Women of Wisdom: Have You Put Your Dreams on Hold?

Women of Wisdom: Empowering the Dreams and Spirit of Women

Women of Wisdomis a journey through sixteen years of one of the largest women’s spirituality conferences in the world, a very unique conference that has impacted thousands of women’s lives. Authors Jean Houston and Margot Anand both exclaimed separately to me – “Kris there is nothing like this in the world” – and they have traveled around the world. The book will continue to impact women, as they experience the wisdom and gifts of the sixty contributors in the book.

The Women of Wisdombook gives women access to powerful, inspiring women leaders and their message for women to step into their power, own their feminine gifts, and learn to speak their truths. WOW provides role models who will inspire women to discover their dreams and their purpose.

Additionally the book shares stories from women whose lives have been changed by experiencing these women’s messages. Evocative art, poetry and experiential exercises enhance the book’s message, providing diverse ways to experience the spirit of the feminine.

Included in the book is my own story of how I started Women of Wisdom,which has been an empowering story for women to hear. My story began with reading The Feminine Face of God, by Patricia Hopkins and Sherry Anderson. Shortly afterwards I had a vision of bringing these spiritual women leaders to Seattle. And I immediately set that in motion at Seattle Unity Church, where I was a board member.

I realized this was something more than just a conference when I welcomed people at the first night of the conference, February 11, 1993, and I stated “Welcome to the First Annual Women of Wisdom Conference.” It has become a movement for women to come together in community and explore their potential, and to honor and support one another. This conference has continued to grow and be strong for seventeen years now and that is a testimony to the power of the vision, and the importance of women realizing the value of their unique gifts to share with the world.

In 1998 I realized I had a wealth of material in the tapes of the talks from these nationally known best selling authors and that they would make a great book. I had a dream to share this with other women. I would get phone calls and emails from women asking me if there was an organization like WOW in their city. Not everyone has the luxury to travel to conferences and experience life changing conferences and this book will provide that opportunity to many women.

In addition, the powerful women who participated at the conference in different ways – artists, musicians, writers, local presenters and WOW leaders – would contribute to make this book a holistic experience of exploring the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of being a woman, giving the reader the full conference experience.

The women’s movement has led women to evolve to such heights as running for the presidency of the United States. However in workshops I have given women have shared how isolated they feel. They don’t feel honored in society for their feminine gifts and how they don’t feel comfortable or safe speaking what they feel, what’s inside their hearts, whether it be in the workplace, home or other. In sharing women’s stories in the book, women will relate to their experiences and gain strength and support through the validation of the feminine that is expressed in the book.

Many of the authors in the book share how there is a lack of balance of the feminine in our world, and how we’re at a critical time where women need to become equal partners towards creating the solutions to the many crisis facing our globe. Jean Houston shares her experience of Women of Wisdom in the foreword of the book:

“Women of Wisdom is in the forefront of the biggest change in human history – the only change that will assure our continuity as a species. Those who organize and participate in the Women of Wisdom experience, know that for a new world to be born we have to bring a new mind to bear. Critical to this is the rich mind style of women that has been gestating in the womb of preparatory time, lo, these many millennia. In their ebullient and evocative conferences WOW demonstrates a tremendous change in who we are and how we do things.”

"Playing their part to usher in feminine mind, WOW emphasizes process rather than just product, and making things cohere, relate, and grow. Cultures in which the feminine archetype is powerful are almost always non-heroic, they tend to make things work together, each piece has its part to play.”

“Men and women will be released from the old polarities of gender that force them into limited and limiting roles, and qualities of intelligence will be added to the human mind-pool that will render most previous problem solving obsolete. Linear, sequential solutions will yield to the knowing that comes from seeing things in whole gestalts, in constellations, rather than in discrete fact…. And it will ring an ecological ethic, along with a new partnership between men and women, in which the human acts in concert and in partnership with Nature to bring about more symbiotic ecological relationships.”

An Excerpt from Women of Wisdom: Have You Put Your Dreams On Hold?

Each one of us has a great dream and a great calling. Many of us have put our dreams on the back burner. We say, “Someday when I have enough time, when I have enough money; then I’ll do what I really want to do, what has fire for me.” At this time there is such a wonderful opening in history, in evolution, if we will just come and take our place.

What I’ve found among many of the indigenous peoples of the world is that they know how important it is to bring our medicine and our dreams to this world. If we want the earth to get better we need to show up and take our place, not with our shrouds of insufficiency, but with our long tall bodies and our deep, deep roots. The warrior’s way or the leader’s way is to show up. And then I can pay attention to what has heart and meaning, which is the healer’s way. I can’t know what has heart or meaning until I choose to show up, until I choose to be present.

Among the shamanic traditions of the world, if you go to a shaman or a medicine person, and you are dispirited, disheartened, or depressed, many of them will ask you one of four questions: “When in your life did you stop singing? When in your life did you stop dancing? When in your life did you stop being enchanted by stories, and particularly your own life story? And when in your life did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?”

Wherever we stop singing, dancing, being enchanted by stories or deeply comforted by silence, we begin to experience soul loss. There’s not a culture in the world that does not have song, or dance, or story, or doesn’t recognize that in the sweet territory of silence we connect to the mystery in our contemplative and reflective practices.

I know I’m not at home when I’m in appeasement, weak-heartedness, seduction, drama or exaggeration. I know I’m not at home when I am playing the martyr or the victim and wanting someone else to be responsible for my life and therefore guilt induce others. I’m not at home when I’m controlling, because the opposite of control is trust.

I am at home when I have fire; when I am deeply connected to what has heart and meaning, the heart’s fire; when I’m seized by a vision that I want to manifest and bring to the sweet face of Mother Earth. I know I’m on fire when I’ve lost time through some creativity, and when I’ve experienced a moment of tender sweetness and intimacy in a relationship that has substance and depth. I know I’m on fire when I’ve connected to something numinous and extraordinarily beautiful that can only be found when trusting in an unshakable part of myself, in a sacred refuge that I can find in my deep interior.

Women of Wisdom by Kris Steinnes, is being offered beginning on June 23rd, 2009 at 12:01 am. We invite you to go to this page - www.wisewomanpublishing.com/womenofwisdom.html - to access the order page and then go back to this page to access the bonus page. On the Exclusive Private Invite page, enter your order confirmation code. That will allow you to gain entry to the bonus gifts that are available to people who buy the book on June 23rd.

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