This is the third in a series, WomanKind, on reclaiming the feminine.
Soft centre is found in the scent of jasmine in spring, a warm embrace, a sunset, the fertile forest floor, the vast night sky, a sunlight rock pool, an awakened heart. It is the first smell of rain hitting parched earth, surrendering to the cleansing torrent, before being rendered to mud. It is found in the noble ground where we do dirt time, baked and cracked open by the sun.
Buddhists call the discovery of our soft spot Bodhichitta, a Sanskrit word meaning noble or awakened heart. It is the felt sense of an undefended heart that could break any moment.. Soft centre is a heart that has compassion for self and others; an embodied feeling that has both a fierce and tender quality.
I have been running away from fear of soft centre most of my life. I’ve caught fleeting glimpses of her in the twilight, hiding in the shadows of the forest, a wilder feminine self. I’ve been running from the work required to uncover her and what I might feel if I opened my heart to her. Now that I have stopped, am still, my desire for relationship with Woman, rewilded is stronger than the desire to protect myself from pain and suffering. Soft centre has finally come to meet me.
She has been lost and forgotten for a very long time. She is the source, the light, the night, and daybreak. She is the smell of good mud…she is the voice that says, “This way, this way.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves
I rest here ready to untangle my old life. I have to drop into feeling, drop into a very feminine space, become vulnerable in the face of self-denial, delusion, shame, guilt, fear and grief and be reborn in the process. In essence, this is what menopause is asking of me. Face to face with the life/death/life cycle of all things.
Something must die first, and it’s disbelief and distrust. Distrust of the soul seeded wild nature that has been tamed by my cultural conditioning. I have to trust what I see when peeling back the bandage, facing the wound, airing it out. I bathe it tenderly in healing waters. I have to believe that all I need is to be willing to show up on the threshold of soft centre knowing that she will open to meet me, invite me in with deep kindness and friendliness despite how prickly, heartsore and alone I may feel.
With practice, soft centre is accessible by descending into the deepest river of self devotion and self compassion.. In the turbulence of rapids, we can avoid getting sucked down by the current when we practice loving kindness towards ourselves.. We are carried along in the river of “bigger-than-self” emotions—gratitude, love, and empathy—expansive and spacious enough to include our pain and suffering.
We know when we have arrived at soft centre when we contact that tender, expanded, undefended space, despite the chaos that is swirling around us; we have created safety and security at home in ourselves. The nervous system is regulated, nurturing neural pathways and for a moment we can breathe easily into and listen to our heartbeat, our deepest longings.
As soft centre becomes part of everyday life, we experience ourselves in a state of flow, transitioning from one role to another with creativity, intuition, purpose and non-efforting, creating beauty as we go. The work still gets done but at much less cost to ourselves. This is the greatest representation of the embodied masculine and feminine.
Soft centre in a Woman, rewilded, has good strong boundaries; we are responsible to ourselves first and to filling our own cups until they overflow and energy is reconnected from womb space to heart space and above to the cosmos. When we give ourselves over intuitively to the process with no expectation, no control,, no judgement, there are no limits to love.
In apprenticing myself to Woman, rewilded, to doing dirt time, I go deeper to find that not only does soft centre reside in my heart and soul, it is in my womb, the space of all creation. But there is a block; the connection has been severed and my work is to reunite them. The purple cord, Bao Mai (uterus vessel in TCM) that joins womb to heart, reunites our wholeness – masculine and feminine – so receptivity, intuition and creativity can flow with directed action, power and courage. Ooh la la! This is the gift of the menopause journey.
The warm, nurtured soft centre in myself and in union with others requires believing I can jump into the river anytime. I can fully immerse myself with fluidity and ease, able to course correct the rapids, with the capacity to stay until it carries me to the ocean and releases me.
References
Dunn, C, Remembering Your Wild Self, Superfeast Podcast July 14 2020
Chödrön, P 1997 When Things Fall Apart. Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Thorsons, London
Estes, C P, 1992 Women Who Run With the Wolves. Contacting Power of The Wild Woman Rider UK
Image credit: the lovely and talented Katie Daniels