On International Women's Day I have a question... So tell me: How many times better Than you must I be To be accepted as your equal? An A-lister, to your B The only thing you understand Is my tough love My mastery And you wonder why We are struggling to be free If I love you You're suspicious If I admire you I can't be serious If I'm nice You underestimate me (Consider it a friendly warning But don't do that...) I make it look easy And instead of virtuosity You see nothing I can keep pulling it Out of the bag But this is getting boring And it would be more fun To ride with you So I'll ask again As if to a friend How many times better Than you must I be With my bountiful skills In my feminine guise To be considered your equal? I have some more questions.... When female leaders are strong, they attract a lot of criticism. Or when they are perceived as weak, or just because they're there. They can be described as being 'masculine', 'ruthless', 'even worse than men' etc etc. I think we are still finding out what true female leadership looks like. How a woman would lead if truly allowed to follow her own inclinations... Is it possible to lead from a place of raw, unpolished vulnerability? Is it possible to guide from a place of feeling and pain? To what extent can a woman be sensual? Which qualities might you 'borrow' from each of these female leaders (below)? Which would you decline on? Are you judging them or loving them? Which other powerful women do you admire? (Top left clockwise: Baroness Thatcher, Catherine the Great, Queen Elizabeth I, Inanna)
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I seem to be developing criteria for songs which make it onto this blog, one of which is 'makes hair stand on end'. I could easily not add any commentary to this video, and just say 'ooooh', but in the interests of un-splaining, just a few thoughts.... We are all manifestations of the ONE The ONE has many lovers We all remember each other We are all eternally COOL with this We are all healed We are all friends The poignancy adds to the ultimate ecstasy We are all IN LOVE You can learn a lot from children. You’ve heard it said no doubt, that to enter the kingdom of heaven you must become like a little child... Well, you know, it’s actually true. Thing is, this is rather difficult when you’ve gone through all the bother of growing up in the first place. You’ve bought into all the ideas about what life should be like, what success is. Education, job, family, lots of likes on Facebook. Being #soblessed. It’s hard work. You’ve put your back into it. You’ve got stuff to show for it. Children are like little animals. Forces of nature. It is not a positive thing though to say an adult is like an animal. So we try to civilise children, divorce them from their primal energy, and work on getting them to perform to external standards. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but kids don’t actually like ‘performing’. Like when Grandma or auntie comes round and you say: ‘Put on your nice dress’, ‘Why not play us that little tune you learned on the recorder?’, or you say ‘Come on, let’s hear a bit of the Spanish you’ve been learning’. Ha, ha, ha.... What happens? That’s right, they tell you, usually by the look in their eyes, to get lost. On the other hand, a child is very spontaneous, and will do any of those things they can do as and when it pleases them, when the mood takes them. But if we want to become like children, we need to start doing more of what children do. Start saying get lost when someone asks you to perform, and then use your energy to excel at something they never even dreamed of. A child will say what they think because they haven’t yet learned that it’s not done to be truthful. A child is innocent and trusting because they haven’t yet learned that the world is cynical of this. A child is hopeful because they haven’t yet learned to manage their expectations. A child is quick to point out an injustice and expects something to be done about it because they haven't learned that's not how the world works. What would a child say about living the life you live right now? If you actually try to ‘become like a little child’, you’ll come up very quickly against your own cynicism. What does that voice in your head say? Where did that feeling originate? Where did you learn that? Do you need to keep believing it? If you stick with it for a bit, you’ll actually realise that innocence can be its own protection. Watch the people around you do a double take. Giggle. Try it some more. Treat yourself with the same compassion as you would a little child and you’ll find yourself opening to life in a much richer way. What is your relationship with the divine? Father? Mother? Friend? Spirit? What about Lover? Like really? Can you make love to your vision of God? Just the two of you? (Warning: your ego and shadow body won't like this at all. They will tell you all kinds of stories about why this is a big dangerous idea. If you're ready to take those fellas on, read more...) Sexual union is the highest form of worship because it implies complete acceptance. Think about it. If you were to make love to your deity, you would have to accept everything that the deity is and stands for (hard). You would also find you have to accept everything that you are - your humanity, physically, sexuality (even harder), and accept that you are accepted, even adored, for being just as you are (mind blowing). Just imagine. It would take years off your spiritual journey. You would be forced to integrate your shadow self and find yourself a more whole, total being for it. You would never have another bad relationship, because you’d have the gold standard to measure it against and no one could take that away from you. I don’t want to give anyone crazy ideas, but who do you call out for in your most intimate moments? Is the divine present? Who is the face of the Lover? Are they separate or are they ONE? If the Divine is your sweetheart, you will very quickly start to see all of life in a very different way. Like I said, don't get any crazy ideas...
You said 'Do more of what you love' But I looked at my life In despair As there were no more Minutes to be found And I know you're not sadistic (Honestly) So this must mean Something more profound I looked again at the strictures And the activity I could not have arranged it better If I was deliberately Seeking misery There was nowhere to go Nothing to do You told me 'Do more of what you love' So I went back to you and said: There is nothing left There is no other way You need to show me How to make love to my life Teach me how to make love To my day I bit my tongue three times this week. Owwwww! So I had to ask the glaring question...Why am I biting my effing tongue? What am I not saying? So many parts of our feminine story are missing from the dialogue. The unconditionality, the sensuality, the calling to account. This is the job of Shakti. Embracing the sheer complexity of all that is, has ever been and will always be. Tantra is like forgiveness in motion. It exists because we are all IT, and we are all one, and because there was a Hitler, and there was also an Eva Braun. They are both still here in all of us. Because the role of Shakti is to surrender, to remember, to use her whole self unashamedly, and raise her beloved to a higher place. It's not about rejecting or withholding. It's about kissing and upbraiding in a single breath. Caressing like a lover, and cuffing like a lioness to her cubs. Drawing lines, but going in. This is the power of the feminine. It's time to get our hands dirty, and call our beloved home... Why am I biting my precious tongue? The tongue is an organ of loving Feel the love flow between us The pouring, the gushing The gentle prattling to your sweetheart You just want to be known Confiding in me your lifetimes All of your stories your learnings I have the other half of these The wisdom, understandings I will explain it all, the primal rush The love play The way you slay me How whatever happens I still go to pieces when you play The symphony Between my tongue and my love The harmonics of good, and god-like And what is that! and ninja-sweet attainment I make it ok in you, the god in you The stuff that makes no sense in you Come home to me Why am I biting my precious tongue? Torturing this love organ When we are both speaking through it Giving and receiving When the chiding and forgiveness come in two When you finish my sentences, my being As brother-sister, one-it-y While you tickle all my love organs With your ecstasy, our laughter I have as much to give As to receive I am the engine that makes us go You need to listen to what I say As part of you I find the needle in your hay And know what to do It’s ok You slay me Come home to me I am not biting my precious tongue As an assassin Gently whispers in the ear Of his victim As he lowers him to the ground Eyes wide in wonder at his fate Awaiting the last breath You speak in tongues Like an incantation or last rite And soothing Stroke my hair So, when Babaji first came into my experience, I remember being under the impression that I was in a safe pair of hands... (Laughs hysterically) Well, kinda. You know, I didn't know that much about him. I'd never read Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, so I did what any sane person would do in that situation - I Googled him. And I came across a couple of stories from that book, including this terrifying one which takes place in the Himalayas with Babaji and his group of disciples: So I read this story, and then I read it again. 'Phew, is that you?' I said. 'You're tougher than I am'. And I wasn't sure what I meant by that at all.... And I turned it over and over in my mind, but my mind couldn't make sense of it. But my whole being was switched ON. And I still felt safe, because the part of me that was real was safe, but really, this should have been a great big neon flashing warning sign. (Retrospect is a great wise thing). There was a lot of jumping. There might have been some pushing - the jury's out. Some of it was fun, some of it was earth shattering, some was excruciating in ways that I have trouble explaining in any kind of linear way. And bits of me were falling off all over the place, shattering, breaking, dissolving. And I would be asking around fifty times a day 'Are we there yet?' We must surely be there? You need to trust the one you've chosen to destroy you, even if you didn't quite see the whole of it coming at the beginning, and you need to feel as if it's a safe pair of hands. That it's worth all the jumping because you'll have a better experience after. Does your 'killer' look as if they're having a good time? This is important when it gets tough. So, lest we forget, as we talk about awakening, enlightenment, ascenscion, consciousness and all the rest of these words that get bandied around, this journey is about dying. Letting go of all attachments to the body, the identity, the morality, the respectability, the good, the bad and the ugly. Becoming completely empty so that you are like an open window for the divine wind to blow through. Getting over yourself and getting out of your own way. And laughing, because you can't continue to take seriously what doesn't exist. And really, if you're going to go, there are worse ways to go than by falling into Love... How can you measure abundance? I love the way this lady turns the tables on most definitions and measures it in her sassiness, laughter, and the 'diamonds' between her thighs. Added to that her mischief and her sheer irrepressibility, she's looking pretty wealthy. Maya Angelou: 1928 - 2014 And check out the live performance at the end. She switches up her own words and brings it sparklingly to life. Still, like life, I'll rise I like to play with my own stuff too. How about: Still, like love, I'll rise...? Still I Rise You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries? Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise There is a lot of chatter about 'abundance' these days on the airwaves. A lot of talk about removing blockages to this abundance. What they are usually talking about is financial 'success' aka performance, and often a successful romantic relationship. If you're really lucky you'll meet your 'twin flame'... The trouble is, these desires are mostly a result of projection, and therefore lack. You want these things to compensate for what you don't currently have as a permanent state. Try thinking about abundance in a different way. How much bliss do you experience when you meditate? How many layers of appreciation do you feel when you listen to a piece of music or watch a movie? How deeply into your own body can you go and how much of the universe can you find there? How many nerve endings are activated when you interact with another who is not your lover. How much self-compassion do you have? When you start to truly have abundance in this inner way, you could choose to live in a cave and feel as if you have the whole world. For me, abundance is characterised by a pomegranate seed. It's a little red, juicy jewel in which you can find everything. Try looking at one with appreciation. When I was teaching myself this, I spent some time clocking little 'jewels' that I found in my life, and endowing them with appreciation, collecting them like trinkets - gifts to me from the Beloved. It's a good practice - how much 'juice' can you squeeze out of a little pleasure? Can you find pleasure in something you would normally resist? Make it into a game. When abundance really happens, it would be unusual for your external circumstances to not reflect this. But that's not why you do it, because a critical aspect of this is surrender and letting go. You let go of your performance-led goals, and start living like a poet or an artist. Celebrate your own creativity in any way that pleases you. If you treat yourself with something nice, do it in full consciousness out of self-compassion and make sure you enjoy every drop. Re-define abundance, and it will be more likely to work with you. I wrote a poem about these jewels of abundance a while back. Always a good reminder..... Jewels that I find: Shining pomegranate seeds Raspberry-laden bush Sweet watermelon French fancies, battenburg and Swiss roll Our love in these Abundantly smiling Like rubies and pearls Shared moments of laughter Sparkling rosé Glasses clinking and tinkling You make me coffee And I kiss you |
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Tantra Mataji | confidence - freedom - passion |