As mysterious as the dark side of the moon lies a hidden force of nature embedded within us all. It is the nurturing side of our being that contains seeds of consciousness waiting to be born. It lies within the silent spaces between our thoughts. It is a silence pregnant with infinite possibilities.
Within these seeds of consciousness is the womb of creation. She feels like a loving mother whose soul purpose is to unconditionally love what is born. Outside of this spacious quality of life there are invisible ties. These invisible ties create a sense of security. A sense of knowing that we are loved by a power greater than ourselves. This power guides us and sustains us. And it’s filled with enough love to get us through each day.
Rooted within this love is a quality of attention. This quality of attention is reflexive. It is a glimpse of our Creator. As we observe this path to love, our soul is bathed in the same wisdom that created it. This article is about the integration of the feminine spirit. At the same time, it is the process of returning to our birthright. Each of us wants to know that we are loved. We long for such grace.
We all know that the world cannot promise us this notion of being loved. Only our soul can take us to a dimension of life, in which the invisible becomes more real than the appearances of our lives. In this sense, we move towards the eternal nature of living that fears nothing and has the experience of a thousand lifetimes. Like a child, we must live each moment as if it were new. When we are open to the mysteries of life, we follow the feminine spirit. It is the pathless path of the spirit that calls us home.
Everyone can remember a time in their life when a mother or father called them in for dinner. Much more than dinner is being prepared. Together, the children and the loving parents gather at a table to eat. This meal is a community act. In the act of eating a meal, each person who participates is filled with the bounty of mother earth. In essence, it is she who provided the food that we all share on a daily basis. Within each digested morsel is a reminder that we are children of the earth.
The generosity of the earth is nourished by a living presence that we cannot see. This invisible presence infuses our lives with the experience of opportunity. Every moment is an opportunity to remember who we are. As we remember who we are, we are integrating our lives, and yes, our souls, into the seasons and cycles of life. At the same time, we have a part of us that is not affected by birth or death.
Thus, the cycles of birth and death become a symbol to remind us how sacred we are. In this realization, we integrate into a multitude of possibilities available to us at any given moment. This infinite set of options carries various connections from one moment to the next until our choices extend into endless streams of possibilities. This circle that goes on and on connects our humanity with the womb of creation, by which we are always cared for by the love of the feminine spirit.
As we move into the 21st century, it will be vital for the feminine spirit to flourish. The feminine side of humanity nurtures and encourages the active participation of our soul in the world. And I’m not sure we can avoid moving in this direction. Daily, we can see the news. People are killing each other for material wealth and power. We fight for higher prices on goods and services. These higher prices are justified by claiming that we are satisfying our external desire to succeed in the world. Often our desire to prosper in the outer world is at the expense of intuition and inner reflections about love for others.
In our days, our souls cry out to be blessed, known, loved and wanted. The outside world cannot guarantee this. The inner world of perception can. Insight means to see from within. As we turn our awareness inward, we return to our feminine nature. Our feminine nature directs our attention to equalities of purity, hope, and spirit. They are the qualities of our nature that purport goodness and love.
It is my hope and prayer that our society learns to value being in the process of living, rather than living for the results. Or at least find a balance between the two. Otherwise, we cannot appreciate living the lives that we have been given in the present moment. When paying as much attention to “being in process” as to “results”, there is an opportunity for our actions to reflect our own soul that seeks the manifestation of peace within our world. In doing so, the female spirit is born.
At this point, our daily experiences begin to sustain us at the deepest level of our being. We appreciate every moment as an opportunity to take care of what gives us meaning and gives us joy. In return, our soul is healed by the same spirit that gives life to all life. When we feel connected to this quality of ourselves, we take on the spirit of a child. In our childlike nature, we trust the forces of nature that have shaped the moon, the sky, and our well-being. It is not a part of us that we can easily see, but this part of us becomes more vital to us as we age.
As we mature, we begin to realize that our five senses and physical body will fade away. What remains will be what is not seen. It is the part of us born into the world, which takes us to this moment and takes us to eternity. The feminine side of our lives is touching. We are free within our soul. Even death cannot diminish the birth of our soul. Because our soul was alive long before we were born into a physical body, created in the minds and hearts of our loving parents.
In the end, we begin to trust our hearts and our visual perceptions. So our soul is at home in the world. When we see our world with the eyes of the soul, our external world is bathed in eternal love. What unites becomes an integration of the feminine spirit into the outside world from within.
Have you ever thought of the earth as energy, or the air we breathe as similar to the ambiotic fluid we breathe during pregnancy? Early one morning, I was sitting on my friend’s front porch looking at the lawn. As the sun warmed the earth, I saw ripples of energy rising from the ground into the air. It was a fuzzy mist and a fluid that caused vapor from the ground to rise into the air.
Similarly, each of us enters the womb of another creation the moment we leave the womb of our human mother. It could be said that we never actually left the womb of our true mother: the female spirit. Every event, circumstance, and experience is an opportunity to integrate a loving presence into our lives. We breathe it.
This loving presence constantly watches over us. We are bathed in her womb every day and every night. She is an inner quality of attention within us that offers unconditional love. This quality of attention is not limited by any physical form. This quality of care is limitless. It is the part of us that experiences our world in purity. it is our soul.
Our soul is fluid and formless. It has the ability to pierce through veils of flesh and bone. Our soul is soft. This tender part of our existence is not caught up in being the strongest, the richest, or even the most self-righteous. Our soul simply remains what it is. It doesn’t get caught up in the personality of one or the other. Our soul sees people and ourselves as children of the cosmos with unique attributes that create our own existence on earth.
Seeing our lives through the soul reveals a quality of attention within us that is not determined by external circumstances. Our soul is the aspect of ourselves hidden behind the conditions or circumstances in which we find ourselves. Our soul is the eternal and unconditional quality of our being that will never die.
Samuel Oliver, author of “What the Dying Teach Us: Lessons About Life”