What Remains

This week, a beloved aunt passed away.  My cousin eulogized her beautifully.  She was, by societal standards, a 'simple' woman - yet she was nothing less than a force of life and love, and her loss is deeply grieved.  Is it not 'simple' qualities like the ones she possessed which truly remain and allow us to touch the infinite in our mortal dress?

I have been pretty 'roughed up' for my beliefs about life, truth, love and justice, but my commitment to them only deepens and I hold them even closer, despite all the evidence that seems to point to the contrary, and all the challenges and losses I've faced in my desire to honour them. 

Why?

For as much evidence that tears away at them, I find more that leads me into the heart of them when I am able to see with the eyes of my true nature.  It is through the little things that the infinite often sounds its potent existence. 

This past week, it was the way the sun bathed her coffin at the front of the church in the midst of days that have been remarkable only for the depth of their greyness and chill.  It was in the rivers of tears that spoke of her capcity to love in this life, and the dignity summoned by those who loved her back to honour her in the midst of their unfathomable grief.  It was also in the smiles and joy of the children too young to understand this loss, yet wise enough to bring forth their new life to shine on broken hearts - their medicine the balm that tugs gently at the hollowness, a reminder to return again to the gift of embodiment that remains for those who live.

The doorway to the infinite was there even more potently when a beautiful teacher of indigenous ways raised her ancestral pipe in ceremony to see my aunt's life in its barest essence.  I cried at the reverberations of the truth of her message.

When we leave our mortal dress, what remains?

I believe it is the essence with which we tried to live the eternal in our finite existence.  How well did we love, pursue truth, heal, seek justice, act courageously, and embody the gift of life more fully through gratitude, joy and creativity?

These are the infinite gifts granted to our humble lives. Our task, one that is often not easy, is to say - in spite of it all - Yes.

A Woman's Love

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.

The Diva, the Warrior and the Priestess

In conversations with women, I am noticing a persistent thread emerging around new visions and symbols to guide us in claiming our deep empowerment in the world.  This week I was asked, "How can women balance remaining true to their integrity and their deep and passionate impulse for life with their emerging leadership roles within society and within systems that are inherently set up to demand the "getting ahead" ethos of competition and scarcity?"

Much literature, from a wide range of disciplines and orientations, has emerged to critique this stance within our world, yet the problem and conflict persists at deeply entrenched levels.  Again I have to return to the fundamental importance of what is embodied in our cells, and the ways in which certain energies flow into our lives to assist us in creating new structures in the outer world, just as we work to shift the energies within ourselves.

I've categorized the different energies that are powerful archetypes for women (particularly as they emerge in our leadership) and would like to offer a brief differentiation of these energies.  In many ways, I think that the Diva, the Warrior and the Priestess can all signal a healthy femininity, but they must be engaged with consciously, otherwise they have the potential to be destructive.

The term Diva has negative connotations, yet has also been embraced by many women at the popular cultural level.  Being a "Diva" is appropriated as symbolizing the ability to express one's creativity, and to assert one's needs and suck the marrow from life by boldly going forth to claim what one desires and what one deserves.  There are many positives in the ability to do this, particularly in the face of a long, deep history of repression of women's needs and a devaluation of their contributions and creative expressions.  Where the Diva slips into her shadow side is when she doesn't keep the thread of empathy and love in her consciousness, and the assertion of her needs and worth becomes a "me-first" repetition of the worst aspects of a power-driven culture, or when her creativity becomes devoid of any life-affirming qualities but instead drowns in excessive egotism or materialism.

The Warrior is rarely associated with women, yet historically there are many women who have carried the torch of tenaciously taking up a cause and taking a stand in order to advance cherished ideals and values.  The Warriors are the female activists.  They have passion and purpose, and are determined to create a new world through their hard work and dedication to articulating what is wrong and putting forward their vision of what is right.  The Warrior allows us to take an ethical stance, and work to support those values.  This energy allows us to feel strong and powerful, and emboldened by our vision of a different world.  Where the Warrior can become overwhelmed by shadow is when anger becomes the fuel to keep burn-out at bay, and in-fighting results when the gains have not lived up to their nourishing promise or have not been achieved in the fullness of the vision, which then feels like failure in the face of all the hard work and sacrifice.

The Priestess is, to me, the most unexplored of the energies.  In a culture which is both very secular and very religious, the essence of spirituality and mysticism have suffered a pretty severe repression.  The Priestess is an energy that one must search far back into history to find.  She is the one who tends to life in all of its paradoxes, and honours love above all else.  She tends to the fires of her deep intuition and wisdom, and keeps faith with the most enduring, sustainable and nourishing values of life - truth, integrity, courage, humility, love, justice, and respect.  She places the mystery at the centre of her life, and values the indigenous wisdom that lives in her bones, instructing her on her connections with all of creation.  In her shadow aspect, the Priestess can become inflated with false power and ungrounded fantasies, and her charisma becomes a form of manipulation and control.

Of course, there are a myriad of archetypes and symbols that inform the lives of women.  These three, particularly among women finding themselves in leadership roles, are important ones to meditate on.  If we can strike a human balance, we can live the possibility of asserting our needs, expressing our creativity, allowing our desires to be consciously fulfilled, taking a stand to further passionately felt values and visions for future generations, and tending to the fires of our deepest wisdom and knowing in service to life and to love.

Sounds like a full and beautiful life to me.