Archive for the ‘shifting paradigms’ Category

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What do cancer, mediation and gun control have in common?

Thursday, February 22nd, 2018

What in the world could be the connection between these three–and oranges?

Well, like all of America and maybe all of the world, I’ve been thinking a lot and feeling a lot about guns and violence, and wondering what can be done. And though I don’t have answers, here are some thoughts about healing the divide.

I’m a two-time breast cancer survivor and the third generation out of four to go through this journey. My mother and grandmother died of breast cancer, and in 2016, my older daughter was diagnosed and treated. And so, a disease has run through my lineage that needs healing.

The same is true for our country and for the world. For generations, violence has disrupted our potential to live peaceful lives. And now, the symptoms of the dis-ease have erupted into a great divide: between conservatives and liberals, or pro vs. anti gun control.

In both cases, it isn’t really that we need to win a war against cancer, or a war against the other party. It’s that we need a healing.

And how do we go about healing cancer? Well, we can take advantage of all the allopathic or technical, scientific strategies we know now. I certainly did, and so did my daughter. But we also took advantage of all the alternative strategies, those on the cutting edge of what we are just beginning to realize.

To live in both the strategic world and the spiritual one—the world of the healing arts—requires a mediation between two ways of thinking, two world views. One says the way to deal with problems is to attack them with the weapons we have available. The other says the way to deal with problems is to reach out to them with love, compassion, with deep thinking and feeling, and with a sense of curiosity and willingness to step into a better future.

One approach is intellectual, and essentially masculine in nature. Left-brained. The other is essentially heart-based and feminine in nature. Right brained.

Do we really want to perpetuate a war between these two approaches? I think this will lead toward more violence, inner and outer. What the real healing will be is a mediation, a union of the two. Just as it is in a troubled marriage.

Mediators ask us to look beneath the positions people take and to discover their real interests. Fighting over an orange? Don’t rush to just cut it in half as a settlement. Why does each of them want it in the first place? One may want the juice and the other the pulp. The orange turns out to be the common interest, not the source of conflict.

What does each side want in the argument over gun control? I would venture a guess that the common interest is in protection. Of course we all want to be protected.

Let’s begin by just breathing into that. The argument isn’t over that. It’s about how to best protect.

The argument happens because of fear. People who are afraid of their second amendment rights being taken away are afraid. So are people who are afraid their child may be shot at school.

So let’s begin the mediation with compassion for all those who are afraid. Fear blocks real reason.

When we have compassion for our own fear and compassion for another’s as well, we can begin to move toward the next step. Which is to take a serious look at what is working and what is not working to protect us.

That conversation is being furthered right now by the young people affected by all that has happened. Let us keep our hearts open in compassion as the conversation—the mediation—moves forward.

 

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Posted in creativity and empowerment, heart-centered leadership, policy making, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

The Rise of the Feminine

Thursday, December 7th, 2017

While the super moon was rising over the mountain above our house last Sunday, it also rose large and colorful over the Capitol. Can’t resist seeing the metaphor.

The moon is usually connected to all that is feminine. And the feminine is definitely rising over the Capitol—in a large and colorful way.

Of course the obvious way the feminine is rising is the #metoo movement and the way women are speaking out loudly enough to be the people of the year on Time’s cover.  As painful as the process is of leaders having to resign, most women and many men would agree that this is necessary. It’s about time that people are insisting that half the humans on the earth be honored and not desecrated.

The less obvious way that the feminine is rising is the way in which these times call for the feminine energy in all people to be honored equally and not desecrated. That feminine energy is usually associated with the gentler, more compassionate, more caring qualities of the heart—as opposed to the strategic, dominating, action-oriented energy that has been predominant for too long.

Compassion , gentleness and matters of the heart are being honored by the Australian government’s vote to honor same sex marriages; love trumps old traditional definitions. And, these qualities are also being trampled in hundreds of ways by the political decisions being made faster than you can say destruction.

So don’t make the mistake of thinking feminine energy is all sweetness and light. The feminine is on the move and will not be stopped.

Take Mother Earth, for example. Wildfires, epic winds, heat waves overtaken by sudden freezes. The threat of earthquakes. Volcanoes. Species disappearing. Glaciers disappearing.We are reminded daily that we may have thought we were in charge, but our thinking has been faulty.

Of course indigenous people could easily say they told us so. The Hopi prophesies—and many other indigenous ones– are coming true. Will we pay attention? Hindus say we are in the time of the kali yuga , the destruction of the old and precursor of a new era. Native people say we are witnessing the destruction of the old world as it was, as a necessary cleansing before the creation of a new one.

There are a couple of ways to ride the waves that keep on breaking during this tumultuous time. The strategy of fighting the wave and grasping at the shore is time-honored, but has never worked very well. It’s easy to see who is doing this. It’s harder to understand why that grasping –and indeed doubling down on the old boy way seems to be working on many levels. But we’ll see what the consequences are. We’ll see who may rise up and say enough.

The moon rose up over “our” mountain surrounded by magical wispy clouds. We watched it by a blazing outdoor fire, celebrating its beauty. At the Capitol, I wonder if anyone noticed. Who wandered out onto a terrace to breathe in awe and wonder? Or are all eyes closed to the rise of the feminine?

Maya Angelou saw all this, and said, in her famous poem, I Rise:

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
This post also appeared on HuffPost at https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-rise-of-the-feminine_us_5a29eef9e4b04e0bc8f3b336

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Posted in caring for the earth, conscious evolution, consciousness, divine feminine, feminine leadership, heart-centered leadership, learning from the Hopi people, managing change, nature as mirror, opening the heart, Photography, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves, Uncategorized | No Comments »

As Trump Reduces Wilderness, I Dare to Dream…

Thursday, November 16th, 2017

Canyonlands, Utah

Behind the smoke screen of daily drama in the media, you may have noticed that our President is busy dismantling protection for our wild lands. He has approved a recommendation to reduce protection for Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah—part of the vast land that became protected by the stroke of Clinton’s pen.

It just so happens that this very week, I’ve been reading Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, by Terry Tempest Williams    Her poetic eloquence, intellectual rigor and passionate defense of the land clearly represents a different world than the one inhabited by our current leadership.

How then, I ask myself, can we bridge these two worlds? How can we—even with less poetic voices—be convincing advocates for the wild, untouched, precious areas in our country and in our lives?

Way back in 1995, Tempest Williams testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Forest & Public Lands Management, objecting to a wilderness bill:

“Mr. Chairman, if you know wilderness in the way you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go. We are talking about the body of the beloved, not real estate. We must ask ourselves as Americans, ‘Can we really survive the worship of our own destructiveness?’”

These issues are, of course, not new. Most wilderness has been created by visionary Presidents. amidst the protest of those whose pocketbooks are lined by extracting resources or developing wild land. Now the vision must come from the people.

Is it any coincidence that this is going on amidst sexual scandals and women speaking out in behalf of their own bodies, as never before? I think not. Women have had good reason to fear speaking about the abuse and disrespect the feminine has been suffering for millennia.

Mother Earth has a body too, and cannot speak for herself except through storms, earthquakes and other responses to the changes she is experiencing. Remember the film Koyaanisqatsi–Life Out of Balance?

“We have forgotten the option of restraint.”

This is not about politics; it is about what we want our legacy to be as human beings.

“It is no longer the survival of the fittest but the survival of compassion.”

When I consulted for organizations who were experiencing internal dysfunction or financial problems, I always returned them to the foundational level of values. Why were they in existence besides making money? What contribution did they want to make? I must ask myself these questions as I go about my own business.

“A nation’s appetite for beauty transcends a state’s hunger for greed.”

I have a voracious appetite for beauty. How about you? I understand greed and the necessity to make a living. And, I stand with communities like the Pachamama Alliance , Bioneers and many conservation organizations, whose voices echo warnings from indigenous elders and the spirits of the the Grandmothers, Grandfathers and ancient ones.

We can find ways to speak in behalf of restraint, of compassion, of love for beauty, of hunger for the wild in the land and in ourselves.

“Who has the strength to see this wave of destruction as a wave of renewal?” Something quickens in me; I think it is hope. I remember:

“We can give birth to deep change, creating a commitment of compassion toward all living things. Our human-centered point of view can evolve into an Earth-centered one….Is this too much to dream? Who imposes restraint on our imagination?”

 

All quotes are from Red, by Terry Tempest Williams

This piece also appears on Huffington Post here.

 

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Posted in Aerial photography, caring for the earth, conscious evolution, consciousness, feminine leadership, heart-centered leadership, managing change, Photography, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, The Beauty Path, Uncategorized, women's empowerment | No Comments »

Seeing Our Way Through the Pachakutiq

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2016

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The latest earthquake in Japan is said to be an aftershock from the one in 2011, and that means among other things that Mother Earth set a big change in motion back then, and the effects are still going on. Perhaps our electoral, political and psychic earthquake in the U.S. is an aftershock too, a manifestation of unseen forces of change that were already at work long ago.

The ancient Inka people of Peru and their current descendants refer to the pachakutiq, the force that turns the world upside down. The force was named after Pachakutiq Inka Yupanki, 1438-1471, the ruler who transformed the Kingdom of Cusco into the Inca Empire.

Pachakutiq was a conqueror, an empire builder, whose name meant “he who overturns space and time.” But even Pachakutiq had to ultimately bow to death and to Mother Earth, whose power reminds us that we actually are not in charge here.

We live a multi-dimensional life, whether we are conscious of it or not. In our personal world, the pachakutiq occurs when we’re faced with a personal earthquake like a divorce or death of a loved one, or loss of a job. In the collective world, a pachakutiq has occurred with the recent US election, and the aftershocks continue. And in the cosmic dimension, the force you might call God or the Great Mystery is at work too, in ways that are unseen.

What do we do in times of the pachakutiq?

My brother-in-law taught me a lesson about this years ago, when he was suddenly stricken with Guillain-Barre syndrome. Within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms, he was unable to dress himself and bound to a wheelchair. By the time I saw him in a rehab facility, he was paralyzed neck down.

“How are you doing emotionally, Bob?” I asked timidly, knowing this was a pathetic, inadequate question.

“Oh, I’m actually fine, now that I made the psychological adjustment,” he answered quickly, as if he had been expecting the question.

“Come on, Bob,” I countered. “How can you make a psychological adjustment to being paralyzed?”

“Oh, but that’s the point. You must.” He had worked this through. “And now that I’ve made it, see those toes on my left foot? You come back next week and I’ll be moving them.”

Clearly he wasn’t paralyzed psychologically, and that’s because he had moved to acceptance. I’m sure he didn’t like being paralyzed, so acceptance didn’t mean approval. It meant he had ceased to allow shock to numb him into a state of denial where action is impossible.

I’m only now moving into a state of acceptance about the election. It does appear that it actually happened, and it also appears that it’s as bad as we originally thought. Given the severity of the aftershocks and the probability of many more, what do we do?

Bob pointed out back then that when we’re dealt a bad hand, we naturally want to give it back. Acceptance means we give up that fantasy. Now we can play our hand, even if it’s not the one we wanted.

Elizabeth Gilbert posed the question, “Who do I want to be in this situation?” Thank you, Elizabeth.

I want to look at the world through two lenses simultaneously, and to have the near view and the big picture work together, even though they seem opposed.

The big picture is that I’m a little creature in a magnificent creation, making me both tiny and grand, a formless bit of the Life force swimming in the great cosmic soup. So out of the big picture lens, I want to see everything as part of the One Being, part of Love. Despite appearances and conditions.

Out of the other lens I see smelly garbage I need to take out, and our latest empire builder making horrifying appointments that seem to overturn time and space. In this dimension, I will not be paralyzed or silent, but will stand for the truth I see with all my heart, wearing as much beauty as I can muster, and perhaps some combat boots hiding under the silk.

We must hold both truths to be self evident: that this is a sacred time when it is foolish to meet the beast with his own energy of fear; and that real Love can be fierce, shaking us all into a place of humility. If we can put these two views together, perhaps that will give us depth perception.

I do not forget that Bob did get up out of that bed and walk again, and even play his own version of tennis. He did not do this out of a desire to conquer, but out of a love for life. And, I know he prayed. I will do the same.

This piece also appeared in Huffington Post, and can be seen at:  Link to article.

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Posted in conscious evolution, consciousness, heart-centered leadership, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Women Holding the Long Lens

Monday, January 11th, 2016

women

I’m visiting family and marveling at how long my grandchildren’s arms and legs have grown, how my daughter has become an inventive and creative cook, and how my ex husband has turned into a gentle friend. As this year just begins to unfold, I’m aware of the longer arc, and of the graceful way life changes the way the path looked …way back then.

I’m reminded of the story of how an apparent tragedy occurs, only to become s portal for a fortuitous event, that then morphs into the doorway for another downturn. Age at least provides a lens for the long story, and presents an option not to get too caught up in the drama and apparent truths of each chapter of this wild and beautiful journey.

On this annual solo road trip, I visit family, see old friends, and will end up with seven close women friends who have been a group for over 35 years. We’ve watched each other meet obstacles, embrace blessings, and survive dramas great and small. Perhaps to balance out the complexity of our own sagas, we always pepper our reunion with as many movies as possible, separated by walks on the beach, home cooked food and less wine than we used to drink.

In our seventies, we know we face losses in the upcoming episodes of our reunion series. One of us has already lost a partner to a sudden, deadly heart attack. Another is recovering from a knee replacement and can’t make it this year. What will it be like when our numbers thin? How will we all get to our destination if we’re disabled? Who will die first, and how will we deal with that?

These kinds of questions are a reality of aging, and yet so far there is a saving grace. We have each other. Friendships forged at a progressive Episcopal church we all attended back in the day, our shared values run deep. We taught each others’ children in Sunday school, and so we care who they’ve married and how their children are doing. We also care whether each woman is finding joy, discovering new meaning, and whether she can take a good joke.

We all have common political views, and so we complain about the state of the world. But these are women who are change-makers. We haven’t given up. Back in the 70’s we named ourselves the Women’s Quilting and Terrorist Society, which we thought was funny then. Now we just use the initials, but the desire to shake things up is still very much alive.

Everything has changed for the one whose husband turned out to be gay and still is her best friend. For the one who lives close to the bone, after using all her savings taking care of her father. For the one whose bitter divorce was healed by a surprise passionate romance and marriage, ending in her partner’s sudden death.

And nothing has changed. The big arc of our lives is trained by faith in the unseen. The dramas in each chapter have been tamed by good humor. And the shards of old stories are held in a sacred pot by women who will treasure them, laughing and crying together until we can’t do it in person any more

This year I salute these women and all women and men who come together in groups, urging you to put these meetings first, even when it’s hard to put the important ahead of the seemingly urgent. Every time you meet, you put money in the pot. And the older you get, the wealthier you feel, finding that life is made, after all, not of victories or defeats, but of the stream of love embedded in the entire adventure.

 

This post is also available on Huffington Post at my author archive, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-hale/. Your comments there or here are appreciated.

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Posted in feminine leadership, happiness, seeing oneself, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves, Uncategorized, women's empowerment | 10 Comments »

Opening the Heart

Wednesday, October 7th, 2015

baby

Once upon a time, I didn’t know what love was.

I knew it was a good word, a desirable feeling, but I wasn’t sure I had experienced it. How was it going to feel? I was a child, trying to team up words and concepts with real-world feelings.

In 7th grade I made friends with a girl named Missy. I went to her house a lot to spend the night on weekends, and I started to notice something. Every time I went there, I got this odd feeling. It was like a tingling in my chest, a kind of light, airy feeling, and it seemed new to me.

Now, looking back on it many years later, I know what that feeling was. It was love. It was my heart opening. It was a time when my own household did not feel predictable to me. My mother was ill, and so one minute she was lovable and the next minute, loving her felt impossible. After all, she wanted me to brush her hair, and I wanted her to brush mine.

Missy’s house felt different. Her parents seemed pretty much the same to me every time, and so I felt a trust that I’d have a good experience there. Missy felt reliable too, and so I dared to trust her. I dared even to trust myself in those situations. So my heart opened a little and felt more spacious. Lighter.

Again, looking back I can relate this feeling to other times. To times when my mother was well, and when I loved her beauty, her brightness, her laugh. When my dad was barbecuing in the back yard and I felt  happy about more than the yummy chicken I was about to enjoy. When my baby brother was born, there was a magic about his being in the house. These were heart openers.

Babies do it for us, don’t they?

When mine were born, I knew that I was discovering what real love was all about. It was as though I’d never felt it before. I barely knew who they were, and yet knew I’d give my life for them.

Now I have five grandchildren, and so I’ve been blessed with many heart openers. Many times of feeling that spaciousness, that tingling, that lightness.

And, in all these years, I’ve had heartache, tragedy, betrayal, disappointment and pain, just like you. Just like all of us. And so, I’ve had many times when I’ve closed my heart.

What to do about my heart opening like that, only to close again?

Well, for me, it’s important to do some proactive things about this very human dilemma:

1. I practice opening my heart. My meditation practice is all about this. It’s meant to “polish the lantern,” to clean off the gunk, to let the light shine. It’s about attuning to the Big Heart.

2. I try to be conscious of when I’m closing my heart. I try to notice what triggers me and how my habitual response is to close. And I try to keep aware that it’s a choice on my part. Do I really want to keep doing that?

3. I try to be grateful for all the heart-opening experiences when they come, and to be grateful to myself for noticing.

These simple steps seem to help me change my habits. They help me keep that heart open more often. More and more I notice that it’s all related to how I choose to see a given event or situation. If I choose to see it through the eyes of the heart, I may feel pain, but I can survive that. It’s better than closing my heart again and having to figure out all over again what that word “love” feels like.

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Posted in consciousness, heart-centered leadership, opening the heart, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms | 3 Comments »

Healing vs. Curing

Wednesday, September 30th, 2015

mesaBreast Cancer Awareness month is October, and so this month I’ll be focusing on how any of us facing illness can take steps to explore more than repairs and curing. We want healing as well!

Allopathic medicine focuses on repairing what is broken and on fixing symptoms and altering structures that cause disease. I am very grateful for our advances in these areas, since I feel that allopathic medicine is responsible for at least half the reasons why I’m alive today after my two bouts with breast cancer.

And, I’m grateful for my training and experience in the other half of the story, which is about healing. The word “heal” means to make whole again. (And my birth name, Hale, comes from the same root as “heal,” and means strong and hearty. This is why I use that name as my author and professional name. I am becoming more and more “Hale.”)

When we “get” or “have” an illness, there are some steps we can take to make ourselves feel whole again.

 We can remember that it’s “both…and.”

On one hand it’s horrible, frightening, evil, a bad sign, and all the other things we could say along those lines. And, it’s still true that the way the shadows of the mesquite trees are dancing on the wall outside my window is beautiful. Can I hold both the horrifying and the beautiful? Actually, I can. And so, I’ll bet, can you.

We can feed the white wolf.

Remember the story about the man who is followed by a black wolf and a white wolf? He visits the village shaman and tells him how these two wolves fight and follow him, and asks which one will win. “The one you feed,” is the answer. How can you feed the white wolf of beauty, truth and meaning right now?

We can decide to be the well ones.

There is plenty of toxic, sick, fearful, angry energy in our world. We are all tempted to join in, and when we do, we feed that black wolf. So we can decide to say Yes to life, even with its pain and imperfection. We can decide to be healthy emotionally and spiritually even when our body is suffering, and to have well-being.

How do we accomplish these three things? I think we draw on the creative energy within us. For creativity isn’t limited to art; it refers to the ability we have to decide, to make choices, to change and shift things in ways that affect our destiny.

The Divine One isn’t the only Creator; we are co-creators.

Healing involves our claiming our role as co-creators.

We stepped into a world that was already formed, but we create our own experience every day. We create the world within. We create the lens we use to see ourselves and our lives.

How will you create wellness and wholeness for yourself today?

 

This post was adapted from the original, which appeared as Creativity & Healing on theSpiritedWoman.com.

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Posted in conscious evolution, consciousness, Creativity, creativity and empowerment, healing, health, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, spiritual practices, Tools for seeing ourselves | 8 Comments »

The Pope: an Embodiment of the Sacred Masculine

Thursday, September 24th, 2015

PopeFrancis-8I write this fresh from watching the Pope’s address to Congress, an historic moment that fills my eyes with tears and my heart with hope. As a non-Catholic who has left organized religion, I am deeply moved by the transparent heart he presents to the world, and by the heart-centered leadership he models for us.

My husband is a legal mediator, and so I hear many stories of people who come armed with their stories and their positions, angry and righteous, feeling predatory about getting rewarded for being right. Jon has to try to lift them to a little higher place, where they can look through the lens of their  real interests. Then they may be able to see what those interests have in common with their adversaries’.

The Pope is a mediator for the world right now, reminding us of principles that are in all our interests, regardless of political positions, religious affiliation, class, race, sex or nationality.

All life is sacred. We can all agree on this, and ought to give each other credit for believing this, no matter what we think about abortion.

All people want and deserve the same compassion we want for ourselves. We can all agree on this, no matter how we would vote on social justice issues.

All people want the same possibilities we want for ourselves. We could all agree on this and then move forward with our dialogue about how to provide those possibilities.

We need to protect the earth. This seems like a basic, a principle that would be hard to argue.

Even though these principles could be considered a lecture to Congress, it was delivered in a way that satisfies our human hunger. The Pope, arriving in his little grey Fiat, is humble and real. He comes from poverty. He speaks in a gentle tone, and uses flowing gestures and a soft voice. I would say that the Divine Feminine within his own heart is palpable in his presence.

And, as Holy Father, his role is to embody the spirit of the Christ, updated for this moment. If he is doing this, then that spirit is tender, protective. Who wouldn’t want a figure like the Pope as a kind uncle or grandfather?

The thousands who greet him are clearly hungry and thirsty. Maybe not all of them for religion. But we are hungry for a leadership that “mothers” and “fathers” us in the best sense. A kind of leadership that marries the Divine Feminine and the Sacred Masculine that lies (sometimes hidden) within our own hearts, waiting to be awakened.

The magic alchemy of this awakening is, in this case, a gentle kind of alchemy. Something is touched, and so people appear. Hope is kindled, once again. Maybe we have another chance to save the earth. Maybe we can rise above our silly political positioning. Maybe we can stop demeaning ourselves and others. Maybe we have another chance to be human.

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Posted in bringing out your gifts, conscious evolution, consciousness, heart-centered leadership, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, The Sacred Masculine | 9 Comments »

Who is the Divine Feminine?

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015

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Have you heard a lot about the Divine Feminine re-emerging? What does this mean? Who or what is the Divine Feminine and how can we benefit from Her?

When I traveled in Nepal, the Divine Feminine was everywhere. In the middle of the market were shrines to Kali, or Durga, or other Hindu figures. People and filth abounded and it was hard to tell sometimes if the goddess smelled of incense, urine, food, sweat, or all of the above. She might be covered with filth and/or flowers, but she was accessible, part of life. Sometimes she was portrayed ripping apart an icon of evil or falseness.

Not exactly the image we have of the Divine Feminine as the Virgin Mary, for example. Shouldn’t the Divine Feminine be pure? Beautiful? Enshrined and protected? Full of peace and tenderness?

Of course in many traditions, she is. But as the force in charge of births, she knows about pain and blood and suffering as a way to usher in new life. And as the force in charge of death, she knows about destroying the false that has to die for the true to gain ascendance.

In America, the Divine Feminine is harder to find. In the southwest, we have the Virgin of Guadalupe, who is much more prominent these days. In Latin America, the Virgin is a mainstay, especially for women. In Europe, one can find the Black Madonna.

So, the Divine Feminine is complicated and multi-faceted. Not to be explained by logic, or tamed by too many rules. She is, in fact, wild. And that is why she has been oppressed in so many cultures for so many years. Along with her human feminine counterparts!

These days a lot of spiritual teachers are writing and teaching about the re-emergence of the Divine Feminine. She seems to be showing up everywhere. As Mother Earth, she has been turbulent, unpredictable and changing. As Venus, she has been hidden from us, traveling the underworld, to reappear as a sign of love. As the Virgin, she shows up on screen doors and tree trunks. As Mary Magdalene, she tends those who suffer, and as Kwan Yin, she is the heart of compassion. As the goddess, she has been honored in a variety of renewed ceremonies and myths. And in the form of certain women, we see her incarnate.

These are times of planetary crisis, and so if we ever needed a dose of compassion, tenderness, unbridled fierce protectiveness and signs of death and rebirth, I’d say this is the time.

So, if the Divine Feminine is calling us to awaken, how can we respond? We might begin by looking for her presence, veiled by tradition or culture, at the essence of things. Even, and especially within our own hearts.

Whether you’re male or female, you have the Divine Feminine within your heart. You have that wild, tender, compassionate, fierce force in charge of births and deaths, all within you.

And so I invite you to begin looking everywhere to see signs that it is time to welcome the Divine Feminine back into full equality—in the outer world and in our inner ones. When she has been fully welcomed, hopefully a new balance will begin to be possible in this wild, beautiful complex Earth home.

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Posted in Compassion for ourselves, conscious evolution, consciousness, divine feminine, feminine leadership, healing, heart-centered leadership, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms | 9 Comments »

Is the Divine Feminine Working on Wall Street?

Tuesday, August 25th, 2015

woman in market

Seeing the global markets tumble is as unnerving as an earthquake. Beyond questions like, “Will I be able to retire?” and other understandable, personal fears, lie other more global and cosmic ones.

We’ve long suspected that the current way of running the world is not sustainable. And we know that if something isn’t sustainable, it won’t be long before it begins to crumble. We’ve seen institutions and systems crumbling all around us. With them,  we can watch the crumbling of our illusions that the very ground beneath us and the climate around us are stable.

One way to frame this is to say that the energy responsible for the trouble we’re in is the energy of the wounded masculine. The predatory, win-at-all-costs, short-term way of “winning” through force, oppression and marginalization is the masculine in its most harmful form.

Like the masculine, the energy of the feminine has many forms. She is responsible for birth, but also death. Her realm is all matter and the passages it goes through: from seed to flowering, to dissolution, to decay, to rebirth. And so in many traditions, she has both a creative and a fierce aspect.

She is sometimes Kali, who wears the necklace of skulls. She roars onto the battlefield with a sword and cuts off heads of everything false. With the dead bodies strewn around her, she calmly sits down to nurse her baby.

In western culture, images like this one disturb most people.  When I traveled in Nepal, I saw shrines to the Divine Feminine in her fierce form everywhere. In the midst of the marketplace, many of them were covered with filth, and then strewn with flowers. They were honored just as they were, right in the center of human activity. They were not neat or pristine or protected. Many of them were destroyed in the earthquake. They are icons of the Hindu faith in the process of death and rebirth, the faith in destruction of the false as a path.

And so I look at this photo I took of a Nepalese woman in the marketplace of a little mountain village, and I wonder some things. How did she survive the earthquake? Can she still farm her vegetables and support her family? How well is the world and the marketplace supporting her? Is her faith sustaining her?

She is a reminder to me as I glance at the paper or hear the frantic debates in the media. What would be the saving grace of the Divine Feminine in this situation? What are the falsehoods the fierce feminine would destroy? What is trying to be born?

We know that our economy is largely built on a house of cards that is too false to be sustained. Our own welfare is complicated. We are in debt to the Chinese, and everyone is in debt to someone else. So the falsehood of the “dollar” will collapse at some point.

And what is trying to be born? Wall Street may be the most difficult arena for this, but the Divine Feminine in her Creative aspect is a birther, a nurturer. She is at the heart of Creation, and is the heart of Compassion.

And so as she works on Wall Street, she might be seeding a question: what would a compassionate economic system look like? What would truth look like translated into economic terms? It’s time to consider these questions.

Those men and women who are devoted to the Divine Feminine within us all can be devoted now to her re-emergence in the world. She is surely at work in the massive shift we are experiencing. Let us take a stand for her. Surely that could be the revolution that could save us all.

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Posted in authenticity, caring for the earth, conscious evolution, consciousness, death and new life, divine feminine, feminine leadership, heart-centered leadership, policy making, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves, women's empowerment | 5 Comments »

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