Wednesday, October 9th, 2013
Thousands of years ago I remember walking on warm earth, at the foot of a hovering mountain, listening to the messages in the rippling of the breezes through the great oak trees. That grove was my home, and the home of my nymph mothers. In that grove I listened the way my sisters from Egypt had listened. The soil beneath my bare feet seemed to kiss them with every step I took. My body was a place of perfect joy.
A few months ago on the way home from a party, I asked my love to stop the car by a wide shore and got out into the windy night. It had been a costume party and if you can imagine the scene I stood there in bright pink tights and a pink faux-fur jacket, with big foam curlers in my hair and cowboy boots on, and opened my hands and closed my eyes, and listened to the messages in the wind like I did thousands of years ago. We are still the priestesses we once were, and we can still embody what they knew here and now in this life (cowboy boots and foam rollers optional)…we need only remember…
Lately, I keep coming back again and again to Dodona in my memories as I prepare to teach my upcoming course about the ways of the priestesshood there. Dodona, that most ancient of Oracle sites in Greece where we understood what nature told us…the messages she gave us in the wind, the waters, the stars…where we never wore shoes because the earth always met us warmly, and so that we could feel her most intimately. Where we taught others the ways we knew and how to interpret the messages in their dreams to bring healing and great insight. But most of all, it was where we danced. It was where we sang the ancient songs and spoke the magical words, and lingered under the canopy of our sacred oak grove. For, we were able to speak the language of doves because we spoke the language of our bodies…
Like moving a finger over the soft roundness of a pearl, we moved with our bodies as one with them. We inhabited our bodies like the deepest home. We didn’t have to wonder where we were from, we knew. There was nowhere else we longed to be more, and being in our bodies never lost its wonder. The bliss of embodiment only grew. We could tell anything, read anything, foresee anything, though the power of our senses…
There was no shame in nakedness. Only radiance.
Living at one with our senses has become a lost art. The senses want to be nourished like beautiful roses. They want to be watered and feel the sun. They want to be experienced, fed, enjoyed, coaxed out, and pleasured. They want to finally be able to extend themselves in the ways that allow them to take us on journeys we have scarcely imagined.
You have a language in your body that is ancient and most powerful, and nearly lost to the world. It is the same language the wind speaks through the trees, as it did in Dodona so very long ago where we listened, with tuned ears, to the voice of the Goddess there, and as every breeze still carries it through every tree, everywhere, now. It is the only language that can truly turn our world around completely…each of our own private worlds, and the world at large. For, to feed the senses is to feed the soul. The senses are usually starving or numbed, and when nourished, they will guide us. They will give us visions. They will lead us places we have been afraid to go, and give us access to the greatest treasures to be found there. Those things we pray for in our lives late at night when we can’t sleep.
And it is the sensual woman, who is naturally the sexual woman inextricably as well, who will lead us most powerfully. She will help the rest of us on earth find the way. That is why those of us who are ready to be her are so called. For millennia the sensual woman has been suppressed, hunted, and eradicated…because she held the greatest power for this earth, and those who wished to remain in false power could not be seen without the attempted dousing of that radiance and true power. We have been shamed, and so much worse, but the flame of the sensual woman never dies. And now we are being asked to face whatever fears we have and step forward again. To remember that ancient language of the body, and speak it again, loudly and bravely once more.
This idea of returning to sensuality may sound remote or vaugue, but it all begins right now, right here, wherever you are in this life, with simple moments. Moments of feeling. For me it is things like the brush of water against my skin when I first get into the shower the morning. The round, red burst of soft warmth when I picked fresh rosehips the other day. The sun on my naked body. The sound of birds singing while I taught last evening, or the voice of someone I love. The brush of lips in an achingly soft kiss, or the rushing embrace of a tiny child. It’s about feeling love through your body. It’s about coming back to life. It’s about turning your senses back on, through beauty and pleasure.
It’s about taking time. Those extra moments to taste your food, (and to choose foods you love to taste,) or to notice the color of the clouds at sunset and really drink it in. It really is about taking time to smell the roses.
It’s about making our days sensual, rather than steamrolling over the senses and the body just to get things done. It is the equivalent of stepping into a beautiful Wonderland, simply by returning to feeling and orienting our days around what feels good as often as possible. When it is a pleasure to be in the body, magic happens. Always.
I know it can be scary. We were taught quite forcefully, in this life and before, not to trust the body and not to trust pleasure. But they, in fact, are the heartbeat, the essence, of life itself, and the pure wisdom of love resides there.
This is a time to just settle into those moments of sensuality and the body. Notice them when they happen, or write about any that happened to you in a notebook at the end of each day. As you bring yourself into your body and senses, eventually life comes into focus, and you will walk with the beat of your heart…and you will be led to the places where dreams really do come true.
Love, Jennifer
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