Shakti Awakens – Poems by Rowena Roberts
‘We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.’
― Anais Nin
Guest blog by Rowena Roberts, one of the women currently travelling with the amazing group of women on our 2018/19 Shakti Tantra Women’s Programme.
After her level 1 workshop, Women’s Invitation, Rowena Roberts wrote some prose and shared it with the women from her group. Her words touched their hearts, reminding and somehow magically capturing each woman’s experience. After that workshop Rowena decided to apply for and was accepted on to the Womens Programme. Along with her fellow brave Shaktis, she recently took part in level 2, Women’s Celebration. Once again Rowena shared more words to captured the mystery and the subtlety of her experience of the workshop.
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We are excited to see what wondrous words continue to come forth from Rowena as she continues riding this river of women’s mysteries, but here’s a beautiful start…
Following level 1 – Women’s Invitation
Invitation
“Try.”
What?
“Try.”
WTF??
“Just try.”
We breathed. We waited.
And one among us took that tentative first step; stepped up, stepped into the lake, kicked the first trembling ripple into the superficial surface of our fearful existence.
The invitation held wisdom beyond words. But it would have meant nothing, that step could not have been taken, without her courage. The courage to be vulnerable, to be seen.
Her courage was witnessed – and in its witnessing was softly shared, spread out among us.
Being witnessed, she found recognition, commonality, acceptance, permission. Permission to be.
And then. Oh then.
Then we saw the effects of our acceptance. Saw her relax into the experience, saw her fears start to dissolve, saw flashes of the bliss of being fully embodied, moving and showing and feeling and expressing without shame.
We saw her return to innocence – and, paradoxically, to knowledge. Full and frank, real juicy knowledge.
And we wanted it. Yearned for it. Desired it for ourselves.
“Come on in. The water’s fine.”
Fine, we thought, fine.
So in we waded, individually, together.
We didn’t know. We had no clue.
We thought it was fine. We sought for, hoped for, longed for fine.
We never, ever dreamed that we would find transcendental
Following level 2 – Women’s Celebration
Birthright
We’re only human, you know.
Beneath all the culture and bluster and blather and bother,
the hurry, flurry, slurry of the maddened mind,
the tick-tick-tick-fucking-tocks that snare us and tear us from our
(luscious, lavish)
presence in this world,
making us forget that we’re all
one.
Beneath all of this, we are…
(God?)
God!
Just consider the transient nothing
(no-thing)
of the treacherous bullshit that distracts and divides us.
His sordid rat race. Her resting bitch face.
My entitled rights. Your delusional wrongs.
Blindfolded to our birthright,
we lurch senselessly around Eden,
judging the vision of others.
Witness our wondrous diversity of spirit,
which we cannot comprehend, nor hold space for,
waging fearful, fruitless war against
our anguished selves, our self,
again and again
throughout these ages
(of reason).
Yet all the while,
just beneath our graceless horde of fascinating, futile, torturous conceits,
we are here,
simply here,
right here.
Only human, you know.
Only soundless
and deep;
immeasurable
mysterious resonance
surrounded by no-thing,
bounded and connected by replenishing skin cells,
soft and juicy and
wanting.
Here, should we
(should we?)
choose to,
we can reclaim what is ours,
connect with true intimacy
(in to me see),
shamelessly incarnate the infinite divine,
tremble with tenderness and terror,
shudder with the desire to know, to KNOW,
through flesh and soul and being and bone,
what life really is,
and how to
touch
(grasp, grope, hold, stroke, fondle, squeeze, slap, sneeze, lick, whip, embrace, expose, express, engorge, embody, explode)
bliss.
You can learn more about Rowena’s work on her website
