Brave Ecstatic Woman: 7 Steps to Ignite Your Feminine Essence for an Audaciously Luscious Life

By Merav Richter

Brave Ecstatic Woman engages your unique sources of energy those that empower your spirit as well as your body. Drawing from the riches of ancient feminine wisdom, Brave Ecstatic Woman offers a system to identify your feminine archetype, essential keys to harness your particular strengths and techniques to embody your greatest potentials.

The insights in this book will bring you:
- Increased vitality and energy
- Emotional balance
- Heightened sensory awareness
- Enhanced intuition and creativity
- Greater fulfillment in your relationships
- A deeper sense of your own spiritual signature

Unlike any other guide, Brave Ecstatic Woman encourages you to develop your own practice that suits your own needs. You will learn your dominant feminine archetype, as well as the shadow and excess elements of your energy centers (chakras) and how to balance those.
This book can help you increase your personal mastery of life starting today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Nov 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504353663

Merav Richter

Merav Richter is a philosopher, poet, performer and peacemaker. She is the founder of Ecstatic Movement, a technique dedicated to energetic transformation, empowerment and esoteric wisdom. She is the author The Secret of the Storyteller, a novel of awakening. Merav holds a degree in Philosophy of Religion and has studied the mystical traditions extensively. She is committed to supporting women to create the bravest, most ecstatic version of their lives. She teaches and speaks about women’s mysticism and empowerment. See www.MeravRichter.com for information on courses and events.

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Copyright © 2016 Merav Richter.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-5365-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-5366-3 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 12/08/2016

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

PART I:  A NEW DEFINITION

Chapter 1—What is Brave?

Chapter 2—What is Ecstatic?

Chapter 3—What is Woman?

PART II:  A NEW VISION

Chapter 4—The Path

Chapter 5—The Gateway to Safety

Chapter 6—The Gateway to Vitality

Chapter 7—The Gateway to Power

Chapter 8—The Gateway to Love

Chapter 9—The Gateway to Expression

Chapter 10—The Gateway to Wisdom

Chapter 11—The Gateway to Unity

PART 3:  A NEW WORLD

Continuation

Archetype Charts

Futher Reading

Resources

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Dedicated to my mother,

Whose death taught me the secrets of life.

To my sons and daughter,

Whose lives teach me the secrets of love.

To my husband,

Whose love teaches me the secret of living.

PREFACE

Prelude to Bliss

Have you ever met a woman who has fire behind her eyes? Who walks into a room and all heads turn to look at her? The woman who attracts into her life love, abundance, and laughter like a vibrant magnet? The woman who seems fearless in the face of any challenge?

How about the opposite? Have you ever met a woman who has dull, vacant eyes? Who seems to live under a perpetual cloud of resentment or anger? A woman in whose company you find yourself commiserating over her misery? And as cliché as it may sound, when you’re with her, you fully come to understand the adage Misery loves company?

Which one would you rather be?

If you chose ecstatic, then you’ve come to the right place. This book will show you how to do just that.

How have you been living so far?

If you answered low energy, lackluster, or anything short of lit up, this book won’t let you live that way anymore. This book will not let you dim your sacred sizzle, or keep your yummy juiciness on the back burner any longer.

First, the Foreplay

Brave Ecstatic Woman is not a How-to manual; it’s a cherished girlfriend, a candid confidante, and a sacred sister whispering secrets in your ear. This book is the wise, wild, and wacky best friend you’ve always wanted. And, if by chance, you’re lucky enough to already have such a woman in your life, share this book with her. Like yours, her path is also ever expanding.

Most of all, this book is a fire-starter. It will take you on a journey within yourself, traversing your own version of the Shero’s Journey, and coming full circle, into the most radiant, luscious, and luminous version of you.

The Human and the Divine

The wisdom of women has long remained hidden. In fact, the root of the word secret comes from the Latin secretus — which means hidden.

Through ancient wisdom and modern methods, this book reveals the hidden secrets of women. The feminine mysteries that have long been suppressed hold the power and ability to ignite a fire within you, a fire that can transcend the boundaries of ordinary awareness, physical limitations, and corporeal consciousness.

This book bridges the dichotomy between your humanity and your divinity. In a quantum leap, you can jump between two worlds, the world of rational thought and the world of infinite possibilities. This book will take you hiking through the Himalayas one moment, and tapping into your hidden potentials the next, from intuitive insights in the afternoon to raucous laughter in the evening; from moments of epiphany in the morning to dancing to the drumbeats of a rave all night long.

Your spirituality does not negate your humanity; don’t let your humanity negate your spirituality. When you find your wings to fly, please remember you have feet to walk with as well. Pierre de Teilhard, the French philosopher and theologian, once famously quoted that you are not a human being having a spiritual experience, you are a spiritual being having a human experience. In pursuit of your spirituality, don’t forget to have your human experience. And while you’re at it, you might as well make it the sexiest, spiciest, most scrumptious human experience that you can!

The Elusive Ecstasy

Can ecstasy be taught? Caught? Bought?

Yes, on all counts.

But, here is the secret of all secrets: Ecstasy does not need to be found, or brought to you from an outside source. Ecstasy already exists within you. This isn’t about a process of self-improvement; it’s simply a self-discovery. It’s not about learning something new but awakening a dormant potential that already exists. It’s not about becoming something that you’re not; it’s about igniting the spark within you, and stoking that fire.

So, how do you ignite that ecstasy?

And, once lit, how do you keep that fire going? Even in times of despair, or the times when your world seems to crumble, your jeans fit too tight, your finances are a mess, your romance has dwindled to a mere shrug, your career a vague shell of your ability, your energy, libido, and joy all stuck at an all-time low?

Are you able to perpetually live in ecstasy at all times?

This book is the culmination of years of searching the globe for these very answers.

The Benefits of This Book

This book takes you on a journey, along the path of your own Secret Garden to Brave Ecstasy. You will learn to let go of your need to be a Good Girl, living by society’s imposed standards of conduct, leaving you muted, stuck and repressed to feeling confident, juicy, fulfilled, courageous, inspired, attractive, abundant, creative, connected to yourself and to something deeper. Though, the benefits won’t reach you if you are a passive observer of this book. There is an old saying that states: What you hear you forget; what you see you remember; what you do, you understand. I invite you to DO this book. Within the chapters, I’ve incorporated Ecstatic Exercises. These exercises are a mosaic for your path. Working the exercises requires consciousness, courage, and commitment. As with any other skill, the more you practice, the more connections you will make.

How to Use This Book

Because Brave Ecstatic Woman is, in essence, a spiritual path, there are a number of ways you can approach this book. This book gives you a road map, with some ideas and exercises about how to proceed, but the path is always yours and yours alone. No matter which way you choose, Brave Ecstatic Woman will show you how to ignite your feminine essence and expand your awareness of your audaciously luscious life.

This work is built on a gradual, sequential structure — a step-by-step guidebook to living a radiant life. You may choose to read it in the order that it’s written, or you may feel pulled to skip to subsequent chapters. The path to your Secret Garden is built one gate at a time, and this book is your guide. Once you’ve gone through it once, you can return to the chapters that call to you the loudest.

Here’s what you’ll find in this book, which offers three distinct parts:

Part I defines what it means to be Brave, Ecstatic, and a Woman. It dives deep into the feminine mysteries and uncovers where the imbalance between our feminine and masculine energy lies. I introduce the ancient traditions and the esoteric knowledge hidden within them. I redefine and feminize the architecture of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, as the quintessential Shero’s Journey within.

Part II establishes the model for the Path to the Secret Garden that defines the rest of the book. This is the framework for the journey toward your greatest ecstasy. At the basis of this framework is an assessment of your predominant feminine archetype. Here is the introduction of The Seven Sisters feminine archetypes.

In the beginning of Part II of this book, you can take the Identify Your Archetype Test. By answering the simple questions, you reveal which energetic signature you embody so that you can assess your feminine archetype.

You can also go to www.BraveEcstaticWoman.com for the short Brave Ecstatic Woman Quotient Quiz.

The Seven Brave Ecstatic Woman Archetypes are:

Earth Mama

Wild Woman

Wonder Woman

Love Goddess

Story Teller

Wise Woman

Enlightened Mystic

Part III brings it all home. Once you’ve found your Secret Garden of Ecstasy, you’ll want to stay there forever. In this section you’ll find the highlights, reminders, and a quick-reference guide for all of the methods to make the Seven Secrets a part of your day-to-day life.

Woven throughout the book are methods, practical tips, techniques, and tricks to interactively enhance your understanding of the concepts.

You may choose to dive right in and read the book in one sitting, just to get a bird’s-eye-view of the territory it covers. But, reading it all at once is not the same as using it, doing the Ecstatic Exercises and letting your newfound awareness settle into your cells. Don’t be daunted by the word exercise. This isn’t home-work — it’s home-play. The sheer enjoyment of doing the exercises is what creates a visceral response.

I invite you to use this book in a contemplative, meditative way. Schedule time each week to finish a chapter and then give yourself the chance to do the exercises within it. If you don’t have time to do all of them, don’t stress. Know that the rest are there for you to get back to them when you need to. Choose the ones that most appeal to you; let your intuition guide you to where you need to grow at any given moment. Just remember, we often resist the very thing that we need to confront the most.

In working with this book, remember that the feminine path is a spiral. The concepts in this book are non-linear, and you will circle back around them over and over in your life, each time at a different level. There is no such thing as being finished with your growth. Just like the universe, all things are in a perpetual state of expansion. Frustrations and contractions will occur on all levels of the path. Your goal is to walk the path that opens up for you, and continue to climb. The ecstasy will astound and delight you.

I hope you enjoy taking this journey with me as much as I enjoyed writing about it. My dream is that one day women will be living such brave and ecstatic lives that we’ll forever change the scope of what it means to be a Brave Ecstatic Woman and usher in a much anticipated new era for humanity.

Caveat Emptor

As the saying goes — buyer beware! With great power comes great responsibility. Once you have learned to become a Brave Ecstatic Woman and shine so brightly that you radiate, you become a veritable energy magnet. As with moths to a flame, you will find your light attracts like a lighthouse attracts ships in the night. If used for malice, or manipulation, I will have done a disservice to the feminine arts. Please use this power only to bring more light into the world and help other women do the same. The world needs you now more than ever to step into your radiance. When you transcend your own ego’s voice that keeps you small, you begin to see the shine that you have been given by divine right. Then you not only start to create the change you wish to see in the world, but to BE that change!

Promise?

Alright then, are you ready?

Fasten your seatbelts.

Let’s begin…

INTRODUCTION

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The Reluctant Guru

May I share something with you?

Before we begin, I want to make sure you know what you’re in for. I want to be perfectly candid and authentic with you. It’s not a secret — more like a confession. After all, we’re embarking on a journey together. And journeys always make friends out of strangers. Don’t get me wrong. I have plenty of secrets to share with you, but this is just not one of them.

My confession is this: I didn’t intend to become a guru, an expert, a teacher, a sage, or a guide. I was your average, slightly plump, suburban wife and working mom. Though I worked in my childhood dream career as a flight attendant for a major airline, I was far from what would be seen as fulfilled, and all I knew about ecstasy was that it was a drug people took at raves.

Then life took me on a different course. The market crashed, my husband lost his job, and overnight I became the sole income earner of a family of five (seven, if you count the dogs). Panic set in. The do-er in me got activated and I got to work. And I burned out. Quickly.

I began to travel more at work. Feeling a sense of guilt for going out for fancy dinners or travel adventures while on layover, I became what’s known in the airline industry as a Slam-Clicker (a person who slams the door to their room and clicks the lock shut.) Pretty soon, I was forty pounds overweight, over forty and living as far from ‘la vie extatique’ as I could live.

I was overworked, overwhelmed, overweight, and oh, so over it.

I tried forcing myself into ecstasy, reading as many books on the power of positive thinking as possible, attending seminars, affirming, chanting, creating vision boards, doing silent retreats, juice fasts, yoga classes, sea weed wraps, crystals, all sorts of human development courses. You name it; I tried it. But none of it worked. Nothing brought me back to a state of pure, absolute ecstasy. I even went to a traditional therapist to talk my problems away. After a few weeks, she recommended a little happy pill. I walked out of her office, threw the prescription paper in the garbage, and never looked back.

Out of sheer self-protection, I began to take a good, hard look at what I wanted in my life, and I realized that somewhere along the way, I had lost myself. I had lost the curious, rebellious, euphoric, powerful little girl I once was. Memories of dreams repressed began to stir in me, and long forgotten ideals awoke once again. Writing, dancing, poetry all began to emerge from me with an unstoppable force. That little girl was begging to return.

One night, in a lonely hotel room, the kind with crisp white sheets and generic still-life art, I began to write. I took my background in philosophy, my personal love of all forms of mysticism, my passion for dance, and unraveled a common theme. I was looking for answers to my own challenges, but instead I had unfurled an elaborate tapestry. I began to unweave the thread of the untold feminine side — the mystical secret of the Divine Feminine!

There’s Madness to My Methods

The next day, I experienced a profoundly moving spiritual epiphany. I took my notebook with me and hopped on a local bus to Jerusalem. Sitting on the ancient steps, surrounded by the rich history of the Old City, I was deeply ensconced in a writing induced bubble. I was in that feeling of flow that only comes when you’re doing something that takes you out of your mind-chatter, when I heard a voice, or rather voices. I suddenly brought myself to a complete standstill, frozen in space and time. For nine or ten minutes, I sat there, as if glued in my tracks. Everything around me went dark. I could hear the loud sound of some form of energy, which was vibrating at a very high rate. Then my nerves quietened, my muscles relaxed, and a great calmness washed over me. The atmosphere cleared, and as it did I realized a command from within came through. The closest way I can describe it is that it was in the form of a thought, yet, it was much more like an order — Bring the women. Gather the women. That command was so clear and distinct that I could not misunderstand it even if I tried. For a few minutes, I sat there stupefied. The experience was unlike anything I had ever felt before. It didn’t frighten me, but it definitely threw me for a loop.

Now before you start thinking that I’m off my rocker, let me pre-empt you. I thought I’d totally lost it, too. I shivered. I looked around, fearing that I had gone completely wacko. Shrugging it off as jetlag, or fatigue, I composed myself and continued writing my little heart out. Then I heard them again: Bring the women. Gather the women, the voices/thought essences kept repeating. The chills running up and down my spine had me sit up straight and listen. I had goose-bumps, or god-bumps as my friend calls them, or what I like to call goddess-winks, all over my body. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and my breath caught in a gasp. As shaken as I was in that moment, a clear and cogent meaning came through. I felt that my