced when she was diagnosed in 2001 with breast cancer. 

It is not an exaggeration to say that when we face a truth about ourselves it is a kind of initiation.  The journey one undergoes when facing a truth is what makes us victors in our initiation.  We all have opportunities in our lives when we are asked to step out of our comfort zones and confront something challenging.  It is our lives asking us to be more.  If we rise to the challenge, and do what is asked of us as we let go of our old selves and become more, the passage to our larger selves is nothing short of transformation.

 I’m so grateful that Anne Marie wrote this book, and that she was willing to share the truth of her journey with the world.  I asked her to share with me about her experience:

LB:  How would you describe the journey you have undertaken through your experience?  For example, do you see a continuum of progress in your inner awarenesses and growth, or lots of backsliding, or a combination…it is hard to articulate an intense inner journey, but it helps others who are undertaking that journey themselves.

AMB:  Thanks for an excellent question, Licia!  For me, the journey is like a spiral, or even a labyrinth… moving always towards the center, but sometimes feeling turned around or even like I’m headed in the wrong direction.  But always, always, I am moving towards the center.  There are times when I feel like I am going backwards, but that is merely preparation for moving forward!

LB:  How are you different than you were when you started? 

AMB:  Before my breast cancer journey, I was numb in many ways.  The whole experience taught me to feel my feelings, to express them in some way, as well as the power of affirmations to change the negative thoughts in my mind.  I feel like I am clearer now about who I am, and definitely more grateful.  Gratitude has become the cornerstone of my life now. That is a huge difference.

LB:  What have you learned?

AMB:  The best thing that my breast cancer taught me is that I’m not alone.  Seems like an obvious fact, but let me explain.  When I received my diagnosis, I had a loving husband who was there for me every step of the way. I had my brothers and their wives, my nieces and nephews.  I had friends and coworkers who meant the world to me.   But all my life, my tendency has been towards isolation.  Somewhere in childhood, I learned (most likely from my mother, a stubborn Yankee!) that I was strong if I could do things myself.  On my own.  Not needing help from anyone else.

So my breast cancer was a huge wake-up call for me in that regard!  Suddenly, I COULDN’T do everything myself.  I learned that just because I needed help making dinner and taking a shower and remembering who I was, that I was still a strong woman anyway.  I learned to be open to what others were longing to give me: love, friendship, support, encouragement.

But most importantly, I learned that I wasn’t spiritually alone.  I had been isolating myself from Spirit for several years when my breast cancer came along.  This is the very best lesson I learned: that the Divine (which I choose to call Spirit) is with me always, as are many spiritual helpers. 

LB:  Are you grateful for the diagnosis and what it has brought you?

AMB:  Before my diagnosis, I had heard some cancer survivors on TV talk shows saying that they were grateful they’d had cancer.  Seriously? I thought they were misguided and crazy.  But now it looks like I am one of those people!  I am indeed grateful for my cancer diagnosis.   I never thought I would say this, but my cancer gave me more than it took away.   I was given love and support from family and friends that surprised me and was soothing to my soul.   I was given a closer connection with Spirit.  My practices of gratitude, journaling and meditation gave me a whole new perspective on life and living.   Ultimately, I was given a re-routing of my life, a re-direction, which I didn’t even know I needed until it was given to me.

For more information about Anne Marie’s book, Bright Side of the Road, please visit this page: www.annemariebennett.com 

To purchase the book, please visit this page: www.annemariebennett.com/how-to-purchase 

Bright Side of the Road is also available on Amazon.com http://tiny.cc/lf3HF 

They say in therapeutic settings that we always confront and heal what’s easiest first.  For me, first was to confront the sexual abuse, then to confront my father, and to reclaim my sexuality, my feelings of safety in the world, and my power (and probably will continue to for the rest of my life).  Harder for me was confronting that my mother knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it; that betrayal has been harder to bear. 

Over the 21 years that I have been doing active consciousness and healing work, I have made great strides.  Most recently, in the last 4 years or so I have had the most amazing sense of relationship with the Divine Feminine, or Great Mother as I have called her.  It was my decision to actively cultivate this relationship and even embody Her on earth, to really fully claim my Feminine Self.  It has been challenging at times because this meant confronting and feeling the pain of what my biological mother did to me.  I realized that there is a direct relationship between my relationship with the Sacred Feminine and my feelings about myself as a woman, as well as how I feel nurtured in this world.

These last few years of choosing to embody the Great Mother or Sacred Feminine has been utterly delicious at times….I have distinctly felt Her grace and presence in my life, and I feel how different Her energy feels than the energy of the masculine or angels or Source energy.  There is indeed a distinct quality of energy that permeates the feminine principle.

I was under the impression that if I embodied the Divine Feminine, I would be providing a great service to the Whole as well as providing a wonderful service to myself.  I had always felt that masculine and feminine balance needed to happen in everyone, but for some interesting reason, I did not give a lot of thought to integrating my own Divine Masculine.  

It seemed that things were going swimmingly when I broke my ankle in February of this year (my right, masculine ankle in my case).  My ability to embody Great Mother came in very handy, as my inner immature masculine was very, very grumpy about the ankle breaking and being forced to sit still.  I realized I had used movement and busy-ness to distract me from feeling the painful feelings of my powerlessness as a child (and even as a baby, I am coming to find out).  When I was forced to “sit down and be quiet” for a solid 8 weeks, it provided the opening for me to discover that I had some work to do to heal my inner masculine.

Fast forward to today, when my ankle is mostly healed, I am getting around to some degree, and living a happy life in a new town, surrounded with beautiful family and friends who support me.  I had the most lovely invitation to attend a beach retreat as the resident writer (I am writing an article for the hosts that will be used to market their business), and looked forward to the time with women on the beach with nothing to do except pay attention to my needs and inner life.

One of the activities available to us was to walk a labyrinth that had been constructed on the beach.  My second full day in attendance, I was relaxed and happy, and went out on the beach that sunny morning to do some intuitive movement and breath work.  As I listened and deepened my inner awareness, I noticed that in my body’s experience and my inner vision, I picked up my self as a little girl, and she whispered in my ear “You are such a god mom.”  This delighted me to no end, as I have had a tough time convincing her that I would be a good mother to her!  I smiled and allowed this lovely experience to permeate me, then I felt the prompt to walk the labyrinth. 

As I stood at the opening, I prayed to experience my inherent wholeness.  I was in a very happy place and did not feel the need to initiate any healing process as per my usual stance.  As I walked, I hummed to myself as I felt my inner little girl integrating into me even more than she had before.  When “we” got to the center, I waited in silence for several minutes.  I could not discern anything in particular in terms of a course of action or intention, so I just paused there.  I definitely felt I was at the center of some womb space, far from the outer world of the beach and sun and sound of the surf.  The insulated quality of being inside the labyrinth was reflected in my mind and heart as I listened deeply for any sign of message or instruction. 

I did not feel anything in particular except great, great joy, so began to move out of the labyrinth’s center.  I got a few steps away when I noticed in my mind’s eye that there was a little lump of a person in the center.  I continued to walk forward, not really thinking much about it, when I felt distinctly I was to STOP.  When I get a strong “STOP” message, I am learning to do it on a dime.  I paused, and as I listened, I was told to go back to the center and “pick him up”. 

Him?  When I looked back at what had been a little lump of a person, I saw now that there was a dejected looking little boy in the center of the labyrinth.  Perhaps 3 or 4 years of age, he looked so sad and so lifeless, like he had no energy in him at all.  I was puzzled, but my maternal instinct took over, and I walked back into the labyrinth’s center to be with this mysterious little boy.  I sat there with him for a little while, me next to him on the sand.  He did not look at me except occasionally with a sideways look out of the corner of his eyes…he made no contact and did not speak in any way to me.  As I sat there, I had the distinct feeling that I was to pick him up and carry him out of the labyrinth.  I still did not understand at that point who he was or why I was to help him, but I did lift his limp body into my arms and carry him out of the labyrinth into my life with me.       

I have been carrying this little boy ever since.  I have learned since that day when I was so puzzled about the arrival of this boy that he is a personification of my inner masculine.  Thwarted very early in my life from expressing my power and will, this aspect of myself was arrested and has been in a de-powered state ever since.   In his de-powered but frightened state, he would holdup his fists sometimes, perceiving the whole world to be a threat, and other times he would just lay about and do nothing.  Another symptom of his immaturity has been to force, force, force things when instead some quiet stillness or discernment was needed.  My tendency to push myself relentlessly, as well as to analyze with my head are both outworkings of this immature masculine within.  His anger has been palpable; his rage at having his legs cut out from under him, being belittled and made to be still for unspeakable atrocities have made him a very mad little boy.   The fact that I did not know to acknowledge him within myself for all of these years might have added to his feelings of being so alone in the world.  So focused on my womanliness and my embodiment of the Divine Feminine, I did not see that what was even more broken inside of me was my own inner masculine.   

As the weeks have gone by, he has begun to show signs of life.  The more I get to know him and acknowledge him, the perkier and more animated he becomes.  He is looking at me now, and talking to me sometimes, too.  I am working with “him” every day, listening for guidance about how to support him, to heal him, to help him grow up.  My dreams of tiny babies, just inches long, being lost in my pocket or in a drawer have evolved into dreams of laughing baby boys that are able to morph into full grown teenagers, with full awareness of and delight in their remarkable evolutionary process.  My dreams, messages from my subconscious, are telling me he is healing. 

The pain I have felt as I opened this door into my consciousness has been very real and very intense.  There are days when I am hurting inside so much it feels like leaving the house is too much.  I have also doubted my sanity; in all the years I have done this hard work to reach into and heal the darkness within me, I have always been able to hold myself above the swirling dark waters of my feelings of rage and powerlessness.  A dip into the madness here and there, but never complete immersion…a coping mechanism, to be sure.  I keep reminding myself that I would not be feeling the intensity of the pain if I were not strong enough to do so. 

 And then today, there is light.  Despite the grey skies and downpour of heavy rain here in the panhandle of Florida as a tropical storm passes its eye over us, I feel some sense of a phase completed.  A very dark cloud which has been over me for some time is lifting, and I feel my life coming together in new ways.  A return of my joy, but deeper and more grounded this time.  A sense of wanting to DO in concert with the BE parts of me.  The little boy is now a teenager…he will periodically be a baby or a toddler or an adolescent again, I imagine.  But the evidence shows me that he is growing and learning that he is safe and loved.  Hallelujah. 

I am once again reminded how miraculous we all are in our unique processes, and have a humble, deeper sense of love and appreciation for myself and All of Creation.

by Licia Berry, April 2007

 

There is a lot of talk these days in progressive thought or spiritual communities about the “return of the feminine” on the planet.  If you type “re-emergence of the feminine” into an internet search engine, you will find endless articles and quotes about how the feminine is coming back to the earth.  Where did she go?  If this talk is true, it seems the Sacred or Divine Feminine left for a period of several thousand years and has now decided to return from her holiday!

The human suppression of the feminine powers has been a symptom of an era of exploration of immature masculine power.  Through brute force, rape and murder, witch trials, shaming of women’s sexuality, relegation of women to second citizen status, the view of the feminine as a “weaker sex’, and the choice of women to give away their power, it can surely feel as if there is no Divine Feminine present in a world that fosters these beliefs.  It is no wonder that so many have felt abandoned and betrayed by their mothers, whether Divine, planetary or biological.

The true presence of the feminine is a strong one, a presence that cannot be denied, ignored, made invisible, or rendered powerless.  Where has this strong presence been?  Why have we felt her absence?  Why did she leave us?

She didn’t.  In actuality, the Sacred Feminine has been here all along.  While we have been playing out the various and important human dramas and stages of development, she has been right here with us.  It is our awareness of her that has been away.  The presence and integration of the Sacred Feminine into our daily lives slipped away from our consciousness for several thousand years, but now our consciousness has evolved to a point that we are becoming aware of her again. 

Even though humanity has been through some pretty painful experiences as a result of the full exploration of the immature (and sometimes wounded) masculine aspects (or patriarchy), everything is in order.  After several thousand years of full exploration of the feminine (the Stone Age is thought to have been matriarchal), it was time to stretch out into the opposite pole and check out the masculine for awhile.  But now we have come to the time on our planet when it is all about balance.

She is not outside of us.  The idea that the Divine Feminine could have been “gone” all these years is a projection onto the outer world of what is occurring inside of us; it is true that she has been absent from the collective human consciousness for a long time.  And it is also a projection that she is returning in the outer world…truly what is occurring is that she is returning in our inner consciousness, and therefore we feel her in the outer world.  But she has been with us all along, waiting dormant in our inner awareness until we were ready to unearth and embrace her in a deeper, more encompassing way.

 

As a woman, I have had my time of anger and outrage about the “plight” of women and the dominance of patriarchy in our world.  I have felt women to be the victim and made men out to be the bad guys…….and I needed to fully explore that anger in order to come through to the other side of it, so I have no regrets about spending time in that place.   And I will again and again.  As I heal the wounds in myself, I will feel the anger anew, and more deeply, until I am cleansed and feel healed and in my power about my feminine face and ways of knowing being fully valued in the world. 

However, I have grown much beyond my place of powerlessness.  Now what I am finding is that the more I fully claim all of the various faces and aspects of my inner feminine, the more I see her in the world.  The more I embrace ALL aspects of my inner feminine, the more I see ALL aspects of her in my life.  So I see feminine faces of compassion and acceptance, I see strength and ferocity, I see softness and embracing, I see deeply and highly charged sexuality, I see raw power and I see infinite knowing.  And the more I am ready to claim ALL aspects of her in myself, the more I am ready to see and claim her in the collective experience.

My feeling, sense, cellular memory and perhaps other lifetimes of experience tell me that the feminine ways and feminine power needed to go underground for the safety and survival of women as a physical gender.  It was a necessary burial of our dearest treasures, much like the Tibetan monks destroyed their precious ancient manuscripts to keep them out of the hands of the Chinese.  It was what we had to do.  No regrets.  The world was not a safe place for the daily existence of the feminine powers.

In addition, men as a physical gender buried their inner feminine.  This can be seen even in modern times (although it is indeed shifting), where a man who is not physically strong or acts dominant is labeled as ‘weak” or “girly”.  It has not been safe for men, either, to be softer, embracing, intuitive, sensual, accepting and wise from a deep inner sense.  Can you imagine what the world will be like when the men claim and embody there inner feminine selves?  WOW.  Those are some men I want to get to know!  I am seeing this mature feminine as well as masculine emergence in my own beloved husband; it makes him courageous and warrior-like when needed, yet intuitive, discerning, deeply wise, willing to allow instead of push, and a sweet and tender lover.  Whoo baby!

Time has marched on, and humanity has evolved, and we, having fully explored the dynamics of the wounded or immature masculine in ourselves and with each other, are letting go of old concepts of the feminine and making room for larger ideas about the feminine.  We are allowing the blunt edge of dominance and suppression of the feminine (both inner and outer) to fall away under the brilliant light of clarity.  And this is occurring in each one of us in our own perfect timing.

It was in 1993 that Marianne Williamson wrote in her book A Woman’s Worth: “There is a collective force rising up on the earth today, an energy of the reborn feminine … She remembers our function on earth … This is a time of monumental shift, from the male dominance of human consciousness back to a balanced relationship between masculine and feminine. The Goddess archetype doesn’t replace God; she merely keeps him company. She expresses his feminine face.”

At that time, the way I read this statement was that men were going down in flames and women were going to grab their fair share of the power.  I was mad as hell and thinking and acting from my own inner wounded, immature masculine and feminine aspects.  My wounded feminine identified strongly with being a victim, and my wounded masculine was how I survived and made my way in the world.  I thought the only way the women would ever be treated with respect again was if we acted like the men who suppressed us.

But over the years, as I grew and softened and became more myself, I began to understand the feminine ways as powerful in and of themselves.  I began to open that cache of treasure that was buried in my psyche underneath all those years of heaviness.  I found an endless, boundless resource of love.  I understood that a truly healed, mature masculine and a truly healed, mature feminine made the perfect compliment to each other.  In fact, they were beautiful together.

It is interesting to note that if we dig into the story of humanity’s past, there are many, many examples of very strong and powerful women; queens, warriors and goddesses whose names didn’t make it to the “his-story” books.  It was a revelation to me to learn about and find that the strength of the feminine was even around in the physical form of actual women and that we just weren’t taught about it.  Let these few names of strong women (who actually existed-this is not a complete list) reverberate in your mind and heart:

Isis (Egyptian Goddess of All of Creation)

Mawu (African Goddess of the Moon)

Songi (African Protectress of the Bantu)

Nukwan (Chinese Goddess)

Danu (Irish Goddess and Protector)

Breo Saighead (Irish Goddess)

Ix Chel (Mayan Goddess of the Moon, Healing and Childbirth)

Xbaquiyalo (Mayan Goddess)

Coatlicue (Aztec Creator Goddess)

Xochiquetzal (Aztec Goddess of music, dance and love and Patroness of women’s sacred sexuality)

Queen KuBaba (Sumerian leader of war of independence)

Trung Trac and Trung Nhi (Vietnamese Sister Queens led battle against the invading Chinese)

Boudicca (Queen of Iceni, a Celtic tribe in ancient Britain, who led rebel armies against the Romans in Britain)

Hatshepsut (Egyptian, declared herself “Pharoah” rather than Queen)

Wu Zetian (Chinese, declared herself “Emperor” rather than Empress)

And these are just a scant handful of the women whose feminine strength propelled them forward into a larger vision.  Even now, consensual reality has some belief that women today are in a state of weakness and subjugation, but there are women (and men who are healing and strengthening their inner feminine) in our modern world who are changing reality every day with their strength and vision.  It is the media and the immature collective consciousness that devote their energies to the message that “feminine equals Paris Hilton”.  You have a choice about whether to buy into that message.

“Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.”

- Betty Friedan

The more we step up and claim the inner feminine in ourselves, the more she shows up in our lives.  The feminine has many aspects, some of which we recognize as docility, forgiveness, and surrender, such as we see in the Christianized Mother Mary figure.  But these traits are only a small fraction of the totality of the Sacred Feminine.  She is ALL, and she is not being fully expressed until we embrace ALL of her.  It is wise to be alert to judgments and beliefs about what it means to be feminine or masculine.  Qualities we typically associate with the masculine, such as courage, ferocity, strength, and intelligence, as well as the “softer” sides of those such as passion, sensuality, deep wisdom and intuition, are all part of the Sacred Feminine as well.  In actuality, all qualities are universal, found in both masculine and feminine essences, but the ways of accessing and expressing these qualities is different in the masculine and feminine.

 

“Darkness precedes light and she is Mother”

Inscription in the altar of the Salerno Cathedral in Italy.

We see evidence in the collective psyche of the awareness of the “darker” aspects of feminine power in the global fascination with and re-emergence of the Black Madonna (be sure to look that up if you don’t know anything about these fabulous images of the pre-Christianized Sacred Feminine.)  In the wonderful book, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the presence of the Black Madonna is central to the story of personal enlightenment and reclaiming of power for a young girl.  In the story, three symbols of feminine power constellate throughout: the Fist, a representation of feminine authority, voice and autonomy, fierce outrage at injustice, dignity, substance, being both level and wild, with an ability to shake things up, the Heart, a representation of profound connection to one another, the big, wide lap of the great mother, a lap so big there’s room for everybody, inclusiveness, nurturing, unity, compassion for what is lost or undervalued and left out, refuge, and deep and beautiful wisdom, and the Moon- Madonnas have been marked with moons since the origin of humanity, and is a representation of cycles, women, women’s cycles, tides, oceans, earth, behavior of animals, fecundity of plants, the body, the rhythms of death and life, fertility, creativity, earth’s aliveness and holiness.  Certainly in these three symbols we see examples of the diversity that is represented in the feminine!  In terms of the collective awareness of the diversity of the feminine, I have a theory that Oprah Winfrey is personification of the ancient symbol of the Black Madonna.  Think of how she aids others in getting their message out, giving them permission and a platform from which to speak.  Think of how she creatively successful she is, but especially in the ways that the masculine world considers successful (money, power, resources).  And yet she has not appeared to lose other aspects of the feminine in her rise to fame.

 “The way to true and creative life is thru the dark feminine.”

-Carl Jung

 When I set an intention to fully claim my feminine power on Winter Solstice of 2006, I set in motion a process in which she has come forward in her totality, and it is blissful and amazing to feel the power coursing through my veins.  In reclaiming my feminine power, I also recognized that I am the one who has been thinking like a victim and I chose to cease that habit immediately.  When I cease to see myself as a victim, I stop playing that role with others in my outer world, even with men and women who may prefer to see me that way. When I stop buying into that drama, I force everyone I interact with to stop, too, even if for a moment.  It is like throwing a wrench in a well-oiled machine…the machine has to stop until the wrench is removed.  And if enough wrenches are thrown in, eventually the machine doesn’t work anymore.  It has to be adapted to the new situation.

“You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.”

- Erica Jong

      My theory is that, as humanity has evolved, we have been moving through developmental stages, just like a baby does.  In the beginning, humanity as a whole was exploring pretty basic animal nature…a denser vibration of physical life.  As we learned and grew, we explored a stone-age era of matriarchal worship….perhaps women were seen as all powerful because we were able to give birth.  Then, we moved into a developmental stage where we grew our intellect and reason and learned ways of controlling nature to guarantee our survival.  There was a time when there was a balance of reverence for women and men, a sense of some stasis and equality.  Then, in the middle ages, we went deep into the age of Christianity and colonialism, defiling woman as evil and the downfall of man, as well as the earth as the mother/planet upon which we all depended for our lives.  This out-of- balance approach took us crashing headlong into the industrial age, in which we developed commercialism and the credo that the one with the most toys (money, power, resources) wins. It was during this time that we explored the worship of the male aspect. 

The anger we see today in our world, in both women and men, could be construed as a deep grief and rage at the seeming lack of presence of the feminine on the planet.  We have fully explored the masculine aspects of power…..wounded as that masculine may be.  As a collective, humanity has explored colonialism, industrialism, over-use of resources and the plundering of the planet, power-over rather than power-with, brute force instead of cooperation, and the giving away of inner power to outer sources.  We have explored victimization, blame, guilt, sexuality as degenerate and dirty, shame, doing what others want us to, and belief in lack and therefore competition to get what we want.  

But this is an era which is dying….we are still seeing the last throes of this dynamic as it senses it’s imminent departure, but make no mistake, it is on its way out.  And now we are coming into an era of balance again, but a little higher on the vibrational scale; we will explore faces of the feminine and masculine that we have not seen before in human existence.  Each time we moved up the ladder of vibration, we explored a different aspect of the masculine/feminine dynamic.   We are see-sawing our way up the vibrational scale, ultimately to a perfect union of the highest aspects of each the Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine, the marriage of the Divine Queen and King.

I had an experience just the other day that played this out for me.  I called on the strength and depth of my inner feminine, and it felt so satisfying, like taking a long drink of sweet water after being thirsty for a long, long time.  As I enjoyed feeling the immense feminine in me, I saw in my mind a scene of the wild, fierce and powerful feminine aspect personified by a naked woman with long, wild dark hair.  Her presence was strong, primitive, shamanic, almost animal-like, yet very empathetic and discerning.  She stood before a pile of bones heaped in a corner, and I knew immediately that the pile of bones were my inner broken masculine.  She stood over the bones, breathing life into them and singing to them, gathering them into her strong arms.  As she breathed and sang and rocked the bones, flesh began to grow onto them.  Over a few minutes, the bones had become a beautiful man with light brown hair and piercing blue eyes.  She put the man down, where he stood on his own two feet, and looked at her with an illumined face.  As I watched, his beautiful body became clothed in the finest splendor, and a crown of gold lay atop his head.  His face shone with love and understanding as he beamed at her, my inner feminine.  And I knew that they were in love beyond any limits.  She had, by coming forward in her greatest strength and power, held the space for healing and embraced my masculine’s brokenness, and therefore brought forth her equal.  He was already there, but a pile of bones, and through her love and desire and feminine ways of knowing, she had opened her arms and encouraged him to come into himself.  The missing complete man was made whole by the love, strength, compassion and power of the woman who desired her truest partner.  And now the inner feminine and the inner masculine could join together in ecstatic holy union.  The two were again one.

As this scene played out, I felt energetic shifts in my body and feelings swirling around.  Breathless, I watched the glorious masculine come into the flesh and meet the feminine’s gaze, and I cried with recognition and joy.  I know this beautiful man!  I aspire to be him, just as I aspire to be the highest aspects of my feminine self!  As they embraced each other and began a long eon of passionate tangling, I wept with relief that my inner selves were indeed making love and becoming whole.  It was remarkable.  

Here is what I know; what we are ready to allow into our consciousness, appears.  What we are ready to put our focus on suddenly makes sense to us and we begin to see more of it.  What we are ready to embrace in ourselves, we are ready to embrace in the outer world.

The feminine has always been here, has never truly “gone away”….there is no “return”, but rather a remembrance and recognition of the strength of the feminine and its grace and its wisdom and it’s all-encompassing acceptance and it’s ways of power and knowing.  SHE IS RIGHT HERE and has been all along.  There is no tragic loss of the feminine….no departure or abandonment….it is just us humans, going though our growth process, who lost our awareness of her.  Our awareness of the presence of the feminine is what went underground; our conscious knowing of ourselves is what went underground, not the feminine itself.  And we are ready to internally embrace her again.   

 

“When they are equally present, all is calm.  When one is outweighed by the other, there is confusion and disarray.”

-central tenet of Taoism

 

The Stolen Mother Moon

from a story that Clarissa Pinkola Estes tells on “warming the stone child”, worshipfully transcribed by Licia Berry

This is about a light, a certain kind of light that is represented by the moon, a psychic light, a cool light, it has some distance to it, not the hyper-tropic mother that is all over her children every time their nose is running they might have pneumonia, this is a mother that is a little more aloof, a little more circumspect, she does not so much love by showering love as she loves by guiding, by bringing consciousness out of the darkness.

There was this village, a wonderful village, and everything happened just the way it was supposed to happen, and all the children were terrific and all the mothers and fathers loved each other, except, as there always must be in the psyche and in fairy tales, there was this one thing that was very, very adverse…..this beautiful, harmonious village was surrounded by a moat of black, murky bogs.  It was dark there always, and it stank because everything was rotting.  It was for that reason, the darkness of those quagmires and quicksand, that the people depended on the light of the moon to guide them at night.  Some nights, she did not come, and on those nights the bogs were filled with treachery, because there were evil things that lived there.  Things that live in the darkest corners of humans’ minds would come out at night and lead the poor, struggling travelers with no light into the quagmires and drown them. 

Well, it turned out that several people died in the course of a very short amount of time.  When the Moon Mother learned of this, she was filled with sorrow, for she cared for humans.  In fact she was so concerned she decided she would come to earth and see for herself.  So when the dark of the month came, she stepped onto a slow shooting star and landed at the edge of the marshes.  She wore a black cape pulled around her so that no light could escape, and for as far as she could see, the bogs were like black mirrors, with a few sparse willows sticking up here and there, and the smell of muck everywhere.

Around the bottom of her cape there was a bright rim of light; she saw that and she pulled her cape even tighter.  It was so cold she was trembling, and she feared the evil ones, just as we all do, but she loved the human soul more, and so she began her investigation, guided by the little golden light that leaked through her cape over her beautiful white feet.

She felt her way through the grass with the dank ponds on the left and the quagmires on the right. And just as she had thought she got the lay of the land, all of the sudden, she felt a vine across her ankles, and too late to hold herself, she began to fall forward.  She reached for a twining tree, the kind under the control of the evil ones, and sure as she grabbed its branches, it sent out tendrils around her wrists and her ankles, holding her as though with manacles.  And the more she struggled, the tighter it held her.  And there she was in the blackest dark, shivering and straining. 

She heard a voice calling from far off, “help me, please help”.  She listened and the cry came nearer and nearer, and she heard footfalls stumbling; at last by the dim light of the stars, she saw a haggard, despairing face with fearful eyes and she knew it was a poor soul who had lost its way, and was floundering on to his death. 

And the traveler now caught sight of the glimmer of light from the captive moon, and made his way toward the light, thinking it meant help, but there was a quagmire right in front of the moon.  She was filled with sorrow because she was luring him with her little tiny light, luring him to his death.  Frantic to warn him, she struggled until her hood fell back, and her dazzling hair lit the black waters; a flood of yellow, precious light of the Moon Mother glinted and the whole was as bright as day. How relieved the traveler was to see the evil ones rush back into their underwater holes. 

But the moon struggled against the branches which held her tighter, and she was so glad he was safe, but the traveler ran to the edge of the marsh so quickly, with such haste and relief that he forgot to wonder about the wondrous thing that had just occurred.  And the Mother Moon sank, exhausted into the mud, and as she did, her head fell onto her breast and her hood fell back over her hair and all became darkness again.

And the vile things that love the dark came too, then.  They came with a kind of whisper chatter… “we’ll get her now, we’ll get her now, now we’ll kill her, yes, we’ll kill her.”  They gathered around the Moon Mother, snarling and kicking and grasping, and they drove her into the ground, they who hated humans.  At last, no more light shown across those dark waters.  The One who gave light and even more, the One who shown down on mothers nursing their babies, the One who made sleeping women kiss their lovers’ backs, the One who put words into the dreams of poets, that One was pushed deep into the mud.  The evil ones didn’t care about mothers or babies; they didn’t care about lovers or poets.  The Moon Mother let one last ray of light zig zag over the waters before she disappeared completely.  The evil ones rolled a great boulder over her grave and danced a crazy dance on top of it.

On nights there was no light to guide, and so many people became lost, and so many children became orphaned, and so many people suffered, that the villagers decided they must go and find what had become of the moon.  Armed with torches and clubs, they trekked through the night into the bog, sinking down into the wet and slimy grass all the way up to their knees, and cold and wet they continued on.  The evil things were about and surrounded them, scratching and clawing at them, but the flames from their torches kept them safe.  

And they came to a great boulder, and they said they did not think this boulder was in this place before.  There was a little lip of light all the way around it that shown whiter than white.  With great excitement they lifted and they hauled and they tugged until the boulder rolled away.  And then staring down into what seemed like the most beautiful face they had ever seen, they saw eyes filled with the love of humanity.

  The light rose up, lighting their faces first from beneath and then straight on and then finally from the top as the Moon Mother escaped from her prison and climbed the dark staircase back to the sky, where now, on most nights, she travels across the sky with her hood turned down and with her radiant light everywhere. 

And on those few, now predictable nights, when she veils herself in grey and does not shine, travelers have learned to stay by the hearth and wait until she shows the way again.