Waking the Feminine
Poet David Whyte said that when he had a son, he felt the need to teach him. His sense was organic—an instinct to continue the species. We know instincts through drives, feelings, emotions and protective urges—those prompting us to care for and train younger ones, and our urges to flinch, freeze, fight or take flight.
When his daughter arrived Whyte said that he sensed a need to apprentice himself to her. His sense of apprenticing to the Feminine of his daughter arose not from animal, ancestral, familial or cultural inheritance—but rather, from the non-ordinary forces of the Mystery. Whether we have daughters or not, all of us—girls, boys, women and men—are constantly being invited, by the Mystery, to apprentice ourselves to the Feminine. She is Life!
The Mystery’s forces and their invitations routinely go unrecognized/unheard. When heard, routinely unheeded. The forces of the Mystery are of a different order than our instincts. These forces are doing the Mystery’s bidding. They are inorganic. Non-instinctual. They derive from, and remain something other than physical matter, thoughts, or imaginings. Our upbringings teach us to disavow their messages when they penetrate our denial, surfacing in awareness.
Her bidding? Become Her Consort. Her Lover. Her co-creative collaborator—all the while growing into the sovereign forces that we ourselves are. Her bidding? Participate in the Whole of things… going to places beyond what our cultures and its institutions acknowledge.
When I was nine my brothers and I got a sister. I was ecstatic. However these things work, she and I have an uncommon connection. We SEE each other. I didn’t know then that I was unfathomably in love with the Feminine. I still am.
The Cosmos… the Universe… the Mystery… all are feminine. Our world—our planet, and Nature—the natural environment—are feminine. All of it is, save for periodic impulses of the Masculine. The Source… the Divine… Allness… the central organizing force of the Cosmos… these words point to the same phenomenon, which is feminine.
Unawares, the human race has disenfranchised itself from the vital-peaceful-aliveness, the undomesticated motion and co-creative promise of our existences. We’ve done so by living out millennia upon millennia of patriarchal mores and acting in accord with its insipid best-practices. We, ourselves, today, continue this folly, equally oblivious, though we consider ourselves aware…
…all the while, furthering the diminishment of our intelligence, sensibilities, capacities and creativities. Though patriarchal mores compel our marching in lockstep, we can yet break our stride changing our lives and the future’s trajectory.
Gender essence possess charge. These forces, and their charge, have been wholly and profanely misunderstood and acted on. The charge between the sexes has been corrupted and contaminated culminating in unspeakable violence. The Feminine and the Masculine gender essence forces are something other than what we’ve been brought up to believe or imagine.
I contend that we—all of us—are profoundly, staggeringly, breathlessly and ecstatically in love with the Feminine, though we are wholly unaware of this, and callous in our ignorance. If we want to leverage change, we will be well served to bring this love into our conscious awareness; to say “Yes!” to it, and act in accord with the our love of the Feminine. Doing so will render boon upon boon to ourselves and others.
What will you do? How will you be? as you awaken to the actuality that you cannot not love the Feminine? That you cannot actually hate life and the living…That you are instead wholly and completely and ecstatically in love with Life, the Cosmos, others, yourself—the Feminine?