by Deepak Chopra, M.D.: One feels a change in the wind that has been a long time coming…
There has been an awakening that has brought on a call to fight for and embrace social equity and justice. The fault lines are related to race, socioeconomics, and gender. This change we sense around us is brought on by a rise in embracing feminine energy, a potent energy that goes beyond political and social factors. There is something deeply spiritual stirring.
Let’s approach feminine energy as a universal quality in consciousness. This quality is divine and has been part of every spiritual tradition, yet each generation has to reinterpret it. At the moment, embedded in a secular society where daily demands and distractions are the rule, connecting with the Divine Feminine requires going deeper into our self-awareness.
Awakening to the Divine Feminine
Beyond constructs of gender, everyone’s source is pure awareness. When pure awareness manifests into creation, gender isn’t in evidence, nor are many of the labels we take on in our physical manifestation. When you wake up from deep sleep and become aware of your existence, the experience has no labels. The division between masculine and feminine enters in a social context, defined by the beliefs, attitudes, and mental conditioning of yourself and the world around you. To be confined in a solely binary experience of gender is a creation of many factors, going far beyond the physiological.
The Divine Feminine isn’t to be confused with gender or restricted to women because, in reality, the Divine Feminine is part of everyone’s wholeness. When we divide all human experiences into the narrow categories of women and men, we lose the opportunity to access wholeness. In order to truly love all people, and for them to love themselves, we each must nurture the universal values that belong to the Divine Feminine. Every human quality that we cherish has a pure source, and the closer you are to the source, the more intense, personal, and lasting your values will be.
Exploring the Healing Qualities Within
What does the Divine Feminine add to everyone’s life? In one way or another, we all express qualities of the Divine Feminine. Whenever there is nurturing, devotional, compassionate, loving, intuitive, or reflective energy the Divine Feminine is present. You might feel yourself resisting the expression of certain qualities to meet social approval because we have all been conditioned to do so.
When the feminine energy is ignored or wounded the same values that this energy carries are lost. In their absence a presence of qualities associated with masculine energy takes form. Forceful, overly competitive, controlling, domineering–these attributes are exaggerated and far removed from wholeness. Society tells us that these energies are either/or, and we are made to feel uncomfortable expressing ourselves as we truly are – a union of all.
On the individual level, the loss of the Divine Feminine can be devastating. There is an imbalance toward the masculine, which no one can sustain without damaging their capacity for loving acceptance, beginning with self-acceptance. I doubt there is anyone who can’t benefit from healing the wounded feminine energy within. We regain wholeness in meditation, but it is in applying self-awareness in daily life that healing steps can be taken.
Restoring Wholeness
Take a moment every day and look through these qualities associated with the feminine energy I’ve listed here: nurturing, caretaking, devotional, compassionate, intuitive, receptive. Think of one value you’d like to encourage and enhance, then make a mental note of the action you’ll take that day to implement it. At night before you go to bed, reflect on your day to see if you carried out the action you planned. If so, how did it make you feel?
Here are some suggestions about how you might carry out healing the feminine side of wholeness:
Nurturing is about all the things a parent does to raise their child, and we often identify it with helping the young. But adults also need support, encouragement, protection from harm, and wise guidance. These are nurturing values too often neglected in our relationships. We forget that the child within us hasn’t vanished with the passage of time. So, acting as a nurturing figure in anyone else’s life is deeply appreciated.
Caretaking is warm, caring, accepting, and embracing. You might show someone close to you that you care by listening without judgment. You might include a person who seems like an outsider to your group and make them feel welcome.
Devotional energy is about the heart’s need to surrender to something outside yourself, pouring out love and appreciation. Devotion is private and happens in silent communion. It doesn’t have to be showy or even outwardly expressed. When you feel the impulse to express loving devotion, act upon it.
Compassion is about loving-kindness and the values that flow from it, such as empathy, acceptance, and non-judgment. Being easy with yourself and ending your own self-judgment are acts of compassion. The same is true when you extend the same attitude to others. As exalted as compassion sounds, it comes down to deciding that you are on the side of acceptance and kindness rather than judgment and harshness.
Intuition and receptivity are about making reconnecting to source and living from that place. This is the energy of creation and inspiration; pure consciousness endlessly creates and is based on a flow of renewal every day. The opposite of renewal is habit, routine, mental conditioning, and fixed beliefs. Rather than struggling to be more creative, use your efforts to tune in and intuitively remove the obstacles that block inspiration from coming through. Once you stop identifying with habit and routine, life’s freshness returns naturally, like water gushing from a spring.
