All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie.
W.H. Auden

SOUL WOMEN
by Natalie Brooks

'The soul is uncontained and wild. It lives dangerously
and is beauty in its mess.'

I would like to share the personal in the political and my experience of this as woman.

I want to write personally. I want to speak to the deepest places in myself and to you. This is my deep inner woman, she wants to move you, to speak to the passionate souls of women and men. Their yearning and deepest desires and repressions. She wants to be heard as part of the whole. She screams; she also cries, she speaks for the long forgotten yearning of the woman's passionate soul.

For the passionate woman politics is dull, dry and devoid of soul, she cannot hear it, it fills her up with words that does not relate to her inner being. It makes no contact with her uncontained spaces, the mess that is also her beauty.

She so desires that she can be seen in all the aliveness, beauty, mess: that she can be met by you as a equal. She wants that these uncontained parts be embraced as part of the whole. She watches the men of politics, and the women too, who seem to appear in masks. She wonders about the passionate souls of these women, have they been sacrificed in an attempt to gain acceptable forms of power?

I am feeling a flicker of weakness in my body as I write, it expresses my trembling part that often I expose and feels deep shame, yet I continue on this path it seems….. I am trusting of truth and how it can be held as soft naked strength. I wish to be released from the darkness of shame and give freedom to these uncontained messy places in my inner being.

I would like to share a relationship I am discovering with my inner male (diamon). I am beginning to understand this as a bridge to spirit. I am hopeful that he/she may touch a part of the passionate woman and the passionate man who yearns for a deeper connection to soul. I see it as an expression of the exclusion of the soul in politics. It is also an offering to reflect on the subtle struggle of two polarities within IPN.

The inner women speaks to the inner male:

This is me, powerful in my vulnerability; my soft strength is my anchor. I sit here as my authentic self and ask to meet you, my inner male, as an equal. I am not sure if I can trust you to not seek power over me. I cannot surrender to you, if I cannot trust you.

Inner male speaks to inner women:

It is hard to speak I have long been hidden, with masks. I am the piecing green eyes of the panther. I am the independent, resourceful one.

Inner women to Inner male: (crying, in a mess, she speaks)

If I express my deep need for you and you are independent, resourceful, what about your need? You are the articulate, calm and contained, confident one. I feel angry with you, frustrated with tears and fears. I am the mess, you are the articulate, calm, contained, measured one. I am the expression of the uncontained.

Inner male to inner women

I need you. I cannot exist without you; this is the true form of me, not the masks. I need you so I can exist. This is painful for me too; the inner male has lost its way. It's true expression is love. I love you, you are the expression of the uncontained, and without you the whole of me cannot be expressed. I need you.

Inner women to inner male

Thank-you, she cries softy for the deep loss of her inner lover. I need you too so I can express the depth of my soul.

As this process evolves for me I have wondered how limited the labelling masculine and feminine is. To reach a deeper understanding of these polarities in this next dialogue chaos and form explore their relationship with each other.

We often refer to these polarities as yin and yang, spirit and matter. How do they make contact with each other, where do they meet? What is form? Where is the bridge between them? Is this story about the edges of the unknown, undiscovered? Is this what form is to make the unknown… known? Here is my attempt to explore this dilemma.

Chaos: I need you to meet me in despair; I feel you cannot hear what I have to say.

Form: Why should I? Despair is dark horrible place.

Chaos: I feel I am left holding chaos, with no form to express it. You have gone away jumped a 'head'. How can we meet again form? I do need you Without you I will descend into darkness and not return. Please speak To me from your 'heart'

Form: I speak as honouring and gratitude. Dearest chaos, without you I have
No form. You are the seeds of the long forgotten.

Chaos: Wow (in disbelief) I forgot that. Joy is embraced, I forgot I am the seeds of all.

Form: Bows in gratitude, thank you.

Chaos: Chaos is held by form. Surrendering. Chaos becomes emptiness and
Oneness for a while.

This piece of writing is in recognition of my own personal story of despair and the re-birthing of my deep feminine wound. I believe it also holds within it the greater story, which attempts to unfold within the personal.

My deepest desire is the re-birthing of the deep feminine, what is Yours?

Written by Natalie Brooks. In honouring and gratitude to my partner, and men who have passed through my life who I have both loved and hated.