The Feminine in This
There's a lot of work to be done when it comes to raising healing, whole, feminine energy into the power and influence in this world. A lot of honest soul reflection and atonement necessary to re-align with our innate feminine wisdom... and to build the muscles that enable us to do it again and again in the face of challenge, ego, and fear... to persevere until change is not something we hope to reach, but a way we live and recognize as undeniable.
It would be a lot easier to not know of this need in our world. To not see it. But if you've begun to seek meaning or the light of change at all, you know it is there. We are thirsty... parched... for this. It has been out of balance for a long time - and it's not working.
Maybe it's not working because we keep seeking just that: "balance"... as if some state of stable neutrality exists.
But it's not a balancing act - it's a DANCE.
A give and take. A hold, a release. With our whole, flowing being. A seeing without eyes.
A trusting ~ without being told how.
This has nothing at all to do with a power play or hierarchy struggle between the masculine and feminine energies. Though, undoubtedly, the fearful and stuck may attempt to retort from a framework that binds them to this belief.
This is about recognizing that the most gracefully, captivating, and soul-sparking movements of change are dances in which partners don't choreograph, lead or follow - but honor and allow, celebrate and respond to a rhythm of reflection and action within one another that is free, pure and uninhibited to the spirit of compassionate transformation and radical connection.
I know that this is a lot of talk - and I don't know what this will look like for you. I'm just feeling my own way around, like everybody else.
What I do know is that this begins at home, and we can't get away from that. I don't even mean the home you share with your spouse or kids or anyone else, but in the home inside of You.
If you aren't comfortable with that place, then what kind of comfort are you going to bring into the space you share, into the world you interact with, into the inevitable surprises of life? Maybe some, but it won't be sustainable and it won't last... and we NEED sustainable wisdom and modeling more than ever.
What I found as I worked on the painting above, as a reflection about Feminine Wisdom and raising Feminine Energy, is that there are layers upon layers of my own emotional bondages and reactions of resistance and conditioning within myself.
When I am not in alignment with the dance of my own feminine and masculine energies, my masculine energy looks like knee-jerk aggression, like a lion fearful of its own ravenous hunger, lashing out at anything that moves. Likewise, when out of whack, my feminine energy becomes paralyzed by its own fearful, sensitive overwhelm and conditioned submissiveness of doubt.
And herein lies just one example of the opportunity for exchange and partnership between these energies within us.
Wouldn't it make sense for the feminine energy to rise, soothe and feed the other with a fresh perspective or posture from which to scan the landscape for nourishment and reward, for a way back into dynamic participation with the cycle of living? This is exactly what I did while I painted - what I had to do - when I went through a phase of just hating this painting. Part of me couldn't see the way anymore - briefly forgot how to feel any different than rage and frustration - but a softer voice, from a still place in us all, lured me back into the movement of joy and realization.
I had to step away and pray for a fresh perspective to replace the rigidity and nay-sayers inside. I returned and listened to her suggestion - to pull the painting off the wall, place it on the floor, and instead of snarling everytime I looked at the 'problem' area, to tend to it with fresh hands - infusing it with new love in a new dance, even though that meant releasing other parts of the painting I loved and felt comfortable with.
Within minutes of approaching the painting with a new color and a big sloppy brush, I fell in love again... not with the painting, or even where it was going, but with the process. With how I can dance when I stay with the changing rhythms. Instead of feeling sick of it and tired, or resistant and insistent, I felt re-energized and ready - Empowered.
I had lived through the message this painting and prayer had for me - not conceptually or theoretically. I felt it. In my body.
This builds spiritual memory - and now I have a perspective to try anytime I feel that aggression rising again. A perspective that is connected to a lived experience of awareness and transformation within. Do you see how powerful this process is?
The truth of the truest of healing is that it is instantaneous. It is lived. It doesn't require "time" even - just a choice. We make up our mind that we don't want to feel a certain way anymore - that we won't. We make it up and we begin to dance.
And we make that choice as many times as it takes.
(Feminine Energy. Acrylic on 30" x 40" canvas.)