The What’s Underneath Project

This video came through as I was trying to open my Yahoo account this morning, and I’m glad I opted to watch it. It’s so refreshing to see mainstream media positively covering ways to help people love themselves and get real. If you’ve ever had body or style issues, feel like you don’t fit in, or have been told you’re ugly or not conventionally attractive — or if you’ve ever known someone like that, please click through here to watch Katie Couric interview the creators of The What’s Underneath Project. I hope you will be as pleasantly surprised as I was.

UPDATE: Based on the comment stream below, I will say that if you do not make any distinction between sexuality and sensuality … and especially if you do not make any distinction between adults and children, then you might find this link disturbing rather than empowering and healing. If so, then I suggest you skip the link. I view the project as a way of people reclaiming pieces of themselves that may have been taken, harmed or rejected as children or young adults. The project involves only adults and celebrates the intimate and beautiful connection between body and soul — a connection rejected by such diverse elements of society as fundamentalist religions, Gnosticism, the fashion industry, people who sexually abuse children, New Age thought that extols only the “Light,” and the Age of Reason.

My work as a Medical Intuitive shows me daily just how interwoven body and soul are. Damage to body image impacts the soul, just as soul wounds so often reveal themselves as bodily symptoms. We live in a world that denigrates the sacred and that fails to recognize differences between children and adults. By doing so, we allow abuses to occur, which often result in adults stuck at whatever age the abuse occurred. We develop rigid black or white thinking to compensate for situations in which boundaries were blurred or exploited. In reaction to misogyny, abuse, pornography, the sexualizing of children, superficial fashion, and patriarchal religions we all too often forget the deep connection between body and soul. We can denigrate and damage the body by denying it just as much as we can by actively abusing it. We can reclaim — as adults — our own relationship with our body and through it reclaim our sacred relationship with the material world.

Blessed Be.

Sophia Love ~ Love Quest: Day 2 – The Cabin

Thanks to Sophia Love for this beautiful description of recent energies. I’ve heard from a lot of people of late who’ve needed to make a choice between the old, inadequate, outgrown misery vs. the new, unformed yet palpable “I want to live” and “I have so much more to offer!”

Sophia Love ~ Love Quest: Day 2 – The Cabin

You’ve reached a critical moment for yourself. There are parts of you eating away at your core. You’ve been unaware of them until now. Why now? Because you’ve upgraded and improved. In order for the new stuff to stand strong and to last, anything that doesn’t support it – works to dismantle it.

Our family owns property in the mountains and on it has always stood what we affectionately called “the cabin”. It was little more than a tar paper shack with an outhouse. Five years ago we tore it down. In its place now stands a double-wide trailer complete with steps and a deck we built ourselves. There is even a bathroom that uses water from the stream running down the mountain. It’s beautiful.

Four years ago something began eating the steps and the deck, an unwelcome surprise. My nephew pulled in late one night and discovered the culprits – porcupines. We’d unknowingly built them a banquet of treated wood. They were ecstatic and aggressive and voracious.

Now, we could shoot them but there were lots of them, they were multiplying, and for sure they’d show up to continue the feast. We tried everything. We ended up in a compromise – an electric barrier surrounding all wooden structures attached to the cabin. It doesn’t hurt them but keeps them away from our steps.

It’s not that these critters had just arrived; they’d been there for years. We only noticed them when they threatened to destroy something we had just built, something new and better.

The stuff coming up now in your life, whether emotions or situations, is not new. You are stretching, growing wings, becoming a newer, lovelier version. These things, whatever they are, don’t support this new you. They were fine before, when Agape was not on the radar. Oh, you felt them – little jabs at your self esteem, dings at your self worth and reductions of your self value – but they were par for the course and passed quickly, soon forgotten. You barely noticed them.

Today, they seem to be center stage with a neon sign announcing their arrival. You can’t miss them. You will have to do something about them, to prevent them from destroying this new you.

For a long time they’ve comfortably travelled the same path you did – much like the porcupines. Today you are on the path to Agape. They remain doggedly on their route to self-doubt. In order to prevent a disruption in your journey you’ll have to dig deep – create such a well worn emotional path that it’s the first place your feelings drop into.

The other path exists and is eagerly travelled by “not good enough”, “have to”, “too slow”, “not ______(fill in the blank with your favorite)”. You can still see it, but it’s not your chosen route. This new, shiny, upgraded path has been reinforced and is deeply lined with truth. It’s a stronger road and becomes more-so with use. Plaques line its walls, saying things like: “You are perfect where you stand.” “I love you without exception.” “Under any condition and in every instance you are loved.”

At first it feels weird to walk there, and a little uncomfortable. Persevere, it’s a faster trip and the accommodations are better.

It took a long time for the porcupines to find our steps and destroy them. We were caught off guard and unprepared. You don’t have to be.

Create a well worn path of self acceptance. When you somehow fall onto that old familiar self defeating road, make a quick exit. Remember where you are going. The old road won’t take you there.

You are every inch the being of perfection you may have expected to instantly morph into about a year ago. Self hatred blinds you to this truth. Love yourself and watch you show up. She’ll be everything you dream of. He’ll be all you imagine. You’ll see.

You are the one you are waiting for.

See you tomorrow.
~Sophia

Link to original article

Click for video: Meet Yourself in the Mirror

[Laura again: First of all, do click through to the video. What an amazing poem! Also, I felt called to offer some information about porcupine wisdom, because it just seems so perfect, as always! From http://animalspirits.com :

Porcupine’s Wisdom Includes:

Innocence

Trust in Spirit

Renewed sense of wonder

Creating your own path

Protection of boundaries

Defense when threatened

Allowing others their path

Non-interference ]