This very body we have that’s sitting here right now, with its aches and its pleasures… Is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.

Imagine yourself standing naked. Behind you stands your mother, naked as well. And behind her, your grandmother. Behind her is your grandmother’s mother, and behind her is her mother. (You can, in fact, in your imagination follow this linage all the way back to the very first mother.) All of them are naked.

If you zoom out for a moment and look at this row of bodies, their shapes and sizes, you will probably see that your body has forms similar to the women behind you, and that they have similar body traits to the women behind them. These are the shapes that have been passed down through generations.

From this perspective we discover that the shape of our body has a whole other purpose than just conforming to the fashion of our decade. It was created a long time ago and passed on. When we judge our body and compare it to cultural dictates of what a perfect body should look like, we are also judging our feminine lineage. To compare it with today’s fashion is to judge a perfect evolutionary unfolding that serves a purpose far more profound than the immediate need to fit in.

Maybe the women standing behind you judged their bodies too; maybe they didn’t fit their times’ ideal of perfection either. Take a moment to feel all these bodies, how they did their best, hearts pumping, lungs breathing, all the cells and blood working hard for so many years without being appreciated, because we all are trapped in a hypnosis of comparison.

We don’t judge our inner organs so readily. We don’t make the same insane commentary on the rest of our bodies, only on our outside appearance. Judgment, criticism, and comparison are all thought patterns and programming we have received from the outside, and unconsciously we keep reinforcing them. They are the result of our deeply ingrained social and cultural tendency to make the body into an object.
It is natural to love and be attracted to beauty. It thrills and fascinates us. When someone recognizes beauty in the color of our eyes or in the curve of our thighs, it can feel nourishing and vitalizing. This does not automatically close us to presence; on the contrary, it can relax and open us so that our radiance can shine through even more. Our suffering starts when we don’t feel our body from the inside anymore, but as an object looked on through the eyes of others.

The French author Simone de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex about how this loss of self from within is a form of “hypnosis” that can repress even groups of people. For instance, when a lower class experiences themselves subjectively in the same way that they are seen by the upper class, as less worthy.

In a similar way, collectively women have for ages been looked upon as objects of beauty and sexuality and on many levels this has trapped us in a distorted sense of self and of beauty. We can see this played out to the extreme in movies where women often are just decoration. We see it in music videos and in advertisements and in the explosive pornography industry happening on the Internet. It is too simple just to point fingers at men as the abusive party in this matter. The problem lies in the relationship to the feminine that we all, men and women, have bought into, and we can start the liberation process by questioning our own beliefs and judgments.

Feel into your body as it is right now. Your heart is still beating loyally. Your cells are so sincerely doing their job. Even if you have an illness, you can be sure that your body is doing its very best to heal. Feel your body from the inside, what a miracle it is. It changes with the seasons and with the cycles of the moon. It is such a perfect organism that with the right tending and loving nourishment will move and grow and love in its own perfect way. However, when we fall into the trance of judgment and comparison we are no longer present in the body. The consequences of this are many.

:We separate from our connection with inner wisdom.
How can we listen within when daily we are treated to a cacophonic choir of how wrong our body is? How can we tune in to the wisdom in our womb, our gut feeling, when we are wearing a belt so tight we can hardly breathe? We lose the ability to feel connected with the laws of nature, from the inside.

:We create poisonous competition.
When we measure the body by fixed standards we lose the ability to see and honor the beauty in each unique expression of the feminine. The sight of a woman’s beautiful breasts makes us shrink and compare them to our own. Drunk on a bitter brew of competition, we also eagerly seek out faults in other women to help ourselves feel better, forgetting that we are judging a unique expression of the feminine. This harms our connection with ourselves, since we start judging the feminine in us as well.

:We limit our sense of beauty.
By seeing ourselves and other women from the outside instead of from within, we lose a total experience of beauty, which is multidimensional and permeates everything. We can recognize beauty through our eyes, but beauty can just as well be felt through the skin, and when opening in laughter and even pain, we can feel beauty as a quality intrinsic to life itself. When we view it only superficially, we are seeing beauty as separate from ourselves, ignoring the oneness in the depth of our beings yearning to be seen.

:We lose our healthy sense of boundaries.
When we objectify our bodies we no longer heed, or trust, when something feels off inside. If a person moves closer to us than what feels okay, we normally feel this as a tension somewhere in the body, maybe in the belly, and we can either move away or express our boundaries. When we are not present in our bodies, we don’t register these healthy signals, and we can end up being violated physically or psychologically. Many women report being so trapped in the image of the nice girl—the spiritual version of this is having an open heart—that they find themselves being busy pleasing even people who act abusively toward them. They cannot feel the no inside, and if they do they do not trust it.

The habits of judgment and comparison often run deep. Once we feel we have kicked them, another layer reveals itself. As we are restoring a healthy relationship to our body, the feminine within is patiently waiting to be revealed and shared. I have found that taking part in women’s circles has provided the most healing and awakening support to me in seeing through these habits.
It takes commitment, gentle support, and ruthless honesty to find our way through the thick forest of beliefs, to move closer to our bodies.
When fully inhabiting every curve of her body, a woman is relaxed, open, and soft. Maybe you have noticed how soothing it is to be in the presence of a woman who is in her body. This healing radiance can emanate through all ages and skin colors, all shapes and sizes. It is the radiance of an innocent heart, of deeply felt feelings. The glow comes from being intimate with the moment itself.

A woman’s relaxed belly makes you let go in trust. Her fully inhabited hips emanate aliveness, and her face makes you remember the love that you once came from. Her eyes look fearlessly into the darkest corners of your being. A body like this doesn’t activate your comparing mind, because your heart is involuntarily touched, and you are subtly guided back to the deeper waters of existence.

From Embodying the Feminine by Chameli Ardagh.

Dancing in the Flames

“Dancing in the Flames is a brilliant and intimate documentary into the life of Jungian Analyst, Marion Woodman, who is known for her ground breaking work as a teacher and author on feminine psychology and addiction. We are taken into a metaphoric representation of the unconscious imagery that Marion discusses so passionately and, in doing so, are invited to examine our own lives. Brilliant mystic and author Andrew Harvey interviews Marion as she explains the mysteries of her soul’s journey and reveals a series of psychological ‘deaths’ and ‘rebirths’ that have formed the consciousness into which she has evolved. The film presents a philosophy of dynamic opposites, the bridging of seeming contradictions. Life and death, love and grief, courage and submission are not at loggerheads for her—they’re part of a harmonious whole. By embracing these opposites we come into the totality of human experience.” From www.cultureunplugged.com

Just click the link above and you can watch it free online.

As it is in Heaven (Swedish with English subtitles)

This is one of my favorite movies of all time.  The three main female characters are reflecting deep beauty and truth on an archetypal level.

“An internationally renowned Swedish conductor returns to his childhood village and agrees to help the local church choir hone their singing skills. The harder Daniel works draws out the singers’ hidden inner talents, the more he realizes just what he’s been missing by living in the big city. Before long he’s made new friends, and found a new love. As It Is In Heaven was Sweden’s official submission for Best Foreign Film at the 2005 Academy Awards.” ~rottentomatoes.com

and thank you, so

With Love, Chameli

Ps: Today marks the Day 1 of our Durga Sadhana Immersion. The Yogini’s are celebrating in all dimensions, glorious is this day. Our circle is gathering again. Over 200 women from all over the world. We will keep the registration open a few more days.

I feel a subtle tremor in my soul, similar to what I imagine animals feel right before an earth quake.
Durga tends to crack open the stale surfaces, revealing the luminous inside of the inside. If we are lucky.
If we are willing to be broken.

In facing Her power, I have been forced to drop all my ideas about power. My ambitious attempts to “get it”, to pump myself up with self esteem, to be better than, to play smaller than, my clumsy attempts to copy the ones I thought have “got it”, my clever games, my spiritual correctness.
She kindly ignored it all and kept pushing me down on my knees, reminded me to soften my tight fists, insisting that I let Her take the wheel.

The path to Her power is a path of surrender, a surrender to your own Self, to your Big Self.

In surrender you find your power, 
in bowing down you find your dignity.
In that moment of getting out of your own way,
you find your way.

The longing to show up, to contribute with the unique flavor of you,
is shared by all of life. Look at the flowers, the animals, look at children,
everybody wants to take part, with all we got.

So why make it so personal? Why do we make it about “being good enough”,
or the “right moment”, or “getting it”?

Here is a secret key, sister:
it’s not really about you.

From the inside of the inside you remember. Songs of outrageous freedom ~ of giving it all.
They come as whispers, they come as howls, or as a silence wrapping itself around you.

Small or big, right or wrong, unworthy or “the best”,
It. Does. Not. Matter.
This moment, this is it. This is life.
Get out of your own way and give it from that deep warmth of you.

See you on the other side.

Join us for the online  21 Day Durga Sadhana Immersion, starting April 25th

When you hear yourself say yes, or no, again, shrinking inside.
When it’s not enough, or way to much.

When his/her every movement is all you can talk about, think about, dream about.
When it feels as there is no way out, when you can only see an either-or solution,
and both are impossible.

The drama is endless.

We think that happiness will come if the story goes right,
so we push, and we pull, with all we got.
We get plugged in.

Yes, you are living this life in a female body, it is inevitable that you will feel
pleasure, you will feel pain, and you will feel everything between.

But there is a deeper suffering:

When we get plugged into the stories, when we get caught in escalating reactivity,
when we forget who we are, we feel what the Buddhists call “the root disease,”
we feel the pain of separation.

If I unplug will I still be engaged,
will things still get done, will I still fall in and out of love?
Will I still make choices, what about right and wrong?
Will I never raise my voice?

Breathe deeply, take a risk, let go.
Remember that Presence is infinite creativity.
Connect with the Presence inside of the inside of all things, first, then lean in with all of you, into the dance of form.

Practice: Pull the Plug

Your practice is to pull the plug from the drama.
Notice what happens when you “sit back in the saddle”, connect with your breath, and expand your awareness to
include the source moving as you, moving as the other, moving as all things.

Please let us know how it goes (post a comment below)

With Love, Always

Join us for our next 21 Day Sadhana Immersion, starting April 25th

Progress is only possible through longing. And as the path of progress is infinite, there should be infinite longing. Thus longing becomes itself a form of the infinite, to be desired for its own sake. This is why the mystics idealize longing. The other name for longing is love.

What a wild ride this human life is. Every moment is an opportunity to show up fully as who we are, an opportunity to create and to be created. The choice is always between turning our back to the moment or turning our vulnerable, open heart and belly toward the moment.

The divine feminine is radical in the way she guides us into a territory way beyond the confined limits of our thinking. Although our minds love to reach conclusions, to achieve goals, to me—at least—this life doesn’t seem to have any goal outside the meaningfulness inherent in this unfolding, this evolution, this play of life itself. While your ambitious mind may desire to reach an ultimate state of enlightenment, your wild heart is fully involved in a never-ending enlightening process.

In the territory of feminine embodiment, we are guided by different rules than just the linear, the logic and rationale. And isn’t this what we long for, to have these golden moments of rest from our chattering minds, where we just are? Where we are immersed in a current bigger, wilder, and wiser than us?

The feminine embodiment practices  are processes of remembering. You will remember, not old dusty dogmas or tidy models of reality, but rather the capacity to stay awake, present and in the body, at the very edge of each moment. It is here at this edge that evolution is happening. It is here—right here in this breath—that you become a co-creator of your future. You will remember how thrillingly alive you feel when you are fully here, fully present. You will remember not mental theories, but life itself, lived in its most awake expression. You remember love.

We dive into the intimate process of embodying our awakening and from here our relationship to our spirituality fundamentally changes. We will no longer seek to “transcend” or get rid of our humanness, but to open ourselves to a multi-dimensional life right here in the midst of it all.

In this directly experienced spirituality, we learn to see through our habits of dividing the “mundane” from the “spiritual”, every dimension of life is experienced as part of the same whole. We sense the suffering intrinsic to any kind of duality, and we start to breathe awareness down into our bodies, welcoming human life as an opportunity to awaken, to learn and to contribute. Our spiritual concepts transform into a tangible, embodied love.

This is text is from Chameli’s book Embodying the Feminine~ Life lessons and Practices for Awakening Women (previously Come Closer.)
Available in PDF or Kindle

Your truth, and the trust and strength to live it,
is not found in the cunning navigation through 
the all too familiar playing fields of the power games (higher/lower, win/loose, superior/unworthy, perpetrator/victim, )
nor is it found in the never ending dance of self improvement,
empowerment or building your self esteem.

Your truth is not something you need to find, reach or create.
It is already vibrating fiercely in the forgotten depths
of that which truly matters to your soul.

Join us for the 21 day Durga Sadhana starting April 25. Read more here.

We were in a gathering with a group of yoginis, we had been diving deep together for many days. This morning it felt as if we were dancing inside the heart of the Goddess, each sound, each movement, pulling us deeper into this unspeakable source of it all.
The moment was holy.

This is when she raised her hand and spoke. I know she was trying, in her way, to dive deeper: to be more “real.”  But when she started to share all her negative thoughts about herself and the others, it felt to me as if she energetically was vomiting onto the altar of her own longing. In this moment, peace, beauty, freedom, it was all there knocking on her glorious heart. Instead of throwing the doors wide open, she went straight down that old familiar road of “the story.”

We often think that the darker it gets, the more “real” it is. That the doorway to intimacy is through “processing our stuff.” If we are simply happy we get bored. We judge the happy people, as superficial and often times plain stupid.

Yes, as feminine practitioners we know that darkness is part of our reality.  Darkness can be the most beautiful there is,  the most horrible emotion, when felt freely, can carry us straight into the lap of the Goddess. Honesty is the doorway in.

Yet, don’t fool yourself to believe that to stay and churn in those yucky waters as some kind of virtue, will get you any faster to Paradise. In your attachment to your suffering it is easy to turn your back on the open door, and you look for a deeper meaning to your pain.

Of course you feel pain, sister, you just turned your back on the open door.

To see the holy is an aspect of the eyes that see. This world is full of horror, and it is also… magnificent. Just the very fact that you are here, and I am here, and we get to experience this moment, means that we get to be alive… that is holy.

Lean in.

Like moss, like warm velvet. Infinite. Still and held. Not in any way airy, it is full. Full of dark softness. And no impulse, what so ever, to do, anything.

This is my inner state. Right now. I know it well, it is the post-shaktiblast-swamp.

Four times a year I pack my gypsy bags and head out for a month long pilgrimage to the European Yogini circles.
After a few days of paying homage to my mother in Norway I practice and teach pretty much non stop. Expanding and expanding, allowing for bigger and brighter energies to flow through my body, this is my path. Embodied spirituality.

With the expansion comes the contraction, and it is in the dance as this pulsation She shows me bliss.

I came home a week ago, and today as the rain is throwing its icy tears at the windows, and the fire is burning hot and holy inside, I curl up in a corner, and I lean in.

Out

Of a great need

We are all holding hands and climbing.

Not loving is a letting go.

Listen,

The terrain around here

Is far too dangerous

For that.

-Hafiz

Photo Credit to Mikaela Larm

For 14 years, Meinrad Craighead lived as a nun in Standbrook Abbey in England. Now, she’s an artist in New Mexico, spending her days creating lush, colorful paintings and charcoal drawings. In the book, The Feminine Face of God, she shares how her decision to become a nun grew out of a strong voice within. When she first visited the abbey, she thought it was “ghastly, absolutely ghastly.” “But you know,” she says, “you do amazing things if you are told from within to do them. What has always been mysterious to me is that I have had the strength to do what was needed; that I have been able to do what was painful or hard. Even entering the monastery I knew that was going to be very difficult. But I also knew I had to do it.”

This inner voice is the voice of our intuition. When we just know something for no discernible, rational reason, this is our intuition. For many women, this is the most direct communication we have with the sacred.

To harness your intuition is to surrender to a river that runs beneath our wants and resistances.  When a woman taps into this river, she has a feeling in her belly and heart and she knows what to do. Some women have learned to trust their inner guidance more than others.  Many of us have also had the painful experience of suppressing our gut feeling with logic and strategic thinking.

My good friend Helena also heard the call of her intuition, which guided her back to the United States after the death of her son. Her mother and sister are in Sweden, she was part of a thriving women’s group, and she had rediscovered a deep love for her native country and its nature. She had no desire to leave again, but the pull was there and she responded. I met her when she had just moved, and it was fascinating to feel in her the trust in something deeper than her own fears and attachments. She was missing her women friends deeply, but she just knew that she could take her next step in California.

Women like Meinrad and Helena have learned the art of listening, they are receiving the subtle messages about life’s intrinsic order.  Right here in this moment, life is in constant movement. Can you feel the rhythm of this moment? Can you feel how it actually takes tremendous effort to work against it?

THE INTUITION GAME

If you’re ready to become more familiar with the underlying river of intuition, this exercise will help you. It is a beautiful way to practice surrender so you can see how life unfolds without your interfering. You will need a whole, empty, unscheduled day, but a few hours will also work.

* Take some time to tune into your body.
Close your eyes, take a few really deep breaths and notice your inner atmosphere. Make an inner commitment to allow your body to be your guide and anchor for the day.

* On each deep out-breath silently repeat these words: I surrender, I surrender.

* Now just wait for the impulse to move.
When it comes, move, and then wait for the next. In the beginning, it can be helpful to move very gently so that you really stay in tune with this deeper current of action; but as you get more familiar with it, you will find that you can move around as you normally would, but still being guided.

* Whenever you get lost in too much thinking, you can simply return your attention to your breathing and to your body.
Maybe you will end up not doing much, even falling asleep at first. Maybe you will run around a lake or move around town the whole day, finding yourself in unknown places and meeting with people you normally would not talk to. You may stumble on inspiring books, or suddenly notice a carved sculpture you have passed every day for the past five years and never seen. Maybe this sculpture will give you the impulse for where to move next. Maybe you will call people without knowing why, yet being open to deep connections.

Be an adventurer without a map or any idea of your journey’s goal.

* Sit down at the end of your practice and go through what happened, taking some time to notice how your inner atmosphere feels now.

Tuning into intuition will bring you peace, strength, and clarity. That little voice will lead down new paths and help you discover what you are here to be, create and share.

Image by Bibbie Friman

I could call it challenging, trail blazing, obsessive, divinely inspired, mad, exhausting, blissful, meaningful. High. Fast. Vast. Ferocious (and many more words if I was more fluent in the English language.)

Lets just call it intense.

It is in times like this I get to experience the fruits of the feminine embodiment practices. My practice keeps me sane, and frankly these days, it keeps me alive.

Here are five of my anchors to sanity:

:: I drink Green Smoothie every day. It keeps me healthy, strong, radiant and even though I fly over the Atlantic ocean in bacteria-oozing airplanes every three months, I have not had a cold or flu in more than two years.

:: I pray. I hand it over. I get out of the way, and hand it over to the intelligence that grows the leafs on the three, the hair on my head. For me That takes form of the Goddess. Every morning, I offer it all at her feet. My hopes and devotion, my fears and doubt, my love and gratitude. It all becomes rose petals at her feet. Please use me.

:: I walk in nature. Most often with a sister. We talk and complain and reflect and compost. With wise, compassionate, fun, and truthful sisters + trees, all things fall into place.

:: I celebrate. Whenever I have finished a task, I stop, take a deep breath, and say my YAYYYYY, before moving on. When money comes into the bank, YAYYYYY. Mission accomplished BIG YAYYYY. When we set out to do a task the body mobilizes all it got of hormones, in order to finish the race. If we move straight on to the next task, the body never gets the message that it can release and let go, and as a result we have stress hormones on no-stop alert. Not healthy. So I celebrate, as a practice.

:: I play. When I got out of my self absorbed little unworthiness-movie the whole universe was there ready. To play. When I fully realized that this body is earth, earth is awake consciousness, and that no matter what happens I will not be thrown off the planet, I started to play the game for real. Who cares if I fail? It. Does. Not. Matter.

With love, always with love

Photo: Bibbi Friman

there is no possible step beyond the cogito ergo sum in the absence of the traditional understanding of Pure Intellect. Logically and legitimately, empirical thought stops right there and can go no further.

The universe as we know it was at origin one unmanifest whole,
the remembrance of which lies deep in every particle of it.

The secret & spirit of evolution is embedded in this longing.
Longing is not a sign of incompletion. It can exist even in the most peaceful and settled souls.

It is the thread that connects one to source, one end of which is in your heart.
It is the remembrance as well as the compass.
By following this direction called longing, one unerringly heads back home.

This is not the time to abuse, neglect or ignore this light thread. Within it lies the secret of your evolution.
Speak to your longing, ask it and it will reveal to you your path and your greatest Self.
It will reveal to you who you really are.
It will lovingly show you how to become more of who you long to be.
This longing will stay with you till you finally achieve that which you long for.

Longing is god’s most compassionate way of keeping connection with you.
Who knows, is it you longing for God, or God longing for you?

Sukhvinder Sircar: is a Yogini sister in our 21 day Lakshmi Sadhana, she is a metaphysician, mystic, healer and transformation leader. She is deeply passionate about women’s work, and works in divine partnership with Shakti to bring forth the awakening. Her Joyous Woman! Workshops are divinely inspired. An accredited Process Facilitator with 18 years of work, she most ably creates a safe space for the participants, and through her process, leads you gently, powerfully & swiftly in your awakening & self-love. Transformation is a vulnerable process, as it means letting go of the familiar and comfortable.  www.primecreator.org

The behavior of "Swami" Kriyananda is really astonishing: He goes to an Eastern society, is welcomed into their religion, defiles their Holy Orders with gross sexual misconduct and then attempts to teach "the savages" that their traditional doctrine of the cycles must be stood on its head! And on what evidence? On the evidence of the "obvious superiority" of Western technical civilization! The arrogance is truly beyond all belief!

Then a little time passed by, and slowly you began to feel a vague sense of not being “enough”.

Just as the air we breathe is shared by us all, sadly this underlying current of not “being enough”,
runs in our collective blood, and keeps us glued to the trance of  the small “me”.

Look around you and realize that everyone is part of this trance.
This will open you to compassion.

I’m enough

Let the words drip like nectar into your heart
and take you beyond.

Loving Kindness Prayer
As you say the prayer the first time, say it for yourself.
As you say the prayer the second time, say it for a loved one.
As you say it the third time, say it for someone you are in conflict with.
When you say this prayer the final time say it for all of humanity.

May I have loving kindness

May I be well

May I be happy and at ease

May I have loving kindness

May you have loving kindness

May you be well

May you be happy and at ease

May you have loving kindness

May you have loving kindness

May you be well

May you be happy and at ease

May you have loving kindness

May all beings have loving kindness

May all beings be well

May all beings be happy and at ease

May all beings have loving kindness

This was the point when the yoga teachers asked: are you allowing yourself to be supported?

It went straight in. I cried. I whispered to myself: yes, yes I am supported.

I wonder what makes it so hard to ask and to receive support in our daily life? Where did we get the idea that that is weak?
In our striving to prove ourselves to be on top of it all, that we can do it alone, we are re-enforcing  an identity of being limited and separate, overlooking that we are all part of one totality and intimately connected to all things.
Everything and everyone are endlessly giving and receiving.

Where am I blocking the flow? Am I resisting support? Am I holding back my gifts?

Do you want to practice with me right now? Lets do it together…

Feel the seat underneath your body, holding you.
Feel the breath filling you, always taking care of you.
You are being held
You are being breathed

Are you allowing yourself to be supported?

ahhh….
I am letting go.

 21 day Global Feminine practice immersion starts January 25th. Have a taste of the support from the Yogini circle. The course is happening online and on the phone. Learn more here

"at the core of Tolle's teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution."

Saraswati, does not teach us the ABC’s of how to do the right thing.
She’s feminine, she knows that life will always show up with different masks, with different clothes, with different challenges and opportunities. So to try to figure it all out, both your future and your past for that matter, can be interesting, can be insightful, but it can also be a distraction of your time and energy.
Saraswati teaches us how to dance.
She teaches us how to feel the rhythm of evolution in our bodies; she teaches us to listen to the beat inside the beat inside the beat.
She teaches us to open our nostrils wide, to let our eyes become soft and endlessly deep like forest lakes.
She teaches us to feel the air caressing 72,000 nerve-endings in our bodies;
she teaches us the language of the wind, sufi dancing in the treetops.
As you are fine-tuning your instruments more and more, She will play you.
And being played by Goddess (life-force, great spirit, earth, Christ universe, insert your name of the mystery here)  is indescribable. Your questions do not become answers~~ one day you just find yourself dancing.

Here are some practices that you can explore right now, to help you dive into the ocean of creativity, which you are. Help you tune in to the creativity inside of creativity, into the unique way this vast intelligence is expressing itself,
as you.

:: Follow your bliss

“Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”
- Joseph Campbell

Your bliss is an underlying sense of openness, of a yes. It is an underlying vibration within you, a feeling of being in tune, in resonance. A feeling of living aligned with your unique self.

Bliss is not exactly a feeling, it is deeper than that. It is more like a vibration, which is really the feeling of being right in the core of the creative flow, and it can be there through difficult times as well as in easy times.
It is a disposition within yourself of resonance, just as when a violin is tuned perfectly, and it is played by a master.
Learn to recognize this dimension of yourself, let it guide you.  Just as the flowers turn towards the sun, you move away from that which does not nourish you, that which is not in resonance.
Follow your bliss and your life will keep opening up.

Anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
~ David Whyte

:: How can I know what impulses are aligned with my calling?
How can I know it is not just my ego or other peoples expectations talking?

With practice you will learn to know the difference. Action may look the same, but they belong to different layers of the world. And with practice, we begin to feel the different layers of the world without judgment and resistance, simply with observations. Take pauses from mental decision making and drop deeper. Pay attention to how it feels.
We can feel the different layers of consciousness as different flavors, atmospheres, different frequencies, just as we can feel different atmospheres in opera versus heavy metal.
Sometimes we get stuck in certain layers, and we find our way out.
And we learn.
Sometimes we engage in actions that are ego based, and we learn the taste of it, and we learn how to connect deeper.
With time we trust the inner guidance more and more.
Here is a simple checklist that can be helpful as you navigate through this discernment process:

1: Does it harm anybody?
2: What is my motivation? Is it greedy, is it making me smaller or bigger?
3: Is it of service? “Does it grow corn”?
4: Is it aligned with why I’m here?
5: Is it connecting me with my bliss?

Enjoy the ride!

Join us for a retreat in German in March fully and totally devoted to Saraswati and her magic.

::

I am a yogini. I am timeless.
I am a woman offering myself as truth,
as a throbbing yearning heart.
I am a roar
I am a sigh
I am a billion sparkles of light.
Come closer to me, I will hold you.
Come with me into the realms of constant blossoming,
in to where each atom is flaunting its stunning power.
Together we dare to be that big.
To be that radiant.
To be that trusting.
Come with me into the heart inside the heart, the world inside the world.
Our roots growing deep into cosmos,
in all directions.

::

 21 day Lakshmi Sadhana starts January 25th. Learn more here

I know you have spent years and years working on your “issues”. It is all good.

Now when we have all that out in the open, lets turn it around.
Lets turn it all inside out, and let’s discover a new way, a new world.

We are not leaving this world behind,
this new world is the world inside this world.

It is the world inside that pain, inside that hope,
it is the heart inside the heart inside the heart.
It’s home.

This path is not a path of self improvement, 
it is not about fixing yourself,
or comparing yourself to an ideal future state.
It is not a path towards a goal.

It is a love affair.
Union.

You fall helplessly in love, and everything shifts.
All is the same, all is different.

You feel everything stronger,
the pain is more excruciating
the bliss more unbearable beautiful.

You receive every breath, every sound, every thought
with wonder
with attention,
with curiosity.
Some moment are dull or dense or stuck, even those moments are miracles.
Just as when you first fall in love with a person,
you see with fresh eyes.

This is the path of the Yogini.

Here there is only one way to fall and that is deeper and deeper in love.

Everything you call “me”,
thoughts and preference, memories and feelings, hunger and thirst, divine and broken.
will continue to arise, yet the glue between it all will melt away.
It all swirls around like a raindrops in an ocean of light, gone before you can grasp it.

Once you claim your seat on this Yoginicircle your life will never be the same
you fall in love
with yourself.

It is an infinite love affair
with an infinite self

Oh yes, the Yogini’s are back, dancing in from the horizon of timelessness, gathering the sisters.
Millions and millions of women have prepared for this time,
and in the midst of this magnificent display of passion, and love and beauty
if you look around you, you will discover your seat among the wild hearted Yogini’s, ready to live it.

It is time.

 21 day Lakshmi Sadhana starts January 25th. Learn more here

Photo: Bibbi Friman 

 ~ aligning your life with your souls desire

With Chameli Ardagh & The Global Awakening Women Circle

January 25 – February 15,  2012

You are invited!

Get all the details here.

Image: Bibbi Friman