Birthing

Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers -- strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.
~Barbara Katz Rothman

I suppose it is natural for me to have the concept of "birthing" on my mind these days. In 12 weeks, give or take depending on when the baby wants to arrive, I will be participating in a literal birthing of the new addition to our family. I'm shifting into a "preparing for baby" phase -- we started registering and figuring out what kinds of things we'll need before the baby arrives, and we start childbirth classes next week. My body is continuing to change in new and unexpected ways, and baby's movements are getting more consistent and pronounced.

But birthing has always been about more than the literal to me. One of my favorite songs is Far Far by Yael Naim, in which she talks about giving birth to yourself. For those of us who are walking the path of spiritual growth, the process of giving birth to ourselves is somewhat constant. There is always something "new" we're uncovering within and learning to show the world. This year that "newness" within that I'm uncovering is mostly about how the divine feminine shows up in me, and how I can share that powerful feminine side of myself with those around me. I am giving birth to myself as a mother, to myself as someone who truly loves her body (perhaps for the first time in her life) now that it is home to her child, to myself as I embrace being a member of the community of woman in ways that my masculine-focused energy used to reject.

We all have both masculine and feminine energy, and it balances (or imbalances) within us differently depending on many factors, like how we were raised, what we value now, what phase of life we are in, etc. I was severely out of balance on the masculine side of the spectrum for the first 30+ years of my life. While the pendulum has been swinging quite a bit towards the feminine, I have often felt that masculine energy still in dominance. This year is really the first time I've felt the balance shift towards the feminine. It doesn't mean that I'm rejecting the masculine energy within me, but it does mean I'm finally finding a way to balance those energies and to embrace my femininity as part of what makes me powerful, as part of what makes me Who I Am.

Mother's Day is this weekend, which is always a wonderful time not only to celebrate the women who gave us birth and the mothers we are close to, but also the feminine energy that lives within us. It is time to let go of the doing energy--we've already planted plenty of seeds-- and instead to celebrate our BEINGness, our unconditional love, our connection to Source, our connection to each other, our ability to allow things to open up and unfold. What are you in the process of birthing? "There's a beautiful mess inside... Take a deep breath and dive... I guess I'll have to give it birth... There's a beautiful mess inside and it's everywhere... Deeper than you ever dared..." Namaste.

Photo: "Viceroy on the Butterfly Bush," originally uploaded by Benny Mazur

A new kind of love

If you were a regular reader in 2008, you may wonder where I've been the past couple of months. I am now catching my breath enough (or for a moment) to update you on the transition that is taking place in my life. It seems appropriate with Valentine's Day tomorrow to talk about the new love that has come into my life -- or really, I should say our lives, because this affects my husband, my family, on outward. We are all blossoming with the new love we feel for the baby we're due to have this summer.

It's been an interesting journey the past couple of months. I helped my mother move from Connecticut to California, I found out I was pregnant, my body adjusted to being shared with another life (well, I should say is continually adjusting), I started a new job, and now we're in the process of moving homes. There has been a part of me that has felt I should (ahem) be able to keep doing all of the things I had already been doing and yet still handle all of these new changes with relative ease. The trick has been to let the rest of me take over, the part that knows that I have to take every day as it comes, ask for help more than I ever have before, make taking care of myself my number one priority, stay in the present moment, and remember that it is what it is. While this way of thinking and living was always my goal, it has been elevated to the only way to think and live due to the circumstances. Much like the concussion I experienced last year, it seems like a gift, a way to get a perspective change because you have to, not just because you know it's the right thing to do.

As much as this feels like a physical journey, I am constantly reminded by how much of a spiritual journey it is. Even before I began walking down the path towards motherhood, I knew that 2009 was going to be the year of the divine feminine for me. Now I see just how true that is as I take on a new facet of that energy, the mother energy. I used to see motherhood as an end to, or at least a temporary derailment from, the spiritual path I have been on, but now I see that it is as much a fabric of that path as anything else I have endeavored in the past 20 years. Not only do I learn more about myself and my relationship to the universe every day, but I am learning about this little soul that is coming into the world. I have been brought in contact with a pure spirit, not yet immersed in the material plane, still aware of the universal big picture, still a being of pure love, still excited about the prospect of exploration and expansion that a life on earth will bring. It leaves me excited about my own exploration and expansion, and how this new experience will only widen my perspective and give me even more opportunity to grow and to learn and to share my gifts.

The world around us appears to be in chaos, but now more than I ever I feel removed from that chaos and connected only to the divine order that is being revealed. I know part of that is because my life is being expanded in so many ways right now that it makes it hard for me to see the limitation that the media is harping on. At the root of all of this is the deep love that I feel for myself, for my husband, for my family, and the new spirit coming into our lives. Love always expands, never contracts, and our universe is built on love. Bask in that feeling of expansion this Valentine's Day weekend and see if you can bring it into other aspects of your life as well. This is the true reality of our lives, and the more you experience it, the more you see it in your own life, the more this truth will be revealed to the world at large. Namaste.

Photo: "New life is coming," originally uploaded by marcusrg

Living with uncertainty

This past week has been such a good reminder for me that life is what happens when you're making other plans. My overdeveloped intellectual, masculine, left-brain side of me has been absolutely writhing with impatience as I've essentially accomplished nothing that I set out to accomplish. I had all these plans for how I was going to get back on track, or even better, how I wasn't going to get thrown off track in the first place by my trip to Georgia. My intellect was already expressing disappointment with me that I hadn't been blogging regularly and so I downloaded the 10th A New Earth webinar to watch on the plane with the intention that I would even post my comments from Georgia without missing a beat. The universe must have been laughing at me, for when I turned on my laptop at 30,000 feet the file was gone. All attempts to watch the webinar since I've been home have been derailed by everything from computer failure to 100 degree heat.

I've had similar experiences with most of the rest of my too long to-do list to the point where I just have to relax, laugh, and say, Okay, what do you want from me? When I sit still and listen, I receive a gentle response that comes from the spiritual, feminine, right-brain side of me reminding me just to be, to let go, to take care of myself, to be myself, and all the rest of it will fall into place. I'm reminded that now is the time for me to relax into the mystery of life, to learn to live with uncertainty, to focus on BEING instead of doing. This is my gift both to myself and to the world, because through being I can become what I came here to be, which really is just simply ME.

My life has always been fairly well planned. I didn't have a sense of what I'd be doing 5 or 10 or 30 years from now, but I had a feel for the rhythm of it, for the texture of it. My ambitions would take me far in my work and I would be very successful. I believed in the common wisdom of climbing the corporate ladder, using my current job to get a better job, working hard so that I would be well rewarded. This was my DOINGness, my masculine energy, my left-brain intellect at play. But I was never happy in my work, never happy with the rewards, never happy with the success. It all felt empty and without purpose. I knew there was more to life than what I came to think of as "making other people rich." I knew that my true purpose lay in a different direction, but this energy was so strong in me that I couldn't escape it.

I left that world a little over 7 months ago, and it feels like I've been in a retraining mode all these months. It's almost like I've been in physical therapy, strengthening my right-brain so that it can at least find a balance with my left-brain. In some ways, I've had to swing the pendulum pretty far in the opposite direction to get the energy shaken up enough that a balance can occur, and I may need to live from a place of BEING for a while yet before a balance is possible. I'm learning how to live my life without a plan. That doesn't mean I don't have a vision--in fact if anything my vision is much clearer, much stronger than it ever was before. But I'm not caught up in "how" I'm going to get there. My focus is on allowing a little bit more of the mystery to unfold each day, enjoying the ride, having fun with the process, finding peace in the present moment.

Are you at peace with the mystery? Can you find peace in the uncertainty? No matter how much we plan, how little uncertainty we think there is in our lives, life really is what happens when we are making other plans. Just like the present moment is the only one that is, life is nothing but uncertainty. We do not know what the next minute or hour or day or month will bring. When we learn to be at peace with this truth, we can truly appreciate where we are in this moment, and we can make room for BEING in our lives and begin to pave the way for what is truly important in our lives, begin to live our lives as fully and richly as possible, begin to be Who We Really Are. Namaste.

Photo: "What does this picture mean to you?," originally uploaded by chema.foces

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Living from the right brain

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
~The Dalai Lama

This video of neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor describing her experience while having a stroke has come to me from several different sources lately. I was finally able to download and watch it yesterday and wow, now I know why. If you haven't heard about this video or had time to watch it yet, I cannot recommend enough taking the time to watch it now. I would not be surprised if you found it the best spent 18 minutes of your day today.



This idea of right brain vs. left brain has been coming up all over the place recently. It is definitely related to the divine dichotomy--we are all One, yet we are each of us unique individuals--and is related to our balance of feminine and masculine energies. This video really helped clarify how it is all connected, and also gave me a way of looking at it whereby I can begin choosing to live from my right brain.

Now don't worry, I have no intention of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and disassociating myself from the left brain, mind-based, masculine energy side of me. It's just that it has been in the driver's seat for most of my life already, and I really want to engage the right brain, spirit-based, feminine energy side of me, at the very least creating a sense of balance in my life. What I'm looking to do now is to develop practices that strengthen my right brain, enabling it to become the dominant place that I'm operating from.

There are quite a few benefits to this practice that I can see. Perhaps the most obvious one for me right now is that so far I've had a heck of a time turning off the running commentary of my left brain. Mostly it is a distraction from my truth and it very rarely provides anything useful, except for when the commentary is obviously fear-based and then I can use it as a guiding light (i.e. do what the fear is telling me NOT to do). A new idea for me is developing this sense of not knowing where I end and the rest of the universe begins. I've had this experience in meditation or when I first wake up in the morning or while on the natural high induced by music and dancing, but recognizing its source makes me realize that it is an awareness that is always with me on some level, open to me all of the time.

I heard a story recently of a woman who recognized that she was allowing her left brain to dictate her reaction to a situation--she literally took a step to the right and allowed herself to respond from this part of her instead. What came out of her mouth surprised even her, but it came from her intuition, her inner wisdom, and resonated with a much deeper truth for her. I've also been experimenting with writing with my left hand, which allows me to naturally and easily tap into that intuitive place. Are you interested in experimenting with engaging more of your right brain? What kinds of activities do you find work for you? I know I'm excited to begin living from my right brain--let me know how it goes for you too! Namaste.

Photo: "***Creativity***," originally uploaded by Angela Mengoa

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Off and on

I feel like today I am waking up from a long nap. It isn't like I did nothing this weekend, but I did spend more of the weekend drifting than shifting. I haven't meditated or done my morning pages in days and I can totally feel it. The simplest word to describe it is that I am "off" -- off-balance, off-kilter, off-key, off-track . . . just plain off. The one thing I did do this weekend I am so grateful for -- I connected with women. I took a friend to the airport on Friday and we had breakfast. I had a handful of women friends over for a potluck dinner Saturday night. I met up with a couple of my Hoffman buddies for brunch on Sunday. I felt like I was rolling in feminine energy. What a nice change of pace, such a treat.

There is something about this weekend every year where I feel called to embrace my feminine energy. I'm sure part of it is balancing the equation -- my husband spends this weekend playing battle games, whether he goes to one of the local cons or just hooks up with some of his friends. Perhaps his being so utterly immersed in masculine energy brings out my need to soak up some feminine energy. Or it could be that on the heels of Valentine's Day, I feel my heart opening up and need to connect to the feminine to help support that. Whatever it is, this year I felt compelled to spend it with friends, and it sure felt good, like a warm bath. My soul feels soothed for it.

Today I feel capable of taking small steps out of the remainder of my funk. I feel again the desire to meditate, to listen to my intuition, to go for a walk, to cook something nurturing. My body and soul are craving some time to connect, to listen, to pay attention. And so I am following those urges, coming back to my center, moving from off to on -- on track, on purpose, on fire. Thankfully!