True Power + Womb Awakening
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The movement continues to gather speed around the globe - women who are done with a paradigm that equates power with domination. Women who are done with a culture of global war.
Never underestimate the power of women - we birth the world through our bodies.
But how will the feminine change the game?
Not with guns, threats, money or governments but with her Womb.
I didn't understand true power until I witnessed the birth of my nephew.
Have you ever witnessed a birth?
Or has your own body ever been a divine tunnel for life to become more life?
As tears soaked my blood-stained shirt, I brokered with my life, praying by name to every diety I knew from a lifelong study of global spirituality, that my sister wouldn’t die. Amidst the blood, sweat and screaming, the morphing abdomen, I could viscerally feel how close birth is to death - they are of the same portal.
The spiritual parallel to a culture of war is the glorification of ascension - escape from our messy embodiment, without an honoring of the other side of the coin - descension - the necessary journey of diving underneath the soil of our unconscious to unearth the scar tissue of personal and collective wounding that has blocked our hearts, closing us off to love, sensation and aliveness. This wounding is an inner violence that is the root of all outer violence.
The spiritual superpower of the feminine lies not in ascension, but in her capacity to descend. Each month, our blood draws us into this ancient cycle of death and rebirth, if we know how to heed the sacred call.
When women truly embody
this fearless honoring of our ancient womb wisdom,
all war will end.
The descent into our feminine bodies - our wombs, our beasts, our pussies, our heart - is the precursor to the emotional death and rebirth required to remember the true nature of of power - that which is beyond this lifetime, that which is rooted like an Oak into a story more ancient than we can know yet alive and well within our bodies.
This process, the feminine shamanic path, can feel like shedding layers of skin, layers of conditioning and trauma passed from generation to generation…. Then what's left?
As she dies to who she once was,
She’s reborn to who she was meant to be.
This is the journey we take together in Body Temple Alchemy, four months of embodied shadow work rooted in the feminine mysteries where we come home to our body to rebirth our true power in the sanctuary of sisterhood.
Maren Madeline, a talented writer, was part of our last cohort of Body Temple Alchemy. Towards the end of our journey, she channeled this story that mirrored the shadow work alchemy she and her sisters experienced.
May this story be good medicine for you and those you share it with. It's a powerful testament to the awakening of women occurring on the planet at this very moment.
May we find sanctuary where we can be supported in this process of shedding our skin - the armor of outdated paradigms - as we remember the nature of true power within - a power beyond violence, hierarchy and domination, a power that is the only hope for our children and our world.
~ Stay Tuned ~
Applications for Body Temple Alchemy 2024 open soon…
The Woman With 1000 Masks
by Maren Madeline
Once upon a time, there was a woman with a thousand masks. But she was unhappy.
Everyone in her homeland wore them, intricately carved and shaped with the latest trends. Like many girls, she received her first mask when she was but three years old, to protect her from the dirt and mud of the earth. Now, as a grown woman, she had collected many over her lifetime, each promised to bring her joy, happiness, and fulfillment. Each time she wore a new mask, she became all the more stunning and beloved by her neighbors and friends.
But no matter which one she wore, or which new one she obtained, she was unhappy.
For years she sought out and tried on new masks, desperate to find the mask, the perfect one, the one that would bring her joy, happiness, and fulfillment, and make her beautiful. Like many girls, she learned early on to never show her true face, her true nature, for it was hideous and frightened people.
One day, she found the most beautiful and ornate mask she had ever seen. It made her family gasp with awe and her neighbors sigh with jealousy. Surely this was the mask that she had longed for, the one that would bring her true happiness.
She took it home with her and removed her old mask. Then, she lifted her new beautiful mask out of the box. But as she put it on, the mask slipped from her fingers. Horrified, she watched it fall and cried out, “No!”
But it was too late. The beautiful mask shattered on the floor.
The woman fell to her knees and wept. This was it, it was the mask, the one that would fill her with joy. And now, she had no other mask that could even compare to its beauty. How was she to hide her hideous face from the world now?
Her tears fell upon the broken pieces of the mask, and suddenly her home was filled with glittering light. Stunned, the woman looked at the pieces more closely and discovered what cast light a thousandfold across the room. Inside the mask was a mirror.
The woman ran to her closet and pulled out each and every one of her thousand masks to examine. Sure enough, in each and every one was a mirror. She had never noticed the mirrors before. All she noticed was the way men watched her walk by and how woman’s eyes followed her when she wore the mask.
As she gazed at her reflection, a broken image on the pieces of a broken mask, the woman gasped. She marveled at her wrinkles, at the tiny sun spots dotting her cheeks, at the scars snaking across her chin. She wasn’t hideous or frightening like her family and friends warned her. She was beautiful.
Then the woman became angry. The fury was hot and fiery, and in this rage, the woman grabbed the closest mask and threw it against the floor. It too shattered into a thousand pieces. One by one, the woman broke each and every mask upon the ground, until none remained. As the last mask shattered, her fury evaporated. The woman stood alone in the sea of fragmented mirrors and held herself. She knew what she had to do now to be happy, to feel joy, to be free.
At first, the village pointed and scoffed at her for daring to show her true face. They screamed at her, jeered and jested, told her of the shame she should feel. But the woman remembered what it felt like to see herself, her true self, in the thousand broken mirrors, and she persisted. She refused new masks from her family and smiled at her neighbor’s fear and rage. For she finally knew herself and she was beautiful.
One morning, the woman heard something break in her neighbor’s house. She went to the neighbor’s home, worried that something terrible had happened. The neighbor greeted her at the door, and she too was without a mask. The women marveled at each other’s raw beauty etched in every imperfection, then embraced one another as sisters.
Together they walked through the village, ready to face the fear and anger that awaited them. For they know that more masks would soon break that day, and every day after that, until every man, woman, and child in their homeland was happy and beautiful, exactly as they are.
Once upon a time, there was a woman with a thousand broken masks, and she was free.