My Dangerous Beauty

Actually there are very many cycles at play within a women’s life. When I feel into the cycles that I pay attention to – I notice that I am part of something greater that I can’t quite put my finger on.

In the 80’s – I was passionate about the moon and astrology and I watched the felt the moon move through my life. At the same time I kept a menstrual diary for over 12 months, I watched, I felt, I was with the cycles that move through my life. I watched and felt what I wanted to eat, when I wanted to make love, when I didn’t want to go out into the world. I watched and felt all of these things.

It is obvious to me know that when I followed the movement of the moon through the sky. The building energy and the letting go energy – my body was doing the same thing. I have spent a lot of the last ten years bleeding more on a full moon than no moon.

I learnt that I needed to follow the flow, and I was lucky enough in my life to change the way I lived it, I scheduled new work and projects when the energy was new in me. I didn’t force something to start something when my body was in a letting go of unused creative potential in my womb. I stopped going against the flow.

Menstruating is an internal process, not only does my body bleed but an aspect of my psyche leaves and goes somewhere, my dreams are prophetic, I have almost gone to work in another realm. To force myself to participate in place in front of my eyes is painful and an aspect of me gets angry and twisted and resentful ie PMS. If I surrender to the deep internal world, I have less PMS.  I still notice a flavour of PMS, it is a tiny doorway of agitation, the last little let-go. It is almost as if it is the doorbell of ‘negativity’ before I descend.

So I curl up in my home, with food that nurtures me, and I sleep and potter around. This too is feminine work. It is not wasting time or lolly gagging. The time I give myself when I menstruate is deeply informing to my life, my work.

Did I go easily into this place, no not at first. I wanted to function as a normal human being – like everyone else around me. I needed to keep up. But that is success-model masculine bullshit really.
I still follow my cycle, but I am much more relaxed in it these days. Actually I plot my cycles by my conversations with best girl friend. She knows when I am about to bleed, I dont keep track of it in a diary anymore.

When my bleeding moves and changes shape, I too let that inform me.

With My Dangerous Beauty, supporting women all over the world, it is very interesting to feel the space in between the winter and summer solstices for example as a cycle. So we chose to celebrate the space in between both spectrums of duality rather than focus on opposites of energy. The high celebration of summer and the death knoll of winter before the turning starts. In the past for example the pagan tradition has focussed on the northern hemispheres points of turning. And the translation has been arkward in the southern hemisphere everything turns upside down. Lammas is at a different time, and often the symbology of the season looks very different as well. What would be happening in the landscape in England is very different to what would be happening in Australia, the colours aren’t the same.

At the last winter solstice, it became apparent that we weren’t celebrating the longest or the shortest day, but we were celebrating a turning. The space in between winter and summer solstice. The connectivity between both of the points in the spectrum of energy.

I know that in my winter solstice in the southern hemisphere, I can also feel the dormancy of the place informing my body. I dont bother trying to create and to do projects, and the ground is dormant.

Underneath the dormant ground of winter in the earth and in me is also a fertile seed waiting to show her head. So I wait and sure enough, she appears when the time is right. No more pushing or shoving if I can help it. No more forceps trying to rip something out of my body. No more trying to make it happen. No more premature births if I can help it.

So for me I do follow my cycle, I do follow the season. I also follow the astrological cycles of my life. Like Saturn return or Uranus opposition, these types of transits or returning in the sky in relation to my moment of birth, work there way through my life. I stopped feeling I was crazy when I came to understand the Plutonic journey I was on in my late 30’s for over 7 years I felt like I was being dragged into the underground and like Persephone i was being raped by Hades (Pluto) at the end of these journeys there were deep riches beyond compare, just like the diamonds and rubies found over the earth. These cycles un-earthed something magnificent in me.

But I also follow something else, I follow the stories. I have loved finding out over the years that my life as a woman follows and embraces certain stories. I have journeyed as the Handless Maiden, I have been Skeletan Woman, I have been Inanna descending into the bowels of the earth to see her sister Erskerigal. Some of these stories are cyclical for me like Inanna or the Skeletan woman. But I also know that when I was about 39-40 I was living the journey of the Handless Maiden for several years – archetypally something was playing out through me. As women we dont often talk about these stories. One woman made them famous in the book Women Who Run with the Wolves. But often they are interpretated and analysed rather than just felt and sensed.

The Handless Maiden in me, revealed herself in dreams, in my waking life, in my feeling state. I had no hands. I felt completely useless and unable to feed myself. I was distraught and couldn’t see two feet in front of me. I wanted god to pick me up, I couldn’t pick myself up I had no hands.

We dont often talk about the story we are in, and we may not even be aware or we’ve forgetten that something much greater is at play through us. We often keep these stories secret, even thinking ourselves ‘how strange’. But by bringing to light the archetypal stories that flow through our lives we are relieved of a burden that somehow we caused something, or did something, or why is this happening to me. But to find that the descent of Inanna is a story that works it’s magic upon my life, and I can go gracefully into the story and surrender to the descent and resurrection rather than resist and deny.

I could spend a of time contemplating each particular cycle and journey, analysing the why’s and wherefore’s etc. I have certainly in the past been someone who read to understand what was happening to me and I do encourage understanding and awareness. I have never been one to spend too much time processing them. I understand the value of processing and spent much of my 20’s processing my family of origin issues. But these days I have let go and I notice and become aware but I dont to stay too long in a mental place with the unfolding, but instead I prefer to be in place of noticing the symbols and whispers instead of getting stuck in them.

I am much more interested in a collective of women knowing that at 40-41 the Handless Maiden may appear, as she has done in many women’s lives. Or at around 42 the finesse of the sacred and sexual actually come to rest in a women’s body organically no matter how many sacred sexuality workshops women attend before then. We dont know all of these cycles yet, because as women we aren’t sharing them, we keep them secret because we’ve depotentized them. Just the same way no women told you that you would begin to grow hair on your chin, instead of we are ashamed of them and pluck them out in private to pretend they dont exist.

The other thing that happens with the stories is that a woman can become overly identified with a story, for example I felt very much in my 30’s and 40’s like a woman who was all scarred, in fact I wore a scar-coat - boy! did I wear a scar coat. I would often talk about my scars - the emotional woundings of my life. I thought that was who I was and what I had become. I was awoken one day, quite abruptly to realise that I wasn’t the story in any way shape or form. I wasn’t the emotional wounds of my life.

These woundings however had been finely crafting me into the woman I am today.

So I dont treat the story or the cycle the same way anymore if I can help it, the woman I am isn’t defined by them but I have been refined by them.

Of course I will have my moments of being asleep in the story, I’m human. And of course I will have moments where I feel the victim of a deep deep betrayal. Rising above all of that isn’t actually necessary.

The grace comes in the moments when you can feel something beyond yourself rippling out from the certain of the universe and you can be soft with yourself no matter what cycle or story in unfolding through you.

Liana Gailand Copyright 2008

Feminine practice really encompasses everything and everything can be made into a practice. Taking a bath can be a feminine practice, masturbating can be a feminine practice, having an afternoon nap can be a feminine practice.

When women are heavily aligned with masculine and their to-do lists to get everything done, adding more feminine tasks to the list is often easier – Monday night ‘have a bath’, Thursday night ‘get a massage’, Friday night ‘dance class’, Saturday ‘be a sex goddess’. As they strengthen their feminine practice they might be challenged by actually becoming the reclining goddess and ‘do nothing’ but surrender and let go.

Some women often begin by ‘doing the feminine’ - they will dance around in their living room to their favourite music for 10 minutes a day. Some women will go to a class to learn how to dance or to deepen their bodily understanding of a particular form of movement like Belly Dancing for example.

The next stage of this type of practice could mean that you begin to move your body to music you dont like. Or if you dance for 10 minutes and then feel done in a way that you are closed, continue to dance beyond your closure, as a way to train your body to offer love even when you dont want to do it. It’s very easy to want to dance when you ‘feel like it’, it is a very different matter if your personality doesn’t feel like it, but it would totally serve the moment deeper by continuing to dance.

Eventually some women learn to dance the music that arises within their own body and give birth to that through moving their bodies.

A lot of women will be happy to just change their clothes and dancing around at home and in class.

Dancing is also only a metaphor for life, which is why feminine practice encompasses everything. The point of practice is to discover what you will do when you hit the wall of your habitual heart closure.

It is easy for a person to sit in loving meditation on a cushion in the privacy of a special room, it is another thing entirely to practice a disposition of loving meditation when you’ve been pushed into a corner or the shit is hitting the fan in a situation. Many Buddhist monks during their torture times with the Chinese Government would have been putting the fruits of their meditation practice into action and to the test.

Some women will be called deepen in their feminine spirit beyond their mental, linear understanding.
Are they willing to get naked with themselves physically and then can they get bare-naked with their feminine soul and listen to her voice from deep within. Once you can hear the voice for yourself, how do you offer that in the world.

That is what ‘being’ a My Dangerous Beauty is all about.

At some point, women can and do know what is inherently feminine and beautiful within them from a true heart perspective not the illusion being reflected to them through media and the world of preferences we currently live in. Some women will be called to move beyond superficial practices to really embodying and radiating the divine love that is their true self even while wearing a pair of grubby jeans and a checked flannel shirt.

A lot of traditional spiritual practices like meditation are often about escaping life and it’s inherent messiness and are often therefore more aligned with a masculine spiritual practice. The masculine is still and constant and the never changing witness we all have within us. All women are a unique mixture of masculine and feminine energy, so when women meditate they are feeding their masculine and reinforcing it’s presence. For women whose energy is highly scattered and unmanageable taking up a disciplined art like meditation would serve the taming of their feminine energy. Women who are very disciplined and controlling taking up a practice of hip-hop dancing would serve the unravelling of their feminine energy.

Most of the written spiritual teachings are written to finding and stimulating this masculine within us all. Men have a higher portion of this masculine energy naturally, but women have a more highly developed and stimulated masculine energy that is often exaggerated.

Many feminine spiritual teachings were oral or handed down through our matrilineal lines, or they were written on the walls in symbols, or hidden inside quilts and handicrafts. Not a lot of time was spent writing them down they went transmitted through each woman’s body.

Discovering the sacred art of knitting or beading for example, you will discover that where you place your hands and the piece you are making is usually pretty close to your heart chakra, and in moments it can feel like you are knitting or beading a sutra. In actual fact knitting is a little passion of mine at present, but I like to knit like each stitch is a prayer.

Making a cake can be a sacred practice, remember the movie ‘Like Water for Chocolate’, like Tita the main female character all of her emotions went into making her food. The chaos in the plot was the range of emotions she experienced in her love drama. So taking up the feminine practice of pouring love into a cake or a vegetable stir-fry, this is a feminine spiritual practice. Offering your gift of cake making is also another beautiful aspect of this practice.

And unfortunately as is often the case in speaking about the feminine it is often lost in translation from ‘being place’ into structured words on a piece of paper. Close but somehow still missing the mark hence the word ‘mystery’. That which cannot be uttered will always a mystery and also very feminine.

In the movie Samsara, Tashi the young monk is leaving his wife Pema and their children to once again join the monastery to deepen his practice and calling. Pema has the same yearning deep in her heart, but she makes it very clear that she doesn’t not extract herself from life, she must find the divine while caring for her children, growing the vegetables and tending the house. It is through life not out of it, that the feminine will find the divine.

It is somewhat easy to sit on a cushion and find your inherent freedom with no distraction – a more traditional form of spiritual practice. But to find your inherent freedom with a vomiting sick child is a more feminine path.

If a woman is leaning towards meditation as a practice, she only need see and feel into the reason why that particular practice appeals to her. If she is wanting to escape from life, then it may potentially be her masculine essence she is feeding rather than her feminine essence. The test would be to see if she is willing to be in her unbridled feminine rollercoaster messiness and emotional interior landscape just as much as she is willing to sit in silent meditation or if she is meditating to control her ‘out of control feminine’.

To still a muddy pond of thinking to hear her true voice, to really feel herself and what her heart wants in a sitting meditation would be a feminine practice. To feel the breath enter your body and lovingly kiss the insides of your being is a more feminine practice. As you can tell intention is everything.

When I feel into feminine practice an image often comes to my mind. The ‘Primavera’ by Botticelli, as Flora the goddess of spring is scattering flowers. All these women are barefoot and pregnant with life. It is a painting that feels very fecund to me. So often when I am doing the dishes by most standards I feel the part of me that is Primavera. Young, abundant, pregnant with creation and barefoot. A very different feeling sense then the downtrodden impression and feeling state of barefoot and pregnant – which feels like stupid, ignorant and less than trailer trash.

This is a feminine practice for me. It is also a practice of reclaiming something that has been defamed. And I do this as a practice at the kitchen sink, because the other piece missing from the statement above is barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink – that is where she belongs. A very downtrodden statement often handed out by misogynsts and

I totally belong in nature, I am a constantly pregnant - full of infinite possibilities and i love being of service. This is a feminine practice.

Liana Gailand Copyright 2008