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

Choice

"Countless times in our days, we find ourselves faced with the almost imperceptible choice to enable trust or distrust, to affirm directness or indirectness, to empower anonymous judgment or the courage to stand in one's truth without judging others."  Mark Nepo

Family

"Sometimes when i think of my parents, who have hurt me, I am lulled by a wintering sky to feel for them, to try on their view, but in my empathy an old pattern kicks in and I start to lose the truth of my hurt, as if there is only room for one set of feelings -theirs.

The struggle is a common one.  So often we feel for others and lose ourselves, or cut others off to preserve ourselves.  Like a radio that can only tune to one station at a time, it seems like only one side of things can be received, though all sides are broadcast.

But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides.  Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality.  Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us.  Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inablility to live up to their truth has hurt us.

This does not remove the emotional facts of our lives, nor does it ask us to remain in a hurtful situation.  Rather compassion asks that we open like mountains to the sky, like mountains that can withstand every kind of weather."  Mark Nepo

Spiritual Partners

The new female and the new male are partners on a journey of spiritual partners on a journey of spiritual growth. They want to make the journey. Their love and trust keep them together. Their intuition guides them. They consult with each other. They are friends. They laugh a lot. They are equals. That is what a spiritual partnership is: a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth.
~Gary Zukav

Flowing

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
...stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.

—Danna Faulds,
"Poems from the Heart of Yoga: Go In and In"

Heartfelt Work

"Heartfelt work is the cessation of avoidance. It is about waiting, listening and trusting."  Elizabeth Lesser

Prayer

"Some people just don't realize that, when their moaning about not getting prayers answered, that NO is the answer."  Nelia White

Expectation

"Expect your every need to be met, expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level, expect to grow spiritually."  Eileen Caddy

"If you see yourself
as no one worth looking at;
if you believe you are
not worth listening to,
if they told you,
"That's not what you saw,
not what you heard,
not what you think
you cannot trust yourself"
You are lost.

Don't look to others to find you,
to love and take care of you now.
You'll suck them dry.

No one out there
is responsible.
Go back and find
your soul.
Be mother and father
to yourself,
Until the divine parents
arrive.

Christina Baldwin

Trust

"No amount of therapy
can heal a heart that doesn't trust.
To learn to trust
is often
the heart of therapy."
Christina Baldwin

Risk

"Those who don't love themselves as they are rarely love life as it is either.   In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness.   Or even that the love we have been given can be trusted."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Approval

"To seek approval is to have no resting place, no sanctuary.   Approval encourages constant striving.   It makes us uncertain of who we are and of our true value.   Approval can't be trusted.   It can be withdrawn at any time no matter what our track record has been.   It is as nourishing of real growth as cotton candy.   Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Trustworthy

"Being trustworthy, not betraying ourselves, is, in part, about recognizing moments or situations when we are likely to be untrustworthy and seek the counsel of people who love us and are willing and able to be honest with us.   The hard part, the place we hope wisdom will find us, in in deciding where and when we must break a promise to be true to ourselves."  Oriah

Trust

"The people in my life who are the most trustworthy - those who tell the truth, even when the truth is painful - are not always those who keep their agreements with me.   Those who can be faithless - who can bear the responsibility of breaking an agreement with someone when the alternative is to betray themselves - are trustworthy.'   Oriah

Wisdom

"The older I get, the more I love words and trust actions."   Oriah