(Monday is Moon Day. What are the tides of your week calling you to?)
There is a tenderness in your being
a yielding
A place so open a mere whisper
evokes awakening
The softness of your Body
The gateway to all you will become
the pathway back to all you where
the opening to everything you are
Honor the warm flesh of you
this meeting place of the divine and human
You think it is about you. You think this stuck, wandering place is about you and all that is wrong with you. It lets you hide out. Sleep late. Not get all the good stuff done.
Magic is intention, allowing, revealing, focus. It is inspiration, wonder, surprise, and wanting. Oh so much wanting. The fancy word for this is desire. Also known as hunger, craving, longing, and yearning. Magic is not released by waving a wand or chanting over a crystal. It is evoked though clarity of heart and wanting, wanting, wanting. Unabashed wanting mixed with decided action.
No mindless doing, no distracted busyness, no filling each second with the striving energy of trying to earn your deserving.
Don’t ask it to maneuver around showy displays of desperation and entitlement or to compete with showy performance and drama. Are you easy for magic to find? Have you cleared the path to your door so magic can dance right in like a long anticipated guest?
Why? What will having this give you? Love this yearning and let it become part of you. Let it lead you to be brave in action in just the right way that opens the door so magic can do its wondrous creation. I love you,
(Are you are finding blocks to magic in your life right now, The Guidance Sessions will help. Take a look.)
Warning: Slaying of spiritual and seasonal platitudes ahead…
Really.
Stop.
I know, I know. “Give unto others” and “’Tis the season of giving”. We were raised on the mandate to put others first, so of course you don’t think of yourself first. Or second, or are you even on the list? You make sure you anticipated every need and wish of everyone else, and more.
But you see, this is wrong. You think your concern for others, helping them, serving them, caring for and about them is your calling. Your family, children, friends, your clients and colleagues, you care soooo much. You would do anything for them. It is your reason for being. Your purpose in life. To make life better for others. You love people.
So you take on the pain of the world. You worry and feel guilty when you can’t do enough. It is part of being a goodhearted, kind and spiritual person, right?
Wrong!
Everything will sort itself from here.
Think about it.
Are you overly tired? You are giving too much.
Are you resentful? You are thinking more about someone else and dismissing yourself.
Are you indecisive to the point of stagnation? You are looking for proof outside of yourself, abdicating authority and not trusting yourself.
Are you overwhelmed? You are taking on more than your share of responsibility.
It wont. Not if you are ignoring your own precious life bliss.
When was the last time you rolled on the floor laughing with tears streaming from you eyes?
So happy you caught yourself smiling with out reason?
Overflowed with inspiration?
Danced with out a thought as to how you looked?
Felt so good in your skin the number on the scale was irrelevant?
Allowed unexpected beauty to stop you in your tracks?
Looked in the mirror and was seduced by your own eyes?
Treated yourself with extravagance that feeds your deepest soul?
Forget everyone else and feed your own thirsty, craving, wild, heart.
Fill her. Tend to her with fierce devotion and focus. Only when she is filled will your caring for others be your true expression, not a road to your own depletion. Only then will the extraneous melt away leaving your true life meaning.
Your caring will then be sourced in abundance and bounty, not duty. Or worse, a strategy to avoid being in your own life.
I can hear the challenges already. “This is selfish.” “This is the worst kind of self indulgence.” “I can’t just stop taking care of people.” “I’d be an awful person.” “People depend on me.” You know what? I don’t care what you think putting yourself first means (see how that works).
Do it anyway. As the rule rather than the occasional exception.
Give yourself a good time. And then do for others. Or most heretical, choose not to. Put the oxygen mask on yourself first, not in order to put it on someone else, but because You deserve to breathe.
I see women all the time, worn out at the deepest level because for years and decades they have over given and think it caring and loving. Because they haven’t been taught to balance their own care and joy with that of others. Because they buy the story it is selfish to think of themselves, or that they don’t have time, or that they have to earn it through good deeds.
I mean full bodied, consuming elation, happiness, jubilation, once a day, at least once a day, for one week. Then tell me putting your own pleasure first doesn’t change everything! Doesn’t change the whole landscape of what caring truly means, what it feels like and how it works. Caring for self/caring for others has a divine reciprocity that builds momentum, not depletion. But it only works when you start full.
I’ve been down the road of depletion to the point of life collapse because I gave more out than I allowed in.
Pleasure through self caring and honoring is the most sustainable and renewing way to source the true loving generosity of your heart.
How do you get this state of self caring, find your path of pleasure?
I say start with Wonder. I happen to have a whole course about it starting January 13. 3 weeks of e-mail joy to connect you to your wild, wonderful self. I’d love for you to join me. Come see the details and register here.
There, out of the corner of your eye.
That faint shadow, vague feeling, fleeting thought that dissolves away before it is even formed.
Are you craving beauty so deeply that your very cells are crying in pain?
Does the night wake you out of sound sleep demanding your attention, only to leave you with a weary mind unable to think?
Your Wild One is stirring and she has no patience for logic or routine. She answers your call for more yet will not follow your rules of propriety.
You must listen or be torn apart in the struggle.
She dances her wisdom inside your dreams and longings. Time to let them out so they can breathe the air and cast their magic.
It will terrify you and have you make up all sorts of stories that are not true. About who you are and what you can do and what is most important.
But your Wild One is not going away and she is not scared of your stories.
Time to invite her in for tea. She will think it quaint and then tell you about your mysteries and unlock the Universe.
And you will be in too much wonder to remember to be afraid.
(Day 30. #11. Last day of my being seen at 50 series.)
I want to write something big and important but what I am feeling is quieter and still forming.
I am coming of age.
Where I question less and trust more.
Where I am so much more interested in the perfection inherent in my imperfection than I am in getting rid of it.
Where life slows down because I get more present.
Where I am becoming the women I want to grow old as.
And I want more.
I want to feel life steeping me into deeper beauty.
I want my eyes to hold what they they see with greater love.
I want my hips to move freely, releasing the power of flow into the world.
I want my skin to feel the sensations of living as the exquisite braille of the Divine She.
I want my lips to gently kiss your life awake.
I want my hands to shake us up because there is magic between us that must ignite.
Magic that can only happen together, as we see ourselves and each other. Magic that will light the shadows and leave no room for anything other than radiant living.
This series has made me bolder. I needed that. So much more to come…
If it touched something in you, thank you for being open. Will you let me know?
Want to read the rest of this series? It is all here.
(This is the 7th post in my series “being seen at 50″)
*******
Here I am in the middle of my 30 day “being seen at 50” project. As I sip my tea and sort images of myself, I am also teasing out some old, old, old beliefs and patterns. And finding my inner revolutionary.
As the days go by I have been more and more riddled with sabotaging doubts about why I am doing this project. Is it relevant, what are people thinking, why did you say 30 days?
And then there is my personal Kriptonite, “Aren’t you being conceited?”
This last one slays me, leaving me open to all of the worst kinds of self doubt, self censure, and self judgment. It has the power to derail me in an instant, leaving me questioning myself and overriding both my intuition and concrete proof. (Intuition that says that the more we women see ourselves the more we deepen our power; proof this is having impact by the the amazing, supportive comments and acts of self portrait courage being shared.)
This one line “Aren’t you being conceited?” is a replay of a deeply wounding moment in 5th grade. My father accused me of thinking myself better than my classmates when I showed pride in my academic success.
I had unknowingly crossed a taboo of good, humble, appropriate girl behavior.
I was doing well, knew I was doing well, and the gravest transgression: I was proud of my intellect and achievements. I felt good and powerful!
I was taken down for it. I came to understand that I was not good and powerful, certainly not particularity smart, but the worst kind of girl. Proud, vain, self centered, thinking myself better than others.
Point taken. I took this new truth deep into my spirit and a burning tar of shame descended. I would no longer outshine, out perform, over reach what was proper good girl behavior. “Aren’t you being conceited?” became my inner check point, the gatekeeper that saved me from falling prey to the horrible female flaws of vanity and calling too much attention to oneself.
Except it didn’t save me at all. It kept me contained and second guessing myself. Twisting and pretzel-ling myself to walk the fine, often impossible line between being true to my desires, talents and gifts, and constraining myself as not to be seen by the world as thinking too much of myself.
Of course I would confront this particularly nasty self sabotage as I work my way though this series. A series of “selfies”, the name itself conjuring images of conceit for me.
Yet here is something I know, from my own experience and years of coaching women.
We long to be seen.
We need to be seen.
By the world, but most importantly by ourselves.
Not because we are vain or narcissistic. But because we matter. We are here. If we will not see ourselves we get lost in a world that reduces us to “fuckable” or irrelevant. Pretty and cute and therefore worthy of notice, or invisible. Able to do business like a man or too emotional to handle the stress. Self sacrificing or selfish.
Young and beautiful and therefore worthy, or old, worn out and pushed aside.
A selfie is a claiming of space. A declaration of “I am here, look at me, see me” in this moment. I am sexy hot. I am bone weary. I am having the time of my life. I am suffocating in my too small life. I am bored.I am showing up, see me.
This is courage. This is claiming one’s self.
This is my act of defiance to the internalized rule that says I should not be visible. It is an act of defiance in world that may judge me a narcissist, since to post pictures of myself for no other reason than because I want, even demand, to be seen, is not humble. It is proud. It is attention seeking.
So be it. I know the truth. Some may call it vanity or conceit.
I call it self revolution.
I crave looking into my eyes and your eyes and embracing our visibility, our courage to be seen as we are, in a moment of life.
What is your revolution, your defiance of some outdated, internalized rule of how you should be? Power waits for you there.
*******
(Want to read the rest of the series? It is all here.)
I would love to hear from you and, if you have been following, you know opening my comments is an issue right now. So if you want to share anything go here or e-mail me at sandi@lusciouslife.com.
There are days when you feel, at best, a minor character in the story of your life. Circumstances beyond your control take over and push you to the sidelines where you watch and wait and pray for better times.
There are days when you are sure you are the villain. Doing, thinking, being, every single way that is wrong and hurtful.
You are scared. Cowardly. Mean. Deceptive.
Weak.
And yet,
You are never, can never, be anything but the Heroine Goddess of your life.
While there will be events and trickster alter egos that mess with your assumptions of how it is suppose the be, you are always the strongest force in your life.
Your adventure in this world can never be overtaken. This is essential truth.
Your heart creates your life rhythm. It sparks the fire that casts warmth into the corners of your doubts and light into your hidden darkness.
Time dances in your favor, bringing you partner upon partner from a world of ultimate possibilities.
Your desires and dreams ever conspire to see in what way you will take your rightful place on the throne of your own becoming. The glorious, only for you, place of honor in the temple that is your life.
Here is the obvious truth only hidden when you assume you have been banished from your temple:
What you long for will bring you Home. It will guide you precisely where you most want to be, bringing you intimately present in all that is.
Here you will find Bliss.
Heroine Goddess,
Crave your life.
Hunger.
Then let yourself dive ever deeper into fullness until you can no longer be contained and must burst forth into new form.
It is an illusion that you are sidelined, a lie that you are villainous in your life.
Remember your temple. Take your throne. Glory in the miracle of your radiance.
Find yourself here.
