The leap into an alternate reality

In that moment, (although I would not fully understand it for many years) I took a powerful, empowering leap into an alternate "reality." I began by practicing a different response to the periodically recurring sense that I wasn't "enough." I, each time, risked doing LESS (rather than more) of what I was already doing at the moment I had the feeling of being not-enough.

That practice began the process of refusing to accept the whole crazymaking framework that kept telling me that only more, bigger, faster, yesterday was "valuable" or "OK."

That practice began (just barely) the process of learning to listen to the deep, (yet faint) voice of the Sacred Feminine re-emerging into my consciousness.

Over the years since that luminous moment, I have been listening more and more fully to the now not-so-faint voice of the Sacred Feminine as it speaks through my deepest self. I am coming to live and move ever more fully in that parallel, sometimes invisible, universe where woman-centered values, ethics and inner-knowings guide my choices.

I remember to love myself no matter what anyone else thinks or says about me. I go only as fast as the slowest part of me feels safe to go. I am really kind, gentle and tender with myself. I remember that rest is a sacred act: as significant, productive and meaningful as any other "activity." I remember to listen inward when I feel confused, trusting my body and my belly to let me know what is so for me. And, I keep letting go of all the rules and forms I've been taught when they conflict with what my deep knowing places tell me.

Exploring how collaboration unfolds

In work a close friend and I have been doing together over the past few years we have been taking what we each have learned inside our own separate experiences of listening inward to our deep selves and begun the incredibly exciting process of exploring how collaboration unfolds in the field of the Sacred Feminine. We discover again and again that old forms and ways (even those that are much honored) feel confining, constricting and deadening. It feels almost impossible to have new things happen through the old forms. We are constantly being taught to create only loose and permeable containers for the work; to be always willing to let go of even provisional form if what comes to fill it takes us somewhere else. We are taught to stay with intentions rather than to be limited by more focussed goals, to stay unattached to outcome and to be willing to range where the energy in the moment takes us.

We learn to follow the lead of Spirit/our deep selves, taking the first steps as they come to us, trusting that the unfolding energy will shape and refine us as we move along with it. We come to trust that we do not need to see where we are going, only the step that asks to be taken next. We learn to stop all forward motion whenever either of us feels uncomfortable (even when we are barely able to articulate the nature of the discomfort). We trust that the discomfort in our feelings or in our bodies is an important message about what is or isn't going on in the sharing. We learn to trust that what becomes manifest in either of us has significance for both of us in the shared field.

We talk about what has words, we listen inward and we listen to each other. We sit in silence. We ask Spirit for help and guidance. Sometimes we rant about our frustration, sometimes we cry. Sometimes we just slow down and breathe. We are clear about our differences when they emerge. We do not require that we agree, or that we do things similarly, only that we clearly hear each other’s view/concern/need. Rather than homogenizing ourselves or compromising the best of what we each hope for, we risk sitting with the edges and discomforts of our differences until we see the way that honors the essence of both of our needs.

Sometimes it seems excruciating, this process...this waiting. We stay long past the threshold at which the discomfort might in the past have caused us to cave in. We stay because we trust it IS possible for each of us to have 100% of what we need in the shared space. Sometimes the path of resolution reveals itself easily, magically and simply.

Sometimes when it's hard, we each give ourselves permission to walk away from it all for a time (and even to entertain the possibility that we might just let it go forever!). Then the magic creeps up behind us and happens anyway. And, what looked like an ending or a detour instead opens a whole new path.

Opening to the energy of the Sacred Feminine Field (and our deep selves) has kept us each and both moving beyond our limited earlier visions: of ourselves, of our collaboration and of the work we are each and both being asked to do each moment.

The gestation of this website

A profound, unswerving commitment to go only as fast as the slowest part feels safe to go (even when the next step is clear and calling) has made for a three year long gestation cycle in the birth of this special web place. During the long birthing season, the For The Little Ones Inside Catalog and the coaching/therapy/counseling work I do in Ojai and by phone have "held the space." Both have been allowing me to share the still unfolding learnings of this journey of reclaiming the ancient wisdom of the Sacred Feminine with a world-wide, great and always growing number of others who find themselves on the same path to remembering and reclaiming our birthright.

This special web space is unfolding as a way to expand that network and to offer to all who visit here an exuberant, lushly nourishing, extravagantly comforting, compassionate oasis. It's a place to rest soul and being from the on going, ever increasing crazy-makingness of the ordinary world in which we spend so much of our time. Welcome to this doorway. Come again and again and share in the unfolding vision of wholeness.

This is your warm invitation to come and play in the Sacred Field of the Feminine. Here we remember that we can be loving, gentle and tender with ourselves in every moment no matter how "imperfect" we may believe we are. We remember the magic of going slowly, the voluptuousness of resting, the extraordinary strength of vulnerability, the wisdom of not-knowing, the pregnant richness of empty places within and around us, the lavish healing gifts of the natural world, the healing balm of silliness and the numberless other wonders that we, in our deep knowing places, can't help recognizing as familiar, even if long forgotten.

May you delight in and feel nourished by all you find here! May we all keep learning to ever better hear the voice of our deep knowing selves, and may we always walk and dance in the wisdom and beauty of the Sacred Feminine as She lives within us!

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