I recently completed my second Expand the Box (ETB) training.
There is an Initiation there where 5 different people scan your Box and Gremlin. I got the feedback that I was arrogant, too serious, cold and superior. A far cry from my first ETB just 7 months ago where every single person in the process told me that I was too nice, a “people pleaser” and fake. My first thought was: “this stuff really works!”
I can’t believe how much I have changed since then, how much change is possible in such a short space of time when I make myself ready for it. Because everything I had been doing in my life led me to the Women Of Earth Lab in Brazil, where I joined 34 other women on an Archetypal Journey like no other in the middle of the Atlantic Rainforest. I could not possibly convey in words exactly what we lived together, yet I will try to do it some kind of justice.
Something so unique is created when a group of women comes together in the context of authentically growing up and taking a stand for creating a new culture. The Lab was full of processes and Initiations that were enormous in allowing me to come closer to becoming a dignified arrogant woman carrying the seeds to Archiarchy.
During a standing rage-hold I allowed myself for the first time ever to own that I was raped at 15 years old and reconnect to this incredibly deep primal Rage I had totally cut off, to finally embody the boundaries for my body and sexuality. And with it I reclaimed some of my innocence and radiance. Something in me shifted, I started moving through the space differently.
After the rage-holds the 35 women all came together organically in the main hall and what happened next I will never forget. We stood looking round into each other's eyes and started to scream and shout at the top of our lungs “YES!!!!!!!” Our voice became one voice, a deafening roar of Gaia. I felt the vibrations of our rage ricocheting through every bone in my body, a sense of immense power filled my being.
I cannot remember the last time I felt such an ecstasy of joy, aliveness and togetherness, nor the last time I have allowed myself to be more ecstatically in Love with women. Nor even when I was so held and seen. I was so empowered and empowering. I had a Team within which anything becomes possible.
Sitting in front of a woman looking into her loving eyes as we laid our Underworld bare, I told her all the ways I could not commit to her. We held each other's hands and wept. I told her I loved her and I meant it, much more than before, because I could really see her now and was allowing her to see me. I cannot describe in words the healing that happened in that look between us as we held witness for each other’s Beings to unfold.
My unfolding continued as I de-baptised myself from Patriarchal games and survival strategies, and swam naked in the lake with all my sisters, feeling lighter after throwing off the heavy weight of the disempowering stories that did not belong to me.
In this cocoon of Authentic Dignified Sisterhood, where the women fanned the flames that burn inside me screaming “GO” as they watched each other rise, I sensed my Being expanding and starting to be able to take on and embody all this newly available power. I'm so in love with that tingling feeling of Aliveness in my body that happened in those moments when I looked around and witnessed other women raging, weeping and burning for the same things as me, knowing I am not alone. I am on the front line and these are my battle partners.
In the moment I decided to leave the Patriarchy, I felt a huge fear of knowing that we go first, the Women Of Warth are trail-blazers and now we can do it together, each one of us with our special brand of Magic which is so incredibly needed. So we celebrated each other's Magic, delighted in it as our own victory, because it IS our own victory. We became an organism, each one of us bringing an essential element for us to be able to expand and heal and move as far and wide as possible.
In this fierce commitment to each other and what lays before us, my Patriarchal strategies of comparison, competition and envy between me and the other Women just lost all its strength because it lost all its necessity. In fact, they became completely and utterly absurd next to the bigness and ecstatic creation of what my being burns for. In that polaroid shot of vivid clarity in leaving the Patriarchy, the strategies lost their bear grip on me. I could see the Gremlin tricks, its stories, and the trying to be special for what it was and I could choose something much more interesting.
I came to the Women of Earth Lab with the Quest-ion about what is my next step, what do I want to create in the world, what do I need to do to get out of my way and let what wants to come through me come through. And as I said, I was led right to where I needed to be, this Magic field, where each practice, each Map, each conversation, each interaction, fanned my inner flame until the fire roared inside of me.
Until I could know who I am.
My name is Lisa-Maria and I am a Sourceress. A Bullshit Burner. An Aliveness Ignitor. A Key and Spaceholder for the Emergence of Next Culture.
