Start where you are.
Do it now.
Not in ten feet or twenty.
Now. This very moment.
Call yourself back to yourself.
Listen to your tender parts.
Hear what they have to tell you.
The treasure and riches they have to share.
Do not turn away from your own nakedness.
Be a rock, a tree, a loving embrace – a warm shelter to all of you.
Call yourself home.
To your heart.
Inhabit your bones. Your organs. Your marrow.
Sing to the youngest, most vulnerable parts of your being.
They hide behind the safety of your ribs,
Squat tucked back under the curve of your sacrum,
Crouched in the wide fertile bowl of your pelvis.
Pulling the darkness in over themselves to stay hidden from view.
From the light of exposure.
Sing to them of welcome.
Of the forever altering embrace of love,
Of compassion and empathy.
Of kindness.
Thick and sooty blankets of shame have obscured the beautiful luminous shine of their true innocence.
Their Passion. Enthusiasm and promise.
Their excitement and startled wonder at the deep magic,
the unanswerable mystery, the startling miracle of this very human life lived.
Call yourself back.
Do it now.
Whisper your love for each and every bit and particle
of what makes you -– you.
Call in your Soul’s presence.
Ask it to fill you.
Call on it’s infinite w-holy power to wash away the shame, the terror.
The rage.
The bottomless pit of grief you’ve kept tucked tightly back under your heart. Wash it all away into the oceanic river of love from which you were birthed. All of it dissolving like mist in the brightness of the noon sun.
Stand in your courage and call it forth.
Listen deeply, with patience and love.
Let the tears spill down your cheeks unchecked.
Each one a benediction.
A prayer.
A coming home.
A healing. A letting go.
A sweet release.
Call on the power of love.
The power of wholeness. Mercy. Freedom.
Open the prison doors and welcome the captured and shacked ones of your own sweet being into the light of freedom.
Ask them what they need.
A safe place to lay their heads?
An ear to listen to the quiet whisperings of their hard won wisdom.
A cup of warm cocoa.
Some paint and scissors.
A long walk in the woods.
An afternoon spent lying looking up through the boughs of an apple tree.
Or the bursting, stinging glorious sharpness of a fingernail slicing through the peel of a juicy orange.
The warm fur of a cat or a puppy against soft cheeks.
Give all of your selves permanent refuge and home in the heart of your being.
Gather them around and give each one a voice.
The warrioress. The timid ones. The shy and quiet. The competent businesswoman.
The meal maker. The orator. The adventurer.
The loud and boisterous ones.
The mothering ones. The devilish, prankster.
The toilet bowl cleaner. The dreamer. The priestess.
The hot, sexy one.
The wise woman.
The empress. The rule maker and the rule breaker.
The bag lady.
The one who’s knees shake and tremble in fear.
The one who laughs until she is just a puddle.
All of them. Every last one.
There is room for each. Let not even one be denied a place in your heart.
Make a pact with yourself to welcome each new tender and ragged part of you when she shows herself at your door.
Turn no one away.
Wherever you are – start there.
Not out in front of yourself.
Not ten steps away.
Here. Do it now.
Open up to the blessings.
The love. The joy.
The healing and whole-ing.
The infinite beauty of all of you.
Stand on your own two feet.
Allow the vastness of the Earth’s love
and support for you fill the souls of your feet,
caress your knees, strengthen your stance.
Feel her power embrace your thighs.
Fill the bowl of your pelvis and hips with her nourishing nurturing gifts.
Opening to and remembering the strong dance of her vast power and steadiness within every particle and atom that you are made of.
Her gift of your body and all that nourishes and sustains it.
Keeps it warm and clothed.
Delights your senses.
Raise your arms to the sky.
Open to and call in the presence of the Cosmos.
The vastness of the heavens that dance inside of you, enlivening you. Informing you.
The place from which your very spirit originates, singing through you now in the holy chorus of all that is.
Open and let yourself be filled with this love, this ether, this magnificent and mysterious Essence.
Feel yourself – the beloved child of Earth and Sky.
The true bridge between Heaven and Earth.
Made of the stuff of stars.
The love that holds you fast.
Shining. Holy. Whole.
Affirm this for yourself.
Call it in.
Stand firm with your feet on the Earth.
Fully inhabiting your self.
Completely embodied. Utterly alive.
Filling yourself with all of yourself.
Your rightful and only place.
Your place of true belonging.
Home.
Wherever you are – start there.
Not ten steps ahead.
Here. Do it now.
Don’t ignore the pull. The call.
Don’t ignore love.
***
The first four lines of this post woke me several times in the night. Literally – wide awake with an urgency. Pay attention, I thought. I finally wrote them in an email to myself so I could just sleep. When I woke in the morning I heard them again with the added bit, “Do it now.”
I got tea and snuggled back under the covers with my journal and wrote those first lines. Then I simply wrote what was in my heart. A page or two later what you are reading made itself known on the page. I am certain that David Whyte’s beautiful poem, Start Close In was part of my psyche’s inspiration for this as is, I am certain, the rich work of Hiro Boga. I share it with you with reverence for our beautiful humanness and the scared wonder of life.
*This was originally published in the Spring of 2015.