Waking Up and Turning On
Hello dear one,
I suspect you might agree with me that the world has gone stark, raving, totally loony tunes; round the bend;
nutty as a fruitcake; not in its right mind; dangerously and absolutely mad—especially in the ways it views women, girls, and the “feminine.”
This insanity compels most of us to hide away and push down parts of ourselves in order to feel lovable, valuable, or be taken seriously.
Which doesn’t work, of course and only ensures we remain unfulfilled, miserable, and at war with ourselves.
But as I’ve discovered—working in depth with women over the past 14 years as a coach, teacher, and mentor (and burning in the fire of my own medicine, of course)—we’ve got it absolutely inside out and backwards.
It turns out that your confidence and joy are actually buried in the very parts you have disowned—that you have literally been sitting on your true power this whole time.
And that even when you feel you have lost your way, there is a path to the woman you are aching to become.
This is the path of Feminine Genius.
- Learn to trust (and eventually love) the parts of you that you previously warred against
- Embrace your intuition, sexuality, emotions, desires, and cycles for enormous effectiveness and fulfillment
- Meet your Oracle, the divine, infallible wisdom of your body—and discover why I affectionately call
it the Oracle Between Your Thighs - Navigate your “dark” and work with painful, difficult experiences in healthy ways
- Brighten your everyday with hands-on practices
- Tap into your inner knowing so you can stop second-guessing yourself and get clear about your next steps
- Explore the history, physics, theology, and biology of a universe built for harmony between “masculine” and “feminine”
- Look in the mirror and see the face of the Goddess gazing back at you
In a world that might tell you ten thousand times a day how you are deficient and wrong, Feminine Genius will remind you that you are just right.
I am honored (and tail-wagging-ly happy) to invite you to dive into my new book, Feminine Genius: The Provocative Path to Waking Up and Turning On the Wisdom of Being a Woman.
I’ll see you inside,
P.S. Come visit liyanasilver.com/newbook, where you can get bonus training with me when you order the book: a masterclass on finding your Oracle to source your clarity, deepen your confidence, and inspire your next moves. You’ll also receive your very own Book Club Kit to support you to journey through the book in a group and practice getting lit off of other women’s brilliance. I’ll see you there!
Your heart is love’s tavern
There is a brief moment when you imagined that your sorrow was working against you. For an instant there was the sense that your sadness, your despair, and your loneliness were obstacles on the path. But love is a shape-shifter. She will take any form she must to unlock a secret place within you.
Even in the center of your fear, right in the heart of your anxiety, weaved into the fabric of your most scary places there is a raging intelligence, a firestorm of pure creativity. Love is awakening those parts of you that have drifted asleep. This is not a journey into some transcendent, detached, and safe place, but into the heart of a wild, untamed groundlessness. You will feel so much more than you ever felt, care so much more than you ever thought possible, yet you will know nothing. Love will even convince you of her absence if that is how she must reach you.
It may seem like an ordinary Saturday, but what is happening here is far from ordinary. Stop. Breathe. Lay your hands on your sacred body. Touch the earth and feel the aliveness and the rare opportunity that has been given here. It will not last long, friends, for love will be calling you home soon. Every person you meet, each feeling that surges within you, every emotion that comes knocking at the door of your heart, every form that appears – love is sending its messengers to you, one by one.
Your body is love’s temple, your heart is its tavern, your eyes are its windows, your words of kindness are its voice, the way you sweetly touch another are its hands – for it is only through you that love can explode into this world.
Wake Up San Francisco! – March 28, 2015
Dear friends, we are excited to let you all know about Wake Up San Francisco: One Extraordinary Day of Transformation, featuring Adyashanti, Alanis Morissette, Caroline Myss, and many others.
Learn more here!
How can we stay sane, resourceful, and connected to the limitless depths of our being right in the midst of our busy lives? Is such a thing possible? Is spiritual awakening reserved for people who travel to retreats and monasteries, or is it possible that we can touch spiritual awakening and the depths of the human heart right in the midst of the chaos of our lives? Wake Up San Francisco is a one-day event on Saturday, March 28th that immerses participants in the awakening of the human heart. Bringing together spiritual teachers, poets, musicians, yogis, psychological researchers, healers, and lovers of life, Wake Up San Francisco promises to be a day of reflection, new insight, and transformation.
You are warmly invited to join pioneering spiritual teacher Adyashanti and music sensation Alanis Morissette for a one-of-a-kind dialogue about waking up in the midst of everyday life. The author of books including Emptiness Dancing and Falling into Grace, Adyashanti is one of today’s most sought-after teachers, especially when it comes to his rare public appearances. Alanis is most recognized for her album Jagged Little Pill (which still ranks as the number one top-selling debut album for a female artist). The dialogue will be hosted by Sounds True founder, Tami Simon, and will be followed by an intimate concert with Alanis Morissette.
In addition to Adyashanti and Alanis Morissette, presenters at Wake Up San Francisco include:
- Caroline Myss, New York Times bestselling author and leading voice in the field of energy medicine
- Mario Martinez, clinical neuropsychologist lecturing worldwide on how cultural beliefs affect health and longevity
- Sally Kempton, author of Awakening Shakti and Meditation for the Love of It, on the transformative power of kundalini
- Roger Housden, author of Ten Poems to Change Your Life and Keeping the Faith Without a Religion, on beauty as a portal to awakening
- Sera Beak, Harvard-trained scholar of comparative world religions and author ofRed Hot and Holy: A Heretic’s Love Story
When we touch a limitless sense of being—vast, open, undivided—and do so in an embodied way, we paradoxically become more uniquely ourselves, more empowered, and on fire to bring forward our unique gifts. We wake up to our courage, to our authenticity, and to contributing to the well-being of others in fresh and meaningful ways. We welcome you to join us at Wake Up San Francisco!
Holding mother in our heart
Let us keep all mothers in our hearts today, creating for them the most luminous holding environment of love, in which they can rest and be nourished. Through the unknown – and through the most sacred womb – they have offered the gift of life, a rare, blessed opportunity to make this human journey, to allow this precious heart to be polished into eternity. No matter what our relationship with our mother in the physical world presently, we can exchange one moment of love with her – for the bond we have with her is beyond time and beyond space.
As the Tibetans believe, each being we encounter in this world has at one time been our mother, and has shown us the most precious kindness, care, and compassion; and has been willing to give her life so that we may come into being. May all mother-beings everywhere receive an outpouring of blessings on this day, may their hearts and their bodies be bathed in love, and may they come to know directly, even for a moment, the true preciousness of this life.
Buzz on, buzz off
While visiting a friend in Denver last summer, I was amazed to see in her front garden hundreds of honey bees dancing in the perfect dusk light. Luckily, I had my awesome new high-tech pro digital SLR camera with me.
“Ha!” I thought, “Finally a chance to use this baby’s rapid-fire, super auto-focus, image-optimizing, mega-sensor, anti-shake, bla-bla BADass-ness!”
Among photographers, the sure sign of an amateur is a behavior called “chimping”—bobbing your head obsessively from viewfinder to LCD screen to see if you got the shot. Well, I was chimpin’ like a National Geographic fanboy (oh wait, I AM a NatGeo fanboy). Anyway, half an hour and about 200 shots later, I did not have the perfect apiary masterwork. I had a camera full of blurry and out-of-frame bugs.
When I visited my friend again the next week, all the bees were gone, except for a few late summer stragglers. And it was gloomy overcast. And all I had in my bag this time was an old film camera—the kind that you have to focus and crank by hand and then apply “percussive maintenance” (i.e., smack hard) just to get the light meter working.
And there were exactly three shots left on the roll.
“Forget it,” I thought, “nature photography is for wussies.”
But the next thing I knew, the ancient Nikon was in my hand.
clickity click click!
Cut to one month later. I’m standing at the drugstore photo counter, and in ye olde-school stack of 4-by-6’s (remember “prints?”), this appeared:
If you’re not impressed, okay fine. But I was. Not by any proof of my artistic prowess, but by what I learned.
Am I about to wax scholastic about master street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment?” Or reflect on the Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s love for miksang, photography as dharma art? Nope, though both luminaries came to mind. What did in fact leave an impression were these thoughts:
1. When I realize that each frame in my camera—or day in my life—is precious, I get MUCH more out of each one.
2. All those restless hours of meditation practice and shoeboxfuls of crappy contact sheets may have led to a mastery that shows up, when it matters, as effortless flow.
3. Between the two poles that I call “intense concentration” and “effortless awareness” lies the vast majority of my life’s geography, and that I might want to enjoy the scenery regardless of the mode I’m in.
4. I am SO done with insect photography. No, really. Bugs are disgusting.
Okay, your turn. Was there a time when your years of practice paid off, effortlessly and unexpectedly? If so, do post a comment, I’d love to hear about it.
Free to be the fearless wildness that you are
In your willingness to take the risk of love, to feel it all, to truly allow another to matter, and to expose yourself to the joy and heartbreak of this life, you come face to face with the most devastating fear that you’ve ever known, but have never been able to articulate: that you are loved.
For when you are truly loved, when you are entirely seen, when you are fully held, it is the end of your world as you know it. Things will never be the same. You will never again be able to pretend that you are other than precious and whole as you are. The implications of this are dizzying if you let them all the way in.
It is so exhilarating to be seen and held in this way, but it is also terrifying as you are fully naked now, utterly raw, and achingly wide open. Your life is no longer your own in a sense, and it has been given to your raw, shaky tenderness. This is your refuge now, the golden bridge through which you will connect with hearts everywhere. Give everything to know this bridge!
Even the soft spring breeze feels as if it might be too much, for it goes right through your skin to touch your heart. A sunrise, the longing of a little baby to be held, the spring wildflowers, the honey-infused ice coffee you just spilled on your laptop, the blue eyes of your sweet lover—you may never be protected again. Ah, that’s fine—it isn’t what you really wanted anyway.
The particles of love are interpenetrating your entire sensory world and you are just not sure your heart and nervous system can take it. Oh, friend, you are on the right track.
You are free to be who and what you are now—no longer tied to a past you thought you wanted, no longer bound by the limited and that which is less than whole—willing to risk it all for love, and free to be the fearless wildness that you are.
Gorgeous photography by Robert Maschke – http://www.robertmaschke.de/