Imagine for a moment that you went into a cocoon as a caterpillar.

You knew the caterpillar way.

You crawled around on things.  You couldn’t go very far.  Your vision was restricted.  You couldn’t see very far.  Your choices were largely defined by your location.  You were not the master of your destiny.

Yes, imagine that you went into the cocoon as a caterpillar, small vision, small range of movement, small part to play, not very powerful…

And then you dissolved.

You became fluid.  You lost all sense of yourself as a caterpillar.  In fact, you lost all sense of yourself.  You became the void.

Then, just as suddenly as you dissolved, you began to take shape again.

Right now, in this moment, you are solid again.  You know you have a new form.  But you don’t yet know what shape you have taken.  You just know you are starting to feel a little cramped in this cocoon.  You sense that it’s time to come out.  It’s time to find out what all of this means.

A tiny hole opens up in the cocoon.  You look out.  You begin to sense that you will rise above the tree tops and into the bright blue sky.  Somehow you know you will also come back down again.  You know you will descend and kiss the flowers and the grass where they grow.

You press your way through the hole.  You feel the pressure of the cocoon against your wings ringing the water out as you struggle to break free.

You emerge.

Your wings are not quite dry yet.

You don’t yet know how to fly.

You don’t even know what flying is.

All you know is that you are no longer a caterpillar.  You know this because you have begun to flap your wings.

You have been through the end of the world as you knew it and you have emerged from your cocoon into a brand new reality.

You have emerged into butterfly reality.

But what do butterflies do?

Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss.”

Everybody says this now.  No one really knows what it means.  No one seems to ask what Joseph Campbell thought it meant.  We just put it on some slides and made it the mantra of the modern age.

Void of any context, this follow your bliss business sounds a lot like HoHo’s for breakfast and orgies in the afternoon; a fine way to live until you start getting dizzy from low blood sugar and lonely from lack of real connection.  This kind of meaningless “pleasure” is not real bliss.  This is not the butterfly way!

It may look to us like butterflies just flit about from place to place filling the sky with color.  But butterflies are more than eye candy flying by.  There is a purpose to the flight of the butterflies.  They, like bees, are nature’s pollinators.

Butterflies spread new life.

That’s what butterflies do.

Bliss, said Joseph Campbell, is “that deep sense of being present, of doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself…bliss is the welling up of the energy of the transcendent wisdom within you.”

When you choose to follow your bliss, you can’t help but choose to pollinate the world around you.  Choosing to follow your bliss is about transforming yourself and it is about creating real meaning and happiness for you.  But it’s also about spreading new life.  It’s about adding something new to the collective consciousness. It’s about sharing your gifts and your joy.

Joseph Campbell also wrote about what he called “the hero’s journey.”  He found that this journey is reflected across cultures and in all of the world’s mythology.

The hero’s journey is essentially a journey of self mastery.  It is made up of the experiences that will put you in touch with your bliss.  The hero’s journey opens the door to the welling up of the transcendent wisdom within you.  The aim of the hero’s journey is maturity.

When you take the hero’s journey, like the butterfly emerging from the cocoon, you will eventually return to the world.  You will come back from the journey with the boon of wisdom in hand.  Like the caterpillar, when you enter the cocoon of the hero’s journey, you are saying yes to dissolution.  You are saying goodbye to your old caterpillar ways.

The hero’s journey is a death and rebirth.  After the journey, you will have something new to offer the world.  Your personality will be transformed.  Your way of participating in life will be utterly changed.  Your sense of yourself, your power, and your place in the world will have been reframed.

You will stop relying solely on your intellectual knowledge for guidance.  You will give up emotional reactions.  You will go from living according to your unchecked emotional impulses and the unquestioned dictates of your rational mind to actively envisioning and investing in a new way of life.  Your vision will be rooted in your wisdom and in your own inner knowing.

The hero’s journey is designed to provoke a psychological breakthrough that will disabuse you of the notion that you are weak, and reactive.  It is meant to destroy your sense of yourself as a mere victim of circumstance.  It will push you to lay down your sense of powerlessness and pick up your fierceness and your commitment to something greater than yourself.  It will invite you to trade in naiveté for discernment.  The hero’s journey will force you to connect with your own wisdom.  It will force you to develop your own internal locus of control.  If you embrace the journey, if you answer its call, you will be utterly changed.

You will emerge from your journey as a wise warrior!

You will know how to listen to your emotions without succumbing to them.  You will understand the difference between the creative use of intellect and the endless mind chatter that only serves as a distraction.  You will discipline your mind and your emotions according to your vision.

You will care for your body as a treasure and as the vehicle for manifesting a new kind of life.

You will ground your actions in your wisdom and your vision.  You will act with skill.

In the process of becoming a wise warrior you will develop real detachment.  Old wounds and habit patterns will dissolve.  You will develops a sense of self that is deeply connected to your own wisdom and worth.  You will stop searching for acceptance and validation in a world that is not connected to wisdom.

You won’t have to spend so much time trying to avoid pricking old wounds.  You won’t invest so much energy in trying to fix what is wrong with you.  Instead, as the wise warrior, you will know your own value and you will show real compassion to yourself and others.

As the hero turned wise warrior you will sees with clear eyes.  You will live by clear intentions.    You will accept responsibility for yourself and your life.  You will meet the challenges you face with faith, intention, compassion, and wise, skillful action.  Suddenly, challenges will be about growth and readiness.

As the hero turned wise warrior, you will live spontaneously and according to your bliss.  You will follow your joy.  You will help others to do the same.  Your mere presence will be an inspiration.

This is the butterfly way.

Big vision, wide range of movement, huge part to play, very powerful…

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The post After the Transformation ∞ Discovering the Butterfly Way appeared first on Rebecka Eggers.

 “If we cultivate skillful means without cultivating penetrating insight, we will stumble blindly and never discover the desired city; if we have penetrating insight without skillful means, we have no way of actually traveling there.” ∞ Judith Simmer-Brown, Dakini’s Warm Breath

I was standing in my shower the other day literally shaking with fear over the decision to open my life to someone.  This was a few days after the bomb went off at the Boston Marathon.

I wanted to put this man under 24 hour surveillance to be sure my decision was right.  I wanted to track his every move, read all his email, watch him when he thought he was alone…My insides were shaking, my hands were shaking, my mind was spinning.  Suddenly this vision of police in riot gear and surveillance cameras lining every street flashed through my mind.  The collective and the personal merged.  That is when it hit me.

The police state that is forming all around us isn’t out there somewhere.  It is inside of us.  It is in our collective consciousness.  The police state is our mirror.

We now believe that we can become omniscient and omnipotent with our surveillance cameras and our spy agencies.  We believe we can crack down with control and somehow avoid the risks and responsibilities of being together in this world.  We cannot.

We cannot eliminate the collective risks of occupying this beautiful globe together.  We also cannot eliminate the personal risks of opening our hearts to one another.  We have no idea what tomorrow will bring.  That is part of being alive.  Not knowing is part of the dance we do together.  Even pain and loss are a part of this dance.

The perils of the dance cannot be eradicated.  Pain and loss cannot be excluded from our lives.

But we can rob the dance of spontaneity by trying to make it safe.  We can destroy its human essence by trying to ensure a happy outcome.  We can steal the joy from it by giving up our freedoms and asking others to do the same.

If we continue down the road of creating a police state personally or collectively we will lose something far more precious than the false sense of safety gained.

We are placing our humanity and the joy of living at risk.

There is another way!

We can confront our fear.  We can accept the wisdom and naturalness of our pain (and our pleasure).

The predominant emotion in the modern collective psyche is fear.  This is not the kind of fear that crops up when you come face to face with a wild tiger.  Wild-tiger fear motivates you to take immediate action to save yourself from imminent danger.  It is resolved instantly.  The moment the threat ends the fear disappears.

The fear I am talking about is an artificial fear.  A barrage of negative messages stoke this fear every day.  All day long other people are constantly stimulating our fear response in order to achieve everything from higher sales to greater control of the population.  Even well meaning people are stoking our fear with the constant emphasis on fearful things we are supposed to rise up and fight against.

This fear has no resolution at all.  It is ubiquitous and without solution.  This fear forms the backdrop of our modern lives.

We are taught to be afraid that our bodies are not sexy enough, our clothes not stylish enough, our car not swanky enough…We are advised to fear terrorists and domestic violence and rape and child murderers and chemical weapons and AIDs and cancer and our food and our government and each other…The list is endless.

We are having a collective, and ongoing feargasm.  Our indulgence in fear has become a very bad habit and a free floating nightmare.  Our fear has become untethered.  It is no longer linked to any specific threat.  It has lost much of its meaning.  Our efforts to combat it have reached the crisis point.

The dominant values of the current age are strength, control, and logic.  So, we respond to our fear with our logic, our will, and our brute force.  We discipline ourselves in an effort to become physically more attractive rather than asking what would make use more healthy in body, mind, and spirit.  We try to make more money so we can own that swanky car and buy those stylish clothes rather than cultivating our sense of worth.  We respond to the threat of AIDs with latex as a substitute for actually knowing our partners and ourselves.  We fight “terrorism” with constant surveillance and shocking violence rather than examining our relationship to the global community.  We deal with our fear of violence and betrayal through suspicion and isolation rather than focusing on the quality of our relationships.

We try to see and know everything that possibly could happen so that we can protect ourselves and so that we never have to feel the ache of loss or of betrayal.

The more we try to combat our fear with logic, will, and force, the more fear we seem to have.  We also cultivate danger and pain in this way.  We are suffering as a result of our fear.

Meanwhile, we are unable to cultivate freedom, fulfillment, and peace of mind.  Instead, we are living in a state of hyper-vigilance and striving.  We have become like rats on a treadmill.  We don’t know where we are going or what we are trying to accomplish.  We are simply responding to and amplifying the external cues.

How did this happen?

We have nearly eradicated the Divine Feminine from our collective consciousness.  She is the seat of our collective and personal wisdom.  She is the part of us that knows without having to look.  The wisdom of the Divine Feminine is the doorway through the fear.  She and Her wisdom will initiate us into bliss.

We must invite Her to rise within each of us.  We must make space to hear Her.

In order to connect with Her, we need to turn off the TV, sign out of Facebook, put our money back in our wallets, and take a seat.  We need to disconnect from the messages of culture, the constant barrage of information, and from the collective fear consciousness so that an atmosphere of silence can form around us and within is.  In this way, from within the silence, we can come to know Her and to recognize Her within ourselves.

Once we do this we will be able to cultivate and hold a new vision for our lives (individually and collectively), a vision that is rooted in the wisdom of the Divine Feminine in us.

Once the Divine Feminine has awakened and found a welcoming home in us, the Divine Masculine can fully awaken as well.  He can manifest as will, logic, and strength deployed in service of higher purpose.  Without Her, the Divine Masculine cannot fully manifest in its highest expression.  Without wisdom, the masculine will express as a helter skelter action void of real purpose and direction.  Our actions will remain unskillful and bliss will remain just outside our grasp.

But when Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine come together, intent and skillful action will take the place of brute force.  Faith and self trust will take the place of hyper-vigilance.  Flexibility and flow will take the place of control.  Bliss and fulfillment will take the place of constant striving.

Once we, as individuals, are connected to our own inner wisdom and living according to our vision for our lives, we can also have a positive impact on the collective consciousness.  We can become transmitters of peace and fulfillment.  We can allow bliss to rise up and to enter the collective consciousness through us.

This bliss I am talking about does not depend upon avoiding pain or achieving a specific outcome.  In order to achieve it, we employ wisdom, intention, and skillful action and then we simply let go and dance with whatever arises.

This kind of bliss can be the new world order!  The choice is yours and it is ours.

Are you willing to see the external world as your mirror and to confront the police state in your mind?

Are you willing to take responsibility for our collective fear and its progeny by releasing it within yourself?

Are you ready to disconnect from the feargasm and enter into bliss by consciously cultivating wisdom and skillful action?

The Passion Path “makes the demand that we know ourselves, rather than simply engage in a fuzzy snuggle with our ego.  The mirror in this context is a place for confrontation and contemplation.” ∞ Peter Grey, The Red Goddess

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The post Beyond the Feargasm ∞ Cultivating Bliss appeared first on Rebecka Eggers.

“With the disconnect from the Sacred there is no transcendence, merely acquisitive, ego-feeding need.  Our worth is counted in a youth bought in extension with face creams, and our sexual allure propped up with Viagra and cut with cocaine…If we are going to be whores, we should fuck and feast as if we were divine.  These are our last days on earth.”  ∞ Peter Grey, The Red Goddess

Something has been lost in the New Age rush towards the Light.  Fierceness is missing in action!  We are afraid of it.

We have seen fierce men savage the land, tear women apart with sexual violation, and vanquish any sense of feminine value with simple acts of cruel dismissal.  We have also seen the shadow masculine channeled through large organizations and regimes that are now self perpetuating.  Their energy of dominance and exploitation has taken on a life of its own.

We have seen fierceness in women turn them into exhausted, near dead copies of the masculine “ideal.”  They have lost themselves in striving and conquering.  I have been there.

In an effort to restore some love and wisdom to this world, we have asked men and women alike to return to softness.  In our effort to contain the kind of masculine aggression that leads to domestic violence and sexual abuse, we have also enshrined victimhood as an ideal.  The rush towards the Light seems to demand that we tiptoe around trying not to offend anyone’s delicate sensibilities and working to make sure nothing that looks like aggression becomes a part of our bedroom dance.  Meanwhile a blowout is happening on the other end of the spectrum.

The rush to the Light hasn’t solved anything.  It has only caused the mass rejection of fierceness and the characterization of all aggression as a sin worthy of excommunication from the progressive community.  All this emphasis on the Light to the exclusion of anything resembling Darkness has only sent aggression and fierceness underground rather than giving it its rightful expression in the Warrior archetype.  We have tried to exorcise the Warrior.  It is now expressing as the opposite pole to the passivity that runs rampant in the New Age community.

Ishtar is the Babylonian Goddess of Love and War.  There is good reason for this.  Love and War go hand in hand.

The male lover who lacks the Warrior’s fierceness and commitment to a transpersonal cause is a Don Juan running about the streets with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and his dick in the other.  The female lover who lacks the Warrior opens her knees indiscriminately without asking for honor and reverence or else she gets lost in the idle romantic fantasies of the Don Juan seeing only the flowers.  She mistakes seduction for love.  Over and over again, her heart is broken.

The warrior without the Lover is just a soldier.  A soldier either expresses as unbridled, indiscriminate aggression or his aggression is directed by his orders.  A soldier doesn’t know what he is fighting for.

When the right set up is in place, both fierceness and aggression are part of the Love dance.  They are a natural, normal, and desirable part of life and of manifesting everything from dreams and goals to passionate relationships.  It isn’t the content we need to look at.  It is the context.

There is so much talk these days about honoring the Goddess.  Much of the dialogue centers around having more pleasurable sexual experiences as if being sweet to the Divine Feminine (and to the women who stand as vessels for Her) will solve everything.

I have come to know Ishtar over months of working with Her.  I have offered myself as a conduit for Her over and over again.  I don’t think She is interested in sweet.  I don’t think She cares whether you have better orgasms or not, at least not as an end all be all for sacred sexual engagement.

There was a time in Babylon when the High Priestess and her male consort came together in fertility rites.  Both masculine and feminine energies and the exchange of those energies was seen as vital to thriving crops and a thriving civilization.  I get the sense these were fierce, aggressive, primal rites as much as they were soft and pleasurable.

The High Priestess and the Priest made love in possession states.  They opened to the Divine and gave it full expression in human form.  In this context of mutuality and complementary opposites, aggression and fierceness were not a problem.  Women didn’t need to ask for honor and reverence.  It was built into the culture.

If I am honored and revered my lover can pin me up against the wall and take me with all the fierceness he can muster.  I will return the fierceness thrust for thrust.  Without honor and reverence, he needn’t touch me at all.  He will only come to know my fierceness in another capacity.  He will incite the ferocity of my Warrior.  I think Ishtar would approve.

I don’t intend to sound like I am angry at men.  Women have played a huge part in creating the dynamics of the hedonistic, pleasure focused sexuality that has emerged.  We have settled for sweet in the place of reverence and asked men to be soft so we could feel assured that nothing will ever get out of control.

Women have often put on the victim role and kept it on long after it ceased to serve any useful purpose such as exposing and addressing a violation.  We have been so afraid of men that we have rejected anyone who actually behaves like a man.  We have settled for fly boys, men lacking commitment to anything beyond the present moment.  Fly boys make love with one foot out the door as they kiss you tenderly.  A distraction!

Women have been focused on all the wrong things.  We have only asked that we never have to confront the edge of our comfort zone and that we never have to process the abuse we have suffered so we can leave it behind.  We have paid a terrible price for our comfort.  We have victimized ourselves over and over again and we have used the fly boys to do it.

As for men, how many are willing to truly take on the responsibility of being a conduit for the God, a pillar of the thriving community, the seed that makes the crops grow?  How many men are willing to go even further by cultivating their masculine power in its fullest and then bringing the fertility rites within?  Who is willing to seed the womb of the Ishtar that lives within the soul of every man instead of projecting his creative capacity and sensuality on the women around him?

This is the true order of things.  Learn to love yourself and to care for yourself and your desires first.  Commit to becoming the master of yourself.  I will do the same.

And I am calling my sisters.  Awaken Priestess!  Come to the temple and worship and then know yourself as the living temple of the Goddess.

Ishtar’s flower is the rose.  Every woman is Her Priestess.  Let the rosebud remain tightly closed until a Warrior Lover comes along and incites the rose to blossom.  Then let him ravish Ishtar with every ounce of fierceness he can bring.  Let him fiercely support Her in Her shining.  Let him fiercely defend Her temple against all assaults that would diminish or degrade the value of womanhood.  Let him fiercely commit to Her happiness and to the children of their union whether they be spiritual or physical.  Let him fiercely plant both feet squarely on the ground and Love Her ecstatically.  Let him fiercely witness Her in ecstasy as She bathes his loins in the living waters of Her womb.  Let him fiercely drink of Her nectar and know that it is sweet.

“Life has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur and its reality in ecstasy and in ecstatic love.”   ∞ George Bataille

If you would like to get in touch with me or learn more about the programs that I offer, you can sign-up for the Unleash Your Passion Newsletter by entering your email below.

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I would like to acknowledge three sources of inspiration for this blog:
The Red Goddess by Peter Grey;
Iron Jon: A Book About Men by Robert Bly; and
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette.

All are available for purchase through my Amazon Store.

The post Ravishing Ishtar ∞ Inciting the Rose to Blossom appeared first on Rebecka Eggers.

Blossom, my darling, blossom, be a rose

Of roses unchidden and purposeless; a rose

For rosiness only, without an ulterior motive;

For me it is more than enough if the flower unclose.

            ∞ D.H. Lawrence

Ishtar was the Goddess of Love and War for both the Assyrians and the Babylonians.  Herodotus once described a scene from the temple of the Goddess in Assyria.  Apparently every virgin had to be deflowered by a stranger at the temple of the Goddess.  This signified that a woman’s sexuality was not her own.  It belonged to the Goddess and the Goddess accepted everyone.  Such was the way of the sacred prostitute.

I began working with Ishtar several months ago.  The closer I have gotten to Her, the less I have been interested in sharing my sexuality with men.  I began to wonder how this could possibly be.  I have essentially opened to Ishtar as her priestess, asking her to incarnate in me as she once did in the temple priestesses.  Ishtar is the Holy Whore.  She is empowered, unbridled female sexuality.

In search of answers, I opened myself to this scene at the temple.  I imagined myself as a virgin in waiting and I sought to understand the context of the ritual.

This ritual took place in a culture that revered the Goddess.  Priestesses of Ishtar channeled Her in fertility rites.  They literally entered into possession states as did the men who stood in stead for the God.  These rites were acts of worship and of Divine emulation.  These cultures luxuriated in both spirit and flesh.

I began to wonder what sort of man approached the temple in those days.  It is impossible to know.  But I imagine the men who worshiped at the temple were raised to love women and to revere the Goddess.  I sense that these unions took place in feminine space and by rules that honored the sacredness of women and of sexuality.

Therein lies my answer.  I am not in Babylon or Assyria.  Women are not generally revered at this time in history.  I can’t think of a single example of a modern or primitive culture in existence today that truly honors and reveres the feminine.

I believe Ishtar is a thoroughly modern Goddess.  I sense that she has adapted to the times.  There has been a twist in the plot.

Ishtar isn’t just a Goddess of Love and fertility available for all takers.  Ishtar is also a Goddess of War.  She is no one to be trifled with.  She knows who She is, what She is worth, and where Her boundaries are.  I imagine She has blood under her fingernails both from raking the backs of her lovers in passionate embrace and from soundly refusing those who come to Her without stopping to make themselves holy at the temple gates.

Rumor has it Ishtar was actually revered as both masculine and feminine.

Under Ishtar’s guidance, I have become like a sealed container.  But I am not sexless or living without sensual pleasure.  Pleasure is in Ishtar’s nature and it is in mine.  I am simply expressing Ishtar in her Virgin essence.  I am a woman whole and complete.  My sensuality and my sexual pleasure are directed inward to the consort, the masculine that lives in me.  I am the union of the fiery drive of the masculine and the wisdom and potential of the feminine.  The fertility rites of ancient times are alive in me.

This has actually been a key part of my own development.  In this way, I have arrested my sexuality from a culture that does all it can to suggest that my power as a woman comes from my ability to sexually excite the men around me.  This stands in stark contrast to the ancient rites when I imagine the bosom of the Goddess was meant to excite a man into desire for Her and into lustful worship.  I imagined a man once excited offered his seed as a gift to spark Her creations to life.

In Ishtar’s presence, I have come to understand that I am both masculine and feminine.  I have learned to take responsibility for my pleasure and for seeding and supporting my own creations.  Ishtar has taught me to bring the fertility rites within, to manifest with the seed of my own soul.  Ishtar is urging me to claim my power and to take dominion over my own life.

Ishtar’s flower is the rose.  And she has made me like a rosebud, closed tightly and waiting.  But I am not waiting passively like Sleeping Beauty.  I am living.  I am a dynamic being.  I am even free to initiate.  There is no shame in making love.  Ishtar has not asked me to lock my sexuality away.  She has taught me to keep it like a treasure, reserved for only the most exquisite moments with only the most exquisite men.  She has gifted me with the discernment to know the difference between a marauding pirate skulking around for things he will never truly appreciate and a devotee who has stopped to wash himself at the edge of the temple gates.  When next a devotee passes by, I can only imagine what ecstatic states await us should we choose the adventure together.

Gently, gently open your eyes and look at the face of Love.  ∞ Rumi          

If you would like to get in touch with me or learn more about the programs that I offer, you can sign-up for the Unleash Your Passion Newsletter by entering your email below.

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A key inspiration for this blog was The Red Goddess by Peter Grey.

The post Manifesting Ishtar ∞ A Rosebud Closed Tightly & Waiting appeared first on Rebecka Eggers.

“When a person chooses the one thing most precious, it is a serious act…The passion of our nature urges a human being to choose ‘the one precious thing,’ and urges [her] to pay for it.” ∞ Robert Bly

Over the course of the last few weeks it has become clear to me that the tapes from my fundamentalist Christian upbringing were still running in my head.  The church ladies of my youth were chatting away as the ministers conjured hell fire and brimstone in the back of my mind.  This realization brought me to a choice point, the crossroads, if you will, between two different ways of seeing and being in the world.

As I brought these old familiar voices of punishment and condemnation to the front of my mind, I became clear to me.  It’s time to go!  I am leaving the church in every sense of the word LEAVING.  It’s over.  We are through.  I’m evicting the church ladies and the ministers too.

There’s a new Girl in town!

But before I go any further, I need to make something clear.

This choice point has nothing to do with Jesus at all.  I am ay-okay with Jesus.  He preached a message of liberal political and religious reform in the context of two repressive regimes – the Jewish religious authorities and the Roman state.  He died for what he believed.  I bow to Him.

Regardless, what Jesus thinks of what I am doing is really beside the point.  It is beside the point that is, unless I think He and His father are waiting for me to screw up so they can send me off for a little sulphur cocktail down by the lake of fire.  And I am going on record right now.  I don’t think that at all!

Actually, I am guessing Jesus would be standing here with me today.  In fact, as a personal matter, I know He would be standing right beside me at the crossroads.  I asked Him to show me the feminine face of God and He did.  It is Her face that greets me today and it is She who offers me something new.

But let me back up just a bit…

The Christian Church, even in its most benign expressions, has, generally speaking, done as much as possible to remove the sacred feminine from human collective consciousness.  The overall message about sexuality is abysmal, and it is only getting worse and more politicized.  The projection of shame onto the female body and onto female sexuality is beyond grotesque.  The notion of divine punishment as expressed through the concepts of confession, forgiveness, sin, redemption, and obedience is tantamount to an ongoing trauma.  The messages of conditional love and punishment by torture bring the constant fear of abandonment and anguish.

The path I just described is an invitation to a zipless, joyless life of conformity and fear.  It’s message is a dangerous one on a psychological level.  This is especially true for women.  As a woman, this message urges me to look into the face of God and see only the face of my brothers reflected there.  This message would have me erase my own shining face from the mirror and deny that I too was made in the image of the Divine.

I want no part of this.

I am especially vexed by the notion that I am supposed to feel loved by embracing the idea that Jesus tortured himself at the hands of Rome and died so that I can be reconciled to a God that would otherwise destroy me in wrathful anger and jealousy.  And don’t even get me started on the witch hunts, the Inquisition, and the Crusades much less the hypocrisy and grotesque excesses of the Catholic Church and the evangelical mega churches.

I can’t sugar coat this any longer.  I can’t make apologies for it in my own mind or in the world at large.  I can only own the fact that these things are ingrained in me and that I am taking responsibility for disgorging them from my consciousness.

Do I sound angry?  You bet your ass I am angry.  And unapologetic.  Anger is the very thing that tells us something is wrong!  I’m finally all in on the anger!

Anger is not my stopping point though.  It is the alchemical agent that is allowing me to finally make an affirmative choice as a woman and as a spiritual being.  It is a doorway to a different way of life.  My anger is asking me to choose.

I have chosen.

There was another way many years ago.

There was a time when women were revered as priestesses of the Goddess and men knew themselves as devotees who stood in place of God in the sacred fertility rites.  Sex and pleasure took place in a context of harmony with nature, between the sexes, and in unquestioned union with the Divine.  Sexual union in the context of the fertility rites took place in states of possession.  The priest and priestess opened to the Divine and were literally possessed by the God and Goddess.  Polarity and duality were about creating.  The fertility rites were about insuring the harvest and supporting life.  Neither men nor women were denigrated.  Masculine and feminine were two strands woven together in a dance of harmony and passionate union.  I get the sense it was a luscious, joyful, soulful way to live.

These rites I am talking about were pre-Christian rites that originated in Sumer and were later carried over into Babylonian culture.  They existed in stark contrast to the Yahweh only sects of the Jewish faith that eventually spawned monotheistic Christianity.

There were other Goddess honoring cultures around the world.  But Babylon interests me most.  It was often thrown up as the nemesis of the Jewish faith (probably due to the fact that the Jews spent years as slaves and captives in Babylon).  Babylon was later incorporated into the Christian faith as kind of public enemy number one.  Talking about Babylon to a group of Christians will conjure images of demon possession and sexual deviance.  Babylon is the symbol for the Devil’s way.  I reject this false advertising!

I am not foolish enough to think we can go back to Babylon or even to the Babylonian way of life.  I don’t even think we would want to.

I am also not an historian.  I am not interested in proving the exact correctness of the statements I just made or walking through the many things that led to the transition from Goddess honoring cultures to cultures that denigrate women and deny the presence of the Divine feminine in the collective consciousness.

I want the feel of Babylon!  I want to touch it with my soul.

Babylon and Ishtar, the passionate Goddess of Love and War, represent a way through for me.  It was Ishtar the priestesses of Babylon channeled in the fertility rites (and Inanna before her in Sumer).

By reaching back through my Christian roots to something that came before I am able to use the past to build a portal to a different future.  Ishtar is my bridge to a whole new worldview and a radical new way of life.  Ishtar is my sacred passage to a life that:

• honors the sacredness of womanhood and of the Divine Feminine;
• encourages us to see ourselves (men and women) as vessels for the Divine;
• holds fertility and the natural world as sacred;
• replaces the fantasy of repellent opposites with the equilibrium of compliments in union; and
• has as its end a joyful, luscious, fertile, ecstatic experience in the here and now.

I am invoking Ishtar.  I believe she is asking to be reborn, to be given a space in our collective consciousness.

A few weeks ago a phrase popped into my mind literally out of the blue.  That phrase was “emerald green flames.”  I did not know this at the time, but copper creates green flames when it comes in contact with fire.  Copper is also a conductor.  It is associated with the planet Venus which is one of Ishtar’s many symbols.

Today, I open my heart as a copper vessel for Her passionate flame.  May it burn emerald green against the night sky and may She light up the dawn.

I have offered myself as Ishtar’s priestess, a vessel for all Her many gifts that have been suppressed, supplanted, attacked, and excluded.  May they manifest in this place, and in this time, in the way that is most needed.  By “this place,” I mean two things: my heart and this world.  By “this time,” I mean right now, in this modern age.  Ishtar is a living Goddess.  She isn’t a relic from the past.  She has things to offer us, things that are dearly needed in this divided world.

How many miles to Babylon,

Three score and ten.

Can I get there by candlelight?

Yes, and back again!

If your heels be nimble and light,

You may get there by candlelight. 

            ∞ English Nursery Rhyme

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I recently wrote an article called Liberating Emptiness ∞ The Path Out of Shame. In that article, I talked about the shame I have felt as a woman who has lived through sexual abuse. I shared my experience of living my life squarely in the sites of the male gaze and about what it took to move beyond looking in male eyes for the affirmation of my worth.

At the end of Liberating Emptiness, I talked about inviting the Dakini, the female wisdom principle of Tibetan Buddhism to incarnate in me. I spoke of taking refuge in the mandala created by the visual representation of union between the Dakini and her consort. Here is what I said at the end of that article:

In taking refuge in the mandala and in offering myself as an expression of it, I have attained a real spiritual victory. I have transformed my shame through devotion to higher principles and through offering myself as a vessel for the incarnation of the Divine. I have overcome my shame by virtue of the simple recognition that divinity expresses in and through me. As I entered this place of refuge, I left the male gaze behind. It is of no consequence for the first time in my life, and its potential to have an impact has been nullified. My gaze is fixed on my mirror. I am looking at Her reflection there.

I had not planned for Liberating Emptiness to turn into a series. But this article feels to me like the natural extension of it.

I was thinking this morning about the purpose and significance of taking refuge in the mandala. As I reflected, I realized that I left a lot unsaid at the end of Liberating Emptiness. As I felt into the energy of the piece, it struck me that it could have been interpreted as a flight into divinity at the expense of human connection and vulnerability. The act of taking refuge in the mandala is far from an act of retreat. It is the fundamental, essential building block of my expanding capacity for real intimacy and vulnerability. It is the way through.

As I thought about all of this, a poem I recently wrote came to mind. In Liberating Emptiness, I talked about an experience of rejection that triggered my shame and ultimately offered me the opportunity to transform it. I wrote this poem about that relationship before the rejection happened.

Below is the poem:

The part of the poem that jumped into my mind this morning was the part that reads “Tempting me to earth again. To silken sheets.  I fall beneath.”  When I wrote the poem, I didn’t understand it.  It just flowed through me.

Suddenly this morning I saw the poem through a whole new lens.  When I wrote it, I was in the throws of an erotic response to something that happened in the relationship.  As a result, the latter part of the poem made no sense to me.  I viewed the silken sheets through the lens of my erotic feelings.  I saw them purely as erotic symbols.  But silk has other meanings as well.

Silk is known to repel negative energy.  It also has protective qualities.  Caterpillars make their cocoons out of silk.  It shelters them during their metamorphosis.

In a sense, the image of the silken sheets is still erotic.  But the imagery evokes a different kind of eroticism now: the erotic feeling of coming under the full influence and protection of the Divine Feminine wisdom principle and of opening to her consort, the male principles of skillful action, compassion, and bliss.

The words of rejection penetrated something deeper than my flesh.  Deep soul work emerged and I quivered.  The quivering is more akin to an inner earthquake, the side effects of an initiation.  The sheets are symbols of divine embodiment and blissful union.  They are the mandala.  I have fallen beneath the silken sheets of the mandala.  I have taken refuge beneath the union of the Dakini and her consort.

Why is this a critical building block of real intimacy and vulnerability?

By coming under the full protection of the silken sheets, by taking refuge in the mandala, I have created within myself an unshakable core of faith where shame cannot operate.  From beneath the silken sheets of the mandala, I can abide in the feminine wisdom that manifests as right, compassionate, and skillful action.

Put in very simple terms, when I am abiding under the protection of the mandala, come what may, I know who I am and what I am made of, and I know what to do to honor myself and others.

In the knowledge of my essential worth, I have become unshakeable, which has, in turn, opened the door for me to make myself more accessible, but only under the right circumstances.

As a matter of practical application, certain key things emerge from the protection of the mandala.

Anytime I take refuge in the mandala, I am released from shame.  Therefore, I am no longer compelled to guard against the agony of it by judging and repelling others.  I am able to see beyond a person’s shame to the essential core of who he or she is and to take up the of practice compassion.  This is a new brand of compassion, however.  It is rooted in wisdom and right action.

Though I may see a person’s essential nature and know that it is good.  The practice of compassion requires that I respond to what the person is doing and to how he or she is showing up in my life.  Having compassion for myself first, means that I have standards.  Nothing that fails to comport with my essential worth belongs in my life.  Nothing that fails to honor the divinity in me can remain.

By virtue of having these compassionate standards in my life, I am able to trust myself.  The standards are rooted in my essential worth which is rooted in the mandala.  This offers me the emotional detachment that fosters discernment.  I am able to discern where, when, how, and with whom to share my vulnerability based upon a very clear standard:  Where, when, how, and with whom will my vulnerability be honored with skillful, compassionate, right action on the part of the other person?

The answer to the question is a simple one.  I am willing to share my vulnerability in the context of real, authentic connection.  Dr. Brené Brown (who has devoted her life to the study of shame and connection) has provided an excellent definition of connection: “Connection is the energy that is created between two people when they feel seen, heard, and valued and when they can give and receive without judgment.”

Brené Brown also notes that shame is the antidote to connection.  Therefore, I am only willing to be vulnerable when shame is not operating in the relationship.

The kind of connection that fosters real vulnerability stands in stark contrast to what is possible in the context of shame based emotional entanglements.  When shame is running our relationships, paradoxically, we are drawn like a moth to a lantern by the very things that will affirm our shame and we repel the very things that comport with our essential worth.  In the shadow of our shame, we do not know who we are and we do not have standards that honor our worth.  In a very real sense, we remain untouchable though not unshakable.  We hide behind walls in an effort to create a zone of self protection.  We make ourselves inaccessible in a misguided attempt to avoid the agony of our shame.  Yet our walls are built with the bricks of our shame!

Dr. Brown has also stated that, “Connection is not negotiable. We are neuro-biologically hard wired for connection, for love, and for belonging.  It is in our DNA.”

By having taken refuge under the silken sheets of the mandala, I have  honored my need for connection and relinquished my willingness to accept entanglement as a substitute for love and nourishment.  I have taken the first essential step towards fostering real, authentic, and vulnerable connections and towards tearing down the walls.  In their place stand the twin guardians of discerning wisdom and skillful, compassionate right action.

In short, I have stopped to deal with my shame at its root.  My sense of self worth now flows from something more durable than flesh and blood.  It is the fruit of my knowing.  I am the vessel of the Divine Feminine expressing as wisdom and I am the seed bearer of the Divine Masculine attributes of compassion, skillful action, and bliss.  My worth is unassailable and not dependent upon circumstances or upon the will or actions of others.  My unwavering commitment to myself is tightly woven into the silken threads of the mandala.  It covers me.

And when I find myself in the midst of another shameful reaction, I can gently remind myself to return to the silken sheets of the mandala.  I am sure I will take this journey over and over again.

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Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another. ∞ H.L. Mencken

I was about 8 years old when I realized the extent of my mother’s actual powerlessness in our family.  My father controlled the money.  She wanted to leave.  I suspect she also saw that leaving would have meant giving up the funds she needed to guarantee our security and to keep seeding the dreams she held for all of her children.  I can’t say for sure what went through my mother’s mind, but I watched her bury her desire beneath the promptings of reality.  She put her suitcase back in the closet and went to bed.

From that moment on, I wanted nothing to do with this womanhood business.

My distaste for all things associated with womanhood only increased when the girls in my class savaged me for having the temerity to kiss a boy the summer before 5^th grade.  ”Kiss” is kind of a glorified description of what amounted to an awkward peck on the lips. Nonetheless, the word got out and I became the class slut.

The label and its implications had a much greater impact than I could have understood at the time.  It was akin to expulsion from the community of girls.  This and other similar moments left me twisting alone in the winds of puberty and vulnerable to sexual exploitation.  I found it really easy to secure the company of men and boys.  In contrast to my “sisters,” they were always quite welcoming.  I assuaged my loneliness with whatever they were offering no matter how damaging to my soul or my self esteem.

But something else was going on too.  Men and boys had all the power and I knew it.  I was more acutely aware of this than maybe other girls were because I had been savaged pretty brutally by men by the time I was 16.

The only power position I could identify was to be found in emulating men.

I chose a career path founded on masculine values: domination, power, intellectual prowess, hierarchical relating, and achievement through brutal, hard work.

Where men and sexuality were concerned, I took refuge in the predator position.  I hunted rather than permitting myself to be hunted.

I did my dead level best to divorce myself from the feminine in a comical effort to become one of the boys…right up until I started to buckle under the weight of trying to live a life that ran contrary to my needs as a woman.  That is when Inanna (a Goddess in the Sumerian pantheon) found me.  In her company I made my first descent into the Underworld of my unconscious.  I began to face my wounds in earnest and I began to heal.

Despite years of working with the Divine Feminine in an effort to recoup my feminine soul, to this day I still have not found a comfortable home within the sisterhood everyone keeps talking about.  I have asked myself over and over again why so many women just don’t seem to embrace me.

I found a partial answer in the fact that I probably approach women with a kind of aggressive energy that reminds them of being pursued by a man.  Suddenly, I realized that I have no idea how two women are supposed to strike up a conversation and become friends.  I think this is fixable.  It strikes me as a matter of skill.

Regardless, I sensed that something deeper was bubbling to the surface in the mirror of what felt like rejection after rejection.  So I kept searching.

I found my answer in one tiny phrase: “I am not.”

Those three words are the most powerfully divisive words I have ever come across.  They justify all kinds of savagery the world over.  They turn everything into a game of me versus you and us versus them.

I discovered something crucial as I dug a little deeper into my own consciousness concerning women.  Those three insidious words were peaking out from behind just about every corner of my mind.

I am not like the women in the Congo or India or the ghettos of the United States, or even the place I now call home, the mountains of Southern Mexico.  I am not like these women who are so often savaged by sexual violence in cultures where rape is hardly even treated as a crime.  I am not like the women who are drugged and raped by their dates on college campuses.  I am not like the women who stay day after day, beating after beating.  I am not a victim.  I am not weak, dependent, in need of a man.  I am not like other women.  I am not like you.  I am not.  I am not.  I AM NOT.

An ultimate kind of truth lurked beneath all of this.  I am a hypocrite.  I professed to love the Goddess.  Yet I continued to hate women.  I invited the Goddess to incarnate in my body while still rejecting the essential reality of my position as a woman in a world where women are hated and violated.  I remained a misogynist, untouched by the true sorrow of women denied opportunities, freedom, ownership of their own bodies, honor, power, and most of all, love and acceptance.

Was this misogyny conscious.  No it was not.  It was a survival strategy.  I needed to reject women in order to feel powerful and safe and to protect myself from further violation at the hands of men.  I was wearing camouflage.  I also needed to reject women to protect myself from the pain of feeling shut out of the community of women.  I simply closed my heart in the face of tremendous wounds.  I am not even sorry I did it.  I might not have made it this far otherwise.

And now I am ready for a radical shift in my consciousness.

I am like the women of the Congo and India and the ghettos of the United States and the mountains of Southern Mexico.  Their experiences and mine are but a matter of degrees and we are one.  I bear the energetic stripes of their suffering whether I like it or not.  And they bear the stripes of mine!  I too have been a victim, raped, beaten, harassed…I too have been “weak” and dependent on men (for proof of my worth if not economic subsistence).  I have stayed for beating after beating.  I am like my mother.  I am like my sisters.  I am like other women.  I am exactly like you.  I am.  I am.  I AM!

This is the truth that exists on the other side of the dualities I have created in order to escape from the pain of my circumstance – having been born into the body of a woman.  This is the end of my denial.  It is also a radical act of self sacrifice made in the service of real liberation.  I am tearing down the defenses in my mind and heart that have allowed me to feel safe and to hide from my pain.  I am opening to the full reality of what it means to be a woman in this world, to be denied opportunities, freedom, ownership of my body, honor, power, and most of all love and acceptance – all because I am a woman.

But this is not my resting place.  It is a way through.  It is the road I must take to ultimate feminine power and transformation.  Until I can consciously choose to walk this path in the fullness of my womanhood the journey will remain incomplete.  I will gain the intellectual knowledge of transformation, but the mystic initiation into the feminine mysteries will never come.

Up until now, I have endeavored to heal the scars of rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and general womanly blight by bringing my grief and my emotional wounds into the light and holding them compassionately.  I have endeavored to overcome my past and my position as a woman in this world.

I am being called to a new place.

I am being called to gnosis, to the deep, intrinsic knowledge of my value as a woman and of the fact that I am the Divine Feminine expressing.  She is not out there somewhere, the far off object of my devotion.  She and I are One, inseparable and unlimited.

I am being called to leave behind my old patterns of assimilating knowledge about who and what I am as a woman in favor of embodying the feminine essence.

I am being asked to take responsibility for my self image, my self worth, and as odd as it may sound, for my experience of this world as a woman.  Up until now, my self image and experience of my life have been externally defined by what was done to me and by the attitudes of the world towards women.

Now I am being asked to take on full responsibility for the knowledge of my true identity – the unshakeable knowledge that I am feminine wisdom incarnate.  I hold the space and full potential of the universe in my womb.  My soul is possessed by the wisdom of the ages.

Today I open my heart.  And to my mothers and my sisters, actual and metaphorical, I say:

Come!  Join me in the celebration of our True Colors.  We are bright and beautiful.  We are unblemished no matter the fingerprints we have had to wipe away and the anguish we have borne and may still bear.  These fingerprints and their accompanying sorrows cannot change our intrinsic value.  They are meaningless.  It’s time we came together and moved beyond declaring our worth to actually living it.  TOGETHER!

Come and drink from Her well with me.  It is the well that springs eternal in you.  Assimilate Her love.  It is the love that blossoms in you.  Allow Her to define you and to sustain and satisfy you.  She is your womb, the womb that awaits the seed of bliss.  Open to it.  Allow it to be conceived and to manifest in you.

True Colors

You with the sad eyes
Don’t be discouraged
Oh I realize
It’s hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

Show me a smile then,
Don’t be unhappy, can’t remember
When I last saw you laughing
If this world makes you crazy
And you’ve taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I’ll be there

 ∞ Cyndi Lauper

Click the link above to listen to the song.  Well worth the 3 minutes it will take you.  I cried!

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I found God in myself and I loved her fiercely. ∞ Ntosake Shanghe 

The greatest shame I have ever borne as a woman is the shame I have borne in my body.

I was 11 years old when my father’s drunk friend made a pass at me. I remember being in shock at the time. I remained in that state of shock, and a part of me remained trapped in that memory, for 27 years. When the shock wore off, I was 38 years old.  I was sitting at my kitchen table.

I can’t recall what triggered me out of the shock. What I can tell you is that I had no prior awareness of the horror I felt when I was 11 and alone in the car with this man who had suddenly trained his attention on my newly developed body.

As the misty protection of the shock wore off, I howled.  I made the sounds I might have made as my 11 year old self if my voice and my breath had not been caught in my chest somewhere between expression and expiration.

As I came out of my shock at the age of 38, I became acutely aware of what transpired when I was 11. The shamefulness of that moment, which really belonged to my father’s friend, had attached itself to my body and it stuck. That moment was an initiation into the shadow side of patriarchal sexuality where desire supplants integrity and women and children are objects of pleasure. Shame is the medium of control in patriarchy. Once it is internalized, no external controls are necessary.

Of course, the cycle doesn’t end with men victimizing women or girls. Women can be perpetrators of patriarchal sexuality too. Once the pattern of abuse and shame goes into a person, it gets expressed in alternating cycles of victimization and victimizing until the pattern is healed and released. I feel I need to say that because this article is not really exclusively about being a woman or a girl in patriarchy. It is about the culture of shame, its implications, and its transcendence. So, I want to acknowledge that women can be perpetrators.

Yet, at the same time, I don’t want to detract from the reality that there is something unique about the way women are identified with their bodies and valued or discarded because of them. It feels central to the discussion that lies ahead. I can’t ignore my femaleness and still use my own experience as a vehicle for expressing the shame culture of patriarchy and for transforming it. I can, therefore, only tell my story as a woman living in patriarchal culture, a woman who has lived life in the midst of the male gaze and who has born the brunt of its shaming impact.

Speaking of the male gaze, if I am honest, there are two times when I feel ashamed of my body: when a man is looking at it and when he is not. I admit that I am ashamed when a man I desire is not looking at me. By the same token, I am also ashamed when a man I do not desire is looking. I have been trained to feel okay only when a man I desire also desires me.

When a man I desire finds my body of no interest, I feel the shame of exclusion. I have the sense that my body has made me undeserving of connection. I feel banished. I even begin to feel ashamed of my own desire. I see myself and my desire as ugly and burdensome. My sense of my own beauty and of my worth as a person slips away. I feel a sudden urge to cover up. The inability to awaken desire is one of the greatest agonies a woman feels. It is a heavy weight to bear, this responsibility for awakening desire in another.

To live without the gaze of a man can feel like a death sentence to a woman. It is excruciating.

When a man I do not desire looks me up and down, I also feel a sudden urge to cover up. I become afraid of what he will demand, or perhaps take from me. I feel responsible for his gaze. That is the shame I picked up at 11. It is the shame placed on all women – the responsibility for, however innocently, having awakened the desire of a man. In patriarchy, we do not hold men accountable for their gaze or for their awakened desire.

To live with the gaze of a man can feel like a death sentence to a woman. It is excruciating.

No matter how far into my spiritual journey I go or how much self love I develop, this particular shame seems to rear its ugly head at the most inconvenient times. It is insidious.

Last night may have been a turning point though. You will just have to wait and see.

I have recently experienced a kind of rejection. As I walked through town last night, I became aware that this rejection had gotten lodged in my body somehow, even though the person who rejected me has never seen my body.

As I walked, I felt the shame of exclusion. I imagined that no man will ever want me again and how that will feel – to never be touched with loving hands again. Or was it for the first time? In moments like these it is hard to say. The specifics are not so important. The pain was all encompassing.

I considered going on a diet, making myself more appealing, maybe a little Botox…I was shocked at my thoughts. I really believed this pattern was gone from my life. I thought I left it behind in the tender gaze of my last lover. He never once made me feel awkward about my body. He never shamed me for my curves or my cesarean scar or the stretch marks on my belly. He lovingly massaged every part of me, especially the parts that he knew held my shame. His attention always went there first. It was a kind of ritual that liberated my desire without fail.

This loving gaze was the flip side of my first real “love” affair. I weighed 110 pounds back then, and I was shoveling meth up my nose at a shocking rate of speed (no pun intended) in an effort to lose even more weight. I was just 16. No matter how small I got, I was never thin enough for that man. I could never satisfy him.

I contemplated these two relationships side by side last night, and realized I had given both men unimaginable power and control in my life. My first lover controlled me with the anguish of my shame over not being pleasing to him. My last lover controlled me by assuaging that shame. Last night was a moment of reckoning!

At some point it occurred to me that I really am subject to exclusion by a lot of men. There are whole swaths of men who would never consider my round, fleshy body desirable. They have been conditioned to want a particular size and shape of woman. It has not always been this way. There was a time when a woman like me would have commanded the room. But that really misses the point!

I have no desire to be seen as an object at this point in time. The sting of realizing that my exclusion is quite real (as a matter of cultural reality) was much less than I imagined. I discovered that I am actually okay with being excluded by people who exist in the dominant consciousness of our age. And I want to remove the last vestiges of that consciousness from myself.

I am ready to see myself as a whole person and to see others in this way as well. I am ready to get past the flesh and into the heart and the soul of the people around me.

Today, it makes no difference to me if a man is looking at me or not. Unless a man is awake and has transcended his conditioning, he will never actually see me. He will see something akin to a cardboard cut out of his own imaginings.

In Tibetan Buddhism the feminine principle is known as the Dakini. Sometimes her appearance is lovely and enticing and sometimes it is wrathful and terrifying always according to what is needed.

I have invited the Dakini to express through me. In this sense, I have engaged in the ultimate act of renunciation. I have given up the notion of myself as a unique personality. I have asked for annihilation in the service of my purpose – to guide others to ultimate freedom.

The Dakini is emptiness, and she is the feminine wisdom principle of the Tibetan path. I believe that those who gaze upon her see the products of their own minds in female form. By relating with their projections, people find ultimate wisdom and liberation.  I welcome the projections while refusing to be defined or injured by them. I am prepared to act as a mirror and to offer what is needed rather than what is desired.

By inviting the Dakini to incarnate, I have renounced my desire for human, conditional love and validation. In order to offer what is needed I must be willing to bear the burden of rejection and exclusion and to find it meaningless. I must also be able to see the lack of significance in approval and validation. That is why I have invited the Dakini. Or perhaps it is the reason she has invited me?

I am prepared to remain a mystery. I am happy and content to perform my healing tasks, to open the door to freedom, and then to disappear into the Mexican sunset with Kokopelli fingering a tune on his magical flute.

This invitation I have extended to the Dakini means I have also, in a sense, renounced men as well in that I am now wed to the Dakini’s consort, the Heruka. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that I have renounced the usual course of relating with men in order to embrace myself more deeply and to go more deeply into embodying the Dakini.  The Heruka holds the masculine principles of compassion and skillful means. I see him as the masculine in me.

Together, the Dakini and the Heruka form a mandala. They are the symbolic union of bliss and emptiness. I offer myself to be the mandala and to the work I am called to do. At the same time, I take refuge in the mandala and in the teachings it represents. I invoke it as my own constant, unchanging core.

In taking refuge in the mandala and in offering myself as an expression of it, I have attained a real spiritual victory. I have transformed my shame through devotion to higher principles and through offering myself as a vessel for the incarnation of the Divine. I have overcome my shame by virtue of the simple recognition that divinity expresses in and through me. As I entered this place of refuge, I left the male gaze behind. It is of no consequence for the first time in my life, and its potential to have an impact has been nullified. My gaze is fixed on my mirror. I am looking at Her reflection there.

And I know! For the first time I know for sure that if I am to have a male partner, he must be the incarnation of the Heruka wed to his inner Dakini. Only he will be able to see me for who and what I truly am.

The feminine wisdom dakini, signifying emptiness and space, cannot be fully realized unless she is joined with the masculine principle of skillful means, compassion, and great bliss. This is called the union of bliss and emptiness, and it is represented iconographically as the sexual union of male and female consorts. Together they form an inseparable pair, ‘not two and not one.’ They can never truly be apart, for penetrating insight and skillful means are interdependent and complete in a Vajrayana world. In this case, Vajrayogini is not complete unless she is with her consort, the heruka Cakrasamvara. When they appear together, they are symbolically joined in sexual embrace, the ‘father-mother’ yab yum. ∞ Judith Simmer-Brown, The Dakini’s Warm Breath

The insights and wisdom concerning the Dakini set forth in this article were internalized as a result of weeks spent studying The Dakini’s Warm Breath, The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism by Judith Simmer-Brown. The Dakini came to me last December. She seemed to be calling me. Soon after She first beckoned me, I encountered the book. I am eternally grateful for the transforming words contained in the pages of this tremendous work. It takes the notion of the feminine principle out of the constructs of feminist discourse and the goddess movement and brings it to life in a space beyond, yet inextricably connected to gender.  Simultaneously, it takes the feminine principles of Tantra out of the hyper-sexualized context of the neo-Tantra movement, and gives transformative voice to the real meaning of union between masculine and feminine.  I will never be the same!

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The post Liberating Emptiness ∞ The Path Out of Shame appeared first on Rebecka Eggers.

This article is Part 5 in a series of articles entitled, The Shaman’s Touch. The series concerns the path of self mastery through covenant relationship with higher purpose. The Shaman’s Touch is aimed at people who have heard the call of their dream and have answered by petitioning the Universe for the fulfillment of that dream. Click here to read Part 1 of this series, Invoking the Refining Fire of Your Destiny. 

Click here to read Part 2 in this series, Into the Fire.

Click here to read Part 3 in this series, Stalking Ecstasy.

Click here to read Part 4, Enticing Fire.

Just as I did in the previous parts of this series, I ask that you not continue reading until you have entered into a covenant relationship with your life purpose.

If you would like to enter a process that will afford you a real opportunity to commit to yourself and to the fulfillment of your dream, enter your email below to schedule your free encounter with The Passion Path.

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Abiding In the Dream

“The lover and the beloved are one.”  ∞ Donna DeLory

As I approached this subject a feeling of warmth and of gentleness flooded my body and a soft kind of joy spread through my spirit.  It was as though someone gently placed a warm blanket over my shoulders in the dead of winter.  It wasn’t just the blanket that warmed me, it was a sensation of being loved and of being held.  In fact it was more than being held.  It was the sensation of being held by someone who was receiving intense pleasure from the embrace.  As I reached back, I discovered myself on the other side of that embrace.  And I realized that I have learned to take delight in myself.

When I began imagining that I might actually have a dream worth fulfilling, I was deeply entrenched in the belief that I was flawed, inwardly ugly beyond recognition.  The only God I knew was awaiting my every mistake with the spiritual equivalent of a wooden paddle.  The lessons that came my way were about proving what was wrong with me and fixing it.  I was engaged in a self improvement project.  It wasn’t about liberation or even about dream fulfillment unless you count the desperate hope of finally being good enough as a dream.  I courted the Fire.  I asked it to confirm my worthlessness over and over again.

I can’t tell you when this dynamic shifted.  I am just aware that somewhere along the way my desire to fix my flaws evolved bit by bit into a fervent desire for liberation.  I wanted to be free of the habits and patterns that bound and chafed.  I wanted to gain real freedom from the circumstances that felt insurmountable.  I wanted to actually make a conscious difference in the world.

These tiny, almost imperceptible shifts began to happen.  Slowly, I moved out of self hatred and into curiosity and awakening.  These shifts marked my initiation into self love.  Suddenly the lessons that came my way took on a new flavor.  They became the yarn with which I wove the tapestry of real understanding.  I began to wake up.

Before long, I was able to see the humor in the endless repetitive cycles that seemed to ensnare me, and I began to toy with the notion that my destiny was actually in my own hands.  This notion of self-responsibility fueled my fledgling awareness.   It opened the door to discernment and detachment, which in turn, opened the door to skillful action.  I began to develop compassion for myself and others.  My compassion and my detachment also fueled my awareness.  Awareness thrives in an environment of neutrality and unconditional positive regard.  I began to offer myself the gift of my own unconditional love.

As I woke up, I began to extract my creative energy from the constant struggle to survive and from the addictions that assuaged my anguish.  I began to conserve the energy that was once wasted in drama and the heightened emotions brought on by self hatred and the loathsome thoughts I held towards myself.

I can’t tell you exactly when it came about.  But I am acutely aware that my desires and my focus shifted as well.  I began to tap into the gifts I might be able to offer the world and I began to envision sharing those gifts with a world waiting with bated breath for me to arrive and to contribute.  I began to abide in the space of deeply held aspirations.  Instead of relying on negative emotions to bring about change, I began to catalyze change with life force energy, with the joie de vivre that was coursing through me like electricity.

Up until now, I have written this series from a place of detachment.  It was an endeavor of delineating concepts and methodology.  I wanted to provide a framework for developing critical skills such as discernment and for working skillfully with the two most powerful agents of change – pleasure and pain.

This piece is different.  It emanates from my heart.  It is the result of having walked through the Fire over and over again and of having learned to cultivate the joie de vivre without clinging to the pleasurable sensations.  It is the birth child of an open heart.  This final installment in The Shaman’s Touch is, in essence, the story of my own return to the natural spontaneous state where creativity and movement flow effortlessly from delight and from a relaxed state of mind.  In writing it, I have endeavored to pull together all of the prior pieces by personalizing the concepts and to crystalize them by giving you a window into my own story.

Most importantly, I want this piece to stand as an invitation. Whether you are taking your first tremulous steps towards a brighter future or you are standing on the precipice of awakening, just reach out and take my hand.  I will guide you gently through the Fire and into the joie de vivre.  I will initiate you into freedom, self love, and the empowerment that flows naturally from their cultivation.

“Gently like a new born baby, will you hold my heart? Gentle like a new born baby, I will hold your heart.” ∞ Shaela Noella Roselana

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The post The Shaman’s Touch ∞ Abiding In the Dream appeared first on Rebecka Eggers.

This article is Part 4 in a series of articles entitled, The Shaman’s Touch. The series concerns the path of self mastery through covenant relationship with higher purpose. The Shaman’s Touch is aimed at people who have heard the call of their dream and have answered by petitioning the Universe for the fulfillment of that dream.  Click here to read Part 1 of this series, Invoking the Refining Fire of Your Destiny.

Click here to read Part 2 of this series, Into the Fire.

Click here to read Part 3 of this series, Stalking Ecstasy.

Just as I did in the previous parts of this series, I ask that you not continue reading until you have entered into a covenant relationship with your life purpose.

If you would like to enter a process that will afford you a real opportunity to commit to yourself and to the fulfillment of your dream, enter your email below to schedule your free encounter with The Passion Path.

Name:

Email:

Enticing Fire

“You experienced pain yesterday and you discovered that it led to pleasure. You experienced it today and found peace. That’s why I’m telling you: Don’t get used to it, because it’s very easy to become habituated: it’s a very powerful drug. It’s in our daily lives, in our hidden sufferings, in the sacrifices we make, blaming love for the destruction of our dreams. Pain is frightening when it shows its real face, but it’s seductive when it comes disguised as sacrifice or self-denial. Or cowardice. However much we may reject it, we human beings always find a way of being with pain, of flirting with it and making it part of our lives.” ∞ Paulo Coelho

Is it possible to engage the Fire in such a way that it offers you nothing more than endless opportunities for pointless self immolation?

I believe it is.

The Fire can be as enticing as pleasure seeking.  We have the potential to become addicted to pain and the relief that comes when it subsides just as we have the capacity to become addicted to pleasurable stimuli.  Some people are even more enticed by pain than by pleasure.  They can relate to pain better because it is all they have ever known.  They court the Fire.

Other people simply become addicted to processing.  These people begin their journey’s with a serious intention to understand what happened to them.  They go searching in every undesirable experience for the explanation of their dysfunction.  They search high and low for what is broken in them so they can fix it.  And all their searching leads them into yet another round of searching.  The promise of finally making themselves good enough entices them back into the endless rounds of birth, death, and rebirth as the patterns of their lives play out over and over again.

This path is not of the heart!  It is born of the intellectual desire to discover what is wrong with you and how it came to be.  It is void of any connection to the deeper self.  It is void of self love and compassion.  This path is a trap.  It is the killer of hope and of dreams.

Beyond Reason

In Part 2 of this series, I said that “reason alone will fail you in the Fire.”  That is because reason seeks to solve a riddle.  The Fire is not really about solving riddles.  It is about gaining self mastery.  In order to make use of the Fire and obliterate the habits that bind up your life, you must move beyond reason and into knowing.

Knowing emanates from the belly and from the womb.  It arises when you learn to connect with yourself deeply and to forge a bond with your own well being.  Awareness is a function of self worth internalized.  It thrives in a space of curiosity and neutrality.  It withers and dies in the scorching glare of self hatred.  Awareness arises from the deep desire to see yourself well and well cared for not from the desire to see yourself made right at last.

The Fire fosters awareness when you learn to work skillfully with what is rather than using whatever comes to prove your essential failings.  Put another way, you will gain self mastery in the Fire when you are motivated by a strong desire to free yourself from the habitual patterns of your life rather than by the desire to fix what is wrong with you.

In Part 2 of this series I also offered a personal example.  I told the story of trying to reconnect my heart with my sexuality.  I related the tale of a one night stand that knitted my heart and my sexuality together in an interminable bond.  The moment I described was a moment of profound anguish.  Yet it healed me.  I wasn’t motivated to prove my lack of worth or to cure myself of unchaste habits or to even understand the source of the problem.  I was motived by a deep desire to feel again and to be free of a pattern that made it easier to give myself away for free than to ever risk being told I wasn’t worthy of connection – AGAIN.

I yearned to know the sacredness of my sexuality and to see my heart as a precious gift.

The moment I described was a moment of intense connection that took place in a space of alienation.  By bringing connection into that space, I awakened in myself a strong desire for more and a clear understanding that I could never turn back.  It was profoundly heart rending and profoundly healing.  It destroyed my ability to take solace in disconnection.  It made it impossible for me to go on affirming my essential worthlessness with my own choices.  Suddenly my behavior came unhinged from questions of worth and thereafter emanated from a place of deep knowing.

In that one single moment of anguish I knew the sacredness of my sexuality and of my heart.  I reclaimed two essential parts of myself I had discarded long ago.  The change in my behavior that followed didn’t come from sheer force of will, from self denial, or from self condemnation.  It arose from the desire to affirm my own intrinsic value and the sacredness of love making.

In this example, I didn’t just flirt with the pain.  I used it to set myself free.  It was a moment without shame.  In fact it erased decades of shame.  I wasn’t making a place for pain in my life.  I was blowing a goodbye kiss to the pain of sexual disconnection.  I was cutting it out at the root.  Pain was my scalpel.

This is what it means to work skillfully with what arises in the Fire.  The skill I am referring to is the ability to harness a situation and to marshal it for the purpose of moving yourself towards greater fulfillment.  Rather than living as a creature of habit restrained by the imperative of stimulus to enact a certain sequence of responses, you open to the endless possibilities for growth, change, and fulfillment.  Before you know it, every moment opens a new door and you get to decide whether or not to walk through it.

Otherwise, you are just playing with Fire, enticing it’s flames, asking to be burned, and burned, and burned again.  And the Inner Shaman will unleash the flames with ever increasing intensity.  The Inner Shaman is in the service of the dream you asked to have fulfilled.  The Inner Shaman is the custodian of the dream covenant.

The Fire will do its best to awaken you, to wear you out, to inspire you to hold yourself with love and compassion at long last.  It reflects the yearning of the Inner Shaman to see you whole, content, and fully available to the kind of life you truly desire.  The Fire is neutral and unwavering in its service to the destiny you have claimed.  Only you can decide how to use it.

Click here to read Part 5 in this series, Abiding In the Dream.

If you are ready to move beyond the endless search for meaning in the Fire and into living an intentional life, enter your email below to schedule your free encounter with The Passion Path.

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You can also sign-up for the Unleash Your Passion Newsletter by entering your email below.

 

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The post The Shaman’s Touch ∞ Enticing Fire appeared first on Rebecka Eggers.