Gratitude is a two-way flow of appreciation between your thanks and the uplifting response that you feel in return. The flow of gratitude from the heart is received by nature in the same spirit it is given, and it is returned back to us as grace.
- Deepak Chopra
Dear Wise Women,
As our autumn session draws to a close, I wish to express my deep gratitude to each of you for being willing to walk this unknown path with me. When we first gathered in early September, I asked you to “Meet me in the Field”, do you remember?
I began with a passage from Rumi:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
I asked you meet me in this field, to meet one another in this field, and to meet all beings in this field. I asked you to meet painful sensations and entangled thoughts with compassion, forgiveness and gratitude. I gently asked you to surrender all judgements and agendas. I invited you into a sacred and safe space for us to co-create a field of unconditional love.
And, your willingness to meet here set the tone for our journey.
Each week, the messages and the insights arrived in real time and in response to what was occurring within our field and the larger field “out there”. The messages ignited the spark for deep and nourishing sharing and enabled a transmission of love and healing energy to occur.
Wise Women, guided by the energy of gratitude, I wish to close our session by taking you on a brief journey of where we have been. Below, I have attempted to capture the essence of our journey from week 2 to week 10 of our autumn session.
As always, may these words and images land in your heart and meet you where you are at.
With endless love,
Patti
Infinite Expansion
“Infinite expansion,” my midwife spoke as she gazed deeply into my eyes. I was beginning to doubt myself. I was there, right in that place during birth when you want to run away, where it feels like if you don’t go to the place you are so much avoiding, you’ll be lost forever…”Infinite expansion” she spoke the words again, but this time with her soul. Then I felt it. I thought that birth surge would split me in two, but I breathed her words into me and let them vibrate into the universe. And I expanded. And I birthed.
And I healed…As we walk into the space that we are so afraid of - afraid to be trapped, afraid of losing ourselves altogether - we must remember these two words, “infinite expansion.” Despite our fears, we can go there - can still breathe and allow our souls to expand there. That is our gift as women. We can plant the seeds to heal ourselves and our Mama Earth. That is the birth energy we have deep inside - hidden, where only the strongest contractions can beckon it out of us.
- Alexandra Kisitu
Which Way Brings you Closer to Love?
At any moment you have a choice,
that either brings you closer to spirit
or further away from it.
- Thich Naht Han
“My Heart is a Compass. The Path of Love is True Abundance”
White Buffalo Calf Woman is a sacred reminder that we don’t have to struggle to receive all that we’ve desired. When we join our heart’s longing with action, we find that there’s a sacred way to move through the world. This sacred way is a path of steady, quiet alignment between the heart’s intention and our every step.
- Meggan Watterson, The Divine Feminine Oracle Guidebook
The River Beneath The River
For a long time we live in the river on the surface of our lives, the river of survival, of false belonging, of all the contracts we agreed to, in order to belong. There is a current that runs much deeper and truer, and we can dive down and feel the pull of that. The river beneath the river moves to a different rhythm. It is not frantic, desperate, and full of noise. It flows and it is also full of stillness and presence. It is intelligent, loving and full of power.
- Shayla Wright
The Río Abajo Río, the river beneath the river, flows and flows into our lives.
The wild creative force flows into whatever beds we have for it, those we are born with as well as those we dig with our own hands. We don’t have to fill them, we only have to build them.
- Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Unconditioning Love
In the arms of grace, I am finding the strength to courageously face another layer of wounds. I am seeing how I have resisted showing my weaknesses to those around me for fear that I won’t be loved and accepted. I am realizing that I have not allowed these same people to show me their weaknesses. I am realizing how much shame I have been carrying. I am ready to release and to embrace…
“Love is the impulse to embrace the innocence of life.”
In celebration of your true innocent nature, love doesn’t ask you to accept what cannot be accepted; it simply says, “Just embrace your own heart, and I will accept on your behalf.”
It doesn’t ask you to forgive what is unforgiveable, but simply says “Just embrace your own heart, and I will forgive on your behalf.”
It doesn’t even ask you to love what cannot be loved. Instead it simply says, “Just embrace your own heart, and I will love on your behalf.”
- Matt Kahn
Unearthing Innocence
“You are here on earth to unearth who on earth you are.”
- Eric Micha'el Leventhal
We remember the beauty of our incarnation - the fulfillment of our soul’s longing to have a chance to be in a human body- this body. We remember the innocence of this incarnation and the source of Love that we came from.
We unearth another piece of innocence, one story at a time, until the fragments return to wholeness and we return to our true innocent nature.
Standing on the shores of the river, hand in hand, we laugh out loud. And in a rejoicing glee we shed our clothes, let go of the shore and plunge into the river! We let ourselves float and flow in this swirling pool of earth and water.
Unguarded Love
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
- Anais Nin
Letting The Guards Go
If it were up to my mind, I wouldn’t do it.
But, for the first time in my life, my heart is louder than my mind.
I can hear it beating,
pounding,
pushing its way out of the fortress and past the guards.
I say yes to my heart
Its ok
We’re ok.
And in hearing this permission, something changes within my heart
it slows down, it stops pushing
and starts dancing with each guard
with a slight bow, a little curtsy
my heart thanks each and every guard for their devoted service
and asks them,
“What has your post been for the past 50 years, what have you been protecting me from”?
And one by one, they proudly respond:
Hurt
Rejection
Abandonment
Despair
Oh, my heart says, I guess you didn’t know…
you never really kept those things away from me
I felt them knocking the whole time
and when you fought against them, my fear of them grew stronger
and so did my belief that I needed you.
Thank-you dear guards for your devoted service
your work is done now,
I’m ready for Love to be its own protector.
Opening the Gates of Creation
“Inspiration is the impulse which sets creation in movement.”
- Roger Sessions
Before to-do lists and chores
Before passes and fails
Before pressure and responsibilities
There was another way
A way of moving, of being and doing
No hesitation, no fear, no worries about the mess that might follow
Only an unbridled desire to explore, to create,
To follow the impulse of the moment.
I long to reclaim this innocence
To infuse just a drop of that magic elixir of wonder
into my adult self.
The elixir is at my fingertips, and yours,
If only we have the eyes to see it
and the will to drink it.
Every moment, a new dropper full of inspiration
that transforms
the mundane into magic
chores into creations
and messes into masterpieces.
That prompts us
to wake up every morning and say:
“What wants to be created through me today?”
The Peace Inside of Pain
The deepest place on Earth is not a physical place, but the stillness we enter at the bottom of our pain, at the bottom of our fear and worry. The stillness we enter there opens us to a spacious state of being that some call joy. When we put down our dreams and maps of memory, precious as they are, we can feel the pulse of life.
- Mark Nepo
And a woman spoke, saying
Tell us of Pain.
And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the
shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun,
So must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over the fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
- Kahlil Gibran
Holding the Opposites
“The greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension between opposites.”
- Carl Jung
If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough —sustain it, be true to it—we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.
- Marie-Louise von Franz
And now, dear Wise Women, I wish to leave you with a timeless poem that I feel captures the essence of our journey together:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
- Rumi