As you may remember, back in December when we went to Prague, I opened up to crossing a threshold and beginning a descent to be with Her, the Dark Goddess, the Black Madonna. I came home, and immediately was presented with the reality of Gracie's not going to school because of hitting her head. So, these past 5 months, I have been being with Gracie, doing some homeschooling but mostly just living life with her as she has been resting and healing. While she's been headache free for several months, I also get reminded of her sensitivity and susceptibility. She slipped on the wet grass playing kickball the other night and landed hard on her butt. The impact went right up her spine into her head - she was scared, and in pain, and in many ways, left her body. Fortunately, the next day she received some amazing body/energy work and I felt her return. But she's on a journey that will not allow her to go back to her old ways. She has to honor her sensitivity and the new, unusual journey she is on.
Anyway, during this time I wouldn't have said that I have been on this profound inner journey. I have been taking care of Gracie, doing life, cooking meals, etc.... My world has basically become me and my family, and now my garden too! I walk. I take care of my family. But what I am starting to recognize is that I have been on a journey myself too. I have been in a process of letting go -- letting go of my business (including my business checking account), letting go of thinking that I know what I want to "do" and how I'm supposed to do it, letting go of thinking I have to "work" and earn money; letting go of any and all identity I have of myself as an external person and business person, a pilgrimage leader leading others. It's as though I have had to come home to myself without any of those ideas or trappings of all that other stuff.
I have often described these past 5-6 months as a paring down to my roots, a pruning of my inner tree of its branches and visible extensions and coming back to the trunk and the roots. I feel as though I have lived my life upside down, from the branches down, from the external, from the who and what I thought I should be and do. Two years ago, I thought I had righted myself by planting my taproot in Restormel. While a step in the right direction, it wasn't until I recognized Boscowen'un Circle in Penwith as my sacred home and center, that my inner journey was truly catalyzed and initiated, and I crossed the threshold to journey with the Dark Goddess.
Over last fall and this winter, I kept returning within myself to Boscowen'un and my experiences of the stone in the center of the circle. When I first experienced this stone circle in 2013, I loved it, and knew it was a special and magical place. I also thought that the center stone was masculine as it jutted out of the ground at an unusual angle.
I have come to realize two things:
1) the center stone of Boscowen'un in not masculine at all, but feminine - deeply and sacredly feminine. It is the center of a women's being - her vagina - our sacred cavern and genitalia with the clitoral tip emerging from the ground at the very same angle as the vagina in our bodies.
Anyway, during this time I wouldn't have said that I have been on this profound inner journey. I have been taking care of Gracie, doing life, cooking meals, etc.... My world has basically become me and my family, and now my garden too! I walk. I take care of my family. But what I am starting to recognize is that I have been on a journey myself too. I have been in a process of letting go -- letting go of my business (including my business checking account), letting go of thinking that I know what I want to "do" and how I'm supposed to do it, letting go of thinking I have to "work" and earn money; letting go of any and all identity I have of myself as an external person and business person, a pilgrimage leader leading others. It's as though I have had to come home to myself without any of those ideas or trappings of all that other stuff.
I have often described these past 5-6 months as a paring down to my roots, a pruning of my inner tree of its branches and visible extensions and coming back to the trunk and the roots. I feel as though I have lived my life upside down, from the branches down, from the external, from the who and what I thought I should be and do. Two years ago, I thought I had righted myself by planting my taproot in Restormel. While a step in the right direction, it wasn't until I recognized Boscowen'un Circle in Penwith as my sacred home and center, that my inner journey was truly catalyzed and initiated, and I crossed the threshold to journey with the Dark Goddess.
Over last fall and this winter, I kept returning within myself to Boscowen'un and my experiences of the stone in the center of the circle. When I first experienced this stone circle in 2013, I loved it, and knew it was a special and magical place. I also thought that the center stone was masculine as it jutted out of the ground at an unusual angle.
I have come to realize two things:
1) the center stone of Boscowen'un in not masculine at all, but feminine - deeply and sacredly feminine. It is the center of a women's being - her vagina - our sacred cavern and genitalia with the clitoral tip emerging from the ground at the very same angle as the vagina in our bodies.
The center stone in Boscowen'un Circle, Cornwall
It lies right on the Mary Line and is believed to have a massive, hidden base to it - another replica of the vagina hidden deep within our bodies.
2) This is my taproot, my sacred place of belonging, my home. In meditation, I now root to the center of the Earth and to Boscowen'un - my taproot - my vagina - firmly rooted in this sacred, and beautiful place. I feel as though I have had many lifetimes living near here, performing rituals and being a part of this landscape. Of course it's not Restormel - that castle, while round and beautiful and a place that I have also lived, is man-made. This circle of stones speaks deep into my heart and soul, and moves me, stirs deep within me the truth of who I am.
"When I let go of who I am, I become who I may be."
In this process of undoing, unbecoming who I thought I was - I am rooting deeply into the truth of who I AM, connecting at the core to the core of my being, and and being initiated, guided and held by this sacred circle of stones.
I am being held in the arms of my family and home and supported to allow for this process of unbecoming. How does it get any better than that? On a certain level, Gracie's hitting her head has given me the time and space - and permission, as it were, to be on this journey, even as I engage with my everyday life as mother, wife, etc. It has been for us both in so many ways. I have been given a time and space to very gently let go of all that is unessential and come home to myself. I am so grateful.
During this time, I was drawn to a course whose name is quite ridiculous - Vaginal Kung Fu, which gave the context and practice for focusing on our vaginas, strengthening it, and coming into our sexuality. I knew that I had to take it, and so spent 8 weeks in February and March focusing on my vagina.
Have you heard of the Jade Egg practice? We used a jade egg as an object for your vaginal muscles to resist and work with and becoming stronger. The "Kung Fu" part of it is when you get really strong, you can lift objects like coconuts, weights, bottles full of liquid, with your vagina! Well, I'm not there yet but I was getting definitely stronger and more toned as I practiced with the jade egg! "They" say it's much more effective than Kegels because your muscles need something to work with and resist, plus it gives a focus to the exercises. I obviously don't relate so much to the "kung fu" aspect of the class, but I deeply relate to the vagina and my experience of it being the overlooked, often forgotten aspect of our sexuality and creativity. So often, it seems that we focus - at least I have - on the womb but we tend to overlook the vagina itself. The threshold.
The Vagina, my vagina, is the trunk of my tree -- the trunk of all of our inner, sacred tree of life...the stem of the chalice.
And the truth is that I resist it, ignore it, and have numbed it down. I'm actually scared of it and its power and potency. As Kim Anami (the women who taught the class) says, "the further you go inside your vagina, the further you go inside of yourself, energetically and emotionally." Truth is that I resist and fight my sexuality, and myself - and at the same time, long for it, crave it, demand it.
Even during the class, while I practiced with the jade egg just about daily, I numbed out to feeling the pleasure of my sexuality.
This is my edge. My challenge. My healing. This is my soul coming me home to my Self and my body. This is the hardest thing for me to do and be. And yet, I know that I am a sexual and sacred being who longs - deeply longs - to express and experience her sacred sexuality, and her sexual sacredness - in the fullness and wholeness of my being.
I saw an amazing healer named Francesca several times over the past few months who actually named the core of my wounding around my sexuality - the first person who was able to do so. It was a very intense experience from a past life where in service of the Goddess of assisting people to reconnect with their creativity and sexuality, I experienced a horrific betrayal that I was still carrying energetically. My commitment this lifetime is to heal from this wounding - to heal the psychic and physical split within myself and cellular/energetic memory. (My body is vibrating as I type.) This split has shown up in so many different ways and permutations this life, and requires from me a deep soul commitment to heal...and many, many miles of sacred, spiral walking!!
I know that I am continually being deeply and divinely supported on this journey. Even though it doesn't look like what I thought it would look like, the support and guidance keeps showing up. Most recently, I have been asked by two of my close friends to share with them the knowledge, wisdom and practices of the Vagina. We met for the first time yesterday afternoon, and this in turn is giving me the opportunity to return to the practice of the Jade Egg within a sacred container and to spiral around again on this journey with my vagina/yoni. Another pass to deepen into and move through my resistance and fears and into pleasure and joy and beauty.
All in preparation for my return to Boscowen'un Circle in early July.
A question was asked in an article from some powerful information about the Dark Taurus Moon of this past week, http://www.cosmicintelligenceagency.com/2015/05/newmoontaurus/2/:
"Will you honour the strength and depth of your sexual creative energy and consciously channel it towards your further awakening?"
I am so appreciating the Goddess' humor that our sacred core and embodied connection to Her lies within us all the time, hidden yet within reach for us to explore and experience all the time! In her amazing book, Vagina - A New Biography, Naomi Wolf talks about the vagina as a "goddess-shaped hole" that holds the "longing human beings feel to connect with something greater than themselves, and which motivates religion and spiritual quests" She sees that this longing for the Sublime can be "experienced during and after certain moments of heightened sexual pleasure... and that is critically linked to an experience of self-love or self-respect, and a sense of freedom and drive."
2) This is my taproot, my sacred place of belonging, my home. In meditation, I now root to the center of the Earth and to Boscowen'un - my taproot - my vagina - firmly rooted in this sacred, and beautiful place. I feel as though I have had many lifetimes living near here, performing rituals and being a part of this landscape. Of course it's not Restormel - that castle, while round and beautiful and a place that I have also lived, is man-made. This circle of stones speaks deep into my heart and soul, and moves me, stirs deep within me the truth of who I am.
"When I let go of who I am, I become who I may be."
In this process of undoing, unbecoming who I thought I was - I am rooting deeply into the truth of who I AM, connecting at the core to the core of my being, and and being initiated, guided and held by this sacred circle of stones.
I am being held in the arms of my family and home and supported to allow for this process of unbecoming. How does it get any better than that? On a certain level, Gracie's hitting her head has given me the time and space - and permission, as it were, to be on this journey, even as I engage with my everyday life as mother, wife, etc. It has been for us both in so many ways. I have been given a time and space to very gently let go of all that is unessential and come home to myself. I am so grateful.
During this time, I was drawn to a course whose name is quite ridiculous - Vaginal Kung Fu, which gave the context and practice for focusing on our vaginas, strengthening it, and coming into our sexuality. I knew that I had to take it, and so spent 8 weeks in February and March focusing on my vagina.
Have you heard of the Jade Egg practice? We used a jade egg as an object for your vaginal muscles to resist and work with and becoming stronger. The "Kung Fu" part of it is when you get really strong, you can lift objects like coconuts, weights, bottles full of liquid, with your vagina! Well, I'm not there yet but I was getting definitely stronger and more toned as I practiced with the jade egg! "They" say it's much more effective than Kegels because your muscles need something to work with and resist, plus it gives a focus to the exercises. I obviously don't relate so much to the "kung fu" aspect of the class, but I deeply relate to the vagina and my experience of it being the overlooked, often forgotten aspect of our sexuality and creativity. So often, it seems that we focus - at least I have - on the womb but we tend to overlook the vagina itself. The threshold.
The Vagina, my vagina, is the trunk of my tree -- the trunk of all of our inner, sacred tree of life...the stem of the chalice.
And the truth is that I resist it, ignore it, and have numbed it down. I'm actually scared of it and its power and potency. As Kim Anami (the women who taught the class) says, "the further you go inside your vagina, the further you go inside of yourself, energetically and emotionally." Truth is that I resist and fight my sexuality, and myself - and at the same time, long for it, crave it, demand it.
Even during the class, while I practiced with the jade egg just about daily, I numbed out to feeling the pleasure of my sexuality.
This is my edge. My challenge. My healing. This is my soul coming me home to my Self and my body. This is the hardest thing for me to do and be. And yet, I know that I am a sexual and sacred being who longs - deeply longs - to express and experience her sacred sexuality, and her sexual sacredness - in the fullness and wholeness of my being.
I saw an amazing healer named Francesca several times over the past few months who actually named the core of my wounding around my sexuality - the first person who was able to do so. It was a very intense experience from a past life where in service of the Goddess of assisting people to reconnect with their creativity and sexuality, I experienced a horrific betrayal that I was still carrying energetically. My commitment this lifetime is to heal from this wounding - to heal the psychic and physical split within myself and cellular/energetic memory. (My body is vibrating as I type.) This split has shown up in so many different ways and permutations this life, and requires from me a deep soul commitment to heal...and many, many miles of sacred, spiral walking!!
I know that I am continually being deeply and divinely supported on this journey. Even though it doesn't look like what I thought it would look like, the support and guidance keeps showing up. Most recently, I have been asked by two of my close friends to share with them the knowledge, wisdom and practices of the Vagina. We met for the first time yesterday afternoon, and this in turn is giving me the opportunity to return to the practice of the Jade Egg within a sacred container and to spiral around again on this journey with my vagina/yoni. Another pass to deepen into and move through my resistance and fears and into pleasure and joy and beauty.
All in preparation for my return to Boscowen'un Circle in early July.
A question was asked in an article from some powerful information about the Dark Taurus Moon of this past week, http://www.cosmicintelligenceagency.com/2015/05/newmoontaurus/2/:
"Will you honour the strength and depth of your sexual creative energy and consciously channel it towards your further awakening?"
I am so appreciating the Goddess' humor that our sacred core and embodied connection to Her lies within us all the time, hidden yet within reach for us to explore and experience all the time! In her amazing book, Vagina - A New Biography, Naomi Wolf talks about the vagina as a "goddess-shaped hole" that holds the "longing human beings feel to connect with something greater than themselves, and which motivates religion and spiritual quests" She sees that this longing for the Sublime can be "experienced during and after certain moments of heightened sexual pleasure... and that is critically linked to an experience of self-love or self-respect, and a sense of freedom and drive."
Such moments of heightened sexual sensibility lead to a woman's awareness that she is in a state of a kind of perfection, in harmony with and in connection with the world. In that state of consciousness, the usual inner voices that say the woman is not good enough, not beautiful enough, or not pleasing enough to others, are stilled, and a great sense of a larger set of connection, even a sense of what I would call, an Universal or Divine Feminine, can be accessed.
Major creative insights, and powerful work, can emerge after an experience of transcendence of this kind. I do believe that when women learn to identify and cultivate an awareness of "the Goddess", defined in this way,their behavior toward themselves, and their life experiences, change for the better, because self-destructiveness, shame and tolerance of poor treatment cannot live in harmony with this set of feelings.
But I would argue, less literally, that "the Goddess" - a gendered sense of self that is shining, without damage, without anxiety or fear - inheres in every woman, and that women tend intuitively to know when they have glimpsed or touched upon it. When women realize the spark of the Goddess, in themselves, healthier, more self-respecting, and other sexual behaviors follow. The vagina serves, physiologically, to activate tis matrix of chemicals that feel, to the human brain, like the Goddess - that is, like an awareness of one's own great dignity, and of great self-love as a woman, as a radiant part of the universal feminine.
The vagina may be a hole, but it is, properly understood, a Goddess-shaped one.
From my vagina, my core, I right myself. I get into right my relationship with myself, my Self, and the Goddess. I strengthen and grow my trunk from my deeply tapped roots, tapped into "home" in every sense of the word. In turn, I heal the physical/psychic core of the core within myself, and become a cohesive receptacle for the Goddess.
This is the essence of my journey - to touch and feel the Goddess, to embody and embrace Her, to live as Her, with Her, for Her, and to express Her through my sexuality and my creativity.
In mid-June, I am going to go up to the mountains for a 3 day mini-retreat over the Dark Moon and deepen my descent to meet the Dark Goddess. She is within me, demanding that I slow down, drop in to my belly and my vagina and reclaim my sexuality. Again, all in perfect timing for returning to Boscowen'un in July. I am so blessed and grateful that I get 6 days to walk the sacred, spiral paths of Penwith by myself. I am so longing for this time and space to deeply walk and experience these paths and sacred sites that my being knows so intimately.
And then my father arrives and we will be in Cornwall together for nearly 3 weeks...I feel there is a wonderful opportunity for deep, ancestral healing both of us, and our family lineage. I am so honored and grateful for this as well.
So, to end this post, I repeat the question from above:
"Will you, will I honour the strength and depth of your, my sexual creative energy and consciously channel it towards your, my further awakening?"
My answer is YES...I will honour the strength and depth of my sexual creative energy and consciously channel it to my further awakening, and embodying the Goddess.
Suseya.
This is the essence of my journey - to touch and feel the Goddess, to embody and embrace Her, to live as Her, with Her, for Her, and to express Her through my sexuality and my creativity.
In mid-June, I am going to go up to the mountains for a 3 day mini-retreat over the Dark Moon and deepen my descent to meet the Dark Goddess. She is within me, demanding that I slow down, drop in to my belly and my vagina and reclaim my sexuality. Again, all in perfect timing for returning to Boscowen'un in July. I am so blessed and grateful that I get 6 days to walk the sacred, spiral paths of Penwith by myself. I am so longing for this time and space to deeply walk and experience these paths and sacred sites that my being knows so intimately.
And then my father arrives and we will be in Cornwall together for nearly 3 weeks...I feel there is a wonderful opportunity for deep, ancestral healing both of us, and our family lineage. I am so honored and grateful for this as well.
So, to end this post, I repeat the question from above:
"Will you, will I honour the strength and depth of your, my sexual creative energy and consciously channel it towards your, my further awakening?"
My answer is YES...I will honour the strength and depth of my sexual creative energy and consciously channel it to my further awakening, and embodying the Goddess.
Suseya.
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