THE AWAKENING

Samme Samareta is part of my amazing Face Book community. Today he posted this text that I want to share with you all.

Namaste,

Chameli

A time comes in your life when you finally get…when, in the midst of all your fears and insanity, you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out…ENOUGH! Enough fighting and crying and blaming and struggling to hold on. Then, like a child quieting down after a tantrum, you blink back your tears and begin to look at the world through new eyes.

This is your awakening.

You realize it’s time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change, or for happiness, safety and security to magically appear over the next horizon.

You realize that in the real world there aren’t always fairy tale endings, and that any guarantee of “happily ever after” must begin with you…and in the process a sense of serenity is born of acceptance.

You awaken to the fact that you are not perfect and that not everyone will always love, appreciate or approve of who or what you are…and that’s OK. They are entitled to their own views and opinions.

You learn the importance of loving and championing yourself…and in the process a sense of new found confidence is born of self-approval.

The Gift Of the Mother~ a Practice

This practice will open to a more intimate relationship with Mother Earth, Gaia.

In the Andes Mountains, the indigenous people have a practice of bringing gratitude to the food.

When they eat they open themselves as if they are fed by the Mother.

When they drink their thirst is quenched by the Mother.

When they open their heart in gratitude like this, the earth and nature will reveal secrets to them through the leaves, through the shadows over the meadows, through the ripples over the water.  Just because they have opened their hearts and tuned in, they will be able to receive wisdom and to communicate intimately with the Earth.
This practice is to not only bring gratitude to your food, but to be very aware that you are being fed by the Mother all the time.

When you drink, notice that you drink from the Mother.

When you walk, notice that you are held, supported by the Mother.

When you breathe, notice that you are being breathed. You are so supported by this loyal breath.

Simply through your receptivity you will open for her wisdom and her communication deeper than the intellect.

 

In gratitude,

Chameli

This practice is from the recorded class: Awakening the Feminine Body

opening ~ closing ~ opening

 

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes,
if it were always a fist or always stretched open,
You would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small
contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced
coordinated as bird wings
~Rumi

 

photo: Gregory Colbert at http://www.ashesandsnow.org

The Women’s Temple group

For the balanced feminine to blossom it is helpful, and in our experience crucial, to create and sustain women’s circles that truly nourish us in the deepest sense. Instead of enforcing the status quo by focusing on our problems and personal shortcomings, circles like this connect us with truth beyond our fears and limited self-images. From this deeper place we can effortlessly radiate clarity and guidance instead of exhaust ourselves in trying to be leaders from a tense, competitive and ego-centered state of mind.

The Women’s temple is not a therapy or a support group. It is a space were we come to mirror, celebrate and empower each other. A space were we can drop our masks, and let the beauty of our authentic face to be seen. In all its glory and pain and passion and vulnerability.
In our Women’s temple we meet beyond the personal, and in this expanded meeting the collective feminine as well as the personal is healed and celebrated.

Women are the teachers of compassion

The Dali Llama says that the future lays in the hands of women, because women are the teachers of compassion.

Compassion, caring and unconditional love, are all qualities very close to the woman’s heart. They are natural to us.

Yet we have come to view these qualities as weak, or soft, they don’t have any place out in “the real world”, in leadership, in political interaction or business transactions. They are qualities we keep at home.

It is obvious to me that the time is calling us women to step forward,  to bring these qualities into every interaction we have as human beings on this planet today. Not only with each other, but also with our earth and the other beings that we are sharing our earth with.

Many of us have closed our hearts because of being hurt in the past, being taken advantage of when we were giving and we didn’t receive anything back. In closing our hearts, we think that we protect ourselves, but the truth is that in closing our heart in this way, to stop giving, we are amputating the very source of nourishment and expansion in awakening and rejuvenation of our feminine being,
So instead of closing our heart, as Awakening Women we are learning how to live in the world with a broken heart.

Lets move to the heart.

Yours Chameli

Welcome to Greece, June 2010

More info here

We have had magic gatherings in Corfu the last three years, with women traveling in from from Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Holland, USA, Germany and even New Zealand, and we are happy to announce that we will gather again; by the OCEAN, in the SUN, to deepen in our feminine practice together… to dance together… to pray together, to laugh and cry together. Prepare yourself for some serious Bliss, showers of tears, deep silence and hot sun on your skin, profound initiations into the mystic feminine, ecstatic chanting, luscious food, tantric awakening of the senses…. to recognize other women and to be recognized yourself~ as the Goddess…

all images by Mikaela Larm (copyright 2009)

More info here

all images by Mikaela Larm (copyright 2009)

Fall Survival Tips that Every Happy Woman Should Know

by Sara Avant Stover
I don’t know about you, but autumn is one of my all-time favorite times of the year. There’s just something about her crisp winds, golden light, red foliage, and first days of school that gives me a fresh, buzzing, alive feeling inside.

I love bringing out cuddly winter sweaters, wooly scarves, and cozy tights. Long walks through crinkly leaves remind me of romping in leaf piles on my way home from school as a little girl.

The magic of the season extends deeper than our wardrobes, though (!), for during these crucial months, nature prepares for her long winter’s rest and teaches us to do the same. It is time to gather, store, organize, and wind down from the momentum of summer and the relentless forward momentum that modern living usually demands.
Maybe you’re feeling this now in your life: do you find yourself organizing closets, drawers, and files? Signing up for new courses—eager to learn and launch new projects?
All of this is wonderful and natural, but we mustn’t lose site that this is the time of year to SLOW DOWN rather than REV UP.

An Inner Leadership Practice

I am packing this morning, and I am  soon off for the airport again. This time I am going to Germany. It takes extra practice to stay balanced during traveling and intense teaching schedule. Below is one of my favorite feminine leadership practices:

Dropping the awareness down into the pelvic floor

Dropping even deeper down, including in your awareness the surface underneath your body, the floor, and even the earth.

Imagine a point in few feet/one meter, into the earth, right underneath the body.

Now imagine that you are breathing up from this point, and into the body. Filling the body with this peaceful, deep alive earthy quality of the earth.

On the out breath, dropping down into the earth with your awareness.

How is it to move around from this point of gravity? To speak and to listen?

I make it a practice to make this connection before I move out into the world.

In gratitude to the earth,

Chameli

Yes, today I am wiser!

simply because I met you. And you showed me you.

You stayed here with me, shaking in your fear. You stayed.

You flaunted your love and desire for your man, to me, you did not hold anything back.

You punched me with the clarity of your life purpose, so simple, so clear, so potent.

You held me in your depth, right there in that knowing that only can be known through many many years coming and going.

You reminded me, that why I am right here, is just because… there is simply no where else to be. I have always been here, right here. Now.

With you.

Love from Chameli in Stockholm, diving deeper with my sisters.

World Watch out!

Green Tara~ The Lady of Courage

Q:

Dear Chameli,

These days I am attracted by the Green Tara I don’t know why. I remember  you telling us  that when we look at her statues we will notice  that her upper body looks as it is in a “strange uncomfortable” position, but it looks this way only because she is not sitting still, she is moving, dancing while sitting.

I sometimes notice that I am stuck in energy that doesn’t move and yet there is something that wants to move…it seems that I have to be still until the movement arises…

I am singing her Mantra repeatedly with YouTube, this helpes me.  A question is arising: It is written that she is helping to overcome fear, anxiety and grant wishes. Can you say something about grant wishes…I don’t understand that, and can you say something about green Tara for me, please?

A:

In the Buddhist tradition it is said that Tara is in every woman, and the way we are practicing with her in the Awakening Women gatherings is to explore that aspect of the feminine she represent, within ourselves.

The Green Tara embodies the fearless and protective aspect of the feminine, but it is not courage which resists fear. If you think of fear and courage as two ends of a spectrum, we need to be willing to move through the whole range.

When we resist fear we will mostly hang out in the fear- end of the spectrum, pushing against fear. We will never be able to fully step into the other end of the spectrum, into the full potential of courage.

When we relax our resistance to fear, we can move freely through all the aspects of the spectrum, and we will even be invited into the glorious realm of the Green Tara, the total fearlessness.

She has one hand in a hand gesture that  is said to remove fear, the other hand leans on her leg, with the palm up. This symbolizes that she gives blessings and grant wishes.  Tara is a mother goddess, this means that she embodies the abundant benevolence of nature. For Budhists she symbolizes that  source which responds to our prayers. She comes in many different colors and each one have their own area of expertise. It is said that if you are starting a new project, or are traveling, Green Tara is the lady you will want to speak to.

I have recorded a whole class on Green Tara and this aspect of the awake feminine, it is available on DVD, CD and MP3. Below you can see a clip were I tell the story about how Tara came into the world.

Om Tare,

Chameli

Ps: If you would like you question answered here, click on the “ask Chameli”- tab at the top of the blog