Wanna Be Woman
“Woman is the creator of the universe, the universe is her form; woman is the foundation of the world, she is the true form of the body.
In woman is the form of all things, of all that lives and moves in the world. There is no jewel rarer than woman, no condition superior to that of a woman.”
From Shaktisangama Tantra:
I’ll admit it, I’ve wanted to be a woman for some time now. Remember that feminine and masculine energy has little to do with gender, but still it’s fun to imagine being another gender.
We are only able to experience what we have contrast to in the relative field of polarity, so we must have a reference of sadness to experience joy, hate to experience love, and masculinity to experience feminine energy.
In her most radiant form, a woman that is anchored in feminine energy is wanting to be seen and felt in her beauty and mystery. She is luminous and glowing, as in a pregnant woman who radiates the embodiment of life conceiving, sustaining, nurturing, and birthing.
The closest I’ve come to being pregnant and having a child is lying with my dog Joey on my chest and my belly. We called this bliss time, because we would both go into a deep altered state, merging into one another until we were one being, breathing, hearts beating, and dreaming in a loving unity.
Our unity was palpable, hearing his moans and cooing when he slept and shifted on my chest, his nose close to my face, breathing in his breath, sometimes he would awaken for a moment and give me a little kiss before his eyes rolled back and he drifted back off. The sense of complete safety, warmth, trust, security and love is what I can imagine a nursing mother to feel.
There is so much more happening in a radiant pregnant woman than simply hormonal messengers that increase oxygen to her skin. She is glowing with love, glowing with fulfillment, and glowing with purpose, she is full in the full sense of that word. And fullness is something essential to being a woman. A woman, grounded in feminine energy, seeks satiation whether it is through chocolate, shopping, emotional expression, mood, social connection or the intimacy that is the culmination of loving and being loved.
The feminine nature of Nature is most appropriate because it leaves nothing out in the fullness of expression and possibilities. There are infinite examples in nature of how female power, beauty, and horror display the full array of life and death. Whether it is the way a mother bison on the run defends her calf from wolves, the multigenerational sorority of sister elephants who all participate in nurturing, grieving, learning from the grandmothers, or a tiny jumping spider who mates and then eats her mate to provide nourishment for her developing eggs, the female in nature doesn’t hold back from her fullness.
Just as Nature doesn’t hold back in Her storms, Her cycles and seasons, or Her radiant beauty, so too a woman steeped in her feminine will not hold back in her fullness, especially when she feels safe, loved and supported.
She wants to be seen and taken, ravished, swept off her feet and transported by the masculine into higher and higher realms of fullness.
In most of the animal kingdom the male is the ornamented one that is flashing his plumage and presenting himself in colorful, stylistic display. But humans have reversed this dance, and it is the female who has adopted much of the ‘see me, feel me, touch me’ role.
Sovereignty
Like so many oppressed people, women have always just wanted to be their own sovereign selves. This means that no-one has power over them, no one owns them or tells them what to think, feel or do, with their bodies, minds, or souls. This is an obvious human right, but it is the most violated human right on the planet, and women have been some of the most intrusively colonized people on the planet. And feminine values and principles have been co-opted and devalued by the masculine patriarchy for thousands of years.
It is remarkable that we are on the verge of electing our first female president. Symbolically, just like electing our first African American president, this is indicative of the evolution of consciousness that it is more inclusive and embracing a wider range of options than the excluding ignorance of intolerance. But as consciousness evolves, there is always a pushback from regressive ignorance, so N.C. enacts laws against LGBT, and Tenn. passes laws that allows therapists to refuse to treat LGBT. We have to continue to lean in and fight against all who would oppress and discriminate, this is not feminine!
Just like Mother Nature, the feminine is an inclusive approach that leaves nothing out, it embraces more and more, desiring to have the fullest range of experience. Masculine consciousness is more about discernment and whittling down to discriminate the essential from non-essential. The Feminine just wants to get all the pieces, players, and material on the table and relish the range of diversity.
Feelings
Another strong desire and need for women who are shifted into their most feminine energy is the need to be held and supported. When a woman is in good relationship with masculine energy, she can relax her own masculine need to be goal oriented and she will relax and open herself to the emotional security that comes with feeling safe and secure.
Women are enculturated to be able to express the range of emotions, so they are much more comfortable and skilled in being able to cry, grieve, be vulnerable, as well as being spontaneous and joyous.
For a long time I was unable to cry and I knew this was psychologically unhealthy. I found my way into theatre at an early age and it was there that I learned the mechanics of being able to cry, which restored an open flow in my emotional system. Most men are emotionally constipated and have a back log of grief and sadness that they mask with anger, judgment, irritability, etc. which greatly contributes to the rates of heart attacks among men, as well as addiction.
Yin Energy
Everything in our experience has polarity, an atom has negative/positive polarity, just like a battery, there are X and Y chromosomes at the genetic level, and the hot sun casts a cool shadow. At every level, we find the dance of polarity, which enables us to have experience and emphasize one or another aspects of polarity, all the while trying to balance.
In Chinese philosophy, Yin is the feminine or negative principle and is characterized by dark, wet, cold, passivity, receptivity, and disintegration. Yang is the masculine or positive principle characterized by light, warmth, dryness, and activity. Together, these are the two opposing, yet complementary cosmic forces which creative energy divides and whose fusion in physical matter brings the phenomenal world into being.
The feminine seeks to fully engage, indulge, and be in proper relationship in the phenomenal world, while the masculine seeks to transcend phenomenon into emptiness and consciousness.
The Feminine seeks fullness and abhors emptiness whereas the masculine craves emptiness and freedom, which can be seen in our preoccupation with ejaculation, scoring a touchdown, getting a promotion, winning a war, climbing the highest mountain, anything that catapults us beyond limitation and boundaries and frees us into transcendence.
The feminine is not seeking freedom but love, her bliss is in surrender, but she will not surrender until she feels safe. Few men are able to relax, let down their defenses, and surrender because we are so identified with the active pursuit of freedom and transcendence. But once we actually attain it, we don’t know what to do with it, herein is where a Mentor is needed.
SHAKTI
In Hinduism, SHAKTI, meaning "power" or "empowerment," is the primordial cosmic energy and represents the dynamic forces that are thought to move through the entire universe. Shakti is the concept, or personification, of divine feminine creative power, sometimes referred to as 'The Great Divine Mother'.
SHIVA, on the other hand symbolizes consciousness, the masculine principle.
SHAKTI (or Prakriti) means energy, power, movement, change, nature. It is the maternal principle – “the provider, abundance. In the human as well as in the animal kingdom the mother offers nourishment, warmth and security. There is no greater love than the love of a mother. The mother carries and nourishes the child in her own body. When it is born she provides it with mother’s milk and raises it at the sacrifice of her own self until it becomes self-reliant.”
SHIVA (or Purusha), on the other hand, is pure consciousness – “the unchanging, unlimited and unswayable observer. Purusha has no desires whatsoever; these are inherent only in Prakriti. Purusha is the empty, clear screen onto which Prakriti projects her colorful film.”
In the animal kingdom it is the female that is the clear, plain observer watching the colorful male trying to win and seduce her.
Only when Shiva and Shakti combine can action, movement and creation arise. This is where art, and spiritual evolution are ignited into manifestations of beauty, insight, wisdom, and love. Until energy is impregnated with consciousness it is ignorant, disordered, aimless and “blind”. Energy alone can produce nothing; consciousness bestows upon it content, form and direction. Conversely, consciousness without energy is dormant power, sleeping energy, and on its own is unable to be the cause of anything.
Your inner Shakti is your feminine life force energy, the essence of feminine and yin energy. From this essence comes forth wisdom, beauty, playful energy, spaciousness, ability, creativity, and power. Shakti is the Great Mother and matrix of creation and all manifestation. She is the power that weaves the universe and manifests in all forms, she is the perfection of wisdom, and the tangible manifestation of energy through the body and the senses.
Your inner Shiva is your unique masculine embodiment of awareness and consciousness. Known as "lord of the dance," Shiva is the essence of masculine and yang energy, the manifestation of presence, purpose, and skillful means. Shiva is the Great Father, with ultimate compassion for all beings. He represents transcendence, detachment, bliss, and the way to ultimate liberation.
Shiva is silent, and eternal, the consciousness that dwells beyond time and beyond death, in the eternal now. Your inner Shiva is that ever-present neutral awareness that compassionately witnesses all experience, and embraces all of life as expressions of the Divine.
Together in union, Shiva and Shakti merge and create the universe in all its manifestations. Experienced in each of us, this is a union of male and female energies, the direct experience of skillful means and wisdom.
You can open to this joyful dance between Shiva and Shakti, experienced as two aspects of yourself, and reflected in all living beings as pleasure, beauty, happiness, and aliveness.
Balanced and integrated, our inner Shiva and Shakti experience life as a dynamic whole, this is an inner marriage, a way of making love to yourself. We move forward with clear vision, yet we are willing to trust and flow with whatever life brings us.
As we become more whole, our need to look outside of ourselves for love falls away. We can experience the sweetness of this union of our inner masculine and inner feminine. From this place we can create more harmonious relationships and more joy in our lives.
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