Women and Their Transformational Spiritual Power.
by Jay Ray
(extracted from a talk given at the Spirit Festival in Penrith, NSW, mid 1990’s)
This article started out with the title "Women’s Spirituality and Their Power". As I worked on the talk, I kept feeling that somehow the title was not quite saying what it was I was trying to express. Somehow the separation of Spirituality and Power seemed to be important. It diluted the strength of what I wanted to portray.
Women as spiritual beings have been well accepted, through the ages, from the Mother of Christ to Mother Teresa, but Women as Powerful beings has had a lot more difficulty being accepted in our modern world. As I thought about this, a couple of things came to me. Firstly, women have received bad political P.R. for a very long time. It has not been the general rule to think of us as competent, powerful beings. However it was the concept of Power itself that most bothered me.
When most people think of power, we think of Authority, but the two are not necessarily synonymous. Authority is the permission we have from other people and beings to act on their behalf. It is coupled with the willingness of those people then to obey us. However, when we look at the meaning of power in Nature it becomes a very different concept. Power in energetic terms, is the ability to produce something. Electrical power has enabled us to create enormous amounts of labour saving devices, from the light bulb to the PC. Steam power enabled us to invent the Spinning Jenny and the Locomotive. Sexual power enables us to keep creating new human beings.
Starhawk, well known activist and pagan author, talks about "Power over" and "Power to". In my opinion, "Power over" is not really Power at all. It may be the ability to dominate, oppress, or to rearrange what already exists, but what it is not, is the Power to Create. It is this interpretation of the word power that I shall use here today.
So what does creative power have to do with women? Everything! First lets look at the word “creativity”. For the most part, creativity has come to mean the ability to paint, draw or write, or produce crafts. That‘s about where it ends. When I ask people if they are creative, most will answer with something like, "Oh no, I'm no good at art and that sort of thing." The sort of creativity I'm talking about is not just in the accepted art world. What I'm talking about is that power that is at this moment creating each of our bodies. It is, at this moment, producing new and interesting, sometimes devastating affects across the planet, and ………….making your pot-plants grow! What is it? Where is it? Well, it's hidden! This 'hiddeness' has made it difficult for humans to fathom, or to acknowledge as part of themselves. They have come up with many theories and religions to explain it away. This continual creative activity, brings change, and has scared the daylights out of us. What would it create now? What would it do to us? How would we deal with it? It felt like an awful God wreaking vengeance on us from all sides. We have tried to control it, destroy it, minimize it, and ridicule it, never realizing that It is Us!
In an attempt to keep the whole thing under wraps, we have turned away from our hidden power with the illusion of staying safe. We have come to elevate all that is seen and understood, and minimalize all that is hidden, therefore frightening. We have attempted to uncover all the secrets. For centuries, we attempted to destroy all the mysteries. Why? Because of Fear!
Within the nature of this planet, polarity is the principal underpinning it’s the core structure. Night and Day, Left and Right, Up and Down, Man and Women. Women and Man? Hidden and revealed. Everything in the world falls into one of these categories. Masculine has come to be symbolic of day, revelation, left, the outer world. Female, then has come, quite naturally, to symbolize night, dark, hidden, the inner world. The French language allocates gender to all their words, giving a polarized value to their entire world. Naturally enough, if the female has come to symbolically represent all that the human race is afraid of, that hidden creative power, which even in the nature of her genitalia is hidden and inner, it’s no wonder she has had difficulty with being accepted over the centuries. The human race, including herself, has done its best to remove her as a threat to the clear light of day, and the repercussions are not too hard to see. We cannot cut off and ignore half of what lives inside of us without effect. What that has done to our Society is easily seen. Our hidden creative force has been stifled and given no co–operation. As a result, its job has become harder and harder. Let me use the analogy of a tree. Even though the visible tree may be 100s of years old, and 60 metres high, it’s masses of root structures, supporting the weight of the tree, go deep. They must go very deep into the Earth, in order for the tree to survive. If the visible part of the tree outgrows the root-stock, it’s not going to last much past the next storm.
I ask you, is that’s what happening to us?
So what has this got to do with women? The hidden force that is represented by Woman, The Female Forces, exists within us all. Certainly, women have become the outer representation of that inner force, just as Man has represented the visible outer product of that force. What good is the force to create without the ability for the product of that creativity to become manifest in the world? It’s not about which is better, it’s about the balance of the two, so that the root-stock of the world is able to support the branches and foliage. Fear of each other renders that impossible. Both those polarities exist in all of us, you and me, man or woman. We can no longer afford the indulgence of in-fighting. We must get the balance right, first within ourselves, - the balance of our own creativity with our visible output, then it will balance the outer world. We all must start looking at the Woman Within. We must give her space, so she can help stabilize and renew our lives.
What is the Woman Within? She is the ability to dream. She is the seed of an idea that needs to be nurtured, sat with, looked in on. She is a feeling that has a message for you from your own inner world, that can, if followed, change the shape of your outer world, forever and for the better, no matter how it looks intellectually, at the time. She is the ability to nurture yourself, to love who you are. To trust yourself. She is a quiet moment in the garden of life, smelling the roses, touching the moss. Give her space, and we are all promised a more lush and abundant future, both on the personal, social and spiritual levels. I would like to give you an opportunity to contact your own Woman Within.
“Close your eyes, and relax. Just spend a few moments listening to your body. Allow it to tell you how it feels about your life. Let it tell you what you need. Are you tired, stressed, overworked or bored? Feel the force that can help you balance your life. Feel it deep within you. Feel it’s love for you. It is You.
Allow a picture to come of what your own inner nurturer, looks like. Your own Woman Within. Spends a few moments letting her take shape, seeing her more and more clearly. Listen to her and note what she has to say to you, always loving, always within your own best interest.
Give yourself some time to ask her anything that has been on your mind. Let her answer you. Store that information so that you can put it into action, using your own inner Man, when the time is right. Take as long as you need to talk with her about what is needed to replenish your life force. Allow the inner Man to enter and have a conversation between the three of you. See how best to bring about balance in your every day life.
Bring that knowledge back into the room with you, and sit with it for a few moments. You may want to write what you have discovered so that you will not forget.
Now you have had access to your Inner Woman, it remains only for you to allow her to help and influence you in your life, making it easier for you to make her a reality.