Why the menstrual cycle is sacred to me.

 

 

The menstrual experience is one of deep possibility. What we have rarely been encouraged to feel is the depth of connection that this intrinsic part of being a woman is capable of. The why of our discouragement of this sacred opportunity, is as varied as the why of the damage still done the earth, the waging of wars and use rape as a weapon of said wars. The how of unlocking this chastity belt of the womb is as individual as each person’s path to peace and deepened relations with the earth. The work I have dedicated my life to is the reclaiming of the sacredness of the temple of the blood, the womb as cauldron of self. The base place within a woman to fuel her strength and fire of desire to know what she wants and the energy to make it so.  

When we as women open to the ebb and flow of the earth mirrored in our bodies we give ourselves the opportunity to live a life enriched by the deep hues of purpose and power that will sustain us far longer than any caffeine high can reach. A woman that has unleashed herself from the treadmill of disdain of body, of sexuality, of organic self, is a woman that has access to a powerful state of knowing. She knows her own mind, her own desires, her own power, her own life. NOT one that has been prescribed by media, government or medicine. She has moved herself beyond the confines of good woman, good mother, into whole woman, whole mother. “I’d rather be whole than good” by Carl Jung a mantra of wonder at what a woman can achieve. 

So, how to be that, how to achieve the freedom that would incite us to live? When one is sourced from the inside out, from the depth of ones dreams to the actualisation of living, this lay a path to the living ones own life. There are so many reasons not to, the pay offs of doing what everyone else is doing is an ancient need of acceptance. When we live a life where our truth’s are not heard, when what we KNOW is something we don’t/can’t offer it up, so we swallow it down. That which could have been a pearl of wisdom becomes yet another stone of retained knowledge. “Depression is withheld knowledge” by John Layard, one of the first quotes of a book called “Wise Wound” by Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove. This book was one of the first to question the confinement of the menstrual experience to that of the unspeakable. And speak they did, a couple that had obviously practiced a life of the truth of themselves. That was 1978, do an amazon.com search today of ‘menstruation’ and there is over 20,000 options.  Something is brewing!

For me and many of the women I have worked with, one of the first steps is the physical, the blood. “Taking responsibility for our bleeding ways is part of the reality-based revolution founded between the soft luscious thighs of every woman on this planet.” Inga Musico from “CUNT: A declaration of Independence” This moment of ‘taking responsibility’ is about the function of the bleeding. Are you going to perpetuate the industry that make billions of dollars each year maintaining the fear of detection? Polluting the planet and the body as they profit from the fear that they educate young girls in high schools to maintain. Treating the menstrual blood, that which could be a beautiful gift to the earth, as some kind of toxic waste. Which for many is the mirror of how they feel about themselves, the bleeding part of their nature, toxic. Change the belief and you change the experience. Starting with the blood itself can be a incredible place of freedom from a merry go round of “blood is dirty”, “must throw away blood”, “no one must see that I am bleeding”, “I must be dirty” for “blood is dirty”.  Gifting the earth with your blood is one of the simplest, clearest statement to yourself, and to Her that you are willing to know the blood to be sacred, thus possibly, to know the self as sacred. Tools like menstrual cups and re-useable pads will assist.

Change the belief and you change the experience. This is an ancient set of beliefs that the blood and the bleeding woman are all kinds of dangerous and demonic, thus the dirty translation. You can’t call a woman of today’s western world that she is a demon because she bleeds, but you can imply that she is dirty, almost has the same effect, let her own lack of self worth from this place illustrate that women are of course lesser than men. Change this belief and you change everything! When the menstrual experience becomes one of sacred time, loving and tender with self. Opening and awaiting the inner realms of heart and mind as they bloom like the summer roses. This life lived from a deep sense that to bleed is blessed, to bleed is to be with Her, and if the man in your life is open to this sacredly held state of womanhood, he can be graced with a union of such ecstasy. The highest forms of Tantric union can only be accessed through the consciously bleeding woman. 

There are many reasons that NOW is the time to open to the menstrual wisdom that lay in your own belly. That can be found in a shared circle of women that have put down the swords of competition, the shields of comparison. As Tea Party invokes, “Sister Awake” our conscious menfolk have a deep calling to have us own this part of ourselves, that we may share with them this ability to listen to the Earth. Our children will thank us for the clarity we offer them, and an access point to self in a whirlwind of what they are called to want, to think, to pay attention to, outside of themselves. If we are to strengthen ourselves, our men, our children to the kind of life we truly want, not the no-name brand off the shelf of consumerism, but a life dripping with purpose and joy.  There are many reasons to know thy blood as sacred, to know thyself as sacred, from here, we know the Earth as sacred.

 

 

In the Eternal Now,

prose that celebrates the beauty of bleeding 

 

In the eternal Now, she stands slowly, feet firmly upon the Earth, hands touching the insides of her ankles, traveling slowly up the insides of her calves. Her hands travel drawing energy up her body up her inner thighs, over the roundness, up over her mound, pausing to gather herself. Breathing deeply into her being, her knees slightly bent, she draws her spine straight. Then her hands move further up her, spreading from her center out over her hips, her waist, her breasts. Up the sides of her neck, slowly still gathering, drawing up through her body her hands pausing front and back of her third eye. Then reaching firmly up towards the moon, she stretches as far as she can reach, with feet still firmly upon the ground. She is calling up to, with the full support and strength of the Earth beneath her, up to the Moon, full and newly risen.  The guiding principle, the oscillator of time and wisdom. She fills, and as she does, she seems to begin to glow, to open to a moonlight that is shining from her skin now. Slowly she brings her hands down the same path that they traveled up, this time bringing the moon down into her being, pausing at her center, focusing upon that which lay within. As her hands move down over her inner thighs, she begins to descend with them folding her legs, sitting upon the moss beneath her, allowing her pelvic bone to open as she slowly opens her being to the blood now flowing upon the vibrant green of the moss. She rocks slightly, placing her hands in the automatic posture of the Yoni Mudra. She begins to chant, wordless, breathing through the heart, for anyone that could see, for many hours she breathes this chant as the moon follows Her path, she chants. Purposefully, just as the moon is setting, she reaches into her cunt and draws out blood that she takes to her third eye, marking herself with the crescent moon. She gets up stretches, and moves her body to an internal rhythm that only she can hear. She dances slowly, her feet not moving far, but her hips and belly rolling gently over each other. As she flows down the insides of her legs she seems to gather a red tinge to her moonlight glow. Her breath and her pulse that is now visible in her body seem to emanate from her, her eyes now glowing a fiery silver light. She turns to face the setting moon, inclining her head, she becomes still.  Slowly turning she faces the rising sun, the red/goldenness of her skin deepening beyond the tinge that the blood dance created. Her dance intensifies; from somewhere inside her the rhythm becomes so much more tangible in her movements that her pores seem to broadcast the sound. As the sun has fully risen, there is a softening of the dance. She stills, she moves from the moss, toward the forest and is gone in the shadows.

 

 

The Blood Ramblings of a Woman That Bleeds Well

 

What is it to feel the moon cascade through us, reach deep into our womb and gift the earth of our blood?

What happens to the psyche that is unfolded and allowed to express the wholeness of thinking, the wideness of being.  

Connected to a deeper ebb and flow that governs so much more than just water.  

As each of us, man and woman, detached from the consumer wheel where our worth and power is measured by the weight of our wallets, we can perceive a profound level of breathing, slowly deeply over 12ish days the earth inhales, the moon becomes full, She pauses for three days, holding it in, then she exhales, slowly over 12ish days, holding it out for three days, still and centered in Her being.

Maybe the moon is a little like our uterus… 

I am not going to tell you like it is. There are many that will and best you keep reading elsewhere if you would like me to think for you, I have a hard enough time just thinking for me.  I offer up the odd thoughts that have beckoned into the back of my mind to slink forward to the conscious eyes and place themselves into the world with jugular accuracy and form. 

What of mind that thinks in spirals??? Where our thoughts are just entertained, given a drink, somewhere comfortable to sit a while, gestate, and then in their entirely beauteous moments of ecstasy they come… forward… over you… fundamentally stirring something entirely different than those thoughts that are manufactured, constructed of past and pain. 

What of thoughts that have no agenda??? 

What of thoughts that swirl and float, lurk and stalk… waiting, waiting for the mind to rest from it’s endless cataloguing, it’s endless tasks of rehearse, rehash, compare and justify.  

I believe… my experience… what I have come to know… what I have faith in… what other kind of platform can hold what we think? When we explore in territory uncharted by ourselves where to do we collect the gems? There may of course be many that have traveled here, but as there is no longer any way that one can hold all of human thought in one lifetimes bookshelf, we collect these thoughts and maybe even ver bartum regurgitate them unknowingly…

Now that begs to be called a realm of thought all of it’s own… more than the 100th monkey that is the stuff of greater mind-fullness.  

This brings me to the Blood Mind, a state of mind that has no boundaries it seems… none that I have discovered yet. An expression of mind that begs for stillness of intent, hands perhaps in those occupied places of craft that weave the seconds of life into something that can wrap you up and hold you when no other can. 

Blood mind is that still-ness of time that has naught to do with any others point or purpose.  Nothing to no-body, souly in your own company and service. 

Here in the openness of being, the slowness of breathe, we can allow the canvas of an unintended mind to be painted with the visions of an opinion not of our own making, not of a construct that would continue its dominance over our earth and lives. 

These visions are from a knowing that we once lived by, a direction that we knew as fundamentally as where the sun was in the sky, how much moon would rise tonight.  These things we once knew, these places we once lived. 

Freedom of thought is the very place that will devour all the other modes of control.  That is why we are well trained to be consumed by thought that have so little do with us… A free mind is a powerful thing… many free minds, open, clear, set to the task of say, healing… opening deeply to Her… listening… dreaming…thinking all those wondrous thinks 

Blood mind is collective…  bleeding space imperative… there can be so much that we will need to know, as there is indeed still so much to fathom about living, for obviously we are still doing it wrong!!!  

With countless experts, books, visual and audio, digital and sonic, you would think (this being the point that we are not!!!) we would stop killing each other by now… how about maybe we could stop raping each other… pillaging the Earth??  

Perhaps civilization and thought have nothing to do with each other.

Blood thought helps you open to the bigger screen of viewing the world’s possibility. You still can only truly affect yourself, model a behavior that you hope your children can hear over the din that the Matrix makes. 

But…there are those incredible moments though, when woman meets woman, totally solid in being... totally open and soft to each other, holding the power places that have a different set of mind, a swaying kind of rhythm that rocks the same way we hold a baby in our arms and croon. 

Practice… till we get it right? What if the concept of practice is to create the breathe of living freely with our lives in sync with the fluidness of She, the simple dawn and dusk rites of opening and closing curtains can be expressed as a practice of opening to the outer then the inner.  

A blood practice… the first sight of blood, connect, and open to the wisdom within, quietly open and ask, what is it that I can shed with this blood? What can I honor and release from my being NOW. 

What is really possible if women actually stood up, no longer weary with childbirth, or contained by the silence created by dependence. What would be made of this world if we stood and bleed with Her, if we listened to the vision we know from within???

Small open groups of women that gather quietly upon the Dark of the Moon to breathe deeply of each other… and themselves.  To explore that which could be, perhaps even that which has been… to consider what the world would be like if women stood up and supported one another… held those moments sacred, deeply needed balm to soothe the wounding of one another that we are so well trained in.  

What if there were 5 circles of 10 women, over three suburbs. What if collectively they created a simple membership agreement, all paid $200 or so a year. 52 weeks a year, that would get your rent paid on a house, small cottage would be nice. A place, where once a month at least you went, to bleed, to sit with the feminine, and open to the blood space of being woman.  

We would all care for it, maybe sleep over, create some spaces that were just for sleeping/meditating, and then some for creating, cooking yummy enriching foods for self, for others, tending one another.  Meet on the first quarter for the business of it all, manifest lists, working together on all manner of projects/creations, self funding our goal. Celebrate on the fullness of the moon, maybe even invite the men folk of our community into the Temple to taste of the sweetness of woman’s form given the room to grow. Release/cleanse as the moon moves into the third quarter, surrendering to the natural growth and decay of living this fluidly. Then the dark of the moon could be silent, deep and allowing of the stillness of She. 

From this place we could create, heal, love and vision.

Blood time can be CORE time, not consumed by story and symptom we can explore deeper levels of being with one another. What it is to hold a sister like a midwife does when she assists your birth.  She need not to know the whole life story, just the here and now of it, where you are in your birthing, and assist in that.

We can midwife each other through life as sisters that hold circle together.  Some of our greatest moments have been in the throes of birth… mostly of ourselves.  Sweating, consumed, totally focused upon the task… these moments are sweet with power, strong and clear in our essential self… alive and well in the catering for the life of another… the life of our self. 

When I midwife a woman into her blood, I walk with her to the door, the gateway, the cunt and I offer many tools, for her use, but I can not bleed for her. I can not open the places in her belly, in her mind that hold the keys to this kind of being… 

It’s easy to get caught up in the anger of it all, in the fear and pain, shouting back at the sun that you wish now to know the moon, only the moon… but there is no moon with out the sun without the earth… and shouting at men in large or general, only hides us further from knowing the blood, it is not men that stop us from knowing our blood… 

‘Tis us… women hold women down, in place, with our collective fear streaming forth in all it’s guises, we maintain that there is no blood… 

Total denial is the only response that is acceptable, otherwise we are admitting what? that we are lesser? That we are somehow dirty? That we are different? That we cycle rather than straight line through our lives…   

What if in actual fact men too cycle… what if in fact we can blood sponsor men, initiate them into the blood mysteries so that as we both uncover the inherent power in being human, with this planet, we can share what we have learnt rather than fear one another???  

Do we have to go there first? En masse… do women need to quietly step to the left of life and bleed, well, first? 

Do you bleed well?

 

What Lillith Means to me…
 

I consider a Goddess or God, or any “mythical creature” to have a purpose beyond the story that they share by their existence. I consider them to be vessels, those that hold a certain understanding. For example the sheer brute force of the lighting and thunder needed a personification that could hold such intensity, Thor has served us well. As too the pure virtue of truth that Archangel Michael holds is as powerful as the fiery sword he wields. Humanity, by constructing these vessels has greater access to the deeper knowing within the wonder filled experience of life.

The Vessel that is Lillith is SHE that was before Eve. Women, the feminine, the yin of the planet before the story descended and changed everything. There was a time, before this current domination of power over, that had an intrinsic state of being with… power within. I call to the Lillith to help restore the deeper wisdom that lives in every woman, in every man. She also holds the power of the earth within. She is a source of great inner strength that I feel elongate my spine each and every time I sit in circle with women to share the blood knowledge.  

I have read much of what others have found Lillith to be, some of it rings true, others of it are clearly a different being entirely. I have translated some of the myth that would blame Lillith for a monks wet dream to mean that Lillith is part of the access to a man’s core sexual beast. This beast of man is no more evil and dangerous than the blood is. Both the sacred depth of power and wisdom that is the blood and the wonders of the virility and inner strength that is the beast have been demonised by the same forces. Whether they be church or state, monarch or tradition, woman and man have been separated from an intrinsic state of power within. 

For me, and the women I work with, Lillith is a pathway into the new form of power within.

A pathway for men that I have felt, is the vessel that is Pan, the free and open sexual being that roams the forest in a state of play.
 

My Best Friend...

I have this friend, my best friend. She always listens to me, and I listen to her as best I can. I’m getting really good at telling when she’s coming now, sometimes I can predict it to the hour of her arrival. Although she can still sneak up on me and catch me unawares too! When she arrives, I’ll not see anyone else. I get very possessive of my time with her, I just don’t get enough of it. You see… we weren’t always such good friends.

When we first knew each other I really hated her. She would always turn up at the most inconvenient times, sometimes ruining my whole weekend. In fact to start off with she was my enemy. She made me feel fat and ugly. Her presence would make me feel, feel stuff I didn’t want to explore. This in turn began to inflict the pain. In fact when ever she arrived I became more and more resistant to her and numbed myself to her. I‘d take drugs, anything to avoid her. She kept coming, the more I tried to be cruel to her, didn’t have any impact, luckily, she’s still here. 

I truly do love her arrival in my life, now. Every 23 days like clockwork. She takes me into myself, she holds my gaze without flinching. She asks me all those essential questions, How do I feel? What do I truly want, need or care about? She is so present to me and when I am to her, when I show her the same commitment, the rewards of that friendship are huge. You know the kind of friend I’m talking about here. The one that knows you so fundamentally. That her presence can bring forth all those unshed, swallowed down tears from the last few weeks. The kind of friend that seems to help you feel into all the deep corners of your being. The kind of friend that leaves you when you are whole, feeling filled, and satiated in a way no food nor man can achieve.

She inspires me to wear red. She whispers to my soul the sweet nothings of a love so profound I am in awe each and every time I meet her. She helps me feel, feel everything that is truly me. I’m not talking about the manufactured response our habitual culture creates, I mean the truest utterings of my soul. My friend and I walk in different lands to most. She asks me to listen, she takes my attention to places I just wouldn’t, couldn’t have thought of by myself. Sometimes she gets in behind my hands and we create together. We’ll build something truly divine, truly inspired. Her voice was incredibly rare to hear at first, speaking mostly with the heart, but more and more of late she has much to say. I listen enraptured by the simplicity, the power the wisdom. When she speaks I am left reverberating with an essence of truth so  tangible, solid enough to chew! She’ll not speak in absolutes, she’ll paint masterpieces of possibilities, mostly the possibilities of me. More than once she has asked me, “Why don’t all women want a friendship like you I have?” it’s hard to answer for other women, as I really don’t know why.

My friend will give me a perspective on my life that takes me out of it. You know those conversations, the ones that give you the ah-ha moments of a different ground to see you self from. Releasing all the months woe’s and blocks, supposed misfortunes and mistakes that misrepresent who or what you really are.

My daughter doesn’t understand her, and I think at times is jealous of her and because she has yet to have this very special friendship, how could she understand the importance of it. My other friends now know to give me the room I need when she’s with me. They know I’ll return and be overflowing with yummy story’s to tell. Sometimes I will share her with my closest mates, the others that know the worth of a sister whom have also taken the long road to find the true meaning of the word “sisterhood”. Big, that word is, the collective agreement that there was once a way of being with each other that had nothing to do with competition or comparison. 

Sometimes she’ll lull me to sleep and we’ll dream, such incredible dreams that leave a hint of their aroma in my consciousness long after they’re gone. Sometimes we’ll write, like now, she’s kicked me out of bed before dawn to begin this sonnet. This ode to the dearest friend of my life. To illustrate what a woman can be to herself. For my friend is me, my blood part of my cycle. A good friend that is reliable, honest and real in a world of many reasons to doubt who we are and why we’re here. By being in such a devoted friendship with myself I am considered strong yet soft, powerful yet humbled by the beauty of the rose. Daily I am thankful for being a woman, to know the ebb and flow in my body. To live in cycles, with the earth, to live with Her.

Now, one may ask, how do I do that? “I want what she’s having” is not a hard choice to make, but be prepared to face a woman that has long been ignored, long been the nemesis of your life, what’s she going to look like? Some women have not spent their entire adult lives in hand to hand combat with their cycle, but a good chunk have numbed it down and themselves to the inherent possibility of being a whole woman. But, how to begin? How does a woman that sees this possibility stop and choose differently, choose to be her own best friend?

Well, how do all good friendships begin? With “Hello”. Then a “How are you?” would be nice, perhaps a “How long has it been?” a good soak in a bath. A long sit in front of the mirror, choosing the nice words to think and say. Telling the world to back off, this is your time for you. MAKE time, we all can, if it’s important enough to us. Once you have the time, be consistent. We all know the kind of friends that only want to know us when there is something in it for them. Be unconditional, make this an incredibly accepting, totally honest and loving friendship. But be real, she’ll see straight through you, and if your just saying the words without meaning any of them, she’ll know. If the loving words are hard to find, they well might be, with so much practice to the negative ones, say the honest ones. If you feel wrongly afflicted by this part of you, if there is anger and shame then meet it! See it for it’s true author, know it for it’s original voice. Your body, your cycle didn’t bring you shame or pain, that has come from somewhere else, find out where. Nail it down and name it and add water, just like that, it will melt away.

The number of perspectives invested in separating a woman from herself is incredible. How many times and ways were you demanded to choose something outside of yourself? Your wisdom undermined. Your true nature contained. Your voice silenced. Your power, ahh, your power, what might that mean? Do you have the power to choose your own thoughts? Own words? Acts? Deeds? Or are you functioning from the considered “appropriate use” catalogue of our culture. 

As women we are well trained in the external definition of self, in fact men are as afflicted as women on this score. When our world, our worth, our self is a collection of ticked or crossed boxes according to  the latest pop quiz on current advertised desires, then we are defined by that which would have us pay for these insecurities, with the free set of steak knives to sweeten the pot. 

Coming to a place where we are our best friend, our truest source of wisdom, power and love that is the place that would have us living the life we CHOOSE to live.