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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!

For more in depth exploration read:

You Make Your Path by Walking
A Transformational Field Guide through Trauma and Loss
Buy on AmazonBuy on Bookshop
The Way of the Mysterial Woman
Upgrading How You Live, Love and Lead
Buy on AmazonBuy on Bookshop

7 Comments

  • Yes, yes and yes !!!! We have been preparing for this all of our lives. In fact, this is what we’ve come here to support. All of the previous the ground work, processes and resources have been set in place to support this very moment. This most challenging time. And as usual, for me, that which is in the collective continues to manifest in the most intimate and personal. In that which is closest to my heart. Thank you, Suzanne, for your voice and your wisdom. Thank you for your guidance and encouragement. It is an honor and a blessing to be here with you now.

    • Suzanne Anderson says:

      I love your fiery and passionate response Juliana. And indeed our personal circumstances – often very challenging – have been the very alchemical fire preparing us for this work in the world. We arise now as Mysterials not in spite of our personal difficulties and traumas but through them. Our becoming needs us to be fully present and I have found that when my conditioning is cracked open through crisis more of my own authentic essence streams through. I am glad to be walking this path with you.

  • Susan Lucci says:

    Suzanne, Thank you for courageously living and then sharing so authentically your life-lived experience. You have paved a path we can now follow and walk with you. Your insightful wisdom is not only beautiful and passionate, but also resonates deeply at my core. I am beyond grateful to be with you IN IT, Mysterial Woman on fire!

    • Suzanne Anderson says:

      Thank you Susan. I am very happy to hear and feel you recognizing yourself as an emerging Mysterial Woman. The fact that this work resonates deeply at your core is a good sign indeed. And I am grateful that you are ready and willing to awaken to your fullest expression now through these ‘heart breaking open’ times.

  • Fiona Vincent says:

    Do not be asleep to the courage this will take.
    The pattern in the USA links with that in the UK, Russia, Turkey. Hungary, Poland, Slovakia mimic the trace patterns. France and Austria to.
    This wave of hatred in our DNA is on the rise and fuelled by the hardship borne of severe weather patterns induced by climate change.
    In 2009 the UN was reporting that Syrian farming families were migrating into the cities. The Syrian Ministry for Agriculture and Agrarian Reform’s estimated in July 2009 that 60,000 families had migrated, mainly to Damascus, Aleppo and Homs. This massive migration was caused by desertification due to climate change; and because the cities could not handle this in-pouring of people, overcrowding of housing, unemployment and social unrest followed. By 2013 Youth unemployment in Syria was at 48% and there was a 49% drop out education all of which contributed greatly to an escalation of conflict and millions of people fleeing their homes.
    Desertification, as happened in Syria is happening across much of the Arab World as a result of climate change and destruction of ecosystems. The result is having a profound effect on migration forcing hundreds of thousands to move from their homes. A study by the UN’s Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) found that the process may drive an estimated 50 million people from their homes in the next 10 years.

    This migration is feeding the wave of hate and fear … a butterfly’s wing effect across the world.

    This mysterial call to "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" is RIGHT NOW and urgent… and serious.
    Do not be asleep to the courage it will take to create the world that "future generations are counting on for tomorrow. "

    • Suzanne Anderson says:

      Thank you Fiona for laying out this layer of our complex, interconnected global crisis. And this is really just the beginning. This speaks to why we need to do the deep inner work to liberate and cultivate intelligences and capacities that have never been mainstream before. We will require the wisdom, love and power functions of the head, heart and the hara (body) centers of intelligence. And we will need to come online sooner than later. Evolution Herself is giving us a hard shove forward right now!

  • Tamsin says:

    I hope it is ok to ask why Susan Cannon is absent in this website?
    In gratitude
    Tamsin

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