To Fully Show Up in All our Glory & Darkness

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To fully show up in the face of others, in all our glory and all our darkness, is a courageous choice to make.

I live in marriage beyond my wildest dreams. Not that it is always pink and frilly and happy-ever-after, no, it is utterly fulfilling for a whole other reason.

To fully show up in the face of others, in all our glory and all our darkness, is a courageous choice to make. The arena in which the depths of this challenge most reveals itself to us is perhaps that of our intimate relationships.

I was only sixteen the first time I made a desperate decision never to involve myself in a relationship again. I was determined to avoid the pain of a broken heart; I decided to be a nun. This lasted a month, until another prince came along and I was back on the merry-go-round of romantic highs and lows, happily oblivious to the errors of the past. Of course, I crashed again. And again.

My attempt to take the spiritual escape route was not very successful either. Although I enjoyed being alone and meditating, basking in silence, life constantly nudged me toward relating to other people. It became clear to me that I needed to find a way to merge relationship and spirituality instead of holding them as opposites.

Because most of our spiritual role models have been men who lived more or less reclusively, away from family and sexuality, it has been all too easy to conclude that we all should strive for a similar lifestyle to find spiritual freedom. Our attraction to relationship has been looked on as a weakness and a distraction.

Now that the awakening feminine is emerging in our lives again, we see a shift of paradigm. The feminine is naturally drawn to relating and to community and sees no intrinsic contradiction between spiritual realization and full involvement in life. On the contrary, it is in areas of relationship, sexuality, and family that she may find her deepest expression of the sacred.

- Awakening Women Institute