She sat in front of me with that burning heart that I have come to recognize as the very essence of a Yogini sister.

So in love with truth, so dedicated to the “real deal.” I could spend my whole life just kissing her feet.

We were in a gathering with a group of yoginis, we had been diving deep together for many days. This morning it felt as if we were dancing inside the heart of the Goddess, each sound, each movement, pulling us deeper into this unspeakable source of it all.

The moment was holy.

This is when she raised her hand and spoke. I know she was trying, in her way, to dive deeper: to be more “real.”  But when she started to share all her negative thoughts about herself and the others, it felt to me as if she energetically was vomiting onto the altar of her own longing. In this moment, peace, beauty, freedom, it was all there knocking on her glorious heart. Instead of throwing the doors wide open, she went straight down that old familiar road of “the story.”

We often think that the darker it gets, the more “real” it is. That the doorway to intimacy is through “processing our stuff.” If we are simply happy we get bored. We judge the happy people, as superficial and often times plain stupid.

Yes, as feminine practitioners we know that darkness is part of our reality. Darkness can be the most beautiful there is, the most horrible emotion, when felt freely, can carry us straight into the lap of the Goddess. Honesty is the doorway in.

Yet, don’t fool yourself into believing that to stay and churn in those yucky waters is some kind of virtue, that it will get you any faster to Paradise. In your attachment to your suffering it is easy to turn your back on the open door, and you look for a deeper meaning to your pain.

Of course you feel pain sister, you just turned your back on the open door.

To see the holy is an aspect of the eyes that see. This world is full of horror, and it is also magnificent. Just the very fact that you are here, and I am here, and we get to experience this moment, means that we get to be alive. That is holy.

Lean in.

editor: Greg Eckard

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Chameli Ardagh is a passionate feminine embodiment practitioner, teacher and the founder of www.awakeningwomen.com. She gathers with Yoginis from all over the world in live retreats and in online Goddess Sadhana immersion. “I have the direct number to an ancient circle of Yoginis, women who refuse to be labeled as ghosts, who are wilder, wiser and more outrageously devoted to truth than one can possible imagine. This cosmic contact has directed my life and practice into the heart of beauty. I bow.”