Tell me this.
Is it scarier to be pushed and pressed to actually live your dreams?
Or to sit on the sidelines and just think about them?
Wistfully.
This is something that preoccupies me, pretty much endlessly.
I am a fire starter.
I am a piece of flammable material used to start human fires.
When I see a desire on the horizon, I have to run towards it and throw a huge burning log on it.
This practice gains me as many friends as it loses me.
Those that love to be ignited, breathe me in like oxygen.
Those that don’t, don’t.
As I stood in the front of the School of Womanly Arts Mastery Graduation on Sunday, and looked out over a sea of about 700 women, I thought, “You know what, Sister? The dreamers are gaining ground. Look at them. The room is teeming with them.”
And this thrills the panties I hardly ever wear right off me.
You know as well as I do that the world is downright desperate for the dreams of women, and the voice of women, to be ignited into reality.
As one of my valedictorians, Kelly, said so eloquently during her speech:
Through the SWA, I became conscious of the degree to which I censor myself, aware of the number of times I have an organic, kinesthetic response to do something, say something, move a certain way, wear a certain article of clothing, and then in a split second’s time, squash that impulse, choosing to keep it small instead. It is incredibly painful to realize I have been complicit in censoring myself. And I now realize the amorphous numbness I had been suffering from is a product of the postage-stamp sized permission the world and I had given me to live my emotional truths. Mama Gena gave me permission and tools to crack the truth of my emotional range open to its mammoth sized glory.
This is the epitome of agency, the definition of empowerment. I could continue studying the problems of the patriarchy in and out, lamenting the plight of woman, but without the depth of understanding of the hook into my empowerment that I have learned here, I am left to fester in my numbness. I have the hook in to instate change. I have the forum to turn things around. I have the power to reverse the last 5,000 years of the censorship of women.
I have made a commitment to following through on every little thing that occurs to me to do. And I have been surprised to realize that most of these things are not too terribly outrageous. I have also committed to pressing into every facet of me that arises, to exploring each face of myself. Especially the darker, messier, not-so-pretty aspects of myself that come up.
Now there’s no turning back. Now that I have opened the door to this journey down the path of pleasure, I have to follow it through. Sometimes when I am feeling dramatic I think, “Oh, wouldn’t it be easier if I did not have this information? Wouldn’t it be easier if I could just continue trucking along, satisfied by mediocrity?” I know in the depths of me—I know in my pussy—the answer is NO. No, it would not be easier to die slowly, accepting mediocrity as my norm. Because our acceptance of mediocrity is just as good as our tacit approval of a fucked up system—a system that censors the boundless beauty and power of a woman living all faces of her glory. My playing it small is literally not going to make a difference. It will go unnoticed. And what’s more, it will keep my sisters bound—it will keep all women on this planet in chains. It is stagnancy. It is death for woman.
And what I saw, as I looked out over that gorgeous sea of women, was the future, not only of The School of Womanly Arts, but of the world as we know it. Most of us have not been raised in a world that was built to encourage the innermost longings of a woman. Rather the opposite. When I very first started the SWA, no one I knew thought it was a good idea. Good ideas, in my culture, were things like becoming a doctor or a lawyer or a nurse or a schoolteacher. Cutting your own trail was frowned upon. As my nearest and dearest heard me describe my vision, failure was predicted. Insanity was surmised.
In fact, I have to say, in the beginning, I never thought my dream would get as big as it has gotten. I could not have imagined 500 women coming to celebrate the bold awakening of my Mastery graduates. But that day has come. How? I let my dream loose in the world.
Just knowing that the 500 guests who came to graduation had a chance to have every coal in their oven stoked by witnessing the living, breathing dreams of this graduating class, has me rest easier at night. Because I know something. Every time a woman witnesses another woman unleashed, unlocked and unbridled, and riding the winds of her desires, she catches it, like a cold. The virulent condition of playing small is replaced by the contagious affliction of choosing to live the impossible. And that is a world I want everyone to be a part of, and I want every man, woman and child to be a part of, too.
So, answer me this: how doth thy dreams live inside you, right now?
Do you find it easier to sit on your dreams, and back burner them? Or press them, like seeds, into fertile soil and tend them with your body, mind and soul?
Do you like to be pushed towards the unlived parts of yourself?
Or is that too scary and crazy?
And if you did let a dream loose, what might it be?
What do you want to create next?
Just posting a desire in the comments below moves it many many inches towards making it so…
And if you want to spread the contagious affliction of living the impossible to your girlfriends, please share this post on Facebook, twitter, etc.
With so much love and pleasure,
Mama Gena
P.S. If one if your dreams is to join me in next year’s Mastery program, now’s the time to take advantage of our Early Bird savings. For more details or to enroll online, click here or call The Palace at 212-787-2411 x1.
Main photo: lizlinder.com
