“In a sacred universe, the prostitute is a holy woman, a priestess. In a secular universe, the prostitute is a whore. In this distinction is the agony of our lives.”—Deena Metzger
For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing.” —Audre Lorde
"Sex has been called the original sin. It is neither original nor sin.” —Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Many spiritual experiences have nothing to do with gender, but it is deceptive to think that religious experience will always be the same for men and women. Simply living inside of a female body produces a different life experience than existing as a male, yet until recently there has been little in our traditional religions encouraging us to place the physical aspects of a woman’s body—menstruation, childbirth, rape, abortion, menopause--in a spiritual context. Much has been written on sexuality, of course, but largely from the male point of view. The Christian concept of a God up in the sky has resulted in negativity toward the body in general and female sexuality in particular. Little by little, this is beginning to change as women articulate their experiences and delve into nontraditional beliefs to draw together a collection of concepts, rituals, and meditations that fit a woman’s felt bodily experience. Drawn from Native American, Goddess, Christian, Buddhist, and other sources, the readings and meditations presented here are designed to draw you into your body and to create heightened consciousness about what female embodiment entails for ourselves and others; to develop an appreciation of the lineage we share with all women, our motherline; and, finally, to suggest ways to heal the heart of the womb.
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” —Martha Graham
“Instead of vesting divinity in a transcendent otherworldly being, we recognize it as immanent in the process of life itself.. . we recognize that, like us, God is dynamic-a verb, not a noun. ” —Joanna Macy
Coming Home to the Body
Emotion is energy in motion in my body: embodied energy. This energy can become blocked or trapped in muscles gone tight from old-held patterns of unexpressed anger, fear, anxiety, rage, and deep grief. Our bodies manifest the energy patterns of our minds and hearts. When we begin to move through our bodies, giving physical expression to these held physical patterns, the blocks are broken apart and new energy is released. The old patterns are transformed into new ways of thinking, feeling, moving, and expressing.
When women begin the transformational process of conscious self-love and coming home to their bodies, fear often arises. Some fears come from the outside. In the past when women stepped outside patriarchy’s boundaries, they were met with burnings, beatings, ridicule, and imprisonment in asylums. The revolutionary act of coming into our women’s bodies is risky. Patriarchy hates women.
There are also fears that come from inside. There are voices inside our heads saying, “You’re not good enough.” “Don’t be too beautiful, too powerful, too successful because they won’t like you anymore. ” “Don’t change your ways because you’ll be left all alone. ” Other voices add, “You can’t help the way you are; you’re just a weak, helpless woman.” “Don’t rock the boat.” They can sabotage our desire for growth. But because these voices are expressions of facets of our inner selves, we must not destroy or repress them, but rather find a way to transform their message.
In our bodies is our aliveness. Aliveness has to do with an area of consciousness called sentiment. We usually associate this word with feelings, sentimentality, nostalgia, the remembering of good times gone by. But sentiment is much more than things past. Real sentiment has to do with consciously connecting with the powerful,
intense energy of the universe that flows through our bodies, minds, and spirits. It is about being fully present w’th this energy now. Sentiment comes from the Latin word sen tire—which means “to sense.” Where are our senses? In our bodies.
Sentiment as consciousness has different levels. The first level is the powerful, intense life force which is present in the universe. This force or energy is experienced as our basic aliveness. This level gives rise to what can be called our felt sense of reality. One woman, commenting on the abusive language of her spouse said, “It doesn’t sound good in my body!” That was her way of expressing how the words she heard were connected to a felt sense of herself.
Where is this felt sense? It is in the muscles of our bodies, in the flow of our blood, in the beating of our hearts, and in the flow of our breath. This energy gives rise to feeling or emotion. Sentiment is an energy which bubbles up in us. It’s been called ‘enthusiasm’ because it comes from the Latin words for “divine energy within.” Calling sentiment an area of consciousness means that it is a way of knowing. Not only do our minds and hearts know reality, but our bodies also have a way of knowing that is vital to our experience of being fully human. When we are split off from our bodies we are disconnected from this way of knowing who we are, and our experience of full aliveness is severely diminished.
Many of us don’t feel alive in our bodies. How can we connect with our basic aliveness? How can we transform energies of dullness, blockage, and deadness into the energies of new life? How can we experience the divine energies of our women’s spirits, the energies many women refer to as the goddess?
I dance! I awaken my aliveness by free-form dancing to music of many different rhythms; I move without music as I give physical expression to my emotions; I sing and chant as I play my drum, rattles, or violin; I dance as I sing and sing as I dance. Then I feel myself coming alive, waking up, becoming consciously connected with the fullness and beauty of my own unique self. I become aware of how wonderful and mysterious it is to be the woman that I am. I become aware of how good it is to be a woman. I become aware of how good it is to be in my woman’s body. I experience a new connectedness with all women, with all people, with the earth that grounds and supports my movements and with the air and sky that carry my singing and chanting. I become more conscious of the need to choose foods that will nurture and energize my body. As my body moves and stretches I experience new levels of my own consciousness revealing my connectedness with all life across all periods of time. Every day brings new movement and new experiences of the multidimensional person that I am.
Each time I begin to move into my transformational life-dance work I experience again my fear of the unknown, the unknown of who I am, the unknown of what may come forth in me. I experience my fear of being foolish, of not being enough, my fear that it does not really make any difference that 1 am here because it’s all been done before perfectly by someone else. My inner voices can get very loud. Doing my life-dance is my commitment to physicalize my fear instead of letting it freeze my creativity and block my growth. It is a way of experiencing these fears as part of my aliveness.
Giving physical expression to my fears teaches me that that energy is connected to other emotions that are also waiting for me to reconnect them. I need to give physical expression to my emotional self, not just talk about my feelings. As I flow in movement from one piece of my story to another 1 begin to experience the contractions and expansions of my own birthing process. 1 remember the words of a poster that says, “I am a woman giving birth to myself.” I experience through my body the sacredness of my own life. 1 find myself pushing through dark inner tunnels of shame, perfectionism, and insecurity. It is messy work giving birth to new life whether it is the life of another human person or new expressions of one’s own life. As I move through those dark tunnels, I begin to discover light coming forth within me. At times it is experienced as deep forgiveness and nurturance that makes my body feel crystal clear.
Louise M. Pare, “Self Image and Spirituality” in The Spiral Path
For a good discussion of the evolution of the mind/body split and other such unfortunate ideas, see Elaine Pagels’ book, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, Vintage, 1988. Other books of interest include: Elizabeth Haich’s Sexual Energy & Yoga, ASI Publications, 1975; Dion Fortune’s Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage, Samuel Weiser, 1974; and Omar Garrison’s Tantra: The Yoga of Sex, Crown, 1983.
Online: Women's Spirituality - Ushering in the Sacred Feminine. Excerpt from an address on the future of Goddess Spirituality in Australia given by Shekhinah Morgan at the opening of the 'Goddess In Australia Conference 2006 - Women Remembering
www.yoni.com/cronef/womens_spirituality.shtml
More from Keys to the Open Gate, available in paperback & Kindle through Amazon.
SECTION ONE: HAVING A WOMAN'S BODY
Coming Home to the Body, Louise M. Pare
Menarche Ritual, Charlene Spretnak
Moon Lodge, Brooke Medicine Eagle
Body as Temple of the Holy Spirit, Catharina J. M. Halkes
Sexuality and Spiritual Growth, Joan Timmerman
Making Love, Brenda Peterson
Tantric Sex: The Secret Rite, Nik Douglas & Penny Slinger
Sex and Soul, Marianne Williamson
Childbirth as Spiritual Experience, A talk with Candace Whttridge
Jizo Ceremony for Aborted and Miscarried Children, Joan Snider
Menopause, Lynn V. Andrews
“The Grandmother Songs,” Linda Hogan
Interdependence. Paula Gunn Allen
Rape, Judith Ragir
Opening the Heart of the Womb, Stephen Levine
SPIRITUALITY AND SEXUALITY
Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger, Sexual Secrets: The Alchemy of Ecstasy
Margo Anand’s The Art of Sexual Ecstasy, Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1990
Jolan Chang, The Tao of Love and Sex: The Ancient Chinese Way to Ecstacy, Dutton, 1977.
Mantak Chia and Maneewan Chia, Healing Love Through the Tao: Cultivating Sexual Energy, Healing Tao Books, 1987.
Gedun Chopel, Tibetan Arts of Love, translated by Jeffrey Hopkins, Snow Don, 1992.
Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger, Sexual Secrets: The Alchemy of Ecstasy, Destiny Books, 1979.
John Mumford, Ecstacy Through Tantra, Llewellyn, 1993.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Tantra, Spirituality & Sex, Rajneesh Foundation International, 1977.
Indra Sinha, ed., The Great Book of Tantra, Inner Traditions, 1992.
Douglas Wile, The Art of the Bedchamber: The Chinese Sexual Yoga, Classics Including Women’s Solo Meditation, SUNY, 1993.