The current state of the world has been at least troubling for most of us. It seems we have reached a tipping point where too much pain and suffering was inflicted. Whether it is climate, war, gender, rape, cancel, or woke culture, there is so much pain, so much misunderstanding and so much being destroyed. I’ve sat a lot with the question, what do we do now? How do go from here? What do we teach our children and our grandchildren? What do we tell the trees, the animals, our earth? How do we save our planet?
If we look at the state of the world, we have been running it for the last centuries in a very masculine way, and it has become a very patriarchal world. And before the reader starts to think that I am a feminist, men-hating woman, please rest assured that this topic has nothing to do with creating more divide. I do not consider myself to be anything.
All humans have feminine and masculine energy. It has nothing to do with sex or gender, it is what keeps the cosmos in balance, and it is both equally needed. One of the difference in qualities is that the masculine energy is the one that brings ideas and solutions, and the feminine is the source of intuition.
A new awareness
I learned in the last years how to sit still and just feel, and when life recently forced me to be more still than usual, I started to realize that being still was bringing a new awareness. By having the different energies move through me without the need to change, analyse, or explain, I connected with a feminine energy that was long lost within me, due to my own experiences in life. An energy that was suppressed, as it was not an energy based on ratio, knowledge, and providing safety.
I was never very aware of this distinction until I met a Sufi teacher who through his lectures, books, and teachings explained what I was feeling. The longing of the heart, the feminine quality we all have deeply buried within us. The feminine is embodiment, interconnectedness, and deep reverence for all beauty of life.
Having grown up to be more prone to use masculine energies, I became a fixer, a soldier, a survivor, like most of us. It has been very hard to even be aware of the feminine divine qualities in a world where separation is the norm, and solutions are taught through divisiveness.
I see more posts of people addressing what it is that we should do, and how can we change the current state of affairs. Many conclude that we all have to do some deep individual work, but how this should look is different for every person. The suffering has to be acknowledged and then transformed, which can only be done by the feminine.
When we act from a masculine energy, we are bringing solutions in separation, and not as a whole, and thus it will only result in temporary change. We are trying to bring change as a separate species disconnected from the whole, instead of an interconnected web of beings, listening to each other, listening to the planet, listening to the divine.
Our planet needs the reconnection with the feminine energy. And it has to happen through us. The feminine energy asks you to listen and feel, acknowledge, and then transform. Once we can do this, we can listen to our planet’s answers. If we can truly listen, we can reconnect with the ancient teachings that have long been forgotten but are still present for those who can hear. Masculine teachings have been written down, from generation to generation, but the ancient feminine priestesses and temple keepers never did this. They did not need to, as there was the gift of deep listening.
Deep listening
Deep listening has been emphasized by many Eastern teachers who came to the West. Teachers such as Thich Nhat Hanh have spoken out intensely about the need for deep listening:
“Deep listening, compassionate listening, is not listening to analyse or even uncover what has happened in the past. Deep listening is the kind of listening that helps us to keep compassion alive while the other speaks, which may be for half an hour or forty-five minutes. During this time you have in mind only one idea, one desire: to listen, to give the other person the chance to speak out and suffer less. This is your only purpose. Listen with compassion.”
One of the biggest hurdles that we face in our society is that even tho we are living in a time when more and more people are addressing (ancestral) traumas and facing deep pains, we identify too much and too often with the pain, creating an identity with it. We do not transform the suffering, we get stuck in it.
As Sufi teacher Llewelyn Vaughan-Lee explains:
“It is especially easy for women to become identified with the suffering of the feminine, her treatment by the masculine, to project one’s pain and anger onto men.”
Even though it is crucial to acknowledge the suffering of the feminine, we need to transform this pain. When we identify with our suffering, it creates more separation, more groups, and more differences that would not even be needed once we can feel and transform the suffering that was inflicted. Look at our world today, the great divide is always there, whatever the topic, war, gender, climate, COVID, or politics, simply because of the identification with the suffering, and the lack of transformation as a whole.
The call for wholeness
By listening we can become aware that we are part of creation, we are not separate, that is masculine thinking. The feminine knows this interconnectedness, she can feel it deep in her being, a woman gives birth, and knows oneness. This is why longing is feminine, the longing for oneness.
Many shamans across the globe are stating that the world is going through an initiation, a transformation “in-between”. This was visible during the pandemic, but started years before, now slowly reaching its peak. More are becoming aware of a whisper deep within, a whisper for change, a longing, for stillness, for wholeness. But this whisper is often hard to hear in a society governed by masculine energy.
We live in an era where it is time to merge the masculine consciousness with the wisdom of the feminine, the wisdom that can give insights into the interconnection between all living species, showing the alchemy transforming the darkest shadows into light. Every one of us has the responsibility to reconnect with this divine essence. For this one needs to learn how to be, see, and feel, without the need to change, and then deeply listen.
The biggest mistake made so far is to think that we are different from the planet suffering, but we are not isolated, we are part of the whole. What is done to the planet is done to us, and vice versa. It is time to awaken the feminine in every one of us. The part that can help us to reconnect with our divine nature, in the oneness with all around us, to become our true nature. This is spiritual and psychological work in which we have to support each other. We are running out of time.