female wisdom – unabashedly female

It makes no sense to use feminine power to succeed in a patriarchy. Like Coke giving micro loans to African women so they can sell its products to villagers. This is life turning against life. Instead, women need to trust in our unique power. We need a leap of faith into ourselves. It might be a long leap – with not many signs of success. But success in a the patriarchy is not the success we long for.
~ Women’s Power Wheel on Facebook

I’ve often wondered why success in this paradigm feels so empty for so many women. I think the wise women at Women’s Power Wheel have succinctly described why this is so. (For more of this contemporary wisdom, ‘Like’ their page, so you can learn more of what they offer.)

Our power does not thirst for acquisition or conquering others. Our power does not grow from making others small. Rather, our power hungers to give sustain life, to support and nurture it.

We are in the midst of a change in how we view power and what it means to be powerful. I have come to see, we are most powerful when we live who we really are…sometimes easier said than done, but if we are to do what this quote suggests, to “trust in our unique power”, then it is in living unabashedly as women that this power will come forth.

And, you?

Take a moment to think of a time when you felt truly powerful, a joyful power that radiated from your whole being, a sense that you were doing what you are here to do, to serve. Perhaps the word power throws you, because of how it is used in this masculine-centric culture, yet allow your body to show you a time such as this.

What do you see? remember? feel?

What would it take to make this leap of faith into yourself, and into other women?

What is the success you long for?

Â “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” â€” Rumi

This is the first of a series of posts on this topic of Rumi, Women’s Leadership & Love.

To be a leader, one must truly feel what others are feeling. To be a leader, one must be able to truly love those she leads. How do we learn this most necessary trait? By feeling, deeply, the depth of our own experience. By allowing our own hearts to break. Many spiritual teachers speak of the necessity of allowing oneâ€™s heart to break open. Itâ€™s not that the heart will break. It cannot break. It must, however, break open, meaning that all the bindings that have grown around oneâ€™s heart must give way so that the heart can thrive in its natural expansiveness. When oneâ€™s heart is free to be, it is as large, and as expansive, as the whole of the Universe.

Feeling the depths of shame and humiliation from our own experience of being marginalized, disrespected and humiliated generationally is key to women waking up to our fullness and wholeness. Both our lightness and our darkness must be brought back into consciousness if we are to be wholly female and embody the sacred feminine that we are.

Every midwife knows
that not until a motherâ€™s womb
softens from the pain of labour
will a way unfold
and the infant find that opening to be born.
Oh friend!
There is treasure in your heart, it is heavy with child.
Listen.
All the awakened ones, like trusted midwives are saying,
welcome this pain.
It opens the dark passage of Grace.

~Rumi

Opening to the pain of our experience as women, individually and collectively, is our passage to Grace. It is paramount that we open ourselves to feel, deeply feel, that which has been projected onto us over the centuries of oppression. There are many layers to this feeling. How much of our anger, shame and disowned power can accumulate before the dam breaks? We can use this pain as the way into Grace, the way into the opened heart, the way into the depths of our humanity. This humanity has become ripe and fragrant with our own capacity to walk side by side men, no longer simply a complement or accessory, but rejoicing in our sovereignty and self respect.

When we are able to feel the depths of what has been internalized within our own beings through the generational oppression, our hearts will move into an awakened state of love for ourselves, for other women, for men, for all of life. And, when we come to embody this love fully, for ourselves, and for others, every cell of our being will be filled with Grace.

Tag: female wisdom

A Leap of Faith Into Ourselves

And, you?

Rumi, Women’s Leadership & Love