Shakti You Were Made For These Times

We Were Made For These Times

So I heard years ago from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, wise words that continue to comfort me.

I gave myself the gift of a break this summer to “breathe out,” lay on hot rocks by the river, and relish precious time with my daughter before she left for college.

It’s why, although I’ve been sending y'all my heart energy regularly, you haven’t seen much in the way of electronic communications from me lately. Shakti is back with creative juices flowing.

I spent three days after settling my daughter into her dorm in a frenzy of cleaning and organizing my nest, as if preparing for a birth (my own obviously). In purging a decade of papers and files, I cried over handmade mother’s day cards and the photos of us in what seemed like more simple times (but of course they weren't then).

I’m sitting in an even emptier nest now. Feeling into the stillness. Breathing in my solitude. Letting go. Letting go again. Wondering who I am now. Excited and so curious about what is coming next.

I feel the satisfaction of a job well done. I know exactly where to find all my documents, neatly filed and thoroughly labeled, precisely where they are supposed to be. My daughter, a brilliant young goddess, is happy and off making her music in the world.

I also feel anxious. Although there is not a hurricane bearing down on my neighborhood at this particular moment, I am part of this human family. Nothing like mother nature to knock the legs out from under any illusion we have of control.

But I’m telling myself that maybe it’s not so crazy to arrange the deck chairs when the ship is heading for the iceberg. Maybe that’s exactly what needs to happen to bring in the light of sanity, beauty, faith. Maybe that can even help us steer clear of calamity.

We seem to be arriving at the place we’ve all been talking about and preparing for: times of change and shift and transformation, whether that’s your daughter leaving home, your home mortgage being upside down, or your home literally being blown across town.

What I know is that we were made for these times and our survival depends upon our loving connection to the earth, ourselves, each other, and Spirit.

The Awakening Shakti teachings and practices I have to offer you are all about cultivating your inner resources for staying connected and navigating these times. The LOVE, SPIRIT and ENERGY that is your Shakti power will light your path, ground you, and help you tap you into gratitude no matter what comes your way. It's alive in your feminine body and you can awaken it.

Stop trying to do it alone. No more time for that nonsense. It’s your feminine nature to be in sisterhood. More efficient too because transformation happens deeper and faster inside sacred circle together. We long to laugh, cry, celebrate and grieve together--it’s so much better that way.

Two big things coming up to support you with awakening more of that Shakti power. Come to Northern California and take your place in our sacred circle of 12 women at the annual Fall Shakti Women’s Retreat Level 1 in my beautiful temple home on the river. Wow. Words cannot describe what awaits you here.

If traveling is out of the question or you’d prefer to be in an intimate, on-going phone coaching group with sisters from around the world, the next Unleash Your Shakti Power Initiation Program launches on Sept. 22. Profound and utterly beautiful what's happening in these Initiation groups.

Want to work one-on-one? Contact me for a private phone Coaching Session and let’s go deep together. We’ll wake up that goddess in you and get her rolling, exactly at your pace.

With big love and blessings to you,

Lisa

Perfume of Fermenting Joy

When she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious...
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on it's own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

Tony Hoagland, from "Grammar"

I found this piece in an Oprah magazine many years ago. It's been tacked up on my fridge, posted next to my desk and copied for friends many times. It never ceases to touch something deep within me: a devotion to the embodied feminine, a longing to be seen, a hunger to love myself with total abandon, a falling into the sacredness of beauty in me, in you.

What does it touch in you?

In two weeks, on January 27, the next Six Month Unleash Your Shakti Power Initiation Program will launch with a maximum of 20 women who are ready to know and embrace their own sacred sensual power. We still have a few spots left. Is one of them for you? MORE INFO

Blessings on your loving, on your beauty.

To be Worshiped by Your Lover, First Worship Yourself

Perhaps you saw the posting recently from my friend Arjuna Ardaugh telling men “Why its Wise to Worship a Woman.” From the responses I heard from women, I think it’s safe to say that if Arjuna was not so happily married to my dear sister friend Chameli, he would have no trouble getting a date right now.

I hear a collective cry of longing from my women for this kind of cherishing from men; “How can I find a guy (or get my current partner) to worship me that way?” Without question, being honored this way is an unparalleled gift. Most women want to be opened slowly and deeply, to have our Beloved move with reverence through the inner gateways and into the ruby-lined sanctuary where our most precious gifts of love and passion reside. I believe that when the masculine and feminine merge in that realm, an alchemical process happens that transforms them and illuminates the world. It’s why I’m a devoted student and teacher of sacred sexuality and Tantra.

Back here on planet earth, however, the medical establishment reports that over 50% of women currently suffer from “FSD” or Female Sexual Dysfunction (which includes lack of interest in sex). Clearly, we are a far cry away from worshiping the inner sanctuary! We seem to have a veritable epidemic of “dysfunctional” women. Perhaps, just maybe, the feminine body, in her infinite wisdom, is saying “No” to sex that doesn’t touch her heart, feed her soul, and honor her essence.

We’ve already expended far too much of our precious life force energy bitching about how men just “don’t get it.” We fantasize about Mr. Worship riding up on his white stead and sweeping us off to his pleasure palace to initiate us into ecstatic states. We’ve also compromised our health and cut ourselves off from our SHAKTI, our feminine succulence and radiance by pretending we can live without our sensual vitality.

Enough of that! Here’s the good news (or bad news depending on how empowered you’re currently feeling).

If you want to be worshiped by your man or lover,
you must FIRST worship yourself.

To attract the lover who will be inspired to worship the divine feminine within you, YOU must worship the divine feminine within you. You must know that place deep inside, honor your body, speak your truth, open your heart to your own flawed perfection, surrender to your mysterious wildness, and burn in the flame of your own fierce passion. When I know myself as “worship-able,” then I attract a lover who recognizes that in me.

Arjuna’s beautiful wife is my soul sister friend, Chameli and her life’s work is Awakening Women to their divine essence. I have learned so much about honoring the sacred feminine by watching how Chameli cares for, loves and celebrates her own feminine essence. In cherishing herself, she inspires worship from her Beloved.

The very good news is that there’s nothing to “do” because you are already divine. It is an “un-doing” and a relaxing into the “real” goddess within. Allow yourself to fall madly in love with the feminine essence inside of you—her dark moods, her irrational rants, her infinite capacity to love, her willingness to surrender completely. As you discover and honor her, her radiance will increase. Others will be drawn, inexplicably, to her light. And what else can we do in the face of such beauty, in the atmosphere of such love, in the fragrance of such perfume, but bow our heads in worship.

Want to learn more about unleashing your sacred sensual power? Join me for one of my FREE Teleclasses or visit my Awakening Shakti website.