Maria Mar’s intimate confessions

Dialogue in front of the Mirror 

In the shamanic lore, an actress or performer is a shapeshifter. She wears the mask, becoming the mask. She enacts different realities, becoming those realities. She takes the shapes of the community’s disease or problem and then shifts that disease back into harmony. As an actress, I am a shapeshifter.

But for many years, I was a Shadow Shapeshifter. I changed my shape to fit an ideal, other-defined image of what my body was supposed to be. In our society, this condition is also known as the yo-yo syndrome or the binge-diet polarity. As an actress, I suffered a brutal pressure to constantly diet and lose weight. I not only had to be thin. I had to be super-thin. During my training as a Woman of Power, I healed from my Shadow Shapeshifting. I became a huntress and tracked down the Shadows ―or fear-based defensive Inner Selves― that kept me running from one extreme to the other of the Yo-yo syndrome.

Now my body is changing again, and I am once again having a dialogue in front of the mirror. Though, judging from the multitude of voices participating, this could be seen more like a town meeting than a dialogue.

Confronting our body-image and our body in the mirror is a delicate balancing act. There are voices that result from a Domestication process that shames women’s bodies. Our body is who we are. It is an expression of our Essence, our nature and our way of life. When our society makes women’s bodies into a mask, it erases the woman and creates a war between the woman inside and the body that reflects that woman. When this happens, we try to control our body to express what others want us to be, and resent what our body REALLY is, what it truly expresses. Our Essence is invisible behind that Body Mask. This unnatural state of affairs creates inhuman stress and self-alienation in a woman.

Nevertheless, sometimes our body is trying to tell us something, and we need to listen. So here I am, facing once again my image in the mirror. There are however, essential differences this time.

1. I love and like myself.
2. I know those voices and the histories and fears behind them.
3. I am not attached to any of those voices. I know they are just beliefs that I inherited and aspects of my totality. They are part of me, but they are not me.
4. I see myself with my own eyes.

I want to share this dialogue with you. At the end, I offer two Tasks of Power that have helped me and others to address similar situation.

MARIA: My body is changing and I don’t like what I see.

SACRED WITNESS: You body is always changing. Your body changes because you change. Therefore, what you are seeing in this mirror is the change that is happening in your life now. 

LA FLACA* (ANOREXIC SELF): You are fat! You’ve always been fat! And now you are FATTER!

MARIA: Fat is a label. You see me with borrowed eyes. I have seen you looking at exuberant women and judging them, like you judge me. You are a victim of other’s opinions. If you have nothing else but labels to tell me, I will not listen to you. I will, however listen to Grace. 

LA GORDA* (FATSO): Don’t listen to her! She is a compulsive mad woman. All she cares about is how men see her. How thin she is so that she can wear whatever is fashionable. How sexy she looks. She is hollow!

MARIA: You are another polarity. Don’t think that you fool me for a second. You are not me, either. You are a hermit who wants to hide behind layers of fat and isolation because you don’t want to face the world.

LA GORDA: You bet I don’t! I write beautiful stories and plays. I put together powerful performances. I do art. I am multi-talented. But what do all that people care about? How much my waist measures! It’s disgusting!

LA FLACA: YOU don’t do performances. If I left it to you, you wouldn’t move, you couch potato, you fat ass!

My SACRED WITNESS begins deep, slow breathing. My whole body is breathing. I feel sadness that these aspects of my Sacred Self are trapped in this polarity. I feel compassion for myself. I also feel free from either polarity.

MARIA: Anyone insulting anyone is a Shadow, and I will not do as you bid because you talk from fear and talk in extremes. If you have something to tell me that I need to hear, you better speak with honest feelings and say your truth without putting anyone else’s down.

LA FLACA: Okay, sorry. What I was trying to say is that I am the performer. I want to be thin so that you can perform well.

MARIA: That is a false belief. I don’t have to be thin to perform well. I am an excellent performer, with great expressivity and flexibility. I don’t have to be THIN to do anything. Actually, I am NOT thin and I am not interested in being THIN.

LA GORDA: See what I tell you? She’s obsessed.

SACRED WITNESS: Call Grace.

I begin breathing again. I call Grace. Grace is the healthy aspect of La Flaca. She is my performer.

GRACE: I am sad.

MARIA: Why?

GRACE: You have not rehearsed for a long time. I want to dance. I need to move. You keep me locked in this house, and I need to dance into the world.

SACRED WITNESS: Look at your body now. What do you see, with Grace’s eyes?

I see that my solar plexus is congested. It has pent-up energy. I am a shelf. I am putting my dance and my grace in a shelf, and it’s not going out into the world.

GRACE: Yes! That’s what’s happening.

MARIA: I know. But right now, I am concentrating on getting all of this business tasks done, for our prosperity, and in writing the book. It’s so hard to take out twelve hours a week to rehearse!

VIVIAN (MY SOUL-VOICE): That is an excuse. There are no excuses. Only choices. I am losing form.

MARIA: What do you mean? Are you saying that I’m out of shape? Coming from you, that’s surprising!

VIVIAN and FIFI (My Sexual Self): No. What we want is to keep our form. We have a form. Our form is who we are. You are not listening. You are losing the form of who we are. It’s not about weight or being thin. We are not happy in your body!

SACRED WITNESS: Listen to your body in breath.

As I do, I begin to feel that I am a closed book. My solar plexus and the upper stomach area are cluttered, like a thick book whose knowledge is locked. I feel very sad and begin to cry.

SACRED WITNESS: You cannot place yourself on hold. For many months now, you have placed yourself on hold. By doing this, you have created disease and imbalance in this body. You ARE the book you are writing. You write it with your life. You cannot forget yourself in order to write for others.

This impacts me deeply. I feel the truth of this in my soul and my bones.

MARIA: What can I do? I can’t do 12 hours of rehearsal a week, like I usually do. It’s not possible for now. It’s too cold to do speed-walking in the park.

SACRED WITNESS: You don’t have a lot of time, but you can take out 30 minutes a day. You like weight-lifting. It is very good for your menopausal health. It builds muscles, which brings you back into your natural form. It helps your heart be strong and lowers high blood pressure. You can do weight-lifting three times a week, for half an hour each day, instead of the usual long rehearsals.

LA GORDA: Ah, no! There you go into compulsion. Aerobics. What kind of Sacred Witness are you? You are an accomplice to LA FLACA! I protest!

MARIA: Weight-lifting is not aerobics. Aerobics are not necessarily a compulsion. I am not doing this to be THIN. You need to let go of your fear of being visible in your power and beauty. You create stagnation in my body because of lack of movement. You stop the circulation of life in my being. Haven’t you realized that your obsession with avoiding exercise is another form of compulsion?

SACRED WITNESS: Everyone has spoken now. More words are just Shadow Games. What does your body need? What can you do that will return you to balance? It is time for choice and action.

MARIA: Yes, I can do weight lifting more consistently, instead of the rehearsals. But I can keep the stretches by doing only half of the Dancing the Bones routine Tuesday and Thursdays.

SACRED WITNESS: That sounds good. If you stop working by 6PM, then you can do this from 6PM to 7PM, before you eat. This helps you not to overwork and to return to your body at the end of the day. This sounds good. How does it feel?

I breath again deep into my body. I am feeling at peace. My body is feeling light, energetic and joyful.

MARIA: It’s a deal!

TWO ACTS OF POWER

Holy Communion

EATING EMPOWERMENT 

Our relationship with food needs to be healed. I share with you a powerful spiritual revelation I had in my Healing Journey.

Jesus Christ in the Last Supper raised the bread towards the sky and said: “This is my body.” Then he raised the wine and said, “This is my blood.” He said to do this in his name. Each time we did this, we would be receiving his body and blood.”

In the Catholic Church, this has given birth to the sacrament of the Holy Communion. But I saw in my soul that Holy Communion is not limited to that sacred moment. Each time we eat, we are performing a sacred communion with the energy of Life Mother and Earth Mother.

To eat with this awareness, to bless the food and give thanks to the food, is a powerful shift in your relationship to the act of eating. I created a prayer for the moment of eating. I further developed the prayer by telling the food what I want it to become in my body. This is how my eating prayer looks like:

“I bless this food with love, gratitude and joy. Thank You!”

I welcome you into my body.

Inside me, you become health, strength, stamina, harmony, grace, joy and dance!”

Try it. Mean it. Know that your words send a clear intent to your mind and to each atom in each organ.

Body Metaphors

BODY-IMAGE EMPOWERMENT

We talk about body image. But it is fascinating to see that the body itself is an image. It is the metaphoric expression of your life. You can have a dialogue with that metaphor.

1. Look at your body in front of a mirror. Find a part or aspect of your body that you like, that you feel beautiful. It could be the shape of your face, your breasts or your legs. Contemplate this part of your body as a work of art, a metaphor, a poem. What does it say about you and your life? Write it as an Ode.

Example:

Oh, my generous breasts!

My voluptuous breasts!

You are large and bountiful.

You have to be.

Only in such abundance

could my generous heart fill at home.

2. Look again at your body in the mirror. Find something that you don’t like, that seems out of balance or out of place with the rest of your body. Contemplate this part of your body again as an art, a metaphor. What is it saying about the way you are living? Work the metaphor until a poem comes out.

Example:

The sensuality of my hips

is a mirror to the exuberance of my breasts.

Venus dances in the waters below

and is reflected in the sky above.

Who dams the flow?

Who closes the waters?

Who breaks the mirror?

What joy is locked away?

What bridge is closed?

I can no longer put myself in hold.

I am the book, and it must now be opened.

――――――――

* NOTE: La flaca means The Thin one in Spanish. That’s the name for my Anorexic Self. La Gorda means the Fat One. That is the name for my Overeating Self. These two Inner Selves are polarities from my Yo-Yo syndrome, a condition that took over most of my young adult life. You get an idea about how different personalities they are if you realized that during these years I had two wardrobes, and I swung between wearing small sizes and wearing large sizes, so that I wore one or the other wardrobe. There was no middle ground. It was a battle inside me!

Eye of the Moon 
Authors' Blog 

By Maria Mar

Seven Tools of Female Power
to walk into a truly New Year

The events of our lives are so tightly interconnected, and our lives as a whole proceed within such a vast network of purposes which we do not see, that no ordinary man or woman is able to know the real turning points of his or her life, the real crossroads where meaningful change can take place. Without that kind of knowledge, we can press and poke at our lives where we will, but it will have no more effect than a temporary disturbance that soon closes over again, as tissue closes over a minor wound. The kind of changes we seek to make in our lives are usually no more than superficial wounds in the body of time.

Time and the Soul

Jacob Needleman

Currency/Doubleday, 1998

A year ends. Another year begins. But what has really changed? Has your life changed? You may think it has. You may have done lots of things and accomplished many goals. Yet, the real change, the change that can move you towards fulfillment, towards a joyful, meaningful life, may have remained invisible. In that event, all the changes you have experienced may have been cosmetic.

Change is not good or bad in itself. Change is just the nature of life in the physical dimension. Underneath this dimension, there is another. There is a Self within you that stands outside the limits of time and walks through eternity. This Self is timeless. It visits you from the future and tucks at you from the past. This Sacred Self is Soul. It is your True Self. It is the Wise One who holds the knowledge of the purpose and design of your life. It works in mysterious ways because it is not logical, linear or causal. If you are deaf to this Sacred Self, you may look back to the dying year thinking that nothing changed much, without realizing that the changes have been staggering!

Under the surface, under the conscious mind, hidden from your Ego, subtle but fundamental changes may have stirred you toward new directions. Yet, if you do not know this, you may resist. You may ignore the destination your Soul seeks. You may, in effect, stay put in an old cycle of repetition believing that you are changing and progressing. You would be like an author who changes the actions, words and settings of her play, while leaving intact the same primordial meaning and experience. Your Soul, however, may want, need, seek and pull you towards a fundamental change in the scenes of your life. If you are blind and deaf to Soul’s call, you may feel split into two. You may feel that you are trying to catch up with where you are supposed to be, and end up missing where you are!

Unless you take time to listen to your Soul, you may live in an illusion of control, of plans for the future that drive away the present. Since you cannot foresee the future, no matter how much you plan, you are left without time, literally, with no present OR future. This exacerbates your feeling that you don’t have time!

In this day and age, we are obsessed with time. We feel that we have no time. We are obsessed with change. We seek to change, to “fix” everything to make it fit into our script of what it should be. Change accelerates, catching us in its momentum, until we are no longer dancing with life. We are spinning out of control.

But it is not Father Time that starves you and drives you mad. It is your blindness. You are living in a world that has been Painted over Your Eyes. In the world you have inherited, time is linear. Meaning, purpose, value and success are equations subtracted from each passing hour. You believe that you are free and independent, that you are “making things happen.” In this race against time, your Sacred Self has been folded and fitted into a tiny box. Inside that square box, you are contained by notions of time, space and life that you inherited. You are not free at all! You are trapped.

If this resonates with your feelings, if you too, feel that you are racing to nowhere, then stop. No rushing back and forth will get you out of that cage. Unless you become deeply acquainted with the design of your life, you may only find out what truly changed in your life years later, when you bump into the consequences of that change. In the Soul Sarongs Healing Metaphor and in The Bewomaning Experience!®, I share with you the Female Way of Knowing, to help you get out of that tiny room and into your Dream. Right now, I am going to share several Tools of Female Power to help you stop the rushing madness and open a space for your Sacred Self.

Right now, as you read this, you stand in a time threshold. Ancient wisdom taught shamans and alchemists that time thresholds are Power Portals. Wise Women used these portals to manifest their wishes. As the year ends and the year begins, you too, can seize this Power Portal. Cross into your Dream!

To take a step into your Dream is to take a step into your radiant, Sacred Self. This step is still and silent. It is an inward step. It is not about doing a lot, achieving a lot or pushing yourself to do more. It is about awakening to your Dream... your Soul's Dream. Instead of rushing through this blog, worrying about what you have to do next, for example, slow down. Breathe deeply and receive the power of these words in your Ancient Heart. Enter into a COMMUNION with me.

As you breathe gently, slowly, deeply, you begin to experience a new sense of time. Here is a secret shamans knew millennia ago. When you transform the rate of your breath, you change the rhythm of time.

There, you are now stepping into your Sacred Self. You can feel how the quality of this moment has enriched. Time seems to have stopped. You are fully present. That’s what your Soul deserves, to be nurtured each moment of your life. You are experiencing right now one of the Female Powers I mentioned. The Power of COMMUNION connects you with all the resources you need at any given time. It’s a door to the riches of the Universe.

Actually, you are experiencing TWO Female Powers. COMMUNION is one. RECEIVING is another. By receiving my words instead of rushing through them, you have altered your experience. Instead of skimming across the surface of reality, you have dived into the experience of Soul.

You do not have to try hard or fix your life in order to step into your Dream. Inside you, there is a perfect, passionate, exuberant and unique being pulsating. It is your DreamSelf. It is Soul. It has everything you need to be wholesome and fulfilled. Stepping into your Dream is moving towards your DreamSelf. Your DreamSelf is your True Self calling you from your best potential future. It is your Soul experiencing the present. It is your Original Face calling you from the past. It is your Sacred Self, living in all times and no time, but always present. You are the seed from which that DreamSelf springs. Like any seed, inside you the full blossom already pulsates! To help it bloom, you need to cultivate yourself.

Slow down even more. Make a choice to finish this article and do the INTIMACY exercise I suggest at the end. Make a commitment to become aware of how your obsessive Shadows steal time and presence from you. Make a commitment to listen to your Soul, to open a space to connect with your Sacred Self right now.

INTIMACY, especially Self-intimacy is another Tool of Female Power. To find out the other Tools of Female Power, subscribe to our FREE newsletter, Eye of the Moon. You will get the New Year’s Soul Sarong Edition of our E-greeting with a Cause, featuring my own story of stopping the world and awakening to myself. You will also find out what the seven Female Power Tools are and how to use them. You will get a FREE Soul Sarongs Basic Interactive E-kit to begin your Soul Journey. The link is repeated at the bottom of the article, so you don't have to interrupt the reading now to subscribe.

By the way, by committing to take five minutes for yourself, you have practiced INTENT, the third Tool of Female Power!

As the year ends, people go crazy buying gifts. The Spirit of Giving and Love is in the air. But the Shadows of guilt, insufficiency, and addiction also waver, creating anxiety in you. These Shadows may push you to direct all your energy into buying, doing and focusing on others at your expense. In this frenzy, you forget about your Soul. The time threshold goes by. The moment of power slips away. In spite all your activity, the New Year is as old as the one that went by.

This season, remember the Way of the Moon, the Female Face of Power. Grandmother Moon knows that she can give more if she opens herself to RECEIVE. She takes in the rays of Grandfather Sun. She fills herself with that gift, and then she gives from her fullness. Remember that the greatest gift you can give others is yourself. The fuller you are, the more you have to give. Take hold of this threshold to fully fill your Sacred Self.

The Soul Sarongs is an Alchemical Arts and Crafts project that allows you to explore your creativity, have fun and take time for Soul. Make it your New Year’s Act of Power: to ignite true change, a change that is meaningful and moves you in the direction of Soul. Subscribe to Eye of the Moon newsletter, if you haven’t. If you have, you will soon get the New Year’s Soul Sarongs E-greetings that will contain the story and the tools to help you begin your Act of Power.

Right now, take three more minutes to do the SELF-INTIMACY exercise that I suggest here. As you standing in this Power Portal, gather your beautiful Soul's gifts around your self and dress yourself in your Dream!

Okay, let me repeat the tools and the gifts you now have available to you.

Did you read the Eye of the Moon article about the New Year's Soul Sarongs? If not, go here:

http://www.shamansdance.com/archive-newsletter-EOM-dec2005.htm

 To subscribe to the Eye of the Moon newsletter, so that you receive the FREE New Year’s Soul Sarongs E-greetings with my inspirational story, click here.

 http://www.shamansdance.com/newsletter_subscribe_box.htm

You will soon get the FREE Soul Sarong Basic Interactive E-kit, which includes an audio and an E-book to help you create your Soul Sarongs.

Want more? Click the link below to enter our Christmas Sweepstake to see if you win a FREE seat in the January 2006 Teleconference Conversation with Your Soul. Here I will guide you through a journey to touch and listen to your Soul and set the foundation for your Soul Sarongs project.

http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/contact.asp?ID=75555

 I am giving you three gifts for the holidays. What are you willing to give yourself? Are you willing to seize this moment, right now? Are you willing to RECEIVE the opportunity that waits if you answer the questions in the SELF-INTIMACY DIALOGUE?

Go for it, then. Don’t forget to subscribe at the end of the process. You will hear from me soon.

SELF-INTIMACY DIALOGUES

Since I know first-hand how Shadows work, I am going to offer you a space right now where you can dump your Shadows’ excuses.

Click on the comments feature of this blog, and write down the excuses running through your head right now. Don’t censor. Don’t fix. Don’t make it prettier. Don’t judge yourself. Just write them down. As you do, make it an Act of Power. Make it an act of DETACHING from the Shadow voices and RELEASING them on to this page.

 Example:

1. “Are you kidding? Another thing to do! I can barely get my shopping done!”
2. “What is this hype about Soul Sarongs? A stupid art project is not going to help me!”
3. “I’m doing just fine. All I have to do is work more. Go on a diet. Try harder.”
4. “Why bother? I’ve tried everything and nothing works.”
5. “It looks nice. Let’s just bookmark the page and I’ll get to it… later…some day.”
   

Then, when you empty yourself from excuses. Go back and see how many of the obstacles your Shadows fabricated you can transmute into opportunities.

Example:

1. “I can buy the fabrics and trims for the Soul Sarongs when I go for my Christmas Shopping. There’s a fabric store close to the place where I am buying some of my gifts.”
2. “I won’t know if this can help me until I try, and since it’s FREE, I am going to try!”
3. “I will feel better if I give myself an opportunity to have some fun while I get to know me. It doesn’t have to be that hard.
4. It’s no bother. It’s fun. And I have not tried this project, so I don’t know if it works.
5. Some day is no day. If Maria took her time to help me, I can do no less than give myself the time, too. If is looks nice, then I’m going to get it right now!

 CLICK. There you are. On your way to crossing the Power Portal into your Dream. Congratulations!

http://www.shamansdance.com/newsletter_subscribe_box.htm

By leaving your Self-Dialogue in this page, you help yourself AND you help others who may have the same inner obstacles.

Take action now, as the Power Portal between the year ending and the year beginning opens! Begin your Soul Sarongs and weave the life you want!

Maria Mar©

"Words create universes," I said at the end of the article you read in the October 2005 issue Eye of the Moon Newsletter.

Maria: It's hard to believe, isn't it? We go around speaking all the time. How are we to believe that what we say creates our world. Isn't our world already created?

Corazon: Hard to believe, but simple. If we wake up cursing because we are late, we will feel tense and pressured. Our reality becomes constricted because we are already perceiving that there is not enough time. But if we wake up giving thanks to Father Time for having a day, we will walk during the day with a feeling of grace. And it was all created by our words and our thoughts!

Maria: It has to do with our attitudes. Because in the same situation we can choose to respond differently. We may feel pressured and we may think we are late, but we may choose to act differently, not to allow those fears to control us.

Corazon: The key is that when we speak we are materializing our thoughts, attitudes or feelings. The reality inside us is expressed in these words and becomes more solid as we speak. One way to shift our thoughts is by expressing the words of the reality that we want to manifest, despite our usual thoughts. This is an Act of Power of the Spiritual Warrioress.

Maria: We usually say that we need to walk our talk. But what you are saying is that it's important to also talk our walk!

Corazon: Exactly! The substance of your words can be felt energetically and emotionally in your body. It's the same as listening to music. It impacts your body.

Act of Power: I would love for you, our readers, to experience physically what music you are making everyday. What is your melody? Your rhythms? Your dissonance? Presence this for a couple of days, and get back to us. We would love to hear what you discovered.