Imagine A Woman

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.
A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.
Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.
A woman who listens to her needs and desires.
Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past's influence on the present.
A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.
A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.
Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.
A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.
Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.
A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.
Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the body of the Goddess in her changing body.
A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.
Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine yourself as this woman.
- Patricia Lynn Reilly

Heaven

"I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there." - Oscar Wilde

Sensuality

"If we come home to our own sensuality and if we let go of all the awful, brutalizing notions of sin and guilt with which we were inflicted and we recognize and recover the lyrical innocence of our own bodies then we will come into the sacred within us.   It will also in another way relieve us of the crass, harsh brutality the modern idea of Eros, which is very voyeuristic and driven and lacks the textured gentleness of loving sensuality."  John O' Donahue

Self Esteem

"The lack of faith in who we are is embedded in the bones of the culture we have created.   We are surrounded by the assumption of our innate inadequacy, the notion of original sin made implicit in a secular culture preaching achievement, improvement, and change."  Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Ego

"Ego is not sin.  Ego is not something you get rid of.  Ego is something that you come to know-something that you befriend not by acting out or repressing all the feelings that you feel."  Pema Chondron

Guilt and Fear...the Lie

"People were given to believe that they were naturally bad and sinful.   They let this toxic idea into their minds and it gradually poisoned their whole way of seeing themselves.   Sin was in every corner and probable damnation waited at the end of the road.   People were drafted into blasphame against their own nature.  You could not let yourself go.   Any longing to claim your nature or pursue your wildness would lead to ruin.   This corrupted the innocence of people's sensual lives and broke the fluency of their souls.   Rather than walk the path with the encouraging companionship of your protecting angel beside you and the passionate creativity of the Holy Spirit at your deepest core you were trapped between guilt and fear."   John O' Donahue

Value

"The idea of sinfulness and selfishness of the self has trapped many lovely people all their lives in a false, inner civil war.  Fearful of valuing themselves in any way, they have shunned their own light and mystery.   Their inner world remained painfully off limits."