What does it mean to reclaim the feminine?  It means to honor our sacred connection to life that is present in every moment.  It means to realize that life is one whole and begin to recognize the interconnections that form the web of life.  It means to realize that everything, every act, even every thought, affects the whole.  And it also means to allow life to speak to us.  We are constantly bombarded by so many impressions, by so much media and advertising, that it is not easy to hear the simple voice of life itself.  But it is present, even within the mirage of our fears and desires, our anxieties and expectations.  And life is waiting for us to listen: it just needs us to be present and attentive.  It is trying to communicate to us the secrets of creation so that we can participate in the wonder that is being born.

 

We have been exiled from our own home, sold a barren landscape full of soulless fantasies.  It is time to return home, to claim what belongs to us, the sacred life of which we are a part.  This is what is waiting for us, and its signs are appearing around us.  They are not just in our discontent, in our sense that we have been exploited and lied to.  They are in a quality of magic that is beginning to appear, like the wing beats of angels we cannot see but can feel.  We are being reminded of what we really are, of the divine presence that is within ourself and within life.  We long for this magic, for a life that unites the inner and outer worlds.  And this other is already with us in ways we would not expect.  We just have to be open and receptive, to say yes to what we cannot see or touch, but can feel and respond to.  And for each of us this meeting of the worlds will be different, unique, because we are each different, unique.  It is the sacred within life speaking to us in our own language.  Maybe for the gardener it speaks in the magic of plants, for the mother in something unexpected in the ways of her children—always it is something glimpsed but not yet known—a promise we know we have been waiting for.  Children themselves feel it first, but for them it is not so unusual; it is part of the air they breathe, the light they live in. They have not yet been completely banished, and maybe they will grow into a world in which this magic remains.

 

The mystery of the divine feminine speaks to us from within her creation.  She is not a distant god in heaven, but a presence that is here with us, needing our response.  She is the divine returning to claim her creation, the real wonder of what it means to be alive.  We have forgotten her, just as we have forgotten so much of what is sacred, and yet she is always part of us.  But now she needs to be known again, not just as a myth, as a spiritual image, but as something that belongs to the blood and the breath.  She can awaken us to an expectancy in the air, to an ancient memory coming alive in a new way.  She can help us to give birth to the divine that is within us, to the oneness that is all around us.  She can help us to remember our real nature.

 

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D., is a Sufi teacher and the author of several books on Sufism, including "Sufism, The Transformation of the Heart," "The Face Before I was Born," "Sufism," "Dreamwork" and "Jungian Psychology." Sounds True has also published sets of his audio tapes, "Love is a Fire," "I am Wood," and "The Sufi Path of Love." He was born in London in 1953 and has followed the Naqshbandi Sufi path since he was nineteen.

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