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Since the beginning of our current evolution, we have resided under the steel-edged umbrella of a male-dominated worldview. We have honored the patriarchal ideals of strength, assertiveness, and aggressiveness. We have deified the pursuit of power and domination as the highest values and models for success.
The male dominance of society began around the same time as the idea of private ownership took hold. And with private ownership came the desire to have male descendants—strong sons to add to a family’s wealth, status and power. This meant that men required virgin brides to ensure their descendants were of their own bloodline.
It wasn’t a big leap from ensuring the virginity of a bride to including her as an additional possession needing protection, a piece of the family treasure to be safeguarded, bartered, and used as men saw fit. We experience the echoes of this today in the continued abuse and objectification of women at the hands of men throughout the world.
Along with the formation of a patriarchal worldview came the creation of a god made in man’s image. He was the all-powerful King and Father, who Himself required a virgin bride. And even today, in 21st-century religion, women are still prohibited from entering the priesthood of many patriarchal denominations. And what a lost opportunity that has been.
This continuing worship of the Divine Masculine has engineered and empowered the insanely disproportionate distribution of the world’s resources that we see today, with only about one percent of the world’s population owning about fifty percent of the pie. And, of course, most of that one percent are men.
This imbalanced worldview could be the death of us. One only needs to see the devastating destruction being inflicted on the living systems of our planet today in order to generate and maintain that disproportionate wealth. We are in the midst of the Sixth Extinction and it doesn’t look very promising for our grandbabies’ future. Our Mother Earth could soon be done with us and the cockroaches will be left to rule, unless we discover a different way of being here. And there is different way immediately available to us.
Many of us are awakening to the ancient memory of when the Divine Feminine was honored instead of burned at the stake. There was a time when She was known as the giver of life. There was a time when She wasn’t traded as merely a piece of property, or her planet exploited to extinction, treated only as a resource to gratify patriarchal desires and fill its vaults. It was a more balanced time that honored the entirety of life as a living, interconnected web of which we humans were merely a strand.
There is a new wind blowing, an open-eyed recognition of the tragic imbalances that have poisoned our hearts and the world. The male-dominated worldview could very well be in its last gasps. You only have to be paying attention to current events to know that this is so.
We are standing at the most profound and consequential crossroads in human history and must choose which direction we will take.
We can choose to take a more balanced approach between those masculine and feminine energies. We can seek for personal and planetary healing, the honoring of our grandbabies and the entire web of life. We can embrace and incorporate the greater feminine traits of cooperation, intuitive problem solving, empathy, nurturing, and celebrating the power of love over fear, and connection over separation. We can build bridges instead of walls.
Or we can choose to continue living within the patriarchal model, not changing anything, where old men manipulate our loyalties using the fear of “Other” as they distract us with mindless and inconsequential national intrigues and entertainments. If we do nothing, the few most powerful men will continue to hoard most of the stuff, despite the cost to our world and our grandbabies’ future. They will continue to buy our leaders and seek for profit over the good of the people and planet. And the value of Love will remain limited to the sentimental fluff of Hallmark cards.
While I suggest that it is “we”, our society, that is standing at the crossroads of choice, ultimately each one of us, individually, must decide on which road we shall take. And we must decide now. Dawdling at the crossroads just shows an unwillingness to commit. We choose and bring our singular choices to the global stage. And we make those choices every day in how we live our lives, spend our money and generally behave in the world.
We can use the spiritual tool of awareness as we access those internal motivating factors that move us through our days. We can bring the light of mindfulness to our thoughts, words, and actions—and take full responsibility for our individual choices in the unfolding of our civilization at this most challenging and important time for humanity.
The choice, at its core, is simple. Every day, regardless of where we are or what we are doing, are we choosing to change, to consciously evolve, to take responsibility for our lifestyle choices, and act from a place of love instead of fear? Are we creating the space for a balancing realignment of those masculine and feminine polarities within our interactions, relationships, and life decisions? Or are we just mindlessly plodding along out of old habits, as the sharpened Sword of Damocles hangs by a hair above our heads?
I recently saw a bumper sticker on the back of a Volvo—a slight reworking of a Leonard Cohen quote. It read: The Goddess is Alive and Magic is Afoot! And I thought to myself, “Now, there’s some good news.”
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