“…in a world of constant change, you need to try to connect with the environment around you any way you can; by sweeping your eyes, by opening your mind to uncomfortable ideas, even by trying to sympathize with historically noxious figures. Only then could you improve your chances of not missing the signs that something, something important, was about to change.” Joshua Cooper Ramo
It’s time to rebalance ourselves and only then our world. In a Navajo healing tradition when someone was sick, they were sent to sit in a sand painting often from four to seven days in order that they might reexamine their lives and remember the time when they went koyaaniqatsi (out of balance). Only after identifying this juncture might they then find their way to hozho nahasdlii (to balance restored). Western civilization—arguable the most influential culture on our planet—as our economic/legal/religious system has evolved to dominate the world, is grossly out of balance and the evidence is tangibly stacking up—and has been so, for a long time. We must, not just individually but collectively, go back though our histories and determine at what point we diverged from lives of equilibrium.
Twenty-five years ago in a university philosophy class, a brief reference was made as to how Western Civilization had taken a wrong turn beginning with the Greeks. This mistake had then led us off into a dangerous tangent. I didn’t understand the professor’s specific case in point at the time, but was captivated by the general idea that we had somehow been journeying though history like a boat adrift on the sea with an undetected error in its navigational instruments throwing us catastrophically off course and headed for the shoals.
As a woman, traditionally viewed as the lesser important and the most inferior of the two sexes, I had long sensed and personally experienced the general denigration of the feminine—which has felt like “thousands of paper cuts”—as we are daily disparaged or disregarded, subtly or virulently, in every venue, from religion to politics, business, media, entertainment, the locker room, etc. I recognized that in our world women have not counted as much as men. The recipients’ of the hierarchical arrangements which infuses our world have been most specifically men and especially white men, who unquestioningly have worn their mantles of superiority.
Not until I began studying energy, such as is prominent in traditional medicines, did I come to understand the imbalances inherent within Western religion and philosophy that establish the basis from which we perceive the world. As I began to apply my new understanding of balance gleaned from my studies to relationships between women and men, I fundamentally realized that here was the crucial issue necessary for effectively addressing our planetary instability. Yin/yang, electro/magnetism, masculine/feminine, positive/negative: each polarity pair related to and dependent on the other—neither force superior nor inferior. These are important concepts which characterize the balance we must seek as individuals but perhaps a more easily understandable and tangibly relevant model is found in the hemispheric differences of our brain. As stated most succinctly by Noble Price Winner Roger Sperry, “The main theme to emerge... is that there appear to be two modes of thinking, verbal and nonverbal, represented rather separately in left and right hemispheres respectively and that our education system, as well as science in general, tends to neglect the nonverbal form of intellect. What it comes down to is that modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere.” This prejudice has been extended collectively against women who are more attuned to the intelligence of the right brain.
The left hemisphere or egoic, logical brain has dominated the decision-making processes for generations and has generally been identified with men. The right universal, feeling brain has been more specifically identified with women. Women thus have been seen throughout history as being incapable of making rational decisions and rarely have been allowed to participate in the affairs of society as a result of this line of thinking. In what may be the biggest conceit in history, but has been the prevalent world view, has been the belief that men are more rational than women because they were not ruled by their emotions—and thus the natural leaders. Certainly, we’ve fallen for this fictitious fancy far too long.
After 911 as I sat in a coffee shop surrounded by several men friends, I was astounded by all the chest-beating and ranting about which enemy we should “bomb back to the stone age.” Anger was absolutely a natural emotional response to the attack, but their recommended actions were not wise as we’ve seen. The airwaves, following the event, were full of men’s bombastic, bellicose ravings, with little commentary from women, or men, who might have disagreed with their “rational” responses toward the attack. I remember feeling quite horrified by the prevalent male behavior—calmer heads were needed before any decisions about war should have been concluded. As disturbed as I was by the attack on the Twin Towers, and there is no denying its devastating impact on our global, collective psyche, I was equally if not more so, distressed by the typical male reaction. There was a frightening knee jerk tendency to retaliate, ignorant of fact and understanding—certainly not solely just a rational response: emotions were central and well manipulated to promote the Bush agenda toward war. Is it any wonder that history has been one long catalog of war? Men’s natural emotional reaction to attack is primarily lethal retribution from a fear perspective no matter the “rational” explanation given. This conduct is seen over and over throughout history and results in extremely polarizing behavior. Besides creating a more and more unstable world, the increases in testosterone which accompany stress, excitement, or war, drive men further into their fear-based left brain and thus our societies further out of balance.
The increases of testosterone result in heightened aggressive behavior. That aggression is not easily diminished even as the war ends so the target to which the hostility is directed merely shifts. I have noted two important consequences which follow every war, one especially detrimental to women: 1.) Any hard won progress women accomplish toward expanding their rights within society in the years between major conflicts—when the energy is more balanced—are either lost or rolled back when the extreme masculine schism is reasserted. 2.) The sizeable increases in debt realized in funding war leads to severe price inflation. The debt is incurred to the benefits of the elite men controlling the international system of finance who demand collateral considerations from the belligerents for the vast extensions of credit. These creditors, whose own fears and insecurity’s result in “the Lucifer Effect’ which no amount of money and power can satisfy, often lend to both sides of any conflict so that they may exert undue influence to control the outcome of world events through the use of the monetary system. The onerous burdens placed on the debtors result in substantial losses of freedom and opportunity and cause much social disruption; destroying countless lives when the economies contract after society’s ability to absorb debt is depleted. This blueprint of economic control or the “Quiet Wars” which has been waged on our societies, particularly since the economic formula was perfected by the Rothschild’s in the 18th century, has been repeated for centuries. We may profess democracy and freedom but in truth these concepts are hollow promises obscured by the repetition of empty mantras of freedom that we repeat over-and-over blinding us to the truth of our world as we blithely contribute to our own self-hypnosis and mind control.
If women’s views were solicited, appreciated and acted upon, there in truth may be some truly more rational ways of dealing with opposition then in just killing or economically enslaving those with whom we have disagreements or from whom we feel threatened. Violence or war is not the normal mode from which women act—war is a man’s game. Having been relegated to an emphasis on the intelligence of the right brain throughout history, women have been closer in touch with the life affirming qualities inherent in that hemisphere which profoundly are aware of the universal interconnections of all life on our planet..
Woman’s brains have 40% more interconnections between the left and right hemispheres than men’s brains; therefore we have a natural ability to excel at understanding the big picture and can provide a more holistic, balanced perspective from which to make decisions. Our brains are better able to respond to all sensory stimuli. Equipped with a wider acuity for perceiving sensory information, we are able to connect and relate information with greater facility. Our tactile sensitivity is so great, that in some tests, the least sensitive woman is more sensitive than the most sensitive man. These proclivities account for our seemingly “supernatural” intuition. Because of this, we are simply better equipped than men to take notice of things to which they are completely blind and deaf. Instead of viewing our observations as an asset to keep our societies from pursuing ill advised and unsustainable means of living and interacting with the world, we have been belittled for being “too sensitive.” Had the talents of women been appreciated, our acute sensitivities would have served as important gauges for maintaining the health and balance of our societies; instead our advice and warnings have been ignored and dismissed as “bitching.”
Could it be that the roots of our dire ecological, economic, geopolitical, etc., conditions are traceable to the cosmology of the ancient Greeks--after all, we can trace misogyny’s beginnings directly to that time. Are the limitations imposed on the contributions of women by denying them significant leadership roles in shaping our world responsible for our current difficulties? Was this the flaw in our instruments responsible for why we find ourselves in shallow water headed for the rocks? How unwise is it, that the gender most able to contribute a fair-minded, balanced perspective necessary for creating a harmonious and peaceful world, have been systematically, until fairly recently, denied education and opportunity? Women’s contributions have been confined, either to the home and family, or to supporting the status quo of a polarized left brained world. We still have little access in actually substantially defining, shaping and contributing to an alternative vision. The general omission of the talents of large numbers of women in public leadership roles, I believe is the most germane issue which must be internalized in order for us to correct course and create a more sustainable and harmonious world. That world is yet to be born, but the labor pains have begun.
Joshua Cooper Ramo in his excellent new book, The Age of the Unthinkable reminds us that:
“Every important historical moment is marked by…shifts to new models of living, which expand in velocity and complexity well past the current ways of thinking can handle. Our moment is no exception. And usually the source of the greatest historical disasters is that so few people at the time either recognize or understand the shift. Artists, with their tuned instincts for the new, often do…But for diplomats, politicians, or businessmen buried under piles of the old ideas and biases, well, for them real comprehension is usually impossible.”
Our present world has been created from an unstable model; a primary use of one type of intelligence—the left brain. As the institutions which have been organized from this paradigm fail us, we must incorporate a new intelligence as is only found within a rebalancing of our right and left hemispheres. Those who make the conscious effort to reconnect with this balance will become our new leaders—many of whom will be women. It’s our time. It’s time for a whole brain revolution.
“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it into question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the Patriarchy and Monotheism hath undertaken in their OWN RIGHTS, to support this SYSTEM in what they call THEIRS, and as the good WOMEN and Men of this world are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpations of either.” Thomas Payne, Common Sense, (Revised to reflect current concerns between Patriarchy, monotheism, women and men rather than King and men as were addressed in the original treatise in 1776.)
“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” Napoleon
“In our larger societal lives, as in our individual lives, we continue repeating what we do not understand, what we have not resolved.” Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice his natural size.” Virginia Woolf
“Morality represents the way people would like the world to work—whereas economics represents how it actually does work.” Anonymous
“No chivalry prevents men from getting women at the very lowest possible wages.” Elizabeth Robins
“A woman picking at a thread of discontent can unravel the world.” Author unknown
The economy is spiraling to its death. The government is bailing out the financial institutions and corporations whose greed and lust for power and prestige has brought about and perpetuated the collapse. The new president promises jobs and economic stimulus. The Federal Reserve, since its inception, has constantly injected more and more debt masked as money into the system. Will the new jobs be constructive outlets for our creative power? Will the stimulus packages undo decades and centuries of unsustainability inherent in our economic and financial systems? Will the ever expanding debt loads by the ever escalating proliferation of fiat money continue to destroy all value and thus ultimately result in a total collapse of life as we know it? It’s all happened before with cyclical regularity and at times with punctuated finality. This being the case, is the system worth preserving? Women especially must ponder these questions. We live in a world not of our making and because of such our feminine egalitarian values of fairness, nurturing, and cooperation, have neither been reflected in nor replicated in the current economic system.
It is a matter of historical fact that all of the institutions on our planet have been created by men for the benefit of men. Their principles of hierarchy, dominance, competition, aggression, and control have characterized the basis from which our world and world view has long been established. Our economics, laws, politics, religions, educational systems, family structures, architecture, philosophy, sexuality, etc.: all have been defined and constructed by men. Our histories and cultures have been recorded and society’s assembled by the winners: the most brutal of conquerors, the men with the biggest egos, the largest armies, the best scientists, the most creative financiers and bankers, the most destructive and efficient technologies, and the most organized religions that philosophically exploit our spiritual proclivities in order to assure our continued passive obedience. These creators of our old and new world orders have been men of power and personal ambition creating the social institutions which insure their continued authority while having learned to manipulate the populace by paying lip service to ideals such as democracy and freedom. Generally women (and sensitive, astute men) know, maybe not intellectually and spiritually, but rather we know emotionally and physically that these ideals are in theory only.
Our world is not a friendly and safe place—how can we be truly free if we do not feel safe? How can we be free when daily we are confronted with widespread violence, “entertainment” that perpetuates more violence physically as well as psychologically, crime, murder, rape, child abuse, spousal abuse, pornography, prostitution, poverty, malnutrition, disease, economic wars masking as religious wars, destruction of our ecosystem, pollution, irradiated chemically laden food, and financial machinations which periodically coalesce to destroy our lives—all under the auspices of freedom and democracy. Even our so longed for and proclaimed mantras of democracy and freedom are idealized values which are most often absent even within our very homes—our most cherished archetype.
Women have lived or continue to live within the realm of the monarchy, either with father, husband, or lover; we’ve lived within the castle of the king: “A man’s home is his castle.” Unfortunately the role of Queen, while rather exalted in myth, in fact, in the home is more akin to that of a chamber maid then equal cohort to the King.
There has been little democracy in childcare, cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, decision making, or in taking care of the most basic daily needs of existence. These needs have primarily been defined to be the responsibility of women. We have historically been prescribed these duties. These fundamental needs as important as they are have been afforded NO VALUE in the masculine contrived market economy. Women have been given much responsibility but have had few rights—and little money and wealth. Rights have, constitutionally and practically, been the soul property of men, and especially of elite men. Their right to classify and craft every nuance of our social domain in their own image has been and remains virtually unchallenged and unacknowledged. Even with all the inroads into the public arena women have made over the past 40 years, we’re still just participating in a male defined construct and have yet to create another more humane model of existence.
Scholarship, especially from the past 50 years, much of it attributable to women who benefited educationally from the women’s movement in the 1960’s and 70’s, has ushered in a revolution in knowledge and understanding. As these researcher’s and writer’s have investigated and reported on issues close to their own hearts, they have used their own perspective as women and challenged over and over the status quo. This change in point of view from earlier scholarship opens up the vista of human experience 180 degrees. From the liberal arts, to medicine, mathematics, and the sciences, women have contributed their significant perspectives heretofore having been ignored
Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson in her book Composing a Life suggests that the subversion of the female was “accomplished by taking advantage of 2 kinds of vulnerability that women raised in our society tend to have. First, is a quality of self-sacrifice—a learned willingness to set aside their own interests and be used and even used up by the community. The second kind of vulnerability trained into women is a readiness to believe messages of disdain and derogation.”
Historian Rosalind Miles in her excellent, witty overview of women’s history, Who Cooked the Last Supper: The Women’s History of the World recognized, “women are an oppressed class. We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants and cheap labor…our prescribed behavior is enforced with threats of physical violence. Because we have lived so intimately with our oppressors, in isolation from each other, we have been kept from seeing our personal suffering as a political condition.”
Author Marilyn French points out how the androcentric or patriarchal system of control “distorts interdependency. By placing all rights in the male, granting males most of all of a society’s economic and political power, it transforms productive adult women into dependent minors. By devaluing women’s contributions…patriarchy disguises interdependency, giving it the appearance of dependency…The Personal is Political.”
In the early 20th century writings of economist Charlotte Perkins Gilman she analyzed how the “economic dependence of women made women the slaves of men and thereby hindered social evolution.” Thus subjected to men’s control women have historically “largely been limited to domestic servitude in exchange for food and shelter, an arrangement sanctioned by an androcentric church and state.” The limited role afforded women elevated the importance of marriage as nearly the sole respectable means of livelihood and status, so that “she must exaggerate sexual and maternal habits.” “So excessive was the sex distinctions between women and men that two divergent worldviews evolved. Two such individuals can hardly function as equal partners in marriage (much less in the public sphere); hence, a double standard exists.” Perkins then suggested that women seek economic independence though specialized work. Education would thus “diversify women’s capacities, and enable them to perform public service and lead to general social progress.”
Women have in many respects accomplished what Perkins had suggested. But still our labors can remain unpaid, underpaid, and under valued even by ourselves who after all have been brought up culturally to see ourselves as less important and significant then men. Surely we might deny this, however, we know and are reminded of our lesser position at every joke, putdown, lack of equal pay, lack of opportunities for advancement and leadership, and general lack of respect for the feminine.
How many compromises do we make daily in our interactions with our significant others be they the spouses, lovers, employers, teachers, political leaders, etc.? How often do we watch each other become quiet when a man is listening or speaking? How often do we watch our friends change before our eyes from strong and self-sufficient women into sycophants when a man enters the room or demands preferential treatment? How often have we seen or heard ourselves devalued and objectified in the media, in films, on television, in the streets, in our homes, and on our computers? How often do we stifle our needs, our opinions, our plans, our desires, and our goals in order to just get along and not be seen as bitches or shrews? How long will we allow ourselves to be controlled by such concerns? How many of our daily frustrations and slights are repressed, our anger turned inward toward depression and self-negation? And perhaps more significantly how long do we think we can continue to collaborate in this system which is undermining our very existence and all life on our planet?
In his most reasoned book, The Gender Knot: Unraveling our Patriarchal Legacy, sociologist Allan G. Johnson succinctly summarizes our dilemma in addressing the excesses of the world which we take for granted: “social systems often seem stable because they limit our lives and imaginations so much that we cannot see beyond them. This is especially true when a social system has existed for so long that its past extends beyond collective memory of anything different. As a result, it lays down laws of social life—involving various forms of privilege—that can easily be mistaken for some kind of normal and inevitable human condition. It then masks a fundamental long-term instability caused by the dynamic of privilege and oppression.” Johnson concludes, we are so “male dominant and male identified, along with not seeing women as oppressed we resist seeing men as the privileged oppressors group.”
As the new knowledge and observations gleaned from it, percolates down into society, perhaps there is a growing conviction that men and women have not merely distinct but opposed political needs and imperatives. We have begun to witness such in the political arena as women are choosing the lesser of two evils and are principally supporting Democratic candidates and policies. (I refer to Democrats as the lesser of the evils as both parties are corporate entities—and I believe it is “corporatism” which looks a lot like a renovated Middle Ages feudalism that enslaved the peasants—which must eventually be addressed by our society. The peasants were attached to the land, so that they physically understood their inslavement; we think that because we can move about we are free, but it is the "system" which enslaves us.)
The division of needs has been reflected in my study of Ancient Chinese Medicine, and Taoism. I have become convinced of the polar opposite needs of women and men as are reflected in the roles that have historically been assigned to each. Taoism, the philosophical basis of Chinese Medicine, long before it became a religion, was simply a study of balance and energy. The Taoist called the energies yin and yang and divided them into 5 elements: fire, earth (the masculine polarities); air, and water (the feminine polarities) and ether—in effect representing, Einstein’s Unified Field in which energy exists in balance. We might think of yang as electro- and yin as magnetic energies; thus defining the electromagnetic energy field in which all life exists.
As I came to understand the polar nature of these energies and how they interacted, I was reminded of a phrase I had encountered early in my spiritual journey, “that which is inside of you can destroy you or set you free.” I now believe that it is our ignorance of these energies (literally the metaphysical and natural world) which is behind the war between the sexes, the war with nature, and the very destruction of our ecosystem and our inability to do much about it. We are the only animal on the planet that is able to ignore natural law. As a consequence of our philosophies and religions we have been taught that we hold dominion over nature and might do with it as we please. Our chaotic world is a direct result of this manner of thinking and interacting with life on our planet.
Averting our spiral into catastrophe, from its trajectory into an abyss toward which we have been advancing for centuries, is made difficult to detect by our relatively short lives. We often confuse cause and effect and neglect to understand the root origins of our circumstances; as individuals as well as societies.
We must once more familiarize ourselves with natural law and learn to live accordingly. My personal education of such was facilitated by studying the I Ching (originally using Carol K. Anthony’s A Guide to the I Ching), Chinese Medicine, and astrology. The I Ching has been known as an ancient divination guide. I used it as such, but as I consulted the guide over time, I realized, more importantly, that it is rather a valuable resource for learning how to live more naturally and harmoniously. It was almost magical. As I was confronted by various difficult situations which triggered off my fears and emotional anxieties and would apply the advice from my readings these situations were favorably and easily resolved. I once read that the I Ching was not a religion but rather served as a lantern that we might hold over our paths to keep us from falling into every pit hole. Chinese Medicine, a 3,000 year old system of proactive health, and the I Ching both trace their origins to Taoist teachings on balance.
Astrology, although it has been much maligned in our time, is simply an ancient encrypted mathematical system, which measures the energy of the electromagnetic field. This system has been used from civilizations as diverse as the Babylonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Mayans, Indians, Celts, etc. Astrology was taught in the universities in Europe at the time of the Renaissance. Ancient documents and knowledge, including the study of astrology, were brought back from the Middle East by the European Crusaders. This information was being disseminated into European society (and may be responsible for the exquisite Renaissance art as the occult knowledge—hidden-as in energy—was used to create beauty) until the Church eventually vilified the practice. The knowledge, however, continued to be used in medicine at least through the reign of Elizabeth I. Astrology had been championed by the father of Western medicine, Hippocrates who stated, “A physician without knowledge of astrology has no right to call himself a physician.”
Here is a very rudimentary and concise explanation of energy as I understand it in order to summarize the general characteristics of energy as pertains to this article.
Yin energy generally represents the feminine; expansive and giving. Yang, the masculine energy is contractive and can be selfish. We all consist of both yin and yang. Each type of energy can be subdivided into their elements: Yin into air and water (intellectual and emotional), yang into fire and earth (spiritual and physical). An integration of all the energies must occur in order to balance.
I hypothesize that since the beginning of the patriarchy, the masculine polarity has been elevated in importance as the feminine characteristics of intellect and emotions have been denigrated. The masculine polarities of spirit and body are more easily controlled separated as they became from the feminine polarities of emotions and intellect. We have all been restricted ever since the origins of monotheism into a segmented reality. What came to be the "official" cosmology justified an elevated status for men, made in God’s image, and relegated women to a lesser position having little value other than as might be utilized by men. Pantheism, which was replaced by the monotheistic order, can be seen as being a philosophy of acknowledging the sacredness inherent within all of life rather than the exclusionary monotheism which puts worth in one God who resides outside or above the Earth, and then by proxy predominantly in men who were made in “his” image. As that God can only be accessed by an elite, male, organization which serves as intermediary, a priestly and kingly order was violently and brutally established over the peoples of Earth, wave by wave, first by killing off all opposition and then by co-opting the remaining indigenous peoples spiritual proclivities, as well as, by instituting legal and economic systems of control. We now all live under this repressive system. What begin in the Middle East with the enslavement of the Israelites as recorded in the Bible, eventually spread into Africa, Europe and Asia, and finally encompassing the Americas and the Islands.
It is only in light of our understanding how much we have been elementally divided can we begin to rebalance ourselves and our Earth home which is experiencing ecological chaos due to centuries of our imbalance.
We’ve advanced a long way intellectually since the beginning of “history.” Our intellectual pursuits were managed throughout the past thousands of years by controlling education and limiting those who had access to such—especially by the exclusion of women and minorities. But in order to truly become whole and reclaim our freedom we must embody our emotional self. This is probably the most difficult piece of ourselves which we must integrate in order to become whole. We have been well taught to repress our emotions. Instead of seeing our unruly emotions as messages from our soul to make changes in our out of balance lives we have learned to bottle them up and ostracize those who may live closer to their emotions—particularly women. We might ask what purpose such control serves. Even in our world today in much of alternative medicines and philosophies to which people are turning more and more, the concern has been limited to an integration of mind, body, and spirit.
Why would the water element (or emotions) be neglected? In my study of energy, I found that the ancients recognized wisdom as being a product of the water element. Wisdom does not originate from the intellect but rather from the emotions. Certainly this is true for we have often seen many things justified intellectually which we know are wrong because we FEEL (the emotions corresponding with the body) them to be dishonest and often immoral. I surmise that in our repressing of emotions we have been led far astray. Rather then feel our emotions and understand them as messages from our core for change, we have for generations, repressed them and been denigrated for our feelings by being labeled as “too sensitive.” Men have been characterized historically as the rational ones and thus the natural leaders while women, as the irrational emotional gender, have not been generally allowed to rule or participate in the public affairs of society. This has been used as justification to limit women from having any real active and vital roles in shaping our world.
An understanding of the energies led me to realize that in order to balance, yin must “consciously” contract by putting herself first so that yang will “expand.” This does not happen unconsciously normally until the mid-life crises of women, when having given too much, our own needs rarely having been adequately met, we contract with a vengeance—all of our repressed anger erupting often into misdirected and misunderstood rage.(Yin turns into yang, yang into yin.) (In my own experience, the feelings come long before the understanding from whence such extreme emotions arise.)
In his book, Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History, historian Robert S. McElvaine quotes the administrator of the U.N. Development Program speaking at a 1995 worldwide survey on the status of women: “life is dramatically unfair to women.” McElvaine then goes on to discuss how “history was shaped in fundamental ways by the belief in female inferiority.” It is “men who have defined the battle lines in the punitive war between the sexes—those who have, in truth, been the ones who declared the war—have drawn those battle grounds so sharply that the middle ground is a minefield.” Given such constrictions, it is little wonder women’s anger finally erupts—despite having been trained since childhood of the inappropriateness of such a passion in women. We have been raised on the ideals of social equality and it takes many years to finally discern that the “emperor has no clothes.” Anger is an appropriate response and a necessary one if we are ever to have justice. Without consciously connecting with our anger, we would simply continue to suffer our abuse. When women are totally in touch with, and claim their anger, we are on our way to healing—what a paradox! Giving ourselves the right to feel our emotions—whatever they might be, understand their messages, and incorporating this new information into our lives and choices is essential to our path to wholeness. This is a healthy understanding of natural law. If one pulls the tale of a tiger, one is going to suffer the consequences and get bitten or worse.
Consciousness is key. We have been so brainwashed since birth about how the world should be, that we unconsciously have learned to accommodate the systemic abuses. As we consciously feel our emotions, we can choose different options to address the offenses we suffer; otherwise we act out of our imbalanced gender stereotypes. The good news is that, as the Taoist say, “if you wish to change the world, you need only change yourself. That is all that is required.” How could this be? Upon reflection I have realized that as we rebalance, the world around us begins to rebalance. I used to use the analogy of a child’s game of magnets to understand how energy might move. If you had a board of magnets of various sizes and moved one magnet, all of the magnets on the board would shift. We are like magnets, as we shift our energy we affect the entire world; and the more of us involved in learning to shift our energies, the greater the momentum toward systemic change.
During the past 5,000 +/- years since the time when the sky gods—Greeks and Hebrews pantheons—arose and over threw the existing earth goddess civilizations, a rupture was introduced into, and spread throughout, our planetary history. Energy, always in balance has been maintained with the masculine energy or yang dominating in the public sphere and yin or feminine energy limited to the private sphere. The problem with this division of energy from a systemic perspective is that although the arrangement has ostensibly worked; individually we all have been out of balance. This individual imbalance has led to our current economic, political, cultural, and ecological crises—as we are the building blocks from on all else is dependent. It is as if humanity made a wrong turn since the time of Plato (the beginning of misogyny, wars without end, abuse of the natural world, etc., traces to this time) and our trajectory as a planet has been off course ever since..
We have not understood the psychological impact of the events which led to the beginnings of history as witnessed by the rise of the Greeks, Hebrew patriarchs and monotheism. Stories preserved in written form from the Bible (Noah’s flood), Plato’s Timaeus and Critias and those legends passed orally by indigenous peoples all over the planet, tell of a world wide catastrophe which disrupted the previous world order. Most probably these stories of global cataclysm refer to our planet being hit by asteroids; geologically, there is evidence of two such events over the past 10,000 years—the last occurring approximately 5,000 year ago—paralleling exactly the rise of the patriarchs. Such a global disaster was beyond our collective imagination until witnessing; at least 21 discernable pieces of Comet Shoemaker-Levy collide into the planet Jupiter from July 16 through July 22, 1994. This was the first collision of two solar system bodies observed in “history.”
An understanding of the devastation and personal trauma experienced by those who survived such a planetary disaster might go far in explaining the reactive schizophrenic split of the masculine and feminine spheres of influence. A psychological rejection of nature and of the feminine does not seem like a far fetched explanation for what followed as humans sought to control their environment. McElvaine suggests also that such a catastrophe is most likely to “kill off the most educated and sophisticated people” who are usually clustered in cities. Those left, mostly the uneducated, being caught up in the chaos, became “invaders, claiming god status” and rising up to displace the old ways by using the pandemonium as a means of securing their own survival needs. “History” thus begins from chaos and trauma.
Trauma, both personal and collective, is difficult to process; our tendency is to shut down emotionally rather than experience the pain. Only if we process our trauma consciously might we understand from where it is derived and ultimately heal it. The time to do so is now. Those calamities from our geological past may have been beyond our ability to change, but the problems we have created from that time forward are not.
In her excellent book, Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives, Anna Fels describes how “throughout their lives women are subtly discouraged from pursuing their goals by a pervasive lack of recognition for their accomplishments. Parents, peers, teachers, professors, bosses, and institutions all understate work by females and therefore unwittingly withhold appropriate praise and support. All too often girls and young women incrementally lose their early convictions about their abilities and talents. A belief in the likelihood of achieving their goals slowly fades and is supplanted by aspirations for more socially available types of attention, particularly attention for sexual attractiveness.” In order to encourage each other to throw off the shackles of our mind which has been our legacy from the past, we must begin to build the support networks with other women who can provide the recognition that we need so that we may succeed in our personal endeavors and help rebalance the world. Each of us has a vital role to play and a personal destiny to fulfill.
Women have much to contribute to our ailing world—we are the most attuned to the water element and therefore to wisdom. Our brains, being more interconnected then men’s brains, allow us to excel in understanding the big picture. If women were truly partners in society, we would innately inject balance into the extremes of our androcentric world. My own spiritual journey began with the reading of Philosopher Ken Wilbur’s book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality as he called for a dose of the healthy, whole, feminine energy to rebalance the out-of-balance masculine world. I understood and acknowledged the validity of his work and being convinced have consciously striven these past 13 years to contribute my share. It’s not been particularly pleasant or easy but I have remained true to this vision throughout; regardless of the consequences.
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Audre Lorde
Our path to wholeness begins as we tune into and decipher our physical and emotional responses as guides to transforming ourselves and ultimately our society. Our spirit, body, and intellect have a role but as we have learned: wisdom is not a product of the intellect but rather of the emotions. When we ignore or repress our feelings in favor of accommodating an unbalanced world, we actively participate in prolonging its volatility and instability. Our raw emotions can be quite frightening and don’t feel particularly good to experience. It is often much easier to masks our emotional wounds through addictions like drugs, alcohol, sex, food, shopping, smoking, etc. Our work involves learning to allow the emotions to rise and to feel them. Try not to use your emotions to confront others, but rather find a private space where you might safely vent. Emotions are energy in motion. Move and let the emotion move through you. They are like the weather, sometimes stormy; but calm, nice conditions always return. Once the storm has passed, usually within a day or two, expect and look for having a personal epiphany. (Comfort with crying is a personal must. Although we have often been ashamed of our tears, as they have not been respected in the male ideology and seen as a sign of weakness, crying is how a woman releases her stress—and we’ve all been quite stressed. An artist friend, having studied transcendental meditation, once told me, “We’ve mountains of stress trapped in our bodies.”)
It is difficult, and often quite inconvenient, learning to be true to oneself in all things; we have spent much of our lives serving many other masters. One should not underestimate the degree in which such a shift from one’s willingness to accommodate the status quo will disrupt those around you who are vested in the current world view. The toil ahead will not be effortless; there is much internal work to be done to bolster the diminished self. As women begin to get in touch with their core values, which will rise to consciousness as the inner work progresses, we will then be able to constructively balance the out-of-control masculine energy which continues to dominate and destroy our world.
The inner work will yield many nuggets of gold. Many early folklores and myths tell of the riches to be gained in confronting ones shadow and reincorporating the split-off portions of oneself. New ways of seeing and interacting with the world will result from this internal work. The feminine energy you are questing for is not passive but rather magnetic; it draws what it needs. You need not actively pursue your destiny (this is the manifestation of the masculine energy.) You need only allow your life and purpose to unfold. Trust that you will receive what you require and rise every day doing only what is before you. Understand that sometimes what you need to experience or understand is not always what you’d necessarily choose, but that all serves a bigger purpose on the path to wholeness. Learn to live in the now and not to worry about the future. Go with the flow. Go downstream; everything you need is downstream. Be gentle with yourself. Learn to clear your mind, get in touch with your body and most importantly breathe: especially when life shakes you up: breathe—long, deep, slow breaths from the abdomen.
The best allies that women have on our paths to wholeness are each other—the patriarchy sustained itself primarily by keeping us ignorant and separate. We have been deprived of each other and have primarily looked to men for validation, love and support both physically and emotionally. We have learned the hard way that this reliance comes at a price which often includes our remaining energetically unbalanced, submissive, weak, and dependent. Most importantly, we are learning that our emotional needs can never be fulfilled by men. Men generally have neither the emotional capacity nor any real interests in fulfilling women’s emotional needs.
In his latest book, Why Mars and Venus Collide: Improving Relationships by Understanding How Men and Women Cope Differently with Stress, John Gray suggests that men can only fulfill 10% of the necessary levels of oxytocin (the love and cuddle hormone of support and well being) in women. The rest (or 90%) of the necessary levels of oxytocin are women’s own responsibility. Means of increasing a woman’s levels of oxytocin are most easily produced by pampering oneself and through quality time spent with friends. If this is the case, then we might easily see that the priorities of women throughout the patriarchy have been to our own physical and emotional detriment by putting husband and family first. Ideally women must put themselves and their relationships with friends first—only then might we receive the support which literally and hormonally, will nourish our health and well-being, thus allowing us to succeed on our terms.
We are poised at an auspicious moment. We are just beginning to experience a global, protracted, economic collapse—which seems to be currently intentionally delayed as the fiat system continues to create money out of thin air, thus exaserbating a “dollar bubble” which the rest of the world is becoming most eager to pop—they’ve suffered the American hegemony of the dollar long enough. Cycles of economic depressions generally last from 15-18 years. This would seem depressing if one sees it from the view point of the status quo, but seen from a balanced perspective, is rather an opportunity for a planetary healing crisis. Alternative and ancient medicines have long recognized that a true healing is often instigated by a shocking event. Only when dreams, that have held us mesmerized for so long, are exposed as having no value can we awaken to create something new. We can only then begin to reevaluate our needs from a balanced perspective and fabricate new types of social, political and economic enterprises which support our new stability. Our whole world is up for reevaluation and revision.
There is a choice to be made: either one might heed the economic breakdown as a wakeup call and adapt one’s behavior toward a journey to wholeness, or one might shut down emotionally to withstand the coming disruptions and accompanying trauma and once the danger passes, resume life as if nothing had happened thus sowing the seeds for the next crisis and repeating the 5,000 year old patterns of disharmony.
The winter's frost must rend the burr of the nut before the fruit is seen. So adversity tempers the human heart, to discover its real worth.
- Honore de Balzac
If it’s any consolation, I have had my own personal, economic, healing crises the past 17 years. I will relate my journey in my memoir Izzy’s Daring Digression which I will post in serial installments on this blog. My wish is that it might serve as a joyfully resolved illustration of what is possibly ahead for all of us. As historian Gerda Lerner highlights in her book, The Creation of Patriarchy, “The system of patriarchy is a historical construct, it had a beginning; it will have an end.” I would remind you that everything that we know was created by someone and that we are all creators. We can, we must, and we will recreate a better world. Lerner once more, in regards to women and our role in revolutionizing our world: “To be women centered…means developing the intellectual courage, the courage to stand alone, the courage to reach farther than our grasp, the courage to risk failure. Perhaps the greatest challenge to the thinking woman is the challenge to move from the desire for safety and approval to the most “unfeminine” quality of all—that of intellectual arrogance, the supreme hubris which asserts to itself the right to reorder the world, the hubris of the god makers, the hubris of the male, system builders.” We must “free our minds from patriarchal thought and practice and at last build a world free of dominance and hierarchy, a world that is truly humane.” The only way to do such is by rebalancing our own energies by reclaiming our water element. In many ways, we will be healing not just our current reality and our future prospects, but bridging the original rift opened so long ago. Won’t you join me on the path to healing and wholeness? It won’t be easy but together we can persevere and ultimately thrive.
Dear Oprah Show and Staff,
I have been much impressed with your show and particularly your concern and care for women and women’s issues. For that reason I am writing today. I would like to recommend a couple of topics for you to consider for inclusion on your show and book club.
Each of these issues: women’s history and learning how to balance our personal energy excesses, I would encourage you to explore on your show. I feel that each of these issues must be generally understood in order to help bring about the awareness that makes the transformation of our world a reality. As I read in an article just this past weekend: “Attempts at political solutions are futile—the primary problems are philosophical.”
I would like to make a personal case for why I feel your endorsement would be greatly beneficial. I have been on what I began calling 13 years ago: my “spiritual” journey. I put spiritual in quotation marks because what unfolded was less of my then current understanding of spiritual as otherworldly, mystical, etc., to more of a journey to “consciousness.” I now equate spirituality as simply coming to consciousness. This consciousness involves the subtle, nuances of values, norms, and inherited attitudes which make up the reality of our world. These attitudes are the given assumptions which are the foundation of our everyday experiences which we do not question or scrutinize. At a basic level we are often “unconscious.” Here is a personal example: I was a rough, tough, and tumble tom-boy as a child. I played sports and avoided all things feminine from a very early age. It is how I had always known myself, and how my family always saw me. My failure to exhibit traditional feminine qualities was often remarked upon by my mother throughout my life as she had “always wished for a Polly Flinders dress girl,” who she would dress up and primp.
Well, though examining my life over the past 13 years, I suddenly and quite amazingly realized that I am such a girl (woman). I am a hypersensitive woman with a soft marshmallow core and not the toughie I had always assumed. Wow! I was stunned to realize this and it has been extremely hard for me to integrate; being soft and womanly is not only scary but often dangerous on this patriarchal planet that venerates the masculine and denigrates the feminine
Evidently as a small, sensitive child, I had realized (not intellectually or rationally, but emotionally and physically) the low esteem that is relegated to “girls” and had opted to not be associated with girl behavior. Phrases like “don’t be a sissy like a girl,” “don’t cry like a girl,” “I always wondered how a girl’s (woman’s) brain works,” etc., while seemingly innocent (we’ve heard them so often) are really quite detrimental to girls self-esteem and teach boys as well as girls a disrespect of all things associated with being feminine from a very early age. These attitudes then form the basis of our life values which we carry into adulthood and remain hidden until much later in life.
Over the past years, I have been conducting personal research into: Traditional Chinese Medicine, economics (my passion, along with history and religious studies, since college), investments, cycles, law, health, physics, genetics, brain science, and astrology. This research I have called my due diligence, covering various topics of personal interest for the “new life” I am creating based on my authentic self and my values as a woman which differs greatly from the long established patriarchal values which largely define our world.
This search for the authentic self has uncovered layers and layers of hidden assumptions regarding men and especially women planet wide. Assumptions I had rebelled against my entire life, even as I couldn’t have defined them. I learned some very difficult truths of our world. I realized that the difficulties I had embracing the feminine were not confined to me but to other women (and men) as well. Based on a desire to share what I have learned, I would encourage you to review Roselind Miles’ Who Cooked the Last Supper: The Women’s History of the World. She does an amazing overview of women’s history the past 6,000 +/- years ago since the creation of patriarchy, and analyses what she terms, “centuries of sexual apartheid.” Hers is an important book to be so little known. (The writer is British.) Perhaps you might review her book and add it to your book list. I feel it is important for women to know and internalize our history should we ever truly change the patriarchal bias of our planet. Or as I learned as student of history, “those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.”
The focus of my research during my spiritual quest these past 13 years has been in the study of energy: yin/yang, the elements: fire, earth (the masculine polarities); air, and water (the feminine polarities). My exposure to these concepts began as I studied the 3,000 year old system of health currently known as Traditional Chinese Medicine, Taoism, and in my study of astrology. Astrology, I realized after researching every ancient tradition I could put my hands on (Western, Chinese, Mayan, Vedic, Greek, Babylonian, German School, etc.) is merely an ancient, encrypted mathematical system, which measures the electro(yang)-magnetic(yin) field in which we live, i.e. the universe and more specifically for those of us on earth; our solar system.
As I came to understand the polar nature of these energies and how they worked, I was reminded of a phrase I had encountered early in my spiritual journey, “that which is inside of you can destroy you or set you free.” I now believe that it is our ignorance of these energies which is behind the war between the sexes, the war with nature, and the very destruction of our ecosystem and our inability to do much about it.
Yin energy generally represents the feminine; expansive and giving. Yang, the masculine energy is contractive and can be selfish. We all consist of both yin and yang, but generally women are more yin and men are more yang. An understanding of the energies led me to realize that in order to balance, yin must “consciously” contract so that yang will “expand.” This does not happen unconsciously normally until around the mid-life crises of women, when they’ve given enough and then contract with a vengeance. (Yin turns into yang, yang into yin.) This contraction can be especially toxic to the children of a stay at home mom. (I speak from experience—much of my early damage occurred at this time. My mother was 32 years old when I was born so her mid-life crises took place when I was 5-10 years old.) If we but understood how our energies worked we might teach our children early on how to moderate the extremes the female and male are drawn to unconsciously.
Although never referring to these energies or to yin/yang specifically such information on balancing is subtlety available in the works of John Gray. I am most familiar with: Mars and Venus on a Date, Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, and Children are from Heaven.
Gray’s work is interesting as he clearly shows how the energy needs are different between men and women. What he does not make clear is that these needs are in many ways polar opposites. During the past 5,000 +/- years, with the elevation of the masculine, society’s focus has been more on fulfilling the needs of men at the expense of those of women. Although Gray’s books are important steps to understanding the energy differences of men and women, there is much more to the story. An understanding on the nature of energy can result in more realistic models of what types of relationships are more likely to create healthy, balanced relationships that fulfill our individual needs.
I am aware of no other resources which present how one might consciously learn to balance one’s own energy; particularly within intimate relationships. What I came to realize as I contemplated my personal wounds as a woman on this planet, was that although we have had a type of balance though history, with men dominating the public sphere and women limited to the home or private domain; individually we have all been out of balance. As we are the building blocks of our society—all of our institutions—defined and created by an excessive masculine energy, exhibit this imbalance. This is a major lapse and much to our individual as well as societal, and planetary detriment. The topic of energy and how to balance one’s own would make an excellent topic for your show and I would love to assist you in putting such together. It is vital and valuable information which must be better understood.
Early on in my spiritual path as I consumed every relevant book I could to understand what was happening to me, I read that women would be leading our planetary transformation. Due to having been the primary victims of the philosophical system which we’ve inherited; the patriarchy, this made sense to me. Men have been in some ways, at least superficially and arrogantly, been the beneficiaries.
As women’s historian Gerda Lerner points out in her book, The Creation of Patriarchy, “the system of patriarchy is a historical construct; it has a beginning, it will have an end.” She goes on to add that when we “free or minds from the patriarchal thought and practice…at last (we will) build a world free of dominance and hierarchy, a world that is truly human.” It is only with an understanding of what has transpired over the past centuries of “his-story” that we might create a new epic, perhaps an epic of “our-story.”
Thank you for your consideration.
Posts
All Comments
Posts
All Comments
