. . . rituals were set up, not to do away with the mystery, but to allow people to experience it. Western science finds a mystery and sets out to explain it. Logos thinking tries to solve the mystery, rather than enter into it. Ritual and contemplation are not an attempt to explain the mystery, but rather an attempt to orient individuals toward the mystery so that it can be approached without fear. The Pregnant Virgin, Marion Woodman
Ritual is a container. Early humanity’s experience was primarily sensory, they sensed the fundamental energies of the earth and the cosmos, and created ritual and stories to contain and share their experience.
The sacred marriage or hieros gamos was one of these rituals. The sacred marriage was an expression of the fundamental forces of masculine and feminine energy uniting to create new life.
But really the sacred marriage is a metaphor for the individual human experience on the planet.
Earth energy, which is associated with the feminine, and cosmic energy, which is associated with the masculine, are the fundamental energies of the sacred marriage. Earth energy validates the physical experience. Cosmic energy is the energy of transcendence.
In transcending, cosmic energy is the energy of growth or change. What that means is that our desires are always causing us to reach forward or transcend our current life with a new vision of how we would like our life to be. That is the role of masculine energy. To transcend the old.
But it doesn’t stop there. You have to bring that vision back into the feminine, that desire plants the seeds of this new life into the realm of matter or earth energy or the feminine, where those desires are actualized or realized. Those seeds are the inspiration or motivating force for growth. And with growth comes a new consciousness. An expanded consciousness is the divine child of the sacred marriage within.
This is how we expand and grow. And this is how the planet evolves. The sacred marriage, the uniting of the cosmic and earth energies, is the source of expanded consciousness.
In my Meditation: Cultivating the Divine Feminine course one of the energy tools you learn is how to run earth and cosmic energy through the body. In learning to run these energies you are facilitating the sacred marriage within.
Running earth and cosmic energy is a powerful energy tool that allows you to begin clear out the energy blocks and erroneous programming that keeps you from owning your body in its natural state of well-being. This allows you to access your own information and reconnect with your ability to heal yourself.
In patriarchy there was a huge disconnect with feminine energy and the emphasis in religion, as the church evolved into a male institution, was on the masculine aspect of transcending. Transcend the body, transcend this life of suffering. . . basically the earth experience was invalidated. The cycle was incomplete.
The path of the divine feminine is the completion of the cycle. Both cosmic and earth energies are validated and life moves forward.
I invite you to learn more about the energy tools that I share with you in Meditation: Cultivating the Divine Feminine and to listen to Session One for free by clicking here. I hope you will join me.
Welcome to the path of the divine feminine. Welcome to the mystery.
The second half of life is the ultimate initiation. In it we encounter those new, unexpected, unfamiliar, and unknowable moments that remind us that we are the sacred mystery made manifest. If we truly understand what is required of us at this stage, we are blessed with an enormous opportunity to develop and embody wisdom and character. We enjoy limitless possibilities to restore, renew, and heal ourselves.
The Second Half of Life, Angeles Arrien
Recently I have been thinking about how the rising of the feminine in the current cycle is similar to the mid-life experience. But first let’s back up a little.
In Dorothy Atalla’s book, Conversations with the Goddess, the presence states, “Earliest man’s apprehension of my nature was unconscious; his awarenesses were not so much part of his thought processes as they were experiential.” And that the experience of the goddess was more a “collective awareness.”
As children we also are the embodiment of an unconscious expression of the fullness of life.
As humanity evolved, through a combination of choices and the developing mind and ego, a disconnect occurred and grew.
Similarly, on the road through adolescence and into adulthood most of us have lost the innocent openness that allowed us to fully embrace life. Our experiences have left us with a disconnect from our bodies and therefore our lives.
And then comes the mid-life transition where hormonal shifts ask us to be seated back into the very bodies that we have abandoned. Mid-life is an opportunity to once again learn what it means to live life fully, but this time consciously. Embracing this passage creates a new reality for us. We come into mid-life with a lifetime of experience that can be transformed into wisdom.
The rising or return of the feminine is similar to mid-life in that this time our embrace of the feminine will be from a place of consciousness and so our experience will also “be a new reality,” and not just a collective experience but this time an individual experience.
Moving forward is always a choice. Both paths are about learning what it means to embody spirit. The work is individual but easier when shared with others who are like-minded. Marion Woodman calls this work of healing old wounds, releasing erroneous programming and learning what it means to step into our own authenticity, “dancing in the flames.”
It is important to learn how to source yourself, to attract the resources that will support you on your journey. All of the books that I share quotes from on the WellSprings Women Facebook page have supported me on my journey as well as the tools that I learned while a student at the Berkeley Psychic Institute. I share these tools in my online course, Meditation: Cultivating the Divine Feminine.
Meditation is a great tool for creating awareness. My online course introduces you step by step to an amazing set of “energy” tools that will help you to reclaim your mind, body and spirit. I have used these tools daily in my meditation practice for over 20 years. To listen to Session One for free and learn more about the course, click here.
Whichever path you are on, opening to the wisdom of the feminine or being seated in mid-life, welcome to the initiation!
I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment here and then join in the conversation on Facebook.
When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world. Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.
Stillness Speaks, Eckhart Tolle
My small patch of earth on this beautiful planet is located in the northern hemisphere where winter has arrived. The hot, dry summers of the central valley in northern California leave me reveling in the increase of the water element that comes with the moist air of Fall and Winter.
I love the winter landscape. In my yard the trees have revealed their lacy structure, their leaves tucked into nearby flower beds providing a blanket of protection and nutrients for next springs growth. Berry bushes are busy with the flurry of small birds. And I can hear the honking of geese as they pass overhead, spending the cold months in the valley feeding on winter wheat.
But mostly the landscape is quiet. My favorite time of day in this season is dusk. The misty winter twilight combined with the holiday lights is the perfect touch of magic.
I am noticing that every year the pull to just sit with this seasonal quietness gets stronger. The decorations and gift giving are wonderful expressions of the joy of this heart-filled holiday season. But I am finding that each year the balance shifts a little more to a deeper appreciation of the quietness reflected in the outer landscape.
As young children our focus is on the anticipation of Christmas morning and all the excitement around mysterious, wrapped packages. As a mid-life woman I am finding that my focus keeps returning to nurturing an expansive peace and calm of the heart.
So projects are put on hold. I keep editing my lists, asking myself to do only what is essential. I take time to breath the air, notice the sky, and live with the underlying magic that is always there. When I lose the inner stillness I ask myself, “What is keeping me from my joy?”
I am getting better at this practice. I have come a long way on my healing journey. My space used to be so overwhelmingly noisy with others energy that it was uncomfortable for me to be in my body. Years of energy work, a meditation practice, and learning to embrace myself as a woman have all played a role in helping me to come home. Today, I can say that to be able to sit with myself is a gift.
So more than anything this holiday season I am wanting to sit with the quietness within myself. To allow my heart to feel the fullness of the subtler harmonics. It is this quiet fullness that will fill my being, preparing me for another year of growth. This is my gift to me this season. And that is my wish for you too this winter holiday. Peace in your stillness. Love to all. Linnette
This month I am sharing a guest post on Kristen Roderick’s website, The Spirit That Moves Me. For the month of June Kristen has been featuring her “Soul Paths: Women Answering the Call” series. I am honored to be one of her guests. My post is titled “To Be a Woman” and I share what that has come to mean to me as I walk the path of the divine feminine. I hope you will take a moment to read the post and share your thoughts. Here is the link.
Pregnancy forces us to have patience with the process of growth and development. As a culture, we want everything instantly. But Mother Bear wisdom doesn’t work that way. You have to allow your pregnancy to reach fruition. And you have to wait for labor to begin.
Mother-Daughter Wisdom, Christiane Northrup, M.D.
The kind of pregnancy that I am writing about here is not limited to the creation of babies. In my case I was pregnant with and gestating the launch of my meditation course. I had taught the course several times in my home and now I was reformatting it for an online release. My early thoughts were that this would not take long. My apprehensions were more around the technical aspects of setting up a membership site. So I set a target date for the release of the course and set to work.
But the editing and reformatting seemed to have a pace of its own. The process moved slowly as if I were taking an advanced version of the course, stirring up the resistance that needed to be released. There was no getting near the material without being affected.
Deadlines came and went, exposing the artificial imposition of these dates in my attempts to take control of the process. During this time I came across the above quote in my reading of Mother-Daughter Wisdom. It resonated in my experience, a sure sign asking me to take note.
The coursework continued to progress ever so slowly. Meanwhile, in my peripheral vision, I kept noticing magical little synchronicities. Those small “coincidences” that were confirming my knowing where I had doubts, soothing my insecurities, reminding me that I was headed in the right direction.
Then I heard Dr. Christiane Northrup, on her radio show “Flourish” on www.HayHouseRadio.com, quote astrologer Daniel Giamario, saying that “mercury retrogrades are simply to remind us that things are not logical and linear the way we think they are supposed to be.”
By now all signs were pointing in the same direction. That is to say that in “Goddess Time” nothing ever gets cranked out, everything happens in its own time.
I came to see that Goddess Time allows for all aspects of the process to matter. Those magical synchronicities that boost our belief in the work we are doing; the spiraling back of the forward moving path that creates breathing room, allowing us to integrate newness; and the constant reminder that it is about the journey even when the goal is the motivator.
In the end I love the course that I birthed, even though its labor was six weeks overdue according to my artificial schedule. But I have been just as deeply affected by my understanding of how my belief in linear time tends to ignore or trample over many aspects of the process that reside in the realm of the subtler feminine energies. In terms of our personal well-being, it is integrating these aspects of the process that is most meaningful.
I will continue to set goals and create timetables. But I have a much deeper respect and appreciation for the vast and nourishing wisdom of Goddess Time. Because in the end it really is all about who we have become in the process.
You can learn more about the Meditation: Cultivating the Divine Feminine course by clicking here.
I would love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts here and then join in the conversation on Facebook.
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