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Your Horoscope
Education
The Feminine Flow of Wisdom
By Prajna
Women have a natural wisdom and compassion that is often distorted in an effort to follow or imitate masculine forms of spirituality and leadership. Women are formed with delicate yet powerful round edges. Our soft curved edges tell us that we are not linear by design – our power is in our roundedness. Rather than targeting our attention from point A to point B to accomplish point C, we gather information in concentric rings from many different sources at one time. Our feminine nature is receptive to sensation, feeling, intuition and thought from both our inner and outer environments. Our round form provides a spacious well within which to be still, relax, receive and give birth to new possibilities, ideas, and creations.
The capacity to birth a baby is a powerful and delicate opportunity interwoven with intense feelings of challenge, grace, strength, love and beauty. Women by nature directly experience a full range of human emotions, beginning with the mixed excitement and fear of the responsibility of conception, through the passionate sweat and tears of gestation and labor, right up to hearing the first sounds of new life. Just as spiritual awakening can express itself as the sound of a bird singing, or as the full moon shining, the moment new life is given conscious recognition, spiritual transformation begins. Life appears as two – I and the bird; I and the baby - yet the direct experience is undivided, the same, oneness. This profound awakening to the reality of non-separation is the beginning of the embodiment journey. Every newborn child is a gift to all of us, as he or she is in a natural state and not able to cognize the thought of separation. When a parent or caregiver gathers a child up close, the undivided original essence of all beings is touched. No wonder babies cry when left alone; they want us to come close so as not to forget who we are before birth.
Our feminine receptive nature welcomes us to return to this space prior to the conception of thought—space where our listening shifts from the mental noise between our physical ears that struggles to straighten out the chairs on the sinking Titanic to the still, quiet voice that rests deep within our heart bellies. This is an uncensored potent voice without regard for image, control, status or acquisition. It is only interested in telling the truth, in giving birth to new possibilities, in harmonious and compassionate reconciliations. This still voice can be so quiet that it can be missed altogether. When life drama strikes, we reflect, “I had a feeling not to follow that loud, grave voice.” That’s because the masculine face of our egoic nature, driven by fear and obsessed with accumulation, took over. Is it possible to pause and reorient to our true voice?
Yes. By unflinching attention to the natural rhythms and sensations of our bodies, our orientation to who we are shifts toward stillness, wisdom and compassion. We no longer stick or identify with the story in our head. We blossom from this deep well within and embody our true nature. We touch the possibility of receiving every aspect of humanity, including the so-called insecure, needy, ugly and deluded parts. This deep receptivity is not an effort or a doing – it is an aspect of our original essence. It is in receiving life as it is without the need to change that transformation happens. As soon as the newborn instinctively suckles at mama’s breast, milk flows and nourishes the healthy development of the baby. The mother receives her child without thought or effort. Like this, “who we are” is already in love with our humanness. As we root ourselves in this wisdom, we naturally flow toward greater balance, harmony, healing and cooperation. This is very different than adapting to mental noise—buying formula or bandaids as a way of life.
Awakened action flows from receptivity to who we are as already and always whole, complete, good. Enlightened action and feminine receptivity are one and the same flow; we cannot have one without the other. Just as a woman cannot conceive without receiving her male partner, so our men cannot act from wholeness without attunement to their feminine essence. As a parent is unable to deny their love for their newborn, authentic spiritual awakening is incapable of withholding love and respect for all of life. Feminine receptivity contains a love and intelligence greater than all of our conditioned thoughts put together. It is this great universal intelligence that heals all wounds, honors our roundedness, and births us into alignment with our essential wholeness or oneness. Very few report the labor of childbirth as easy. We love it just the same, as it creates a precious new being.
There is a collective impulse on the rise to join together in peaceful resolutions, to yield toward harmony, to be courageous while remaining kind. Our bodies and our hearts contain the wisdom necessary to influence and invite old conditioned masculine parts to relax and know that a moment of feeling is not a weakness. Feeling is an unexplored edge that leads to well-rounded responses, integrity and truth that reside at our core. This wide perspective invites childlike curiosity rather than tools of measurement. Naturally we wonder, “What is true? What is myth? What is nothing but old conditioned patterns? What is no longer needed? What am I here for? What’s the most important thing? What am I really?” These inquiries, deep listening and soft subtleties are explored in the Women’s Embodiment Journey. Stillness is our foundation, feelings are welcome, requests are respected, roundedness is celebrated and fullness is danced.
You are welcome to join those who are courageously stepping into the feminine flow of wisdom, carving out a new life and blossoming fully as awakened women.
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“The great therapy, and healing, is the presence of our feminine nature.”
Prajna
Therapist, Teacher, and Co-Founder of The Flowing River School and this is her ad in the Lotus Guide Magazine
“To know yourself as the being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain….is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.”
Eckhart Tolle
Bestselling Author
Oneness Blessing—Deeksha
By Vidya Frazier
I think that one of the greatest and most harmful delusions we have in this world is the view we have of ourselves as being separate from other human beings and the world in which we live. This alone has been the source of untold suffering in our world. This is why something such as deeksha, which has a focus on oneness, is so important in today’s world because it takes us beyond our divisive worldviews and beliefs we have about ourselves and each other.
—Rahasya Poe, Lotus Guide
"I can really imagine you there, Vidya . . ." said my friend on the phone. He had just returned from a three-week course at the Oneness University in India and had been regaling me with wonderful stories of his experience there.
But I was not hearing the prescience with which he was speaking as he told me he could see me there. I was too busy remembering my trip to India 12 years before—a trip to visit the spiritual master Papaji. It had been an extraordinary, life-changing visit—but one that had left me declaring: Okay, I’ve been to India. I don’t need to go there ever again. As beautiful as that country had been in so many ways, the plane ride there was way too long for me, and the Third World realities just too harsh. And, besides, I had long ago left my spiritual seeking behind.
After 30 years of searching through many different spiritual traditions from both the East and the West, my experience with Papaji had led me to what felt like the end of the search: I was left with the knowing of myself as consciousness and with the simple joy of the present moment unfolding with each breath. And I had been living quite contentedly with this awareness ever since. So I began protesting to my friend on the phone: "No, I don’t think so—I’m really not interested in India or one more spiritual trip.” But he said, "Well, just let me give you the oneness blessing and then see what you think.” He had been telling me about the blessing (also known as deeksha) that he had learned to give at the university. I had to admit it did sound lovely. He described it as the transfer from one person to another of a specific kind of energy, emanating from the founders of the Oneness University, Amma and Bhagavan, that was designed to promote spiritual evolution in a person, a deepening of his or her awakening. It generally seemed to bring about a deep sense of peace and joy in people and also the "flowering of the heart.”
Furthermore, he said, through time it begins to bring about healing and a greater balance in people’s everyday lives—in their relationships, their health, their finances, their work. (This really spoke to me—the bringing of spiritual awakening into the mundane world of people’s lives.) And then he said, "This isn’t about another particular spiritual path: This blessing is for everyone on the planet, for people of all faiths—or of no faith. It’s truly about the realization of the oneness that lives at the core of all existence.” So I finally thought, Well, why not? And we sat on the phone together, silent, for a couple of minutes. Fifteen seconds into it, I was stunned by the profound awakening of joy and love that began to flood my being. Tears sprang to my eyes as I sensed the divine presence gently, warmly enfolding me with such love that I could hardly bear it.
This intoxicating feeling remained with me for the rest of the day—and awoke with me the next morning. So it wasn’t much of a surprise to me after all, a few days later, to discover a deep longing arising in my heart to go the university in India myself. What I was realizing was that I wanted to learn how to give this oneness blessing. That, in fact, this was actually what I had been waiting all my life to do: to be part of the global team of thousands that were now giving deeksha around the world. With sudden joy, I realized that the work I’d been doing for years—counseling, giving workshops, writing—had simply been preparation for this new work. It took a few months of preparation, but soon I was off to India. I was pleasantly surprised from the very beginning: I actually managed the long ride there and back with surprising ease. I hardly noticed the heat and humidity and the other discomforts of India—amazing for someone like me with health and comfort issues!
The university itself felt as if it somehow existed on another dimension; it seemed to be enclosed in an energy field that kept our inner processes popping 24/7 for the full three weeks we were there. The presence who met me at the door of the large meditation hall was so powerful, so tangible, that I felt I was being drawn into "thickened light” each time I entered. Our guides throughout the process were several of the 200 people who now teach at the university—all of them Indian "kids” somewhere in their twenties. Some of them had been taught by Amma and Bhagavan since childhood; others had been taught by those earlier kids. But all of them I saw or experienced, without exception, were extraordinary. I kept thinking, What planet have these beings come from? Every one of them, despite their tender ages, carried themselves with a beautiful inner authority way past their years, along with a bright clarity, wisdom. and love shining from their faces.
Their lectures were eloquent; their expertise in leading us through processes, both sensitive and powerful. Never once did I sense a feeling of "politics” among them, as I always have in the past with all the spiritual groups I’ve encountered. They truly moved somehow as one being—demonstrating so clearly exactly what they were teaching: the reality of oneness. I never ceased to be awestruck by them.
The personal experiences I had during the process varied from ongoing, nonstoppable explosions of laughter to deep sessions of sobbing, feeling overwhelmed with the preciousness of divine love, to totally disappearing into a golden silence. The oneness blessings I received from the guides left me riveted; I felt my brain being rewired, difficult childhood patterns being lifted, and my heart swelling with immense joy. I have returned, feeling deeply transformed, more profoundly awake than ever before, and filled with a passion that totally lights my heart. I find myself eager to give the oneness blessing to others around me—and I have met with groups of people asking me for it. I know no greater joy than to offer this blessing to others and feel an unending gratitude of this gift I have received.
For more information about the Oneness University, see onenessuniversity.org or onenessmovement.org. For more on Vidya, see vidyafrazier.com.
