Thank You Gaia
For Showing Me How to Be With the Patriarchy and Everything in Me Now
I sat looking up at the patches of backlit cloudy sky visible through the canopy formed by the many leaves and trees above. I had removed my shirt and wrap because I wanted to be one with Her, with Gaia, in pure nakedness. I wanted the show, the clothes, the separation to disappear between us and to feel Her fully in my Five Bodies.
The other women and I had embarked on a Nano-Vision Quest, fasting from connection with anything other than Mother Nature herself, seated for one hour on a mat in the jungle within earshot of other women.
My physical and energetic bodies scanned the space around me. A spider was spinning its web meticulously under a couple of small technicolor green leaves on tall stalks next to me. The slope of the hill climbed upwards and downwards directly from the spot I sat on next to a walking trail that had been blazed by one brave person one day some time ago. I was balancing on the border of the up and down, precariously perched on a clearing on a slope just big enough to house me for this small quest. Occasional droplets of water would fa—bzzzzzzzp.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzp.
BzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzzp.
The first mosquito appeared.
I swooshed it away.
Brown Dog laid down on the path about ten feet from me, slowly scanning back and forth the activity happening around us. I wanted so badly to see a snake and kept wishing that it would slith—bzzZZZZZZZZZZZp.
The next mosquito came.
And a third.
I swished them away too.
Brown Dog was so sweet. It was so perfect to have a companion next to me after just earlier in the day, in a powerful group process with the women, I de-baptized myself from believing I was not lovable. Brown Dog had come to sit with me! I felt the Love shared between us as we sat connected in silence with Gaia. I wonder if Brown Dog could feel it too.
Here I was, enjoying Brown Dog’s lovely company, and yet, I kept being distracted from this space because I wanted to see a snake! The thought arrived for the seventh-or-so time: “I hope the snake slithers by just alongside my mat and I can say hello. Not onto my mat, but just there beside. How amazing would that be?” After this interruption sponsored by longing for something other than what I had came, I would return to the actual programming this moment was offering, and settle back into quiet contemplation with Brown Dog.
After a while, my energetic body started relaxing into the space around me, like a water balloon that had been pricked with a pin, slowly seeping water out, changing its shape to merge with its environment. Gaia’s wildness was undeniable as I looked around at the various types of trees, plants, insects, moist jungle floo—BZZZZZZZZZPPPPPP.
The mosquitos were back!
They kept interrupting my experience of being with Gaia!
They kept coming back in what seemed like increasingly large numbers. I was getting angry about spending my energy and attention on fighting nature, on controlling the mosquitoes’ biting, and having to finally give in and put my wrap on to cover my naked body so I wouldn’t get bit all over. And just like that, the wall went back up between us again.
After the anger, my sadness came about the need for comfort and convenience that has so often separated me from Gaia, that I couldn’t in that moment find it in me to embrace Her chaos, Her untamed wildness, Her mosquito-y bites reminding me like sweet kisses, “I am always here with you”.
I wanted it to be different. I wanted Her to be easier to b—bbbbzzzzZZZZZZZZZZP.
I WANTED HER TO BE EASIER TO BE WITH!!!
And then it hit me. It was so painfully clear—as I simply sat on a mat amongst the trees—all the ways in which Patriarchy lives in me:
Covering up instead of revealing myself
Prioritizing comfort over connection
Fighting nature
Not appreciating what I have and wanting something else
Being a Victim of my energy and attention being dictated by my circumstances
Fixing it, whatever “it” is, instead of Being With what is
Creating a Fantasy of “Being With” Gaia, instead of actually Being With Gaia
I sat with the mosquitos and these reflections, and then at some point one of the women planted nearby shook me out of this when she started shouting, “I de-baptize myself from giving my center to men! I de-baptize myself from comparing myself to other women!! I de-baptize myself from the Patriarchy that lives in me!!!”
How dare she impede on my experience, and that of the others, breaking the sacred silence with her brutal sounds. I was angry this woman was not using her fear or energetic body to be delicate with this precious space we were experiencing, alone, together.
Then the next layer unfolded, the joy I felt, as I started celebrating her powerful declarations while in connection with Gaia, hearing her process in this same sacred space, and following her natural impulses to be big and loud in the jungle, quieting herself for no one.
And then the final layer of sadness came, with the shared recognition that I, too, am in the process of de-baptizing myself from these very things she was shouting deep into the roots of the tall trees and the tips of the dappled leaves covering the sky.
I was with her and we were in Her, together.
And that was my experience of the Women of Earth Lab here in Brazil, feeling and witnessing with the other women:
Revealing ourselves
Deepening connection
Embracing nature
Empowerment
Being With what is
Hitting Bottom by dropping fantasies and coming to Reality
Seeing and hearing each woman reveal and show more of her true self—dropping the show, killing the Fantasies, being arrogant about how radiantly wonderful she is and sometimes her struggle to do so, raging on fire like Pirates shaking the walls of the building, bringing her confusion into held space by her team, stepping up in her spaceholding skills, finding next steps for her Gameworld or project, caring for another woman unreasonably in the in-between moments, brainstorming how to hijack ordinary spaces and make them into extraordinary spaces of Thoughtware upgrades and Evolution — allowed me, and perhaps other women, to truly revel in the essential Archetypal Everythingness each and every Woman of Earth carries within.
As I write this, I feel a deep sadness welling up behind the hazel infinities that live in the irises of my eyes. It’s a kind of saudade for this space with these women that has come to an end, wishing it could always be like this.
I sense I am entering a new chapter of my transformation journey, the ground starting to shake below me as if it will give way to a big crack in the earth revealing a rocky, earthen, endless void. A hit of fear comes reading those last words.
I left something behind in this Lab that I had been drowning in my whole life, and unconsciously fighting since I came face to face with it in a process last October at the Feelings Practitioner Core Lab in Portugal. I left behind my commitment to workaholism, which I used to perform myself into being someone else other than who I am in Reality.
Yesterday, two dear women, Anne-Chloé and Vera, held space for me to give back to my mother what is not mine that I copied from her and have been carrying with me since I was three years old. It was almost as if the Golden Cube of workspace around the Lab stretched itself to include this one last process.
Spaces that were once clogged up with my mother’s blueprints and fighting my Being’s full aliveness opened up inside of me as I pulled out their roots and gave them back to her. I am now slowly and tenderly integrating this new spaciousness and the care I received from these two women. My five bodies are adjusting to the new shape of my Being.
A few days prior to this, I stepped out of the physical container of the Women of Earth Bridge-House that has held me since February. While I have and continue to experience the energetic field of the Bridge House as holding me beyond the physical realm since I said yes to it, I have a new sensation of the training wheels being taken off. It is time to start holding myself in full contact with life now. It is actually already happening, Now.
I can see with deep Clarity how each week, each training, each connection, and experience has led me closer to the Reality of where I am Now, since first encountering Possibility Management last May, and in so many instances before then over the course of my life.
I have never actually been in the Now as much as I am right Now. Carving out and excavating Survival Strategies that had made Now a place to reach or attain, now leave me with a more real Now, one that is unmarked by anything other than what actually is, with no agenda.
I feel myself floating around like an astronaut in space, tethered to the center of Gaia with my Grounding Cord, equipped with the tools I’ve cultivated to navigate this experience we call Life. I feel a greater capacity to Be Myself, without stories, plans, or someone or somewhere to be. I am just here, where I am Now, at the precipice of Radically Relying on E.C.C.O. to move me.
Yes! I am indeed just starting to dance with life, and this dance is shared with so many amazing women, men, animal, plant and other Beings. I feel the joy of being alive starting to inhabit the new nooks and crannies that I have created inside of me.
Thank you women, thank you Gaia, thank you to this precious experience we call Life.
Until the next encounter and with deep love,
Jacqueline