Darlings,
There are these things I get to see.
That I am so spilling-out-my-guts grateful for that sometimes I think I might implode.
Implode is different from explode.
Explode is from the Latin explodere which means “to drive out by clapping.” Ex (“out”)- plodere (“to clap”).
And by implication, implode is to drive in by clapping.
Which is how I feel during a Mastery weekend.
I feel like I have an entire Madison Square Garden full of cells rising to their feet and going insane with joy in standing ovation after ovation at all I get to see, experience, and co-create.
Photo: lizlinder.com
There is this certain kind of emotion that gets produced at The School of Womanly Arts that happens nowhere else on the planet.
And surges through this sisterhood with a suck and slurp the way a thirsty 5,000-year-old sponge drinks in water.
And it feels like this:
Relief.
Joy that makes you lightheaded.
Tears that beat against the back of your eyeballs.
Heart-pounding ecstasy, like when Secretariat ran faster than any horse ever because of love and, why not?
And a deep knowing that all you ever longed for is not only possible but on its way to you.
Which makes you sweat. (Which is why I am often sleeveless at Mastery.)
Women have so much experience—in this world—settling. Compromising. Never getting theirs. Wounding. Sacrifice. Despair.
And Mastery is a celestial ball gown of light fantastic, where all of a woman’s compromise reweaves itself into a crown of splendor.
Let me weave you a tiny tale.
Sister Goddess Merry, who is worthy of more words than I am giving her at this moment, made her way to Mastery, by hook, crook, and sheer determination.
A breathtaking testimony to her power as a woman. Yet this power remained elusive to Merry.
By the fourth weekend of Mastery, each woman has the opportunity to come to class dressed as if she were a courtesan.
For those of you who have not taken Mastery yet, give this some thought for a moment…what would you wear?
Tacky or elegant? Wispy or down to the ground?
This exercise places a woman inside the heart of her relationship to her sensuality, and Merry chose to be a vision of 16th-century beauty and 21st-century sizzle.
But, like most of us, she had no idea of how to apprehend this aspect of herself, and only saw what was missing and what she lacked, as she regarded herself.
Until Weekend Four.
Where she was pressed into not only living her beauty and power, but demonstrating it, in front of a room full of over 200 women.
(Through a series of exercises and experiences that I am unable to deliver the content of, here.)
The result was this: Merry changed her mind about who she was.
And not because some handsome prince galloped in to awaken her.
Because she chose to awaken herself. And there was never a sight so incandescently beautiful as Sister Goddess Merry, catching her first authentic glimpse of herself.
To see a woman experience her pleasure is to see her live her sacredness.
There has been no spiritual home for woman, and no sensual home for woman, on this planet, for the last 5,000 years.
And participating in breathing all of this back into real life, in real time, is a caper as wild, woolly, and dangerous as SEAL Team Six.
I want you to feel this feeling.
I want you to awaken the smoldering embers of your sensual spirit, and burst into your flaming, eternal beauty.
I want you to feel the relief, the joy that makes you lightheaded, the tears that beat against the back of your eyeballs, the heart-pounding ecstasy, and a deep knowing that all you ever longed for is not only possible but on its way to you.
Come join me for the Graduation Celebration of The School of Womanly Arts Mastery Program, Spring 2011 and implode with me.
With so much love and pleasure,
Mama Gena
