Listen carefully and perhaps you will hear your future self reaching back to you today through time and space whispering…
You were born for these very times. Do not be afraid. Have faith in what you cannot yet see. Ignite your courage and commitment to keep on walking forward even as the fog thickens and the sky darkens. The future generations of tomorrow are counting on you today.
It was on my birthday, November 12th, shortly after the shocking election results here in the USA when I fully recognized that I have been preparing for a very long time for this exact moment. My sense is that many of us have. And that if we listen we can draw strength from our future selves who made it across this difficult threshold and are living in a better, more peaceful and loving world.
In late 2012 I was poised to launch my book and new programs after 12 years of research to find an accelerated path that could help women awaken to the next level of their innate leadership potential. I was ready to take flight.
But the Great Mystery had other plans. In January 2013 my beloved husband died tragically and suddenly and virtually overnight I lost everything that I cherished. The door to the future I had imagined was slammed firmly shut. It was an enormous fall, partly because the flight seemed so close at hand, with the wind already under my wings lifting me skyward.
Similarly, many of us were gliding upward in the slipstream of the potential of the first female President of the United States. And it was a brutally hard descent when Hillary Clinton was not elected – not only because of what she represented, but also because of the openly misogynistic, racist views of the president elect Donald Trump. On election night many of us literally felt nauseous – a kind of vertigo that happens when you descend too quickly.
Well it turns out that I know something about crash landings. I thought I was more than ready in 2013 to come out into the world with all that I had discovered and be a guide for women. But the past 4 years have been an essential kind of ‘alchemical finishing school’, preparing me for these very times. When my outer life shattered, I found within the wreckage of my former self a truer me. I have grown into the woman who can actually now, in a more fully embodied way, Be the change I want to bring in the world. Yes it is 4 years later than I thought, but it seems that my Mysterial becoming needed ALL of me: my brokenness and my wholeness; my vulnerability and my strength; my softness and my swift sword; my truth and my understanding of others; my receiving and my extending; my aloneness and my belonging.
I believe that the hidden opportunity in this devastating blow to our dreams as women is that it catalyzes us to WAKE UP, GROW UP and then SHOW UP with more of our authentic wisdom, love and power. How we respond now is everything.
1. Wake Up
We can see much more clearly now the toxic shadow of a hyperMasculine worldview that is reaching the end of its ascendancy after 5000 years. It isn’t that this shadow of power over, objectification and abuse of women, mind over matter, alienation, bullying, wasn’t there before – we just couldn’t see it fully. Now we can.
And this toxic Masculine shadow is not just ‘out there’.
It is coded into our very DNA.
This turn of events in the USA is a wake-up call. It is an invitation to recognize the ways in which we have been asleep, complacent, thinking that our own growth and development as women was done. Let these events break your heart more fully open. Turn toward the aching bones of your own sweet humanity and connect with the suffering of your sisters and brothers. This is where we start – with a deep Feminine wave of compassion.
Practice: Awakening begins with embracing where you are right now. Be with the grief and shock and terror that may have arisen through these events. Find the communities of support where you can be nourished and held. And then move to Step 2.
2. Grow Up
We need to turn on our developmental tap again. What I mean is that we will have to do the challenging inner work of awakening our consciousness to a worldview that is wider and fuller than we have now installed. It is our consciousness that determines what creative solutions we have for complex problems and what actions are possible. It is time to recognize that we have been severely limited as women by the shadow Masculine and Feminine forces deep in our personal and collective unconscious. We will need to do the depth work required to unhook from these ancient patterns that hold the next level of our potential hostage – a potentiality I have called Mysterial.
Your individual task is to ‘upgrade your inner operating system’ so that you have access to all of your Feminine and Masculine essences and are weaving them together into ways of being and doing that are a match for our interconnected, complex, global world. Our cultural task is to be the ones who dive ‘down and in’ to free ourselves from oppression, persecution and marginalization so that our actions can shape a positive world for all.
Practice: Find the communities, programs, coaches and guides that will help you do this. While we must do this work very personally we do not have to do it alone. We do not have time for that. We will need the acceleration of catalytic collective engines of growth. And we will need the supportive environment of others who share our commitment to growth in order to engage Step 3.
3. Show Up
There will be important actions to take in the days ahead. Let’s make sure they arise from the deep ground of our Feminine being and are wise, loving and powerful. Joanna Macy has spoken powerfully about the prophecy of the Shambhala Warriors which matches very closely my image of Mysterial Women.
Here is what the legend says, “Compassion gives us the juice, the power, and the passion to bring awareness and vision to the world. Awareness allows us to see things for what they are, including noticing our own conditioned reactions and being at choice about whether to employ different ones – like those in service of more curiosity, understanding and productivity – and, ultimately, peace. But compassion itself is not enough because it will burn us out. So we need the other weapon, which is wisdom. Wisdom enables us to comprehend our interconnectedness and see that it is not really a battle between good guys and bad guys at all, but rather that the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart. With compassion we can be at choice with our words and our deeds; with wisdom we can understand how our actions have wide-reaching repercussions beyond anything we can measure or discern. By employing wisdom and compassion, the Shambhala Warriors become agents of awareness, vision, and, ultimately, transformation.”
Practice: Start close in with a simple act of compassion or wisdom – the one you have been afraid to do in your own life. The one that makes your knees tremble, the one that your future self is encouraging you to take.
More than ever now I see that all the effort that it took to write and publish The Way of the Mysterial Woman: Upgrading How You Live, Love and Lead and set it free in the world was worth it. It provides a well researched map and a pathway, based on how women develop, to accelerate our emergence as true Mysterials. Please use it as a guide and become the woman today that future generations are counting on for tomorrow!