Bone knowing: Meet Julie Daley and embrace the power of Trust at work

Hello. It’s wonderful to meet you. I’m Julie. I’m happy to be here with you as a member of this beautiful tribe.

Fall is such a beautiful time of year and it’s fitting that I should be here, now. So much of what I am about, and what I am here to do in the world, is about unveiling, stripping away, revealing, and trusting that what is unveiled is more beautiful than anything you could have imagined.

Yes, really, I am talking about You – You in all your radiance, a radiance that shines forth when you strip away all the faces, roles, veils you put in place because you thought you needed to. I mean us all, and I mean You.

What happens when a tree loses its leaves? We get to see the purity of the tree’s true shape. We get to know the skeleton of the tree, the way it winds and weaves itself through space, and the way it is held by the earth while warmed by the sun. and then in Spring, the tree brings forth new leaves, new fruit.

So the fall time is a beautiful time of letting those leaves fall to the ground, letting go of the old and worn out, and going into a deep hibernation within.

Which leads me to things I love…

I love the mystery, the dark place of transformation that is at the heart of life, the mystery that is the feminine. It’s the place of birth and re-birth, and the place of destruction, the handmaiden to creation. It’s before all, and it births all.


I love to dance. I love my grandchildren and children. I love color and math. And, I love flowers. I love to love. I’ve got a real soft side. I feel great joy, and sometimes, I feel great sorrow. I’ve experienced big grief. And, I’ve experienced abundant love. You can’t feel one without feeling the other. I know this. I know grief can break a heart open, and it is an open heart that knows compassion, empathy, joy and fierce love.

I love to write about doing what we love, because when we are doing what we love, we are alive…truly alive. How hard it was for me to allow myself to do what I love. There are so many funky rules and notions in our culture about doing things that are hard, that are character building, and that make you strong. Yet, I haven’t found that doing what you love makes you any less strong, resilient, or character-full.

So, I do what I love. I dance. It is my main practice. It has changed my life. You’ll probably be hearing about dance. Yep. I’m sure you will.

What else do I do? This has been a question to live, because I feel we, if we are open to continually evolving, move in and out of ways in which we make our living, because what we love can shift and flow. For now, I am a teacher, writer, artist, and coach. While I don’t coach like I used to, many one-on-one clients for years, coaching is an important tool that I bring to what I do because it is about knowing, deep in the heart, that every being (human, scaly, winged, and furry) has its own answers, wisdom, and creativity. Every being is blessed with a seed within, a seed planted by creation. This is the seed of the soul and it is what I enjoy nourishing with beauty, love and a bit of deep tickling of the longing spot – you know, that place of longing that can’t quite be quenched until you come home.

I am not yet sure what I will share with you here, but I do know it will be about a new direction in my life and work. I’ve been moving into a really interesting place in my life. What I always thought ‘I” was doing is really already coming through me, even before I have a chance to say yes or no to it – neither of which actually changes it. I am relaxing into this. It’s not a passive thing at all. It’s actually a vibrantly active embrace of life, of this sweet relationship between lover and Beloved.

I tend to see things before their time. I tend to see things as they are being born into being. I tend to see things through the heart. And, I know what it’s like to be different, to have lived life differently than the status quo. My life has been very non-traditional and while I found it difficult to be outside the norm for much of my life, I now see that it is a gift, and is really a large foundation for why I am here, now, in this body.

I look forward to communing here with you. Until we next come together, know that life is moving through you, with beauty just as it is. Follow the scent life sprinkles out in front of you, to entice you down the path it has laid out for you. Dine on the succulence it serves up in your honor. Breathe deeply the fragrance that is you.
 

Untitled, originally uploaded by Annija Muižule

Bone Knowing

The bones know. There is such a thing as bone knowing.

Not too long ago, I went to listen to a man give a talk on awakening and living truth. He’s wise and vibrantly alive. He spoke of not knowing, about how there is so much we really don’t know if we just allow ourselves to be honest with ourselves.

I’ve come to realize that what I’d been holding onto as truth was really just a belief system to help me manage the unknown. Not knowing can generate so much fear. We unwittingly develop a worldview stuffed with beliefs to manage the fear. Yet, when we feel into the nature of the unknown, really feel into it, it’s not so frightening. It’s actually really pregnant with possibility, with aliveness, with the divine. It is spacious and vibrant, a pulsing sea of love without conditions.

It’s funny how we want to put conditions on it, even though we crave and thirst for unconditional love!

During this man’s talk, and then follow-up question and answer session, as he spoke of not knowing, others began to speak to the feeling that they realize they don’t know anything. That’s not quite right – what I heard, was the recognition of a similar understanding, yet what I also heard was a disowning of things we do know. My ears perked up, because in my experience, while I do know this pregnant sea of possibility and silence, I also know that there are things I know, really know, deep in my bones. I could feel myself squirming as the discussion of not knowing kept going – in particular, when I heard this one woman speaking of not knowing and how she didn’t know what to trust.

Something in me had to speak. I had to speak about the wisdom of the bones. Something pushed me to speak.

So, I did. I raised my hand and said, “Yes, yes, I understand about the not-knowing. If I am truthful with myself, there is so much I don’t know. I really don’t know what is going to happen in the next minute, or in the next, or the next. My rational mind thinks it can know, and I can see it’s my mind’s way of thinking into the unknown. I get this.”

“And, there are some things I DO know, some things I know so deeply in my bones, things I just can feel and when I speak of them I feel the knowing so deep that it feels like it’s in the marrow. It’s the feminine knowing, the wisdom of Sophia. It’s a kind of knowing that runs so deep below the surface of things it could be easy to miss, and is easy to miss if I am not in my body. This river of knowing winds its way through my body – through the cells, the flesh, the blood and the bones. My bones know. They know. I know this. I know this wisdom. It is real and alive.”

Then, I asked him, “Can you speak to that?” I was asking him to expand on this idea with his wisdom. He looked at me and said, “I don’t need to. You just did.”

I realized, my bones had spoken. I knew this. I didn’t need anyone to help me understand what I already knew. He knew I knew. He honored this. He didn’t need to say anything. So lovely.

In my spiritual life and the experiences I have searched out in a almost-rabid attempt to ‘wake-up’, I’ve spent many hours, sometimes days, even weeks, attempting to lose myself in the attempt to know the numinous. Looking back, I know none of it has been in vain. In fact, questioning the worth of it is a bit silly, because it is what I’ve done and where I’ve been.

One thing I’ve discovered, though, is that no matter how often or much I experience this transcendent quality of the divine, I still end up back here, alive in this body called Julie. It’s taken me some time to want to be here. It used to be that so much of what I felt in my body was painful. There were so many old fears, wounds, and raw experiences that I just didn’t want to feel or remember. But, something in my life was missing, too. The everyday, seemingly mundane, things were calling to me. Life was calling to me to come back home to here, to the body, to the senses.

There is this Oneness, this vast emptiness and fullness, the transcendent. And, within this Oneness there is this real, human life. There is the spirit and there is matter. Bones know. Wisdom is real.

A woman’s spirituality is really centered in this humanness, this expression of humanity that is at the heart of a woman’s experience. It is of the body, the earth, the bones, and flesh and blood. To know this realm of wisdom, we have to come down into the cells that make up the body; we have to come down into the cells and feel.

Yes, we may find things we don’t want to feel, things that caused us to go up into the head to begin with. Yes, it isn’t just wonderful and light and flowers, but even the things we don’t want to feel are part of this very real gift that is life.

This is the doorway to healing. This is the door to the sacred. This is the doorway to the soul, to the wisdom of the bones. This is the doorway to joy, the joy of an embodied life. This is the doorway to living the numinous right here on earth, right here in these bones that know.

These bones are not separate from the numinous, luminous spirit. The sacred is bone. The sacred is blood. The sacred is flesh. The sacred is woman – all of her beautiful wild self, including the fire, including the fierce, including the, “Hell no, this is not okay and I won’t stand for it anymore.”

Trust the bones for very practical reasons. The bones will guide you as you maneuver through your day. They’ll guide you as you raise your children or birth your creations. They’ll help you navigate your relationship with your honey and make major life decisions. Yes, your rational mind has a purpose; and, when you bring it into right relationship with your bones, you’ll find it’s a powerful combination to guide you through life. It’s a good balance between your own masculine and feminine.

Trust this. Trust you. Trust the body. Trust your voice. Trust the bones as you speak your voice. In fact, let your bones speak. You’ll be amazed at what they know and share.