It seems as though my last post, Listening Into Liberation, resonated with many of you. The comments you left were insightful posts unto themselves. They touched me deeply.
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“The future of humanity will be decided not by relations between nations, but by relations between men and women. ” D.H. Lawrence
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I realize that I know very little, if anything, about the answers to how liberation into wholeness can unfold. And at the same time, I absolutely know that wholeness is our inheritance, and that our true nature is already whole.
I know that consciousness is seeking to know itself, to awaken fully into wholeness.
I know that my rational mind can’t understand it, even if it thinks it can.
I know that I have a deep longing to heal into wholeness, and to be liberated from these ties and snares that keep me falling back into the false beliefs of our culture, that:
- women are secondary to men,
- the feminine is something to fear,
- the masculine is bad
- women have to apologize, constantly, for something not quite known
- men must be taken care of
- men and women can’t trust each other
- women are inherently jealous of, and hostile to, each other
- I, as a woman, will be more safe and secure in my relationships, and in the world at large, if I ‘pretend’ to be good, compliant, selfless, small…in short, something I am not.
These are just a few of the notions I (and others I know) have believed in the past, or continue to believe right now. Is there anything else you might want to throw in here?
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“…re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.†~ Walt Whitman
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We’re told many things about women, about men, and about our worth, our value, how we should be with each other. We’ve been conditioned by parents, by our schooling, by the church, by the culture, by the media…
I can see the most necessary and important thing I can do to begin, is to question all of my beliefs. Period. Even my most treasured beliefs, the ones I cling to that give me a sense of righteousness, or a sense of safety and security. This is really about questioning the small, yet sometimes very loud and insistent, roommate in my head that wants me to believe these things so I will stay ‘in the tribe’.
I know liberation into wholeness will not come by hanging onto my beliefs. It will not come if I hang on to anything I have to believe in, because if I believe in something, it means I don’t really know the truth of it. If I did, I wouldn’t need the belief.
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All of Life is Sacred
One thing I know is that all of life is sacred. I know this. I don’t have to believe it, because I experience it. I witness the sacred looking out your eyes. I hear the sacred in your voice. I feel the sacred in your touch. I taste the sacred in your kiss. Everything is alive with the sacred. Everything.
We are breathed, we are fed, we are loved, and we are held by the sacred. All is infused with the sacred. When we don’t see this sacredness, it’s because we believe the conditioning that tells us differently.
Patriarchal conditioning teaches us to fear matter, to fear that which is here right under our noses. Patriarchal conditioning is about fearing the feminine in us all, but most especially in women, because we embody the sacredness of the feminine life principle. Patriarchal conditioning tells us to transcend rather than embody. Yet, it is through the body that I experience, that I enter into relationship with you, with woman, with man, with life.
I know I begin here, with my own experience that all of life is sacred. Somehow it’s easy to see this sacredness in children. I see their innocence. Yet, this same innocence is alive in us all.
I begin with this innocence, this wonder and amazement that are naturally a part of being alive and aware. The only thing I can know, truly know, is what my experience shows me.
I long to know you, to listen to woman, to listen to man.
Wholeness is about Oneness, about no longer experiencing division within and division without. I have to begin here, where I am, seemingly still ensnared by beliefs, but willing to look to see what is here, what is true, what is so. And, then acting on that knowing, to move with truth, rather than shrink away from it.
The roommate believes it won’t be easy. Yet, the longing is much stronger than the roommate’s resistance.
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And, you?
I’d love to be in conversation with you.
