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Embracing Gender Healing

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Being a girl is so powerful that we’ve had to train everyone not to be that. ~Eve Ensler

By now, many of you have probably watched Eve Ensler’s TED India talk of November, 2009, “Embrace Your Inner Girl”. If not, I’ve provided it here. I just found it and was blown away by her ability to use language that is inclusive of both men and women. It’s one of the things I loved about the talk.

In attempting to speak about a subject that is charged for so many of us, she has come up with a metaphor, the Girl Cell, that speaks to a part of greater consciousness that exists in us all, men and women. By doing so, she is able to speak about the feminine part of all of us that has been suppressed in the Patriarchy.

She also weaves this idea of the feminine within each of us together with the understanding that there is something positive and life-affirming that girls and women have to offer our world that has been untapped. It’s a both/and perspective: that we all, men and women, can embrace our girl cell, and we can honor what women have to offer as well.

That being said, Eve doesn’t speak in this talk about the boy cell or what men have to offer. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t value those things. Who knows why she doesn’t. The reason I bring this up shows up in the comments that follow the video on the TED site. The context we are all conditioned in, the patriarchy, has created an atmosphere where there is much distrust of the feminine in us all, and much violence towards women. From a contextual point of view, much of what she brings forward must be understood in a new light. I would also say we need to understand, in a new light, what it would look like for men and woman to embrace their boy cell, those positive aspects that come from owning the masculine qualities that uphold and protect life itself.

As I read the comments, I feel so much compassion for all of us as we navigate these churning waters of not only external gender healing, but the internal healing we are all experiencing between our own girl cells and boy cells, our inner masculine and feminine parts. I wonder about how we can talk to each other, woman to man, woman to woman, man to man, about this. Some men were obviously put off by her talk, along with some women. Some men totally were not, along with some women.

In the end, this inner balance between our masculine and feminine, and the balance between these two parts in the external world, is what needs to happen for us all to heal, and for our planet to heal.

As a woman, I loved Eve’s talk. I loved that she spoke to the pain that men have had to endure, too. And, one day, I hope we have a video to watch that speaks of the boy cell and how we all can call this forward within ourselves.

I believe we will create a harmonious and peaceful world ONLY when we come to a place of true gender respect, where we’ve all seen through the rampant misogyny (contempt, fear of, hatred of women) and misandry (contempt, fear of, hatred of men) that exist today. Many are doing powerful work in the world to make this happen. Part of our individual work to heal is to become aware of the places inside ourselves where we fear, have contempt for, and even hate our own inner woman and man. That inner hate shows up in the outer world.

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And, you?

Now that you’ve watched it, what do you think? How did her language of this issue impact you?

If you read some of the comments, how were you impacted?

How do you feel about the current state of affairs between the genders, and within your own being?

What pearls of wisdom do you have to share?

I’d love to know.

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The Courage to Sin

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What is it to be a woman, in the fullest sense?

I’ve been sitting with this question now since January 5th, the day I read that Mary Daly had died.

It’s not that I hadn’t thought of this before, doing the work I do. Coaching is all about this. And, Unabashedly Female? This blog reflects my experience in living this question, What is it to be female?

But, a quote I read, penned by Mary, in one of the columns celebrating (make that celebrating/vilifying) Mary resonated so deeply. Right away my mind (that lovely roommate I live with) said, “Yes. OMG, she’s a genius. Mary Daly brought it.”

You see, I hadn’t heard of her until last year. For anyone who has read the scholarly works of the feminist movement, Mary Daly is well-known. But, even though I reached womanhood in the seventies, and even though I personally witnessed the way the feminists of the second-wave were vilified, something that still haunts me to this day, I didn’t really read feminist scholarly works. When I first read some of what Daly wrote last year, albeit the tamer bits, I was blown away by the ideas she brought to the table.

Here’s the quote that got me:

“Ever since childhood, I have been honing my skills for living the life of a Radical Feminist Pirate and cultivating the Courage to Sin,” she wrote in the opening of “Sin Big,” her New Yorker piece. “The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Indo-European root ‘es-,’ meaning ‘to be.’ When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a woman trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin.’ “~ Mary Daly (from Jan 5, ’10 Boston.com article, “Mary Daly, pioneering feminist who tussled with BC, dies at 81.)

“For a woman trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin.'”, is a bold, bold statement.

“For a woman … ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin’.

::

Mary Daly was one courageous woman. For many, she was way too out there in her feminist radical philosophy. She was confrontational. She pushed the limits of what it means to be a feminist, hard. She set the parameters. She was willing to go toe-to-toe with the deeply held principles of patriarchy, the structure that espouses, and enforces, domination as a way of life. Many found her to be just as oppressive as those she was confronting.

As I searched the Internet in these last few days since her death, I have found a very wide spectrum of opinion about Daly, her philosophy, her manner, her life, and pretty much everything else you could think of.

Mark Vernon of the guardian.co.uk wrote, “She was an audaciously creative spirit; an awkwardly witty, deadly serious writer. She arguably did more to stretch what is possible to think in contemporary feminist theology than any other.”

At the end of Vernon’s post, the comments created a stream of back and forth banter that, in itself, was telling of the spectrum of opinion on feminism, and the still very-much-present gender upheaval, that exists in the world. Even after her death, controversy still surrounds Mary Daly.

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But back to my question, What is it to be a woman, in the fullest sense?

As I consider the ramifications of Daly’s statement, that to be fully this female that I am is ‘to sin’, it points to the most basic premise that we, as women, are already sinners simply by being, by breathing, by existing. Basically, this is the whole Eve complex. Our fall from grace. The idea that we women are responsible for sin.

It then follows that if we do something to minimize our fullness, meaning we learn how ‘to be’ in the ‘not-fullest sense’, then we mitigate our sinning potential, so to speak. We minimize how much of a sinner we are.

I have to admit, when I am really honest with myself, much of my 53 years here on this earth have been filled with an underlying, nauseating sense of something being wrong with me, solely because I am a woman. And, I know I have minimized myself in order to not feel this sickening sense of sinfulness.

If I could somehow be ‘less womanly’, ‘less seen’, heck, just ‘less’, then I would feel less, meaning I wouldn’t have to ‘feel’ being a woman.

To see it in this raw form, though, to see it so bluntly equated, woman=sin, felt sickeningly true, not intellectually, but somewhere in my psyche. Some part of me believes this. Hmmmmmmmm….. But, where did this come from? Where did I learn this?

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One of my teachers, Adyashanti, speaks of the word sin and its meaning, which in his words means ‘to miss the mark’. Upon researching this, I discovered this explanation:

Sin & Evil: In the Aramaic Language and culture that Jesus taught in, the terms for “sin” and “evil” were archery terms. When the archer shot at the target and missed the scorekeeper yelled the Aramaic word for sin. It meant that you were off the mark, take another shot. The concept of sin was to be positive mental feedback. Sin is when you are operating from inaccurate information and thus a perceptual mis-take. When you become conscious and aware if the results of your inaccuracy you have the option to reconsider what you have learned and do as they do in Hollywood, “do another take.” By the way, where the arrow fell when it missed the target was referred to as evil.

So, this derivation of sin would have been about the time of Jesus.

Diving further into the etymology of the word, I found this explanation of the word sin, one that comes from more recent times:

Etymology: Middle English sinne, from Old English synn; akin to Old High German sunta sin and probably to Latin sont-, sons guilty, est is —
Date: before 12th century

1 a : an offense against religious or moral law b : an action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible <it’s a sin to waste food> c : an often serious shortcoming : fault
2 a : transgression of the law of God b : a vitiated state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God

This is the etymology that Mary Daly quoted, a derivation of the root that means ‘to be’.

If we move forward in time, forward to where the patriarchy as world paradigm has become firmly entrenched, in most of the world it is believed, either overtly, or covertly, that women are the lesser gender. It is here, within this worldview of male supremacy, that sin has moved from missing the mark to simply being human, to simply being a woman.

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Now, granted, we can toss this whole thing out if we don’t believe in this most strict sense of what it means ‘to sin’. Or can we? We learn to make meaning through what we are taught. We are taught with words and we are taught through behavior. We are taught through culture. We learn to make meaning within the culture we swim in.

Things have changed greatly in how women perceive the idea of sin and sinning. Or have they?

Perhaps on the surface of life, in this culture, much has changed. And, intellectually this just doesn’t make sense. But what do we believe, somewhere down in the shadow?

And, what about emotionally? What about our deepest conditioning? What about the stories we made up as young girls? Not so much the stories about what we could grow up to be or do, but the stories about our core worth? Stories we began to tell ourselves about our nature as girls, and as time progressed, as women? What about the feeling of being a girl, then a woman, in a culture that is based on domination?

I know that, until recently, I have lived my life with the unshakable sense that there is something less valuable about me, simply because I was born in a female body. While intellectually I knew this wasn’t so, somewhere in the recesses of my psyche lay hidden beliefs and fears that this body is sinful, that my womanhood was somehow dirty and bad. I see it reflected in the media, in quasi-pornographic programming showing women being beaten and tortured, raped and abused. I see it reflected daily in the myriad ways women are objectified, repeatedly, to sell everything from hamburgers to beer to cars to razors.

It is my experience, and in the experience of many of the women I have worked with to awaken to the divine feminine within, that we swim in this notion that to be a woman in the fullest sense is to sin. We swim in the cultural sea, and we swim in our own internalized pool of it. It’s a deep and dark pool that lies in the shadow, far from the light of Spirit, far from the light of the Goddess, far from the light of the God I know. We carry this pool around inside us. That’s the kicker. If we hold conditioned beliefs, that are unconscious, we swim in our own little pool of perceived sin.

This pool is the only pool that really matters, for it feeds the negative, compulsive, shadow thoughts that keep the inner-patriarchy in place. And, it’s the only pool one can change. But, when we do clean our own pool, the big pool becomes a little clearer and cleaner.

::

Sitting with Mary Daly’s statement, I have read it and re-read it. Writing this post has been like a long labor. I’ve written, and re-written, until I could wind my way around to something I already knew, but needed to see in a simpler form, for anything true is really, really simple at its core.

“For a woman … ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin’, when she is trapped in patriarchy.

“For a woman … ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin’, when she is trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet.

And, when she’s not trapped in patriarchy?

Ah, woman ≠ sin.

As you can see, I’m a lover of logic and math. But, I’m even greater lover of the Mystery, which is the Mother of math. This Mother is the heart of existence. This Mother holds us all in her womb, the womb of truth. If we’re willing to hang out here, the truth will be revealed.

As I sat in the Mystery with Mary’s wisdom, this oh, so, young part of my psyche cried out with very familiar mantra:

‘be small and silent and agreeable = be safe and loved and wanted’.

Here was the part that keeps me believing, even when I know on so many levels this is crap.

::

I know this. I know it is only the stories I tell myself. But, when the stories are woven into the fabric of the culture, into the belief systems that keep the patriarchy in place, it can be so hard to step back far enough to see the obvious. I had to see the equation woman = sin, I had to feel it, I had to sit with it, I had to open my heart to the part of me that believes this seductive lie.

It is seductive. It seduces us with its promise of safety. It beguiles us with the promise that if we give ourselves away, we will be wanted. In believing this lie, I can settle down into the oh so sickeningly comfortable familiar arms of, ‘I will safe’.

Of course, the equation is different at different times for different women.

Sometimes, it looks like:

‘be like a man = be safe and loved and wanted’

or

‘be asexual = be safe and loved and wanted’

or

‘be youthful, sexy, and beautiful as hell so every man will want me = be safe and loved and wanted’

or simply

be silent = be safe.

::

I have done a ton of work to disengage from this cultural story. It’s not only cultural, it’s familial. We, all women and men, learn our story of illusion at a young, young age, from parents who also were taught these seductive lies.

Much of what I’ve done has allowed my mind to once again trust my heart and my body.

When I drop down into this sensuous female body I exist in, I can feel the dark richness of the feminine, the dark loveliness. This is oh so different than the darkness of the shadow.

From my own experience, I know that this is the place from which my own internal power flows forth. This place within the depths of my body and my heart, is the place where I am the fullest in every sense.  It is the place where I feel wholly holy female.

Here, in this wholly holy female place, I am no longer ‘trapped in patriarchy’. It has no power. It does not exist.

In reality, the only thing that is real is what is here, now.

The patriarchy is an illusion, a story, albeit a powerful one because so many minds have agreed to uphold it, thereby granting it power.

::

In remembering Mary Daly, perhaps we can focus on truth, your truth as a woman. This truth stands alone from academic philosophy and theology, cultural conditioning, and gender differences. This truth is free to question. This truth is to know, and to be, you in the fullest sense.

Thank you, Mary, for your fierceness and your courage. You certainly weren’t perfect. You were controversial. You didn’t ever shy away from stating your beliefs, wholeheartedly. You stirred things up. You pissed people off. But, you blew the conversation wide open. You shined not just a light, but a high-beam on the shadow of this culture, a shadow that only harms women, men, children and everything that is living.

Who knows how history will hold you and your ideas, but I do know that you have added to the conversation, a conversation of possibility where all women and girls might one day know, relish and celebrate the fullness of what it is to be female, while also coming to know their healthy masculine side, and where all men and boys might discover the beauty of their feminine side, so that we all might live in true gender respect and harmony.

::

This post has been the most difficult I have written. It felt as if I was giving birth to something so much larger than my own understanding, and I was. I have been giving birth to the raw courage to sin by being fully a woman in all my fullness in THIS paradigm we swim in, the paradigm of patriarchy.

We don’t live in the time of Jesus, when sin meant to miss the mark. We live in the patriarchy, where women are seen, way down deep in the shadow, as being sinful, simply by their nature.

To me, having the courage to sin does not mean to spew anger and hate at those that hold power. It means to do the work it will take to come to know myself through experience, not by way of what I have been told it means. It means to question what I have made up about myself, my worth, the world itself and my relationship with it.

It means to be fully female, to embody the divine feminine, to disentangle one’s being from the powerful structures that keep us believing in our own powerlessness. It means being that which we are, divinely female, embodying the life principle that, by design, created us to bring life into life.

It means to step into this power, to stand and speak, and to give my whole-heart support to other women and men who are willing to stand, speak and step into their own personal power.

As it turns out, it is only my own knowing, my own courage I can birth, but by sharing this knowing, I hope to help crack apart the tightly held beliefs about the prevailing structure we hold so tightly to.

::

Look out your eyes onto the world.

There is nothing written on it.

There are no words.

There is no etymology.

For women and men, the beliefs we hold and the meaning we place on it, is simply in our minds, in how we think we see the world.

The world itself is empty of all meaning and all belief.

It is empty of all that we attempt to make of it.

It is here, in this emptiness, that the mind can rest.

It is here, in this emptiness, that we can know the simple elegance that we are.

It is here, in this emptiness, that we can know our divine inheritance.

It is here, in this emptiness, that we can know the goddess, not as story or image

but as the coming and going, the birth and death, the dance of light here in the world of matter.

It is here, we are safe, loved and holy whole, simply as we are.

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My Unsung Heros: Men Who Respect Women

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Best of 2009 Blog Challenge: Day 20: New person. She came into your life and turned it upside down. He went out of his way to provide incredible customer service. Who is your unsung hero of 2009?

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The answer to this question is so clear. My unsung hero(s) for 2009 are men who respect women, value women and know that women have much to offer that is not being utilized because women are still oppressed. Yes, even here in the US, women are still oppressed. So much of the shadow aspects of our culture are still projected onto women. This post, though, is not to speak to this oppression, but rather to celebrate men who deeply desire to see women empowered.

In 2009, I began to receive emails and facebook messages from men who have discovered my writing, see that I work with women to wake them up to their wild creative nature, and want to share with me how much they love strong women. They wonder how my work is going, because they long to see women step into their power and share leadership with men, not only here in the US, but all over the world.

These men have written to express their sadness at the treatment of women. They write about their frustration with laws that punish women who are victims of men’s transgressions. This excerpt comes from one such letter:

“My opinions on the treatment of women have some loose origins, and are derived from numerous sources, not least of which are my own male frame of reference, and general observations over the years. Frankly, I love intelligent women.  I much prefer their company and conversation to men.  They are a fascinating creature and I have always thought a woman’s perspective on most matters is more thoughtful and reasonable than men.  There is a distinct spark and vitality in women that men lack. Women are altogether interesting and have a far more illuminating take on the human spirit than men; generally speaking.

…The subjugation of women in [this scheme] has mixed motives.  In many tenets the origins are to protect women and children.  Men write the laws, and men know what men do – the strict Islamic laws and western church sensibilities are a direct response to the sexual weakness of men – who desire what they see in a woman.  Rather than put the onus on the man to manage and control his urges, we subjugate women with rules for their behavior. 40 lashes for wearing a pants suit.  Stoning for being raped.  It’s all ludicrous and so very stone age.  Its depressing really.  For all our progress in civilization, the progress of equality for the woman is painfully slow.

We are missing out on the great wisdom and nurturing characteristics of women in leadership in the world.  I am certain that letting a woman lead would circumvent much of the evil in the world.”

On various sites where women’s issues are raised, especially sites working to raise women’s consciousness, there have been recent references to, and quotes from, men who have stepped forward to apologize for how women have been, and continue to be, treated throughout the world. Reading these heartfelt apologies brings me to tears. To know there are men who see through their conditioning so clearly and are willing to take responsibility for their gender’s ongoing subjugation of women brings hope that someday soon there will be an end to the worldwide mistreatment of women and children.

I know this is not about men vs. women. There are many women who are against equal rights for women, while there are many men working to bring about gender equality and healing.

I thank Gwen Bell and her challenge for prompting me to sit and consider more deeply how much these men have inspired me to commit completely to my work. And, I want to, again, thank all the men who are my unsung heroes. I look forward to knowing more of you in 2010.

::

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
Day 20 New person. She came into your life and turned it upside down. He went out of his way to provide incredible customer service. Who is your unsung hero of 2009?

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When I Was A Boy

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One of the things near to my heart is gender healing. I see gender healing as the foundation to healing the human predicament. So, when I came across this song, I wept. Dar Williams has gifted us with a beautiful song that so poignantly speaks to what happens to both boys and girls when we become conditioned out of our natural balance of both masculine and feminine qualities.

What if we had grown up believing we are both a boy and a girl? ‘Cause we are.


WHEN I WAS A BOY

I won’t forget when Peter Pan came to my house, took my hand
I said I was a boy; I’m glad he didn’t check.
I learned to fly, I learned to fight
I lived a whole life in one night
We saved each other’s lives out on the pirate’s deck.

And I remember that night
When I’m leaving a late night with some friends
And I hear somebody tell me it’s not safe,
someone should help me
I need to find a nice man to walk me home.

When I was a boy, I scared the pants off of my mom,
Climbed what I could climb upon
And I don’t know how I survived,
I guess I knew the tricks that all boys knew.

And you can walk me home, but I was a boy, too.

I was a kid that you would like, just a small boy on her bike
Riding topless, yeah, I never cared who saw.
My neighbor come outside to say, “Get your shirt,”
I said “No way, it’s the last time I’m not breaking any law.”

And now I’m in this clothing store, and the signs say less is more
More that’s tight means more to see, more for them, not more for me
That can’t help me climb a tree in ten seconds flat

When I was a boy, See that picture? That was me
Grass-stained shirt and dusty knees
And I know things have gotta change,
They got pills to sell, they’ve got implants to put in,
they’ve got implants to remove

But I am not forgetting…that I was a boy too

And like the woods where I would creep, it’s a secret I can keep
Except when I’m tired, ‘cept when I’m being caught off guard
And I’ve had a lonesome awful day, the conversation finds its way
To catching fire-flies out in the backyard.

And so I tell the man I’m with about the other life I lived
And I say, “Now you’re top gun, I have lost and you have won”
And he says, “Oh no, no, can’t you see

When I was a girl, my mom and I we always talked
And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked.
And I could always cry, now even when I’m alone I seldom do
And I have lost some kindness
But I was a girl too.
And you were just like me, and I was just like you”

Dar Williams’ music is the music that rocked my world in 2009.

This post is part of The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge (by blogger Gwen Bell):
Day 10 Album of the year. What’s rocking your world?

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Embrace Your Wild Creativity

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“Men and women both have a role to play in these times. Feminine wisdom holds many answers, and we have a responsibility to acknowledge its presence, and allow it to emerge as a force in the world. And women have a particular responsibility in this process. Women’s spiritual consciousness, which holds the secret of how spirit and matter come together to create new life, is needed for the mystical process that is taking place within the whole. In order to serve the needs of this new era, women must really live who they are without hesitation, and leave behind patterns of insecurity, dependency, and fear that have inhibited them from expressing what they know is real. Men can serve by developing their own feminine nature, and also by supporting and protecting women as they accept their responsibilities during these changing times.” ~Hilary Hart

Women’s Wild Creativity is: the source of Life, one’s creativity, flowing through a vibrantly alive, instinctive, and radiant female body.

I started Wildly Creative Women six years ago, after a life-changing, consciousness-shifting experience of my own wild creativity. During a mess painting episode, something broke open within me. It brought awareness and light into every cell of my body. In the tender, joy-infused moments of this experience, I saw clearly that women’s creativity is different than men’s. While the source is the same, the vehicle which we use to express it is wholly, and holy, different.

Women have the deep creativity that allows for Spirit to marry with matter, to bring life forth into life. Whether or not she gives birth to children, this capacity, this consciousness exists within each and every woman. It is only a matter of awakening it, and right now, in these times, we are blessed with Life’s deepest desire for us all to awaken.

Men, too, have a role in all of this. As Hart so eloquently states, men must embrace their own feminine nature within, and protect women so that they can step into their new place of autonomy and new-found sense of responsibility to the whole. What greater gift can we give to each other as men and women than to fully awaken to, and realize, the gifts Life has bestowed upon us. We each have a place of service to the whole in this new world that is unfolding before our eyes.

What we are now faced with is the very real necessity, and beautiful opportunity, to bow down in true honor and respect to each other as women and men. In order to come into balance in this way, we need to come into balance within our own beings…and we need to honor each other’s personal power as human beings, knowing that this personal power within each human being is the sacred life force that feeds and nourishes us all.

Each of us can ask ourselves, where do I give my power away, and what do I give it away for? Is it for love? Is it for safety and security? Is it to keep myself playing small in a world that doesn’t seem to be comfortable with my power? AND, we can ask ourselves, where do I take away another’s power? Where do I gladly help another play small, so that I can feel superior?

There is no shortage of love, unless we choose to see scarcity. Love, compassion, passion and creativity all flow from your life force, your inner resource that is your personal power.

In very real concrete terms, women’s power is continually taken away by a culture that does not value the true beauty of women; by a culture that does not value women’s bodies; by a culture that does not ensure that its children are well cared for because it continues to make the day-to-day realities of life so difficult for these childrens’ mothers.

Embracing your wild creativity means you begin to open to your personal power, to that vibrancy that is your life force, while marrying it with the instintive nature that your body gifts you with. Feel this force within you. Honor it, acknowledge it, and bring it out into this world that is thirsting for this sacred nature within you.

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Equality Now

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Equality Now

Joss Whedon on Equality:

“It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity, we need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and women who’s confronted with it. We need equality, kinda now.”

I came across this video today and was completely struck by Joss’ message. It is succinct and clear: we human beings are not naturally misogynistic. It’s not our way to hate and fear women. It is cultural conditioning at its worst.

While this video is a few years old (2006), but it is just as timely…perhaps even more, considering the election events in Iran and how women were treated, the tragic gang rape in Richmond, California, and a host of current day events that continue to reflect back to the human race just how misogynistic we have been taught to be.

When will we realize that peace will only come on our planet when there is peace and deep honoring and respect between women and men? What will it take for this shift to happen? What do we need to see within our own behavior in order to create peace within, so there can be peace all over?

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Marrying Pattern and Matter in the Matrix

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Photo Credit

I was watching PopTech online this morning, and lo and behold there was a talk about creativity that perked up my female ears and heart. I had never heard of PopTech (hard to imagine as a woman with a tech/design/creativity degree). This morning though, I came across mention of PopTech from @PatriciaMartin on Twitter. While she mentioned she couldn’t be there because she is packing to move, I thought I would log on.

I watched a talk by Kyna Leski from RISD. She was speaking about creativity. This is my love in life, and my work here in the world through Creative Wellspring and Wildly Creative Women. Creativity is the Spirit within you, your true nature.

Kyna explained that matrix (derived from the word for mother, and later used to refer to womb) is where pattern and material are married. She then went on to say that pattern (derived from the word for father) and material (derived from the word for Mother) are married in the womb in the creative process.

We all are creative beings. All people are creative. When I teach my ten-week course (in courses for women and men, and also for women only) I love the moment when students experience their creativity, when they really ‘get’ that they are creative beings. It’s like seeing each one remember, in the moment, their true nature and true potential.

We all live our creative process, this marrying of pattern to matter in the matrix, many, many moments in each day of our lives. And, in my work with women, and in my own life, I know that women are created with a womb that brings forth life, brings life into being, brings the mystery into manifestation. Yes, we have a physical womb, but more importantly we embody the creative capacity of the divine feminine. As Rumi said, “Woman is the radiance of God; she is not your beloved. She is the Creator —you could say that she is not created.“ We can create babies, and we can create so much more. We are mothers to life.

Men, too, are just as creative. The source of creativity is non-gendered. The source is life re-creating itself in its never ending unfolding – Shiva and the cycle of creation and destruction. I am divinely curious about how our design as women and as men is naturally intelligent, and what it would be like and look like if we, both men and women, began to trust and have faith in our deepest creative potential, that expression that flows through our gendered body.

This marrying of the mother and the father takes place within us, and in this marriage we bring forth our deepest creative capacity, a new consciousness and intelligence far greater than what any one of us can try to ‘think’ into creation.

It is my deepest hope that if we, as women, can own our divine feminine creative capacity, that men can then relax into their own natural creative nature, and we can, side-by-side, walk into a future that allows for our unique humanity to flower.

So, I know my opportunity is to no longer attempt to exist in the image of the masculine, which is defined by all the ways I was taught to be in the world. The opportunity is to open to being fully female, to honor and trust my own creative process, my design as woman. I don’t yet know how this will evolve. How can I? But, I can trust in this design, trusting in the deeper intelligence that life is. I welcome this marriage of pattern and mattter within me. And, something that is just as exciting, I get to trust in man’s design. I look forward to discovering what shows up between us.

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Feminism – A Whole New Look

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image source: memphis connect.com
image source: memphis connect.com

After receiving the National Civil Rights Museum’s “International Freedom Award,” His Holiness the Dalai Lama said to the audience:

“I call myself a feminist,” … “Isn’t that what you call someone who fights for women’s rights?”

“Whether you believe this religion or that religion, we are all the same human beings,” …“We all come from the same mother. That creates the basis for compassion.”

via: MemphisFlyer.com and FeministLawProfessors

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The Words of God do not Justify Cruelty to Women

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Place: Mosebo, Ethiopia Date: Sept. 15, 2005 Credit: The Carter Center Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter shakes hands with a young girl in Mosebo, Ethiopia, during a visit to commend the efforts of the Amhara Region to prevent trachoma, a painful and debilitating disease that causes blindness.

“The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.” Jimmy Carter

Wow. When I first read the title of the July 12th Observer Op-Ed by President Jimmy Carter, “The Words of God do not Justify Cruelty to Women“, I didn’t quite know what to expect.

As I read the piece, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. A man who was president of the United States stepping into the minefield of women’s rights with courage and conviction, enough conviction to leave his church of six decades, the Baptist Church.

As I let what President Carter had written seep into my awareness, I felt something hard to put into words. It’s the feeling of having another human being express, aloud, something that I have known to be true, all my life, deep in the recesses of my being, even though the established ideology of the many cultures of the world denied its truth. Here was a man speaking it with such strong conviction and courage.

All my life I have witnessed this falsity played out, the falsity that women are lesser beings. It is a belief that is ingrained in the culture I live in, and in many of the cultures of the world. I imagine there are still some small pockets of indigenous people who continue to honor women as equals to men, encouraging the gifts women bring, as well as those of men. But, I grew up in a culture where this falsity was a part of the system, and so, I internalized this belief. I internalized the sense of not being as good as, not deserving the same opportunitties, not, not, not …

I grew up as a middle-class white girl in the United States where I had so many more options that others. I had, and have, more options than so many women and men; yet, and here is the crazy-making part, I witnessed the gap between what I was told and what I experienced.  If the world believed women were lesser beings, then I must have been crazy for knowing, and believing, something different. I internalized a sense of distrust of my own knowing. I internalized all the crazy-making thoughts that seemed to support the cultural belief that women are second-class. At a young age, I adopted the belief that the world around me fiercely held to.

My process of awakening to an innate sense of self-worth and self-trust as a woman has taken decades. It has been necessary to look deeply within, to inquire into my own self-limiting beliefs, as well as those beliefs held by the culture I live in. It has been critical that I ask myself, with fierce truth-telling, if what I hear and see reflected out there is real, is true. In this process, I have come up against all of my internalized beliefs about my worth and the worth of women. I saw where I was telling myself all the lies that I had been told. I came to understand that those lies were illusion. I came to know that I am created in the image of an intelligence far greater than anything my mind could comprehend, an intelligence that does not create flawed and sinful beings. I came to see the beautiful light and life that lies within the female body.

More recently, I came to understand that men are not the enemy, women are not the enemy, there are no enemies. We are all part of the whole. We are all dis-illusioned, conditioned by beliefs that keep us separate and at odds with each other; somewhere within, we know these are illusion. And, we are all capable of seeing clearly, if we choose to question our own belief structure with fierce truth-telling.

Fast forward to yesterday: here was Jimmy Carter finally, in plain and simple English, saying what I know and feel as true, know by way of my own experience, that women are not lesser beings. A feeling of rightness and peace came over me, a rightness that happens when what you see and hear outside matches what you know inside.

You might read President Carter’s Op-Ed, and even this post, and say, “Of course women are equal”. But, it is one thing to know this intellectually, but another thing to know it emotionally, to no longer believe those old feelings of low self-esteem and low self-worth, or to no longer feel a sense of being better than or less than. When I read his piece, his words resonated with what I feel inside.

I feel something big is shifting in the world. I believe in the power of the truth. If we wake up out of this illusion that women are lesser beings, and realize mutual respect and honoring between the genders, this same feeling of rightness, of peace, can pervade the world we live in. And, perhaps we can realize true honor and respect for all of life, the earth, animals, plants, ocean…all living beings.

Thank you, President Carter, for taking this courageous action, and speaking it out into the world, for in your speaking it aloud, we take one more step forward to a world where men and women bow down to each other with mutual respect, dignity and honor.

Photo credit: The Carter Center

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