Today's subject is honoring the sacred feminine.
The sacred feminine is a term that I think when people hear it,
Associate it with some kind of new age thing.
And you can see lots of memes about it or lots of different things online.
And sometimes I think when terms get used a lot,
They lose their potency or they morph into something else.
But really,
The sacred feminine is as old as can be.
It's about as old age as anything that there is.
There's archaeological evidence going back almost 25,
000 years ago of the great mother or the feminine being worshipped and being honored.
You can find all kinds of carvings of the female form.
And throughout the whole world,
So many different cultures have honored and revered the feminine.
And I want to say at the beginning that usually our mind immediately goes to some kind of a gender association we hear feminine and masculine.
But the way I'm talking about it is as a principle.
Feminine and masculine exist in everyone to varying degrees,
However one may identify with their gender,
Man,
Woman,
Non-binary,
Or anything in between.
We know that gender is mutable,
Is fluid.
But when it comes to these principles of feminine and masculine,
They exist in everything.
If you look at different spiritual traditions around the world,
There are many different ways of talking about and expressing these different principles.
There are like polarities or different qualities or energies in existence.
For example,
You've seen probably the yin-yang symbol from the Chinese tradition.
These two feminine and masculine energies,
They interpenetrate and they're indivisible.
They go together.
In the same way,
In the Hindu tradition,
In the tantric tradition,
Which is people often hear the word tantra,
Immediately they have an association that that has to do with sex.
Tantra is actually a very deep,
Very profound system with many different parts to it.
Fundamentally,
In tantric philosophy,
There are two main energies,
You could say,
Or polarities that govern this world,
And they're often referred to as Shakti and Shiva.
Shakti would be the feminine power,
Supreme feminine power.
Shiva would be like the pure consciousness that is underlying everything.
So many different ways to talk about it.
But these two things,
Shiva and Shakti,
They,
Like the yin-yang symbol,
They're indivisible.
You can't really have one without the other.
It's not that one should trump another.
It's not that we're trying to squash and get rid of the masculine because we've moved so far away from the feminine.
It's that them coming together in equal balance within us,
Within the world,
Is what will bring healing.
We really,
Really have moved so far away from that,
And we're all suffering from it.
Whether we know it or not,
We all suffer from the destruction and violation of the feminine principle in this world.
I'm not a historian or an archaeologist,
But I have read a lot and studied a lot about this,
And there were times on this earth when people were living more in harmony with nature,
Where there was more balance between people,
Where the feminine and masculine qualities were more in alignment with one another,
Where there was reverence for this world.
And that began to change.
We could point our fingers and say that there are so many reasons why this changed.
It was probably a very gradual thing,
But it did change.
If you read The Chalice and the Blade by Rian Eisler,
She talks about how basically we moved from a partnership system to a domination system.
So we moved from a time when women who were the source of life were respected and revered to a time when they were neglected and exploited and abused,
Just like we see happening to Mother Earth.
But there were also changes in the way that we lived.
If you read Rene Descartes' work,
He introduced the idea of the mind-body split.
We're only now moving away from that to understand through physics and stuff that actually we live in a unified field of consciousness,
But everything is not separate.
But for a while there,
For many centuries,
There was this belief the universe is like a clock,
It's a machine,
It's mechanical,
And everybody is separate from nature.
We have a mind,
We have a body,
Nothing is interconnected.
Those ideas really took us away from this truth of inter-being,
This truth of the feminine,
The feminine principle,
Which are certain qualities,
Like relationality.
The feminine is relational.
Care,
Cooperation,
Empathy,
Nurturing,
Patience,
Also fierceness,
Courage,
And power,
All of these things.
We see reflected in the feminine,
Which exists in anyone of any gender to varying degrees,
Whereas the masculine is more the masculine principle.
Remember,
I'm not talking like man or woman.
The masculine principle is more about structure.
It's more about direction.
It's more about analysis,
Logic,
How to make something happen.
There's different ways to think about it.
These two things need each other.
They go together.
But if there's a lack of the feminine,
Then it's like everything is all dried up.
There's no life.
There's no water.
It's like dry earth.
You can have that structure,
But there's nothing enlivening it.
So this shift happened,
And these so-called masculine values became very prominent.
I could probably say that the Industrial Revolution also had something to do with it,
The sense that I have to be productive.
I have to accomplish things.
I have to achieve.
I have to do this.
I have to go,
Go,
Go,
Go,
Go,
Right?
This is the way that many people live today.
We're more in the mode of doing as opposed to the mode of being.
Being is the realm of the feminine.
Doing is the realm of the masculine.
Nothing wrong with doing.
But if you only do,
And you never be,
Something is off.
We can all feel that if we just reflect on our own lives to see how these different qualities are playing out.
We divorced ourselves from nature.
We divorced ourselves from that feminine beingness within.
And so in a sense,
It's like our world is suffering from almost like a kind of psychic wound,
You could say.
Because if half of our human psyche is suppressed,
If we're not acknowledging it,
If we're turning away from it,
Then that has to be hurting us in some way.
That has to be having an impact on us,
Whether you call it feminine or masculine or whatever you want to call it,
A world that has no empathy,
A world that has no compassion or care for one another or a sense that we're all connected,
We're all one.
If we don't have that view,
It's only a matter of time before we really destroy ourselves and it's happening.
If we look around,
We can see that these things are happening,
We're harming one another,
We're hurting one another.
There's so much focus on separation and division.
So the need to come back to an understanding that this world is sacred,
That is in the realm of the feminine.
It's here in nature,
It's in the water,
It's in the trees,
It's in the mountains,
It's in other people,
It's in our own body.
It's in all of these things that we see every day.
If we can revive that vision,
The ability to see that what we are seeking is actually here,
Then we have a possibility of really transforming our planet and transforming ourselves as well.
So I want us to do a meditation together just as a way for all of us to connect to that feminine principle or to that feminine consciousness.
So let's do that now.
So we can just call upon the presence of the great feminine goddesses and archetypes throughout history who have shown us different faces of the feminine,
Showed us different fractals of our own self,
And we just call them in with gratitude and ask that the feminine qualities that can bring healing to our own hearts and bodies and minds,
That they may be nurtured and awakened within us,
Beginning at the root of self-compassion and care.
Feminine sees and feels the sacred in everything,
So we need to begin by recognizing the sacredness of our own being,
Our own body,
Our own mind and heart,
And our humanity.
In everybody's heart,
There's like a soft spot.
Sometimes this is called bodhicitta,
It's a tender place in our heart.
This tenderness is like the seat of feminine,
That tender place feels the pain of all beings,
The pain of the earth,
As well as the joy and the love.
It feels its oneness and unity with everything in existence.
It's okay to feel that place,
That soft place.
We don't always need to armor it and close it down.
It's okay to let the sun shine on that,
Feel the light that that has to offer you.
You can feel and imagine a sense of harmony within your being,
A balance of masculine and feminine.
It's not about one trumping the other,
It's about working in partnership together in harmony.
Feeling that whatever is needed to expand,
To balance the other side,
Lunar and solar,
Dark and light,
Masculine and feminine.
We can connect to the earth and just feel the beauty of mother earth with our senses,
The realm of the feminine and feeling it with our senses,
The waters of the earth and the rich soils and the sands.
We can imagine feeling them with our feet and immersing our body in the body of water and smelling the flowers and feeling the wind on our face,
Breathing in this beautiful world and offer gratitude to mother earth for always supporting us despite what we have done to her sacred body.
She gives so much.
May we all connect more deeply with the feminine qualities that she expresses and embodies.
May we learn from her and may we embody those more in our own lives,
The tenderness towards our own self,
Compassion,
Forgiveness and patience with our own hearts,
Space to feel and be who we are,
To be what we are with our emotions,
To let them flow,
To not feel shame about who we are,
To honor our darkness and our light.
Thank you.
