Starting Down the Rabbit Hole

It's often been said that, despite appearances, many women in Western culture tend to disregard or ignore their own wants and needs in favor of the wants and needs of those around them. In all reality, I'd imagine this trait is ingrained within Woman from an evolutionary standpoint. I mean how else is she going to raise kids and see to the needs of an entire tribe if she's not inherently at some level willing to put the needs of others ahead of her own? At some point, however, her own must be tended to. I think therein lies the challenge that many women face, of which I am no exception. The problem though is that this precept is one that has as many foundational underpinnings as any other relationship with the Self, and finding our own personal connection to this is our own challenge. This post is me trying to explore this concept in a way that opens doors for future or deeper exploration. It's a model, one that I've found helpful even though the process demands that I be willing to listen to the emotional surges which are my guideposts. Here goes...

Precept: I shouldn't have any personal wants or desires for myself.

Problem: I have a very hard time even recognizing, let alone articulating, any deeper wants beyond "I want dinner" or "I want to do this today". Without giving any recoginition and thereby conscious validity to deeper wants, they find hidden or even destructive ways of being satisfied.

Digging around in this problem, I felt an emotional reaction when I revealed something that I wanted which had to be darn near dragged out of me. That reaction was an extreme discomfort to being vulnerable, to being open to rejection. Now I've done a few posts on receptivity and vulnerability and how these relate to what men respond to within the Feminine, and in those posts I admitted that I had a problem with this facet of myself. I didn't quite realize just how large that problem was until I felt as if I were naked at Grand Central Station after finally admitting to something important to me that I didn't even know was in there.

Alison Armstrong uses the example of women being afraid to need something of their own because if those needs are rejected then she's left alone to be eaten by lions. That a woman's placing others before herself is a primal condition. Remembering this, I wondered if perhaps my own relationship with this aspect of the feminine was that same thing.

Anyone remember those logic problem of if A then B, if B then C so therefore A then C? I tried that to see if there was some emotional response. If want then rejection, if rejection then death, therefore want equals death.

As I typed those words, I paid very close attention to how I felt about them, to how I emotionally reacted to them. For 'if want then rejection' I definitely felt a response, so I'm taking that to mean correct. For the rest of it, nothing. The primal and emotional minds were both unmoved by the words, so those aren't correct for me. I went back to the drawing board, changed out a few words and came up with: If want then rejection, if rejection then alone, therefore want equals alone. Now THAT got an emotional response, and a rather strong one. This is the right track for me.

Using my emotional awareness as a guide, the idea of being alone is the one that needed to be explored. What came out was "if I am alone, then I'm alone with myself" and that statement literally had tears coursing down my face. Clearly I have a problem with that idea.

My first thought was to ask "What's wrong with me that this is the case?" I think it's a very basic response that women have, the tendency toward negative re-enforcement, and it's one I've talked about before. This question though also invites a downward spiral of self-blame, recrimination and rejection. I'm trying to accept who I am, good and bad, pretty and ugly. Acceptance and blame are counter-productive, so this question has to be thrown out the window.

Since I'm not really good at that sort of thing, I turned to my husband for a positive way of addressing this problem. True to form, he had an excellent suggestion: "What is it about myself that I'm afraid to be with?" I knew this was on the right track because even just typing the question had my chest burning. You see, this question isn't looking for blame. This question is opening doors, inviting me to look at myself. It should be noted that the previous question had zero emotional impact -- my emotional self can handle the blame game, but the open exploration game caused a surge of almost panic.

Besides this one question, there are a great many more than could be asked, but because this one had such a powerful reaction I started there. Other questions include those of the relationship between my own self-worth and the feeling that I deserve or don't deserve to be happy and therefore don't recognize my wants; taking a look at whether or not I place value judgements such as 'legitimate or not' on desires before they are even consciously recognized. Of course, once all these are considered, I need to go back and find out if my non-recognition of my own heart even related to the idea of "What is it about myself that I'm afraid to be with?" What if want and alone are actually unrelated, and the upwelling of emotion is triggered by 'alone' and unphased by 'want'? But the question highlighted above is where I'm starting for now.

While I won't be posting all the gorey searching, I will share the most useful tool that I used to dig around in myself for this intensely honest and frankly painful but oh-so-liberating inner exploration. That tool was to look at my own resentments towards other people. The initial response to this question was an interior innocent batting of the eyes and a "but I don't resent anyone" denial. Blatantly untrue, but this is the face that social conditioning likes to wear, the face that my ego self likes to pretend is true. Alas, it is not. I wrote down the names of 5 people in my life that sprang to mind, and then spent about 20 minutes just writing about them. Since this is for me, I cut loose. It started out with really nice verbage, couching all the perceiving wrongs with innocous wording. Eventually, something broke and out poured all this genuine emotion.

Now, the absolute hardest part of this process but CRUCIAL is to just let it flow. My social conditioning was trying desperately to put the brakes on this process because it was 'bad' and I was admitting to myself for the first time just how 'bad' I was. Folks, resentment is a poison, and like poison it has to be purged if healing is to take place. Letting it fester in the deepest part of myself while I pretended to be all goodness and light and forgiving was only killing me, leaving them utterly unaffected. Even afterward, when I had filled page after page with a level of rage I had NO idea was even there, those folks are still unaffected and yet I feel so much lighter, freer. I can now see them in my mind's eye and finally there is no inner lip curl at the sight of them. I am free to finally see them.

What came to me during this process is that I chose the symbol of the Lioness far more appropriately than I could have imagined. Why? A Lioness is, above all, true to herself. She knows who she is, and accepts it. There's no "a lioness should be this" in her thinking. She just IS. She is a killer, and is fine with that -- indeed, relies on it to feed her sisters/mother/aunts/cubs. She is also a caretaker, a loving and loyal member of her family. Good and "bad", she just is. I'm starting to realize that in order to fully embrace the Feminine, I have to be just like her, I have to embrace all that I Am without judgement (tricky tricky!). Here goes: I get angry at people. Phew!! You'll just have to trust me when I say that finally admitting to that was like pulling out teeth. Ultimately, since I want to be majestic and powerful and feminine, I first have to know all that I am so that I can accept who I am. Eventually, I'll be able to drop the (in training), but I'm far from there yet. Until then, I remain a striving

- Lioness (in training)

The Threshold Western Woman Really Stands On

I have to admit, yesterday's blog post has me all kinds of excited today. I hear from various quarters a lot of lamentation of what we collectively 'lost' with the feminist movement, but if I change my perspective and instead look at this shift in paradigms as a cultural maturation of the Western Woman, then we haven't "lost" a damn thing. What we have done is throw the baby out with the bathwater in some cases because archetypally the Western Woman was in essence a sheltered and pampered child (have you seen 'the real housewives of the OC'?? holy moley, that's a collection of spoiled and pampered children!). Like a teen who rebels and rejects everything their parents tried to teach them, the Western Woman tried on a few facets of life which before had been denied to her.

The key to success for this collective process is to not go backwards by demanding to be treated like a child again, which is what I'm starting to see in some women. As I see it, this entire energetic leap that Western Woman undertook is invaluable to the maturation of our entire species. Without honest and genuine maturity, wisdom is flat impossible. And if there's one thing we need it's wisdom!

Okay. I think I'm starting to get too abstract for the average person and I think this perspective is too important to lose people. In order to understand this post and the concepts I'm working with, you have to mentally zoom out, like a camera lens has the capacity to zoom in or out so that it can focus on just one thing or include a great many things in the picture. There is no single woman who embodies the Western Woman. I am A Western Woman, just one manifestation out of millions. My life span will likely be between 80 and 95 years, yet the process I'm speaking about has already spanned multiple centuries. Again, zooming in too close to see just myself means that I can no longer see the bigger picture. I think I myself am actually fairly mature so then what am I talking about? What do I mean by the maturation of the Western Woman yet I'm talking about events that have spanned hundreds of years? That is the big picture, and I am just one piece.

Have you ever seen those pictures which are themselves composed of hundreds of smaller pictures? Zooming in allows you see that one picture, but zooming out allows you to see that all those tiny individual pictures combine to create, for example, the Mona Lisa? It's called a photo mosaic.

I personally, individually, am just one photo within the massive photo mosaic that is Western Woman. My own tiny little picture will change as I change, but it's too small to really have that much effect on the composite image of the Western Woman. In order to change this image, it will take millions of women several generations to really change that big picture. So yes, you and I can be very mature and yet we're still a part of this larger image, and that image is of a young woman just learning about who she really is, and isn't.

In order to relate to this, I have to correlate her to my own growth and maturation process. This helps me to make that massive composite image something small enough, personal enough, that I can work with it and understand it. In the teen years, what is happening is that the individual is breaking away from the parental figures in order to learn about who they are. This is the time for experimenting with new hairstyles, different friends, etc. Eventually, if all goes well, the individual will find that sense of individuality that they are looking for, that they NEED. The 20th century was all about this phase of maturation for that Western Woman. She threw out everything she had been taught to value because she needed to find the value in those things for herself, in her own way, on her own terms. Only then can she really and honestly see the value in them! She also needed to work through a lot of anger and resentment at Western Man for trying to protect her from the trials of adulthood -- just as a teen sneers at her parents and chafes at the controls and restrictions. Eventually though, with experience and wisdom, the teens comes to understand what was really going on and comes to terms with things. I think that's where Western Woman is at this point, at the early stages of coming to terms with Herself more honestly, with her Man, and everything in between.

Looking back a few posts, I talked about the power of the Feminine being the force of Civilization itself, of woman as the civilizer of man, of an empowered woman as the inspiration source that allows men to become their empowered aspect. If my theory is correct and that Western Woman is herself finally ready to step into her role as a mature woman, though of course there are some growing pains and learning which has to happen first, what does this say about our culture? About our civilization? Indeed, about our entire species, about humanity as a whole? See, the Western Woman concept that I am just one tiny little piece of is herself just one image within the photo masaic of Humanity!

So if Western Woman is working toward stepping into her Empowered, Adult, Mature self, how will this change the world? How will her wisdom and strength of character affect those around her? Inspire those around her? I actually think that the heralding of the Energetic Age and the passing of the Fossil Age, as Caroline Myss talks about in a September 2008 Sacred Contracts radio show, is a direct result of this process!

I so want to be a part of that! I won't live long enough to see it in its full glory, but I am one who is making it happen. The more women who can see how their lives and their hardships and the lessons they've learned and passed on to their daughters will help shape this future, the less likely we will be tempted to retreat back into a known path of comfort. If we do that, if Western Woman collapses in her bid for maturity, the entirety of humanity will take a huge step backwards in terms of potential. It could take another couple of millenia or more to get the momentum back to try this again. I'm not sure the planet will have the patience with us for that.

I personally find this image and this guantlet of challenge to be exceedingly inspiring and empowering. I wanted to try to share this excitement with you, this vision of what the threshold that we collectively stand on really is and means. It's an awesome time to be alive!

- Lioness (in training)

What is the Liberated Woman?

I've been listening to the backlog of Caroline Myss' Hay House radio show called Sacred Contracts. If you are not familiar with either her work or the Jungian concept of archetypes then I'd highly recommend investigating both of those.

The topic of her October 14th 2008 show was on the archetype of the Liberated Woman and her supposition that this archetype is actually a myth. She was inquiring exactly what we were liberated from. Overall, a good show. Her definition of what this archetype represents is what I think is fairly typical for what the modern woman thinks she should be: one who "has it all" -- supports herself, doesn't need a man, is a strong individual who is completely independant, yet somehow has and raises kids successfully. Since her idea of the Liberated Woman is quite exactly what I describe as the lioness with a false mane, this show got me to thinking.

What I particularly love about her is that she does what I do -- ties everything into a historical perspective. Afterall, in order to understand the complete picture one must first SEE the complete picture and this includes the history behind how and why we got to where we are. While she did do this to a small degree, she didn't explore it overly much. She was looking more at what we lost by demanding 'liberation' than in what was being rebelled against.

What exactly did women want to be liberated from? In order to answer this question, we have to go back a few hundred years and understand why women started to demand equal treatment under the law, to demand the right to vote and thus participate in and therefore influence the world in which they lived more directly. This then became a demand for work opportunties, most especially after WWII as I've already talked about, and then it became a demand for 'equal' treatment in the work place.

After looking at the things that women were actually asking, I realized that what she was REALLY wanting was nothing less or more than "treat me like an adult". As a collective, Women were asking to stop being treated like little kids who didn't know their own mind, who weren't even potentially sophisticated enough to grasp the magnitude and complexity of the adult world. Look at the objections of the time of the Suffragette Movements and you'll see statements which pretty much baldly state that men didn't consider women either smart enough or emotionally capable of handling the responsibility voting would bring with it. Indeed, through the previous centuries, women were by and large handled just like kids with the exception that women were interchangeable while a man's kids were not. You can see it in the laws, the social attitudes, and the expectations.

So if the root idea behind the original Liberated Woman was simply 'it's time I be allowed to grow up', where did this other 'need to have it ALL' idea enter the picture? When did she forget that she wanted to finish maturing and instead attempted to cut men out of her life as extraneous baggage? The transition can be seen in the 40s through the 80s. As always, it was a long slow building process.

The absolute irony is that by trying to be so strong and independent and "I don't need a man ever", that's actually a pretty immature stance. It's identicle to the sheltered teen who leaves home for very first time ever to go to college only to end up doing crazy stupid stuff.

I recall watching a movie called "Bounty Hunter" with Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler. In it, the woman is complaining that the man isn't mature enough for her. In her tirade, the character all but stomped her foot in a childish temper tantrum. In that moment, I could see the frustration and eye-rolling tolerance toward women than a huge number of men have. She WANTS to be mature, demands it of others, but has no idea what that really means. Archetypally, she's in college, first time away from home, doing crazy stupid stuff yet thinking she's being mature and adult.

I see the last century or half century as growing pains in the maturation process of the feminine. At some point though that first time college student has to realize 'whoa! what am I doing?' and from there true maturity begins. The first step is always taking personal responsibility for our actions. Here are the things that women in western society have gained in the last century alone:

• We can own our own property.
• Our worth is no longer based on what we bring into the marriage contract.
• We have equal protection under the law, even if the abuser is our husband.
• We have the right to work without having sexuality used as a bargaining tool.
• We have an equal say in the running of our democratic republic.
• We can do more with our lives than attach ourselves to a man and have kids, if we so choose.

These are things our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers and more fought for. They are serious things, important things. I don't ever want to see them eroded or taken away!!!! But with these come responsibility. I think that the reason collective Men at the turn of the 20th century started to grant these demands for adulthood was exactly the same reasons a parent allows their child to move out on their own when it's demanded: "ok, you want to prove to me you're an adult, here's your chance".

The Liberated Women was freed from the puera eternis (eternal little girl) notion and granted the right to grow up. We've had our growing pains and I think we're starting to settle back into ourselves. I can see the trend starting. What we collectively have to do is make sure that we don't go backwards because that's the pattern we know. If we do that, we're doomed to repeat all this over again at some point.

I am not an eternal little girl looking for a daddy figure to take care of me! I am a Woman. I roar. I am fierce. I am intelligent and opinionated, caring and compassionate. I take responsibility for my life and my actions, but I am not alone. I have a Partner, who will hunt the deer and protect the campfire so that I can tend the homestead, gather berries and see to the social bonds of our group. I can't do it all. I don't WANT to do his job and mine.

I think that the majesty of the feminine is rooting here: confidence and maturity.

- Lioness (in training)

Link between Sacred Feminine and Civilization?

I talked in the last post about a possible link between the strength of the cultural concept of the Sacred Feminine and the fertility of the land. I also made mention of a book that I'm currently reading called "The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine" by Nancy Qualls-Corbett.

While I'm only about a 1/4 of the way into it, I have to admit that I'm a bit disheartened. She's pulled out some decent examples of the role of the Sacred Feminine in ancient cultures which have been lost to us through time and the villianization of the Feminine. Specifically, as you can guess from the title of the book, she's looking at the role that the prayer-through-sexuallity priestesses carried.

What has me rather disheartened is that so far there is zero mention of the role that the Goddesses played in bringing civilization to humanity. For example, Inana-Ishtar is the goddess credited with that role, but she was also associated with love, fertility and passion. The author focuses exclusively on her on-going roles and basically gives a nod to the whole "BRINGER OF CIVILIZATION" role. She brings up the Epic of Gilgamesh in which the wise king Gilgamesh has the wild-man Enkidu sleep with a sacred priestess and after laying with her for 7 days he is transformed from wild man into human, capable of thinking and acting like a man now instead of an animal. That the author utterly whiffs on this as an example of the civilizing power of the Sacred Feminine had me grinding my teeth.

She also overlooks the role of Athena, which is very nicely covered in Elizabeth Wayland Barber's book "Women's Work: the First 20,000 Years". Barber talks about the symbolic power struggle between Poseidon and Athena for the patronage of Athens. Originally, Athena was the patroness of weaving -- the very first of the technologies which allowed humanity to begin taming and controlling his environment for his own use. The myth of Arachne illustrates Athena as the weaver, not to mention highlights the Dark Feminine response to being bested in a contest where pride is at stake. Anyway, the people of the city asked both Athena and Poseidon for a gift to demonstrate why they would be the better choice for the city. Athena's gift was an olive tree, and Poseidon sent them a large wave. The olive tree blocked the wave and saved the city, ensuring that Athena became the patroness of the city.  Here is the quote from the book relevant to my point here:

Pg 242: "... Athena is the beneficent deity that protects humans and makes them prosper, pushing back the untamed forces of nature represented by Poseidon. More exactly, she represents everything that human skill and know-how can accomplish; she is a goddess of "civilization" itself."

Indeed, even the olive tree is a manifestation of humanity's ingenuity and ability to take what was wild and make into something useful -- the domestication of fruit trees. Alas, no mention of this myth is found within Qualls-Corbett's references because she's focusing on the role of sex.

There is one reference I recall reading but cannot place, which Qualls-Corbett has overlooked. In parts of ancient Greece, when men returned from long campaigns, they were considered to be unfit to enter the city. By going to war, they had reverted to their uncivilized, animalistic selves -- it's why they succeeded! But in order to be allowed back into the city, they first had to have sex with the priestesses, which would restore them to their Manhood, what we today would phrase as "return them to their Humanity".

I would argue that the role of the Sacred Prostitute, or Hierodule (priestess whose duty includes sexual functions), is a manifestion of a woman's civilizing influence on men as well as a manifestation of her procreative powers.

Alas, somewhere along the way this vision got horribly perverted. Myths such as Pandora's Box ('box' being a very old euphamism for female genitalia) as well quips by Pythagoras such as "There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness, and woman." It's no secret in the least that the later Atheneans were not too fond of women in general. This sentiment is echoed throughout much of the later middle east and is carried into Europe by the Christians, until eventually women are the very embodiment of the evil temptress sent to seduce men and thus prevent him from attaining spiritual perfection. This idea is the foundation behind the Church barring women from any leadership roles, a stance which continues to this day but was hardly part of the founding principles. There are examples of females bishops in the early church, a fact which was attempted to be struck from the record until recent digs unearthered the murals depicting them and their stories.

Despite all of this, women still remain a civilizing influence on men. All you have to do is walk into a long-term bachelor's house and listen to a woman's typical response to what she finds. It's women who insist on manners and proper behavior, though men definitely have their own code of ethics when they deal with each other. It's women who traditionally tend the house, and the house and household is the heart of civilization. The Vestal Virgins may not have included sex in their duties, but as priestesses of Vesta -- "Vesta represents the sacred heart or hearth of the home, the central fire which supplies heat and on which food is cooked. Nourishment and warmth, home and the center are Hers" -- they were the epitome of the Feminine which is indeed the center of the home and the source of warmth (love, children, caretaking, nourishment). This to me is the epitome of the Sacred Feminine, the true Majesty of the Feminine.

This is the role that I said I wanted to take up, even though I didn't have the language. Indeed, finding that language has been the purpose of this blog! What is truly amazing to me is that, after I left my job of 7 years, people who knew me came to my husband who still works there, asking why I left. He replies simply that I stopped working so that I could focus on taking care of him. He brags that he now gets 3 home-cooked meals a day and so far has lost 16 pounds in 3 months. He loves coming home to no worries in terms of household stuff because I've been able to do it. As a result, now we have time to spend together without me worrying about all the things I haven't had time to do. He reports to me that several women have replied to his stories with a wistfull "I'd do that too, if I could" and so far my actions have inspired three different men to have a talk with their wives about them working in the home, at least of those who've gone back and talked again with my husband.

The more I look around and see the Feminine manifested in her Glory, the more I realize how immensely powerful she truly is -- quietly powerful. There's no need for chest-beating or demands for recognition as to her contributions. She KNOWS exactly how majestic and magnificent She is. It's us mortal women who've been listening to several thousand years of blame and anger and villanization by men who themselves have never even glimpsed her Light Side that require the recognition etc. Instead, we've focused on the Dark Side of the Feminine for millenia. It's time to shift our focus! I can't change history, but I can set some examples for going forward. I'm certainly far from perfect and therefore can never really manifest the fullness and majesty of the Sacred Feminine, but I damn sure can try. I'm really really hoping at least one reader of this blog is inspired to try the same, in her own unique way.

-- Lioness (in training)

Correlation between Strength of Cultural Feminine and Land Fertility

Last year I read a book called "The Triple Goddess: An Exploration of the Archetypal Feminine" by Adam McLean. Now I'm reading a book called "The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine" by Nancy Qualls-Corbett. The combination of these books along with this blog and the books by Alison Armstrong as well as archetypal discussions had by Caroline Myss on her Sacred Contracts radio show has me thinking about the subject of Femininity, Masculinity, Patriarchy and Matriarchy through multiple different filters.

Within Qualls-Corbett's introduction, she's talking about the passing out of active consciousness of one aspect of the Divine Feminine which occurred at the same time as the rise of patriarchy as a social system. Now I'm relatively familiar with the rise of civilization in the middle east and its progression through the systems. Since Qualls-Corbett is specifically lamenting that this aspect of the Divine Feminine is absent from modern Western culture, I know to bring the roots of that culture into the picture: Christianity and pagan Europe.

Christianity, as one of the Abrahamaic religions, is pretty firmly patriarchal. Despite this, the Divine Feminine remained a powerful figure in the form of the Virgin Mary, and to a lesser extent in the Lover Mary -- whether you want to argue Mary Magdelene was a literal or idealogical lover of Jesus is still hotly debated, but in either manifestation she is the Lover. My question upon seeing this was: Why? To my limited knowlege, neither of the other Abrahamaic religions has a positive Divine Feminine to speak of. Why the difference? Why did Christianity, which became entrenched in temperate Europe, retain a Divine Feminine while the other convert-seeking religion, which became entrenched in largely arid climates, not have one?

It suddenly struck me: Land of Origin.

When Christianity moved from arid climes into more temperate ones, and the people converted from their polytheistic systems into it, they refused to allow the Divine Feminine to fall into obscurity. A sort of mini-cult around the Virgin Mary developed, and no matter what the early Church tried, this adherence and reverence remained staunch. So they gave up and just went with it, even further elevating this impossible Virgin Mother ideal far beyond the emulative reach of mere mortal women -- and then they villified the Lover into a reformed Prostitute, making her likewise one not to be actively emulated. But Europe and the people there were steeped in the fertility of the land. The Mother Earth was everywhere, and she cannot be stopped -- controlled and channelled, but short of poisoning the land the earth all around the Europeans was immensely fertile.

Compare this image with the arid climates, in which the fertility of the earth is less abundant, less in-your-face. Oases and river valleys are the centers of life, but surrounding this is harsh and unforgiveable land. There is little softness in the desert -- it is hard and cruel, prickly and unwelcoming. It then is not a huge stretch to imagine the Protector Masculine swinging into action to corral, contain, cultivate and protect what precious little active fertile land is present from others who would seek the same -- a haram of land, adopted by and emulated within the society. Women then are precious resources, to be tucked away and hidden lest they be stolen away.

I live in Southern California now, having grown up on the East Coast. What a contrast! If you haven't experienced it, this approach may not make sense but having seen both, I can now easily see the correlation between what the land is doing and how it manifests in stories and the native cultural psyche.

So here it is in a nutshell: I would posit that there is a correlation between the strength of the Cultural Feminine and the level of Land Fertility -- more fertility means a stronger feminine, less fertility means a weaker feminine identity. It's certainly an idea I've never seen anywhere else before, and it might actually make for a very interesting Masters dissertation.

In our modern way of life, we don't even bother to pay attention to when the sun rises and sets anymore, and even fewer have any realistic awareness of the native fertility of the land on which they live. For the average person, food is derived from grocery stores, not gardens or farms. The Solstices are just dates on a calendar. I could see, given this, that our connection to both the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine is currently rather compromised. If this is the case, where might this lead us as a people? Is it a positive or negative thing? Is reconnecting with the Divine Manifestations part of the process of reclaiming and celebrating my own individual femininity?

-- Lioness (in training)

Digging Through the Dumpster: Finding that Trash is actually Gold

Ok. It's been a few days and I've been working on my list of adjectives that comes to mind when I think of "Feminine". For those not remembering, I had assigned myself the task of (1) listing all the adjectives I could think of, (2) then listing all their positive and negative expressions, and (3) listing why those attributes might be survival contributors. Afterall, if those are generalized feminine traits than they have been selected for biologically speaking and eventually culturally speaking. They serve a role -- what could those roles be?

For this exercise, I'm picturing a very primitive stone age society type of living. No ammenities -- no sunblock, no toasters, no ovens, no maids, no guns, no cars, no antibiotics, etc. In this world, those who survive do so because they are clever, tough, and make it work.

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This is one that I didn't think of in my initial tirade, but was reminded of it later that same day: Sympathy. Sympathy, empathy and compassion are all related and are used interchangably by some. I make a distinction. Empathy is feeling what another person feels; compassion is feeling along with another; and sympathy is extending our own feelings toward another generally for the purposes of consulation. All three are actually feminine traits, and since they are closely related I'm going to try lumping them into one category.

A positive expression of this emotion serves to create bonds, social bonds (hehehe) with others. Sympathy and compassion both help to sooth ruffled feathers in others, or to console the wounded - emotionally or otherwise. Empathy helps do the same by creating the awareness that what we feel, others feel, and vice verse.

The positive side has the pure survival skill of enabling the individual to work within a group, to cement relationships and clan status so that in times of danger they will remembered and protected. It enables a woman to raise children effectively, to negotiate with men well, to have friendships with other women.

The negative side has more to do with how those emotions are put to use. I can use sympathy to actually destroy someone, if I wanted to. If I feel threatened by someone who turns to me for sympathy, I can use that position to ego-wise strip that person to the bones. It's the foundation behind a lot of social manipulation, and women can use this tool in their arsonal with devastating effects.

This has the survival function of allowing a woman to recognize situations and use the emotions of others to our advantage. Getting rid of threats ensures our own objectives become more likely -- whether I am trying to put my own son on the throne or trying to oust a competitor for the limited protection or food available.

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Here's a huge one that's been pinged repeatedly: multi-tasker. This means simply having the capacity to manage multiple tasks simultaneously. In Allison's parlance, she uses "diffuse awareness" -- being aware of everything in the surroundings without being focused on any one thing.

Positively, this serves to help protect (did you see that grass move? is there a lion stalking there?), to populate the database (which berry bush that I can recall is ripe at this time of year?), to monitor (water boiling, child playing with dog, friend scraping hides ... everything good!), and to plan the day. Actually, I really like Elizabeth Barber's take in "Women's Work: the first 20,000 years" where she conjectures that women took on the role of spinning and weaving because those tasks were easily interupted. Think about it -- women have a radar going at all times. Problems cause pings, which need to be attended to. That means dropping everything being done right now to tend to that. When that ping is taken care of, the original is task is resumed as if it had not been interupted.

Why is that a survival skill specific to women, to the feminine mind? Men can do this too, to a limited degree, though it does improve with practice. I would argue that it's because women are the primary raisers and trainers and caretakes of children, but they still have duties to the tribe to do. If a woman became focuse on berry gathering and her radar went down so that she didn't even notice her kids were all eaten, she's not going to have too much luck getting her genes into the future. Men, conversely, don't generally take young children with them hunting. They aren't tending to toddlers while running down a herd of mammoth!

Negatively, this aspect becomes what can be described as scatterbrained, being unable to maintain any degree of concentration long enough to complete anything. The bread gets burned because they forgot they'd put it into the firepit, that sort of thing. Ultimately, this is bad management. Running a bad household is pretty unattractive, inefficient, and potentially wasting precious resources that aren't exactly limitless. This ineffectiveness can easily lead to putting the family in jepardy in the form of poor long term planning -- such as failing to recognize theren't not food or warm clothing for the winter. While in today's world this negative is hardly lifethreatening, but I can easily see it as being a large problem in more demanding world.

Hrm. So in what way can this negative expression be a survival tool? ... That's a harder one to supply. I do know that in women it's a learned skill. and if the tribe as a whole is effective enough to compensate AND the scatterbrain has some strong social skills, it can easily be overlooked as a powerful negative.

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Emotional. ... I'm wondering if this is tied back into the first one. Emotional awareness, living within an emotional world, means relating to others more easily, more readily. If the primary job of the feminine is the rearing, training and caretaking of the young, this makes total sense. Kids aren't exactly power houses of logic -- that's learned, and comes only as the brain develops. If women spend more of their time with each other and with kids, it makes sense to be immersed in emotions -- all the better to relate with.

That would be the positive use. And it's survival function is tied to the society, enabling the female to be integrated into the fabric of her culture such that she and her kids are cared for enough so that her kids survive to follow suit.

The problem in this comes I think with lack of maturity. Much of what I listed originally (instability, self-centered, insecure, etc) are often seen within women who haven't been challenged, who'se lives are 'easy' when compared to primitive stone age life. Good lord half the women I've seen on Montell would be kicked out of my tribe so fast it'll make your head spin. If that kind of behavior is tolerated, it becomes an acceptable tool to get what is needed.

And here is the negative side of it -- emotional blackmail, and other forms of emotional manipulation. Think of the kids who are acting out violently all in an effort to get some attention. Boot their ass out of the hut at nut, leaving them to fend in the darkness until they straighten out and fly right, and you'll see some behavior modification right quick. I see it all the time in horses -- young stallions raised with mares are perfectly well mannered, sequestered and isolated and those young stallions are unmanageable assholes.

At the least this negative does serve some survival role -- if it's fostered, allowed by the tribe, then it's acceptable and expected behavior. It becomes the means by which the individual earns their place in society, securing their right to food, shelter, protection and mates.

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Ok. I think I've been through enough of my list to see the trend. Almost all my problem with the concept of the Feminine comes from the negative expression of the emotional self, but now I can see just how integral it is and how it serves a key survival role. I don't know about other folks, but I'm a "why" kinda person. If I don't see the why, the what's makes no sense. The Why's give me perspective.

Given this exercise, I think that I've tried to distance myself from the emotional core of my nature because I mistook the negative expressions as 'normal', and they are not. Because of my rejection of this, my survival is actually at stake because I'm failing to integrate into the society. Instead, I stand outside of it because I lack the emotional awareness of myself to connect in a mature and healthy way. It's entirely self imposed, but it's run the entire length of my life. I've had one friend, if I was lucky, at any given point in my life. At my high school graduation, I got my diploma and walked off the field, feeling utterly no need to say a single thing to anyone. I left my place of employment after 7 years without saying too much to anyone, figuring no one would miss me anyway. A friend pinged me and mentioned it would have been nice for me to say goodbye at least, considering that I'd been working with these same people for 7 years. It never crossed my mind. Honestly! Now I feel bad, and I think back to high school. I went to school with some of those folks since second grade, when I moved into that school system. From second grade through twelfth, from age 8 through age 18, 10 years with the same kids, playing soccer, running track and cross-country, helping with homework, etc, and I didn't feel a part of the group enough to feel the need to say farewell to a single person.

Conversely, my brother cried at his graduation as he went from person to person, telling them how much he'd miss them, to wish them well on their life's journey, etc. I remember laughing at him because he laughed at me when he tried to shove onto me an emotionality and sentimentality that was utterly lacking. Projection. Now I think ... he's the better person. He's made himself part of the social group, and I'm the outsider. In a primitive society, I would have been left out in the cold to be eaten, freeze or starve.

My early childhood rejection of the Feminine within myself, the villification of all things 'weak' and 'frilly', has had some serious life consequences that I never really saw before now. I never really fully realized just what a large hole is here. No wonder the subconscious spat up this subject, the subject of reclaiming the majesty of the feminine, when I sat down to think about what it was I needed to chronical during this transition in my life!

What do I do about it?? I find myself mockingly asking "what am I supposed to do - go emote all over people now?" And that is exactly the tone of a rejection, the phraseology of villification. How can I do this constructively? Positively?

I'll have to think about it. I'm wondering if simply wearing the clothes I've snubbed (despite the deep down secret admiration for the look) is a good first step. I can't run out and buy a bunch of clothes, so that means I'll have to make some of the patterns I've been collecting. That'll also be a literally constructive act. I'm MAKING the clothing, consciously. It'll be interesting to see what that act does, internally speaking.

Onward.
-- Lioness (in training)

Reclaiming usually starts with dumpster diving

Had an interesting breakthrough today, and I suddenly also realized why I hadn't been inspired to write anything for this blog. It's because I was trying to focus on the wrong thing -- on the relationship between the masculine and the feminine. Why this title and topic sprang into my mind was because I needed explore my own relationship with the Feminine, my relationship with myself as a woman. Alison has done a good job with the hunter/gatherer thing, and I don't want to just reiterate her stuff (even if I do add new layers to it from time to time).

What I need to do is explore and own my own Feminine. All this came out today because I realized that my housemate was reflecting back to me for recognition all those things about women that I despise in myself. She's just who she is, and I most definitely do NOT despise her at all. What was aggitating me was rather that she was making it difficult for me to remain in intentional ignorance of all the things about myself that I've been flat out ignoring, denying and villifying since I was a wee thing. Hell, one of my earliest memories was that my dad was disappointed with me because I, his firstborn, was a girl. This is NOT his thinking, it's mine, and I gave it to him and made him carry it for decades before I finally realized that it wasn't my dad that was disappointed, it was me. I was disappointed with myself for having internal plumbing. For being a ... *sneer* girl.

How on earth am I going to 'reclaim the majesty of the feminine' if I'm actively villifying it?!? As long as I'm doing that, clearly I can't reclaim a damn thing. So now I have to dive into exactly what it is that I am turning my nose up at.

While vacuuming, I was doing an exercise in which I assigned myself the task of listing all the adjectives I could think of that described Woman. Here's a sample of the list:

Emotionally unstable.
Harpy/Bitchy/Nag.
Clingy.
Self-Centered.
Insecure.
Useless.
Illogical.

Can you see the jist of this list? It's entirely negative. There's not a single positive attribute within my mind that I can identify as 'feminine'. Soft? Euphamism for weak or flabby. Multitasking? Euphamism for scatterbrained. Good communicator? Euphamism for gossip.

Eeee! Not good!!! Even trying to summon up positives associated with motherhood is just as riddled with warped and unhealthy perceptions ranging from careless slut to broodmare to angry and/or tired all the time. No wonder I never wanted kids -- there was nothing positive in the least associated with the concept. NOTHING. So I pour all this denied affection out onto animals. It's only very recently that I've allowed myself to smile fondly at the antics of a kid being a kid in the grocery store (not the screaming and being a general shit sort of antics, but the playful running around enthusiasm for life sorts of antics). But if someone's there to witness this stupid smile, you can bet I'll swallow it completely and instead ignore the kid.

Ack. My throat is burning again. Definitely an area of high unexpressed emotion.

Now that I can see just how exceedingly unhealthy and negative my view of what it means to BE feminine, the challenge is how to turn this around. How to own it, and find the gifts within the negatives. For example, while it may be negative to be a Bitch, the gift of this is the strength and conviction to go after what you want. The positive of the Nag is that it keeps track of what needs to be done, so if the Nag and the Bitch joined forces the combo would go from complaining incessantly to keeping track of it and acting on it.

One observation that I had as I was cataloging all the things I've done to repress this side of me was the patterns that I've chosen to purchase over the years. Curious, I went to my pattern drawer. There are more than 2 dozen dress and skirt patterns, and one shirt pattern. No pants or slacks. Almost entirely dresses. I almost bought another dress pattern this past weekend. How many have I actually MADE? None. Going to my closet, I have the reverse. I have 1 dress and over 2 dozen pants. Hrm. Interesting. Yet another subconscious and unrecognized wishful expression of who I am beneath all the masks.

I have to admit I'm terrified that there really IS no 'majesty' at all to the feminine. That I'm just deluding myself with wishful thinking. The rational part of me recognizes this is a groundless fear, but I have to recognize it, own it. I'm also concerned that by embracing this side, I'll become everything that I hate, and by extension my husband will look at me and think 'uk, I really did marry just another woman'. I feel that this is the fear with the most bite to it.

I don't want to be emotionally unstable, or an illogical raging harpy, or devolve into a useless damsel who cries for help with everything all the time. Fortunately, I can feel there is tremendous strength within the Feminine, most definitely a powerful majesty, and I'm just too mired in the dark side of it to see clearly right now. I can't ignore where I'm standing and expect to reach for the bright shiney successfully. I have to deal with where I am so that I can move forward, move toward integrating the ugly shadow side with the light majestic side.

This will be my next self-assignment -- list all the attributes I can think of which I consider "feminine". For every attribute, list the positive and negative expressions. From there, list possible survival reasons why those attributes are present.

- Lioness (in training)