Facing the Dark...Liberating Soul...

Life is beautiful isn't it? Everything, all of Life and God’s Holy Creation is conspiring to bring me (and you too) to truth...to set me free from the prisons of the past.

My belly is burning and I am breathing into the pain that has been buried there. Surfacing now.

So much of my life has been sourced in lies. Lies about who I am, lies about what I want, lies...lies...lies...lies...lies. I've lied to myself, I've lied to others...I've lied to God. And all of this started...all of this fabrication started by ingesting someone else's lies.

Last night I was invited to look at the power I have over men and how I have manipulated my responses and relationships with them.

Yes, I can look at this now. I have the Power and the Presence within me…I have the Love in myself, for myself to look at this now. Andrew Harvey (my spiritual director) called it being a “Geisha to the Oppressor.” I quickly learned the art of the Geisha at a very young age frantic to please my oppressor, to cater to his needs, to give him what he wanted…at all costs. I paid a high price…my survival depended on it, my life depended on it. He was my stepfather…he threatened to kill my mother if I spoke up, if I took a stand, if I said no. So it went on and on for years…my silence, my turning tricks and twisting myself into all sorts of contortions to keep myself and my family safe…to receive what love I could from an abusive and anorexic environment.

It is no wonder that I became anorexic. It is no wonder that I have tried to keep myself safe and loved through the illusory promise of fulfilled desire. How has this looked? I have spent a good part of my life avoiding authentic relationships with men in one way or another. I have entered into silent contracts with men…I will love you, I will be here to meet your needs and I will stay silent about mine. I have replayed this crazy dance that I experienced with my stepfather and my father…one abandoned and the other abused. I lived with the abuser, playing the Geisha to his emotional and sexual needs. I was abandoned by my father, and for years painted pictures of success and competency to gain his love. Geisha to one, Actress to the other.

What is the point? I am taking my power back. I am taking my truth back. I am taking full responsibility for my life and my relationships and my career and my finances. I am taking my life and my living back.

When I sense that you (a man) have something you want from me, a desire, a need…I find a way to meet it…not the real need or desire, but I’ll give you something to appease your appetite. I don’t believe that you could want to be with me unless I could meet your need…spoken or unspoken…so I’ll anticipate…and I am so good at this…knowing what you need and giving it to you…but not sex…you can’t have that…unless I am really backed up against the wall…unless my survival is threatened…when push comes to shove…I’ll brace myself and you can have some semblance of my body…but I won’t be there. What do you need from me? I’ll try my best to give it to you.

This is gross. And beautiful. I can have great compassion for the little girl, the young teen, the young woman and now me at age 40…seeing how I had this pattern programmed in somatically and neurologically at such a young age. I see how it has held me back…how it holds me back from freedom…from true love and liberation. I see how it has harmed others, held them back. I hope this helps someone because this is hard to write about.

I have lied about my yes and my no. I have said yes, when I was dying to say no. I have slept with people I didn’t want to sleep with. I have suppressed my voice and my true desires. I have hidden relationships from people out of fear that if they knew they would leave me.

I have at some deeply unconscious and semi-conscious level lived a life that was in collusion with the belief that there is a scarcity of love and support in this world. This fear has had its hand on my throat…it’s fist in my belly…threatening my life…pushing me to death. I choose life. I choose life. I choose a true and authentic life. I choose to live the truth of the abundance of love and support that is oooozing from the Universe…and rushing to fulfill my…our…every need. This is the Truth…everything else is a bad dream.

The game is done. New relationships with men and women are taking root and growing…relationships based in love, reciprocity, truth and creativity. Old relationships are transforming, truths being told, old patterns breaking up. This way of relating from fear is dissolving. Going, going, going, GONE!

The price I have paid has been my life and the true abundance of love and support that is here for me if I would only stop playing the game. I didn’t know I was. I didn’t know that this had been my life strategy…until now. Out of denial…into recovery...one interaction, one moment at a time.

Andrew Harvey says to train the light and love of God…of Christ Yeshua on the wound. We can’t live in the light and deny the dark, that only brings a life of illusion…we bring the light to the dark and in this place wholeness is born. See what happens to those monsters when the light of day hits them. They scream, twist, contort and melt into a puddle. They can’t withstand this radical love and compassion. They will dissolve. They are dissolved.

Yes, I have been a geisha to the oppressor and now I am a Geisha to Love. I will serve the power of love and that only. I will serve the power of truth and that only. I will serve that which gives Life and that only. I will stand alone. I will stand with others. I will stand in and for this radical love and loving.

And today as I take off the shades of denial, I see how the old is dying and the new is taking root.
Yep, that’s my shit…it doesn’t get any darker than that. You want to know my game? You’ve got it now. And as I write this I hear my mind in fear…who is going to run away now…what might you think? And then I laugh…because this is probably so obvious to some of you…those that have been in the game with me.

Now I am ready to face this truth…and after years of therapy and with degrees trailing my name…now is the time for me to be truly loved and truly free.

And I am.

And the Truth Shall Set You Free!

Thank you Yeshua for your relentless love and presence in my life…for leading me into the ecstatic union within the 40 days, for plunging me into darkness, for fortifying my path of living embodied and now for sustaining me in loving the darkest of my dark and bringing me into a new place of wholeness so that I can be free, completely free, to be an instrument of your Peace and of your Love…truly…for real now. For real now. Let’s make it real now. Amen.

Presence is the Currency of Love

I awoke this morning with the words, "Presence is the currency of Love," on my lips. Placed there with the kiss of Divine inspiration, calling me to write...to dive into exploring and expressing this process of embodiment...of Love becoming Overflowing Love.

Presence is the currency of Love. Do I dare wade into these waters of Love and share my unguarded Presence with you? I know the price of the ticket for this ride...nothing less than a full commitment to Truth, to moment to moment presence and naked awareness. This path of presence and embodiment requires ultimate vulnerability and essential integrity. Practicing maintaining deep connection to Presence means bringing the consciousness of Love into each now moment, nothing is outside of Love...despair, fear, hatred, addiction, lust, joy, sadness, delight, ecstasy, expression, repression...Love holds all, neither prefers nor rejects. Love is the All within All. Presence her currency.

What is this Presence that I am speaking of? It is a full immersion in the now...a deep connection to the breath, the senses and the truth here present now and now. It is an attunement to what is...in the simplest form...here is my now moment...

I am sensing a stinging in my eyes from the lotion I used this morning, I am sensing a churning in my belly of warmth and energy, my chest is warm, relaxed and breath is flowing easily into and through my belly and my hips, my genitals, my thighs and feet...breath is flowing through me, I see the screen of the computer a blurry surreal sense to it with a candle flickering behind the screen, I smell the musky scent of my Jack Russell Terrier, Jack, curled up next to me on the couch taking a morning nap, I hear the sounds of the dishwasher humming in the background, swishing and swirling, I am feeling happy and content, grounded and aware, grateful and tender. I am trusting and loving myself in this moment. I want to share the fullness of my love.

Through this presence I am dropping deeper into essence...breath becoming fuller and deeper...chest opening...stillness dropping me into a center of calm. I have the sensation of a core of energy from the top of my head extending down through my pelvis. This core feels like a trunk or a root...an extension rod that is connecting me to the transcendent...the expansiveness of the Presence, and the immanent...the manifest expression of the Presence. Both are occurring simultaneously. This is uniting heaven and earth through the practice of embodiment. This is Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh...I am that, I am, experienced through deepening into now, awareness of sensation, awareness of breath...Naked Awareness as a practice of embodiment. This is where Deep calls to Deep, where our Souls linger in hopes of courting our awareness and bringing us into deeper knowing and seeing. From this place we become united with Sacramental Perception...a seeing and a deep somatic understanding that everything is holy, wholly...everything, every person, every emotion carries the seed of the sacred, the flame of the holy. Grow that seed...fan that flame. Naked Awareness leads to Sacramental Perception. In this place of naked awareness, of breath, of inner stillness, of deep rootedness, of sacramental sight...we become porous to the Presence of Love and beauty and joy that is here to bring us into cellular sensitivity and aliveness...feel...feel ...feel...sense...breath...the Presence breathing you into Life each moment ...we are being breathed from the inside...the Presence, the indwelling Presence is here to breath you into aliveness, with each breath our cells are stirring...they are waking up with the consciousness of Love....they stir, tickle, delight...head to toe...an energetic consciousness awakening in the body...the awakened body coming into being...this is the initiation into becoming a ordained vessel and instrument of the Presence of God...a divine human embodiment. Allowing the desire of Life...the allurement and energy and attraction and the passion and the Will to Live come alive in the core, fanning the essential life force...Eros in the body.

Sit still with me now as you read these words breath into Presence and allow the Presence to breath into you...make love with this moment with your breath and naked awareness....feel all of life conspiring to bring you into this full aliveness and radiance. You are loved, you are loved...you are love, I am love...our breath exchanges this love...it carries the One Love...exchange this love breath. The Love Breath, breathing inside, breathing outside...the meeting of conscious breathing and the spontaneous breathing...that of being breathed into being by the Divine....feel yourself being breathed into being by the Divine breath that emanates from the internal eternal essence....from your core...your core is breathing...it is not a function of the lungs...it is the indwelling presence that animates you, that inspires you and moves you into being, into form through each breath. This is how we are a constant becoming...the indwelling spark ignites each moment and we are made new in this image and likeness. What would it be like to fully come into Presence and become new in each now moment...to truly connect with this truth...by feeling, deeply feeling and experiencing the Spirit of God within you breathing you into Life and newness each moment...how would it be to feel welcomed on this earth...to feel this Life calling you into form, beckoning you into manifest form...the whole choir…the symphony and cacophony, of life...the angels, the archangels...the invisible Life and the visible life of nature, water, trees, subways, people, structures, pavement all conspiring to say Yes, Yes I am here now created anew in this moment.

This interaction and interplay and deep exchange I am having with this life is calling me forward and I am actively creating the presence of Love through each now moment that I bring Loves' presence and naked awareness...the Love breath creates. I am that, I am. Tingling, alive being breathed into being. I am free to be and to create with unguarded, naked presence. To receive and conceive of an essential Divine inspiration that will feed and nourish and sweeten the life and the living…mine, yours…ours. In this place I feel an embodied oneness with all Life…the visible and invisible unifying, one is held with in the other…the visible holds the seed of the invisible and the invisible holds the seed of the visible…they make love to one another, their relationship is one of interdependence and mutual receptivity and reciprocity…this is the marriage of the masculine and the feminine. Unifying through Presence…this is the sacred marriage. This has eluded me as an esoteric concept for many years…what is the embodied experience of this union and sacred marriage? How do we create the conditions to lure it into our lives? A deep and at times excruciating surrender to the call to live, to live, to live…to surrender the forms of death that we enact…the numbing…to move beyond the numbing of our aliveness to surrender to the pain, the grief, the despair, the isolation that is often the precursor path to birthing union. Ultimate vulnerability…surrendering the structures, mechanisms, patterns, systems of safety…the lies, the deceit, the hiding, the using, the manipulation and control…we can eeeek this release out one by one…or we can just lay it all down. I suggest we Lay It All Down…to surrender and donate all of our life and our living to the fires of Divine Presence, to serve Truth…Love…to lay down our small ways of being so we can be the brilliance and the radiance of the I AM that lives within and between and all around.

I AM breathing you into existence each moment is new, new awareness, new consciousness, a new creation. This is what it means to forfeit ideas of who I am, who you are and who we are together. This moment is new, a new arrival, a freshness, a joy. An intimacy with life….Intimacy with Life for the way you “make love” is the way God will be with you.

Intimacy with life, ahhhh…yes the ultimate vulnerability to life, to God, to Self, to others…a most vulnerable and porous and potent place to reside in full presence…nothing as powerful, a creative force to unveil and unmask to make ourselves ultimately vulnerable to life and to love is to guarantee obliteration into love…beyond worrying about life and death…a deep surrender to revealing ourselves and our hearts and our bodies and our brilliance and our despair…our darkness, our light…which precedes which? Inseparable the prisoner and the guard. Intimacy with life…ultimate vulnerability and revealing of need, of want, of love, of desire, of soul…being penetrated with the gaze of life, the gaze of the other…my eyes burn yet I want this fire…I see and feel this fire and I know it…I recognize it as my own…as the Spark and the Flame that I carry, that we carry…yet to be seen naked with the glance of the Beloved…the blemishes and blunders seen with the eyes of the Beloved become pearls…alchemized…lead becomes Gold. This is the gift of giving the sacred heart…donating one’s being and living to love…we become vessels for this divine human embodiment and give this sacred medicine of love to one another where are deepest wounds can be exposed and healed…under the true sight and vision of the Beloved…our seeing of one another in our darkness, in our woundedness and seeing the beauty, seeing with unrelenting, fiery love is essential to our collective homecoming. Come, let us disrobe in this upper room (upper room of the radical love and tenderness of God consciousness) let us disrobe in this upper room, take off the masks, lay down the sword, slow the pace, deepen the breath, stop the game, time out…let’s be here now…take off your clothes, they hide your beauty, they hide your wounds…disrobe with me Beloved and in this disrobing, let us reveal these place of self hatred, of self rejection, of self repression…drop your look good…surrender that game…and the madness that it brings…disrobe with me, expose those wounds to my love, to my light…let me bring you my healing salve, let me nurse you with the tenderness and sweetness of my breast, I will place my nipple to your mouth and bring you to life with the love of God. And in this place of the upper room, in the crucible of love I will see you, standing naked, wounds, vulnerabilities, brilliance, beauty…yes this is where we reveal the beautiful and the ugly and see it as one, one Love…in this place, where two or more are gathered in this innocence and love we fan the flame and the fire burns, we bring the love breath and the fire burns, we throw off, we lay down all that we have been carrying and the fire burns…we jump in…we burn…we burn…we burn…we rejoice in this burning…screaming, laughing, the ecstasy of burning, the ecstasy of death…take from us Beloved , from all….from all that does not bring us closer to you…to be the embodiment and expression of love. Where two or more are gathered in the upper room, in love’s fiery crucible, the indwelling presence, the immanence and transcendence will join in this holy alchemy…this process of calcination…ashes to ashes, dust to dust…we disintegrate…dying to who we have been, the image and likeness of the golden calf must die to give rise to the true I AM image. We die together, we rise together. This is the intimacy of Life, now. This is the intensity of Love’s fire. This is the immensity of the call that is upon us. What is my answer, how will I respond? Will I numb myself or will I surrender to the burn…the true burn? It is a choice, I am at a crossroad…I am beyond the crossroad…I am at the edge…I am over the edge…tumbling…I am falling into ecstasy…sweet ecstatic agony. I am here solid like a rock, porous as air, flowing like the waves, tender as the blade of grass reaching upward, I am relaxing and opening.

I am the blossom of life, I am.

Intimate Revelations

Naked Heart ~ Intimate Revelations Reading ~ 5.18.2008

Sharing some images and a writing from my first "reading" ~ an intimate gathering of 25 people and a beautiful connection of heart and soul.

****

My heart is opening like petals on a flower responding to the light and warmth of the Spring air. She has no choice but to open and share her sweet fragrance, for it is her nature to do so in her own time. In rhythm with the natural season of our soul we will unfold, we will blossom in Love. There is no need to push or force or see what for now is unseeable, to know what is unknowable. To trust the natural opening of the heart, to trust that it opens when in the Presence of a greater love and loving. This is one of the lessons of love. To allow the opening and the blossoming of love. To create the conditions in the heart and in the life where love can be planted, grown and brought into fruition. She responds to love and warmth. She responds to adoration. She responds to deep presence that allows her to open and to breathe in life. She needs space and time to open….she needs to feel her rhythm and yours. She needs to move in the serpentine movement of the soul, she has purpose although her purpose is in deep attunement to the underlying current, the mystical map and symbology that is leading her on. It doesn’t follow any proven formula. It looks to many like the path of insanity…for to walk the mystics path…to engage the sacred feminine…to move with the promptings of the heart requires that we move from the tower of the mind into the temple of the heart. We have grown so much in our mental capacity, developed mind. Underdeveloped heart. This is the journey into love...to develop the capacities and the powers of the heart. The power to love beyond reason, beyond acceptance or rejection. To truly place ourselves on the altar of God and ask to be transformed and transfigured into becoming a full embodiment and radiant expression of God.

Desire, the Permission to Desire...

Wow…I feel my heart stop after writing that sentence. I feel the anxiety setting in about what do I want, what do I desire? Can I know, can I feel, can I have, and can I trust the energy of desire? Desire, love, attraction, allurement, God. Yes I went into the dessert time, the 40 days…my desire to know God, to come into intimate communion with God…my GodSelf…with nature and with the sacred heart. I wanted to open myself, to feel the love and the radiance of the Mother. To attune myself to the rhythm of God, of love…to bring myself into deep relationship with my own heart and my own capacity for love. God…to know God, to experience intimate communion with God led me into these 40 days…into the sacraments, into the fires of purification, into a more natural rhythm, into slowing my pace, into yoga, nakedness, writing, art, into right relationship with my authentic desires. Silence and intimate communion will bring us into right relationship with our natural, soul desires….slow the pace, feel your natural rhythm. Pace is key to feeling authentic desire. Slowing our pace to our natural rhythm…I believe most of us our out of right relationship with our natural rhythm…we push, force, multitask, we become disconnected with ourselves, our presence, with others around us, with truth…we become disconnected, free floating and disconnected to the deep integrity that our innate, inherent, authentic desires hold. To feel and to follow a soul desires is to embody love and enact God’s will in each moment. Return to breath, return to pace, find the rhythm. Knock and open the heart. Listen and feel the heart center as you as sing into your heart words that will open and deepen. Qush Wa Eth-Phetah. Knock and be opened, I am the door.

Intimate Community

"The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart."
~ Ortega y Gasset ~

One week ago I stood naked in the living room of one of my closest friends...four of us were gathered to support each other in our process of becoming...of breaking through that which holds us back from living the lives we long for. The question posed to me..."are you willing to follow your deepest desires, are you willing to stop holding back and constricting and trust yourself...your deepest longings...your deepest knowings?"

Am I willing to disrobe, disarm, dismantle and dissolve into love? Am I willing to become naked and revealed to myself? Am I willing to be "undressed" by another's presence and unrelenting love? Will I open to the Beloved's gaze and be penetrated to my core?

The answer I uttered as I stood slowly disrobing, clothing dropping to the floor...being witnessed in my humility, in my vulnerability, in my beauty and in my grace, was a quiet, but firm..."yes!"
Yes, I am willing to give up my carefully constructed walls, false fronts and strategies to surrender and give myself to the fullness of Love that is. Yes, I am willing to bare myself...to show my core quivering, shaking, quaking...to live unbridled, unbound and free. Yes, I am willing to embrace my darkness...the experiences of self-hatred and hiding as well as my light...my brilliance.

Yes, I want to make love...in all ways...moment to moment. To make love to life and allow it to make love to me. I want to taste it all, skin to skin...breath to breath...warmth to warmth. I want to re-member Eden before the fall...to make a return to our collective wholeness...our native nature. I want to be naked with you...naked and free.

Alchemical, intimate, beloved community. It is here now. The invitation upon us...do we dare enter the mysteries of this radical love...or will we shrink back? Will we relegate it to some "new age" bullshit or will we see it as the opportunity to understand and experience an embodied love that can only be birthed in and through a web of relationships that are deeply committed to staying in, to entering the temple and being transformed, opened and sustained in and through the power of Love.

Love? A radical commitment, a persevering beyond, a stand for the highest good for you and me...even if that means saying things that rob the ego of its grip, its look good. Love, a tender, compassionate embrace when everything is falling away, burning away, going away...a place to melt, a place to dissolve. An invitation to bare all, become all...

I looked around the circle the other night and saw a group of beautiful, brilliant lovers...accomplished, intelligent, credentialed people...and yet I know from my conversations with some of you...many of you...that we are all needing one another to go beyond the comfort zone, to emerge from the numbing slumber, to meet our edge...to go beyond and thrive. I know I need that. I know I can offer that.

Since our gathering on Thursday (www.wearethelovers.com) night I have received over 30 connections through phone calls, emails and text messages...they started to come in Friday afternoon and continued through this a.m....people registering the movement into Love...into communion...community. It is the Universe saying, "YES"...Yes...I know you are tired...but listen...the drumbeat sound within your hearts...saying, come...this is the way.

Let us create something real...let us contribute something essential...let us call this community of radical lovers...brilliant creators into form.
Let us become naked and revealed...let us become the elixir and the partaker of Sacred Love.
Let us serve this silent awakening.

Love,
Anakha