What a perfect day to reflect on what love really is, and what it means to you.
Sometimes the word has a lot of meaning to me. It's a feeling, an expansion in my heart, a desire to give my joy, a tender nurturing of another or myself, tending to my garden, holding a grieving client's heart.
Sometimes love seems truly to be a verb...to have more meaning when it's put into action.
Sometimes love seems so overused that it has no meaning whatsoever. People who hardly know each other, ending an email or phone call with "I love you"--or the other extreme, two long time married people ending each call with "Love you" whether they feel it or not, where the words have become rote.
When you say "I love you" do you mean it? Do the words mean anything when you say them? I am very careful about using those words, because I want them to mean something when I do say them.
Sadly, love for many, has become a medium of exchange..."If I say I love you, you'll do ____ for me" or "I need you to love me so I can feel ____". In intimate relationships, it is often linked with ownership....if a couple is in love, there's an expectation they won't feel that towards anyone else. That expectation can cause great suffering. Even in a deeply committed monogamous relationship our hearts can deeply love more than one person, even as a lover--while still not choosing to act on that feeling with someone who is not our partner.
To me, love is the infinite field from which we came, which is interwoven into the fabric of our lives, and it is the place to which we return. This temporary body is a channel through which life will take shape, and then return to its Source.
Seeing love this way, there is no lack, loneliness or isolation, for I am no longer a single cell in a vast sea.
May you rest in that abundance, today and all days.
From my Heart's Abode to yours,
Ellen
Showing posts with label conscious women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conscious women. Show all posts
Friday, February 14, 2014
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Rise Up O Women O Sisters O Guardians of the Goddess in men and women’s bodies.
Today many bear witness to the suffering of girls and women from violence and abuse. Around the world we speak, dance, read poems, act in plays, to attest to this horror, to declare that it must stop NOW.
We understand well that this is the result of patriarchy and a deliberate systematic disempowering of women. This is part of the disconnection of humanity from the natural world and the force of life itself which women carry as the birth-givers.
None of this is news. We’ve had 8-10 thousand years of this. What’s sad and shocking is that despite women’s great progress in some ways and in some parts of the world, this level of violence and terrorism against women continues. It is hard to measure since so much of this goes on unreported and unseen in the privacy of women’s lives, but could it be that it’s even increasing? Is this a backlash against the rising of women in so many countries and continents? Or is it simply that in our world of instant global communication this long buried well of pain and suffering is finally coming to light?
It doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that it's being talked about, that we are rising, that we are rising TOGETHER, and saying “Enough!”
There’s another conversation that needs to happen too--about how women themselves perpetuate the oppression of other women. Not through physical violence but through the way we project jealous and competitive thoughts and emotions towards each other.
We envy the one who’s thinner or more beautiful, we compare ourselves to impossible standards of beauty and find ourselves lacking. We compete for attention, men, money and power. I have often heard women, as well as men, affirm that women are catty and can’t be trusted.
If we’ve had the experience of being put down or torn down by our mothers, sisters, female classmates or coworkers, then we have even more evidence that women are not safe to be around and we can’t rely on them for support.
There are so many ways this insidious turning of women against each other can happen. How do YOU perpetuate this?
An ancient strategy-- divide and conquer-- is a very effective way to disempower any group of people and keep them fearful and separate.
I am NOT blaming the victim here. In fact, recognizing how we as women participate in our own disempowerment is our point of power. We can start to recognize the part we’ve been playing and take the steps to correct these patterns of competing, putting down, and failing to support other women. We can look at any places where we have failed to stand up for each other, and where we have sold ourselves and each other out in order to gain or keep the peace with men, even at a great cost.
I ask you to imagine now a world where mothers, teachers and all women feel safe in the world, where we are free of the fears of violence, rape, unwanted pregnancy, abuse and exploitation. Where mothers raise their daughters—and their sons, to cherish, honor, and celebrate the Feminine. Where women appreciate their own unique form of beauty, and the many expressions of the Divine Feminine through the whole range of women’s body shapes and sizes.
Imagine a world—it was birthed today--where women gather to celebrate, honor, appreciate, love, accept and welcome each other, exactly as we are. Take a minute to envision this, and then feel it in your body, dance it, move it, meditate on it.
I leave you with a very simple practice, one of the core practices of the Art of Feminine Presence to make this vision manifest in the world. Take the next three days to tell other women what you appreciate about them.
This beautiful movement of 1 billion rising….carry the seeds forward with this simple practice of appreciating other women.
Together, we WILL change the world.
Happy V-day to you and all of us with love,
Ellen
Today many bear witness to the suffering of girls and women from violence and abuse. Around the world we speak, dance, read poems, act in plays, to attest to this horror, to declare that it must stop NOW.
We understand well that this is the result of patriarchy and a deliberate systematic disempowering of women. This is part of the disconnection of humanity from the natural world and the force of life itself which women carry as the birth-givers.
None of this is news. We’ve had 8-10 thousand years of this. What’s sad and shocking is that despite women’s great progress in some ways and in some parts of the world, this level of violence and terrorism against women continues. It is hard to measure since so much of this goes on unreported and unseen in the privacy of women’s lives, but could it be that it’s even increasing? Is this a backlash against the rising of women in so many countries and continents? Or is it simply that in our world of instant global communication this long buried well of pain and suffering is finally coming to light?
It doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that it's being talked about, that we are rising, that we are rising TOGETHER, and saying “Enough!”
There’s another conversation that needs to happen too--about how women themselves perpetuate the oppression of other women. Not through physical violence but through the way we project jealous and competitive thoughts and emotions towards each other.
We envy the one who’s thinner or more beautiful, we compare ourselves to impossible standards of beauty and find ourselves lacking. We compete for attention, men, money and power. I have often heard women, as well as men, affirm that women are catty and can’t be trusted.
If we’ve had the experience of being put down or torn down by our mothers, sisters, female classmates or coworkers, then we have even more evidence that women are not safe to be around and we can’t rely on them for support.
There are so many ways this insidious turning of women against each other can happen. How do YOU perpetuate this?
An ancient strategy-- divide and conquer-- is a very effective way to disempower any group of people and keep them fearful and separate.
I am NOT blaming the victim here. In fact, recognizing how we as women participate in our own disempowerment is our point of power. We can start to recognize the part we’ve been playing and take the steps to correct these patterns of competing, putting down, and failing to support other women. We can look at any places where we have failed to stand up for each other, and where we have sold ourselves and each other out in order to gain or keep the peace with men, even at a great cost.
I ask you to imagine now a world where mothers, teachers and all women feel safe in the world, where we are free of the fears of violence, rape, unwanted pregnancy, abuse and exploitation. Where mothers raise their daughters—and their sons, to cherish, honor, and celebrate the Feminine. Where women appreciate their own unique form of beauty, and the many expressions of the Divine Feminine through the whole range of women’s body shapes and sizes.
Imagine a world—it was birthed today--where women gather to celebrate, honor, appreciate, love, accept and welcome each other, exactly as we are. Take a minute to envision this, and then feel it in your body, dance it, move it, meditate on it.
I leave you with a very simple practice, one of the core practices of the Art of Feminine Presence to make this vision manifest in the world. Take the next three days to tell other women what you appreciate about them.
This beautiful movement of 1 billion rising….carry the seeds forward with this simple practice of appreciating other women.
Together, we WILL change the world.
Happy V-day to you and all of us with love,
Ellen
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