THE GODDESS SCROLLS - Sacred Erotic Tales

I was deeply honored to write the forward THE GODDESS SCROLLS - Sacred Erotic Tales by Rev. Goddess Charmaine a collection of spiritual erotica. On sending this forward to Rev. Goddess to review, I received a call from both Rev. Goddess and her mother. Her mother was weeping on the phone, thanking me for honoring her daughter's path through these words and touching her heart. The feminine on the planet is healing. Our relationships to our birth mothers and the divine mother is healing. On hearing Rev. Goddess's mother weeping, I wept. Her mother explained she didn't understand all the concepts I spoke about in the forward or what a yoni was(Sanskrit term for vulva), but that there was a power and beauty in the words that she felt in the presence of her daughter and her daughter's work. Rev. Goddess later told me that her own daughter Archa and her daughter's husband Doug had been reading the book and it had brought them closer as a newly wed couple and was reinvigorating their romantic partnership as newlyweds. Rev. Goddess has been a friend, confident and inspiration to me over the years. Her path and work have informed my own path. I am deeply grateful to have her in my life and consider her a true friend and colleague. THE GODDESS SCROLLS -Sacred Erotic Tales will be on pre-order on Valentine's Day.

"I read Reverend Goddess Charmaine’s first book The Sensuous Mystic – Uniting Sex and Spirit as I was just stepping onto my path as a Sensual Shaman and Sexual Priestess. Being a recent initiate as a Sexual Priestess, I knew the power and obligation of what lay before me. The split between sex and spirit is was one of the darkest and deepest wounds on the planet and only one who’s energy can battle the darkest most powerful shadows on a personal and public level takes on this epic feat. One must be called to this path with a fervor and ferocity that champions the most intense human psychological labyrinths and deepest core wounds. There is no space to be wishy-washy about this work. Those called to it are in a life-long stand for the unity and healing of a sexually empowered planet.

Reverend Goddess Charmaine has dedicated her life as a Sensuous Mystic and Interfaith Minister to healing the split between sex and spirit within our holy bodies and on our sacred planet Earth. She has held one intention since the time I know her - to have her yoni in the sky. Translation – to reawaken God/dess Consciousness on planet Earth and celebrate the connection to the holy body and sensual spirit. Reverend Goddess Charmaine is a pillar to the modern Western Tantra movement and is one of the sensual transformers who paved the pathways for this powerful global awakening.

On first meeting Rev. Goddess Charmaine, there was no doubt in my mind – I was in the presence of a fully realized Goddess. She towered in leopard print stiletto heels and a hip-hugging black pantsuit with an ass you could set a teacup on. Her long braids and almond eyes radiated a Cleopatra like energy. She was truly what I envisioned as a walking embodiment of the Goddess. Upon meeting her, one feels in the presence of someone both holy and accessible at the same time. Rev. Goddess holds a strong mother energy that loves and nurtures the collective, a powerful presence and connection to Source that ministers to her community compassionately and effortlessly and a strong connection to her roots in “the hood” that will throw back a bottle of red wine and dance on top of the bar at the disco – yes, in the same leopard print stilettos - all from the same authentic and sacred cord of being an embodiment of Goddess.

Being present in her workshops as both a participant and a co-facilitator Reverend Goddess Charmaine’s connection to Eros feels limitless. In witnessing her powerful presence facilitate erotic trance dances, guide individuals through healing self-pleasuring rituals or minister at clothing optional church services, I see her always connected to the infinite sensual life-force of Goddess.

Her erotic fiction over the years has continued to inspire an ocean of devotees who seek her same connection to universal orgasmic inspiration. This collection of work has truly been a sacrament and life-long devotion to the path of the Goddess and the quest of uniting sex and spirit. Each sacred erotica story was crafted during a Tantric rite and completed during a full moon. You are reading a mystics journey through mystery school and sacred initiations. On reading her erotic stories, one is easily transported to a time where the wounded masculine and feminine energies within our collective unconscious have healed and birthed a new race of humans that remember the holy body and sensual spiritual as a sacred gift that was born of the cosmic act of one-ness with Source.

This book of channeled erotic transmissions is written in the same style as it was received from Source, in erotic bursts, in panting self-pleasuring visions, in seeds and sutras created in Tantric pujas with consorts and kindred souls. Several times while reading the book to write this forward I was swept into such ecstasy through the transmission of the erotic prayer, I would find myself in a state of energetic orgasm, only to come back to the story and realize that two hours had passed and I had only skimmed the first page.

In your hands you hold a Sacred Sexual Bible. May the connection to sex and spirit awaken and unfold in YOU and all of the beloveds you with whom you choose to share this sacred text."

Infinite Sensual Blessings & Erotic Awakenings,

Isis Phoenix ~ Sensual Shaman"

For more information about Rev. Goddess Charmaine visit www.sensuousmystic.com

Scarlet Poppy

I began this post around Memorial Day. It is said that there was a time when the language of plants, animals, crystals and humans spoke together effortlessly. This is a tribute to the reemergence of that time. May we awake once again to our interconnectedness with all life and all that is.

Scarlet Poppy

Papaver rhoeas Papaveracae – the Scarlet Poppy, a variable flowering plant with large vivid red four petaled flowers and a black center. Annual. Germinates in disturbed soil. When broken it bleeds a white latex liquid. Flowers in late spring and if climate and warmth permit – in the beginning of autumn. The simple leaves are lobed, alternate or whorled. The flowers have petioles and are not sheathed.

Papaver rhoeas ~ Before our meals at the Wise Woman Center in Woodstock, NY where I am an apprenticing herbalist, we stand and sing. We sing of Scarlet Poppies. The scarlet poppy is a symbol of menstruation. In older times and sometimes still today, to ensure a good harvest, women were sent into the fields to bleed before the seeds were sewn. Rich fertile menstrual blood, one of the most nutrient rich resources available on the planet, was offered to our beloved mother. This nourishment from women nourished the community and the planet. Blood was life.

Today on Memorial Day weekend however, I discover a new meaning for the scarlet poppy. It is Sunday and right before Holy Body Service, I am inspired to look up the meaning of the day and remember those fallen, remember those from my own ancestry, remember the women who supported the families and the men who fought and fell on any sides, all sides. Today I remember. In my remembrance, I find the scarlet poppy.

In Flanders Fields and Other Poems a 1919 collection of poems by John McCrae, I find the scarlet poppy again.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below...

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields...

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands, we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields....

McCrae was a Canadian soldier, physician and surgeon who’s Flandes Fields poem brought international attention to the scarlet poppy as a symbol for all fallen soldiers, a symbol of blood on the fields, a symbol of loss and grief and stained Earth. Here the poppy was not a symbol of nourishment and agricultural fertility, but of one of remembrance and Death and the restlessness of the dead should the battle not continue in honor and faith of those fallen. After John McCrae published “In Flanders Fields,” the poppy continued to evolve into a symbol of remembrance of fallen soldiers. In 1918, Mona Michael’s inspired by McCrae’s poem wrote in her pledge to keep the faith of the fallen wrote

“Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,

Sleep sweet – to rise anew!

We caught the torch you threw

And holding high, we keep the Faith

With All who died.”

Mona Michaels went on to introduce the practice of wearing poppies as a symbol of remembrance of those who did not return to celebrate the end of war. Her dedication to this practice spread internationally and the scarlet poppy became recognized not just as a symbol of remembrance but of a time when the world would return to piece after the ‘war to end all wars.’ Ironic, the poppy grows in disturbed soil–the soil of battle.

Pinned to our heart centers, the scarlet poppy holds our fallen loved ones in hand and heart as we move through with faith and remembrance the loss of loved ones during gruesome battles. Mona later went on to use the scarlet poppy as a symbol to raise funds and benefit servicemen in need.

Today I take some time to speak with the plants – to offer my voice as their voice. The Scarlet Poppy Speaks ~

“I would like to welcome a time where the blood of man is replaced by the blood of women and when senseless deforesting is replaced by conscious agriculture and where we truly nourish our communities. I am a symbol of blood and the bleeding of humans and that symbol can cause remembrance and nourishment and my next phase is to be remembered as the flower in the hills where community holds the planet and each other and their blood streams run together in nourishment and wholeness. As a flower, I fold and blossom and grow and hold the beauty of sex in its whole-est form, open, visible and alive. Use me to enliven your sexuality and to remember that which can be used for nourishment and benefit for the entire world.”

Scarlet Poppy on YouTube by Isis Phoenix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e32NJFFOXcc

May we together hold the vision to return to a time where we are in communication with the plants, the animals, the crystals, the planet, each other. May we listen, really listen and hear what Pacha Mama – beloved mother is saying to us. May we open the doors and gateways of communication and listen once again to the voices of all that is. Open your ears, open the gateways – awake, awake.

Holy Body Worship ~ Why 'Clothing Optional'

Holy Body Worship is a clothing optional worship service led by Rev. Goddess Charmaine and Isis Phoenix each month. Having recently abbreviated our name to 'Naked Church' we are taking this time to redefine that this continues to be a 'clothing optional' event.

Holy Body Worship is an Interfaith spiritual service that celebrates the intimacy and uniqueness of the body and soul relationship through honoring and acknowledging the body as a temple and recognizing it as the vessel our soul chose for incarnation. The option of being naked or skyclad during Service is used to further the expression of reverence and celebration of our body soul relationship to Source. Our bodies are miracles, beauty, complex ecosystems, walking art - each unique, holy and a piece of God/Goddess/Source. The ‘clothing optional’ is simply that – optional. You are never required to be nude during service. It is a matter of choice and truth in the present moment based on how your body feels and wishes to express itself. In service, we view nudity as a form of transparency and intimacy. We bare our soul’s and the places that have been hiding or living inauthentically and bring ourselves back to authenticity, transparency and one-ness. If we feel guarded when we remove our clothes it’s not a form of celebration and we’ve actually moved our relationship to body/soul/source out union or one-ness and into fragmentation and inauthenticity. However, if you have felt guarded your entire life, perhaps this is the moment to experience your union and one-ness through exploring nudity, through moving through fear and embracing yourself ‘holy’ and completely in this moment. In Holy Body Worship, we choose to be nude or to celebrate with others who are nude to explore a deeper level of intimacy with our bodies, our souls, each other, the divine. To remove that which keeps us separate – and to bring us back into right relationship with body, soul, Source. Whole-y Body Worship celebrates and takes a stand for the right to choose to worship your body naked or clothed or in any state of disrobe that feels appropriate to you in the present moment and also acknowledges that that decision may change from moment to moment. We invite you to ask yourself what makes you feel powerful, holy, wild, sensual, free, and totally you and to celebrate your body soul union from that place.

Nude New York Interview with WFUV's Cityscape

I had a great time doing this interview with George Bodarky on what has inspired my own naked yoga practice and the naked yoga movement in New York City.

You can download or listen to a free podcast of our interview below :)

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/wfuvs-cityscape/id168241302

Enjoy!

Traumatized Wings

After teaching a beautiful yoga session this winter, my student inquired about the rather large collection of feathers I kept on my altar that ranged from peacock to hawk to seagull. Each feather had been gifted to me or found while in nature and over the years had become integrated into my Shamanic healing ceremonies. He asked quietly how I would feel about receiving some more. Knowing my yoga student was also a hunter, I questioned where and how he would get them and what would be come of the bird whose feathers would end up on my altar? He said warmly he ate everything he hunted and that the birds’ life would not be for sport. Satisfied, I accepted, feeling the circle of life move through the room and right relationship resonate throughout our conversation. I would be grateful to give the feathers and wings of these birds another life beyond their own.

A few weeks later my yoga student brought a large bag of newspaper wrapped wings to me. Giddy and excited to experience the power of a new healing tool, I rummaged through the bag and pulled out the first newspaper wrapped bundle. Much to my surprise, upon opening the bundle with joyful eagerness, I closed it just as quickly with wide-eyed horror. The energy emanating from the wings was so intense I had to look away directly after opening it because they nothing short of knocked my energetic socks off. I was almost blinded by the power of what I was holding. It became too much for my nervous system to process and after the first look I put the wrapped wings up in the top of my closet promising myself I would set aside special time later to properly attend to them.

Weeks passed. Each time I got dressed the bag holding the wings loomed over me. I had asked for this and now that I had them I wasn’t sure what to do with them. Finally, on a cold Saturday ready to finally move into spring-cleaning and avoid this ridiculous energetic procrastination, I took them down and set them on my bed. I opened the first wrapped newspaper bundle that held partridge wings. There was a loud moan and flapping that swept over my heart. I realized that the bird’s spirit had not fully left the wing. When its life was taken, the quickness of its death confused the bird’s spirit and had somehow become trapped in the wing. What I had experienced before when I looked at the wings briefly a few weeks ago was a bird’s soul in severe distress. The bird that had become food had not transitioned back to source. Instead a piece of its soul had become trapped in the part of its body it uses for escape. I energetically merged with the wing and let if move through and out of me until the flapping moan subsided and there was simply peace and presence left. I realized that trauma had actually locked the bird into its wing making it unable to move forward fully into its next life.

All afternoon, I sat with this experience and pondered the bird’s wing as a metaphor for our own lives. Places where as humans we have become stuck, traumatized and are holding incompletion in any area of our life is a place where our wings have become detached and our soul’s evolution has stopped. Any place where we have experienced loss of power, rejection of another or ourselves or compartmentalization is a place where we have become stuck and our soul has stopped its process of growth.

Much like the experience with the wings, I invite you to explore areas of your life where loss of power, resentment, grudges and incompletion is present for you and to visit that experience fully. What do you need to complete? What would support you fully in moving forward? What opportunities of forgiveness would support you in opening your wings to their fullest extent? How can your wings grow and stretch even further across the planet and support our communities and our world to its return to balance and right relationship?

Teachings come every day in new ways. Thank you to my yoga student who brought me the wings that helped open my eyes and my wings to new horizons.

Much Love!

Isis Phoenix

Yoni Steams

Yoni Steam Ritual

Yoni is a traditional Sanskrit term for a woman's vulva. The term itself acknowledges and honors that yonis were a symbol of the Great Goddess and that in their presence rests the force of Shakti, the pure essence of the divine feminine. Yoni Steams are an ancient wise woman traditional treatment using a unique blend of organic and consciously harvested herbs that are steeped in hot water creating an herbal infusion. After brewing, the steaming herbs are transferred to a bowl and placed in a toilet where the woman receiving the steam sits as the medicinal herb steam rises and opens and lubricates the yoni. The herb steam has gentle healing, cleansing and stimulating properties supporting a healthy pelvic floor and reproductive system. The steam increases blood flow to the yoni and helps discharge clots and energy blocks by relaxing the muscular and deep tissue layers of the pelvis and naturally balancing yeast and bacteria. Yoni steams help lubricate the pelvic floor and encourage a natural healthy wetness that cleans, clears and rebalances.

The Ritual ~ Add half the jar of your yoni steam herbs to the muslin bag that was wrapped around the jar. Place the bag in a pot of water that has cooled just below boiling. Steep the herbs in the muslin bag for 15 minutes, covered, on the lowest flame setting. Pour the herb infusion that has been created into a large bowl that can rest in the toilet. Test the steam for heat sensitivity before sitting directly on the toilet. Disrobe from the waist down and drape your lower body with a large towel or blanket to keep in the steam and your body warm. Steam for 15-20 minutes. The sensation should feel pleasant, opening and relaxing as the pelvic floor is nourished by the healing steam bath. After the steam cools, as an additional part of the ritual, you are welcome to pour the herb infusion in a warm bath and bathe to continue nourishing the body or add hot water to the bowl of herbs and steam longer. Be sure to keep the body warm afterwards and allow time for quiet meditative reflection or rest. Give used herbs back to the earth in your compost, garden, or any green patch that calls to you.

Benefits, side effects and Contraindications

A Yoni Steam treatment serves as an internal cleansing of the uterus assisting in the release of incompletely flushed debris and fluids. It introduces warmth and softens and nourishes internal membranes. Yoni steams are ideal if you have endometriosis, dark blood at beginning or end of the menstrual cycle, ovarian cysts, irregular periods, painful periods, uterine fibroids, prolapsed uterus, pelvic trauma, vaginal dryness or decreased libido.

It is not advised to steam during your menstrual flow, if you are pregnant, have a uterine infection, vaginal sores or blisters.

Yoni Steams are lovingly crafted by hand for you J

Reclaiming Natural Ecstasy

Dear Ones,

I am just back from a glorious week in the green mountains of Vermont celebrating a late Lughnasadh - the ancient first harvest festival with the Celtic Witch Priestess who initiated me onto my path and her new apprentice who is already in the throws of this life changing ancient transformative magic that is permeating the season. Vermont continues to be a place that inspires magic, transformation and access to open portals of wisdom from the proximity of the land and the way the community must live in relationship to it. I spent my days stacking fire wood, hanging a bat house, perusing the local markets and fairs and cooking good wholesome food all the while reminded of the depth and magic of simple Earth-based living and the beauty of human existence when it falls into right relationship with the planet. My body aches this morning from the hard manual labor of the past week and I smile with a deep pleasure at the sensual wholeness of the return to the land. A conversation that spun out of this time was the "turn on" of human existence when we reach this integrated relationship. When we are simple doing what we are here to do and living the way we are here to live. My dear friend the Celtic Witch Priestess spoke of her new apprentice's new amazement at her own limitless and expanded sexual energy and how it now colored every part of her life. I laughed, remembering my own initiations unfolding to the natural state of being sexually functional, always turned on - reclaiming the ancient brain and animal body of our existence and plugging into the Earth's perpetual state of orgasm - how truly exuberant existence becomes.

A meditation - When in your life do you experienced true wholeness and interconnectedness? Where is desire and passion currently running through your life? Are you following it freely or resisting it? What would shift in your life if you consciously plugged into this energy all the time?

In Natural Ecstasy,
ISIS

Gender Imbalance In Balance

The gender paradigm can often rouse passionate responses and heated dialogues from almost anyone who has actively explored masculine and feminine roles in our society. Today, on Mother’s Day, I pause to look back at the presence of the feminine in my life and reflect on how grateful I am to be such a privileged woman in the west who has had a myriad of powerful female teachers, mentors and leaders who have influenced my own spiritual maturity as a woman.

In the arch of my spiritual journey, the roles of masculine and feminine energy have influenced the core of my spiritual evolution because they exist at the very heart of our culture and the heart of our evolution as a species.

I’ve had my fare share of heady and aggressive conversations about the feminist movement, the monotheistic male center of patriarchal religion, the concept of Goddess and the place of the uprising divine feminine. As a fierce representation of the uprising feminine, I fought hard in my college years to let the voice of the feminine be heard and to quench my own insatiable thirst for mainstream information in reference to the sacred feminine and presence of Goddess Worship in the barren lands of Midwest America. My formal teachings of the Divine Feminine came behind closed doors and under a covenant of secrecy from the town witch, and while what she was teaching me may have cast me as a heretic in the Bible belt, today, it rolls off my tongue and passes through conversations between my friends, clients and community as quickly and easily as someone might discuss the weather.

In my flag-waving feminist days, however, I declared myself a female refugee of the patriarchy and quite often entered into relationship with men where I both dominated and resented their position as man and masculinized my position as woman in an effort to climb out of the years of patriarchal oppression and absence of choice. I martyred myself and my poor unsuspecting boyfriends at the time who fell helplessly in love with a women claiming her Goddesshood and owning her wrath of centuries of oppression and abuse. The early uprising feminist spiritual movement was laced with Martyrdom and rightly so after centuries of silence and oppression. In my individual uprising of ushering in the proclamation of the Goddess, I worked directly in the wound of the feminine, answering calls at Domestic Violence Intervention Services trying to put myself in a path of creating change and healing the world. I directed the Vagina Monologues, raised money to stop violence against women, took back the night. I became self-identified with what David Deida refers to as ‘Stage Two Feminine’ where the feminine embodies her inner warrior and challenges the masculine to meet her on that plane of existence. She has become empowered, liberated and demands equality and at times superiority on every level. She works under the solar influence of the masculine, not resting or nesting or nurturing but constantly creating, fighting the activist’s fight and coping with adrenal burnout from over-embodying dominant solar energy.

Today the split is mending and we are moving into an age of partnership, a time where the energies of God/Goddess are uniting within us and outside of us. The third stage of the feminine is the stage of partnership, a stage of inner God/Goddess Harmony, within and without. It is also a stage where we consciously embrace and celebrate our born gender identity knowing we can shift among all stages interchangeably. The feminine, becomes all aspects of the feminine AND masculine but rests in the love and balance of wholeness of her feminine body and archetype by choice of nature’s script and soul purpose. The masculine rests fully in his role as male after actively embracing his feminine and moving through his stages of masculine maturity and evolution.

The masculine/feminine relationship thrives from the inside returning to the oneness and balance it evolved out of from Source – God/Goddess consciousness. Many of us New Agers who have ridden out our own liberation from gender roles bemoan gender identification and the masculine feminine gender paradigm citing ‘people are people,’ but to know each energy separately is to know it as part of the whole as well. Just as on a Shamanic level the elements make up our world – Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, Ether, so do the masculine and feminine dance make up our universe and these very primary energies are at the core foundation of our creative archetypes. To disassociate from them, we must know them fully balanced both within and without and also be able to re-release them back to the cosmic void which often results in returning to them, acknowledging them, playing in these roles and stages of the masculine and feminine interchangeably and consciously and then releasing them to that cosmic source void of the universe once again.

Today, on mother’s day, I pause to look back at the presence of the feminine in my life. I look at the promises I made to myself in the arch of my feminine journey as woman. Promises about never getting married or having children and today I find myself on my way to marriage and for the first time in my life, hearing the future whispers of family life within me, which had always been previously met with silence or wounded protests. Today I find myself celebrating my role as woman, as matriarch, standing next to a partner who embodies all aspects of the divine masculine and acknowledges his feminine core. Today I stand and acknowledge the ushering in the age of partnership and holding a vibration of wholeness as we move towards healing ourselves, healing our partners, healing our planet.

Our Warriors

There was a time, an ancient time, when our men came home from battle and were cleansed through the temples of Priestesses before returning home to their families and into society. These sexual priestesses lay with warriors healing, transforming and washing clean the wounds of war and the energetic and psychological traumas from it. I spoke to Marine Colonel today after our yoga session who reminded me, one never stops being a Warrior even after the battle is done. I could see that based on the professionalism he addressed to me through our first email correspondence: his punctual nature, his early confirmation of our appointment, his discipline and training of his body. He was a man who had trained, transformed and disciplined himself and served his country, his community and himself with meticulous attention and self-respect. My meeting with this warrior today had reminded me of this essay I wrote back at Christmas that I never posted. It also reminded me of our alienation of our soldiers, our warriors, our veterans. How are we honoring these men and woman who have served our country and how are we as a society assisting them into reintegration? Please enjoy my previous essay.

Love & Blessings,

ISIS

Serviceman’s Discount in May (includes current servicemen and veterans, policemen, firemen, EMSA and Hazmat – 20% off any drop-in session. Id required. Thank you for your service.

Giving Voice to your Journey: Submit your story of service. One person and their story in May will be selected to receive a free Sensual Shamanic Bodywork Session.

December 28th, 2009

I was standing online at Newark Liberty Airport. It was just after Christmas, Sunday, December 27^th and after the attempted terror attack on America just two days earlier, I had excepted long lines and heightened security measures, but the Goddess was good to me and there were no lines to stand in as I checked into my flight. I removed my shoes and shuffled sock footed up to the plastic tubs and x-ray machine, when I first saw him. A hardened looking black man under a thermal shirt, aged, late forties a bit of grit around the edges of his aura like he had seen things most of us hadn’t. He’ll get screened, I thought, instantly slipping into our countries default racial profiling. Until I saw his hat, “Retired Army – Still Serving.” Right, Scratch that. My thoughts raced back to the Oliver Stone film Platoon, I had seen for the first time on Christmas Eve, just a few days before and began to reopen my inner soul-stirring contemplation about the current embodiment of the Warrior archetype in our culture.

Before boarding my flight, I had attempted to change my seat assignment several times to avoid being in the much loathed ‘center seat’ read – no arm rests and claustrophobia the entire trip. I eventually resigned to take it, after no other seat options presented themselves. On making my way to my begrudged center seat, even more annoyingly near the back of the plane, I saw the army man who had gone through security before me, was in the window seat next to my designated spot. In this moment of recognition, I felt the unmistakable zing from the universe when a moment of synchronicity unfolds before me, preparing my soul to learn, experience, and transform. I stored my bag and hunkered down in my middle seat unsure of what to say to the man next to me of whom I was prepared for divine teachings to pour through. Rather than speak to soon, we had several hours of intimate contact in a plane together ahead of us, I closed my eyes and tuned into my veteran seatmate’s energy field. It had been places, that much was clear. I felt his spirit – even, calm, but very powerful – the presence of a warrior archetype.

“You can use this arm rest if you like,” I heard the voice next to me say. I opened my eyes and saw a gentle glow coming from the eyes of a man who had served our country, not only a warrior, but also a gentleman. “Thanks” I said, “if you’re not careful I may use your shoulder as a pillow too.” He laughed and I detected the hint of an island dialect in his voice. “You’re in the army?” I asked. “Retired, for a few years now, I train recruits” he said. “How long did you serve?” “Over twenty years, I enlisted in my thirties after I moved here from Aruba.” Older than I thought. “I just watched the film Platoon.”

“Great movie,” he said. “Probably the most real depiction of what it’s like inside our world.”

Over the next few hours of flying, I detained this former sergeant from getting any shut-eye, quzzing him from my civilian groupie stand-point on the Warrior archetype, ethics of combat, idolization and ostracization of warriors, and the Hollywood-ization of war and afterwards began to draw a more defined picture of the Warrior archetype.

In the film Platoon set in the Viet-Cong, young and seasoned soldiers most soul-crushing combat occurs not battling against the Viet-Cong Guerrillas and North Vietnamese, but fighting within their own platoon and among their own friends, teachers and fellow soldiers. Charlie Sheen’s character Chris Taylor, speaks in the end of the film of his war initiations the shadow and light aspects of the warrior archetype split between two men and then merged into one, as Taylor finally departs from Vietnam, becoming a son born of these two fathers.

The Warrior is a complex archetype both idolized and dehumanized. The seasoned warrior knows death intimately, has merged with it, become one with it, and with acts that most of us will never experience nor even conceive in our lifetimes. Much like Arujna in the Bhavad Gita, the archer stuck in the limbo of soul splitting conflict when his dharma leads him into battle against his kinsmen, cousins, teachers and Beloved friends, surrendering to the dharma of the Warrior can summon an almost dehumanizing grace to a higher order void of an imposed inner moral compass.

In most great war epics, Platoon, being no exception, men move through physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual initiations to embody the warrior archetype, some initiations taking men into expanded awareness and a deep state of empathy and compassion for humanity and some moving men towards the shadow side of the Warrior archetype into a state of barbarianism. In the journey of Warrior Initiations and those that hold the Warrior Code of energy in their DNA, we can see how the Warrior Archetype power can be yielded grounded in spiritual laws and highest order or how it consume men who misuse and lust after ‘power-over’ verses power-within.

The young warrior spirit protects; an activist fighting for a cause, usually fed on transformative anger and the life force of testosterone with the mission that his life force will save and protect from an anchor of loyalty and devotion. The young warrior assumes he is working for the greater good and the loyalty and devotion of his spirit from his inner calling has led him to battle. The seasoned warrior spirit, or sage warrior surrenders to the battle because it is his dharma. He has been initiated into the ways of war and knows himself capable of any act, but the warrior sage uses his act with discernment rather than the ‘good moral compass’ of the young warrior. Like General Elias, he practices peacekeeping and uses combat with discernment but can also kick-ass when called upon.

The young or green warrior spirit is the one who thinks he can never perform a certain act, having separated himself from those he battles moving him out of the oneness of war, the oneness of being capable of any act. At this point the warrior is not in full service to the spirit of the warrior because he is still fighting the inner war. The sage warrior has conquered the inner war, read Yoda in Star Wars, where the calm of a oneness with death has settled into the body knowing intimately the dance of destruction and rebirth. With that removal the natural order of the warrior has been destroyed.

“I’ve held back a lot of tears but have learned ‘never say never’” the retired veteran said solemnly on our flight. I felt the presence of the sage warrior in his energy field, the calm strength I had tuned into earlier. Until we know ourselves capable of any act beyond right and wrong, can we truly own compassion and the grace of the Warrior as upheld by the Warrior’s Code.

“I love the military” he told me which from a civilian stand point I take as startling admission. “I walk with pride and it has carried over into how I am as a human being. Many young recruits who go through never apply their training to daily life. It has taught me so much, punctuality, respect, living by the Golden Rule – treating others how you want to be treated. But being a soldier I will never back down when summoned to fight. I am a soldier. I will always fight.” There was such truth in his words. This was his dharma. “I have to live by a military base now, even though I’m retired. It’s where I feel the most at home. It’s my life.” If one is born with the dharma of a warrior, one will always find a war and will always serve the cause as part of one’s universal duty. The warrior spirit has surrendered fully to its role for the sake of a higher order, part of the spirit is peace-keeping and order and part of the spirit is combat and transformation through destruction.

The army veteran I sat next to on my flight took his hat off for me to examine more closely. Battle Ready – Still Serving, was embroidered on the side of it. “That’s the nickname I had in Basic Training. It’s been with me ever since.”

What initations (life experiences) in your life have made you a warrior? What power are you serving and fighting for? What is your warrior’s code of ethics? Where are you seduced by power in your life and where are you serving power for the highest order? When do you back down from fighting from a place of weakness verses a place of strength?

Exercises to strengthen the inner warrior: Warrior Yoga Poses, Martial Arts, Kapalabhati Pranayama and Breath of Fire.

Dr. Shannon French, a professor of the US Naval Academy has written an amazing essay on the Warrior’s Code. Follow the link below: http://www.usafa.edu/isme/JSCOPE02/French02.html

Iceland Turns Frigid ~ When did pro-feminism become anti-sex?

I read an article this morning by Julie Bindel from the UK’s Guaridian reporting that Iceland has passed a law that will result in all of the strip clubs in their country being shut down citing that no business be allowed to profit off the nudity of its employees. In my early college feminists days, I would have waved my high toting feminist flag while wearing my hair back and up in what my boyfriend of the time referred to as my angry scarf. I would have pounded the pavement with my other angry feminists sisters and fellow women’s studies majors in hi-laced combat boots or Earth mama Birkenstocks celebrating this moment as a movement on behalf of the rights of women. But this morning, eight years later, I cringed. The article and law reeked of outdated second wave feminism ideology suppressing an equally powerful uprising force, women’s sexual freedom and empowerment in all its shapes and forms. I also cringe at this article today, knowing that the more liberated, whole and healed I become as a woman, the more I celebrate my sexuality, nudity and the exchange of energy for my work which includes at times both nudity and sexuality, for money.

I make my profession, fulfill my dharma and live out my soul’s purpose on this Earth through unfolding both men and women to the beauty of their bodies, their sexuality, their wholeness. I am one of those people who Iceland’s feminist prime-minister Johanna Sigurdardottir’s ban would have affected in an anti-feminist AND anti-sex way. Today I reflect for a moment on how grateful I am to live in the country where I live, how grateful I am that women are in positions of power and that feminists have paved the way for me like Johanna Sigurdardottir to be the empowered woman I am today. I also stop to ask questions such as “Is it so hard to fathom that a woman might, Goddess forbid, be empowered by her sexuality enough to want to strip?” Is it so preposterous to think that sexual surrogates might actually be called to do what they do because it’s healing for both them and their clients?

To this, I address the Sex Industry Entry Point for Women:

There are three avenues a woman enters the sex industry, by force, by circumstance and by choice and ultimately it would be useful to have laws and systems taken into account for all of these entry points into the industry. The trafficking and exploitation of women and children in the sex industry is a rape of our planet and our humanity and effective laws are absolutely necessary to support healing and transforming both the women who have been exploited and the men who are doing the exploiting. But what does a whole healed woman look like? Could she look like a stripper? At this point Johanna Sigurdardottir’s administration has not taken into account women’s’ entry point into the sex industry where intention and empowered choice become a catalyst for healing and transformation.

I propose to Iceland’s administration a quite miraculous model Eve Ensler has moved forth onto the planet – using her Award Winning women positive and sex positive play The Vagina Monologues to raise awareness and benefit causes that promote ending violence against women. Couldn’t this massive, lucrative, mostly male run and female employed industry be better served if a portion of the proceeds went in fact to rehabilitate persons who had experienced their time in the sex industry through circumstance or force rather than by pro-active conscious choice and also create more structured laws in place to unionize dancers rights?

In responses to the new law recently passed where no business can profit off the nudity of its employees, Miriam of feministing.com responds: “A feminist victory, in my opinion, would be a highly regulated industry that made sure dancer's rights were protected. One where workers were paid good wages, were able to unionize, had full benefits, were able to set boundaries with customers and have those boundaries protected. One that ensured that these immigrant women were not being brought to Iceland against their will.”

I think we all know from past experience that beyond stripping, the oldest profession will always be that, the oldest profession and will eventually push these communities underground which endanger most of all the women workers and not the men who have been doing the exploiting. By alienating our men from having the opportunity to rise up and support women and their sexual empowerment, we have created an even deeper and oppressive shadow by creating separation and isolation rather than mutually beneficial activism.

I personally extend an invitation to Johanna Sigurdardottir and Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir who first proposed this ban, to attend any Naked Yoga class, Clothing Optional Holy Body Interfaith Worship Services, or Sensual Shaman Session free of charge to witness what whole, healed sexual people look like in a consciously nude, celebratory and symbiotic environment. Johanna and Kolbrún, I await your response.

Guardian UK writer Julie Bindel guardian.co.uk writes:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/25/iceland-most-feminist-country

Miriam of Feministing.org

http://www.feministing.com/archives/020546.html