books – Page 2 – St GEORGIA & Boo

I had two watershed experiences when I was in my early twenties, experiences that went against everything I had been taught about my body up to then. While at a women’s weeklong gathering and at night at the fire near the hot springs, I saw a naked woman of about thirty-five; her breasts were emptied out by childbearing her belly strained from birthing children. I was very young and I remember feeling sorry for the assaults on her fair and thin skin.

Some one was playing.. and she began to dance, her hair, her breasts, her skin, her limbs all moving in different directions. How beautiful she was, how vital. Her grace was heartbreaking. … that night I saw it. I saw what I had been taught to ignore, the power of a womans body when it is animated from the inside.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

begin here, with your daughters and sons, mothers fight the ever-growing war against this illusion of sculpting our bodies as though we were not born perfectly into this world. Teach your daughters to love themselves from the inside out. Teach your sons that we are perfect in all our flaws, that really the flaws are an illusion in its self. That our bodies are going to grow and change as we do, that never throughout our lives will we stay the same nor should we feel we have to. It is in our child baring years that we feel this most. It is in these years that loving ourselves and the body we wear needs our greatest admiration, for how perfectly they are able to stretch and define themselves around new life, sometimes leaving us with deep blue and purple scars that remain as reminders of how we once carried another within ourselves. Let us rid ourselves of this belief that we are meant to conceptually fit some unattainable idea of ourselves, before and after we carry our children. Let us change the minds of our teenage daughters and ease them of the heavy burdens they believe their bodies to be. Let us teach our sons to look deeper, that the real beauty of a woman lies deep within her layers, that they will never find what they are looking for if they are only ever to look at her from the outside.

the interior castle

the calling

There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxication so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget.

This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway. Step around the poisonous vipers that slither at our feet, attempting to throw you off your course. Be bold. Be humble. Put away the incense and forget the incarnations they taught you. Ask no permission from the authorities. Slip away. Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home.

Listen. Softly, the One you love is calling. Listen. At first you will only hear traces of his voice. Love letters he drops for you in hiding places. In the sound of your baby laughing, in your boyfriend telling you a dream, in a book about loving kindness, in the sun dripping down below the horizon and a peacock’s tail of purple and orange clouds unfolding behind it, in the nameless sorrow that fills your heart when you wake in the night and remember that the world has gone to war and you are powerless to break up the fight. Let the idle chatter between friends drop down to what matters. Listen. Later his voice will come closer. A whisper you’re almost sure is meant for you fading in and out of a cacophony of thoughts, clearer in the silent space between them. Listen. His call is flute music, far away, coming closer.

Be brave a walk through this country of your own wild heart. Be gentle and know that you know nothing. Be mindful and remember that every moment can be a prayer. Melting butter, scrambling eggs, lifting fork to mouth, praising God. Typing your daughters first short story, praising God. Losing your temper and your dignity with someone you love, praising God. Balancing ecstasy with clear thinking, self-control with self-abandon. Be still. Listen. Keep walking.

What a spectacular kingdom you have entered! Befriending the guards and taming the lions at the gates. Sliding through a crack in the doorway on your prayer rug. Crossing the moat between this world and that , walking on water if you have to, because this is your rightful place. That is your Beloved reclining in the innermost chamber, waiting for you, offering wine from a bottle with your crest on the label. Explore. Rest if you have to, but don’t go to sleep. Head straight for his arms.

And when you have dismissed the serpents of vanity and greed, conquered the lizards of self-importance, and lulled the monkey mind to sleep, your steps will be lighter. When you have given up everything to make a friend a cup of tea and tend her broken heart, stood up against the violation of innocent children and their fathers and mothers, made conscious choices to live simply and honor the earth, your steps will be lighter. When you have grown still on purpose while everything around you is asking for your chaos, you will find the doors between every room of this interior castle thrown open, the path home to your true love unobstructed after all.

No one else controls access to this perfect place. Give yourself your own unconditional permission to go there. Absolve yourself of missing the mark again and again. Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation. Waste no time. Enter the center of your soul.

-Mirabai Starr, The Interior Castle

I have lots of things to teach you now..

I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night.

It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.

Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all.

It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity.It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die.

It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended.

There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.”

-Jack Kerouac

women who run with the wolves

Each woman has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, the-river- beneath-the-river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting…or any activity which requires intense altered consciousness. A woman arrives in this world-between- worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out the corner of her eye. She arrives there by deeply creative acts, through intentional solitude… much of what occurs in this ineffable world remains forever mysterious to us, for it breaks physical laws and rational laws as we know them.’

I’ll tell you right now, the doors to the world of the Wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door; if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much that you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.

The Self must have freedom to move, to speak, to be angry and to create. This self is durable, resilient, and possesses high intuition. It is a self which is knowledgable in the spiritual dealings of death and birth.

…there is in many women a ‘hungry’ one inside. But rather than hungry to be a certain size, shape, or height, rather than hungry to fit the stereotype; women are hungry for basic regard from the culture surrounding them. The ‘hungry’ one inside is longing to be treated respectfully, to be accepted and in the very least, to be met without stereotyping.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

There is a fire that burns within us, no woman is excluded from this. At times it lies dormant, waiting for long drawn out periods, with great patience, for right timing to ignite it to its full force. Women know this to be true. Some are closer to it than others. For some it burns as a quiet tinder,others a ravishing burn or a ferocious flame. The closer we come to ourselves, often after long treks down broken roads and undesired outcomes, we become tired of the search and finally surrender to all that we are in our mysterious ways, we decide to return home. With surrender, comes tremendous acceptance of ourselves despite what the world is saying. We let go of everything and in doing so find everything. We discover that we are essentially all that we ever needed, and it isn’t necessary to better, or move or change ourselves, all that is ever really necessary is to unfold from the inside out. And as Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, in Women Who Run With the Wolves,’Entering the terrain of wisdom occurs at any age. We sometimes step, sometimes stumble, and other times we are pulled into the territory of the Crone when the need for a deeper, larger understanding of our most meaningful path can no longer be denied—when the gifts hidden in our challenges must be brought forth.’

Roma’s own, shakespeare and company’

Roma’s secret, in the quaint cobble stone lane ways of the old town Trastevere, hides this priceless little book shop that quietly sits with its door open, awaiting or not any one who happens to pass by. It has managed somehow to remain untouched and unharmed by the many wondering tourists. For any respectful lover of books, to step into this shop you are immediately filled with a profound affection for the literary authors of past times. This is truly a memorable moment. This is not a place for hasty decisions but rather deep breaths of gratitude and contemplation of all that lies upon the shelves, each book having already passed through one or many hands before, touching fellow beings and shaping lives. The shelves are filled from wall to wall and to the high ceilings, calling you to look deeply and with a sense of faith that the right book shall make its way into the palms of your hands. This truly is the authentic Shakespeare and Company of Roma. If ever in Rome, seek out this untouched wonder and treat yourself to a little slice of literary heaven.