Pacing Our Growth in Spiritual Expansion

More and more I'm noticing in the collective field this addiction to high-sensation experiences in spiritual growth.

Seeking out the major ayahuasca ceremony in Peru because that's going to blast us open and liberate us from all our problems.

Seeking out the intense sexual shamanic container that's going to blow us way outside our constrictive relational boundaries.

Investing in high ticket coaching containers that are way outside the range of what feels realistic financially because EXPANSION.

And here's the thing--all of these experiences and choices can 100% be aligned for you at one time or another in your life.

I've been the person that engaged in group intimacy containers that invited us to engage in practices and experiences with people *way* outside of my comfort zone or preference in the name of relational research.
I've engaged in deep dive ayahuasca journeys, mushroom journeys, cannabis, MDMA, LSD, etc because of the desire to bypass the control mechanisms of my mind and limiting mental attachments to my current identity.

I've been the person that invested $52,000 in a 9 month coaching container when I had no money in the bank and $40,000 in debt because of my desire to stretch my energetic system's capacity to wield greater wealth.
None of those decisions were "wrong".

Some of them were GREAT.
Some of them were deeply challenging.
Some of them were the most aligned choices in my life.

AND, some of them were decisions based in:

1) a desire to escape my current circumstances and be saved by an external experience, person, or group of people that I thought had more power than me
2) the idea that bigger and faster is better and if it isn't scary then I'm not growing or pushing my edges enough
3) old trauma-patterns where an old belief system was sending me the message that I need to abandon myself or go outside of my personal boundaries in order to get people to love (or choose) me

It's super nuanced.

What's an aligned expansive quantum leap experience for one person, can be a reperpetuation of trauma and self-violation for another.

I'm not going to get into any type of black-or-white generalized statements about what's right or wrong here...

...because all of these decisions about what is aligned in terms of the way we approach our personal growth and spiritual evolution is so unique to the individual and what is most aligned for their heart, soul, nervous system, and current physical reality.

What I *will* say in this moment is that I am truly enjoying the retirement of my "sensation-seeking intensity junkie" and leaning into the power of subtlety and attuned sustainable opening.

I've become so deeply attuned to my own energy, and the nature of how my system most thrives in terms of expansion and contraction when creating new realities and receiving the fulfillment of new desires.
I desire paced, sustainable opening.

I desire pleasurable, aligned expansion.

Where I'm deeply dedicated to holding and honoring my own nervous system and not bypassing her needs for sustainable integrative expansion in order to:

1) look cool/more evolved
2) fulfill someone else's desires/expectations/belief systems
3) avoid the fear of being left behind

My experience in my personal life and professional teaching work is that what MOST people who have been in the "spiritual awakening/ transformational container game" are most needing is permission to slow down and really learn how to honor and attune to their own nervous system.

To look at the places where we've been subtly (or not so subtly) bypassing the true pacing our soul is longing for because we've learned to reject or neglect our own needs in exchange for the validation of others.
It's such intimate, tender, and vulnerable work, because it requires us to both MEET and HOLD ourselves in the places where we've been ignoring or rejecting our core truths, needs, and boundaries for a very long time...

...which yes, is uncomfortable at times, but also the *essential* ingredient in restoring integrity with ourselves and our bodies so that we can truly open to receiving so much more of what we TRULY desire in our lives without feeling like we need to abandon ourselves in the process.

Devotion to and integrity with Self is the core foundation of all the teaching/coaching spaces I hold for people—and it begins with myself and how I show up in my life and intimate relationships.

I've gotta be right with me.

And from that place see that beauty that manifests all around me.

This is devotion.
This is alignment.
This is embodiment.
This is integration.

And this is what, in my opinion, is essential for finding grounding and stability in our own spiritual (and relational) awakening.

With Love,
Arielle Brown

#rememberwhoyouare

Self-Abandonment & Self-Trust in Love & Intimacy

One of the biggest wounds I see people working with in personal growth and healing is the wound of self-abandonment in sex, intimacy, and relationship.

I know for me, the romantic relationships I got myself into in my 20s are the experiences that brought me into the darkest places of my own psyche and self-abandonment, because of how deep my desire was:

1) To be chosen.
2) To be loved.
3) To escape from circumstances in my life I didn't believe I had the power or ability to change on my own.

On a deep level I had this idea that being chosen by a man in intimate and sexual partnership would save me from the fears of brokenness or not-enoughness that hid within the cracks of my consciousness––

––limiting my own capacity to create and subtly sabotaging my ability to embody the knowing that I had (and have) all the power to create and manifest within me.

In short, I didn't trust myself to be able to make decisions and take actions in my life that would genuinely move my reality in a direction that aligned with my dreams.

And because of this lack of trust in Self, I would choose partnerships with men that would reflect this lack of trust I had in myself by attracting partners who didn't trust me or would try to manipulate my perspective on reality.

I take full ownership for this. I was a consenting participant in the dynamic, and even though my shadow and subconscious was running the show in a lot of these dynamics that involved me going to some very dark places in myself that I don't have a desire to return to––

––ultimately, if I desired to liberate myself from the pattern of attracting these dynamics with men into my life (and I DID desire that), I needed to take full responsibility for my role in creating it.

Now here's the thing. The process for releasing these trauma-based patterns of relating (where my own addiction to suffering and no reference point for anything different wound up re-creating similar scenarios in my life over and over again), required me to look deeply into the places where I held shame for:

1) The decisions I'd made up until that point regarding men, sex, intimacy, and partnership.
2) My desires (and sometimes fetishes) regarding my sexuality and sexual preferences.
3) The harm that I'd caused to myself (or to others) in the process.

Through my devotion to releasing myself from wounded-patterns of relating in sex and intimacy, SO THAT I COULD BE A SOVEREIGN CREATOR IN EVERY AREA OF MY LIFE, I became very clear that my attachment to and identification with shame in my life was inhibiting my ability to:

1) Forgive myself
2) Trust myself.

In this post, let's focus specially on SELF-TRUST, because SELF-FORGIVENESS is another big topic which I'll address at another time.

We can’t trust ourselves in places where we hold shame.

And in places where we don’t trust ourselves AND hold shame, self-abandonment is likely to occur.

This is why releasing shame around our sexuality is so key.

Because if we allow shame to live there, we wind up attracting or creating those experiences that reflect the lack of trust we hold in ourselves in areas of life where sexuality or sexual desire occurs.

Self-abandonment in sexuality is one of the deepest places where fragmentation of the self can occur, because of how deeply sexuality is linked to our core essential self.

Sexuality is what brought us into this world, and if we hold shame for that truth, or areas surrounding that truth, it not only caps our ability to embrace the innocence of our own pleasure, but it also caps our ability to experience and be in relationship with God.

Let's restore sexuality to its rightful place at the table.

As a deeply human experience and embodiment that is an access point to collective healing and reconnection to our inherent Divinity. 💫

With Love,
Arielle Rebecca Brown

*******
The Erotic Integration Mastermind is open for enrollment.
We begin November 2nd, 2022. 💫
Details are in the cover photo above.

The World Needs *Your* Unique Medicine

The world needs YOUR medicine.

Not the medicine that you polish up to make it look like other people who you see being successful with their medicine.”

Not the medicine that becomes a few degrees removed from your essence when you second guess whether or not your simple truth is enough.

Not the medicine that plays with imagery and aesthetic that doesn’t actually feel like you but “this is trending right now” so maybe I should hop on this bandwagon to be seen.

All of the above approaches actually make you “less” visible to the people who are ready, waiting, and aligned to receive your soul medicine now.

There is a difference between “trying” to be seen...and ALLOWING yourself to be seen.

In fact, when we’re “trying” to be seen, that energy of trying actually reflects a deeper desire to remain hidden…

…often because of a fear of the power, energy, and responsibility associated with allowing ourselves to be seen.

And it’s okay. My experience is that “trying to be seen” is often a necessarily aspect of the initiatory journey of getting to a place where we’re ready to ALLOW ourselves to be seen.

Because let’s face it, when we’re ready, the flood gates of visibility and prosperity open, and then we’ve got a whole new set of initiations to meet.

“New level, new devil” —said someone somewhere some time.

And in my book, the devil spelled backwards spells “lived”.

So rather than fearing our opening, why don’t we instead get into the devotional practice of knowing how to hold the powerful sensation of being truly seen and deeply received?

Rather than fearing our power, let’s embrace the legendary responsibility, of being truly and deeply alive.

This is embodied leadership—where we don’t need to be superhuman in order to be trustworthy. And in fact it is our vulnerability of allowing ourselves to be witnessed in the imperfection of our humanity that inspires other leaders to not just follow you—but walk WITH you.

May we all remember who we truly are.

Myth-Busting About Sexuality & Tantra Teachers

I sense people have this perception that people who work in the sexuality field are having a lot of sex. And don’t get me wrong, I’m sure many of them are.

And, I just want to clarify a funny and seemingly ironic personal truth, that the deeper I’ve gotten on my sexual embodiment path, the less sex I have outside of a committed partnership.

Why?

Because for me, sharing a sxxual experience with someone is also a sharing of energy, consciousness, and perception of reality.

Especially because I am a woman, and I am the one for the most part receiving someone else’s physical body inside of me, there is a vulnerability in that I am opening myself up to be influenced by this person long beyond the sexual encounter itself.

That’s a not a bad thing, but if it’s done unconsciously, that person’s energy, state of being, and perception of reality is way more likely to have way more impact on my life, because I am choosing to receive them inside of me.

Sxx is beyond physical. There is way more being exchanged than meets the eye.

Many people just don’t realize how much is actually being exchanged because of how de-sensitized and numbed as a culture we’ve become to subtle energy.

The more sensitize we allow ourselves to become (which is a deeply powerful thing if we learn how to hold, harness, and protect our sensitivity), the more we become aware of how another person’s energy impacts our own and the way we perceive the world around us.

Now, let’s add the heart-sxx connection to this equation.

I’ve intentionally chosen to re-establish the heart-sex connection in my body.

Because the only sex I’m interested in is sex where love is present.

Because the only way to connect the crown (chakra) to our sex (sacral chakra) is through the heart. So if we’re wanting our sex to be a spiritual practice, our heart has to be online.

That’s why casual sxx tends not to work for me. I’m not closed to it, but I’m incredibly mindful of the awareness that I genuinely feel at least 90% (likely more, but I’m being conservative) of the sex happening in the united states is trauma-based sex.

Meaning, most of the sex happening at least in the united states is still being engaged in from an unconscious place where we’re:

• dissociating from our body on some level during all or part of the experience

• performing or trying to be seen in a certain way to please or “hook” the other person

• objectifying or projecting (which is also de-humanizing) the person we’re having sex with

Each of the above patterns are symptoms and signifiers of trauma-based sex, and I am personally devoted to slowing the f*ck down in my sexual experiences so I am deeply present and embodied in my sexual experiences so I:

• am not re-perpetuating patterns of self-abandonment or manipulation

• am honoring the person across from me as a brother and sacred kin on the path

• am honoring my creative channel and energy which is inherently linked to my sexuality

#3 is the final piece I’ll land on for now.

For those of us who are teachers, thought leaders, creators, visionary entrepreneurs, guides, or community leaders of any sort…deep intentionality regarding who and how we’re having sex is integral if we value the integrity of our creations.

Sxxual energy IS our creative energy, and our creative channel is influenced by the consciousness of those we share our sexual space with.

If we’re operating in distortion in our intimate or sexual relationships (playing out old patterns rooted in shame, people-pleasing, control, or self-abandonment), it’s going to influence the purity, clarity, and stability of our creative channel.

Our life force energy, our creative energy, and our sexuality as visionaries stewarding important messages and paradigm shifts in the world, is one of our most important assets.

And as a result, I believe discernment around who we share our bodies, hearts, sexual energy, and consciousness with (all four of which I believe our integral to a fully embodied and satisfying sexual experience) is one of the most important things we can devote ourselves to.

Shifting from Victim to Creator Consciousness

For those of us on the path of spiritual awakening and embodiment, an important conversation needs to be had around the lens of consciousness we are perceiving reality through.

This is my entry point into this conversation:

The more devoted I am to resolving my own traumas, triggers, and insecurities—the less susceptible I am to feeling victimized or offended by the world and people around me.

I want to invite you to notice the place where you tacitly give another person’s voice more power than your own internal authority when it comes to determining *how you feel* or *what you believe* about yourself.

And I want to invite you to ask yourself why you do that? Where does that pattern or inclination to give a person’s perspective power over you come from?

How has giving a person (or a group of people) that type of power served you in the past?

I promise you there is gold in here for you if you ask yourself these questions, and are willing to feel the potential discomfort associated with exploring them honestly. I know it was a treasure trove of clarity, freedom, and reclamation of power for *me*.

We aren’t helpless.

(Even though the traumas or woundings we carry can tip us into that lens of reality).

We have the capacity to cultivate discernment about what we let in and what we do not let into our field of consciousness—but when we don’t commit ourselves to doing the work of resolving our own traumas, or allow our shame for their existence to be stronger than our devotion to transmuting them—we can’t actually cultivate our inner boundary system because we’re not valuing ourselves.

We need to value ourselves to have boundaries.

As long as we need the external to change in order to find a sense of peace within ourselves, we will never be free—and we will continue to perpetuate the paradigm of the trauma/drama triangle despite the fact there is a paradigm that exists outside of it rooted in wholeness and sovereignty from within.

This isn’t about shaming or negating the places we have been victimized in the past. Because it is real.

This is instead about looking at where we walk through this world wearing the lens of a victim which in-so-doing shapes our entire perception of reality.

Deep compassion for the places we have been a victim is integral for being able to take responsibility for changing our experience.

My personal practice and all of my teachings are in service to supporting the individual in creating a grounded embodiment of personal sovereignty so we can release distorted patterns of relating perpetuating distorted blueprints of relating rooted in victimhood that aren’t even a reflection of the divine nature of who we truly are.

We are so much greater than that.

AND, we get to have compassion for ourselves (and each other) along the way in the places we forget.

May we all remember who we truly are.

Hookup Culture is the Antithesis of Community

One of the greatest sources of pain I see existing in culture is the wounding of distrust and disconnection between men and women that can often occur through sex, desire, and attraction.

We haven't learned how to relate with each other as brothers and sisters--we've learned to sxxualize, objectify, and project onto each other both our biggest desires and fantasies, AND our greatest fears and traumas.

We get to be super compassionate with ourselves in this process of upgrading how we relate to our arousal and re-establishing the sex-heart-crown connection.

AND, self-responsibility is needed if we want to have a new experience.

If we want to move forward as a culture, where we can build healthy relational ecosystems that support community, balanced leadership, and social structures that support family...

...we need to learn how to integrate our sexuality into our humanity.

We need to learn how to see any person we may experience romantic or erotic attraction to first and foremost as a brother or sister we're here sharing this world with intending to create a better place.

We need to look at where our previous wounds, triggers, or traumas are creating reactive or compulsive responses within us that seek to create intimacy from a place of agenda and projection over authenticity and connection.

In my teachings, I often say that "hookup culture is the antithesis of community". It's why I'm so passionate about drawing a deeper awareness to the intersection of sxxuality and leadership.

And why--just like integration of psychedelic experiences is SO deeply important. So is integration of our sxxual experiences.

If we keep relating with sxxuality as a peak experience we are seeking that exists outside of our every day waking reality, we'll keep turning people into projections and fantasies that we don't know how to integrate as real life humany human beings who struggle and long and fall and f*ck up and fear and love.

That's why I created HOLY DESIRE, a 7-week online program for leaders and lovers skillfully navigating sxxuality and desire in intimate relationship and group dynamics.

It’s for those playing a bigger game in leadership, purpose, entrepreneurship, community stewardship, and/or guiding others in their own awakening and consciousness expansion in private client or group work.

And it's for those simply desiring deeper freedom, pleasure, and self-awareness in their own life and relationships so you don't feel like you have to compromise who you are to have what you *truly* want.

We're all leaders–it's just a matter of what form the leadership takes.

*******

For those interested in deepening in this self-awareness and leadership work, HOLY DESIRE, my 7-week online program for leaders and lovers skillfully navigating truth, sexuality, and desire in intimate relationship and group dynamics is an excellent place to begin.

For those of you deep in your leadership and service game, my 6-month Erotic Integration Mastermind for those serving as leaders, facilitators, teachers, and entrepreneurs begins in July.

It's ideal for those stepping up to play a bigger game, been seen more widely, and have more impact in their work and thought leadership, and want to do that deeper integration work around their erotic energy and sexuality so they can show up more trusting in their power, their discernment, and their authentic voice in their leadership.

When Trauma Becomes "State-Addiction"

There’s a certain point we get to in our growth where trauma can become an addiction.

Yes, trauma is real, and yes, it’s nothing to be minimized or trivialized.

However, if we use the “severity” of trauma as a blanket statement to rationalize our state addiction to trauma, and the permission it gives us to avoid responsibility or ownership of our actions/impact, we will never experience the freedom, pleasure, or power of choice that many of us espouse as our virtues.

There is a certain level we get to on the Path where we actually have cultivated the tools, awareness, resource, and ability to let go of the trauma and release from our system.

The question is, are we willing to let go of the comfort we’ve come to associate with the security blanket of our own self-nurtured fragility?

Ultimately, each of us needs to make the decision for ourselves when self-compassion becomes coddling and avoidance of the next level of our own awakening.

My writing speaks to those who are at a place in their healing and evolution where they realize that trauma is something that can be released from the body if we choose it.

I honor the whole spectrum of healing around trauma, and I by no means wish to minimize any of the process of moving from victim to freedom, from disempowerment to creatorship.

Every stage is necessary.

We are all walking around with various degrees of trauma in our bodies that we will continue to release until the day we die.

However, the key nuance I seek to speak to through my work and writing is the sneaky place within us that can become attached to our trauma or try to hide behind it is a way of avoiding having to own embrace the power and vulnerability necessary to change our experience.

I no longer have an interest in coddling or colluding with that sneaky place within me, because I desire to embrace higher and higher levels of pleasure and ecstatic connection in my life, which is correlarily dependent upon the level of self-ownership and sovereignty I am willing to cultivate within myself on an emotional, energetic, and somatic level.

This is a core practice with clean love, which is a core principle in The Cosmic Tantra Community.

The willingness to make the distinction between acknowledging trauma as an inherent part of life that we learn to be in relationship with, versus using trauma as an excuse to avoiding taking the driver seat in our life.

I know the conversation of trauma is highly nuanced, and that I am speaking to a “niche” so-to-speak within the realm of trauma and personal growth.

This conversation is not black and white.

I understand this is controversial. I’m okay with that.

I love you.

Arielle

Writings from the Big Island

On Desire & Expansion

I am having this experience where the Universe just keeps giving me more of what I truly desire.

More love. Most opportunities for aligned growth and pleasurable expansion.

More ways to be of service and share my gifts from a place of ease and overflow.

And I'm just continuing to say yes to it.

I'm learning how to remain open and receive more and more abundance, pleasure, and goodness into my life without feeling compelled to contract, sabotage, and justify why it isn't safe to open.

I am no longer questioning my worthiness of receiving.

Instead, I am bowing in humble gratitude to the ocean and the aina, allowing for emotion, energy, and aliveness to flow through me back in gratitude and devotion to her.

None of this is mine, and yet all of it is available to me.

I am a vessel who is able to give and receive cleanly because I know my worth and I know my value.

Because I am willing to wield power without trying to control power.

Because I am willing to have impact and also take responsibility for it.

Because I am willing to fully embrace my desire and simultaneously be willing to release attachment to my desire's fulfillment if it's not fully aligned with the will of the Divine.

I am in service to the will of the Divine flowing through in service to perfect harmony, knowing that my pleasure, embodiment, and ecstatic healing expansion is part of the living testimony of my devotion to humanity and the greater cosmic reality of The All.

I am in service to the truth, and the ecstatic current of aliveness that it catalyzes to flow through me.

I am in service to love, and embracing it as a power that I may wield from a place of clear eyes, clear mind, clear heart.

And it is from this place of opening to cosmic communion with the Divine that I realize I can only open so wide to receive her Infinite majesty as I am willing to bow in humble devotion to the art. Pouring out so that there is space to truly pour in, knowing that what I give out into the world is a reflection of what I receive.

It is all energy. It is all connectivity.

And I am devoted to the Path of pure ecstatic embodiment, where my Divine aliveness does not compromise my personal or transpersonal integrity.

I choose to be a trustworthy container for the Divine to flow through.

I choose to be a container of energy where heaven and earth meet, and to practice living and loving from that place to the best of my ability.

I choose to allow myself to be fully alive, removing all self or externally imposed limits of what is possible to achieve.

We are infinite, and in choosing to do this work, practice, and play together, we amplify our divine potentiality.

Where we cultivate this energetic of aligned expansion within ourselves, and lean to become pillars of light, balanced in our own Masculine and Feminine energy, in service to the healing and integration of opposites within humanity.

We do this in connection.

We do this in community.

And by the way, this is what the Cosmic Tantra Community is all about, a place to practice the embodiment of Divinity within community.

A place to remember who you are...over, and over, and over again.

I love you.

Clean Love & Erotic Energy

A practice I've really been enjoying (and by “enjoying”, I mean melting in the alchemical fire of transformation) is how to be intentional in the way I share erotic energy with people.

What I mean by this, is how to open up into pleasurable erotic space with a person, honoring and loving each person for the gorgeous human they are, without creating stories about what the connection "means" that distorts the authentic truth of the relationship.

What do I mean by this in a nutshell?

The question of:

How do we deepen into erotic intimacy with a person, without projecting our fantasies, desires, belief systems, past experiences, and expectations on the person in a way that actually dishonors the person and the truth of the connection?

We all future trip in some way. We all have our own combination of desired futures and feared outcomes that can impact the way we perceive reality.

The challenge is, often what these things wind up doing, if we aren't doing our work to clarify what is truth, versus what is illusion, is that we can wind up creating patterns in our relationships that squeeze the life force, mystery, and mutual honoring out of the connection.

This experience is SO easily heightened in our erotic connections, because when we open up the channel of sharing our s£xual energy with another person, it simultaneously opens up all our wounding and experiences from the past.

Working with erotic energy has the potential to transform EVERYTHING in our life if we do it intentionally.

AND, it also has the potential to f*ck our sh*t up if we don't come in with clear eyes, clear heart, doing our devotional work of staying in connection to the truth in every moment.

I've spent the better part of 10 years being in the dance of cultivating this awareness. Finding myself in some of the darkest places I've ever been in my life while in erotic connection with another being.

Getting so lost in delusion and addiction to an "idea of a relationship" that I've sacrificed core aspects of my inner knowing and personal safety because of my attachment to a story I was telling myself about what the relationship was.

Whoa. We think psychedelics create altered states of consciousness. Try opening up the portal of intimacy and erotic connection with another.

And it's been a pattern that I've been in devotion to dismantling, because I've realized that when I bring hidden agendas or projections about what a relationship "should" be into a connection, I actually dishonor the person I'm in connection with.

The person goes from being a sovereign being and brother/sister on the path, to a projection of old wounding from the past or fantasy of the future, that in my opinion is a form of subtle violence rooted in mal-attunement and disconnection from the present moment.

I want to honor the truth. I want to honor the sovereign free will of every human being to be who they truly are, free of my subconscious attempts to manipulate or distort our connection in service to my Ego's agenda of what we should "be".

I want to love *cleanly*.

"Clean Love" is a phrase I've been working with a lot lately as a framework for relationship and s£xuality as a spiritual practice.

Clean love as a practice of honoring the sovereign free will of another human being by not allowing fear or scarcity-based lenses of reality have us ever-so-subtley exert any form of domination or control upon another.

We have enough of that going on in the world right now.

Know what I mean?

I truly believe that practicing "clean love" is a form of sacred activism that serves as an energetic blueprint and investment in the type of human connection we believe in, value, and support in this world.

Imagine what this world would look like if we all committed to doing the work of healing our past wounding and trauma in intimacy so that we can show in service to mutually supportive, pleasurable, liberated connection in our relationships?

Imagine if men and women are respectively devoted to taking ownership for our own distortions, distrusts, resentments, and fears of the opposite sex, so that we can show up with clean eyes in our relationships?

Imagine if we were so committed to staying present in the moment, so that we could truly be allies to each other in our healing and our opening, versus allowing our wounding to have us shut down and contract when our openness and curiosity is what needed most?

That's the world I wanna play in.

That world sounds way more fun, way more pleasurable, way more connected, and way more sexy.

This is the intention and energetic framework of the Cosmic Tantra Community.

More to come...

The Initiation of Not Listening to My Body

I'm going to tell you a story about an uncomfortable and important initiatory experience I created for myself several years ago while in an intimate relationship.

My creation of it at the time was unintentional (at least on a conscious level), but as I've reflected on and integrated the experience over the years, I see how my Higher (and unconscious) Self deliberately created this experience for me so that I could embody greater truth, power, and choice in my life.

Now, before I begin, I do want to tell you part of this story involves me choosing to get an abortion. It's not the main part, but it's definitely a part.

I personally believe that every woman has a right to choose what she does with her body. I also believe more women sharing from a place of power, ownership, and vulnerability about their abortion choices can help destigmatize and remove shame and guilt around a taboo topic that impacts and isolates many women.

We all have a right to choose and in this moment I want to honor your right to choose by letting you know in advance that this story is here, and you get to decide whether or not you want to read it.

Excellent. I feel clear. Let's begin…

Several years ago I met a man who was significantly older than me and involved in a spiritual community up in California.

At the time, I was already very much engaged in my own spiritual journey…

…studying elemental earth magic, exploring my relationship with God and the Universal energy that connects us all, plant medicines, deepening into my sexuality, learning how to transform my external reality by transforming the belief systems I held within.

When I met this man, I was also pretty ungrounded in my material world.

I was fresh out of a traumatizing experience with a prosperity coach where I systematically bypassed my intuitive knowing in our work together because I'd put her on a pedestal based on how she presented herself on social media.

There were so many moments in our work where I didn't listen to myself, to my body, to the little voice inside of me saying this doesn't feel right…

…and it finally built up to this huge breaking point where I severed our contract together because I completely lost trust in her, but even more painful, was the realization that in the process of quieting the cues of my heart and body, I had lost trust with myself.

After I quit our working relationship together, I stopped coaching and taking on new clients for about 6 months. I was so ashamed that I had bypassed my own intuition because of my desire to accrue greater wealth in quick and glamorous ways, that I didn't feel in integrity working with new clients.

I needed to pull inwards, I needed to heal, I needed to gain clarity within myself about what had actually happened that allowed me to get so disconnected from my own power.

Now cue the man.

I met this man at a party I'd been invited to by a new acquaintance.

He and I met on the dance floor, and it was instant heat of volcanic proportions followed by juicy connected conversation afterwards. He asked for my number, I said yes, and we started dating. I unknowingly was being drawn closer and closer to the fiery crucible of my initiation into power.

The truth is, physically, I wasn't actually attracted to this man. He was literally 30 years older than I at the time. But there was something about his confidence, stability, and a sense of security that he was offering me that kept me leaning in.

He also had a strong felt sense about our spiritual connection, and that he and I were meant to do things together in the erotic realm of great significance.

I don’t know if you relate to this, but in the past I had a pretty kinky fetish for relationships presenting as these grandiose connections of archetypal importance that made the seemingly fucked up things happening within them seem more palatable.

I had this desire to be special, to be chosen, and on a deeper level (partially conscious, partially not) to be saved by a man.

There was something in me that did not fully trust my ability to create safety for myself in my life, so I sought out passionate, volatile relationships with men that presented some glamour of importance, success, and security.

I placed so much emphasis on the man's “rightness” or “sight,” I would bypass my own intuitive knowing when yellow, orange, or red flags emerged in the connection because I was more addicted to validating the man's perspective than the feelings in my heart.

Are you seeing a trend here?

I had a pattern of abandoning the felt-sense in my own body due to my belief that someone outside of me had the keys to my safety and salvation.

There were numerous little yellow and orange flags that showed up in our short lived yet long remembered relationship, but the major red flag that I minimized and ignored in our relationship was in our sex.

I'm a highly s£xual person, and any man who has been in intimate partnership with me knows this to be true. In my experience with this particular man, I would experience intense stabbing pains in my cervix when we had sex.

There was one moment when we were in a hotel room in topical location (he took me on an all-expenses paid trip and intentionally didn't want me to spend one dollar because he knew I was stressed about money)…

…where his cock penetrated me and I experienced a stabbing pain so intense, I literally found myself lying on the floor of the glass-enclosed shower, my arms curled around my body, buckling in pain.

I even remember housekeeping knocking on our hotel door and him telling them to leave because he didn't want them to enter the room with me in that state.

It was intense. I reflect on that experience now as I am writing, and wow.

And here's the thing, this man didn't even have a particularly large cock. He was relatively normal sized, not too long, not too thick.

To be honest, I’ve experienced men who are way bigger, and despite their length, and I've never experienced that kind of pain.

On some level, I knew this back then, but I definitely know it now--his cock size had nothing to do with my experience of pain. The pain was caused by my body telling me that something was OFF in our connection.

The pain was my body telling me that it was not a ‘yes’ to this penetration. That it did not want to receive this man, this energy, this penis inside of me.

When I expressed my concerns to him, his response was something like this: “there was something within me that was wanting to be healed, and if I could just lean into the pain, we could heal it.”

Red flag.

But there it was again, that thing inside me doubting my own intuition.

Second-guessing the wisdom I felt in my own heart, because I was afraid of saying no and risking a relationship that might be really important and meaningful--I didn't want to “fuck it up.”

So I allowed it to happen, several times, until I eventually got to a place where I realized I wasn't happy, I wasn't crazy, and what was true for me was I wanted the relationship to end.

I broke up with him, but there was a deeper lesson my body wanted to teach me that remains to this day as one of the major turning points in my life.

About two weeks after my breakup, I noticed that my period was 4 days late.

I went to a local Target, bought a pregnancy test and was so clear I needed to know the truth NOW, I went right into their public restroom and took the test.

I peed on the stick and sat there waiting, feeling my body tremble with nervous anticipation, knowing the answer before any plastic stick told me.

I was pregnant.

And then I felt it. All the flushing sensations of new life gestating in my body that I'd been so previously disconnected from I just couldn't feel it.

I had become so desensitized from my body by allowing her to be penetrated without attunement and discounting the feelings that arose within her because they were inconvenient, that I had numbed myself out to the truth.

What came through clear as day to me in that moment, and is still clear and true for me today, is that my getting pregnant was a direct result of not listening to the intuitive wisdom and boundaries of my body.

I've been practicing intentional unprotected sex with partners for years, tracking my cycle, and clearly communicating with my partners about the pull out method with mindfulness around ovulating.

This is the practice that feels best for me. It's what is aligned for me. That does not mean it is right or aligned for you. Just as I said above with everyone's right to choose with abortion, the same is true here. We all have the right to choose.

And in my 7 years of engaging in this practice, I'd never gotten pregnant.

While I'm sure there are plenty of valid reasons and explanations one could present that have nothing to do with the karmic energetic impact of acting out of integrity with the wisdom of my body for why I got pregnant…

…the truth is, I know what's true because I can feel it, and that's enough.

I was pregnant and I was clear in every fiber of my being that having an abortion was the right, true, and aligned decision in this circumstance.

I didn't have shame, I didn't have uncertainty, I just had gratitude.

Gratitude for institutions like Planned Parenthood, gratitude for parents like my mother who fly out to California at the drop of a hat to be with me during that emotional time, and gratitude for the clarity I felt in my body.

That experience, while one of the most challenging and emotionally charged times of my life, was also one of the most transformative experiences of initiation into the power and wisdom of my body.

I had come to a place within myself I could no longer avoid, seeing so clearly how my own avoidance of my truth could create such deep physical pain, and result in the need to make such a BIG and significant decision in my life as to physically remove a living being from my body.

And I realized something very important about what it meant to take ownership for my experience….

It wasn't about shaming myself

It wasn't about beating myself up.

It wasn't about seeing it as a mistake that validated why I can't trust myself.

It wasn't about punishing myself, or creating internal stories about my unworthiness of love, safety, and meaningful connection because of how stupid, silly, or naive I was.

(Though believe me, I cycled through all of those many times).

It was about having deep compassion for all the moments of pain and suffering I’d experienced in my life before I knew I could choose anything different…

…and then honoring and caring for myself in such a way that cultivating trust with my body became the most important form of safety/security I could create.

It was about getting to a place within myself where I knew on a deep level that I have the power to choose something different, and the answers didn't exist outside of me--they existed within.

I've gotten to this place in my life where I am devoted to learning the language of the wisdom of my body,…because I spent too many years looking for power, truth, and safety outside myself in men, money, and distorted Masculine structures that are disconnected from the Feminine integrity of their hearts.

It is a powerful threshold to walk through, and despite what social conditioning or our inner critic might think, the way through is not via self-judgement, or making ourselves (or our experience) wrong or small…

… but through embodying such a deep level of compassion, curiosity, and approval for our experience exactly as it is, that we can free up the energy previously frozen in shame and self doubt, and channel it towards the creation and fulfillment of what we truly desire.

In the words of Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure".

This is an invitation into realizing that we have power, despite what past experience or any external voices rooted in fear and control want us to believe.

We have the capacity to transform old memories of pain and disappointment into something truly miraculous in our lives, if that is something that we truly desire…

…and in fact it is the energy stored within our bodies from those experiences that can serve as the generative fuel for that alchemical transformation.

My Questions for You:

1) Are you willing to powerfully transform the way you relate to your own suffering?

2) And, are you willing to allow yourself to find joy and fulfillment in the process?

SOVEREIGNTY, is an 8-Week Initiatory Container for Women who…

…. are turned on by discovering a new and empowering way to work with shame and their erotic energy...

...want to do it in a community of women who support you in your growth and expansion...

...and want to receive support, guidance, and an immense amount of love, approval, and recognition of your power along the way...

Enrollment opens October 1st.

To learn more and receive details when enrollment opens, sign up for the SOVEREIGNTY mailing list here.

The Risk of Living with an Open Heart

To live with an open heart, 
inevitably means to risk a broken heart.

It comes with the territory of being alive.

And please allow me to clarify, 
that there is a difference, 
between merely existing, 
and being truly ALIVE.

To merely exist, is to be a passive observer, 
a tacit complier, to a culture built on fear, control, 
and the false belief that it is not safe to trust.

To merely exist, is to allow our hearts 
to become calcified, jaded, and numbed 
as a natural by-product of undesirable 
yet seemingly unchangeable circumstances.

To merely exist, is to allow our soul 
to go into hiding, to calculate the opening 
of our heart like a chess move--
only risking making ourselves vulnerable 
if we can guarantee the upper hand.

This is not living, this is purgatory. 

It is a life worse than death, 
because at least in death we are free.

To be truly alive, on the other hand, 
means to opt into this body, 
this heart, this moment, 
this life, right now.

To be truly alive, means to lead with the raw, 
messy, inconvenient, infinitely endearing truth--
that lays us out naked and vulnerable 
for the Universe to have its way with.

To be truly alive, means to be so indelibly 
connected to our heart, our value, our soul, 
that we know nothing can be taken from us 
that is not freely given.

We are safe, you see, we are infinitely safe, 
beyond anything that your mind, 
your ego, or your insecurity 
could begin to fathom.

Your heart, my darling, is an infinite resource, 
and to hide your heart from the world, 
to make it a scarce commodity, 
is to deprive the world of something 
it is in dire need of.

Love. The world needs your Love.

It needs your love unadulterated, unfiltered, 
unencumbered by fears of being "too much", 
"not enough", or "unworthy of being received".

The world needs your heart open, and yes, 
to open your heart does mean that you 
exponentially increase its risk
of being broken.

But let me tell you my dear, 
a broken heart, 
is not what you think.

It is a gift, you see. 

Because in the breaking of your heart, you shatter 
the calcified walls of fear and retraction. 

You break apart the avoidance of feeling, 
of breathing, of claiming your aliveness.

In the breaking of your heart, 
you open yourself to a love 
beyond what you can possibly imagine. 

A love of this life that goes beyond anything 
our human mind could comprehend.

This is a love that connects us to all things. 

This love shatters fear, 
it shatters story, 
it shatters illusion.

This love, is simply truth. 
And it lives within you.
And it is waiting for you.

Waiting for you to remember that your love 
does not need permission or validation 
to be expressed. 

It gets to exist right now, 
without expectation 
or agenda.

Your love just gets to be here.

And oh my dear, can you imagine, 
if we had a world full of hearts, 
courageous enough to be open, 
and willing to be broken?

Can you imagine what a world, that would be?

With Love,
Arielle Brown

Photo Credit: Lionsgate Portal Art print by Lori Menna

The Alchemical Relationship Between Desire & Fear

There is a conversation that wants to be had about desire and fear, and the indelible relationship that exists between the two. But to have this conversation in its true potency, we must clarify the true nature of desire.

Desire, in its true and essential nature, is nothing short of our soul’s expression guiding us towards our destiny. Our destiny, said another away, is the peak evolution one can experience in human form, before the only left to do is leave the body and ascend back into our pure spiritual form of no-thing oneness with all that is.

Ascension, however, is not what I’m interested in talking about here. 

That does not mean to say I’m opposed to ascending in this lifetime--I’m just not attached to it--nor am I gunning for it.What I am significantly more excited and aroused to experience in this lifetime is DESCENSION. Descension into the body. To become an aligned, open, embodied, receptive, and engaged vessel for being fully inhabited and penetrated by the divine, so that I am nothing short of a walking embodiment of god.

That may seem a bit extreme to some, but I’ve found that most freedom comes in life when we’re just willing to call a spade a spade and stop acting like we don’t actually know exactly what we want and who we are.

So, back to our topic of the moment--Desire.

There is an important distinction to make between what I’ll call “authentic desire” and “compensatory desire”. Authentic Desire is what I described above--the soul’s longing to guide our temporarily amnesiatic human Self back into remembrance of our divine nature, so that we may fully embody and release the illusion of separateness, unworthiness, and anything else that has us dig our feet in the dirt in resistance of our own ecstatic awakening.

Compensatory Desire, on the other hand, is what has confused, maimed, and shamed what desire actually is. Compensatory desires, unlike authentic desires, are impulsive longings for things/people/experience that serves as a means of escaping from or avoiding our authentic Self.

Compensatory desires on the extreme end can take the form of addiction to drugs, alcohol, technology, sugar, and abusive or co-dependent relationships. 

Compensatory Desires lead us farther away from the truth; the deep, core, essential truths that free us from self (or societally) imposed limitations about who we are and what we are capable of being or becoming in this lifetime.

There is so much to say on compensatory desires, but that’s not where we’re going today. Today we are focusing on authentic desires, and how they are irrevocably related to fear.

When we connect with an authentic desire--a desire that exists deep down within us, there is something inherently confronting about it to our Ego. One of the most common things I experience with people through my private coaching work, is that many of us do not know what we want. Or at least, that is the story we tell ourselves. 

Often, it’s not that we “don’t know”, it’s much deeper than that. The deeper thing is that to actually know what we truly desire, would mean liberating ourselves from the shackles of conformity and compliance, which is so directly threatening to the Ego, that can become easier to bury the voice of the authentic self beneath other people’s expectations, externally-conditioned morality, or feelings of ineffable unworthiness.

The Ego abhors the prospect of our authentic self connecting to our authentic desire, because when we do, we threaten the Ego’s survival, the crumbling of false concepts of control, and a surrender into the great dark void of the unknown.

Authentic Desire threatens our entire existence. It threatens the idea and deeply held belief of everything we’ve believed ourselves to be up until this point. Which means, on some level, to embrace our true desires means that we must allow ourselves to die.

This is why what we truly desire is also what we most deeply fear.

I’ll offer a personal example, as I’ve found that leadership without vulnerability is a recipe for disempowerment and tyranny that I prefer not to perpetuate in this lifetime.

Much of the intimacy energetics and spiritual embodiment work I facilitate with private clients and groups has been a by-product of my own fervent devotion to dismantling patterns and belief systems about romance, relationship, and sexuality rooted in disempowerment and victimhood.

Long story short, I spent a lot of my 20s getting into diabolical at worst, co-dependent at best, romantic relationships with men where the consistent unconscious desire driving my engagement in the relationship was my desire to escape the feelings of powerlessness and uncertainty I felt in my own life, and how that related to the stories I’d ingested about what it means to be a woman.

This very twisted (yet in simultaneously circumstances deeply erotic) unconscious desire revealed itself to me during a solo acid trip I decided to imbibe one New Years eve many years ago when I found myself with seeminly no other offers that felt more exciting.

The peak of that trip was me finding myself curled up in the fetal position on my couch, bawling my eyes out realizing that all of my romantic relationships with men up until that point had been subconsciously driven by the covert desire to be saved by a man. To be saved by him financially, emotionally, ceremoniously--similar to how I’d seen in many Disney movies in my early adolescent years. However, my idea of being saved was less about white horses and shining armor, and more dollar bills and an obviously superior perspective of how to survive in life inherently because he was a man and I was a woman. Those belief systems ran so deep in me I didn’t even realize there could be any other truth.

Yep. On the outside I had all the lingo down of wanting a man who could really meet me, who could handle all of my intensity, my emotions, my sexuality, my power--and yet deep down, what I really wanted was for a man to possess me, own me, dominate me, in such a way that I would not have to take responsibility for my own fears of not being able to create financial security and personal emotional and physical stability in my life.

It was some deep dark twisted material, very artfully nuanced amidst my sexually liberated post-modernist Femininst personal. And don’t you know, I wound up attracting in relationships with men who DID want to own me, possess me, control me. 

Hell, one of them got very close to convincing me it made total sense for me to become a prostitute and he my pimp. (And by the way, it feels important to mention here I actually have nothing against sex work and sex workers. I simply hope that in choosing to be a sex worker, that they’re doing it from a place of desire and choice--as opposed to a perpetuation of victimhood and self-sacrifice). 

Long winded way of saying, I learned a lot about myself in the process.

The past 10 years have been about deconditions myself from models of relating rooted victimhood, manipulation, and disempowerment. I realized that if I wanted a truly powerful relationship with a man in my life, where I could fully receive his power and penetrative energy without sacrificing or losing myself in the process, that I was going to need to do some deep internal work around the subtle energetics of sexuality, sovereignty and the art of giving and receiving. 

I’ve gotten a place in my life, in my own personal spiritual evolution, where I am beginning to attract men into my life who are available for deep emotional intimacy. They are powerful, driven, embodied, attuned, receptive, grounded in finance and purpose. Clear on their desires and their connection to their own spirituality. 

And you know what? It’s DEEPLY confronting.

That which I’ve desired, longed for, done the work to become an energetically and emotionally available for, is now beginning to enter into my vortex of reality, because I’ve become an energetic match for it, and it TERRIFIES me.

That which I desire, is also that which I deeply fear, because to surrender to this desire, to become available to receive it, to allow this desire to fully penetrate my emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual plane of existence being, means to die to who I once was. 

Desire embodiment work is not for the faint of heart, and it is important to realize this if this is the spiritual path you are inclined towards.

There is a common misconception in different spiritual communities that if we’re actually ready to receive a authentic desire that we’ve never had before, that we won’t be afraid. I think that’s bull shit. I believe that fear is a necessary part of the activation process that heats up our spiritual-emotional-energetic system enough to allow that which is no longer resonant with our current identity to burn away.

Here lies the inherent sameness of desire and fear in the context of personal transformation. 

Desire and fear both activate arousal in the body. They charge up our life force energy in such a way that we become more present, more receptive, more penetrably available the Divine to enter through us in service to the fulfillment of our desire and simultaneous destiny.

Both desire and fear catalyze energy within our body that can be utilized in service to our own embodied awakening. 

Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt Therapy once said, “fear is excitement without the breath”. This is the very thing we observe in the relationship between desire and fear.

In those moments in life when the energy and sensation feels so high in our bodies that everything in us is screaming to shut down, contract, cave in on ourselves because the signals in our body tells us we should be afraid--that we are not safe.

What if, instead, we learn how to stay present to the higher and higher levels of sensation and energy that were moving through our bodies? 

What if, in the moments where we our reactionary body wants to clamp down and contract around on the energy stirring within us, we instead chose to breathe, stay grounded and embodied, and open expansively to what is possible in the present moment?

What if the story of fear, of “not safe”, “helplessness”, and “not enoughness”,were all gauntlets of initiation and rights of passage created by our Higher Self to test our ready willingness to walk across the threshold of our own liberation from suffering and the illusion of separateness?

I invite you to consider these questions, and notice the sensations, emotions, and feelings that evoke within you. These are powerful times to be questioning the nature of our reality, and who we believe ourselves to be.

I’ll leave you with a final question for today: 

Are you ready to Remember Who You Are?

The First Step is Trusting How You Feel

If the way a person is treating you or engaging with you does not feel good, it is essential that you first trust, and then explore that feeling within you.

Many of us are learning how to come into an embodied relationship with our boundaries, which are the foundation for our personal sovereignty.

This learning is essential, because many of us were raised in a family system or community that in some way or the other told us that we need to sacrifice our personal truths, emotions, or desires (I'll call them "TEDs") in order to secure the experience of love.

It is important to realize that in most circumstances, these reactions from family and community were not rooted in an intentional desire to cause harm, but more the understandable result of a culture indoctrinated into a fear, victim, and scarcity-based perception of reality. 

So, with all of this in awareness, it is essential that you begin by trusting and validating yourself anytime you feel that someone is not treating you in a way that feels good or honoring of your heart.

This does not mean that you take this validation and use it as ammo to point the wild finger of persecution or villainization towards this person...

...but instead use the trusting of your emotions as an anchor point for discerning what type of boundary you need with this person to keep your heart open and connected to the world around you.

When we trust how we feel, we can intuitively know what boundary we need with any person in our lives in order to feel safe, clear, and grounded.

When we trust how we feel, our boundaries do not feel like intangible things existing outside of us that we need to pelt with a base ball bat at someone in order to convey our point.

When we trust how we feel, our boundaries are simply a grounded feeling of clarity within our bodies that we transmit through our posture, our energy, our movement, and yes, our words.

When we do the essential work of reclaiming our right to our own emotional experience, we no longer need to prove, to force, or manipulate in order to be seen, felt, or heard...we simply ARE. 

We are embodied in our essential nature, because we embrace and love our human experience. And that EMBODIMENT is more powerful than any pithy or profound phrase of verbal conviction we could conjure.

Words are nothing if they aren't backed by embodiment.

I tell you, I invite you, with every fiber of my being...

There is nothing left to prove, when we are willing to walk the courageous path of settling into our heart, and remembering who we are.

With Love,

Arielle Brown 
www.ariellebrown.com

How to Begin Trusting the Feminine

Much of my work with clients these days has become about cultivating a healthy relationship and balance between the Masculine and Feminine polarities that exist within us. 

So much of the trauma, the destruction, the suffering that happens in our relationships occurs because of the wounding, repression, or over-compensation in how we give and receive in relating.

How we give and receive love... How we give and receive truth... How we give and receive touch, emotions, and pleasure... 

So many of us have been wounded by both of these polarities, namely because one is trying to exist without, or at the expense of the other.

A male client of mine recently sent me a message, asking how he can begin re-opening to the Feminine within his own body, when his past has shown him that it is not safe to trust the Feminine?

This is the response that I offered him, and it feels relevant to share it here: 

"It begins by looking at the places where you have become resolved in abandoning yourself, your desires, your truths, because of the assumption that it’s simply what you must do, or because that’s just how things are.

Often, when we are violated or treated poorly by those that are closest to us, we’ll cultivate behaviors where we become our own violators, getting into the habit of abdicating our truths/emotions/desires before the person even demonstrates whether or not they are going to go down that familiar path of treating you in ways that don’t feel good.

This is about cleaning up your side of the road, and looking at any places where you are feeding, contributing, or perpetuating a pattern that you are saying you no longer desire.

It begins with recreating trust with yourself incrementally by identifying and shifting the patterns that exist in you that enable (and even encourage) others to treat you poorly.

It’s about being gentle with yourself, kind with yourself, loving with yourself in all the places you withdraw love and affection because you stopped believing you were worthy of it, or didn’t have a model for what it looked like.

One small step at a time, of presence, being with your heart, and creating more space within you to breathe, and feel into who you truly are". 

May we find peace, ease, connection, and clarity, in the places where there have previously only been egg shells and brick walls.

With Love & Devotion to the Process,

Arielle Brown 

Artful Penetration & Expressing Your Desires

~ On Artful Penetration & Expressing Your Desires ~

I love when a man is forward with expressing his desire, especially when his desire is in relation to me. It lets me know that he is willing to lead, willing to explore, willing to be vulnerable and courageous in letting me feel his heart.

It helps my nervous system to soften, my vigilance center to relax, and allows me to shift into a more embodied, receptive, aroused state of being that can only occur when I am in a state of surrender.

The key here, is that there is a particular energetic that a man must embody and transmit when he is expressing his desire. 

There is a level of attunement that he must have (either on a conscious or unconscious level) with my emotional body, that allows him to calibrate to my energy and artfully penetrate my field of awareness in a way that facilities two things:

1) Letting me feel and know the potency of his desire in a way that is disarming, pleasurable, and arousing.
2) Communicating through his attunement to me that he can stay present, grounded, and connected during high sensation experiences of intimacy.

Both 1 and 2 are extremely important to women, because:

1) Many women are deconditioning ourselves from being masculinized by a culture that told us we need to basically become men in order to succeed.

2) In order for us as women to surrender into our soften feminine, which is inherently nourishing and pleasurable for men, we need to feel that men are able to both a)Fully inhabit their potency and desire, and b) hold and channel the energy of it without being consumed by it.

We women are hungry to surrender to you men, the key is that there is an artful energetic attunement that you can and must cultivate, in order to non-verbally communicate to our female bodies that you wish to both catalyze and ride the waves of our pleasure, but not at the expense of connection.

I understand that culture has told you that it is not masculine to be sensitive or emotional. So I am here to affirm what I trutst you already feel on some level in your heart: That it is your attunement and sensitivity that is the missing key to opening the floodgates of our pulsing feminine orgasm and surrender.

If you are a man who is interested in cultivating your erotic attunement, and your ability to artfully penetrate the feminine being and body with your heart, your desire, and your sex, I have an invitation for you.

Online and in-person Erotic Alchemy & Attunement containers are available for those who are ready to learn the ancient ways of intimacy and connection, and how these art forms are in service to your spiritual awakening.

Serious applicants only. Ask yourself the question: "Am I ready to awaken to the truth of who I really am, through being held and supported in a clear, safe, intentional designed container?"

If the answer is yes, fill out this form here, tell me why you want to explore working together, and if it feels resonant, we'll schedule a time to hop on a call and have a deeper conversation of what it looks like to step into an Erotic Alchemy & Attunement container together.

Wearing Armour vs. Having Boundaries

This week I held a group call for my online men’s container, called ATTUNE, and we were having a conversation about energetic armoring.

On the call, one of the men shared that he feels like he walks around energetically guarded wherever he goes. He described how this armor felt like it perpetually blocked him from the type of intimacy and connection he was truly wanting.

As we explored more deeply, we got to uncover how this armor had actually been constructed when he was very young.

This armor had formed out of necessity as a child because of certain dynamics with core people in his life where he didn’t feel safe to be open and vulnerable (receptive) to the perspectives and desires/expectations of the people around him.

This armor, while it was something that had formed when he was young, was still something that he carried around with him 30+ years later, and we were exploring the question of how to take the armor off.

I shared with the group that often the reason armor stays with us into adulthood is because we haven’t cultivated an embodied relationship with our own boundaries.

I clarified that boundaries are actually different from armor.

While armor is something that is solid, impenetrable, and often non-discerning about what it blocks from our energetic-emotional body on an unconscious or subconscious level…

…boundaries, in their most exalted and healthy form, are actually permeable, fluid, and adaptable based upon the unique circumstances and evolving truth and feelings that a person experiences on a moment-to-moment basis.

Whereas armor tends to keep us disconnected from the people and environment around us from a place of self-preservation and self-protection….

…our boundaries support us in acclimating to environments in a way that allows us to staying open and connected to the world around us.

When we haven’t consciously cultivated a relationship with our inner boundary system, our armor serves as an auto-pilot defense to ensure our basic safety and survival.

Armor tends to be a default of trauma, boundaries are an act of devotion to self.

The challenge is, most of us never cultivated the ability to connect on an intimate and somatic relationship with our boundaries, because:

1. We were early on taught that in order to main connection with our primary caregivers, we needed to sacrifice aspects of our personal truths and perspectives to avoid rocking the boat.

2. It wasn’t safe to say “no” because we would risk being judged, shamed, attacked, disowned by those who provided us safety and a sense of family.

3. We learned to become disconnected from our bodies, our feelings, and sensations that tell us our “yes” and “no”, in order to cope with the physical and emotional pain that came with being judged or misunderstood by those we loved.

Many of us, as a result, have been living in a state of survival around our emotional/psychological/spiritual/energetic well-being, because we simply weren’t taught that it wasn’t okay to thrive and feel safe in our own bodies.

And here’s the thing, in order to thrive, and find deep fulfillment in our lives, in love, and in all of our relationships, it is essential that we learn how to take off our energetic armor, by cultivating a healthy and embodied relationship with our own inner-boundary system.

This is why I created The Soul of Boundaries Self-Paced Mini-Course (exactly 2 years ago over Thanksgiving week in 2017).

This course pulls back the veil of the underlying stories, emotions, and belief systems we've held about what boundaries are, so we can release the subconscious fears and patterns that prevent us from knowing and speaking our truth in the moment.

The course has 4 different video modules, covering the following:
1 Fears & False Beliefs About Boundaries

2 Aligning Your Inner & Outer Reality

3 Validating Your Emotional Experience

4 Becoming a Conscious Creator

Each video module comes with specific journaling questions that invite you to integrate and apply the content into your own immediate relational reality.

To learn more about The Soul of Boundaries mini-course, click here.

The Energetics of Emotional Abuse

I was sitting with a sister in a kava bar conversing about community, consciousness, and stuff of the cosmos. A normal day in my surreally ordinary waking reality.

Amidst our dialogue, we began having a conversation about abuse in its subtler forms and how it shows up in relationship. 

The abuse I am talking about in this case, is not the obvious form of physical or sexual abuse, but instead abuse that occurs on the level of subtle emotional and psychological energetics.

As she was speaking about abuse, the image that immediately came to mind for me was the act of spinning an invisible energetic prison for the person, that is built out of subtle comments, actions and mannerisms that systemically invalidating a person's belief systems or emotions.

The person who is perpetuating the abuse as described above, often may not even consciously realize what they are doing, but instead is unconsciously perpetuating a pattern of self-protection that they have learned to cope with their own fears of inadequacy and abandonment over the years.

What also feels important to note here is that no abuse on this level of subtle awareness happens in isolation or a vacuum. 

This type of subtle abuse that systemically disconnects a person from feeling conviction and grounding in their own inner guidance system, does not work unless there is a part of the abusee that believes playing into this dynamic is what will help love stay.

When we grow up in a culture that perpetuates the belief that we are not worthy or good enough as we are...

...and many of us are recovering from parenting models that didn't have access to the levels of freedom or spiritual awareness that many of us are privy to now...

...it can be easy to become an active or passive co-creator in our own relational and spiritual demise. A perfect example of the "boiling frog analogy" (which I'll attach a video about in the comments below).

Kinky, right? That we can find seduction, desire, and longing to lean into these patterns of relating that perpetuate our own victimhood and debilitation of self and soul.

What I would love to encourage in these words that I share here, is to shift our primary focus away from attachment to villainizing the accused "perpetrator", and instead shift our awareness to questioning what within ourselves believes we are worthy of being treated in this way?

Asking ourselves questions such as:

What is the type and quality of love that I wish to believe in?

What part of me deep down knows that the way I'm being treated isn't right? And why do I ignore that voice?

What part of me is addicted to the paradigm of clear "rightness" and clear "wrongness", in order to avoid being in the profound ambiguity of the inevitable gray area that is reality and human relating?

What fear do I have about standing in the conviction of my truth? And where am I still more attached to being chosen than being authentic?

There are many more questions I could ask, and do ask in the intimacy containers I create with my clients, but for now, I invite each of us to consider where we have found a debilitating sense of safety in channeling our precious life force energy in turning others into the villain.

Validating or our own ineptitude and inability to change our circumstances by affirming external forces that limit our capacity to do so.

YES, these external forces do exist, AND, again it comes back to this question of which wolf (fear or love) we choose to feed on a daily basis.

I am not attempting or intending to offer an answer of how to dismantle these collective pre-inclininations towards subtle forms of control and manipulation oriented abuse in order to "make love stay"...

...In this moment, I simply want to bring awareness to that danger in trivializing what it means to be a perpetrator or an abuser, and how it can perpetuate an ostracizing and condemning of qualities that *inevitably* exist within all of us.

We all want to be loved. And we are at the tipping point of a collective awakening to the realization that love cannot exist when "power over" is the agenda.

We are learning a new way. And we are all on this ride together. I love you, and I am an ally for you in this deep and significant remembering of who we truly are.

The Power to Choose Your Reality

Yesterday evening I sat in a small rapé ceremony with several friends, held by a Brazilian curandero (which is a native healer or shaman of Spanish or Latin American origin).

Rapé, for those who don't know, is a sacred plant medicine made from finely ground tobacco and ashes from various medicinal plants, used for centuries by various indigenous Amazonian tribes.

This plant medicine is received through the nasal passage, and can either be self-served, or in this case, served by the curandero. 

I experienced this plant medicine for the first time in a ceremony just over 6 weeks ago, right before I left for Costa Rica, and in that experience felt called to use it more regularly in a ritualistic and meditative context.

My experience with this medicine, is that it helps to cleanse the mind on a physical and energetic level. It helps me to detach from the frantic worry and voices that can cloud my consciousness and perception to what is true on the deepest level in my heart.

Yesterday evening, the curandero described his perspective that the medicine helps to restore the pineal gland, and to help us as spiritual beings operate more clearly and freely within the Matrix of reality.

I appreciated and resonated with his description of the medicine, and felt deep gratitude and the aligned synchronicity of being in that place, at that time, with these people.

The curandero went around in the circle, serving each person individually with the medicine. When he came to me, he placed the serving pipe (also known as the "tepi") to my belly, to my heart, to my temple, and then, upon my consent, he blew the rapé into my nasal passage.

I allowed the medicine to move through me. It began in my head, a deep, pleasurable discomfort I have quickly learned to appreciate as the sacred burn that it is. 

I felt myself relaxing into receiving the energy of the medicine, tingling and activating my consciousness from the chin up with its deep, ambient, smoldering alchemy. 

Several minutes in, I started to feel the medicine moving down my body, flushing down me like a slow, intentional, radiant waterfall. It felt as though my whole body was dilating. 

I felt my body flushing, expanding, disintegrating and reintegrating within me. The sensations were whelming. Not *over*-whelming, but whelming.

I noticed my mind starting to come online as the sensations started to touch the threshold of what my mind felt capable of being with.

My mind started to speak...

"You might get sick"...
"It feels like you might throw up"...
"This might be too much"...
"Can you handle this?"...
"Can you trust yourself?"...

I let my mind speak for a bit, and then a deeper awareness emerged in response to my mind. This voice was different. It was steady, grounded, calm, clear. It said in response to my fear...

"Well, you could get sick if you wanted to...Your fears and stories can be true, if that's the experience you desire to have...AND, that doesn't *need* to be your experience...

You could instead focus on your breath. Focus on the in and out of breath within your body. Allow these intense sensations to move through you...as opposed to allowing the fear to contract your body, your breath, and your energetic field...thus trapping and anchoring your feared experience into your physical reality...

The question is, which do you choose?"

I felt peace in my heart, and I chose my breath. I chose to bring my present awareness to my inhale and exhale. I chose to believe that the power of my choice and where I place my attention could shift my internal and external state.

I chose to stay present in the face of intense physical discomfort, and believe that I had the capacity to know and guide my ability to move through it to the other side.

I chose freedom, curiosity, and embodiment in that moment. And through that experience, I was able to realize and claim an aspect of my power and capability as a human being that I didn't necessarily have confidence in before.

This experience encapsulates so much of what I believe we as human beings are learning to navigate on our individual and collective paths of embodied spiritual awakening. 

We are learning that awakening spiritually does not mean transcending our human experience, but instead deciding to fully opt into it, and become present and embodied in all the places where it has felt "easier" or "safer" to check out or dissociate.

Our true power to activate our divine potential in human form rests in our ability to find embodied, engaged, empowered relationship with the emotions, reactions, and physical sensations that have previously destabilized, immobilized, or broken us down.

In cultivating the practice of being in relationship with the inner and outer experiences that have previously limited our capacity to break free of relationships, realities, and paradigms rooted in fear, scarcity, isolation and oppression, we learn to shift out of victim consciousness and into creator consciousness.

This is how we shift out of a paradigm of finite resources, and into a paradigm of quantum embodiment--where there is limitless possibility, and timelines collapse in such a way that profound change in circumstances and identity can happen in what seems the blink of an eye.

This level of freedom, power, and spiritual embodiment is available to all of us. It is simply a matter of how willing we are to step out of what is comfortable, and into consciously relating with that which our mind fears may annihilate us.

I have found, ultimately, that our ability to expand and embody our most actualized self, is directly related to how much sensation we are willing and able to be present with in our bodies.

If you desire support along the way, you know where to find me.

Are We Making Decisions Rooted in Fear or Love?

I am navigating a lot of big decisions these days, around relationship, around community, around the ways I believe culture and connection should and could be formed.

What is "allowed"? What is not "allowed"? What are the rules and agreements we choose to abide by that are the grounding structure for the way life and love may birth into form?

And more importantly, WHY are we choosing it? Why are we agreeing to it? What is the value system and intention that lives at the heart and root of why we are coming together in the first place?

These are the questions I navigate, as I find myself with the gift, power, and responsibility of helping to create new models for community rooted in what I/we truly believe, rather than following the rules of what simply have been.

So I ask this question again, are we making decisions rooted in fear or rooted in love?

When we decide what is acceptable in a relationship or in a community, which of these are we doing:

1) Are we making decisions rooted in an attempting to avoid or control that which we fear might happen? 

2) Or are we making decisions rooted in fostering and facilitating the emergence of that which we desire and that which we believe in?

There is great evil that exists in this world, and there is also great good. 

As I navigate these real, significant decisions that I am blessed with the privilege to help make in my own relationships and community, I am reminded of the old Cherokee story that a grandfather tells his grandson.

Inside every person, there are two wolves. One is the wolf of fear (of anger, jealousy, control, guilt, resentment, shame, etc), and one is the wolf of love (trust, hope, love, understanding, compassion, etc). 

These two wolves are in a battle with each other, the grandfather says. And when the grandson, in his innocence, asks the grandfather "which wolf wins?", the grandfather responds, "the one you feed".

I am realizing more and more, that to feed the wolf of fear, is to also feed the evil that breeds the fear that perpetuates the fertile ground for more evil to grow.

We cannot shift culture or the collective consciousness, by walking on eggshells, catering to the fear and insecurity of our or other's egos.

There is a point, where we must choose as an individual, as a partnership, as a community, as a collective, that we are ready to fully BE here.

Ready to fully show up in this body, in this heart, in connection with our power and our ability to catalyze and BE great change in this world.

And the beautiful, profound, and important thing to realize, is that we do not need to be up on a podium, in front of thousands of people conveying these truths, and this message to make an impact.

All we must do, to be a vessel of great change in this world, is in every moment, in every interaction, in every decision we make, to the best of our ability, to bring consciousness and attention to where our decisions are coming from, and what wolf we are choosing to feed.

I choose love. Over and over again. For that is all I will ever be. And when I forget, I beckon you, my family, to please remind me.

I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I am here.

That Which We Resist, Persists

If we resist something that exists within us (i.e. a desire, truth, emotion, feeling, etc), we cannot be in relationship with it, and if we cannot be in relationship with it, we cannot influence it or change it. 

While it may seem counter intuitive, having love and approval for that which has plagued us with shame or self-judgement, is an unavoidable step in coming into energetic alignment with that which we authenticly desire.

Resistance creates a state of contraction in the body. Whatever we contract around stays in our body and energetic field, which also invariably causes significantly more pain and suffering, because we are clamping down on it.

It is through the felt and embodied experience of love and approval (as opposed to simply conjuring the idea of it in the mind) that move from a state of constriction and contraction to openness and expansiveness, which is where new realities and possibilities can enter the body.

This is how we release a truly undesirable experience from our energetic field, so that we are no longer an energetic match for it, we must allow it to move through us, which can only happen if we allow it to be there.

To allow it to be there, we must shift into a state of embodied trust that its presence up until this point has be in service to us in some way. That it being in our life has somehow supported a feeling of safety or security, or affirmed an identity that up until this point we weren't ready to let go of.

To do this, we must acknowledge that we have chosen up until this point to hold on to our suffering and pain. We must acknowledge that there has been something comforting about perpetuating our own suffering.

After all, who are we when we aren't the story of our struggle? How do our identity, relationships, and experience of reality change if we allow ourself to be free from a lineage of shame for who we are and what we desire?

We are being called into a golden awakening that can only occur through a willingness to surrender into a deeply psycho-emotio-somatic compassion for our gorgeously imperfect humanity.

We are being asked to release ourselves from the self-flagellating purgatory of shaming ourselves for the truth and desire that lives within our own hearts.

We are being asked now to reconnect on a deep level with what truly defines our value. We are being asked to remembering our worthiness NOW of feeling safe, loved, and enough.

And ironically, it is only from this location of having deep approval for the truth of what exists right NOW, that we may open ourselves to receiving the infinite bounty of the cosmos.

Welcome to the divine irony of quantum embodiment.