WHY WOMEN AND MEN ARE NOT EQUALS

Through another fellow bloggers post (Yashar "I love feminist Warren Buffet") I found this article:
"Warren Buffet is bullish...on women"from CNN MONEY

A great read...that of course had me write a "comment" that was really a post back.  I have to chuckle at my ability to write a page as quickly as someone can say "Amen"!


WHY WOMEN AND MEN ARE NOT EQUALS

This article is great - and the underlying principle of why I am developing my own class called Practice Joy Dance Therapy (www.practicejoycoach.com) specifically to teach women about the history we were never taught - highlighting a book I recommend to all to read (women AND men alike)Creation of Patriarchy. In her book Gerder Lerner ends up outlining several preconceived notions that 4500+ years of patriarchy have endowed upon the human population that we can still trace beneath the fabric of our culture today. This is why brilliant women like Kay and so many of us have a hard time shaking off the inferiority complex. But it CAN and WILL be done...but I don't know if it will be done based on/how Buffet talks about.

In my work I share that this step for women cannot be something led by men...but has to be led by the women. And it starts with STOPPING the race to make women equal to men. We are not equal to men...we are very different to men with very different gifts and when the focus is on trying to make us equal - we try to make women, our bodies and our brains into something that resembles men. This step of racing to train and use our "other half" is more of the same - more of the masculine driven energy that is driving all of us into the ground. And women will ALWAYS feel inferior to men if being equal to men is the standard. How can we not? Unless we have a sex change - and even then - we are STILL women.

This step of trying to make women and men equal is killing women - and our world - literally and figuratively. In order for America or the world to get back to a healthy balance between the sexes - women must learn about our differences, learn about our cycles and the innate power of intuition we are gifted with and how to cultivate this power of cyclical patterns back into our own lives, the lives of our families and the lives of our communities once again. Women must learn how to function in the world as the feminine souls we are - souls that are the nurturers, made to nourish life with their own bodies, creators of life through our own bodies, souls that have highs and lows each month and that would do well to learn how to use them instead of trying to ignore or level them out. We as women cannot continue to be women in a man's world but learn how to carry forth these feminine essences of women into a world of balance of the two essences of masculine and feminine. 

As a woman in the midst of this change herself, I do believe women will and are changing the economic forecast of America - and thus the world. Yet, I believe if we want to be truly successful at what matters most - which is not a Gross GDP of so much, etc. - women first need to learn from WOMEN who they are and what they are. Then they must learn to approach life, love and business from this perspective...then I think we will see a world that will and can live in harmony, in balance, in Peace and Love.

REPHRASING OUR "SIN" NATURE, OUR DARKNESS: IT'S JUST A BANANA SLUG (In LIGHT of Boston)

"Because we are creative beings, we are INTIMATE with our capacity to destroy...with our capacity to make ugly what is totally beautiful."  

Sophia Diaz on a conference call with Sara Avant Stover on my course for "Reversing our Curse"

This post was to be a very different post.  This post was going to originally share that while I was wanting to write today...that I was by no means breaking my vow of hibernation in order to share my findings.  This post was to share that I am LEARNING and growing in so many amazing ways...and that I am seeing my path with what I have been gifted to learn so I can teach and bring it to y'all.

Yet, I stalled on writing...and now I know why.  In the meantime, the tragedy in Boston has occurred.  And it reminds me of another tragedy that happened last than 6 months ago...and I asked when is enough going to be enough?

Well it seems that as a society - enough still is not enough.

So, instead of jumping on the band wagon and getting all fired up on the heels of another needless, heart wrenching tragedy....I think I will try a different approach.

See, I keep running into people that - in my opinion - have replaced the idea of the Rapture and 2nd coming of Jesus and the urgency I used to feel with that message - well I have found other ways that this same tune is being preached yet in different words - such things as conspiracy theories and evolutionary crises.  While I do not wish to demean or come across as putting down theses brilliant wise men that share these views I have come across...

...I just wish to be a voice of love and life...

....and pointing to death and destruction, or urgency and crises I feel is a double edged sword that does us no good if we really wish to change our world.

THE SCIENCE OF THE BRAIN/BODY
While we are dual creatures with very real dualistic natures...I think the one dualism we cannot wrap our evolved minds around is the idea that first we are "sinful", that we are born into "original sin", that we are "evil", etc.  ~ and then in the next beat ask our minds to find a positive solution for that dire mess of our nature that we have labeled in such awful, horrible ways.

I believe the science of the brain also points to this: basically, I have learned that once the psyche, the soul has been traumatized by rejection (and I believe that labeling ourselves "sinful" or "evil" leads a psyche to rejection)..., the person rejects themselves. Rejects themselves as a valid, worthy person of anything but rejection.

Furthermore, I know for myself  - I haven't heard this from science, I just can FEEL this in myself - that when I feel rejected... I go into defense mode.  When I go into defense mode, essentially I go into "fight or flight" mode...my stress hormones kick in, I'm stuck in my small mind ...and wham - I'm now making choices not based on my evolved big brain - but I am just making survival choices.

In this state, I might be able to make small changes that last a few hours, days or maybe weeks...but in the end, once I have calmed down - those changes are not lasting and I revert to my pre-defense mode change.

Taking this above example even further, I know for me these same stress hormones get triggered when I start hearing people talk about "crises" and "urgencies", when people start "prophetizing" the extinction of the human race, etc....so I cannot help but think this is why the prophets of old perhaps never saw really lasting changes....not even Jesus.

To further complicate this matter, starting either around the time shortly after the death of Jesus or at least sometime between then and the time Constantine acquired the Church...this idea of Original Sin came into being.  Instead of being creative beings with the ability to create - either for good or bad - by the idea of free will, by the idea of having choices....the human population increasingly bought into this idea that we were not born into free will, into choice...but into sin.  To top it off the word "sin" has become increasingly more "evil" in its connotation.


THE PROBLEM WITH LABELS
UNTIL a psyche deals with aforementioned rejection it cannot ever "hear" or "understand" a message of love and hope.   It cannot understand a way out of the dire mess our world is in...because that soul/psyche has been rejected...by itself...and thus it rejects the "evil" and "sin" out in the world as well.

If one cannot see their own Other side and integrate it - then one cannot see the Other outside of them either - and the propensity to continue to use their creativity, their choices for destruction instead of life - either internally or externally - will be perpetuated in our society.

I believe that part of us that we call "sinful", "evil" or "dark"...the part that has been rejected - it is looking for a home some how, some way.  It wants to be seen, to be known.  It wants to be held and told - just like a wounded child - that It is okay to be here, It is okay to be alive, that It has a purpose.

Until It knows It is accepted as part of us, while It might allow us to "hear" the story of love the Divine is...It will continue to keep us in our "small brain", in our "fight or flight" stance whenever we hear messages about "evil" and "sin" and "crisis"and how there is an urgency that we need to change.

Why?

Because It Itself is that part that we label "sin", "evil", etc...and It does not want to be labeled that way.  It will not allow the rest of you to see It if you continue to label It with negativity...and as a society we will continue to see the tragedies that we are seeing.

So - not until we learn to label our "sin nature" as something that we can actually get comfortable enough to see...not until then will we really - as a society - be able to make the changes we wish to make.

Not until we are in enough pain as individuals, not until we realize we can no longer ignore, dismiss or shun our own rejected "sin" will we begin to see the Shift I believe we all wish to see deep within our hearts, our subconscious.

In my journey, I learned that sin was something to be avoided at all costs - do whatever I could to avoid sin.  Yet, how can I avoid it if it is part of my very nature?  If I am born into it?  If I have no choice but to have it?  How about you - what do you really think about sin?  What can you really do with it if it is part of you?

SO WHAT DO WE DO NOW?
We know we have something that we label "evil" in the world...and we know that that propensity lies within us as well.

So, what the heck are we to do with this knowledge?  Ignoring the idea that something is wrong in the world does not seem like the answer.  Yet, doing what we have been doing - of getting the megaphone and shouting at people until we are blue in the face that we are headed down the wrong path - well that doesn't seem to make a difference either.

I ask again, what the heck do we do now?

Heck if I know - but this is what I'm discovering in my own life and developing with Practice Joy...
1) find the really uncomfortable feelings others or events bring up in me
2) back it up to the brain and see what "old tapes" are playing
3) see how I can rephrase those "old tapes" in order to expand my mind, open my heart and bring on the healing by allowing those feelings to be moved and cleansed by my e-motions


WISDOM FROM THE ANCIENTS

In the past, the way our ancient ancestors did not have the concept of "original sin" as part of their vocabulary.  They were - as I have said - conscious people who had creative ability - and with that creative ability they choose to do something that created life or destroyed it.  In order to help them deal with their conscious - conscious management if you will - they developed myths.  Myths are nothing more than deep meaning stories.  They would write into the story the "creative abilities" so that they could "see" and thus learn how to integrate into themselves.  I believe this is what modern day psychology calls "projection".  

To put this another way, I imagine that my inner world is like a movie real, and that my words and my thoughts about others become the projector that the movie is played on so I can "see".  

Projection is not a bad thing...projection is what gives us light into the "dark" places where the movie, the film (well at least in the "olden days") was being developed.  Projection gives us clues as to how to deal with that internal world that we have rejected.

IN ORDER TO SEE OUR OTHER SIDE
These ancient ancestors also knew the potential of the "ugliness" that resided in one's own psyche or soul - and that if that "ugliness" was not integrated into the entire being - that it would end up being killed or destroyed.

Think of Medusa...a woman so ugly that if you looked at her you would turn to stone.  She was created by the ancients so they could tangibly "see" their own "ugliness"...and in doing so, whomever wrote the story must have been paying attention to how ugliness in the outside world made them feel on this inside world.

For when I saw my "Medusa" today - in the reflection of a banana slug - I felt an immediate repulsion in my upper body and an immediate stone-like reaction in my gut.  I was out in what has become my manifestation of my internal world on the external - nature herself.  And as I chose a site to sit down and just be with the running water I looked down and saw the slug - with some strange green stuff on one end - which I couldn't tell which end it was.

Yet, since I have made a conscious effort to work on seeing my "invisible", "dark", "sinful", my "other" side - I decided this is RIGHT where I needed to sit...and maybe work on turning my head to actually look at the slug every few minutes.   But I wouldn't get too comfortable with this...for the internal revulsion was still there...making my insides crawl with the thought of being that close.

Yet, as I thought back to listening to Sofia Diaz (quote from above) yesterday talk about our Dark side and our Shadow selves and how spiders and insects can represent these aspects of ourselves to ourselves...and as I thought back to my admission that I  HAVE FOUND my dark side in my own sexuality and that I am working with her and trying to integrate her...and as I thought about how I allowed myself to fully break down in the midst of my Ecstatic Dance Community yesterday, to loudly sob while other women came to be with me...

...as I thought about all this I decided my work at that moment was to sit and "see" my ugliness by "seeing" this icky, slimy, blob of a mess...and to think about how this was the "icky, slimy, blob of a mess" in me that wanted to be seen and held and loved.

I cannot say that I fully accomplished my work in one session...but I can tell you this.  That as I sat there quietly pondering this experience...I decided to use my rephrasing technique yet again.  As it became evident that the leafy green spikes sticking out were in the "mouth" end and as I saw this slug begin to eat, I quietly started saying internally, "I see you."  Then, I started saying it quietly outside, over and over and over again.

The amazing thing that happened - physically on the inside of my body - is that as I said this over and over, my upchuck reaction calmed down and relaxed...and my gut-of-stone began to loosen, and my root chakra actually began to "feel" energized and "happy"....all the way through my solar chakra.

ITS JUST A BANANA SLUG
I have no idea if any of this post will make sense to you.  I have no idea if it will help the "craziness" of the world we live in to become less "crazy".  I have no idea if the sun will rise tomorrow or if I will get up.

But this I do know - that I cannot and will not use the approach of focusing in on the destruction in this world in attempts to ask others to wake up.  I will not do this, for it gets me all worked up and in my small brain - and if my own writing does that to me - then I can only imagine what it does for others.

Instead, what I will do is to continue to do my own work, to stand present and erected in my attempt to learn how the power of rephrasing my mind changes my body...allowing me to see my own Medusa, my own ugliness so that I can be a small part of the Shift in this world.  I have and I continue to be a vessel to move the pain through me, to allow the "cries of childbirth" through my very body so that IT can be felt, seen, heard and witnessed.

I will no lovingly refer to my "sin nature", to my "dark side" as a banana slug - at least for today.  And in doing so, I will allow myself to see the part that wants to be seen and held and heard.  I will do it for myself and I will do it for the world...with prayers that I am bringing life and healing and health to our world.

So how about you?  What icky insect or bug or thing will you find so that you can see your "dark side" as well?  

I would love to hear your descriptions in the comment section!

If you are a woman and would like to join me in a class to learn more, either sign up on for my newsletter or join me at the Women's Healing Conference where I will be teaching some of this material in a workshop.  

RECLAIMING GOOD FRIDAY FOR GOOD

IN LIGHT OF GOOD FRIDAY & PASSOVER: 

I wanted to take a look at my own path these past years of looking inside for the answers, of uncovering the depths of darkness within me and my subconscious mind that seek to keep me locked in patterns that seek to keep me separated and apart from myself and thus from my brothers and sisters. 

It is with this that I leave you with the sayings from other writings of the Teacher...of a Rabbi in the 1st century (and probably others...) who is noted for saying the following in regards to understanding the "Kingdom of God":

"...Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.  When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will realize that you are the {children of the living Divine}.  But if you will not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty."

In the same way, He is noted for saying:

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

The Garden of The Divine

OUR SENSES ARE THE GATEWAY

BACK INTO THE

GARDEN OF THE DIVINE.

Our senses are the communication link to the Divine.

Our senses are the doorway where 

Yeshua stands and knocks and

asks if we will come in and "eat".

Am I an Athlete? (From 8/10/11)

It is early, and I have been up for a while already, laying in bed with thoughts of writing streaming thru my head.  What would I write about this morning if I was to write?  It's amazing that while I know I have written some over the past years, when you finally are able to throw off the shackles of oppression and connect yourself back to your Creator - how the floodgates of heaven can open up on your creative side.

I was led to this thought in a very indirect way this week.  At a service on Sunday, a young lady and I were talking in which she asked me if I was an athlete.  I don't remember what sparked this change in direction in our conversation...but I was completely caught off guard.  Not because it wasn't an appropriate question - but because I hadn't really thought if I was an athlete or not...is that what I would consider myself?  I mean I did swim competitively in high school, I've coached and completed a few sprint triathlons and 5k runs, I coach indoor cycling and love working out - but am I an athlete?  I still have a hard time answering this question and am not sure why.  Perhaps because I think of athletes like Michael Jordan, Barry Bonds, Tom Brady...people that play a sport for a living.  Perhaps because an athlete to me has a certain connotation about the person it represents - a certain mental attitude that can rise above the pain and obstacles of training the human body.  Or perhaps because, as I am sure many of us do, I have a hard time seeing in myself what others might see so easily. 

Even now as I think about this question, I think no.  I mean I can coach you to be an athlete, I can push you past that point of which you think you can go - and then push you more.  But can I do this for myself?  Not so likely...I need some one else to do that, be that coach for me.  While I have much fortitude of mind, much "sticktuitiveness" (like that word?) ingrained in my spirit...I still need someone outside of myself to come along and coach me to be that athlete they can see in me, to inspire me to be more than I think possible of myself.

Furthermore, while I have always seen myself as having an excessive amount of creativitiness (fyi - I like to create words) and imagination - I have never seen myself as an artist.  Not just a painting type of artist, but one of those people gifted to create beauty out of my life to help inspire other people.  Yet, as I have come out of the oppression I have lived under and found myself again...I feel this stirring in my soul, deep in my spirit to be artistic in ways I never knew I had.  I.E. - I went out in June and bought a whole bunch of acrylic paint and started painting, teaching myself out of a book how to get the most out of my color and shadows, etc.  I have literally been amazed at what has come out of my hand...thinking it is almost an out-of-body experience because I have never been able to draw or paint in my life before.  (I have also bought a book on how to draw and am finding with some basics, I can kind of make things look slightly better than a childish drawing that I always saw come out of my hand before.)

What is more is I have this utterly odd desire to go pick up a guitar.  What?  I have never played anything more than chopsticks and Joy to the World on a piano before this - and never thought that I could do more than this.  But now, now I feel that with God anything is possible. 

Even more than this, even more exciting than this is I am finding my singing voice again.  (Stick with me here, I am close to making my driving home point!)  For years, I was putting doubts in my head that I really wasn't good at this art.  I was frustrated and sad because I have always loved to sing.  I was in choir for most of my young life...in the ensemble groups off and on in addition.  And lastly, singing was my one connection that I felt I had to my late mother.  She had a voice of an angel when she sang - so pure and true and one that I always prayed and aspired to have.  To be able to stand up and lead others to worship the one and true mighty God, to be able to bring tears to the eyes of those listening. This was my mother, and while I knew my voice wasn't as beautiful as hers in any stretch of imagination - when I sang I always felt a little closer to her. 

However, with these comments lodged in my brain, I became even more self-conscious of my voice than I was before.  At church is when I would sing most often, and if I sang off-tune for even a second I would catch it.  I tried so hard not to care because I was singing to the Lord, but inside I was dying.  Had I just lied to myself all these years thinking something was true that wasn't.  Was I really like those people on American Idol that just think they are all that to have the judges rip into them? 

Well, a few months ago I decided to put these doubts to the test and ask some trusted friends who I knew would tell me the truth.  And did you know what they said?  Yes!  They said yes that I could sing and immediately asked if I was joining the choir!!!  Not only did they think I could carry a tune, but I was good enough to be part of a choir? 

Since then, as I mentioned I have felt my voice coming back - hitting more notes than not, finding it easier to find the right tune or just sing my own harmony that is in my range.  I feel myself singing louder and unabashedly for the pure thrill and enjoyment of it - for my King - and I feel myself reforming my sweet connection with the mother that I am part of, even this small part of her. 

Here is my point: sometimes we need those people outside of ourselves to speak into our lives, to share with us what they see in us.  To tell us that we are creative, an athlete, a beautiful soul inside and out, a great sister in Christ, a great friend to those in need, a great mother/father/wife/husband, a great daughter/son of the Almighty living God...and we shouldn't shun them or their words as being too generous or untrue.  But receive their words as the blessing and love that they are.  For while God can show us time and again our talents - our ability to be self-deceptive and hard on ourselves is enormous.  And therefore He uses you, me - to help each other see what we are too blind to see in ourselves.

So here are to my sisters and brothers in Christ - and even those yet to be in Christ - who see things in me that I don't see!  That share with me that I am an athlete, an artist - and even a beautiful person in Christ.  I thank you so much for sparking my spirit and stirring my soul with your kind words.  I have never been good at receiving love from anyone since my mother passed, but I have committed to God that I will try my best to let the body of Christ fill me up with His love.  I just want to say a great big Thank YOU!

"Savior, he can move the mountains!  He is mighty to save, mighty to save.  Forever, author of salvation.  He rose and conquered the grave, conquered the grave!"

Thank you Jesus!