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A True Dignity

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“You cannot oppress a person, when there is a feeling that in them they are in touch with something that is sacred. You can’t oppress them at the soul level.” Jean Bolen

 

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We live in a society that oppresses everything feminine – feminine values, ways of being, expressions and more. The corollary, more often unspoken than spoken, is that this society, and every patriarchal society, oppresses women. While the severity of this oppression varies by race, society, culture, country, religion, at the core of patriarchy is the oppression of women.

We may want to deny this. After all, our fathers, brothers, and sons are men. And, patriarchy teaches us, as women, that it is our duty to make sure the men in our lives feel good about themselves, that it is our role to do that.

Why do women fight patriarchy? Because, they have the most to gain from its demise. Why do so many men turn a blind eye to it? Because they believe they have the most to lose.

protecting new life ssm

Why do we all avoid, on some level, engaging fully in seeing through this dream? Because it hurts to see the way we’ve been conditioned to treat each other, and to treat ourselves. Because we fear what might happen if this all changes. Because we must grow up, emotionally, to step into our power as sacred beings. And, a myriad of other reasons.

But, men aren’t patriarchy, just as women aren’t the images that patriarchy makes us out to be. Patriarchy is the structure woven into the institutions of this society.

We all, both men and women, to some varying degree, hold this structure up, whether we are aware of it or not. It is woven so deeply, none of us see the full extent of our compliance or complicity, unless we truly awaken out of the dream that is the world of patriarchy.

Men benefit the most from the privileges automatically bestowed at birth in a society that is based on patriarchy. But, even those that are privileged in patriarchy, are suffering, because this is not our natural, sacred way of living.

It is painful to be oppressed. It is painful to oppress. We are all losing in this dream. We know this, and we deny it.

And, we all, men and women, must be part of the solution. The solution is awakening. Awakening to this sacred nature within. A nature that knows the beauty and goodness in all beings.

Something is awakening. Something sacred, something vital, something that knows truth. We are awakening. We are waking up from this dream of patriarchy, from this dream of separation and control, from this dream of fear, domination and oppression.

As Jean Bolen so eloquently points out, when the soul wakes up to that which is sacred within, it can no longer be oppressed. While the body may be abused, the psyche verbally and emotionally assaulted, the soul, when aware and aware of its divine nature, can not be oppressed.

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And you, beautiful woman. The sacred feminine is alive and breathing right inside your body. As a woman, you have the ability to bring life into life, whether it is babies or any of the other myriad ways you can create new life. Your creativity, sensuality and sexuality are intricately woven together in a way that allows you to nurture and love all of life, without losing yourself. This same rich tapestry is also the source of a fiery life-affirming force, a Kali energy that surfaces as you express the fullness of what you are.

When you come to know the divine feminine you, a true dignity arises from within. You accept the humbleness of your own soul and the opportunity to serve all of life.

You have a part to play in this divine dance of life that is yours and only yours. Your sacred feminine creativity and open heart are needed in our world today.

It is time for us as women to remember our innate power, and to no longer trade it for the false securities of our cultural conditioning.

It is time for us to realize that what we are as women is wholly different than men- this difference serves the natural expression of the masculine rather than competing with it.

When we bring together our innate love for the sacred and our deepest desires to see love made manifest in the world, we become a powerful creative force in service to something greater than ourselves.

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The good news is that you are already this sacred being. You don’t have to do anything to learn it, to become it, to get the hang of it. The only thing standing between you and your knowing of your divine nature is the revealing of you to you.

Are you ready to reveal you to you, to look within to the beauty that is you?

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This breathtaking image is “Protecting New Life”, by Shiloh Sophia McCloud, an incredible artist with a divine brush.

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Love of Woman

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“…this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love.” ~David Whyte

I want to write about love.

Between women.

Love between women that was never part of the world I grew up in.

Love between women that defies the (il)logic of patriarchy.

Love that is outside the acceptable norm of patriarchal society.

This love between me and woman has been a long time coming.

To love woman in this way goes against unspoken rules.

It pushes up against learned fears.

And it compels me to belly-up to the place of trust, where the tenderness of past hurts reveals its pink flesh.

This love is far beyond simply promising not to put other women down.

This love is far beyond knowing that supporting another woman does not diminish me.

This love is more simple than all of these thinking things.

This love comes from the place deep within my body that is the radiance of the living, breathing essence of the sacred, divine feminine.

To love woman is to know the purity of the place made ready for new life, whether or not this place ever produces new life.

It has taken me a long time to learn to love woman – in myself, in others, and in its most essential form, the sacred, divine feminine.

::

This post is in response to The Summer of Love Invitational, where the lovely Mahala Mazerov has invited bloggers to write about loving kindness.

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The Great Mother

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“How might your life have been different, if, deep within,

you carried an image of the Great Mother?

And, when things seemed very, very bad,

you could imagine that you were sitting in the lap of the Goddess,

held tightly…

embraced, at last

And, that you could hear her saying to you,

“I love you…I love you and I need you to bring forth your self.”

~Judith Duerk, Circle of Stones

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The Great Mother is here. Her way is not the way of visibility. Her way is dark and deep, down in the darkness where life gestates, where life springs forth from the primal belly.

I first became conscious of Her presence a number of years ago. It felt as if someone was pulling me down, way down into my body, into the depths of the darkness that the descent illuminates. I could feel Her pull, and I knew, instinctively, I was being called to feel, in their most raw elements, all the dark emotions I had been avoiding all my life.

I can’t say I was excited by her invitation. Quite the opposite. All of my spiritual learnings had taught me about transcendence, guiding me to find the Light of Spirit, the masculine aspect of God. This invitation was not about Light, at least that’s what I first thought. It was about darkness, and Her pull was relentless, yet also loving.

It’s easy to want to avoid this dance with the dark. The mind thinks of so many logical reasons why I should’t follow her down. I can’t see Her. And, where is down? Where is this darkness? There is nothing on the outside that would indicate She is calling. It is inside that I hear Her call. It is in the interior of my own experience, that I know it is Her. It is in my body that I know what I know. It is in my heart that I feel Her love for all of life.

I’ve come to know this rich inner life quite well. I’m the only one that knows this interiority; and, you are the only one that can know your own interiority. But, there’s something we have in common. If we are to bring forth ourselves, we women must leave the known outer life, the conditioning that has taught us well how not to trust our own knowing, the conditioning that has caused us to know ourselves only in relationship to others.

If we are to find our own voice, our own inner authority, we must turn inward and begin to listen to our own self. Of course, we are always at choice. That is, until we aren’t, because at some point, it may become more painful to ignore Her call than to heed it.

One of the most important things we can offer each other, as women, is a reverence and respect for this inward journey of women. Perhaps, as we become aware of our own inner life, and all the tugs and pulls and longings we feel to know who we truly are, we can begin to realize that other women we know are also feeling a similar calling. Perhaps, when we each treat the other with reverence, knowing the Great Mother is calling her, too, then a bond of strength and power will begin to nourish our connection to each other, supporting us all in bringing the sacred feminine forth into consciousness.

I can’t say I know for sure why She is asking this of us (although I have my own ideas); yet, she is asking. Don’t take my word for it – or Judith Duerk’s word. Get quiet and take a moment to ask yourself if you hear, in your own world within, Her calling to you.

I do know one thing. As I become more at home in these beautiful depths, I fall more deeply in love with women and all they offer to this world.  We are the gestators of life. Whether or not a woman gives birth to babies, she is always a mother, designed in the image of the Great Mother. As Rumi says, “Woman is the radiance of God; she is not your beloved. She is the Creator —you could say that she is not created.” It is time we come to know our own radiant feminine selves, and see it reflected in all of life.

And, you?

What have you experienced in your inner life? What do you know of the sacred feminine in your own experience? How have you shared this interiority with others? How might you begin to trust this knowing even more deeply? I’d love to know what you’ve experienced.

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The You That Takes Your Breath Away

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Columbine Bud by fireflies604 on Flickr

“We are the only species on earth capable of preventing our own flowering.” – david whyte

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This quote floated across the Twittersphere yesterday, and grabbed my attention. When I posted it as my status on FaceBook, a lovely male friend commented in response, “Yet we are drawn to flowering. Such a juicy existence.”, causing me to pause and consider the dynamic tug of war between closing and opening, concealing and revealing, preventing and surrendering.

So many ways we fight what is. Human beings that is. Only human beings. At least as far as I can see, human beings are the only ones who try oh so hard not to be what we are.

Then, I thought of how much energy it would take for a plant to keep itself from blooming. Oh my. Can you imagine if a bud could keep itself from blooming? I can just see it trying to scrunch everything in, holding itself back and in as if holding its breath, trying so hard not to be what it is meant to be.

Or at the other end of the spectrum, if the plant desires to blossom, gets to the height of its bloom and then tries really hard, incredibly hard, to keep the bloom beautiful. forever. without a flaw. without losing its perkiness. without fading.

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Fighting one’s design is exhausting. I know. I’ve done it all my life. Especially my design as a woman.

I’ve hid my deeply sensual nature. I’ve kept myself small. I’ve taken on others’ shame as my own. I’ve apologized over and over and over simply for taking up space, for being in the way, for reasons I didn’t even know, even as I was in the midst of doing it.

I’ve been really, really nice, keeping the anger and rage down inside where it won’t be seen so I won’t be seen as threatening or angry or a bitch.

As far as I know, flowers can’t choose. They do what they do because their intrinsic design is to do that. But people, we get to choose. We get to self-reflect. We get to do this dance between ego and soul, a dance between pretending and being.

Fighting one’s design is the never ending staircase, the infinite treadmill, the highway to hell, but you never get to hell, because no matter how hard you pedal, you end up exactly where you started. I call it ‘the project’.

Preventing flowering IS hell.

As I let myself feel my exhaustion, when I stop and allow the full force of my dance with the illusion of my not-enoughness to flow over me, something else makes itself known. It is always there. It’s just doesn’t clamor for my attention. It doesn’t have to. It’s just what is.

It’s the wake up call to remembrance.

It’s the quiet, yet insistent, push to bloom, to flower, to be the one I know I really am. The one I allow myself to see in rare fleeting glimpses. The one that flashes across my face sometimes when I’m caught off guard looking in the mirror. The one that scares the hell out of me because of its persistence. The one that scares the hell out of me because of its beauty.

You know the one I’m talking about… the you that takes your own breath away.

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My project has exhausted me for years. And, it shape-shifts. Just when I think I am being real and truthful and risky, I can feel the oh so familiar tightness and constriction of the project taking over again.

Let me make something really clear. The project is NOT bad. It is a ingenious survival strategy to stay safe when young. It’s filled with well-meaning parts that will do whatever it takes to keep safe. The only thing is, if the urge to bloom is there, then the project is standing in the way of blossoming. And, hence, creating exhaustion.

It can feel really risky to be the you that takes your breath away. But, in my experience, it hurts like hell to keep hiding it. The body suffers. The soul suffers. Hiding this you is fighting your design as a soul, as a human being, as a woman.

Beauty appears when something is completely & absolutely & openly itself. ~Deena Metzger

Beauty is something being what it is – completely. Sometimes this learning to allow beauty it is messy. Sometimes I don’t feel beautiful, but then I remember THAT beauty was the beauty I was taught to believe in…not the beauty of something being real. messy. powerful. strong. This is the beauty that pushes the seedling up to the light, the bud to open, the petals to fall, the flower to die.

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Right now, there is a force calling us forth to be beautiful, to be completely and absolutely and openly ourselves. Yes, it is very persistent and fierce force, like truth always is, because, as Andrew Harvey says,

“Everything is at stake, and everything is possible.”

This force is compelling women to blossom. Fully. In all our feminine majesty. It is time.

::

image by fireflies604 CC 2.0 license



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Growing Whole in the Darkness

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“All beauty contains darkness.” ~ Daniel Odier

Learning to see, and then act, outside of the current patriarchal structure has been a journey of ever widening circles, much like a spiral. It is the journey of living the feminine, a way of life that is very different than that which I was taught to know. It means trusting what is revealed in each moment of present awareness, and feeling for what is ripe with the promise of birth. I go in and out of living this way, but as the circles of understanding grow, I find myself opening to the darkness of the feminine to receive Her guidance.

When this guidance is revealed, the only thing that lies ahead is darkness, the darkness of the unknown. The only thing known is that one choice, the one thing that is the most obvious choice. My mind struggles with the darkness, wanting desperately to know what lies ahead, and yet I also know in my heart that this darkness, this unknown, is the mystery of life waiting to be revealed. The divine mystery is the new, is this darkness from which all emerges.

What I am learning to trust in is the strong pull of this knowing. You might call this intuition, but for me, as I live deeper into the cells of my own body, it is knowing.

I found, what I guess you could call the ‘best’ book of 2009, this way. I saw it on a friend’s desk and knew I must read it. The pull was unavoidable. A friend had given him the book, for reasons he couldn’t understand. He had no intention of reading it, but for some reason had not yet given it away.

I would call this book a gift. A gift given and gratefully, and voraciously, received. Not all of the book kept my rapt attention, but the parts that did carried me deeper into the darkness, deeper into the parts of myself that were thirsting for light. I was yearning for gnosis. Through a marriage of the wisdom of this book and my own willingness to allow a new kind of knowing to emerge from within, I began to deepen my trust in this darkness.

The book that has so many dog ears, cracks in the spine, lines underlined, recommendations to others, is Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness. The authors are Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson. In my knowing, this book can be a guide book for the journey into darkness that we all, and most especially women, must take. As Woodman states, “The evolutionary imperative within the collective unconscious is pushing us toward a new level of consciousness.” We must learn to stand alone, in our own wholeness, if we are going to survive. And, learning to stand alone means diving into the darkness, to come to know ourselves again in a whole new way.

As Odier shares, there is beauty in darkness. It is the rich soil from where all of life emerges.

Today’s post is Day 4 (best book) of Gwen Bells’ Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

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Sacred Activism

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The most life-changing ‘article’ I experienced this year was, and still is, The Great Death, delivered in the medium of video by Andrew Harvey. This video is actually the first of seven, and it drew me in so quickly and deeply that I watched another, and another, and another, until I had watched all seven in one sitting. As I watched, I realized I finally had a term and words to put to what my work has become – Sacred Activism.

Over the past seven years, I have been drawn deeper and deeper into the darkness of the Sacred Feminine. It really has been longer than that, but it was seven years ago that I could name what was happening within my being. I’ve been aware of the re-awakening of the sacred feminine within consciousness, as a whole, and within my own psyche. I left my work as a programmer/analyst because I knew I must help birth this consciousness within me, and within others.

After being zinged by Andrew, I contacted the Institute and joined their co-creator program in July. This first year, they had four coming-togethers in Oak Park, Illinois, so I joined in time for the third and fourth program. Being a part of the program has changed my entire view of how to do this sacred work in the world.

“When the joy of compassionate service is combined with the pragmatic and practical drive to transform all existing economic, social and political institutions, a radical divine force is born – Sacred Activism.

This is my third post in Gwen Bell’s blog challenge, the best of 2009

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Both/And | Yes/And

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IMG_6728I’ve noticed a curious thing as I inquire more deeply into the awakening Feminine. There seem to be two (at least) threads of conversation around the Feminine: awakening feminine consciousness in both women and men, and finding balance within our own beings between our masculine and feminine aspects; and, women awakening to their own unconditioned, organic way of being, and the natural power that comes from this energy becoming conscious. Unabashedly Female is a place to converse about the latter, to discover together what is coming into consciousness solely through women.

Most of the time, I read about the former, feminine qualities that both women and men are finding again, such as receptivity, collaboration, relationship and a host of others. When this is the conversation, women and men are included together because these aspects are part of coming to wholeness in every being.

Many times when I speak (or write) of the latter, as in this blog, I ‘hear’ people being in the either/or mindset, a mindset that comes from the culture we are swimming win, one based on a patriarchal perspective. Ubiquitous in this perspective is the notion that things are either/or: that one is either for or against; that either something is true or it is not true; that if I speak of one thing, then I am negating its opposite. This either/or perspective shows up often when I write about women and re-discovering our own nature, that of the sacred feminine. It’s as if our conditioning as women tells us we can’t or shouldn’t look at ourselves with curiosity and wonder as different than men. Or, perhaps it is old conditioning about needing to support everyone else rather than seizing the opportunity to REALLY give ourselves time for reflection and meditation on our own nature. Or, maybe it is based on fear and is a way to avoid the looking within that is necessary.

When I write of women being loving and compassionate and wise, I am not negating that men can also these things. When I write of the ‘Mother’ being absent from our culture, I am not saying that the ‘Father’ has been truly available to men.

What I know to be true is that a compassionate, relational humanity is based on a both/and model. In the humanity model we are opening to, one that is becoming more balanced between the masculine and feminine, we will see from a perspective of both/and, where we agree that we are different beings because we are different genders. Through this perspective we celebrate all of life and the differences that flow through our experience because the spirit we are flows through different gendered bodies.

Celebrating differences is celebrating the diversity of nature. It doesn’t mean continuing the sense of separation or the better than/less than  that has been a hallmark of our patriarchal culture. Instead, celebrating the organic truth of our nature allows us all to bring our full selves to the world, to honor the elegant unique simplicity of our design.

The idea of both/and is becoming more prevalent in many places, but I first encountered the power of it in an improvisation class I took a few years ago. We did an exercise called, “Yes, and” where you willingly accept the last improvisor’s choice of action and build upon it with your own. IN other words, you don’t block what they just brought to the experience, but rather build upon it. This experience was an amazing learning opportunity for me in two ways: 1) I got to see how conditioned I was to block, to take in another’s experience and want to change the direction, say ‘No’ to it, find some problem with it, or to see it as an opportunity to disagree with it and come up with something better. While most of this was pretty unconscious for me, the exercise brought it out. 2) By having to accept where the improvisation was going, which meant accept the other’s choice and position, and then finding a way to build upon it and move from it forced me to acknowledge the other person’s AND their experience and find a way to create and collaborate with inclusiveness. It was an experience of connection rather than separation, opening rather than closing off.

I see Both/And | Yes/And as two very similar world views we can hold in these times of deep chaos and churning. There is no limit to what we can create together as a world of human beings yearning for peace when we come together, when we honor where the other person is, when we act with reciprocity and empathy.

What if our design as woman and design as man is exactly perfect?

What if under our conditioning lies the intelligence of our being, an creative and cooperative design that fits together like a 7 billion piece jigsaw puzzle?

What if our solution can only come out of a clear seeing of all that exists right now and a new possibility that can come from everything that is here?

Our evolution as humans depends on the power of Both/And. It depends on the full flowering of the female gender and the male gender, blossoming out from the constricted conditioned attitudes we’ve been holding.

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Rumi, Women’s Leadership & Love

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 “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.” — 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 one’s heart to break open. It’s not that the heart will break. It cannot break. It must, however, break open, meaning that all the bindings that have grown around one’s heart must give way so that the heart can thrive in its natural expansiveness. When one’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 mother’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.

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Opportunity in Chaos

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We can’t expect our leaders to be what we are afraid to be ourselves. We can’t expect our leaders to take actions that we are afraid to take ourselves. We can’t expect our leaders to take us where we refuse to go on our own accord. It is up to each one of us to recognize within what we are searching for in our leaders. If we truly want our candidate to win and succeed then we must embody that which we are asking of our leaders. We must be willing to walk the path with them. As I see it, this is the meaning behind Gandhi’s quote:

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

We have all, men and women, been highly conditioned by our parents, cultures, religions and society at large. This conditioning is the basis of our personal ego. This ego has its own gods (beliefs and opinions) and these gods are the ones the ego believes all should follow. For example, with regards to the Hilary Clinton vs. Sarah Palin debate, on one level we may believe that the way Hilary carries herself in the world (beliefs, character, background, actions) is better than the way Palin carries herself…or, perhaps, for many others that Palin is “better than” Hilary. It all depends on the way we have been conditioned. But, conditioning is conditioning. Period. All conditioning is a box that has been created to keep each one of us in conformity and a false sense of security and safety. And, even though we have outgrown our conditioning, we keep choosing and acting from it so that we stay part of the ‘tribe’.

We are on the brink of something new, something fresh. What is required is true leadership from each American. We must quiet the fearful cries of our egos so that we may hear our own truth and ‘be’ this truth in the world. This does take trust in our own wisdom. It means taking a stand for what we know to be true within our own being. It means responding rather than reacting. It means questioning our reliance on our leaders to be responsible to us when we haven’t found our own means of being responsible to ourselves. It means becoming citizens again, citizens of not only this country, but citizens of our world.

There is an amazing opportunity presenting itself. We have the opportunity to heal the cultural distrust between men and women, and between women themselves. This distrust has been passed down from generation to generation as part of the cultural conditioning. It has been part of our cultural shadow for hundreds of years and for this distrust to heal, the shadow needs to be seen, acknowledged and personally owned. What we fear within ourselves we project out onto others. How does the shadow show up for you? What are your deepest fears about women in positions of power? How are you judging the women and men involved in the campaign rather than objectively looking at their qualifications? In what ways do the candidates, and their opinions and beliefs scare you? In what ways do you align with them?

Right now things feel chaotic. They are. This election has suddenly, and beautifully, brought in new voices, the voices of women, voices that have for too long been kept quiet. Things are changing and the change feels overwhelming to that part of us that wants to ensure our own beliefs will win.

But, in chaos is opportunity. How can we use this amazing opportunity to create something new and fresh in our political and cultural landscape with regards to women and men leading together?

True creativity, something truly fresh and innovative, can only come into existence when we trust in our own nature and in what we know to be true for ourselves.

Here are a few thoughts I have with regard to the current dialogue regarding women and the elections:

  1. As women, we can choose not to disrespect another woman simply for holding other views and opinions. We need to own our projections. We must separate out what we hate and fear about the ‘other’, and what we disagree with about their position. What we hate and fear about the ‘other’ is what we hate and fear about ourselves.Our cultural conditioning is misogynistic. This means both men and women have been conditioned to see women in ways that are belittling and demeaning. It shows up in subtle ways, and we are all guilty of it. If we can see our own part in this and consciously find a way to heal whatever it is within ourselves that feeds this dynamic, then we will be actively embodying the change we hope to see in those who lead our country.
  1. As women, we can recognize that we have all found a way to survive in this male-dominated culture. We continue to rely on our conditioned strategies to stay in the fold, whatever fold we have found to rely on be it Democrat, Republican, or Independent. Our parties seem to have become tribes that keep us seeing ourselves as different and separate than those of the other tribes.It helps to own that we are all clinging to our worn out strategies and beliefs, ones that no longer truly serve a society that is moving towards a different perspective of power and prosperity.
  1. Why should we be surprised that women running for office would hold wildly differing views? Men have for centuries, and women will, too. Can we separate out gender from clearly defined positions and platforms? Yes, it would be amazing to have a woman in office, but to vote for a candidate simply because of gender would truly be a mistake if we don’t genuinely agree with the positions the candidate espouses or the integrity with which they lead.
  1. Can we choose to not act out of fear and negativity? Everywhere we look, something is feeding our fear. Everything is about ‘fighting’ and winning the war on fill-in-the-blank. This perspective of fear and fight continues to cause us to see the world in which we live as an enemy to be conquered rather than an environment that can sustain us if we see ourselves in relationship with it rather than dominators.
  1. We each must step up to the plate and be willing to be in action. We must be that which we are asking of our leaders. This means finding and claiming our own authority to act from our integrity and authenticity, those qualities that define successful visionary leaders. Then, regardless of who wins in November, we will be walking our talk and living our values…being the change we wish to see right here in our own backyard. Doing this brings forth the peace within that we are looking for out there.

Hopefully, we can open to a new way of seeing our personal role in this election, and beyond it to the rest of the world. How will we hold our relationships with other women, especially those who hold differing views? Can we agree to disagree, while maintaining a sense of compassion and respect for each other as women? Can we begin to build and nurture the humanity of women, a web that connects us to each other and to the sacred feminine?

Can we refuse to do to each other what has been done to us as a gender for hundreds of years?

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Transmuting Anger to Love

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Blue Tara ~ Goddess of Liberation

“Blue Tara, or Ekajati, is associated with the transmutation of anger. A Protector expressing ferocious, wrathful, female energy who destroys all learning obstacles producing good luck and swift spiritual awakening. She removes fear of enemies, spreading joy and good fortune.” (source: Seasonal Salon)

If I am going to be unabashedly female, I must be present to what is here. Anger is here…again. To be honest, I don’t know what to do with this anger. Anger wasn’t something I learned to feel or express, but it certainly is here.

Anger for the way women and children are treated. I sense rage underneath a pretty veneer of good and appropriate behavior, not only on my part, but in the world at large. I sense many women feel this rage at something we can’t quite name, or perhaps don’t know how to name. I am sure many men feel this, too. I know some of it is my own anger, while I know much of it is the collective rage, a rage carried over from centuries of oppression of the Feminine.

My mind can’t understand how this anger and rage can be expressed without hurting another. I don’t want to simply spew more negativity into the world…there is enough already. But, I know I must feel this anger. It is here. And, I feel compelled to do something about what is happening all over our planet. While I feel small compared to the problems, when I feel this anger arise, there is at least something moving, something stirring rather than the complacency that comes when I feel overwhelmed by the problems I see.

In my writing, I have been stymied by the anger that comes up. I am clear that I don’t want to blame or rant or rave. I want to move from the love I know lies deep within my heart. Yet, I don’t yet know the fullness of how love can show up, the ways in which it can move and stand in its fullness as the truth.

I do know that love can cut like a knife of truth. I have seen it. When I stayed at Amma’s ashram in India, I witnessed Her love over and over. Even in moments of Darshan, when she was hugging someone with infinite tenderness of the Mother, she would occasionally express this knife of truth (what I might call anger or something like it) towards someone when it arose. But, here the expression was clean. It cut through the haze of ego like a knife, cleanly without a lingering trace of guilt or blame. Her love flowed through the entire experience. Witnessing its expression took my breath away. I had never seen the beauty in truth of expression like this before.

From my own experience, I know that pure love follows the true expression of anger. When anger is experience fully, without identifying with it, and without allowing one’s conditioning to feed off of it, it transforms into love.

I now know this transmutation of anger to love is what Blue Tara represents. For thousands of years, Blue Tara, and the other goddess forms, have represented this transmutation because anger blocks the way to expression of truth and love. There have been deities to express this because this is part of our path to awakening, to discovering the truth and wholeness of what it is to be female.

There is so much fear amongst women about being angry. No woman wants to be the angry bitch. Yet, we must feel the entirety of what is here, without identifying with it. We are not our feelings or thoughts, yet they move through us. When we block the negative ones, we block all of them. Our hearts are big enough to hold the entire universe…I know we can hold the feeling and expression of this anger, too. Perhaps then it will be like letting the air out of a balloon, slowly, little by little, rather than letting it get so full that it pops.

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