Book Club: Embodying the Goddess
Do you have a woman’s circle? A book club? A collective? Start Here:
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Lesson 1: Embodied Spirituality
The frame story of the Goddess goes something like this:
The Goddess is so in love with her beloved, the infinite transcendent ground of stillness, that She creates Herself out of that transcendence so that She can give Her Beloved the one thing that Her Beloved cannot do: the infinite cannot bind, limit, or boundary itself.What is your highest expression of creativity? Was there something you did as a young child that made you feel creative and free? What was that thing?
The frame story of the Goddess goes something like this:
The Goddess is so in love with her beloved, the infinite transcendent ground of stillness, that She creates Herself out of that transcendence so that She can give Her Beloved the one thing that Her Beloved cannot do: the infinite cannot bind, limit, or boundary itself.What is your highest expression of creativity? Was there something you did as a young child that made you feel creative and free? What was that thing?
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Lesson 2: The Goddess Path
We shut down our curiosity for many reasons. Sometimes we think we will only be loved if we sit down and think or do what people tell us to do. Sometimes we think we need to become rigid to succeed at a job or at a philosophy or in a cultural role. What ways have you shut down your curiosity?
What brings that curiosity back into some level of aliveness? Where do you feel curiosity in your body? Is there a shape, texture, color, smell, or temperature in your body that wants to be noticed?
We shut down our curiosity for many reasons. Sometimes we think we will only be loved if we sit down and think or do what people tell us to do. Sometimes we think we need to become rigid to succeed at a job or at a philosophy or in a cultural role. What ways have you shut down your curiosity?
What brings that curiosity back into some level of aliveness? Where do you feel curiosity in your body? Is there a shape, texture, color, smell, or temperature in your body that wants to be noticed?
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Lesson 1: Layers of Being
Of the 4 + 1 layers of being (body, thought-emotion, intuition, transcendent void, + saturation of all), is there a place that you feel that you have resided or become attached to most closely?
Is there a way for you to access all of the layers of your being? What is it like when you are able to play the scales of your heart without holding preference for one layer, one place of the heart’s resonance, over another?
Of the 4 + 1 layers of being (body, thought-emotion, intuition, transcendent void, + saturation of all), is there a place that you feel that you have resided or become attached to most closely?
Is there a way for you to access all of the layers of your being? What is it like when you are able to play the scales of your heart without holding preference for one layer, one place of the heart’s resonance, over another?
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Lesson 1: The Feminine Divine
Boundaries give us an antidote to an ego that has become beige-washed. Is there a boundary that has helped you lately? Is there one you think might help you?
The Goddess has been vilified: called “illusion,” “unreal,” or a “trickster.” But she is simply the unfolding of Life. Is there a way you have diminished your lived experience? Can you cultivate reverence there? What are you reverent toward the most?
Boundaries give us an antidote to an ego that has become beige-washed. Is there a boundary that has helped you lately? Is there one you think might help you?
The Goddess has been vilified: called “illusion,” “unreal,” or a “trickster.” But she is simply the unfolding of Life. Is there a way you have diminished your lived experience? Can you cultivate reverence there? What are you reverent toward the most?
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Lesson 2: Relationships that Matter
Opposites play together: pleasure and pain, expansion and contraction, ease and grit. How have opposites taught you in the past? Can you hold two opposite things at the same time? What’s that like in your body? What are two opposites that feel like, when they are held simultaneously, somehow make you more human, more wise, more whole?
Opposites play together: pleasure and pain, expansion and contraction, ease and grit. How have opposites taught you in the past? Can you hold two opposite things at the same time? What’s that like in your body? What are two opposites that feel like, when they are held simultaneously, somehow make you more human, more wise, more whole?
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SWEEP THE TEMPLE
This book is not theory. It is not philosophy. It is not meant to be held at a distance. It is an invitation to be Embodied.
So, dear Goddess, is there something you’d like to engage with here, explore, understand, uncover, investigate? Can you work with this material until you feel the pulsation of your whole heart- free and independent, complete and embodied?
“Embodying the Goddess is both scholarly and practical, and absolutely readable. Through stories, myth, parables, and the exploration of language, Cynthia Abulafia will lead you on a journey into yourself with practices and inquiries designed to connect you more deeply to your body, your breath, the beat of your heart, the pulsation of life within you, the creation and destruction that is the goddess. This is a bedside table book to be taken in slowly, allowing yourself time to question, contemplate, and fully open to the divine complexity and possibility of your human experience.” - K.H.
