me last summer in värmland, sweden. photo by my friend Kristina Junzell, who I love deeply
It is time to pay attention
the moment to heed the call
I know you hear it inside you
you’re the one –
and so are we all
Earth is crying cause we hurt her so bad
but when I try to cry with her I have a hard time feeling sad:
my Being is overwhelmed with a feeling,
stronger than ever before
This time there is no hideout, so I surrender into my core
to Love – just listen to that word
feel it, hold it –
cause it is Love that is reaching us from all of Existence
and it will force us to listen and stop
take a moment, and a deep breath,
and then take a step towards a life you wanna live
where we are free to love and give
I wish I could say that I’m sorry
I wish I could say “don’t worry”
but the one I things I say is that we can touch the sky
you and I
I cry and I praise my tears cause they bring love intrinsically
freedom to breath yet deeper, to relax and be me
come my soul I open to thee
Open breath take in life’s mystery
I gently whisper,
slowly bring to thee
my inner silence,
the entire explosion of life that is me
to experience one another is reality
and “one another” is all
dare to experience what is around
we have gone too far, and our errors have been magnified
the truth of nature from this you cannot hide
Mother Earth is calling softly
I can hear her crying lovingly
She is reflecting the pain of you and me
and it works the other way around as well, you see
The universe is just one set of energy
what once touched is connected for eternity
mathematicians calls it entanglement
even our science has brought us the evidence
that all is one
All is one
One is all
You are unique
We divided from One to Many connected as One to Love
to live
– breath –
to see each other
to love one another
listen and you’ll know it is time to practise loving, decidedly
Discipline is standing with her small pet dragon on her arm. She looks like a strict teacher as she seems to pass her training thoughts to the baby dragon.
I think that the image also tells the tale the other way around: the baby dragon is transferring its wisdom to the fairy as well. Looking at the branch one cannot tell if she is holding up the branch for the dragon, or the other way around? I believe that they are leaning on the same branch – a branch of the gathered knowledge of all Eternity- which they are both constantly contributing to. Considering the myth of the enlightened mind of a loving dragon, the following question also rises – who has the “most” wisdom? Is there such a thing? And does it matter?
I think the amount of wisdom does not matter, and that every being have their unique wisdom and discipline – basically: their own way. This image reminded me of that, and that wisdom is not restricted to knowledge, sex, race, kind or level of existence – all beings have their unique wisdom, and all beings can reach the top of expressing that wisdom, partly through discipline.
All beings always have something to teach us at all time, since all beings actually express the highest form of what they have been capable of developing under the circumstances which we all live in. And no matter how lost someone seem, she or he or it might give you that one piece of information that you need at this very moment to form your own discipline.
This is what makes the grand masters I think: that they know that they are always as much a student as a master
It is good to remember that the Goddess Disciplina was an important but minor Goddess, pointing to that you can have several varieties of her – several disciplines in your life. But maybe it also says that you should not exaggerate the amount of different disciplines in your life, nor take discipline too seriously, or better said, not to obsess about this Goddess. Sometimes learning a discipline takes you on unexpected paths, where you have to let go of discipline(s) in many life areas for the time it takes you to transform and evolve. It can be difficult for the confused mind to know how to impose discipline to get further on the best or at least the desired way:
sometimes I think the best is to just wish for healing and go with the flow, which this is also a form of discipline…
In the end, discipline plays a very important part in reaching fulfillment: if you want to express yourself in this dimension, it is indispensable to have it.
Latin word disciplina was especially used to refer to military training, but could also mean “education”, “ordered way of life”, or refer to the results of training; and it was also used in the modern sense of “body of knowledge” or “science”, such as is applied to a philosophical or scientific study or system.
In Roman mythology, Disciplina was a minor deity and the personification of discipline.[1] The word disciplina itself, a Latin noun, is multi-faceted in meaning; it refers to education and training, self-control and determination, knowledge in a field of study, and an orderly way of life.
Her chief virtues were frugalitas, severitas and fidelis—frugality, sternness, and faithfulness. In worshiping Disciplina, a soldier became frugal in every way: with money, with energy and actions. The virtue of severitas was shown in his focused, determined, not easily dissuaded, and decisive behavior. He was faithful to his unit, his army, the officers and the Roman people.
In protestant, well now more secular, Sweden, we serve mass on Sundays at 11 o’clock, like many who practice Christian faith. So each Sunday, weather I want it or not, I come to think about religion.
I was baptized by my own wish when I was 7. My parents were not really religious and they did not want to force me into anything. When I was born in Sweden in 1977, religion was widely considered to be a very personal choice, and often looked upon like an “opium for the masses” (Marx). But my parents, especially my father, had their private belief in GoddessGod, and I always strongly believed in GodGoddess, and I came to believe in Jesus. I also came to believe in angels, spirits, ghost, demons, magic, fairies, trolls and other powers.
When I got to know more concepts of GodGoddess, or the universal soul/consciousness, in Taoism and Buddhism I integrated these views into my beliefs, and when I got into shamanism and Wicca my understanding developed further. The later two also helped me to integrate my beliefs in spirits, fairies, magic etc into the picture, and like this I have been going on learning.
At the same time, philosophy and all kinds science have made me understand existence and GoddessGod in new, amazing and very inspiring ways.
Altogether, I have built my understanding of existence and GodGoddess by letting myself be enlightened of and inspired by many different sources.
I find it wise to believe that there has been(there is) human beings who have been(are) so in love, harmony and understanding with existence that they intensify their communication with and openness towards GoddessGod to an extent which makes them profoundly enlightened. They can then become prophets – a clear channel for divine love, inspiration and power, and words which helps others get closer to GodGoddess.
However – to believe that one of these individuals, these prophets, should have been able to express the whole truth of what we call GoddessGod is, according to my opinion, simple-minded. It is also believing to much in things like the capacity of the human brain and constitution, not to talk about the capacity of the human languages. Therefore it has never been an option to me to believe that any single religion holds the real truth about GodGoddess.
But I do believe in GoddessGod, in my own way. I also believe that the power of love is the strongest power of all, I believe strongly in the power of thought, intuition and persistence, and that one need to handle these powers with care and attention.
I find it hard to describe GodGoddess like GoddessGod is, I feel that no one can do that, but maybe everyone can actually do it, in their own, special, unique, way.
But to describe it like a universal truth???
I mean, how do you describe feeling?
Or being alive?
How can you truly describe the 6 hour long sunrises over the waters of Stockholm on midsummer mornings or the intense winter silence in the deep forests of the Scandinavian north; the views from the high Alp tops of Austria or the power and beauty of the fertile earth and floods around Vienna; the special light in the air on Mallorca, where the high concentration of moisture in the air is making the sky look so close…
I believe that there are power(s) and knowledge which are beyond our capacity of understanding, but that every human can experience all of them and some can even find the words to tell us about these experiences. To listen to them is wise.
But to follow anyone’s words blindly I believe to be neither wise nor the point of them telling these wisdoms to us. I think that the point is to help us all to experience life more profoundly, for us to love more, experiencing GoddessGod deeper and deeper… They do this for us to live a better life, so that there will be more harmony and love in our societies,
and so that we might find the words to contribute to the human understanding of existence and GoddessGod with our own unique knowledge.
The 34-year old supermodel Kate Moss has beautiful breasts and quite a tasty body to go with them, although personally I find her a bit too thin. I’ve just opened the issue of “Heute” – a free daily paper/tabloid, distributed in Vienna that has a naked woman on page 3 every day – which I found on the seat next to me in the Vienna underground. The almost naked Kate on page 3 is the first thing I see. Petite, with very well pronounced cheek bones and open mouth, she is hinting at her well shaved vulva, radiating with the fulfilment of some of the most cherished dreams of the contemporary woman and man: to have the looks of a 20-year old at least until the age of fifty and, above all, to stay thin. Along with this, one should preferably have a pair of small, firm and tempting tits, just like Kate.
Even if I am less bisexual than I sometimes would like to be, I do now and then find myself looking at other women’s breasts. They are soft and beautiful and well, irresistible somehow. Anyway, today I’m looking a bit extra carefully, since I’m on a mission to find breasts on the streets of Vienna and ponder on the position of breasts in contemporary society. I have been very lucky; right now the proportionally biggest breasts in town, the 15 FF-cup breasts of the 11,1 cm high female stone-age statue Venus of Willendorf, are decorating every second billboard. She just had her 100th anniversary of being found and the Museum of Natural History decided to celebrate this with a special exhibition. I decided to visit it and on my way I found Kate.
The British sculptor Marc Quinn actually finds Kate so much in coherence with the contemporary beauty ideals, that he chose her to sit for him when he wanted to portray these ideals in the statue Sphinx. This bronze statue was uncovered in 1996, but a gold replica can soon be seen at the British Museum in London. Made out of pure gold it shows Kate sitting in a yoga position, a pose that is quite a contrast to her reputation as a “sex, drugs and rock and roll queen”. My thoughts drift away to the Christian myth about the golden calf, at the same time that I ponder the fact that the statues Venus of Willendorf seem to have very little in common with the actual goddess Venus. But I’ll get back to that later, because my attention is drawn to another woman who occupies the opposite corner of page 3 in today’s “Heute”: Hillary Clinton.
Interestingly enough Hillary is hiding her breasts in this picture. It is just a result of perspective, but in combination with Kate’s lustful exposure of herself it becomes very symbolic. Like many other women in the sphere of political power, Hillary has quite an un-sexy image. I know a bit more than I want to about her husbands sex life, but absolutely nothing about Hillary’s. Even if her husband surely helped her with her campaign as much as her daughter, I rarely heard her mention him or her relationship to him, whereas she can’t say enough about her daughter and motherhood, mostly of her being a proud mother. Well, in western culture motherhood turned asexual through the icon “Holy Mary”, so I guess being a mother is ok for a female politician, but I’m quite sure that being a wife or sexy can be very difficult, even dangerous.
On top of page 3 in today’s “Heute” is a picture of a young, beautiful woman in a red dress beside her 20 year older boyfriend, some TV-celebrity. They just were engaged. Her generous décolletage is nicely framed by the fine, red silk, which, in contrary to Hillary’s appearance, does all but to hide anything. In between these three photos of contemporary women there is a story telling about problems in flight traffic with the headline Heaven and Hell and another telling about the quite late absolution of the last woman in Europe to be burned as a witch. Looking at all this combined, I’m going like: “Wow, here is the present dilemma of female sexuality on just one page!”, and it goes something like this:
beautiful tits can be a great mean of power, but to get real power today you have to hide your tits. As a woman, you can use your sexual power to get famous or married, or hide it as good as you can and go for an intellectual career. I have seen many cases with women who have tried to show that they have both and they ended up facing a real witch-hunt. Conclusion: one cannot both hide and show one’s tits at the same time. The whore-madonna-complex, the woman as a gate to heaven OR a gate to hell, is still very much present in our life. Looking at this page I feel that the way a woman keeps her breasts actually can have a great symbolic meaning, even telling what kind of power she is using at the moment.
I come to think about what one of my teachers in shamanism has told me about the view upon women and men in shamanism: women are seen as the more powerful of the two sexes, but they need a man to be the spark: to get that power going. Since I have grown up in Sweden with a mother and aunts with very feministic ideas and impressive careers, I used to find this idea to be traditionalistic, patriarchal fundamentalism. Don Garcia used to argue that this is the reason why societies that suppress women loose everything in the end, since women in these societies cannot produce enough power for the society to function. I had a firm belief in that we all have both creating and nurturing power and we can all be whatever we want, both at the same time. Nowadays I am not so sure any more, since I have found that men and women actually are different, but I do not know how we are different, or why are we different, or if our differences have anything to do with our physical features or if it results in us having different kinds of power. But that we women should be something like helpless collies carrying around loads of power without being able to do anything with it? I don’t think so. Suddenly I find myself thinking that breast milk is much tastier than sperm, and I have to smile at myself.
I am finally at my goal, facing the about 28.000 years old Venus of Willendorf. Such female figures in many variations are often found among stone-age findings, this one being one of the best kept in the world. She is very small, but very impressive with her huge breasts and a belly that tells the tales of several childbirths. In one of the books about her in the museum shop, I read that no one knows what she and her sisters actually stand for. There are theories saying everything from that they were stone age pin-ups, symbols for the domestication of the woman, just different women or dolls, to that they were protective spirits, fruitfulness symbols, the Mother Goddess or other goddesses. I suddenly think, what if they were like a “we-where-here”- sign in a time of matriarchal culture, where every tribe was symbolized through a different female figure?! Just as I think about this, I read in the exhibition folder that most of our interpretations are just projections of our own ideas and beliefs, and I have to laugh a bit at myself again. Instead of making more crazy assumptions, I turn to admire the Venus of Willendorf.
Looking at her motherly body I can’t help thinking that she must be an image of Mother Earth. If not, she should be, she feels like she would be. If she is, I am not sure that she would have liked the boring and way too organized exhibition of minerals on the second floor of the museum. She would probably be appalled and more than angry about the environmental crisis, which the museum is describing in the corridor just outside this room. I’m not so sure that she would have liked the three stereotypical images of women in “Heute”either.
With her worn out, faceless appearance the Venus of Willendorf is not really a goddess of “beauty”, like Venus. But she and her huge tits radiate power, the abundance of nourishment and care of motherhood – and she is incredibly beautiful. By looking at her it is easy to believe that women carry a huge surplus of power that they can share as they wish: I want to be her, I am her, I feel that immense power, at the same time I want to be Hillary and a little bit like Kate. Maybe even a tiny bit like the woman in the red dress and, well, many things. I feel that I am all that and yet I do not know what I am, but I will continue to show off my breasts, or at least parts of them, when and how I feel like it. And just like with the meaning of the Venus of Willendorf and her sisters, the meaning of me showing my symbols of womanhood will lie mainly in the mind of the beholder.
spiritual empowerment 