The Goddess Thing

Recently, while discussing our spiritual paths, a friend of mine admitted that she just didn't get "the goddess thing."  I understand that her path is not my path... and I love and honor our differences.  Still, I'd like to shed a little more light on the subject by sharing a few questions here...

What would happen if, instead of growing up with popular male images of divinity such as these dominating our mental landscape,

we were also given just as many images of divinity that looked like this...

 and this...

 

and this...

 and this...

 and this...

 

Would we see ourselves in the same light? 

What if creation didn't look like this...

but looked like this instead...

How might our consciousness be transformed?

Those patriarchal images take root in our mind.  They effect how we view ourselves, how we treat one another, and how we treat our planet.  When we see that all things are sacred, when we honor both the feminine and the masculine and see that the life in us is the same life that causes trees to grow, the sun to shine, and the earth to spin on her axis, we liberate ourselves from dualistic thinking and become free.

Sue Monk Kidd writes in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter:

"Walking into the sacredness of the female body will cause a woman to "enter into" her body in a new way, be at home in it, honor it, nurture it, listen to it, delight in its sensual music.  She will experience her female flesh as beautiful and holy, as a vessel of the sacred.  She will live from her gut and feet and hands and instincts and not entirely in her head. The bodies of such women, instead of being groomed to some external standard, are penetrated with soul, quickened from the inside."

When this new consciousness takes root within us, we also begin to experience every blade of grass, every drop or dew, as infused with divinity.  Kidd writes:

"Divine feminine imagery opens us up to the notion that the earth is the body of the Divine, and when that happens, the Divine cannot be contained solely in a book, church, dogma, liturgy, theological system, or transcendent spirituality.  The earth is no longer a mere backdrop until we get into heaven, something secondary and expendable.  Matter becomes inspirited; it breathes divinity.  Earth becomes alive and sacred.  And we find ourselves alive in the midst of her and forever altered."

Would we treat Mama Earth differently if we felt that she was a living, sacred, thing?  Would we still spray our strawberries with poison?  Would we still fill our oceans with plastic?  Would we still genetically modify our crops so they were "pestiside ready" or support the corporations who did by buying their products?  Would we still value material wealth over spiritual abundance or wage war against one another?   

Would we treat ourselves differently if we honored the sacred in feminine form?  Would we dance and play and honor our bodies regardless of their shape?  Would staying home with our kids be as valued as pursuing career goals?  Would our little girls grow up believing they were just as strong as their brothers?  Would we see ourselves in a different light?  I certainly think so... and for reasons like these, this mama is loving every minute of her journey into the collective feminine soul.