Why struggle when you can swim? Since I resumed my menstrual cycle after having my baby, the days around it have gotten darker, more volatile, and almost violent. During that time I fight against my ordinary life like a WWF wrestler in a steel cage match. I try to turn to my best old standby, A New Earth, and the whole thing falls flat. Cognitively I understand that in these troubled moments driven by hormones and whatever else is going "wrong" in my body, all I am supposed to do is accept what is, dwell in that moment, and eventually come out peacefully on the other side. Realistically, the best expectation I can have is that I come out the other side not having broken any dishes willfully. The model of inner peace and enlightenment that is set forth by all the teachers I've read is one that feels unattainable to me.
Recently I have been reading This Time I Dance by Tama Kieves. Her writing thrills me. It talks of passion and power (the inner kind, not the dictator kind). It talks of peace driven by fulfillment. It talks of harnessing the energy - violent and otherwise - into your life's work. It talks of swashbuckling, risky, feather-in-my-cap kind of inner peace. Now we're speaking my language!
The dovetail to Tama Kieves seemed to be a revisit to Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Says Pinkola Estes, "Feeling extraordinarily dry, fatigued, frail, depressed, confused, gagged... without inspiration.. chronically fuming, volatile,... to be self-conscious... drawn far into domesticity..." These descriptors point to being out of synch with the "wildish force int he psyche". In other words.. to be a woman. To live in modern society, especially here on the east coast in new jersey, means to inherently live out-of-synch with our wildish psyche. It means to drive a car from point A to point B. It means to straighten our hair, it means recycling is some remote thing done far away. It means that the beauty and power of our ocean and its sands of times is relegated to an onslaught of summer beach dwellers half heartedly glancing in its direction. It means the struggle to seek marrow in an ordinary existing is like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill.
Well! No wonder this woman is ready to tattoo her face with desperate messages of escape! Rescue me! I have no desire to live peeing in the woods, believe me. I don't want to hunt deer for food and forage for berries. I like most of modern life - I like elongated seat toilets, I really love hot showers. I don't like bugs, inside or out, and most wildlife scares me. It's only that the pace and standards of life right around here are counter-supportive to living a full, feminine life connected to Mother Earth and one another.
This is all to say that the men seem to be talking more about peace in the moment and stillness, the women seem to be talking about passion and movement, and I live in a place that seems counter-supportive to any of the above. To women living out a fulfilled, authentic life, this society I live in is polite enough to quiet its collective mouth but will give you a brutal side-eye.
Do you think that emerging women's spirituality would do better with female teachers?
No comments:
Post a Comment