An Oracle of One’s Own
Your Direct Line to the Divine
The number of steps from you to God is zero.
NATHAN OTTO
Every word on every page has been leading you here.
The confidence, guidance, and salvation you hoped to find out there, can be found in here, within your body beautiful. Eros can embolden and impassion you for the life you are here to live. The wellspring of your light, fire, and inner knowing — the headquarters of your Feminine Genius — I call your Oracle. Actually, I call it the Oracle Between Your Thighs.
But let’s back up a bit.
Let me tell you a creation story of when the Divine created human beings. When she (we’ll call her she, shall we?) was done making the multitudes, she was tired and wanted to take a break. But we humans, fruitfully multiplying, wouldn’t give her a rest. We humans had questions. We wanted divine guidance; we wanted answers to our conundrums about what to do with our lives: how many children to have, or whether to have them at all, who was our best partner, the right way to pray, whether or not to drink water with our meals, whether to set up our doors to the east or the north, and so on.
The Divine took off to the highest mountaintop, sure she’d get her well-deserved break, but of course we humans found her there. We named her Oracle and gave her the official job description of wise counsel, divine wisdom, and spiritual authority. Beyond exhausted, she went into the deepest cave she could find, but of course, we found her there as well. Finally, she took off to the Bahamas, but of course we found her there as well, even behind her oversized rock star sunglasses.
So then the Divine formulated the perfect plan: she broke herself up in a zillion little pieces and placed one piece inside each human being because she knew that was the last place we would ever think to look, and at last she’d get some peace. Her plan has worked brilliantly ever since.
I was fifteen when I heard this story from one of my most inspiring dance teachers. For me, it served as an inflection point, one that you, beloved, have already crossed over, simply by having read this far. From this point forward, you will always remember that what you are aching for cannot be found out there, not in parental wisdom, in papal wisdom, in magazine wisdom, or even best friend wisdom. It can only be sourced from within. Your own inner knowing can be clarified, catalyzed, and inspired from your trusted sources out there, but its source is within you.
So would you like to know exactly where within you this power source is? Let me introduce you to your own personal Oracle.
The word oracle has its roots in the Latin word orare, “to speak or to pray.” Any oracle is a bit like an orator, as in a speaker, debater, lecturer, or sermon giver. In past times and cultures, an oracle was understood to be a physical person (although sometimes it was a location like a spring or grove, or an object like a shrine or temple) that not only had the ear of God but was also the mouthpiece of God.
Just as in many religious and spiritual traditions, folks believed that you couldn’t speak directly to God yourself, but that you could connect through an oracle. If you had a question for the omnipotent and omniscient Divine about what you should do with your life, how you should behave or think, you would go consult the oracle, which was endowed with the powers of prophecy. It could see the future and know what was best for you. The oracle’s guidance, officially stamped with the seal of the Sacred, was safe to put into action.
the Oracle as direct line to
the Divine —YES
that it is outside of you —NO
Your own personal Oracle is within you. It is right where the Divine placed it so reverently and irreverently, right at your South Pole, in every wise cell of your naughty bits. On the coattails of the Gnostics, I say that your Oracle isn’t out there on the highest mount. You don’t need a go-between. You’ve got your very own Oracle, factory-installed in your sexy, wise woman’s body. You won’t find her in the depths of a cave, on the highest mountaintop, or in the Bahamas. She is in you. In your body. In your female reproductive organs, in fact, all nestled nicely in the cauldron of your pelvis.
you can know
truly, who can know, but you?
AN ANATOMY OF YOUR ORACLE
Let me offer an even deeper view into why I believe that your inner knowing — intelligent, intuitive, divine guidance — can be found in your pelvis, your sexual center. The geographic area of your Oracle, below your belly button and above your tailbone, is also known as your pelvic bowl, and holds most (but not all) of your female sexual organs, specifically your vulva, vagina, clitoris, uterus, ovaries, and pelvic nerve. These lovely bits distinguish you as female and endow you with physical and metaphysical female superpowers.
Your pelvic bowl is made up of the bones at the base of your spine, your sacrum and pelvis. If you reached around and massaged your lowest low back (go ahead, you know you want to), you would feel the bones that make up your sacrum. The Latin root of sacrum means “sacred,” by the way. The ancient Romans called the sacrum os sacrum, meaning “holy bone.” The ancient Greeks called it hieron osteon, meaning “temple or sacred place.” Ancient Egyptians also assumed the sacrum to be the seat of special power.
If you then placed your hands on your low belly and inched your fingers downward (go ahead, it won’t bite), the next bony protrusion you would find would be your pelvic bone, part of your pelvis. The word pelvis comes from Latin and means “a cup, bowl, or vessel.” Sacred vessel. A much better name than those our sexual organs often get called, if you ask me. And nice to know that at one point, it was built into our language that you have serious sacredness down there, not just something mundane or profane.
So, there you have it. Your female reproductive organs are holy. And you are the proud owner of an Oracle, a sacred vessel for new life, ideas, desires, visions, and passions.
HOW YOUR ORACLE KNOWS
Let me offer an even deeper view into how your Oracle relays your inner knowing to you. As practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture can tell you, the organs of the body such as the liver, kidneys, and spleen each have a distinct and measurable pulse. And, at least one of your sex organs does as well.
There is an unusual medical instrument with a decidedly unsexy name — the vaginal photometer (I told you, not sexy) — that uses light waves to measure the pulsations inside the human vagina. And the pulse that it measures is a different and distinct one from the pulse of your heart and blood. And guess when the pulse of your vagina increases in intensity or speed? Not necessarily during sexual arousal or orgasm, although it can then, too, but when you are emotionally moved, inspired, and impassioned.
Your flesh-and-blood vagina pulses distinctly and measurably when you are experiencing a surge of meaning, love, euphoria, anticipation, gratitude, or pride. Your lady parts have a pulse, which a scientific instrument can detect and gauge, that fluctuates when you feel deeply connected, intensely alive, and divinely motivated. Your vagina knows.
And so does your clitoris. The singular biological function of your lovely, pearly clitoris is to create sensual pleasure — for you! All female mammals (and a few other species) have such an organ, one that never ages, sags, or atrophies. Your human clitoris has 8,000 nerve endings. The average penis has half that number, only 4,000. Your clitoris is somewhere between the size of a pea and a grape, yet has twice the capacity for pleasure than the considerably larger, banana-sized male member. When it comes to nerve endings and pleasure potential, peas beat bananas two-to-one, every time.
Bottom line? Your body was biologically designed to experience pleasure. Twice as much than the average dude. Whoever or whatever designed the human body blueprinted into your flesh and blood a structure devoted entirely to your pleasure.
It also built into your biology a remarkable link between your pleasure and your confidence. When you experience (or expect to experience) states of pleasure (whether the mild, medium, or spicy kind), the nerve endings in your pelvis fire off. Those pleasurable sensations are relayed through your pelvic nerve, to your spinal cord, and up to your brain, which then releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter. Now, dopamine, sister, equals confidence. Neuroscientists tell us that dopamine is critical for motivation and desire. If dopamine is depleted or blocked, you may lose the will to strive, even the ability to move.
The good news is that you don’t need any scientific devices to measure any of this. You may have not yet noticed the knowing pulses in your vagina, or that when your pleasure increases, so does your confidence. But if you take a few moments to turn your attention to your nether region, you can feel it for yourself.
There in your pelvis is the location of your knowing, your clarity, your confidence, your full-body yes. There is the seat of your Oracle. What are you truly passionate about? What is your purpose? What is meaningful to you? What moves you? What are your favored forms of self-expression? Why are you here? What is your calling, your mission, your contribution; and will you be able to pull it off? What do you want? And how can you trust what you hear? The pulses in your vagina know. The confidence instigated by your clitoris knows. Your sexual, sensual, erotic life-force energies know. Your Oracle knows.
Author Naomi Wolf discovered that the female brain and the vagina, rather than being two distinct organs of knowing, are more like a single system — a system in which a woman’s sexual history, life experiences, and beliefs about her femininity can affect the functioning of her body, mind, and soul. In Vagina: A New Biography, which draws on the findings of numerous neuroscientists, Wolf suggests that cultures that practice female genital mutilation and rape as a tactic of war do so in part to affect a woman’s thinking, sense of self, agency, and her “inner light.” Wolf also shares research that shows that some somatic conditions that at first seem unrelated to sexual energy — like vertigo, ringing in the ears, low physical stamina, and a muscular issue that causes a woman to have unusually poor balance — are dramatically more present in women who have sexual abuse or rape in their histories.
It becomes even more understandable why we women, more often than not, have developed a confusing relationship with our bodies, erotic energy, sex organs, wants, desires, and passions. Statistics confirm that about one-third of us have been profoundly or violently wounded in these areas. It is as though one of our legs has been cut off, and we wonder why it is so hard to run to catch the bus. We have ignored, dumbed down, or excised entirely our sensual and somatic superpowers, and we need these amputated parts of ourselves back. Hello, Oracle.
As Naomi Wolf concludes, “To understand the vagina properly is to realize that it is not only coextensive with the female brain, but is also, essentially, part of the female soul . . . a mediator and protector of women’s highest, most joyful, and most unbroken sense of self.”1 Your Oracle (which includes not only your vagina but also all the sexual reproductive organs in your pelvis) is not separate from your brain, it is in partnership with your brain. Your Oracle not only channels your erotic energy, it also channels your soul. Your Oracle not only creates life, it also brings meaning to your life. Your Oracle is not only an organ of pleasure, but also an organ of truth. Your Oracle, it turns out, is not an appendage that you tow around like a dinghy on a ship, but an engine, steering wheel, compass, and headquarters, all in one.
After a period of sexual awakening or after a singular incredible sexual experience, women often feel surges of unapologetic creativity and self-expression. A positive, full-body sensual experience lights a woman up and brings all of her on line. Perhaps you have experienced this yourself, when ecstatic erotic experiences can create a deeper sense of meaning and connection between you, other people, and life. When this channel of your power is once again flowing, in its mild, medium, and spicy forms — Watch. Out. World.
But why here, you might ask. Why not in your brain, why not in your heart, why not in your gut, why not in your big toe for that matter? Why do I insist on opening up a can of worms by insisting that the power and wisdom of your Oracle is rooted in your pelvis?
THE PASSIONATE PELVIS
Remember Riya? The woman in chapter 3 who learned, in the backseat of her family car when she was a wee four years old, to button up her enthusiasm for life? When I first met Riya, she shared a recent experience of relocating her passion, her passion for life and for her work, as well as for her sensual life with her husband. In a Skype session and with guidance from one of her spiritual mentors, Riya put on, ironically enough, Peter Gabriel’s “Passion,” from the soundtrack of the movie The Last Temptation of Christ, and began an improvised dance meditation to access her primal energy and passion. As instructed, she dropped her awareness into her pelvis and low belly and moved from there.
pelvis. low belly. move.
Riya moved. She danced; she undulated her whole body; she swiveled her hips and embodied the music. She went for it. She growled. She roared. She wept tears of sadness for having kept down her primal yet innocent energy. And she laughed, feeling, as she put it, like a divine child.
Something bubbled up that she hadn’t felt in years. Riya felt sexy, she felt wild, she felt whole, and she felt beautiful. It was the first time in maybe her whole life that she felt present. As she rested after the sweaty session, she reflected that she had reconnected to her innate untamed essence — her passion — feelings she remembered having as a child.
In the days and weeks after her dance of passion, Riya began to hear clearly her own inner voice. And then she and I met, rolled up our sleeves, and got to work. Through our conversations in our coaching sessions and through movement and meditation practices at our retreats, Riya updated her restrictive beliefs about her body. Seeing her body for the first time as a temple helped her prioritize healthful eating and exercise for the first time in her life. As Riya got “back in her body,” she was able to get back on speaking terms with the same wants, passions, and desires she had buried as a young child. Riya practiced letting her passion direct her in her daily life, in her work in the world, and — slowly, but surely — into a more fun and rich connection with her husband.
Riya took it on faith that she would be able to re-access her passion and inner guidance through her pelvis and low belly region, the place in her body that her erotic energy sourced from. She was instinctively drawing on the power of kundalini, an energetic force coiled in the pelvic region that ancient traditions recognize as the wellspring of our passion, power, confidence, inspiration, creativity, and knowing.
The Power of Kundalini
Please welcome kundalini. Kundalini is a form of energy. It is primal energy, life-force energy, the energy of Shakti. The term kundalini is derived from the Sanskrit word kundal, meaning “coiled,” and is described in the Upanishads as well as Vedic and Tantric texts as early as the sixth century. Your kundalini — or Shakti — energy is considered to be spiraled like a potent snake or sleeping goddess at the base of your spine, in your sacrum, at the “root” of your body, waiting to be awakened.
Many of those who work with kundalini energy see it as libidinal and instinctive, as well as spiritual. Some look at kundalini energy as a biological mechanism that links the activity of the reproductive system and the brain. Kundalini is considered to be in-dwelling, meaning it is only accessed through your body.
Some go so far as to say that kundalini is an evolutionary impulse that can guide human beings toward greater consciousness and enlightenment, and that it has been referred to directly by many founders of major faiths, including Christ, Buddha, and Muhammad. (And let’s not forget the goddess Isis and Saint Mary Magdalene, too.) Some scholars say that energies like the spirit in “Holy Spirit,” the kingdom of the “kingdom of God within,” and the light of enlightenment are all other names for kundalini.
Kundalini energy practices are designed, through breath, movement, and meditation, to release the erotic, creative, potential energy that originates in your pelvis. Through breath, movement, and meditation, it then moves up your spine and throughout your whole body, so you can have access to your innate radiance, well-being, peace, and vibrancy — your passion.
As I see it, your Oracle, in your passionate pelvis, is the seat of your physical and metaphysical female superpowers. Your Oracle helps to define your femaleness and to source your life-force energy, whether called kundalini, Shakti, Holy Spirit, or Eros.
Physically, your Oracle is the grouping of female reproductive organs that live in your pelvis, below your belly button and above your tailbone, whose functions include (but aren’t limited to) producing and regulating hormones, conducting experiences of pleasure, as well as synthesizing the raw biochemical ingredients needed to create and incubate new life.
Metaphysically, your Oracle is where the sacred and the sexual meet. Your Oracle is where the other world and this world meet. Your Oracle is where your soul and your soma meet. Your Oracle is a great determinant of whether you, like a source of light and fire, are turned on or off. It is through your Oracle that your deepest wisdom bubbles up, like a celebratory bottle of champagne. Your Oracle knows what brings you joy, fulfillment, confidence, clarity, meaning, and pleasure, and what does not. She is the seat of your “Hell, yes!” and your “For heaven’s sake, no!” Business, book, or baby, are all born here. Although possibly paradoxical, the physical and metaphysical functions of your Oracle are both true.
So, instead of consulting an external oracle, let’s have you awaken your own Oracle. Let’s start gently, as I realize it might be a shock to the system to simply strike up a conversation with your pelvis.
ORACLE PRACTICE #1 ORACLE MEDITATION
This Oracle meditation is designed to wake up a slumbering Oracle. It is a wake-up call, but not like that obnoxious, police siren type of alarm clock that shocks you out of slumber; more like a gentle Zen kind of clock that slowly fills the room with light and seduces you awake.
The Oracle meditation is a sassy twist on the traditional Buddhist Vipassana contemplative mindfulness meditation practice, which is designed to help you focus your awareness on a specific part of your body and keenly observe the sensations present there. Like any meditation, it is designed to help you choose deliberately what to focus on. In this case, for example, rather than focusing your awareness on your endless to-do list, you will direct your awareness to the source of your power instead.
1 Sit or stand comfortably and place your hands on your low belly, your Oracle.
2 While you would usually be aware of drawing your breath in and out of your nose or mouth, imagine instead drawing your breath in through the base of your spine and out the top of your head.
3 As you draw your breath in, imagine it waking up, turning on, nourishing, soothing, or enlivening your Oracle — the lovely and lively spot on your body that rests below your belly button and above your tailbone.
4 As you breathe out, imagine your breath shooting out the top of your head and cascading in front of you like a waterfall.
5 Continue this “circular waterfall breathing,” as I call it, imagining each in-breath as a cool breeze or a warm caress, continuing to wake up, turn on, nourish, soothe, or enliven your Oracle.
6 Notice what sensations and emotions come up as you place your awareness on your Oracle in this way. If thoughts, beliefs, judgments, pulsations, or preferences also come up, simply observe them, thank them for sharing, and let them pass on just as they came.
That’s it. A simple (but kind of saucy) meditation practice, ideal for reacquainting you with your Oracle. Simply and kindly placing your awareness on something (especially when that something has been a little or a lot out of your awareness) is the first step to any profound change.
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophies.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Your Oracle is a guidance system reconnecting you to the wisdom of your body and the intelligence of your soul. As you practice, your Oracle can help you make daily choices and determine crucial next steps, even if you have felt disconnected from and doubtful about your wisdom up until now.
Over eight years ago, Safya sought me out to help her gain clarity on whether or not to leave her marriage. Disconnected from and doubtful about her wisdom, Safya had literally made herself sick trying to decide. She wasn’t sleeping, and much of the time she was nauseated and anxious. Self-doubt was her constant companion. While she wanted to find clarity for her current situation, we both knew that she also needed a way to find clarity for any situation, now and going forward.
In our private sessions, we started to explore what she really wanted for herself and for her life. At first, Safya couldn’t come up with any answers. She felt disturbed that she was clear about what other people wanted for her and for her life, but that she herself just didn’t really know. She didn’t even know how to know.
Over the past eight years, Safya learned how to know and has frankly mastered how to know. She first needed to learn the language of her body’s wisdom, which is as refined, systematic, and complete as any verbal language and has allowed Safya to think less, yet know more. Her inner knowing has guided her to leave that marriage, get into a whirlwind five-year romance with a wealthy celebrity, get over devastating heartbreak, build her business to remarkable profitability, and have her first child with a much younger man. It hasn’t always felt easy for her, but it has always felt true.
Let me share with you a version of what I did with Safya so many years ago, so that when you ask what it is you truly, madly, deeply want, you can access your body’s wisdom as well as trust the answers you hear. Let’s get you started with the ABCs of your Oracle’s language: your yes and your no.
ORACLE PRACTICE #2 FINDING YOUR ORACLE’S YES AND NO
1 Take a moment to get quiet and perhaps close your eyes. I suggest putting your hands on your low belly, your Oracle.
2 Begin by taking a few breaths that are slower and more deliberate than usual. Direct your awareness to your breath on the inside of your body, waking up and nourishing the inside of your body, almost like a massage or a caress.
3 Now, please ask yourself a series of four questions to which you know your answer is yes.
• “Is my name (your name)?”
• “Do I love (someone you love)?”
• “Do I enjoy (something you enjoy, perhaps a scent, taste, or touch)?”
• “Do I feel vibrantly alive when I (something that brings you alive)?”
4 After answering each of the questions, bring your awareness to your Oracle (specifically to your low belly, the area under your hands) and notice what sensations and emotions you feel, and where you feel them.
5 Notice the common thread between the sensations and emotions you noticed in all four yes answers. This is how your Oracle says yes.
6 Now, please ask yourself a series of four questions to which you know your answer is no.
• “Is my name (someone else’s name)?”
• “Do I love (someone you abhor or find, well, extremely challenging)?”
• “Do I enjoy (something you detest, perhaps a scent, taste, or touch)?”
• “Do I feel vibrantly alive when I (something that saps your will to live)?”
7 After answering each question, bring your awareness to your Oracle (specifically to your low belly, the area under your hands) and notice what sensations and emotions you feel, and where you feel them.
8 Notice the common thread between the sensations and emotions you noticed in all four no answers. This is how your Oracle says no.
How to use this? I suggest you start by asking your Oracle, on a daily basis, what I refer to as “low stakes” questions such as, “Wear this skirt or these pants?” “Peaches or guavas?” “Coffee or tea — or water?” “Make a detour into that store?” “Say that awkward thing now?” “Stay in tonight or go out?” and follow the yeses and nos that you sense. Then work your way up to higher-stakes questions like, “Should I get married to him?” “Should I have a baby?” “Should I stay or should I go?” or “Should I start this business or that one?”
Practice first with low-stakes questions to increase your confidence so that later you can use this with more complex queries in your life. I will say it again: start with low stakes. Don’t start out with biggies. Take some time to experiment with questions that won’t really affect much of anything in your life, whatever you choose. I know sometimes it feels like life or death to choose between the skirt and the pants, but it is not. Whether to terminate a pregnancy or not, whether to take your father off life-support or not, that is literally life or death. Work up to high-stakes questions like those.
There is no one right way your Oracle’s yes and no should feel. It is different from woman to woman, but here are some feelings that clients and course participants have reported over the years that I have offered this practice:
Yes feels like: Expansion and moving toward something; light, easy, and free, like air can move through me; powerful and happy; a horizontal opening starting in my belly; a softening smile; alive yet peaceful and calm swirling sensations; a tingling thrill in my heart and pelvis; positive, expansive, and relaxed; tingles throughout my body; warmth in my vagina; not exactly arousal, but kind of; a feeling of joy, bliss, and buzzing; assurance, like standing my ground.
No feels like: Contraction and moving away from something; a tightness in my shoulders and upper back; like shrinking back into my spine; tightening in my throat; a warning cringe in my gut; constriction and panic in my belly; a flush of anger; retreating inside; wrongness with tight muscles; deadening dullness; pushing away; uncertainty, closure, and guardedness; my mind and thinking gets over-active.
There is no one right response to discovering your Oracle’s yes and no, and there is no one right way to use this tool, but here are some more reports from women clients and course participants on what it is like for them:
Discovering my Oracle’s yes and no is: Such a great blessing to be able to read my body’s language and know my real answer even before mentally assessing; in all honesty, partly terrifying, partly mesmerizing; now I don’t need a pendulum or muscle testing; an embodied way to improve my happiness and my decision-making skills; a powerful guide to help me understand what might be going on when I feel triggered or reactive; and, an extremely valuable tool to stop second-guessing myself.
By learning your Oracle’s yes and no, you are learning your Feminine Genius ABCs. Brava! (And, just like learning any new language, it will get richer and more nuanced as you go. A bit later, I will show you how these ABCs become a full language of words, sentences, and paragraphs; even sonnets, odes, bulleted instruction lists, slam poetry pieces, and full-scale rapturous visions.)
The first song my son learned was “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” He would sing it, pulling himself up by the railings of his crib, often saying “la, la, la, la,” in place of any words. It was cuteness overload. The second song my son learned was the ABC song, and I noticed then that the two songs actually have the same melody. Your ABCs, as sung to you from your body beautiful, are just like little stars.
Listen. Look. Those little twinklers are re-assembling into your new North Star.
And never was there a more wondrous compass than your Oracle.
You think you need a map, but what you really want is a compass.
SETH GODIN