The Mystery Robed in Clothes of Sacred Feminine Flesh

Representation
Humans use representations to make up, in their minds, what the world is like, how people behave and even how they should be and what they should do. We create images in our minds of how things are, and then we compare ourselves to those images, and more often than not, see how we don’t measure up.

There are so many representations of women in our world; so many archetypes; so many images and idols. How do we come to know ourselves anew, broken free of the gazillion ways women are represented in the manifested, constructed and imagined world?

Pin-ups & Centerfolds.
Rubens & Picasso.
Cosmo & Vogue.
Ms & Jezebel.
Mary & Qwan Yin.
Eve & Pandora.
Marilyn & Sophia.
Beyonce & Brittany.
Venus & Aphrodite.
Buffy & Xena.
Kali & Durga.

The Mysterious Feminine
The feminine is mysterious. Mystery is feminine. Who and what we are as women is mysterious because we are the embodiment of the sacred feminine.

For eons, women have been represented in so many ways. We try to put into images and word the essence of the mystery of life that moves in and through women. So many sources and symbols, each one trying to make sense of something so mysterious and esoteric, yet so earthy and grounded; while in reality, it is something that can’t be known except through actual embodied experience. Whether woman or man, each of us wonders what this mysterious and incomprehensible beauty is that is woman.

Our Female Power
While this sense of woman is depicted in so many ways, the vast power that is woman is also cut down, chopped up, and apportioned into so many pieces (like Picasso’s varied representations of the female form) that our heads spin trying to make sense of it all. 

We try to pick up pieces here and there, putting together, taking apart, all in an effort to assemble something we can become. When somewhere we came to believe that what we are is not enough, is too much, is impossible to achieve, isn’t worth achieving, and any or all combinations of these, we constantly scan for what it is, what woman is, what we must become if we are to finally rest in that oh-so-hard-to-attain enoughness.

We humans spend a lifetime trying to forget what we really know ourselves to be so that we can fool ourselves into believing these gazillion representations of ‘reality’. And for women, another layer is added. We straddle the Madonna-Whore continuum. We project these polarities onto ourselves (and other women), and receive the projections from so many sources.

This perpetual dance of trying to be the good things we see out there and trying to project what we don’t want to be onto others, is exhausting. (Or maybe we try hard to be the bad things we see out there and project the good onto others). (Or try hard to be the good and then turn around and project the good). There are lots of ways to do this dance and none of them work. And in dancing this female human dance over and over, we can’t help but develop a basic distrust of ourselves.

Even while we continue to dance this dance of illusion, all along we know what we know, even if it is buried way down deep in the caverns of the unconscious (and semi-conscious) psyche.

Seeing, Accepting and Claiming
Last night I went dancing. My dance is a practice called the 5Rhythms. It is a moving meditation developed and taught by Gabrielle Roth. In the 5Rhythms, we give it over to the body. When we dance, we let go of dance steps, how we should move, and allow the body to move however it desires to move to the rhythms it feels. 

I’ve been doing this practice for nine years now and it has been my teacher in so many important ways. The practice has helped to heal the split in my psyche, has helped me to rediscover the joy of moving that I enjoyed as a child, and has ushered in visions (a way I seem to receive information) of things I know deep within.

As I stepped onto the dance floor, a very clear vision of the power of my own being came into view. This clear vision took my breath away because what I saw was so incomprehensibly vast compared to how I currently see myself and how so many women I know see themselves.

There weren’t any words with the vision, so I will try to share the vision itself.

I could see myself from behind. I was standing in a large clearing, surrounded by a dense grove of trees. It was late dusk, with just a little bit of light left from the parting day. While the image of my body was the physical size it is now, my energetic body was so large it went out way beyond the clearing, way out into the trees that surrounded me. I could sense myself so connected with the land and the trees, and with the earth and sky. In the vision, it was clear that I was so much more than the body. The body was within me, and the body was what I expressed through.

In the vision, I could clearly see that knowing my full power as a woman comes from aligning myself with the truth of who and what I am. As I did this in the vision, I came more fully into my body, which then allowed the awareness of myself as a living being to grow and expand.

The truth of who and what I am could never come from the representations on the outside, and while that is true, those representations hold a piece of truth. I could only know the piece of truth by feeling what part of it was true in me. There is a piece of each of those symbols in me, yet none of them are who I am and all of them are what I am.

To know the vastness that is my power as a woman, I must be willing to look within; to remember and re-member the parts of myself I put away; and to recognize and re-cognize what I know I know.

In the vision, I could see and feel and know this vastness of Self through the body, a body in relationship with the earth and sky, clearing and forest. 

Whole and Healed
In my past, even though I didn’t have such clear visions or deep knowing, I was always, on some level, aware that I knew something I wasn’t allowing myself to consciously know. I knew that I knew, but I didn’t know what I knew. 

I’m wondering what you know that you don’t yet allow yourself to know, or see, or feel? Where are you not being truthful with yourself about what is real for you, about your power, and about who and what you really are?

Sometimes, those representations do point to something we know. Sometimes, there’s something in there that speaks to us. I know, when I walk in the woods, toes deep in the mud, a part of me comes alive; when I stand in the waves as they break, something in the water speaks to me; when I stand on a mountain and inhale the expansive sky, the wind whispers to me, reminding me of what I know that I won’t yet let myself remember.

When I read feminist teachings, something in me feels the fierce love of the feminist heart. When I witness the destroying nature of Kali and Durga, I know these energies within my own being. I know that destruction is just as much a part of life as creation, even if I am not yet fully comfortable with that aspect of the feminine within.

Even the parts of life I bristle against, like the centerfolds and pin-ups portraying women as objects, remind me of something in me that is sensual and sexual and very alluring. I am all that, and I am not that simply for men’s sexual gratification.

I am that because the feminine, the sacred feminine that I embody is organically sensual and sexual, creative and erotic, and sublimely alluring and seductive without trying to be any of it. It is organic. That is a part of who and what I am, and again, going back to my vision, when I align with all aspects, all parts, I know the vastness that is my power as a woman.

This power is whole and  healed when I feel it within my own being, when I don’t project it onto others in return for favors and perceived safety. It is whole and healed when I see that all of who I am is not simply here for someone's gratification, but here so that it can be fully expressed as an expression of creation. It is whole and healed when I know I belong here and trust enough to allow the soft, pink flesh of my heart to open and be vulnerable as I express the truth of this woman's soul.

Trust that you know what you know. Listen to that inner voice, the one that invites you to turn to look within. Trust the wisdom in the body to guide you as you walk this inward journey of remembrance, recognizing and reclaiming.

I long to bring this vast and expansive mystery fully down into my body, and to dance with my sisters as the mystery robed in clothes of sacred feminine flesh.

*****

Certified Coach, teacher, and writer, Julie Daley, has led hundreds of people from all walks of life to take an inward journey of the creative heart — the source within each of us that guides us to knowing, healing, and personal evolution.

Comments

[melissa]

feeling the wisdom of this soulful poetry deep in my body. thank you, julie.