I have always had this urge, impulse, well, call it longing, to create something inspiring, something that holds a sense of purpose, well, perhaps even destiny. Something that goes beyond the rules and policies, the structure, content and conditioning that has been prescribed to us by the society we live in. I am a very creative person and despite having both, a business background and a design background, I did not conceive myself being one of those artists that will inspire through fine art, photography or design. My “special skills” somehow lie within a different kind of self-expression, maybe the art of language and communication, and perhaps, within a just recently found passion, the art of body in motion.
It wasn’t really until my late-twenties that I started exploring that there might be some other dimension to myself, buried deep within. One that goes beyond the dimension of the mind and the intellect, one that goes beyond the psychological aspect of you and me. It is one of an untouched dimension, one of purity, one that cannot be conditioned, one that simply is. It’s the one that we all share, knowingly or unknowingly, that one that unites us all. The one where all of our creativity comes from. So what to do with all this super energy and enthusiasm rising high up from a level deep below, this other dimension, urging me to contribute and change the world? What to do with all the charisma and passion I exhibit when I truly believe in something from the depth of my heart? There ought to be a use for all those qualities, right?
Well, recently I came across a series of online audios, organized and hosted by two unbelievably inspiring women named Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas. Their organization is called Feminine Power – Awakening the New Feminine Power. It surely sparked my interest, as I’ve always been a little bit of a rebel not necessarily going with what everyone else thought. If you have been following my blogs, you know what I’m about. If you don’t know me, well, I love exploring the journeys of the human mind, the perception of reality, and challenging our current understanding and knowledge of ourselves to new levels that lead way beyond the legacy of our families and culture, that lead way beyond the conditioning and “culturing” of the things we adopted, inherited and accepted as the truth. So, this series of conversations was right up my alley.
I will use this conversational series as the content provides a great backdrop for my explanation of what's currently going on in the economy, locally and globally. I think with the crash of the economy and the crippling of our societal system, each one of us has no choice but will eventually have to re-evaluate oneself, ones values, ones beliefs, etc, in order to contribute to a new, sustainable system, as the government is crippling under its own systematic weight. You surely might receive unemployment money for a while, but just wait what happens until that runs out too. Then what? In other words, like it or not, we are on our own, a new world of no structure and system to latch onto...at least until we will build a new one.
So what does it mean to “exist” when old structures fall apart, structures from which we have derived and formed an identity from? What does it mean "to be and survive" when the dictates and instructions suddenly cease that have been running your societal and culturally conditioned mind? What’s a yellow duck to do that is used to marching blind and mindlessly behind its fellow duck, which on a larger scale is part of an entire society of numb, yellow marching ducks? It is freaking scary, isn’t it? It is shocking. It is so overwhelming that it is hard for your mind to comprehend what happened. Where did everything go? Everything you worked so hard for suddenly slipped away, all in one split second. It all seemed to disappear into nothingness, emptiness. For a brief moment, chaos turns into stillness. The world has stopped moving. Everyone is frozen, paralyzed with fear, anxiety, hopelessness. Your job, your income, your car, your house, your savings, your retirement, your image, your reputation, all went down the drain in the mists of an economic collapse. Applying for a new “job” wont’ work, as the framework and the system that provide those jobs don’t hold up any longer. Like I said, you are on your one. This time around, you will have to count and trust in yourself that you got what it takes to start over - without a system in place.
Take a breath, it’s not that bad, I have a little flair for the dramatic sometimes - for entertaining purposes. But really, who are we when we remove and are devoid of all the underlying conditioning, the instructions, the beliefs and values, the adapted truths that have been running through a societal system? With our academic backgrounds we all are pretty good at analyzing and forming opinions and stating the nature of the problem. But in order to get out of this mess we have to develop a new culture, a new society, with new sets of values and structures. In order to get there it is essential to ground and root ourselves into a new kind of awareness, or consciousness, that will function as the ground from which we can create from. Desperately holding on to old paradigms, structures and believes will be an obstacle in developing a system that will be able to make a difference. Or in other words “you can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that has created the problem to begin with”. And this is where I believe women will play a significant role over the next coming centuries, as the female approach, if tapped into that pure essence, is just different. The masculine zeitgeist that has swayed over the last few centuries into the mindset of man and women won't be able to evolve and grow beyond its current one unless something new, something of catalystic inspiration is triggering a new state of mind in all of us. For philosophical reasons, let’s call it the liberation and rise of the feminine.
So, as we get a better understanding of the old system and paradigm we are coming from, and as we slowly evolve over to the other side exploring our own inner resource and essence that is void of the conditioning and culturing, we are left with this transitional gap of "nothingness" in between. It is this transitional gap that people are currently lost in. It's a gap experienced as the unknown, therefore filled with fear, anxiety, hopelessness, perhaps even depression. Without a clear context of the crippling of the old system and the emergence of a new system, it will be hard to navigate from A to B. So, I think we are not ready yet for the implementation of this new system, but rather we first have to establish an overview and context of the current happenings. Then we are ready to introduce and nurture a new mindset that is the necessary platform for a new system. So what we are just about to enter is an "educational" phase. With an understanding of the larger picture and the nurturing of this new mindset the transition will be experienced much smoother and easier, as we all will have an intention, a mission, well a purpose to look up to. Yet, at the same time, many of us may find themselves defaulting back to the old and familiar, into our comfort zone, until they too will realize that they got to take the leap of faith into that new and unknown that no one seems to be able to define as of right now.
In the meantime we need to come together and unite, co-operate and collaborate with each other for practical purposes, such as every day survival and making a living to get through this transitional gap. You can see it already happening, people are coming together, moving in together and sharing financial obligations, getting involved in their community, helping, volunteering and authentically and generously wanting to generate business or referrals for each other. It’s not about individualism anymore. No need for feelings of shame or pride as it’s happening to all of us. We are all sitting in the same boat, and it happens to be sinking. We have entered a time that is demanding unity, collaboration and cooperation in order to make it. Pride, selfishness, individualism, privacy, I call them necessary survival strategies of the past. In reality, it’s not that difficult. It’s just inconvenient, to our Ego. We are in a time that allows for growth and self-development. After all to grow, we have to work with the content and circumstances that life gives us. It’s an opportunity to foster and develop diplomacy, dignity and tactfulness over unaware impulse reactions and selfish measures as we are coming to live and work together for the purpose of a new system, a new culture, well a new future.
Okay, now let me delve into a brief conversation of how the female will play a vital and significant role in shaping and contributing to a new set of consciousness, that will influence the underlying structuring of a new society and culture.
Please note that I want to give credit to all the authors and speakers as well as the hosts and organizers from “Feminine Power – Awakening the New Feminine Power” for being a catalyst for today’s blog. To listen to the conversations and interviews please click here. As host and interviewees were discussing the roles of women throughout history and the suffering of female suppression that has been endured throughout centuries, they all agree that women seem to be re-arising from the depth. To be more specific, they are referring to the feminine essence. We seem to be in a time of reclaiming our feminine qualities, power and potential, this time playing a significant part in reshaping a new society, with new values, well, a new culture, or consciousness.
I don’t mean this in a feminist way at all. As Diane Musho Hamilton pointed out, in order to surpass the feminine oppression experienced for centuries in a masculine dominated system, women collectively broke through that aggression. And it wasn’t until recently that women experienced opportunities of equal rights. Sequentially, women “believed” that they had to adopt masculine qualities and trades in order to become powerful, competitive, and successful, so as to make it in the workforce, so as to become self-sustainable and independent. Alternatively, if that didn’t appeal to a woman (or her husband) she would find herself self-sacrificing and self-martyring as a pro-creator, popping out one child after another while chained to the home in some secluded village. How depleting! Doesn’t sound all that inspiring to me! Anyhow, the point is that somewhere along those lines of initial oppression, and traditional, patriotically prescribed female roles, and occupations and careers marked by masculine traits and qualities, women unfortunately have completely disconnected and forgotten their own feminine qualities that are rooted at the chore of their essence.
We now, however, seem to have reached a point in history, where women collectively seem to be letting go of these old, adapted and inherited sets of male identities, values and consciousness from the past and are reclaiming that inner resource of ours, that power and potential that is very unique and special, buried deep beneath within our female roots. So I hope that my male readers see as they read along that I’m not advocating for a feminist movement here at all, but much rather I am playing into this larger perspective and understanding of this current cultural and societal shift we seem to be all part of, including and impacting men as well. The only difference is that this time around women are playing a vital role in the shaping of this new system.
Why not, what harm can be done to the world by the creativity, the potential, the quality and power that are so unique to the feminine? One of wanting to heal, to nurture, to foster and to evolve the world? One that is marked by an authentic and autonomous sense of operating out of love, passion, connecting, collaborating, uniting and co-creating for the benefit of a future that will carry a legacy that goes beyond the personal selfishness society is currently engrossing in?
As I mentioned earlier, as women (and men) go through this transition, many of us don’t know what to make out of that impulse we feel, that urge, that desire, that longing of finding our autonomous potential and self-expression, the feeling of wanting to make a difference and better the world. All that is lingering deep within, waiting to be released from its dormancy. It’s almost as if the mothership of the feminine has arisen from deep below, blowing the horn of awakening, a sound of female resurgence reaching us all collectively. We just don’t know yet what to make out of it. We are torn back and forth between this new impulse, and the traditional pro-creator roles, or the masculine occupational modules we adhered to in the workforce as alternative to pro-creation.
So, what seems to be happening is the formation of varies women groups and organizations all over the world. Women are coming together to support each other; to share the fears, anxieties, dissatisfaction, guild, or depression, all simply symptoms deriving from a denial of self-expression, of not being capable of releasing that potential that lies within ourselves. As they share and start understanding that this seems to be a collective journey and not a personal one, relatedness kicks in, relief, inspiration to allow for these female qualities to resurface. It’s a newly gained confidence to trust, to accept and to embrace this foreign, yet deeply personal and intimate dimension within. Diane called it our golden shadows. It’s those parts of you that are buried deep within the female essence, those which represent the best in you...the beauty, the softness, the radiance, the sensuality, all the qualities that only a woman possesses; yet, at the same time these innate qualities hidden deep down seem so foreign to most of us. Perhaps self-acceptance is all it takes?
It is very interesting to observe in myself this process and transition as described above. On one hand I have been intellectually stimulated as I was listening to these conversations. At the same time I have been experiencing and implementing this inner process and transformation myself. One major area of my life I’m completely and utterly challenged to do so, pushed to my outermost limits, is in my recent training in dancing that I started in 2008. As much as I was seeking to find freedom and liberation through body movement, a physical cry for mental and psychological liberation from societal and cultural conditioning, I was absolutely paralyzed. I did not know how much of me and my female essence was blocked by mental and societal obstacles versus a physical one. At the beginning I couldn’t move, I was frozen, filled with fear and insecurity, shyness, and embarrassment. What the heck did I get myself into? We were told to be tough, and strong and independent, to be in control and to rely on ourselves. We were taught to analyze, to strategize, and to prepare for a worst case scenario. No one ever said anything about moving with pride, and confidence, with dignity and sophistication, with beauty, sensuality and that inner female radiance!
I got myself into a situation that was all right-brain, that was all about feelings and emotions. I got myself into a situation where I was forced to let go of any sort of control, mostly my old believes I had about my self. I was standing at a major cross point. It felt like one of those moments where it was about death or life. Everyones eyes are on you, people wondering if you are going to do the jump? It was now or never. I literally had to un-condition myself. I had to retreat to that most dreaded place of total and absolute vulnerability, to that place of groundlessness, unknowingness, that place of emptiness where there is nothing to latch onto. I had to find that place of security and confidence within myself. And I had to trust the person assuming the lead and control and that he would not violate and abuse my vulnerability I was just about to hand in...in order to give rise to something new. That and overcoming a chronic spinal injury is why dancing is so much more to me than just dancing. It completely and utterly stretched my safety zone into a whole other world, one that tapped into the root of my feminine essence.
No worries, it wasn't really all that dramatic. I'm just trying to get across a point here; vulnerability. You have to allow for vulnerability to arise if you want to shed yourself from an old and outgrown identity, as an identity is doing exactly that, defending and trying to keep intact what it has fought for so hard over the years. Once you let go of your socially and culturally conditioned identity, you have an opportunity to hopefully bring forth those golden shadows of yours, rooted deeply in your essence.
Alright, stay tuned for updates, as this will be the beginning of a woman’s group that I have envisioned to establish for quiet some time, dedicated to the development and growth of women committed in contributing to a new system, society and culture, at least for now in our immediate neighborhood. It probably will be a small and intimate gathering to start out with. However, in collaboration with another group of inspiring and powerful women we'll be introducing something on a larger scale in 2010. I'll keep you updated. For now, anyone interested in attending and or participating in my smaller gatherings please send me an email to tatjana (at) otny (dot) net.
Wishing you all a very happy holiday season. Talk to you in 2010!
Tatjana Luethi
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