For the past few months, I've been delving into the Women's Mysteries and the Blood Mysteries as part of my Priestess path. I had a great friend who was kind to introduce me to these concepts and they really resonated with me and I took them to heart since I believe healing can take place if we honor our mysteries as women and empower ourselves. We need to get rid of the shame we have lived with for so long because women tend to get the message that they are dirty, weak, less than men, among other messages that we get from the environment. While in my journey, I was also introduced to Male Mysteries because of my need to understand the Male energies in my life and how to reach harmony since we all contain both male and female energies within- yin and yang. In my search, I came across a book called "Fire in the Belly - On being a man" by Sam Keen. The word belly with being a man called my attention immediately because belly is always associated with WOMAN, with creation, with power. When I opened the book, I couldn't help but be amazed by the title of one of the chapters "it's a Woman's World". After reading several feminist books, I found this book that seems to portrait the same concepts but with the opposite sex. In this chapter, the author talks about how men have defined themselves as opposite of women, how they need to be strong, how they need to provide, how they need to be aggressive, how they need to find meaning because they come from Women but they can not be like them, so they decided to be the opposite but the question remains as of what does it mean to be a man? Men have not taken time to decide what being a man is, what rites they follow, how to deal with their own archetypes as women have the maiden, mother and crone. One of the phrases that called my attention was "Men have invested so much of their identity, committed so much of their energy, and squandered so much of their power in trying to control, avoid, conquer, or demean women because they are so vulnerable to their mysterious power over them." This phrase talks to me about how men try to be different from women, and how women fight patriarchy to gain their rights but in the end, each gender is fighting to define itself against the other. We are comparing ourselves to another, taking the reference point outside ourselves instead of defining ourselves from within.
Another phrase that was really reassuring to me was when the author said "Feminists who argue that goddess-worship historically preceded the notion of God as father are certainly correct. What they fail to see is that the goddess, since her historical dethronement has remained alive and well, and continues to exert power from deep in the hidden recesses of the male psyche. Granted she has been sentenced to remain in a kind of internal exile, under house arrest, but her power is obvious from the efforts spent to keep her imprisoned." As men start to realize that they can create their mysteries as women have theirs, and that they don't need to define themselves based on women, they will be able to evolve and release the energies that are tied in keeping up with a mask that does not belong to them.
It is time for all of us to define ourselves from our own point of view, not as our parents define us, or society, or the other sex. It is important to switch the point of focus to the Goddess or God within and start defining who we are without comparing ourselves to others. It is time to stop fighting for power or trying to see what gender is better. We all hold the spark of spirit within and we can achieve whatever we set up our minds to. It is time to release the energies tied in controlling and trying to exert power and instead replace them with learning about ourselves. One of my favorite phrases is "Know Yourself" and unless we let go of comparing and competing with others, we will not grow or evolve; instead, we will live prisoners of our own limitations and the cages we create for ourselves. It is not a Woman's World. It is not a Man's world. It is a world we share and we can all make it better if we dedicate time to go within and define ourselves by our parameters, and not other people's parameters. It is time to let go of competition and start cooperating and working together. We can all coexist and make this world a better place to live.
Blessings )0(
No comments:
Post a Comment