Embracing the Feminine

Google's International Women's Day Logo
Friday 8th March is International Women’s Day.  I believe in some countries it is a national holiday; good for them. The push for women to gain more and better political and economic access is a critical and essential spearhead in the battle for universal human rights.                  

        It is also fabulously fitting that this year IWD is happening during a period when that conclave of Anti-Feminine, the Vatican, is in the process of choosing a new head of that regressive movement.  For me International Women's Day is not simply about the 'feminist cause', more critically it is also about embracing and honouring the  Feminine aspect of humankind. I am going back to First Principles.

 One condition of being human is to live in illusion. Unfortunately it means we have to split the reality of Oneness and express that rift in our behaviour in the world. The perception of duality is lodged deep within the brain structure and is expressed in our actions, perceptual understanding and experience of the physical world. Our experience of duality is embedded in our language – good and bad, left and right, up and down, hot and cold, black and white; thinking and feeling, quantitative and qualitative and all the other dualities in life – and within us.
   The concept of Spirit and Soul (symbolised in the mythology of Adam and Eve) represents the first duality into which humanity had to fall. To my mind this is the ‘original grief’ (not original sin) inherent in leaving Oneness. It is Oneness we seek to re-experience – or re-member. This is a huge problem for popes and catholic priests who fervently desire this experience, while at the same time rejecting it.
The practice of celibacy is absolutely fine when it wholeheartedly embraces and experiences the true marriage of Spirit and Soul. However, celebacy tends towards the shadow when it is predicated on the rejection of an aspect of the unified Self. That’s why the sexuality of many catholic priests gets expressed in the shadow, literally. What’s this? Just pause for a moment and think about it.
In the meantime, I can hear the Catholic wing of my family having a nervous breakdown. 'Oh my god', one lot says to the other ‘have you read her blog today? Did she really say that'?  ‘Oh yes she did’, says the other. But let me not focus just on Catholics, Mullahs also have a problem; so did Buddha.
     If you require further food for thought, then read the writings of Thomas Moore, a former monk, Jungian analyst and author who understands the nature and purpose of the erotic rhythms of Spirit and Soul. See Moore’s The Soul of Sex, and Dark Eros: the Imagination of Sadism. [The one vaguely redeeming feature in the hypocrisy of the British Cardinal, who resigned last week following revelations about his ‘inappropriate’ behaviour towards young priests, was to publicly own up to his own dark Eros tendencies]
     Spirit and Soul are equal partners in sustaining physical, emotional and mental health, as well as a state of wellbeing on the planet.  It is our own perception of separation, the split from our ‘ground of being’ or innate source of supply, which lies at the heart of our troubled mind. The truth is the masculine spirit has a burning desire for its feminine soul; when the two get together it is sheer ecstasy.


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