By Bethany Webster
This is an excerpt from Bethany’s upcoming book of the same name. About the book and its message, she says that “Menstruation is a powerful time in which women can harness their true power; a power the world desperately needs right now…the power of vulnerability, which comes from the courage to feel what we fear may destroy us.”
Menstruation, that monthly bleeding that all women share, unites us no matter what else sets us apart. At any one time on this planet, millions of women are bleeding. Conscious menstruation refers to the profound awakening that is possible when we embrace our monthly bleeding with deep awareness and self-love. Menstruation is a powerful portal for women to enter into conscious union with Life itself, as the Lifeforce is flowing through us every month and our bodies tune in with the cosmos.
The current dis-ease of our planet is due to an underlying belief in separation. The healing of separation is possible by cultivating a deep, authentic relationship with ourselves and with all of Life. As women we have the ability to give birth to form, whether it be babies, projects, organizations, ideas and beyond. As beings who physically hold space for the unmanifested to manifest, we walk between worlds and are natural healers. Opening to the power of our menstrual cycle opens us up to the deeper mysteries of our own lives and deeper yet into the mystery of the one life that permeates all lifeforms.
Menstruating with mindfulness and love, we take steps closer to ourselves and to a deeper way of living; a way that is more in tune with and more accurately reflects our deeper truths and our authentic selves. It is a path of great courage for it requires us to ultimately face the death of what is false in us and to midwife the birth of the real; to step into our full power and the deep responsibility that it brings.
Consciously embracing our menstruation asks us to break some taboos in our culture, namely the taboo of rest and the taboo of abundance. There are unspoken rules that we must not rest or take our time, especially for the purpose of knowing and caring for ourselves. There is also an unspoken rule that we must not acknowledge the abundance already present in our lives. Instead we are conditioned to see lack and insufficiency, causing us to rush about seeking more possessions and achievements. As we break these taboos by resting deeply and acknowledging our inner and outer abundance we gradually come to a still point within, a luminous, aware presence that is our true Self.
The willingness to surrender to the love within and allow it to destroy all that we cling to is the death of the dysfunctional ego and the next step in our evolution. This is the willingness to let our small selves be destroyed by love, a love so big that it shatters who we thought we were, birthing us into something so vast, our minds cannot fathom it. This is the willingness to open radically to our moment-to-moment experience, surrendering all that we think we know and admitting that we do not know. It is consciously stepping into the Unknown. The wisdom of surrender is what the world is resisting. This resistance is driving us to extinction. Women’s bodies know surrender at the deepest level and so they are the healers and leaders of this time.
Conscious menstruation is seeing oneself as a microcosm of the whole and seeing oneself as the Source. For women every period can be a time of release and renewal, of self-awareness and deep transformation. In this way, women are stepping forward, bringing humanity home to the heart, to the indestructible innocence, sacredness and simplicity of Being.
© 2012 Bethany Webster