The Feminine Mystic
Yes, of course, we love and honor the Feminine Mystique, and, in some ways a Feminine Mystic is an oxymoron since the Mystic transcends the polarized reality of masculine and feminine. But, here we are in the wild wild western culture, where Newton’s Law and material based science still rules, where the power, prestige, and influence goes to the ones with the most wins, the most toys, without much thought about what we might be losing in the process. At least that's how it has been.
Feminine qualities of intuition, depth, receptivity, process, feelings and emotions, harmony, cooperation, compassion, community, honoring all of life, are viewed as nice sentiments at best and human weaknesses and distractions from what we really need to focus on at worst. At least that's how it has been.
The feminine qualities are much more powerful than we can imagine for a healthy, thriving human family and environment. The problem is the fear that arises in a knee jerk reaction to what is not understood, and to that which cannot be controlled. Women, girls, and these feminine traits and qualities have received an incredible amout of bad PR for a very long time.
Several months back I attended a Tibetan Monk’s afternoon talk. Being the head of a large school in India, and a scholar, he mostly read from a sacred text on higher principles of living and how one can be successful as a monk. It seemed an interesting, and at times fairly awkward, topic for the Northern California crowd. When he opened the floor for questions, I couldn’t help myself, since the Dalai Lama’s image had been staring at me from a large picture on stage all afternoon. There only seemed one logical question.
“What do you think the Dalai Lama meant when he said the Western woman would save the world?”, I asked. I felt the energy in the room immediately shift, not in a Dalai Lama kind of way I might add, and I started to wish I hadn’t brought it up. But, then the deeper curiosity took over, and I was glad I was there and glad it had been brought up in this setting. After the commotion died down (it was a Buddhist gathering, so commotion in this context was quiet whispers and hushed laughs) he said it was the first time he had heard the reference, and said he didn’t know. Then he made a joke about women in the west being part of the army and maybe fighting is how they will do it. A few people laughed, nervously it seemed. I didn’t. I waited. Then he said that maybe it was part of what he was seeing as he travelled all over the world. That in the west the majority of his audience were women. That they seemed to be much more interested in spirituality and in deeper understanding. Now that would definitely seem to be a bit more of what he meant.
In the larger conversation of empowering women and girls on the planet, much of what is being proposed is ushering more girls and women into finding their power in masculine based roles and ways of relating, via traditional education. The question that arises when I hear that women are the answer to a global economy, is, Do we really want to employ millions more into a system in which financial and material profit is (still) the bottom line? Where feminine qualities are seen as distractions and aberrations to the real work and duty of human beings.
The current western educational model might be the answer if Nature, the Earth, was not a living, “breathing” system, and if we were “only human”, as we’ve come to know the term. Without a greater understanding, and even more importantly, awareness and experience, of Who We Are as Spiritual Beings we will continue to operate and make decisions from a limited, separate sense of self, rather than tapping into our much greater capacity as Spiritual Being and into the inherent Oneness of Life. Even if the millions of girls were put into schools today, this deeper issue would go unaddressed. Let me be clear that it is fairly obvious that being in a typical school setting and subsequent job is light years ahead of the alternative for most girls in developing countries. I would love nothing more to see all girls, and boys, and women, and men, all of us, living in a peaceful and abundant manner on Earth, all of us getting our needs met and having the opportunity to express our gifts and talents. I just don’t see the answer at this stage of the game as a system that is falling apart because of it's refusal to expand to fill the needs of our growing awareness of What We Are. It is no longer an outer game, but an inner one. Until we know What We Are, as well as What Earth/Gaia Is, how can we know what we are really doing here? How can we take one step forward without considering this fundamental question much more deeply than we ever have? It seems the outer solutions will only ever be temporary, creating more problems in their wake, as long as we fail to address and answer the real questions of our existence. New answers are coming into many fields of science, but, since science itself has become more political with much riding on the implications of such new and disturbing changes to what we have based our reality on, most of it is being brushed away. Much of the new science will not even make it into the textbooks for at least another ten years, maybe twenty. To consider more deeply the question of schooling being the answer to girl’s/women’s problems go to: http://schoolingtheworld.org/ and http://www.racetonowhere.com/ and also http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005O730CO/ref=atv_feed_catalog?tag=imdb-amazonvideo-20
Recent studies have shown that while more women than ever are graduating from college and earning more than ever in the west, they also report being much less happy than in the past. This is a trend that began in the 70’s and is continuing. Our quality of life is diminishing with physical and mental health issues skyrocketing. Is it that the human race is naturally evolving into a sicker, unhappier, more stressed out version of itself, or, does it have more to do with creating systems and ways of life which are incredibly out of balance with Who We Are and what we are here for?
It does seem the only true solution is maturing spiritually, waking up from the illusion of separation, embracing feminine qualities of being, which many, many women are being drawn to now, and creating social structures from this level of understanding and awareness of What We Are. This is not something we can ‘do’, but it is something we can intend, invite, inwardly contemplate, and ultimately surrender to. While this society has been built primarily on control and conformity, we will need to consider what we might build instead with an open mind and a deep curiosity, with innate knowing and trust, with tremendous creative leaps and innovations, and with an abiding and sincere love for one another and for the planet, none of which is typically cultivated and encouraged in a basic school setting.
A thank you to everyone who is engaged in this great work of spiritual evolution and social service. I welcome any comments and further exploration on this topic, engaging the deeper conversation and inspired solutions, which surely exist, and which are surely possible.
If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here.
