by Prajna O'Hara | Dec 23, 2020 | Blog, Conversations
“Healing Cauldron,” an intimate conversation with Agata Krajewska & Prajna O’Hara. Agata & Prajna speak about ancestral trauma, the consequences of trauma, and the history of patriarchy. They discuss the limitations of non-dual spirituality and how it can lead to by-passing humanness. They explore the split between feminine and masculine and the opportunity for relating to serve as a healing cauldron for the aspects of who we are that are ready to heal and integrate into a greater source of love.
The The conversation closes with a section on the power of giving. Agata speaks about being the gift and the redemptive quality within all experience when it is met with presence and love: “Giving ourselves permission… to see ourselves where we haven’t been seen... [to nurture] the seed of love in all of us.”
Listen to the full conversation HERE.
“As a young person, growing up in Poland Agata always felt connected to the miraculous nature of things, though the human world around her was challenging and confusing. At the age of fourteen, she had a serious operation on her spine, which gave her the first sense of mortality. Recovering from that experience took the largest part of her youth and taught her a lot about her nervous system and embodiment.”
In her Awakening Theatre work held in a womb circle, Agata, allows the participants to be seen, heard and witnessed in love and care. Agata shows how deep healing unfolds: women access their feminine wisdom and speak their hearts and many gifts are found through this open theatrical process. She also works with her partner Phil to support men to be held, witnessed and healed in presence. She has a deep respect for the power of mothering and feels herself as a seed of love that is birthing and mothering in a different way through listening to her feminine heart.
by Prajna O'Hara | Dec 11, 2020 | Blog, Conversations
*Title image credit to Anita Hübsch.
“In and Down” is an intimate conversation with Prajna and her guest Claudia Neubert. At the time of this conversation, Claudia is in the final stage of pregnancy with her fourth child. They discuss how her connection to her body, her womb, and the natural process of birthing progressed as she came in and down to the innate wisdom in her body. “COME IN AND DOWN.”
These were the words that changed everything for Claudia. It was her first meeting and meditation with Prajna. Suddenly it hit her: “Damn, I haven’t been IN and DOWN for many years.” The spiritual concept that she had until that moment was that it is all about going up and out.
Claudia nursing two of her children, 2020.
The changes that happened from then on were huge. Claudia left the more male oriented spiritual path, had a much greater YES to her life as a mother and a woman, and started to develop a real relationship with the earth and her body. She realizes it is all about honoring life, the great SHE, the earth without getting lost. For her, Prajna embodies movement and stillness, form and nothingness at the same time. As a teacher, sister, and friend she loves her as a guide of love and truth.
Listen to the full conversation HERE.
Pepe Ferdinand Neubert was born on the Solstice Dec 21, 2020.
Claudia is interested in self-determined birthing, healing her womb space through each pregnancy and getting in touch with her internal wisdom. She believes in being a mother as a way of grounding and living in her spirituality and family life as a form of retreat. To understand her own awakening, she looks to female guides and teachers who are mothers. She offers women’s circles, connecting with the wisdom of the earth through our female bodies, focusing on feeling rather than thinking.
by Prajna O'Hara | Dec 10, 2020 | Blog, Conversations
In this Conversation with Dr. Nicole Beasley, we explore the call to be a healer, and loving darkness, welcoming darkness, healing through darkness. We discuss growing up at the end of the Civil Rights movement in a brown body yet a white world.
Nicole’s strong yearning for God began to receive answers at age 20. “I’m not alone. Spirit is here.” She began learning how to care for herself in a sacred way. “Women know at a visceral level, it’s not ok to be female.” Nicole continued to reclaim herself by going through layers of memories and pain to reclaim the aliveness of her womb. “This line doesn’t meet the circle. The Circle has so much wisdom.” With a passion to meet darkness, she felt called to love what has been labeled unlovable. The path of love is her chosen hard and beautiful way.
We discuss historical mental illness, labels, trauma, and choosing between joining a monastery or becoming a mother in order to awaken to herself as spirit. Even though Nicole’s teacher at the time told her that if she chose to be a mother her chances of awakening would be like “a snowball surviving in hell.” Nicole followed here heart’s journey as a mother to discover transformation, healing and deep rest. She realized mediation is rest—in the trees, in nature, in life with her children. All of her striving for awakening was broken in the fire of mothering. She saw the idea of awakening only happening in a monastery as a trick of an old school egoic tendency. “Tumbling through a river to discover what spirit is creating. Presence is a yes to hearing what may not be spoken.”
In short: we discuss Nicole’s spiritual journey and how she realized love is at the heart of it. Leaving her spiritual teacher and the possibility of living at a monastery behind to become a mother was a transformational step on her spiritual journey. Surprisingly it lead her to a more embodied experience of awakening. She was unable to strive in a linear way toward her egoic notions of awakening. In this talk we discuss how life shapes us into awaken through love. Enjoy!
Listen to the conversation HERE.
? To receive Nicole’s “Love Notes” please go to: https://nicolebeasley.com/love-notes/
by Prajna O'Hara | Dec 10, 2020 | Blog, Conversations
In this Conversation with Tamar bat Yehudit, we unpack her spiritual journey as a young mother in a difficult orthodox marriage and the stress this created in her body. Tamar followed an inner impulse to leave her family in order to honor the innate wisdom in her body and return better equipped. She found healing, sustenance and power in the fertile ground of the earth womb and female guides. The womb of mother earth rekindled her organic, natural and compassionate capacity to heal and cherish her natural relationship to her body, life as a mother and autonomy on her path.
Tamar felt a natural freedom of wonder, bliss and curiosity in her body up until age 8 or 9 when she increasingly encountered the restrictions of religion. In a festive ritual of dancing with the sacred Torah scrolls rather than experiencing a “protection and celebration of what is precious,” she felt danger and shame, and began to doubt and disconnect from the precious joy in her body.
She struggled for many years with depression, suicidal thoughts and confusion that disconnected her from her body’s guidance. She did not know where she fit in. At age 17 she left South Africa and moved to Israel. A few months later, she dated and married her husband and moved into an insular ultra-orthodox Jewish community. Pregnant at age 19, she connected deeply to the growing life in her body. She encountered many treasures through meeting a birthing teacher and giving birth.
At the age of 28, her menstruation stopped. Depletion from a challenging marriage and exhaustion from the loss of her fertile body led to her journey towards healing and liberation. She met a new female teacher and underwent a spiritual awakening that taught her how to restore trust in herself by learning “to be on her own side and to transform from the inside out.” This awakening and learning empowered her to reclaim motherhood in a new way and create a life in alignment with the wisdom inherent in her body: a deep authentic knowing.
Listen to the conversation HERE.
Tamar bat Yehudit is a mother who is dedicated to honoring how spiritual awakening unfolds naturally in the life of parenting her three children through honoring her body and the female cycles of fertility. She has a passion for listening deeply in her body and to nature for guidance on how to live an organic embodied life from the fertile ground of her womb and the earth. Tamar shares her passion for creating circles of sisterhood that foster a natural organic connection to the wisdom of the womb.
by Prajna O'Hara | Dec 10, 2020 | Blog, Conversations
In this Conversation with seasoned teacher Jac O’Keeffe, we explore spiritual autonomy, attachment, and models of women that are also mothers in spiritual leadership.
“I’m done. I received my paper, ran and haven’t looked back.” This is what Jac said after receiving a degree in Theology from Catholic Religious Institution in Ireland. As a student, she found it nearly impossible to sit passively and regurgitate a head in the sand rhetoric detached from regular life. I couldn’t agree more as I was indoctrinated into Catholic Parochial School prior to an advanced degree in Theology from Boston University. She described her felt experience as one of dominance, control, judgment and lacking love. She was not trained to have her own autonomy or submit creative ideas. There wasn’t space for personal analysis or opinions. It made her an atheist. “I tried many ways to find love or God in these teachings.”
At age 30 she felt a strong tug on her shoulder, “hey sweetie, look again!” This was a spiritual initiation that knocked her socks off and turned her life upside down, as initiations do. She felt lucky, suspecting she had thrown the baby out with the bath water, and was ready to have a much deeper look. In no time at all, she found herself meandering through various different spiritual modalities and hearing teachings from a different place. Walking down paths to God or Spirit she never imagined, learning and growing in ways that spurred more curiosity and wonder. A big surprise came when she felt in order to go full on to God, she needed to leave her marriage. She felt the need to let go of everything to find out what the practice of detachment really is. “If I stay in my marriage, how do I know if I am attached or not?” This idea pressed on her night and day for a good long time.
At age 37 she left her marriage to find out. “Did you ever think about becoming a parent?” At this juncture in her journey she felt the need as an autonomous and single person, to decide if she wanted to be a parent. She contemplated this for a long time. Historically, she had not been able to find women in roles of spiritual leadership that are also mothers. Jac looked and could not find these examples anywhere. In her experience, we are not given examples of spirituality demonstrated through motherhood, ever. In my research I also found this to be true and wondered why. This is a topic of a larger conversation. “That was the modeling, zero, there was none. If I have children, my life should be about them. Children are a gift to the planet and require well-resourced parents.” She questioned in herself if she was holding an attachment to an idea. “Do I need to do this? I’m the youngest of 5 sisters. They all have children.”
She pondered is this an either/or. As she looked within, she clarified, “I don’t need it. I don’t have a karmic obligation to be a mother.” She couldn’t find a stronger pull to be a mother than to go within and be with silence. Disconnecting with everything, felt like the stronger pull. After leaving your marriage, how did the detachment play out for you? What does detachment mean to you? “Are we willing to be solo to have our own autonomy, our own human identity independent from those around us? Or do we define and find comfort and identity in the roles we play whether that be a lover, mother, spouse, partner, child, doctor… do we need something in that for our own reassurance?” Is the relationship to the role, how we are relating to or from it? Is it serving an unconscious need? “Is it compensating for something I need to do for me? Or I am running it through someone else or my role, or my ideas of what I think.”
Without prior role models, Jac simply could not be sure that she could be in that first marriage and learn about detachment. Spending time alone for a while she learned that there were some skills that she did not have. From that place, she prepared herself to be in her next relationship in a different way, from a different place with less compulsory behavior and as an independent woman in a much healthier relationship with herself.
Jac and Prajna are spiritual teachers with a keen interest in the evolution of spiritual autonomy, responsibility and leadership. Both have their own unique teaching style that draws on direct experience applicable to everyday life. This blog post is part of a series of intimate conversations with Prajna. Click HERE to follow the conversation. Please subscribe to Prajna O’Hara on YouTube to be notified of uploads.
Jac O’Keeffe offers insights and skills so that every student is empowered in their own inner exploration. She helps them cultivate inner autonomy and encourages them to take responsibility in both their spiritual and human evolution. For more information about Jac visit jac-okeeffe.com. Truth Serum Cafe Expanding the Field of Consciousness Founder, Association for Spiritual Integrity Author of Born to Be Free and How to Be a Spiritual Rebel.
