The subtitle I wanted to add to the above was "Precious or Pernicious?" I am wondering if there is anything in the world less trusted, or perhaps less valued at a collective level, than a woman's authentic love.
I am not trying to exclude men or folks along the gender binary here, but want to speak from the reality of my own experience and what I have come to understand through my conversations with, and my engagement with the work of, other women. I know that all people suffer from not having healthy avenues of expression for their love. What I would like to touch upon here is how women's love can be taken up and perceived when it is expressed.
Does our struggle to honour women's loving have to do with our psychological struggle with our own mothers, and our spiritual struggle to see the feminine valued in the world?
When a woman expresses her love, gives from her heart, and speaks from her deepest truth, I see again and again that these acts are put under a suspicious microscope. Being real in our loving (which encompasses many things, including honouring our truth) can often put us in direct line of projections. This creates a vicious cycle. The more we experience our deepest authenticity being unwelcome in a power-driven world, the more we hide that essence, or become more skilled in disguising it, or more strategic in protecting the truth of our being and knowing, which makes us feel like we are hiding a shameful secret (Shhh...don't let them know you love that much!). The most dangerous thing it seems we can be in our current cultural climate is genuinely open-hearted and honest.
Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that power does often masquerade as love in our lives. When we are experiencing the real thing, it's hard to know if it can be trusted. Conversely, we can get severely hurt by mistaking love that really isn't love at all for the real thing, and that gets us into all kinds of challenging and painful situations.
Our bodies can be our greatest friends in helping us to know the genuine from the false, but having ignored our body's wisdom for a long time, this takes patience and skill. How do we know when our old fears and wounds are getting triggered? How can we know if the feeling of mirroring we are experiencing in a relationship is genuine? Again, the devaluation of the feminine principle that is reflected in our disembodiment needs to be challenged in order to befriend the wisdom of our most trusted ally, which is our body, our very matter.
Learning the language of our greatest guide can then release us into what Mary Hamilton refers to as "original flesh" in her book The Dragonfly Principle: An Exploration of the Body's Function in Unfolding Spirituality. Honouring and expressing our body's innate capacity for love and joy allows us to be more capable of receiving the love of another.
As we become more embodied in our spirituality, the hope is that the feminine depths of love that we are capable of expressing will be restored to a cherished place within our world, and that its extraordinary ability to heal and renew is remembered for nothing less than what it is:
The sacred essence of peace.
I am not trying to exclude men or folks along the gender binary here, but want to speak from the reality of my own experience and what I have come to understand through my conversations with, and my engagement with the work of, other women. I know that all people suffer from not having healthy avenues of expression for their love. What I would like to touch upon here is how women's love can be taken up and perceived when it is expressed.
Does our struggle to honour women's loving have to do with our psychological struggle with our own mothers, and our spiritual struggle to see the feminine valued in the world?
When a woman expresses her love, gives from her heart, and speaks from her deepest truth, I see again and again that these acts are put under a suspicious microscope. Being real in our loving (which encompasses many things, including honouring our truth) can often put us in direct line of projections. This creates a vicious cycle. The more we experience our deepest authenticity being unwelcome in a power-driven world, the more we hide that essence, or become more skilled in disguising it, or more strategic in protecting the truth of our being and knowing, which makes us feel like we are hiding a shameful secret (Shhh...don't let them know you love that much!). The most dangerous thing it seems we can be in our current cultural climate is genuinely open-hearted and honest.
Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that power does often masquerade as love in our lives. When we are experiencing the real thing, it's hard to know if it can be trusted. Conversely, we can get severely hurt by mistaking love that really isn't love at all for the real thing, and that gets us into all kinds of challenging and painful situations.
Our bodies can be our greatest friends in helping us to know the genuine from the false, but having ignored our body's wisdom for a long time, this takes patience and skill. How do we know when our old fears and wounds are getting triggered? How can we know if the feeling of mirroring we are experiencing in a relationship is genuine? Again, the devaluation of the feminine principle that is reflected in our disembodiment needs to be challenged in order to befriend the wisdom of our most trusted ally, which is our body, our very matter.
Learning the language of our greatest guide can then release us into what Mary Hamilton refers to as "original flesh" in her book The Dragonfly Principle: An Exploration of the Body's Function in Unfolding Spirituality. Honouring and expressing our body's innate capacity for love and joy allows us to be more capable of receiving the love of another.
As we become more embodied in our spirituality, the hope is that the feminine depths of love that we are capable of expressing will be restored to a cherished place within our world, and that its extraordinary ability to heal and renew is remembered for nothing less than what it is:
The sacred essence of peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment