A Wild Soul Woman. Module Three. The Oceans and Rivers

Transcription

1 A Wild Soul Woman Module Three The Oceans and Rivers Sophie Jane Mortimer: Welcome wild soul sisters. This is Sophie from TreeSisters, and I'll be hosting the call today with Mary. So it's really wonderful to be here with you all. Before I hand over to Mary to start our journey with the oceans and rivers this week, I just invite you to take a couple of moments to settle in and to see that you've got everything that you need to create a really restful hour of wild soul woman retreat time. So you might want to get some extra cushions to make yourself really comfy or grab a cup of tea, and especially make sure that you've got your journal ready for the journaling sessions. And I also want to thank Mary from my heart, and I know on behalf of all of us, for being such an exquisite guide on this journey, so with that I think I'll hand over to you, Mary. Mary Reynolds Thompson: Thank you Sophie. So, yes, today we are entering the oceans and rivers. But first, let's feel how far we've already journeyed together. We've really entered so many places within our inner landscapes and, through Facebook, have begun to share our experiences of both these outer landscapes and these inner ones in deeply personal ways. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 1

2 Mary: And, I believe that s offered a widening of our understanding of these landscapes and really is helping us to integrate them. So, yet again, a plug for those of you that haven't already, to join us on Facebook, even if you don't personally share. Just by reading other people's shares and seeing the exquisite photographs and paintings and reading the beautiful poetry that's emerging, I believe your journey will be enriched immeasurably; I know mine is. Today's call will follow the same arc. As always, a reminder to be responsible for yourself and most especially, perhaps, as we enter one of the most powerful of the landscapes this week; the one that might be seen as the most feminine of the landscapes, and I'll talk about that in a little bit. But also one that holds the key to our shamanic power as we'll also be exploring. In a moment, as ever, we ll enter the oceans and rivers via the gateway of the Initiation Song from the Finders Lodge. And, by the way, somebody posted on Facebook, Ursula LeGuin, the writer and poet who wrote this piece, actually speaking this poem, and so if that doesn't beguile you to join us, I don't know what will. To hear the poem in her own voice was quite extraordinary. But first, before we go there, why is the oceans and rivers the third stage of the heroine's journey? Let's recap a little. We began our journey in the desert and this was the great unburdening, the letting go, the stripping bare in order to connect with our essential selves and in order to lighten our load sufficiently that we could be able to literally make the journey - that we weren't so burdened down. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 2

3 Mary: And in the process of that, we were also developing our skills as the mystic, the one that can see through the illusions, see through the mirage to what's real, the bare bones of the truth of things. Then, we entered the forest, and here, we really began to realize that if we were going to make this journey, this heroine's journey, the linear patriarchal path was not going to be the path to lead us through it, and so, therefore, we were going to have to rely on our embodied, intuitive, instinctual wisdom to create our own journey, our own path. In this process we were developing the skills of the witch or, as some people might prefer to call her, the wise woman. And now, in this landscape, the oceans and rivers, we meet the middle point of our journey. But also, we confront the landscape or waterscape that runs through every other landscape that we are journeying through. So, think about that, water is the great shape-shifter, it is moving and flowing and therefore it exists in different ways in each and every one of the landscapes. So this is an incredibly powerful landscape. It's also the place where we return to the womb of the Earth. And really, until our own waters break, until we give birth to a life that expresses and reflects the deepest longings of our souls, then our journey will never be heart-guided or sourced from love. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 3

4 Mary: The waters of our longings are incredibly powerful and much of our own power is actually contained within them and yet, they can be tricky to navigate. Water doesn t hold its shape. It not only appears in all the different landscapes, but in different forms. It s unpredictable. Water is deep, it's shallow, it's salty, it's pure, it's fluid, it's frozen... so we need to own our powers as shape-shifters, as shamans, in order to really reclaim the full power of our feelings. But when we do, we discover the gifts of this, our third stage of the heroine's journey. The ability to come fully alive to ourselves and our passions and our purpose. So now, we are going to cross the first threshold into deeper, sacred community. This is our gateway into ceremony. As always, imagine women gathering from every corner of the Earth and drawing together in the Finders Lodge. And remember, that at the center of the Finders Lodge, in the altar, is your question, your sacred question that you are carrying not just through one landscape, but through this entire journey. And just notice is that question changing? Is it shifting? And if it is, feel free to exchange it for the more real and relevant question that is in your soul right now and take your seat in the circle. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 4

5 Initiation song from the Finders Lodge Please bring strange things. Please come bringing new things. Let very old things come into your hands. Let what you do not know come into your eyes. Let desert sand harden your feet. Let the arch of your feet be the mountains. Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps and the ways you go be the lines on your palms. Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing and your outbreath be the shining of ice. May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words. May you smell food cooking you have not eaten. May the spring of a foreign river be your navel. May your soul be at home where there are no houses. Walk carefully, well loved one, walk mindfully, well loved one, walk fearlessly, well loved one. Return with us, return to us, be always coming home. ~ Ursula LeGuin A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 5

6 Mary: So, outside of the Finders Lodge, is the watery landscape, the river or frozen tundra or ocean, the water as it wants to express in you now. In you now. We are going to cross the threshold out of the Finders Lodge by saying the first line in the wild soul mandala in the oceans and rivers section. So I want you to exit the Finders Lodge to greet your water ancestor, and as you do that, say these words after me: "I am surrendering to the flow"... I am going to give you silence and space to simply be with the water as she is wanting to be with you in this moment (silence for reflection) Awaken to your every sense as you take in this water ancestor of yours... (more silence for reflection) And allow your attention to move between the outside landscape and the inner one, until those distinctions, inner and outer, dissolve. Until you feel how the waters of the Earth are simultaneously alive in you and in the world. And now, remaining in the landscape of your imagination, reach for your journals and jot down any thoughts, feelings, images or phrases that are flowing through you in this moment. What are your responses to this particular waterscape? (silence for reflection) A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 6

7 Mary: And just let the words flow. (more silence for journaling) Take a moment to read through what you've written. This is where we do our reflection-write. And just notice is there a particular image that's emerging, something that surprises you or is tugging at you, and just in a sentence or two write that down. Let's go back to why we are on this journey in the first place, looking at that from the perspective of the oceans and rivers. As we know, in order to be wild, nondomesticated, authentic, we need always to see the ways in which we have been tamed, trained and tamped down. So something is always wanting to break through and break free. So what does that look like in the oceans and rivers of our souls? As many of you have already touched upon, the key thing here is that the connection between women and water is unmistakable. Our bodies hold more water than men's bodies. And in the cycles of pregnancy and birth and sexual desire and menstruation, we feel the ebb and flow of our own waters. We feel it intimately and sometimes we feel it very intensely. And we also feel how water and desire or longing are connected, so when we smell some wonderful food that we long to taste, saliva literally rises in our mouths. When we are sexually attracted to someone, our vaginas drip with lust. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 7

8 Mary: Our blood flows and our wombs fill with ancient seas of amniotic fluid. In our tears, both born of joy and of grief, we taste the ocean. And when the moon rises with a full belly, we feel a reciprocal tidal pull in our own watery bodies, frequently howling or beginning our periods, or really feeling this deepened, visceral and embodied response. So water has this power to shape the earth and as I said, it runs through every landscape that we are exploring together. And it s also true that our emotions and our desires have the power to shape the course of our lives. So our lives tend to follow the channels of our feelings. But here's the problem. In our patriarchal world, women's emotions have been dismissed, they've been dammed/damned and I spell that both ways they've been culverted which essentially means they've been sent underground by a culture that is emotionally stunted and determined to control feminine feelings and even to pollute them and dilute them...those feelings... to their own ends in the same way that it controls and pollutes the waters of the Earth. And we can feel very strongly in our culture right now how the more toxic emotions are beginning to rise to the surface because real feeling isn't being expressed. So the question I ask here for us is, just imagine if we could become guardians of our own waters? And by that I mean, what if we learned to live and express from love and longing and joy and genuine sorrow and allowed those feelings to flow out into the world in order not just to bring ourselves alive, but everything they touched alive. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 8

9 Mary: And if you can put a stake in the water - I'm not sure you can - but if you can, I want to put a stake here into the ground of the water that if we really want to take back our power as women to effect change, then we need to become shapeshifters. And by that I mean we need to embody and embrace the full power of the full range of our feelings. So let's look a little bit more deeply into what that means for women. I imagine if you re like me, there have been times and maybe even many, many times, when you've been shamed for your emotions. The culture doesn't treat feelings kindly and so we're told we're too much, we're overly this, we feel too strongly, our outbursts are irrational, we're too ecstatic, we're too joy-filled, and that's really, really scary, right? Or angry women are ugly women. Sexually aggressive women are whores. Our sexuality as women has been deeply shamed and often sent underground. We're hysterical, a word that actually comes from the word for womb and implied a disorder of the womb. We're just too emotional to be taken seriously, too full of passions and feeling joys and sorrows, to fit comfortably into this carefully controlled calibrated, calculating world. And so, in response, we women can do one or two things, this is what tends to happen. One is we dam/n ourselves, again spelt both ways. We hold back. We don't express and we don't emote, and we can even get to a place where we feel shame every time a genuine emotion seeps through. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 9

10 Mary: And so we become less emotive, and in the process we discover that we can't just cover up one emotion, and so we lose touch with our passion. We lose touch with our true desires. Even our sexual feelings can be held back and tamped down. And this is a really deadening and depressing way to live. And if you feel depression, one of the reasons can be that you've really dammed your desires and this can actually land us in the shadow aspect of the desert where we are literally dry as dust. Dry as dust. Or, alternatively, we can rebel, right? And therefore we reject the masculine within us entirely and so we put no restraints on our feelings. We hurl our emotions into the world, we flood, drown, you know, tsunamis of rage, we rant, seemingly unconcerned for the destruction that lies in our path. And this is also a really painful way to live. We can even become sexually permissive in a way that isn't out of choice but actually hurts us. And then we can wonder why, surely, if we're expressing our emotions, then we should be creating intimacy or love in our life, but that's not happening. And it's not happening because we have lost the art of really channeling our emotions in a powerful, intentional way which is very different from damming them or controlling them. All to say that our emotions, like the waters of the Earth, are tremendously powerful and how we take care of them has tremendous consequences. So what would happen if we could literally learn to navigate, to hold and channel and feel the full extent of our emotions? Who would we be personally? A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 10

11 Mary: And what kind of power, as the collective feminine, would we unleash? Another place to look here is surface versus depth. We live in a culture that plays in the shallows, and, as a result, we rarely take a deep dive into ourselves, we're not really invited to do that. But that's where our great generative power lives deep within us. So here, in the oceans and rivers, we're actually being asked to take the time to summon the courage to take the deep dive into ourselves in order to dissolve that sense of the small self by entering the oceans of our being in order for the greater self within us to become better known to us. In order to make conscious what we really yearn for. And by the way, when we emote in a way that is exaggerated or has an edge of desperation to it, it is because we haven't taken the time to really understand what is it you truly desire...what is it you truly desire? We haven't really connected in to what our purpose and passion in the world is. And imagine what would change if we were willing to go deep. What then would we women give birth to from our collective, oceanic wombs? And there's something else, and this is really where we look at the shape-shifting quality. As we've moved through these landscapes, what we're realizing to a great extent is that we have been squeezed into a very narrowly acceptable way of being in the world and we women are beginning to rebel against that. Water shows us that there are so many ways to show up. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 11

12 Mary: That's it is okay to boil with rage, to be icy with anger, to express like a gentle summer rain, to be that free tumbling waterfall of joy and excitement, a cooling dip of pleasure, the salty sweat and tangle of eroticism. We re invited into a huge playground here, so that our feelings give us access to, portals into, the many aspects of our energetic self. And yet we dismiss the ones that we don't think are nice or pretty, or acceptable, or good or lovable, and in that way we cut ourselves off from an incredible source of power. And the more familiar we become with our true, pure desires, undiluted and unpolluted by society or other people, but really our own, then the more we get to be in choice about the ones that we embody and when we embody them. So if we want to be cold and clear as a glacier to cut through something, we can do that too. We can choose to do that. So this is the power of shape-shifting which is the shaman's skill of choosing how to express and embody your genuine feelings in a way that brings about real change. Truly becoming a shape-shifter rather than getting stuck in some emotional rut, which is so deadening, is one of the most amazing ways we can unleash, as women, our ability to influence and change the world. To influence - a very watery word - and change the world. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 12

13 Mary: So, I just want you to take a moment before we continue to just notice what you are feeling now. What's all this bringing up in you? Grief, rage, joy, peacefulness? Do you sense something stuck, something beginning to flow? Just take a moment and empty those feelings into the pages of your journal. Pick up your pen and for the next two minutes we're going to write, you're just going to empty those thoughts and feelings onto the page. (silence for reflection) Take a moment to read through what you've written. What do you notice? Capture your reflection write in a sentence or two (more silence for reflection) In a moment, we are going to move into, as ever, our delicious musical meditation. But before we do that, I'm going to read a poem to you by Denise Levertov that s going to mark our crossing into the second threshold. And then immediately after that, the music meditation, which is about six minutes long, will come on. Keep your journals handy because we'll go straight into a writing prompt. So here is the poem: The Fountain Don t say, don t say there is no water to solace the dryness at our hearts. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 13

14 The Fountain continued... I have seen the fountain springing out of the rock wall and you drinking there. And I too before your eyes found footholds and climbed to drink the cool water. The woman of that place, shading her eyes, frowned as she watched but not because she grudged the water, only because she was waiting to see we drank our fill and were refreshed. Don t say, don t say there is no water. That fountain is there among its scalloped green and gray stones, it is still there and always there with its quiet song and strange power to spring in us, up and out through the rock. ~Denise Levertov A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 14

15 Music Meditation: (Music begins) You are entering the oceans and rivers... (Music continues) Catch the current and ride it like a wild animal. Seventy percent of the planet is water. Seventy percent of your body is water. It is from your mother's salty womb that you emerged. Water moves through your veins. Your heartbeat replicates the pounding of waves. Water absorbs, shape-shifts, flows. It will carry you to the heart of your desire. (Music playing) Every breath of your body is like the ebb and flow of the ocean. Here in the oceans and rivers, you follow the flow of your own desires. Allow them to move through you, sometimes deep, slow, sometimes shallow, quick. You are the river drawn to the great ocean. Your dreams, your desire, propelling you forward. Every breath of your body is like the ebb and flow of the ocean. (Music continues) A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 15

16 Every breath of your body is like the ebb and flow of the ocean. Spend time in the oceans and rivers of your own soul and here you will find your purest love, so alive, so fresh and vital and life-giving. You can trust that what you long for deep in the wells of your being is just what the world needs. You are a pure, fresh stream of the waters of the Earth. (Music playing) Every breath of your body is like the ebb and flow of the ocean. Every breath of your body is like the ebb and flow of the ocean. I am surrendering to the flow. I have the faith to live fully as myself. I am wholly alive. (Music finishes) Mary: And now, reaching for your journals, here is your writing prompt: In the oceans and rivers of my soul, I... In the oceans and rivers of my soul, I...or even...in the waters of my soul, I And just write and allow the words to flow from there and I'm going to give you four minutes to write. (silence for journaling) A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 16

17 Mary: So, let's just take a moment and think about what is possible for women when we awaken to this particular archetype. Imagine, imagine being able to undam, to daylight - to bring to light - your own desires, so that your life can flow from your passion and your purpose. Imagine being sexually liberated, able to express yourself without shame or blame, but deeply connected to the needs of your own body and your own juicy desires. I can't even imagine what power would be untapped if we really committed to that. And imagine being fully alive to your own wants, to the pure, fresh waters of your being that can bring guidance to your life and give birth to new and vital ways of being in the world. Until we enter this deep knowing of our own desires, we cannot give birth to something new. But if we did, what would be possible? And imagine being able to take the shape of any emotion you feel, fully and without holding on to it, or trying to control it, but inhabiting it and the power of it, with all your being. And in these tempestuous times, these tumultuous times, I think this is an art that we women are being called to develop. To truly inhabit and own the power of our feelings and to express and embody them, choosing how to express and embody them. And again, just let yourself feel whatever is moving inside of you, give it breath. If your body needs to move a little, then let it move. And simply know all that you have been with today is opening up new channels of wisdom and of desire within you. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 17

18 Mary: So now, I am going to share a portrait of the archetypal oceans and rivers woman. And simply allow the words to vibrate and stream through your being and your imagination. Oceans and rivers woman: She is flow and feeling, the red ribbon of menstruation, the flood of sexual desire. She appears soft and malleable, but stone gives way beneath her touch. In time she moves mountains. She is shape-shifter and earth-scriber. She is the blue stream of veins, the wild wave, the still lake. From her oceanic womb all of life arose. Deep, dark, bright, scintillating, she cannot be contained, nor fully possessed. The moon tugs at her frothy skirts. Sun ripples across her swaying body, her hair is the white of mountain snow. She is shaman, thirst quencher and tide dancer, full-throated and quiet as ice. She is the stream of consciousness, the well of tears, the sacred fountain. In her gentleness, we are lulled. In the face of her fury, we are humbled. In the full force of her passions, she is unstoppable. When we surrender to her flow, we know what it is to come fully alive. A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 18

19 Mary: So we're going to end as always by saying the words of the wild soul mandala that pertain to the landscape that we've visited. And obviously today we're in the oceans and rivers. The first words are really about stepping in, they re an initiation into the landscape. And the second phrase is really a recognition of a deep kinship with the landscape. And then the third one is about claiming ourselves as that landscape. So as you listen to these phrases you can think about that. So there s an initiation, a recognition and a reclamation. So beginning, I am surrendering to the flow. And you can say that after me. I have the faith to live fully as myself. I am wholly alive. Next week, we are headed for the mountains, and I'll meet you there! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A Wild Soul Woman ~ Oceans and Rivers 19