Who or what is an awakening woman? In the words of Chameli Ardagh, founder of the Awakening Women global sisterhood and wisdom school, “she is a spiritual rebellion, engaged in a glowing and embodied, nothing-held-back love affair with the great mystery.” Chameli is a wisdom keeper who creates and leads retreats in both Greece and India, facilitates leadership trainings and leads online Goddess Sadhanas. She is the author of two books on feminine empowerment and spirituality, which have been published in three languages, and is especially appreciated for her passionate love of mythology and storytelling as a method for spiritual awakening and feminine embodiment. She also describes herself as a spiritual activist and philanthropist-in-training, committed to supporting organizations working on behalf of Mother Earth and the empowerment of women and girls. On today’s episode, we discuss her own spiritual journey, the deep wisdom offered to us by embodied spiritual practices, and what it means to be an awakening woman in today’s world.
Liz: [00:00:40] Hey, everybody, and welcome to today's show. This is Liz, and I am joining you today from central Virginia and the ancestral lands of the Monacan people with a deep vow of gratitude to them and all the indigenous peoples of the Americas for stewarding this land before my ancestors arrived. So in this line of work, I can tell you that there is no shortage of powerful women who inspire me endlessly. And with that in mind, I want to tell you a little story about my guest today. Several months ago, someone shared a video in the home to her Facebook group, which, by the way, if you're on Facebook, you really should join us. The video was of a speaker at a TEDx event and that speaker was talking about the fierce feminine. And I was just absolutely captivated by her storytelling. She spoke about the fury she felt at the injustices of the world. She wove in mythology and she used her whole body to tell her story. She actually roared during her talk. It was amazing. And it all felt incredibly relevant to our world today. Yet it wasn't until I reached the end of her talk that I actually noticed it was recorded back in 2010. Such incredible staying power. Well, when I did a little bit more research, I realized I'd actually been familiar with her work in the world for years, and so I knew I had to figure out a way to have her join me on the show.
Liz: [00:01:59] And it took us a little while to get this worked out, but I am thrilled to welcome Chameli Ardagh to the show today. Chameli is a Wisdom keeper and the founder of Awakening Women, a global sisterhood and wisdom school that serves as a practice community for women called to weave spiritual practice in the holy into ordinary life. She has created wildly successful ashram retreats in both Greece and India and facilitates leadership trainings and online goddess sadness. In addition to her women's wisdom school. Chameli is also the author of two books on Feminine Empowerment and spirituality, which have been published in three languages and is especially appreciated for her passionate love of mythology and storytelling as a method for spiritual awakening and feminine embodiment. As a spiritual activist and philanthropist and training, Chameli is committed to using her resources and influence to educate and support organizations working on behalf of Mother Earth and the empowerment of women and girls born in Norway. Chameli now lives in Northern California, and she's joining us from her home there today. Chameli, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with us.
Chameli: [00:03:09] Thank you. Thank you so much. That's a great introduction there.
Liz: [00:03:15] And for those of you listening, if you haven't seen Chameli's Ted talk, I'm going to make sure I'll put it in the show notes, because you really need to watch it. It's pretty fantastic.
Liz: [00:03:25] I love to usually start with my guests to get a little bit of a sense of your spiritual background and maybe what you were exposed to as a child. So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that.
Chameli: [00:03:38] Yes. I grew up in the west coast of Norway, which is very wild and rough, it's the Northern Sea. The weather is intensely shifting all the time. And in a country like Norway, there is not a very religious or spiritual culture, one can say. But the people have kept their intimate connection with nature. So I would call that the spiritual practice of the Norwegians. And that was what I was initiated into. But I lived among people who didn't really have a language even for a longing that I experienced in my heart since I was a very small child. So I actively started to seek out rooms and people that could could reflect back to me what it is, you know, that I could feel inside and I remember I had a neighbor who was a Christian and I tried to go to church with her. I loved just the ritual and ceremony and the smell of incense and without knowing anything or much about Christianity in that sense. And then I, you know, I soon realized that Christianity didn't really have room for all that started to grow within me. I felt that a lot of the things that I wanted to explore as I moved into teenage years didn't really fit into Christianity. In fact, there were people from the church that actually started to judge me, and I felt like a lot of shame for my awakening sexuality, my wanting to explore ecstasy.
Liz: [00:05:48] Ecstasy, the drug or ecstasy, the experience?
Chameli: [00:05:58] Both actually! And when I moved into the teenage years, also as a result of my family situation, I experienced a lot of suffering which really started to build up more and more in my teenage years. And I explored a lot of drugs. I was really trying to get out of, I had that feeling of like, I want to get out of my head. I want to get out of this limit, the thought machine. I knew there was something else outside, that I knew I was more, and I could feel that in nature. And then so very early, like in my late teens, I got introduced to to eastern spirituality, to art therapy. And when I was 20, I left. I went to India, and that was where I really started to to feel that resonance. I started to find paths and practices that it was almost like a recognition. It was like, Yes, this is what I was looking for. This is what my heart knew was possible. And then I started to explore practices from India. And for me, in the beginning, it was really an escape route out of here. It was this promise that if I only meditated enough and did practice enough, I would escape the mass of human body, human feelings. All of these things that I got so stuck in. So it was very attractive for me. I was chasing this spiritual carrot on a stick. And actually, in my practice, I had a lot of awakening and realization of a dimension of myself that was outside the limited self. And it was an incredible liberation. It was just a miracle for me, which, you know, made me even more and more thirsty.
Chameli: [00:07:49] I went to India every year. I gave my life to to spiritual practice and I loved it. And nevertheless, I couldn't find a way to bridge the inner realization with the way I acted in the world, especially in relationships. And then that's when I began to to realize that all the paths I was following and the practices I was following in all the big religions, most of the spiritual paths were created by men for men. And it didn't really address all the obstacles and opportunities I met experienced as a Western modern woman. And that is when I was brought to the woman's circle. That's when I saw that, oh, there's a whole new other set of practices needed not only to have a spiritual experience or realize a more expansive self within which is enough if you are a monk, which most of these practices were created for. If you're a monk and can sit still for the rest of your life, that is the goal of the practice. But for most of us today, that's not really our purpose. And so most what I was interested in was really to explore, how can how can I bridge that inner realization with the way I speak and act? And that's what I dedicated my life to, even if I had no idea how to do it, I didn't have many role models but I really married that commitment. I really made my life around that. And that's what I've been doing for the last 20 years now, intensely exploring that. How does awake consciousness express itself through the woman's body?
Liz: [00:09:55] Well, there's a lot that I want to pick up with from there, but one thing I just want to note that I think has come up with other guests as well, actually a lot, is the first real awakening experience being with nature. And then perhaps the disconnect that we might see and feel from what we feel in nature compared to what organized religion might have offered us, especially for those of us raised in the West who were exposed to Christianity as the first line of organized religion. So I'm curious if you recognized that thread back to when you realized that being a monk and sitting in silence for the rest of my life is not really going to work. If there was a thread through back to that experience of how you felt in nature when you had that realization.
Chameli: [00:10:58] Absolutely. You know what? What the goddess path has brought me to is to see that she is a promise of wholeness. And in that reflection, I discovered all the ways that I split between spirituality and an ordinary life, and we begin to see how so many spiritual paths and religions almost vilify nature or earth and body as our enemy, something we should overcome or control. We begin to see also how we act in our modern lifestyle today, the way we exploit Earth. It's only possible because we see her as other. We see her as something else than ourselves. And the goddess path is really guiding me into an intimacy with Earth and body, not as other than spirit, but as the expression of spirit. And that is that recognition of something I knew, you know intimately when I was a child. It's more like a remembering than learning something. It's unlearning. That's what it feels like.
Liz: [00:12:18] Yeah. Absolutely. Oh gosh, that feels like the whole lifetime journey, doesn't it? You just don't learn all of this.
Chameli: [00:12:24] Mm hmm.
Liz: [00:12:27] Well, I'm curious, too, if this sort of awakening to this feminine embodied essence, was a particular specific turning point or if it was just more of like a gradual realization that was brought on by, you know, to your point that most of the spiritual practices that you'd been engaged in were created primarily by and for men.
Chameli: [00:12:58] Yeah. For me, it was actually a very, very specific time. It was when the airplane hit Manhattan 911. That was a moment for me and the rest of the world. It was such a shock and kind of a wake up call. And many of us remember that a few days after there was like an opening in the veil. Almost, it was like people were awake and shocked, awake to what, you know, what is it we are doing here? What is it we are doing with each other? Just the horror of the conflicts. And the way unfolded for me was that it became a mirror to see that I who had been given so much privilege in my life. So I've been meeting teachers and paths and tools, and I had resources by being born in Norway, which is the richest country in the world. I had been given so much. And I saw that even with all of those tools, I was living in conflict, in my own home, in the relationship I was in at the time. I could be very spiritual in my practice. But once I started to relate, all the old habits of my parents and conditioning just took over and I saw, how can I expect there to be peace in the world if I can't live in peace in my own home? And that was a really strong wake up call.
Chameli: [00:14:28] For me, it was a gruesome thing to face. It was embarrassing, humiliating. It was, but I stood in that pain and that pain opened me to a commitment where I say, OK, I realize that the longing in my heart is not to get out of here, which I thought it was, which so many spiritual paths told me that was the goal. And I realized that ever since I was a child, the longing in my heart is to be more here, to really move into deeper intimacy. And that's what shifted it from me where I realized that even if I fail for the rest of my life, I'm going to give my life to to exploring how this big love in my heart can be expressed through my body, and I will support others to do the same, too. When we align ourselves with our inner truth in that way, it is a sense of success right away. It's not like it has to unfold perfectly for it to be successful. It's a sense of, Oh, finally, I am on the track that I am born to be on. It's like I'm at the right place at the right time and it felt scary. I didn't know how to do this, but it felt really, really meaningful.
Liz: [00:15:58] Wow. This occurred to me as you are speaking, and I'd love to just hear your reflection on this. I'm thinking of embodiment, and I want us to dig into that a little bit more. You know, for women specifically, but I'm also thinking of the idea of integrity and living in alignment with our values and for me, I'm thinking of how in a way that requires embodiment, right? You can't really bypass if you're fully here, because then your actions matter. You know, you're not trying to get out of this experience. You're here. You're in it 100 percent. Then those those choices that you make,you really have to own them. I'm wondering if there's anything that you might feel like reflecting on on that.
Chameli: [00:16:58] Yeah, I think that is a very important portal to explore and to walk through. And I think it is a gift that is coming in to a lot of the new age spirituality today, just when we coming out of this year or two years, I don't know how long it has been there, but more and more of us are really called to see that. Yeah, in the same way that happened for me 20 years ago, as I said, it was not like an ending. It was a start of a process which is, like you said, lifelong and many, many, many of us are seeing again how our spirituality can be somehow anemic or amputated if we are not, you know, rooting it in the body and in the way we act and contribute. If not just an experience we're having, which is nice. But yeah, many of us are called to to to bring it into action and and many of us also see that. Not only can it be, you know, not kind of contributing, it can even harm, like a lot of spiritual beliefs that can sound very nice and friendly, can actually harm if we are not willing to examine our blind spots. And the ways that we see it is that in our spiritual practice, we are often times faced with our personal conditioning from parents, from society, limiting beliefs, habits that we are acting out unconsciously and through our practice, we are given tools to deal with that.
Chameli: [00:18:54] And then there's a sense of awakening that, Oh, I'm not only these beliefs, I'm not only these habits, I am something more myself that is not only these different preferences. My self is vast, it's limitless. And. Just as we can examine our blind spots or unconscious patterns in our personal conditioning, many of us are brought to the realization that we are equally trapped in systemic and collective conditioning that is harder to see because it is the water we swim in. It's like we have been living within the construct that we don't recall normal. And then there are a lot of people and animals and beings that are suffering from this normality that are knocking from the outside and says, Hey, I don't have. I'm harmed by this normal. And then within the normal, many of us just, you know, block our ears and say, La la la la la don't disturb the peace. Oh, you are so angry. Why are you so angry? Why are you disturbing this nice normal that I don't see any problem with it.
Chameli: [00:20:13] And then, of course, many of us are confronted in our anti-racist work, in our awakening work to see that, oh my goodness, I didn't see that I was playing along with a collective conditioning and are actually, at least for me personally. I'm deeply grateful to be called out and to be to be made aware where I have not seen. My greatest nightmare is to lay on my deathbed one day and I've gotten away with being ignorant. You know what, if I had lived the rest of my life not knowing that some of my actions were creating harm? That would be horrible for me. So for me, my spirituality is really quite, you know, I'm committed to making this real. I don't want it to be just a made up, nice experience or nice theory or philosophy. For me, my spirituality leads me to the heart of the divine mother. And for me, my experience of divine mother is that she is the medicine needed in this world. And she is fierce. She's fierce. She's trusting us. She doesn't allow us to get away with less than the real deal, thank Goddess.
Liz: [00:21:36] Oh, isn't that the truth, though? Yes, it's not always an easy path, is it?
Chameli: [00:21:45] No. Yeah.
Liz: [00:21:52] I want to ask you too about this connection, specifically between women's spirituality and embodiment, and I realize we're kind of talking about that right now, but I'm wondering if there's anything in particular. It's certainly been something that's just become super front and center as I worked with sacred feminine energy over the last several years. But I'm wondering if there's anything that you might you might say about that specific connection that seems so strong between women and the body.
Chameli: [00:22:36] Well, the way I see reality is just one perspective, but the way I see it from the goddess view, the goddess path is that all of this is one energy. All of this is one totality, one energy that takes different forms. We all arise out of one source and return back to one source. So there is no split in totality. So the way we relate to this is that energy or that all of this is energy and it takes different forms and it becomes solid in different aspects of of its manifestation. So. Just as the scientists have discovered that when they penetrate deep into matter, they find them, you know, the molecules atoms and then if they penetrate deeper and deeper until they find waves, yeah, they find vibration, they find energy. And this is what the yogis has been speaking about forever. And if we think about energy, then as you know, energy is formless, but also it also takes form, and one of the forms it takes is the human body. In our practice, we can then enter into the spiritual dimension into that more spacious and manifest reality through the body. The body is a portal into it. A lot of practices tells us to move beyond the body and witness the body as an object. But for us, it is a live portal into the mystery, into its source, which is the source of all things. So it's not that the body is more important than other manifestations is just that in this lifetime, this is the portal we have been given.
Chameli: [00:24:38] And for us, born in the woman's body and I also want to include other women, we have women who are not born in a woman's body. But I identify as women and they find also a way to practice in this way. So it's not limited at the woman's body, but nevertheless, the woman's body is one of the tools, you know, to put it bluntly, it's a portal into awakening. So we use the womb or the womb space. We use the the breasts, we usespecific aspects of the woman's body as portals in. But as I said, if one doesn't have a womb, it doesn't exclude you from this practice, there are many creative, creative ways that we can use it because we can adapt this. Because where it leads us to,it's beyond gender, it's beyond form. And nevertheless, in this lifetime, it is expressing itself through this form and on the spectrum when we have, you know, vast energy taking form as human. That spectrum also takes form as God, as energy. So God is energy is also an aspect of this spectrum of manifestation. So in this way, we relate to God is also in one, you know, ultimately as ourselves. And nevertheless, she is not human, but she's not, not human. The human is not separate from God. And nevertheless, it's only through fully incarnating through our human form, we can access the full spectrum of her glory.
Liz: [00:26:34] I'm thinking of that word goddess. It's something that I sit with and I think about too and as opposed to divine feminine or sacred feminine. I wish we had a different language, by the way, like something big enough, you know, sometimes I think we need to invent a different language, or maybe it's telepathy or something. But when you say Goddess, are you referring to... well, what do you mean when you say Goddess? Because I could see that as this overarching umbrella notion of a mother goddess or the infinite different aspects that the goddess takes depending on your culture and your lens. Or, you know, what do you mean when you say that?
Chameli: [00:27:20] Yes. The goddess for me points to the ultimate source of all things, but the ultimate source of all things is not really gendered. Yeah. And there's many different traditions calling the ultimate source of all things all kinds of names. And I strongly believe that all those names point to the same thing. So I don't think we should be too attached to the different packaging of source because then we end up with these wars. We see, you know, like my packaging is better than your packaging, but we are all the same source. So I call that goddess because for me, it is ultimately a mother quality. But even the mother quality in its deepest sense is not its sum. It's the quality of creation. It's creativity, it's the source from where all things arise and dissolve back into and then from source manifestation begins. Like I spoke about how different great like it. It doesn't. It's not. It has manifestations even before it gets physically solid. So the way I relate to goddesses from different cultures and different traditions is that they are different by their different frequencies. That is part of the universe that we can tune into and relate to to awaken those frequencies within ourselves.
Chameli: [00:28:57] And also how we can relate to God for me, devotion is is a big part of my path. And in that intimacy, with her as a frequency or a form, as a name, as colors, as her mantras or her practices, all of this just allows me to have that more devotional relationship to her. But with the understanding that we ultimately are one. I just don't think it's helpful for us to lightly begin to say I am a goddess because yes, yes we are. But we are humans right now and that is not, not goddess. It's not like, Oh, I'm only human. You know, sometimes we can be so flippant around the miracle that we are walking around in here. You know, if you really open our eyes to what it is that is the human body, we would fall to our knees in awe. So yeah, and I'm like, you said, everybody has an individual and personal relationship to this, and I think that is essential. It's an essential part of the goddess practice, that freedom, for us to have that direct experience and not having to kind of compare ourselves or fit into dusty dogmas.
Liz: [00:30:24] Oh, I love that: dusty dogmas. I also love the language that just referring to these different goddesses that perhaps we resonate with as frequencies. You know, the term archetype is very familiar to me too, but the frequency just feels.. I like that, right?
Chameli: [00:30:44] Yes, I like the word archetype, but I know that it also can limit us, it can exclude the the mystery. Yeah, when we begin to speak to about it a little bit more like, Oh, this is an archetype that we can analyze and we can recognize, it becomes very human in one way. But I like the word archetype in the broader meaning that it's a frequency in the universe. Yeah, it's not only human.
Liz: [00:31:11] Yes. And I like the word frequency to because it gets back to the embodied. Like we know it because we feel it, we sense it. It's an embodied in-body experience, right? So you kind of talked about this turning point of 9-11 and I'm wondering from that point, how did you kind of meander along to get to the point of creating the Awakening Women Institute?
Chameli: [00:31:47] Mm hmm. It was a long period of prayer. It was a long period of dedicated prayer because I had made this commitment, I had jumped off the fence and stepped into the river and said Yes, fully, yes, this is why I'm here. Please use me. I don't know how to do this. Please guide me. And I remember I spent so much time just saying that every day, please guide me. Please use me. And then. At that point, I had shaved my head and I thought that I'm going to, I'm so committed to this love in my heart that I don't want to compromise it in power games and all of these conflicts and things that I associated with relationship. This is something, this part of my conditioning that I associated love and relationship with drama, conflict and and pain, basically. And it was such a commitment that, Oh, I have access to this love in my heart. I don't want to waste my time anymore being distracted from it. And so I shaved my head and I thought I had to be celibate for the rest of my life, but very, very soon later I met met my husband. It's like just a few months later I met my husband, but he was in a similar place and together we created the relationship to to support each other, to stay, to stay loyal and aligned with the love in our hearts instead of creating a relationship that distracted us away from it.
Chameli: [00:33:30] So that was really changing my life a lot. You know, I was stepping onto a path of love and to to explore and realize a love that I knew was possible in my heart, but had never, never experienced. And from that partnership, that's where I started to gather with the women to explore. And I remember the first time we had a Women's Temple Group here. It was me and one other woman and we met together just to explore how awake consciousness expresses itself through the woman's body. And we we danced, we touched each other. We created this free space where we could move our bodies. We could make sounds or we could just openly explore deeper than the thinking mind. And it was ecstatic. And from there, it started to grow, so more and more women joined. And yeah, the rest is history or not history. It's an ongoing exploration. It just never ends.
Liz: [00:34:45] And I'd love to just hear you talk a little bit about what you're doing with Awakening Women. But I wanted to share something that also was just lovely timing, which showed up in my Facebook group last week that you had written, so I want to read it really quickly. "An Awakening Woman is a spiritual rebellion, engaged in a glowing and embodied nothing held back love affair with the great mystery. She moves in the world with fierce compassion, grace and freedom, and is passionate about truth, rest and real love. She is fluent in angelic diva and in Kali roars. Earth is her home and so is infinity." And I just love all of it. All of it, even the surprise of the word "rest," which is so important, but it's unexpected in that litany, if you will. But tell us more about this awakening woman and who she is and how you're facilitating this.
Chameli: [00:35:55] Yeah, I am always careful to create definitions like that. You know, that is a little bit more poetic way to try to include our practice, different parts of our practice. And what I'm passionate about is that when we come to practice, we create a safe space where these places where energy, life force energy has coagulated into repetitive patterns that we're did not necessarily choose. Even just like these habits and patterns and beliefs that makes us experience ourselves as a solid, separate self, like I am like this, you are like that. It's a sense of identity with a group or with a sense of solidness, which Einstein calls it an optical illusion of the human mind that we experience ourselves as separate from our surroundings and in our circles. We come together and we explore all of these ways energy is coagulated and then we bring spiritual heat like the heat of awareness, the heat of our movement and dance and singing and prayer. All of that begins to melt these. I call these rigid patterns ice cubes just to have us remember that they're not made of anything else, that your highest, most glorious, ecstatic self is the same energy. So if we spend a lifetime pushing away unwanted parts of ourselves, we are pushing away our own life force, the life force energy that is coagulated in a pattern that we don't want to experience. It's the very same energy which is there. Like, for example, I don't want to feel fear and then we just keep pushing away fear.
Chameli: [00:38:04] But it's the energy that is coagulated in that resistance to fear, which is the same energy that's going to be your most glorious courage. It's the same life force energy. So in our circle, when we begin to melt these rigid patterns, these ice cubes melt and life force energy begin to flow again. We begin to be able to stay present in this moment instead of reaching for our strategies and these patterns, we cultivate the capacity for intimacy where different experiences can flow through us without us reaching for these predictable strategies and resistances. Now, when that is flowing in that way, there is no fixed definition of how you are going to be. Yeah, like I see sometimes a tendency in woman's circles that is almost like we are copying, you know, Audre Lorde, she says you cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's weapons, tools or something like that. And I see in the woman's circle that we don't want to be what we were before, and we move into the woman circles and then we begin to create this ideal woman that we now all are going to compare ourselves with a lot of. We see these kind of priestess images and, you know, like all of this, that now again create a sense of like, Oh, I'm not good enough or I'm not doing it right. And I think that is a crime that is the very symptom of what we try to awaken from or waking up from into that.
Chameli: [00:39:57] And radical loyalty to how life force energy moves through you. Yeah, that is unique and that is the intention of our practice not to become the perfect awakening women. So I'm quite passionate about this because I see that many of us think that, oh, I'm not doing it right or I'm not Goddessy enough or I am not in all of this, you know, just like our awakening leads us into presence and here that even identity with gender is not that solid. Nevertheless, to just answer your question, right now we see millions and millions of women feeling within their own hearts a call to the goddess. A call to bring the feminine into our spirituality. And it is quite remarkable what is happening in the world today. And we get emails from women in in countries where they have no affirmation of what's happening within them. There's a sense of longing. And then because of internet, they can now find other women like, Oh wow, this is happening elsewhere too. I'm not crazy. And then we can support each other. So there is something that is is arising through women today. And I think that is rising not only to benefit women, but to benefit all of us. But it feels almost like the women are pioneers in this area just because perhaps because we feel the restriction and pain of the old way the most?
Liz: [00:41:55] Yes. Oh yeah. I've had lots of thoughts on that too. You know, just the ways in which patriarchal structures they affect men equally badly, right? No one's winning in these, you know, even the people that think they're winning are not. You know that perhaps we're able to see it better or we feel it more to your point, or perhaps because historically women have been pushed to the margins that's allowed us at least more recently, I wouldn't say, you know, back in witch burning times necessarily, but more recently to get a little bit more creative and find each other through the women's circles and things in ways that maybe men really are not encouraged and are actively discouraged to do.Two words also that came up for me and you were talking before as one was fluidity, you know, like the ice cube, too, which is so perfect: water. I know that certainly has been true for me on this divine feminine path, anywhere that I'm feeling a little rigid, it is almost a guarantee that she's going to come and pull the rug out from under me any time. That feels like it's very fixed. You know, so that idea of being fluid and the other word that came up was multiplicity. You know, celebrating just these infinite ways in which she can express herself, I guess, and that they are all different and they're all beautiful.
Chameli: [00:43:46] Yes.
Liz: [00:43:48] Yeah. I'd love to talk to you, especially since I started with this, how your love of mythology and storytelling, how that fits into your work and how I hate the word tool that feels very functional, you know, but how that serves as a tool in this path of awakening women?
Chameli: [00:44:07] Yeah, yeah. In the mythology, I find these almost maps, blueprints, instructions that have been with us since since the beginning, and in one way, the way I see the patterns of mythology is that they express themselves through stories in the human realm. But the stories they point to patterns that are not only human, they are universal patterns. And they show us just how different, how energy moves. And also they show us how humanity has interpreted these energies and and created societies and relationships and the way we get stuck in those areas and the way we can find our way through. For me, the study of mythology, I call it embodied mythology. When is to recognize these patterns and instructions within ourselves and then begin to see that whatever I recognize of the vision or separation within myself is manifested outside, too. So then you begin to see that. But what we see in the global dynamic, in the society and in collective structures are the same patterns that we see in our own inner individual personal practice in awakening. And I like I sometimes use the word like web consciousness. I come from Norway, and in Norse mythology there is this notion of wyrd, which is the World Web. Yeah. And each thread in this web. And for me, the study and practice with embodied mythologies awake in that web consciousness where you begin to see patterns and connections, you begin to see the, yeah, the interconnectedness of all things.
Chameli: [00:46:07] You begin to not only see separate objects, you begin to see the breath in between the people, you begin to see the white space. We can see all of these, these things that we so often overlook. You begin to see the patterns of of cycles and seasons and you begin to see patterns like the leaves in the springtime, the leaves they come back on the tree. These leaves, they are new this spring. But the pattern of of the leaves the blueprint of the leaves is a recurring pattern. Yeah, it's so we begin to be more and more aware of of the connectivity, not only the different objects of our experience, and that links us to so much resources. You begin to link us to memory and wisdom that has been passed on through generations. It it, it opens them. You live in a more multidimensional self and world and your self is interconnected with the rest of the world. So for me, it's just super. I just have a very deep love affair with the mythology from all over the world.
Liz: [00:47:34] Yeah, oh, I love that. And so I have this question for you based, you know, kind of a follow up to that and I'm going to see if I can muddle my way through it. So I think sometimes about, especially if we think about the awakening feminine, you know, I don't even know how you feel about that or that language or the rising feminine is language that I hear a lot. It feels like there's a destination that we're trying to get to right, one that is more balanced and equal and fair and just I don't know if that's the right word, but. And then I think back to mythology and stories that we have, we read about conflicts and struggles that have been going on, you know, so it's very relevant to our world today. But it brings up this question for me, and I wonder how you feel about this is: is there a "there" that we're actually getting to? Or are we destined to to enact the same cycles and patterns over again? Or I don't know, that's about as good as I've got it. Can you run with that?
Chameli: [00:48:50] Yeah, I have that question a lot. And I think perhaps the closest we can come to some kind of reconciliation or a way that we can relate to, this is the image of the spiral. Yeah, that we come back. But we come back in a different evolutionary round that we, you know that we can experience this in our personal life, too, that patterns come back. But different. You relate to them differently or you you have an insight, that is. I've been in spiritual practice for 30 years now. And even before that, I started therapy. And so I've been really examining my own patterns. I had to do that because I was really I had, you know, it was dysfunctional the way I grew up. So I had to do a lot of healing work just to function. And just now I'm 50 and there's a new wave of healing work coming up in my lap. And there's some of those areas where I go, I've done this before. I was like, Oh, but but you know, I've worked so much with my father wound or whatever, and then it comes up in a different way. Yeah, it's like all of a sudden there's a deeper layer that wants to be healed and seen and recognized in one way. For me, my spiritual practice for the last 20 years has been to welcome all the exiled parts back into the heart of the mother, to see all those parts that are left behind that I thought did not have space in spirituality and to embrace them back into the wholeness, into her wholeness.
Chameli: [00:50:40] Yeah, so there are definitely patterns repeating itself forever and ever and ever. I'm a person to look to the past. I love history. I love to look at the past. I love to look at the patterns, and what I see is that we live in the, you know, there has been thousands and thousands of years of these patterns. But even if it's, you know, six or seven thousand years of the patterns of patriarchy and conflict, there are traces of history before that, which was maybe one hundred two hundred thousand years that looks like it was different. So I think we have a memory and history within us, in ourselves, in our DNA of how to live in the reciprocity and honor and respect with Earth and make that actually our main focus. And from there, humanity has a whole whole, you know, we have much more resources in our hands to also live in peace with each other. I think that we will never have fully peace. Like you see that even with children, that we fight. So I think that the peace we are looking for and harmony has to include diversity and different opinions and include a tolerance even for passionate disagreement. I think that is what's happening in human consciousness today. You know, it's so much of my life I have, I have thought that the solution is that if everybody just believed like I do, then we will all live in peace.
Liz: [00:52:31] All eight billion of us!
Chameli: [00:52:35] Exactly! But do you think it's never going to happen? Yeah, this earth is full of diversity. And in fact, that is the nature of God, this diversity. So I think it's a whole different kind of evolution to instead of trying to convince someone else to have the same opinion than you, it is to find a place where we can meet with differences.
Liz: [00:52:56] Yes. Yes, absolutely. And I was thinking of, you know, stories even now, I think we're seeing, you know, if we look at them from a different lens that our understanding of what they have to teach us shifts. For example, I'm thinking of the story of the American Thanksgiving, right? Well, you dig a little deeper into that and you realize that is a fallacy, right? It's a fantasy woven by white settlers. If you examine that story from an indigenous perspective, it's still a valuable story, but you get a very different lesson from it. And you know, you can even explore gratitude, I suppose, from that story, but you're going to take it in a totally different way.
Chameli: [00:53:43] Yeah, and that's also exactly and this is part of the study of mythology, too, especially from the gods perspective, is that you constantly have to turn, you have to constantly explore different perspective and ask yourself who is telling the story. So as a goddess practitioner and a woman exploring the myths from all over the world, you very quickly discover the lens and the biases of of, the person who wrote it down, for example, or the the the perspective of patriarchy comes in very quickly or white supremacy coming very quickly. So you have to, like you are saying, that if you just shift to ask who's telling the story and if you shift from the story to some of the other people that were there, you may, you know, you may discover a completely different story. And this is such a good example of colonization where we are in this bubble of the white supremacy of white colonists. And we have all these glorious stories. And then, you know, you wake up and begin to see that, wow, what about the people who were already on here? Yeah, what? What about them? How is that for them? You know, for them, it's a nightmare. These kind of glorious pioneer stories we tell.
Liz: [00:55:10] Yeah, absolutely. The other thing I'm so glad that you came to, if any of you have been listeners for a while, you know, we explore the history here of evidence of goddess worship and the presence of ancestral women going way back. But I feel like it is always good to get a reminder that while three to 5000 years of history sounds like a big deal compared to our lifetime, it isn't. When we think about what we know about how long people have been human, which is, yes, 100,000 years and maybe longer, this what science tells us, right? I mean, we know that figurines of women have been found to, you know, back 250,000 years now in Israel and Morocco. So, so there's a whole story there. Even if we don't have it written down, there's a story there. And I just I loved how you I think you mentioned a remembrance or memory that we have of it.
Chameli: [00:56:11] It lives up. There's an archaeologist from Eastern Europe, Marija Gimbutas. Yes, who have done a lot of work excavating, you know, to try to find proof and traces of these cultures. And so not so since we don't have written stories from that time, but we have have the figurines, we have the different archaeology sites. And in that work, she has discovered there was one beautiful way that she discovered this was that when you go dig down into holy sites, oftentimes it starts with a Christian church and then you have to dig below it. You find pagan sites and then below it, you find different cultures and different times and and they are in layers on top of each other. And she says that in some layers, you find a lot of weapons and you realize that this culture was, you know, in a lot of wars. And what she found through these layers, that was at least, you know, many thousand years in Europe where there was enormous amount of goddess figurines and sculptures and and sacred symbols. And in those thousands years and these layers, she didn't find any weapons she didn't know, and it was quite remarkable.
Chameli: [00:57:34] And so she presented the theory that we at least that's what she can show that it was thousands of years of goddess centered peaceful living. For me, it's an important imprint because there's a lot of identification, at least for me. When I begin to see all the horrendous things that humanity has done to Earth. There is a kind of a shameful sense of being human, almost like, are we? Are we a lost species? Is the Earth better without us here? I think it is important for me. I know that I am a child of the goddess. I'm not a mistake. So for me, it's important to find a model for a humanity that lived in honor and reciprocity with all things here. And it helps me to see that we have done it.
Liz: [00:58:38] Yes, I totally agree. And, you know, Joan Marler, who worked very closely with Maria Gimbutas and edited, I believe, the Civilization of the Goddess by Maria, was a guest on the show, a couple of episodes back. And so listeners. Look, if you haven't heard it, go back and listen to it.
Liz: [00:59:06] Well, you know, I want to. I want to honor your time, but I feel like I've got this one last question that I want to ask you that I'm thinking and it feels sort of perfect where our conversation is gone or thinking about how we can envision a different kind of future and how maybe these these stories of conflict that we have heard and been told all our lives aren't the whole story. And so here's my question for you is, you know, you referenced having done this work for, I think you said at least 20 years. And I'm curious. It feels like to me, maybe it's just my own trajectory. It feels like there's really rapid change happening right now. But I'm curious what shifts have you seen since you've been doing this, this work and how you see this understanding of the sacred feminine wisdom shifting and changing in this moment?
Chameli: [01:00:06] Yeah, it has been a shift. I remember when I started, there was a lot of work, a lot of the work was to explain or to explain what even the sacred feminine is, and I feel that more and more people now have more awareness of it, and more and more women are drawn and have a practice and have an inside out experience of of the sacred feminine. And then of course, what we are seeing today is also this. There's another movement of a lot of young people and of course, a lot of people of all ages that are are coming into the field, also with questioning of gender and family, feel restrictions of the binary of feminine and masculine, and I can see that coming in as a gift. And it can be a challenge to begin to navigate that. Like how do I as a leader of the woman circle, include and navigate and at the same time protect this thread that I feel I have been given as a torch that is mine to carry for the next generation, and I have been given that by lineage of wisdom keepers that have been keeping this woman's wisdom alive through so many obstacles and and dark times. So it's different.
Chameli: [01:01:39] It's definitely a complex time, but I feel that it is a very potent and fertile time. It is a time where we shouldn't be afraid of being challenged, we shouldn't be afraid to examine where we have again just slipped into a certain kind of concept or an exclusivity or a box that that we now have to fit into. I think that again, these practices are leading us to a dimension of ourselves that is gender less. We are all, you know, coming home. We are all coming home from different parts. And what I see, also, with the men around me are really waking up to the divine feminine divine mother more than I've ever seen before. It's really realizing that, oh, this is the medicine that is needed here, so I see a lot of exciting things unfolding. In the Nordic mythology, we have these three norms. There are three faith goddesses and they are the past and the present and the future. But in a little bit different way than we see it because we tend to see future as a linear, you know, it's a place in front of us and in in these three norms, they are guarding wells. So it's like a more a vertical sense of opening into this moment.
Chameli: [01:03:29] So one of them is the Earth, and she is the origin. So in our language, we will call her the past. But here she is, the original instructions which are present right now. It's just that we want to reach ourselves in the original instructions. We want to reach ourselves in that vaster perspective. And then that leads into who is the present. She is here now. And we can we can enter into Earth through violence, so if we enter into the presence we enter through the body, we find the original instructions and whatever we are doing in the present moment leads to the third goddess, and she is what we would call future. But her name means that which is owed. So whatever we are doing in the present moment creates a debt, it's similar to karma. What it will affect, how the next moment in the future will unfold. So we can root ourselves in it in original instructions. Cultivate the capacity to stay present in this moment. Now we may see a more regenerative and kind and benevolent and honoring human presence here on Earth. That's my my hope at least.
Liz: [01:05:03] That is really, really beautiful. I love that. And I feel like I want to just leave us there. Stay with that thought. Chameli, thank you so much for your time. It's been such a pleasure to have you with me today. What a gift to be in conversation with you.
Chameli: [01:05:25] Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Liz: [01:05:36] If you want to learn more about Chameli and her work, and I'll make sure to put that in the show notes too. And just let all that soak in listeners and thank you all for joining me and yeah. Until next time, we'll talk to you again soon. Oh, and as always, if you like the show, be sure to subscribe. Leave us a review. Help other women learn about this. It takes two seconds to click five stars on iTunes, and I'd be so grateful. You can also pass this along to anybody else who would benefit. And until next time, I will talk to you again soon.
Speaker1: [01:06:23] Home to her is hosted by me, Liz Kelly, you can visit me online at Home to Her, where you can find show notes and other episodes. You can read articles about the sacred feminine. And you'll also find a link to join the home to her Facebook group for lots more discussion and exploration of Her. You can also follow me on Instagram @hometoher to keep up to date with the latest episodes. Thanks so much for joining us, and we'll see you back here soon.