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Reclaiming Her Sacred Wisdom

 

If the knowledge of the sacred feminine has been lost how can we know what to do?  Part of the wisdom of the feminine is to wait, to listen, to be receptive.  A woman does not consciously know how to bring the light of a soul into her womb and help it to form a body.  And yet this mystery takes place within her.  Nor does she consciously know how to nourish this light with her own light, in the same way that she gives her blood to help the body to grow.  She is the mystery of light being born into matter, and her pregnancy is a time of receptivity, waiting, listening and feeling what is happening within her.  She and the Great Mother are one being, and if she listens within she is given the knowledge she needs.

 

We may have forsaken this simple feminine wisdom of listening, and in this information age awash with so many words it is easy to undervalue an instinctual knowledge that comes from within.  But the sacred principles of life have never been written down: they belong to the heartbeat, to the rhythm of the breath and the flow of blood.  They are alive like the rain and the rivers, the waxing and waning of the moon.  If we learn to listen we will discover that life, the Great Mother, is speaking to us, telling us what we need to know.  We are present at a time when the world is dying and waiting to be reborn, and all the words in our libraries and on the internet will not tell us what to do.  But the sacred feminine can share with us her secrets, tell us how to be, how to midwife her rebirth.  And because we are her children she can speak to each of us, if we have the humility to listen.

 

How can we listen to what we do not know?  How can we reclaim what we have lost so long ago?  Every moment is new.  The present moment is not just a progression of past moments, but is alive in its own way, complete and perfect.  And it is the moment that demands our attention.  Only in the moment can we be fully awake and respond to the real need.  Only in the present moment can we be fully attentive.  Only in the present moment can the divine come into existence.  Men may make plans, but a mother attentive to her children knows the real need of the moment.  She feels in her being the interconnectedness of all of life in a way that is veiled from the masculine.  She knows one cannot make plans when there are so many variables, but one can respond with the wisdom that includes the whole and all of its connections.  The divine feminine is asking us to be present in life in all of its wholeness, without judgment or plans.  Then she can speak to us, reveal the mystery of her rebirth.

 

And because this is a birth, the feminine has to be present, not just as an idea but as a living presence within us, within both men and women; because although woman most fully embodies the divine feminine, part of her secret is also shared with men, just as a son carries part of his mother in a way hidden from her daughters.  Yet to live the feminine is something we have almost forgotten: our patriarchal culture has denied her power and real wisdom, has sanitized her as much as it has divorced her from her magic that belongs to the rhythms of creation.  But we need her, more than we dare realize.

 

However, to fully encounter the divine feminine, the creative principle of life, we must be prepared for her anger, for the pain that has come from her abuse.  For centuries our masculine culture has repressed her natural power, has burnt her temples, killed her priestesses.  Through his drive for mastery, and his fear of the feminine, of what he cannot understand or control, the patriarchy has not just neglected her, but deliberately tortured and destroyed.  He has not just raped her, but torn the very fabric of life, the primal wholeness of which she is always the guardian.  And the feminine is angry, even if her anger has been repressed along with her magic.

 

To welcome the feminine is to acknowledge and accept her pain and anger, and the part we have played in this desecration.  Women too have often colluded with the masculine, denied their own power and natural magic, instead accepted masculine values, ways of thinking.  They have betrayed their own deepest self.  But we must also be careful not to become caught in this darkness, in the dynamics of abuse, the anger and betrayal.

 

It is especially easy for women to become identified with the suffering of the feminine, her treatment by the masculine, to project one’s own pain and anger onto men.  Then we are caught even more securely in this web that denies us any transformation.  If we identify with the pain of the feminine we easily become an agent of her anger, rather than going deeper into the mystery of suffering, into the light that is always hidden in the darkness.  Because in the depths of the feminine there is a deep knowledge that the abuse is also part of the cycle of creation.  The Great Mother embodies a wholeness that contains even the denial of herself, and we need her wholeness if we are to survive and be reborn. 

 

Real transformation, like any birth, needs the darkness as much as the light.  We know that the feminine has been abused, just as the planet continues to be polluted.  But the woman who has experienced the pain of childbirth, who knows the blood that belongs to birth, is always initiated in the darkness; she knows the cycles of creation in ways that are hidden to the masculine.  She needs to give herself and her knowing to this present cycle of death and rebirth, and in so doing honor the pain she has suffered.  Then she will discover that her magic and power is also being reborn in a new way, is being returned to her in ways that can no longer be contaminated by the masculine and its power drive.  But without her full participation there is the danger of a still birth; then this present cycle of creation will not realize its potential.

 

First we need to acknowledge the suffering of the feminine, of the earth itself, or the light within the feminine will be hidden from us.  We have to pay the price of our desires to dominate nature, of our acts of hubris.  We are not separate from life, from the winds and the weather.  We are a part of creation and we have to ask her forgiveness, to take responsibility for our attitudes and actions.  We need to go consciously into the next era, recognizing our mistakes.  Only then can we fully honor and hear her.  But there is always the possibility that we will not take this step.  That like defiant children we will not acknowledge the pain we have done to our mother, and will not reclaim the wholeness that she embodies.  Then we will remain within the darkness that is beginning to devour our souls: the empty promises of materialism, the fractured world of fanaticism.  To take a step into maturity is always to acknowledge our mistakes, the wrongs we have done.

 

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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Divine Feminine - Reclaiming Her Sacred Wisdom
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