Dancing With Calypso

“Women are as changing as the seas”  (Old complaint...)

Celebrating divine feminine independence and empowerment

She has been flying – or perhaps swimming – low on my awareness radar for a few years, with water parks, dances, and a Jacques Cousteau vessel named after her. She entered the realm of my imagination with increased impact after the Pirates of the Caribbean movies under her bayou voodoo priestess guise. But it is only while dancing the Sacral Chakra, the connection with the inner divine feminine, that Calypso made herself insistent with a message that I need to share.

“Would you love me if I were anything but what I am?” asked Calypso to her lover Davy Jones in the “At World's End” Pirates movie. He was accusing her of not being present when he went to see her for their once-in-every-ten-years reunion. On that fateful day, she was dancing with the wind, or working up a storm somewhere else. She was not in her womanly body waiting faithfully for her lover to return from a long journey at sea. She was following her instincts, elsewhere. “It is in my nature to be changing,” she explains. But he did not appreciate that changing nature – especially when he wanted to possess her. And he conspired to imprison her soul in a human form.

I haven’t found many good research documents on Calypso, yet most sources state that she is one of the first feminists “on record”. She speaks up for herself. She told Zeus that he was using double standards when judging the behaviours of gods and goddesses, allowing personal and sexual freedom to the gods and denying the same to the goddesses; allowing gods to have affairs (and rape!) women while goddesses were forbidden to love men. Calypso has suffered for this, banished to a small island and fated to fall in love with men who could not be her consort, or who could not understand and fully appreciate her true nature. She has also been silenced in history, oppressed in the patriarchal society.

Oh yes, the feminist in me is now awake. I can feel Calypso’s seas, her moods, her changing nature. I feel her need for social justice - regardless of sex, race or religion.  I feel her plea to allow humans love who they want. I certainly feel her strong yet loving need for independence and free speech. I feel appalled that our society still condones double-standards. I weep the pressure women are under to always be consistent and joyfully submissive – when they are not, they are systematically “medicated” at best; shunned or brutalized in the worst case scenarios.

In my dancing meditation, Calypso affirmed that it was in our divine nature to be changing like the seas.  We must embrace our independent nature.  We have to stop trying to conform to a regime that oppresses our emotions, and start embracing our true selves: our calm waters AND our raging seas. When we deny ourselves the sacred time and space to be fully and authentically who we are, we are missing a big part of our potential. That is typically when clients come to see me with concerns about feeling empty, lost, and overly emotional about the little things. What we deny within ourselves usually comes out elsewhere, and unfortunately it often manifests out of our Shadow in a self-destructive way.

I am grateful I have learned tools, like Reiki, Chakradance and guided visualizations to help women find their path to wholeness. Just this morning again, a client told me how more calm, centered and connected to Spirit she feels thanks to the journey she has done with me. She notices the small miracles and synchronicities in her life, she is more joyful, and her fears are diminishing. I love receiving such testimonials! I am so grateful that Spirit can do this work through me!

If you take a deep breath now to check within – how do you truly feel? Is there space for more self-love and self-acceptance? Do you feel there’s a big dark door that you are fearful of opening? Are you trying so hard to keep things together when you feel the call of your inner seas? Are you ready to journey toward wholesomeness and authenticity? I’m here to journey with you – and so is Calypso. You need not be alone or lonely in your journey. Please reach out, talk to me. Let’s see if the stars and the seas are favourable to a journey together. I’m ready to set sail – are you?

Sending you blessings of joy!