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.

The Dignity of Descent

The  "successful"  journey through life often presents itself as linear, or as an inclined linear passage, meaning that one climbs to a summit of success.  The illusion being that one can, through conquest and successful will power, achieve a steady upward progression through life. To set goals and strive to achieve them is not at issue here.  What I'd like to explore is how this notion of linearity flies in the face of life's truest, deepest rhythms and challenges.

While we are so often presented with the notion of climbing and striving as being the true challenge and test of one's character, the reality is that it is surrendering to the descent and accepting the paradox of transformation through death and re-birth that requires as much, if not more, strength, grace and grit than the upward climb.  The ultimate paradox lies in the fact that to truly surrender and accept life's realities requires levels of courage that lie closer than bone, and a strength that can endure the shattering of what one has held sacred.

We are in the realm of the deep feminine here.

In Sylvia Brinton Perera's groundbreaking study Descent to the Goddess, she explores the feminine cyclical pattern of death and rebirth through the Sumerian Inanna myth.  This is not your average fairy tale - the myth is challenging, dark and, at times, frightening.  It is all these things because it is about what we often fear most - death.  Not just physical death, but the death of our ideals, the death of relationships, the death of identities, and the death of old patterns and ways of relating.

Perera writes:

The Inanna mythologems of descent and return reintroduce two great goddesses, primal feminine energy patterns and their partners, and the possibility of an individual human response to bring them into incarnated, personal life.  The story presents a model for health and healing the split between above and below, between the collective ideal and the powerful, transformative processual reality underlying the feminine wholeness pattern...[and can lead us] on the path as we suffer the return to the goddess and renewal.

Healing the split between above and below can be understood at a personal level as healing the split between the mind and the body - cleaved apart by a rationalism that does not hold the body's wisdom in an equal and loving embrace.  Yet by healing this deep split, we are returned to our birthright as embodied souls and can better express the full spectrum of our humanity.

Our bodies are the reminder of why the linear incline is an experience within life, but cannot be a model for life itself.  It is our bodies that undergo the descent and transformation of a mortal journey - meeting the deep feminine through death and decay.  This embodies both the literal experience, and the metaphorical understanding of death as that which brings forward new life - that real transformation is, in fact, only possible through death.

Another paradox presents itself here: by accepting that truth, life becomes more vibrant and filled with possibilities.  When Plato was asked to summarize his life's work and philosophy, he responded by saying, "Practice dying."  In essence, Plato is inviting us to practice surrendering to change, practice accepting what is, practice releasing the fear of the unknown, and practice letting go.

When the fear of change and letting go is preventing new energies from being born into your life, steel yourself with Rumi's question:

When have I ever become less by dying?

EQ in Schools

When many educators within the province hear the first two letters "EQ", they might automatically think of EQAO - the Educational Quality and Accountability Office whose mandate is to ensure greater accountability and quality within Ontario's publicly funded education system.  At core, educators are accountable for fostering an environment and creating the conditions for the development of literacy, numeracy, critical thinking, and skills development in a wide variety of areas.

But what about the importance of EQ - emotional intelligence?  We have yet to create systems of accountability within education where we are accountable for fostering humane, caring and empathetic human beings who will, by virture of their interpersonal skills, cultivate a healthier, more productive, and more dynamic and inclusive society.

What if EQAO stood for Emotional Intelligence Accountability Office?  Of course, we might bristle at the thought of an intrusive, external gaze of how we conduct our emotional lives and how this might be measured.  Fair enough! Yet I can't help playing with the possibility of what kind of society we would create if what mattered in our schools equally to what we were learning and teaching was who we were when we were teaching and learning.

In so many ways, because our modern culture has embraced success, efficiency and productivity at any cost, we all carry the lack of balance this has produced within our psyches.  To embrace emotional intelligence as a core educational value would mean that our understandings and measures of success, efficiency and productivity would be transformed.  Due to the long history of not valuing emotional literacy and intelligence and the wounds or incompleteness in our humanity that has been created as result, elements of education would have to be broadened and understood as a pathway of healing (being made whole), and not only as the transmission of knowledge.  The way in which the work of education is understood expands and deepens with this shift, and institutional responses must arise organically to support this process.

It would also mean that educators would not only have the responsiblity of having a firm grasp of the curriculum, and the various strategies, approaches and techniques that help cultivate success for students, but would also be deeply committed to their emotional and psychic growth.  Of course, many educators already are - I happen to be lucky enough to have known and worked with some of them (and do now). 

Can you imagine what kind of society we can create when the heart of a child really, truly matters?  When what they feel is listened to, understood and given space to be expressed in healthy ways?

When I realize what could be achieved and created by a society of deeply secure, healthy, caring and inclusive human beings, I then truly understand that the cultivation of emotional intelligence is not an "extra", or an "add-on" - it's essential.

Following the Reindeer Woman

I have been so moved by reading Linda Schierse Leonard's Following the Reindeer Woman: Path of Peace & Harmony. Having long been deeply inspired by images of deer and reindeer, her exploration uncovers the depth and layers of this powerful symbol of gentleness and strength in divinely balanced embrace.

She writes:

Our own reflection framed within the peaceful eyes of the reindeer can remind us of our intimate, primal connection with and responsibility to all of nature. The reindeer's ability to survive the starkest winters and find their way through dangerous wildness to create new life may help us reclaim a guiding symbol for our existence, one that can help us rediscover and redeem our own enduring instincts. The reindeer can again become spirit guides for us, images of hope and peace that can inspire us to honour and affirm life and peacefully transform the world and ourselves.

As a woman, I find the balance of strength and gentleness an ongoing task and process of discernment. I know this is a struggle for all sides of the gender spectrum. Fundamentally, this is about our human ability to live in a state of healthy emotional and psychological balance. How can I be strong without shutting down...and how can I be gentle without being splayed? Meditating on the reindeer provides some energetic clues...something about the fierceness of the antlers when threatened. Yet that kind of fierceness is clean, sharp and appropriate - no drama, no unecessary brutality. It is a protective fierceness that says a powerful and justified, "No" to harm, and "Yes" to life.

I feel that an emerging ethics of our time asks of us to embody this same protective fierceness. Unlearning outdated gender roles and stereotypes that do not allow women or men to be whole in our respective passion for protecting life is central to the journey. Again, careful of the abyss that lurks on either side of the paradoxical edge we are trying to embody - avoiding both the stone-cold Medusa, and the victimized gentle flower.

Being vulnerable and therefore open to feeling great pain is unavoidable; yet I believe it is possible for us to shed our tears with dignity...then dry them and carry on. Whole with our hearts open and our shields at the ready to deflect any cruel arrows, we may turn to find the deer standing lovingly, and approvingly, at our side.