Have you looked up at the moon lately?
Last night at sunset I went for a walk in the wide soccer field behind my house. The setting sun was filling the western sky with pink and gold, while in the east a partially full moon was rising, slung low in a grey sky with a luminous haze circling it.
It felt very healing to look at the moon, and I wondered why I don't get outside more often in the evening to watch it.
It felt good to know that letting the moon light touch me, its rays on me, could actually influence the state of harmony with my inner feminine essence.
Watch the moon ladies and gents. It's going into full bloom this week on Wednesday. It does not promote panic or madness, that's an old anti-womanist scare tactic from the Inquisition days.
What it promotes is beauty, self-awareness, and getting in touch with your natural energies. Women may have participated in orgiastic rites at the full moon that caused the Church to worry about people switching to paganism (it looked like too much fun probably)!
Let's find our selves in our cycles and keep in touch with the moon. She, he, it....does it matter if it's a lady in the moon or not? The moon's cycle is aligned with women's cycles, and it doesn't hurt to let a little moon light shine on you.
Enjoy!
musemother
Monday, September 24, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Inner Wisdom and a higher power
Wisdom for women begins with learning to connect with our own inner wisdom. For too long we have been told what to believe, what to feel, what is ok to feel or think. The authorities we listen to have usually been male, either scientists or religious leaders, the 'keepers of truths'.
For some of us, it's a radical concept, to find our own connection to spirit within, and yet more and more of us are experiencing that connection.
Whether you believe in a guardian angel or the universal spirit, a mother goddess or divine synchronicity, guidance is available if we are open to receiving it. In my yoga class every morning, we make an intention for what we need to receive through our practice that day. it's a powerful way to ground yourself in the here and now, manifest what you need. Some very popular books are going the rounds right now, explaining that what we think and what we attract to us are connected, ie The Secret.
"When you sincerely invite in the sacred (your inner guidance or spirit) to assist you with your life, you are granting permission for your life to change." Dr. Christiane Northrup, Woman's Bodies, Women's Wisdom."
For many women, getting past the male image of God is important to their new understanding of their spirituality, so they focus on a 'sexually affirming image of power and beauty', ie a mother god.
Perhaps this is a way of reimagining the divine spark as living in our own female body, and undoing centuries of abuse stemming from Eve and the apple. Women need to know that a female body and its sexuality are brimming with creative spirit, brimming with love and goodness. We need to reconnect with sexuality as spirituality, instead of splitting the two. Spirit's highest expression, for me, is the creation of a human body, and that begins with conception or sex.
So, let's reclaim our connection with our bodies, and celebrate the gift of being a woman. Someone once said, if you want to increase your blessings, then start counting them. I begin with the prayer of thanks for being born a woman.
nameste,
musemother
For some of us, it's a radical concept, to find our own connection to spirit within, and yet more and more of us are experiencing that connection.
Whether you believe in a guardian angel or the universal spirit, a mother goddess or divine synchronicity, guidance is available if we are open to receiving it. In my yoga class every morning, we make an intention for what we need to receive through our practice that day. it's a powerful way to ground yourself in the here and now, manifest what you need. Some very popular books are going the rounds right now, explaining that what we think and what we attract to us are connected, ie The Secret.
"When you sincerely invite in the sacred (your inner guidance or spirit) to assist you with your life, you are granting permission for your life to change." Dr. Christiane Northrup, Woman's Bodies, Women's Wisdom."
For many women, getting past the male image of God is important to their new understanding of their spirituality, so they focus on a 'sexually affirming image of power and beauty', ie a mother god.
Perhaps this is a way of reimagining the divine spark as living in our own female body, and undoing centuries of abuse stemming from Eve and the apple. Women need to know that a female body and its sexuality are brimming with creative spirit, brimming with love and goodness. We need to reconnect with sexuality as spirituality, instead of splitting the two. Spirit's highest expression, for me, is the creation of a human body, and that begins with conception or sex.
So, let's reclaim our connection with our bodies, and celebrate the gift of being a woman. Someone once said, if you want to increase your blessings, then start counting them. I begin with the prayer of thanks for being born a woman.
nameste,
musemother
Monday, September 3, 2007
The Tao of Menopause #2
Tao Te Ching, #3
If you over esteem great men
people become powerless.
If you over esteem poessessions,
people begin to steal.
The Master leads
by emptying people's minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think they know.
Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.
Well, empty nesters and menopausal women with an urge to empty their closets, will relate to the Tao entry above. At least, in my case, after twenty years of reading books, writing essays and poetry, attempting to 'fit' in a literary world, and after much soul searching and confusion about 'what's next', I have finally come face to face with the fact that most of what is 'literary' bores me. My mind can use some emptying, as well as my closets. There is too much 'stuff' in my 5 bedroom house, weighing me down. There is too much thinking in my mind keeping me away from feeling my core. I create confusion when I think I know too much, anyway. Clutter.
Lao Tsu says the solution is to practice 'not-doing'. Stephen Mitchell, in the preface to his translation of this gem of wisdom, says 'not-doing' does not mean doing nothing, but losing oneself in the flow of doing, the way an artist loses himself in his work, or a dancer in the dance. The mind is tricky in that it creates separation between the heart and what we are 'doing', self-doubt, self-criticism, negative thinking keep us removed from the feeling of 'flow' or core. If I align myself with what I have learned to focus on inside, the feeling of the heart, the separation is removed.
I want to pay attention to the real desire of the heart, my thirst for self-knowledge, of the longing for peace felt deep in the belly. My ambition may become weak on the outside, for accumulation of objects, cars, possessions, for recognition and fame, for keeping up with the neighbours. I may decide to empty my house of extraneous furniture and belongings and call the Sally Ann to come do a big pick-up. But how to empty the mind of its forgotten clutter of concepts?
Only in the recognition of my thirst for self-love, for harmony, can I find my real ambition: to appreciate the curcumstances of my life (gratitude), and flow with trust in the rightness of what life presents every day. To learn how to flow peacefully from home time to work time to supper prep time to teen chauffering time, without feeling squeezed inside because there is no 'me' time.
Finding pleasure in taking care of my needs, sitting in silence daily, listening closely to my emotions, to finding balance, to grounding in and accepting Life: in my ambition to become a human being, not a human doing.
Heart to Heart.
Everything will fall into place.
If you over esteem great men
people become powerless.
If you over esteem poessessions,
people begin to steal.
The Master leads
by emptying people's minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think they know.
Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.
Well, empty nesters and menopausal women with an urge to empty their closets, will relate to the Tao entry above. At least, in my case, after twenty years of reading books, writing essays and poetry, attempting to 'fit' in a literary world, and after much soul searching and confusion about 'what's next', I have finally come face to face with the fact that most of what is 'literary' bores me. My mind can use some emptying, as well as my closets. There is too much 'stuff' in my 5 bedroom house, weighing me down. There is too much thinking in my mind keeping me away from feeling my core. I create confusion when I think I know too much, anyway. Clutter.
Lao Tsu says the solution is to practice 'not-doing'. Stephen Mitchell, in the preface to his translation of this gem of wisdom, says 'not-doing' does not mean doing nothing, but losing oneself in the flow of doing, the way an artist loses himself in his work, or a dancer in the dance. The mind is tricky in that it creates separation between the heart and what we are 'doing', self-doubt, self-criticism, negative thinking keep us removed from the feeling of 'flow' or core. If I align myself with what I have learned to focus on inside, the feeling of the heart, the separation is removed.
I want to pay attention to the real desire of the heart, my thirst for self-knowledge, of the longing for peace felt deep in the belly. My ambition may become weak on the outside, for accumulation of objects, cars, possessions, for recognition and fame, for keeping up with the neighbours. I may decide to empty my house of extraneous furniture and belongings and call the Sally Ann to come do a big pick-up. But how to empty the mind of its forgotten clutter of concepts?
Only in the recognition of my thirst for self-love, for harmony, can I find my real ambition: to appreciate the curcumstances of my life (gratitude), and flow with trust in the rightness of what life presents every day. To learn how to flow peacefully from home time to work time to supper prep time to teen chauffering time, without feeling squeezed inside because there is no 'me' time.
Finding pleasure in taking care of my needs, sitting in silence daily, listening closely to my emotions, to finding balance, to grounding in and accepting Life: in my ambition to become a human being, not a human doing.
Heart to Heart.
Everything will fall into place.
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