"The effect of this (Great Goddess) archetype may
be followed through the whole of history, for we can demonstrate its workings
in the rites, myths, symbols of early man and also the dreams, fantasies and
creative works of the " man of our day."
Erich Neumann
"Comparative religion " teaches us that there is in
man (beyond the psychological need for a father symbol) an equally great, or
possibly even greater need: that of the divine woman who appears in many
different forms throughout the world, yet remains basically the same
everywhere." Raphael Patai
Yet,
the archetype of the Goddess has been suppressed in our psyches and our
culture. While we have been acculturated
to easily accept the masculine pronouns for God, we are challenged to accept
the female pronouns. Even though we may
hold that God is beyond gender, the female pronouns seem awkward. Carol Christ, PhD, Religious Studies at
Yale, writes: "Theologians frequently
assert that God has no body, no gender, no race and no age. Most people state that God is neither male
nor female. Yet most people become
flustered, upset or even angry when it is suggested that the God they know as
Lord and Father might also be God the Mother, or Goddess."
I
know that when I first experimented with making "Goddess" a part of my
vocabulary, it felt strange, and I wondered why I should bother. I really didn't like the word "Goddess" - it
felt uncomfortable and unnecessary. Yet,
at a time of crossroads in my life, the term kept rising up from within me -- it
was a feminine voice I had never heard.
I began to study the sacred feminine -- the erudition of anthropologists,
psychologists, feminist scholars, poets, archeologists and historians. And the more I persisted in my studies of the
sacred feminine, the more it was revealed to me just how deeply imbedded the
"masculine" hierarchy had been within my psyche. I eagerly saturated myself in the feminine
experience of the divine. This was
deeply transformative. I felt that a
long lost part of me was being restored -- that I was connecting to the deepest
core of my being and finding there a power and strength that was beyond
anything I had experienced. It bubbled
up within me and turned my perception of our cultural mores upside-down. My foundational beliefs had been pried up
just enough to allow me to access the vast and fecund psychic terrain beneath. She
Who Dwells Within every human psyche at our deepest collective level, broke
free within me This feminine presence confirmed my gut level "knowing" that
hierarchies, war, environmental destruction, a world in which children suffer
and grow to repeat the same patterns of pain -- this is not the only reality for
humans. A world of peaceful
co-existence, harmony with the natural world, honoring of the human body and
all life forms - a world in which children are safe and can thrive in the
expression of their own unique beauty and divinity -- this is our
birthright. We can look at history and
contemporary matriarchal cultures to see pieces of what is possible.
Many people on the planet are
opening up to higher levels of consciousness, but as we go higher, we must also
dig deeply into the archetypal realms, into the body's wisdom and our
collective history. "The Mother has left
memory in us all." She is the honoring
of community, interdependence, birth, nurturing, empathy, intuitive
intelligence, creativity, earth, nature, the eternal cycles of birth, growth,
death and renewal, sensuality and sacred sexuality. For so long, our left-brain dominant
theological journey has made heaven (the realm of God) an abstraction, earth a
proving ground for the soul, and life a time to earn immortality. The Goddess is earth. Her heaven is here. Her children are born into Her
divinity, rather than the traditional view of being born into a troubled earth,
to one-day return to heaven. Heaven is
here.
As we endeavor to move beyond the
limitations of the mind into expanded consciousness, we must first witness what
is operating in the mind. Foundational
beliefs that have been in place because of our left-brain dominance and male
monotheistic culture can be tough for us to access, to see within
ourselves. These foundational beliefs
can become quite clear not by trying to look directly at them, but instead, by
focusing on their complement. The very
unfamiliarity and awkwardness of the term, "Goddess" indicates just how deeply
male monotheism is operating, even though we may state that the divine is
beyond gender. We can only say we've
gone beyond gender when the term "Goddess" is as comfortable and natural as the
term "God." Ultimately we have gone
beyond when we are that very thing that we have conceived of as the
divine - when we are the image and likeness of the divine as it expresses
uniquely through us.
The
great teachers, whose wisdom provides the foundation of the world's religions,
have modeled for us what it means to be divinely embodied. All of the world's faiths have at their core
magnificent wisdom -- it is misinterpretation that brings disharmony and
division right up to this present day.
If looking at some of our foundational beliefs helps us to come into
balance and regain our interconnectedness with each other and nature, then we
need to do it. We are all using the
right hemispheres of our brains more, and this bodes well for humankind. We are the co-creators of heaven on
earth. Leadership for a new era will be
based on the integration of the feminine, as expressed through both women and
men and the restoration of the sacred feminine has profound implications for
every sphere of leadership - within families, communities, businesses, health,
education, governments and the global economy. The United Nations' World
Conference on Women affirms that the advancement of women is central to every
dimension of global development. A sustainable world cannot be built
using the old, out-of-balance model.
The feminine face of the divine has been missing for far too long. Thankfully, "the Mother has left a memory in
us all."
More
information and DVDs of "In Our Right Minds" are available online at: www.inourrightminds.com .
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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