Where has the balance gone?

Somewhere we stopped listening. We stopped listening to that voice inside of us that told us the answers to things that we can not see, rather we feel, we (used to) know.  We stopped honoring this voice and knowing and started looking at it as something that maybe just maybe, only women posses. Women retreated deep into themselves, into this knowing, into this intuition and further into our isolation “Red Tents, Kitchen Witchery,Womanly Arts,The Vapors, Hysteria,Like a Girl,Stand Behind Your Man.” Women retreated further and further until that voice of knowing was diminished, forgotten, scoffed at. When that voice started to fall silent in women, it started to fall silent for everyone in the world. That voice, that knowing ,was and is the divine feminine in all of us. Women and men too have this voice, as we are all part of this dance thats is movement of all energy and the divine balance of the universe. Just as the divine feminine is present (albeit dormant in most of us), the divine masculine is present as well. The divine masculine allows us to address the knowable world: it is a space of action and when in balance, protection.

When women allowed their voices to fall silent and realized that they wanted to find their way back into the world, they forged ahead, holding on firmly to the masculine spaces inside of them…they convinced themselves that the only way to be powerful, to be heard, to be seen, was to embrace the masculine. The masculine which because it is out of balance, has lost its divinity. It has spilled over into violence, fear and oppression. Instead of being a protector, it has become a great destroyer. It’s time that we stop. Its time that for just a moment we become quiet, we listen….we find that small spark of knowing that is inside of us, and we nurture it, we tend to it, we flame it with the fans of faith, acceptance and reverence. Until the divine feminine is honored in all of us, we will continue to forget that at one time masculine was not only divine, but it stood side by side with the divine feminine in the dance of the energy of the universe.

So how do we connect with this space in ourselves if it is something that seems to be born from mystery and fostered by faith alone? We take the first step forward by using what is tangible in our world and move from there. We look at the cycles of the moon, and notice how the moon affects our sleep, our behavior. We honor the “pulling inwards” we all experience when the days are shorter and there is snow on the ground. We feel and acknowledge the energy and joy we feel when the earth is reborn in spring. We look to our farmers and gardeners and watch how they plant their seeds and look to the cycles of the earth to guide their hands. We look at the tides and how they are affected by the cycles of the moon. We then take a small leap of faith and look at sentient beings and recognize that they have consciousness, and resist the urge to anthropomorphize what we do not not understand, but extend them respect and kindness, understanding that they are inhabitants of this earth in the same way we are. We then look at anything with any kind of life force (plant and trees) and understand that there is energy there and that they play as much of an important part of the existence of everything as we do.  Finally we take the biggest leap of faith of all….we listen to ourselves, deeply, clearly, with love and compassion. We honor the voice deep inside ourselves that speaks to us all the time. We dont excuse it, diminish it, or bully ourselves for listening. We exalt, feel, accept, embrace and honor that voice. It is not “women’s intuition”, it’s deep knowing that is present in all of us. It is our connection with the universal consciousness (we are all made of the same energy after all). We stop looking at femininity as weak, and instead (as we have embraced masculinity as strong) we embrace femininity as powerful.We as women stop trying to take back our divine power by acting more like men. We instead encourage men to embrace their divinity  (both male and female) by saying “no” to the exclusive male power paradigm (and I speak to us women as well as we are so guilty of  trying to overly exert our masculinity in order to keep up in a long-standing patriarchy). We listen, we honor, we exalt the shiva and shakti of the cosmos- recognizing that the universe will always find balance,and in embracing the divine masculine and feminine in us all, we are living in harmony with the earth and all energy. With this balance comes ease, grace, knowing, joy, ferocity, strength and most of all a deep abiding love and recognition of our place in this great existence.