Power and the deep feminine

That was most definitely a potent full moon and I am only now clearer about what it was ushering in. There was most definitely a play on power, and you might have felt that in your own lives too.

I definitely felt a sense of powerlessness with the way that life is currently unfolding and it is only now I recognise the reason for the kidney and liver pain that has accompanied this. The kidneys because of deep rooted fear of not being able to touch or to use holistic therapies to heal (as these rely so heavily on human touch). I feel as if ancestral and past life wounds were touched, around Wicca and the deep memory of the persecution of healers (the witch hysteria during the mid 1400s ).

There was anger in this too, then, for this Wiccan history, and also for the collateral damage of trying to protect the vulnerable from Covid-19 and yet creating so much more suffering and vulnerability in the process. There is a thin line and I don’t envy anyone having to manage this, but I do feel as if a perspective shift is required. The state has done such a good job in conditioning (and controlling) everyone to (through) fear, that now it has a huge job on its hands to condition everyone that life is again safe to be lived.

There is a fear that for those of us who teach yoga or in some way offer our hand to heal, will not be able to do so, in the flesh, for a long time to come. Yet I know that in every ending is a new beginning and I take comfort in this. I am grateful that yoga and Reiki can be shared distantly, albeit it is not the same as physical touch, but at least there is the option. Plus I know that healing can come in so many ways, and I recognise in my own life how this pause, and this space, has revealed other things to me.

I keep returning to Rebecca Campbell’s marvellous quote about all this, well about letting go really, which is what this is all about, and how the power comes into it too, because I have a feeling that this is where it’s at really, coming to understand the nature of power, beyond labels and this idea of being someone. There has been so much emphasis these last few years for women, especially within yoga, to step into their power, and yet I can’t help thinking that we have been attempting to do so while still ignoring the deep feminine.

“In order for the new to arrive, we must first allow the old to shatter. Sometimes this happens on its own. And sometimes it requires that we do the smashing. To tear apart what we’ve built because things have changed, including you. To admit that while it once was aligned, now it no longer is. This shattering requires both courage and faith. Courage to let go and faith that the pieces will come back together again in a way that was more aligned than it was before” Rebecca Campbell

I’m not sure that the deep feminine, the inner witch, the healer, the carer, the mother, the grandmother, the wisdom keeper, I don’t know that she needed to be any more than what she was. She didn’t need to be on a pedestal, or splashed across social media, nor rushing around the world sharing her wisdom. She was contented to live it and share it with those who sought her, not because she was ‘someone’, but because she was her-self. There was a sacredness to her life and to her offerings too. There was the power, in the sacredness of it all.

I have found the break form social media thus far extremely liberating, empowering. I don’t miss it. It’s refreshing not knowing how others are living, and not concerning myself with it. There is less external noise and more time to be with those who matter the most. It has also freed me in my teaching, to offer what I love and what I have learned over all these years of studying the self, with those who most value it, there is (for me at least and I hope this doesn’t sound arrogant as that is not as it is intended) a deeper sense of the sacred. This too came through with the moon.

There is a re-alignment of power at play and for us women this means that yet more ideas of what this might mean need to drop away. We are entering a new paradigm and the idea of what it means to ‘step into our power’ also needs to change. The joy is that life will create this shift, the universe, the moon, the stars and the planets, they will all play their role to ensure that we have the opportunity to listen.

We might not heed the call, we might not make the space, we might grip on so tightly to how we think it should be, that we don’t hear the whisperings of another way. But the signs will be there anyway, the illness, aches, pains, tensions, the dodgy skin, the irregular period, the people, birds, animals and insects that cross our path, they are all message keepers, if we pay attention.

It’s not easy to pay attention though. Sometimes when working with my teacher, she is asking me to be so attentive that I find it difficult because I have to be very still and very present, and very much inside myself. Yet I know that if I can stay with it, then I will touch something that I cannot touch when life is lived externally, or busy, or noisy. The practice comes in being present and attentive, and this is tricky beyond the yoga mat when there is so much distraction.

Yet I have feeling that this is the power of the deep feminine. It is not about what we might create or produce in the external world (that’s the illusion, the trap), but how life is lived in relation to the self. That’s not so easy to teach, and not so easy to explain, because we all have that wisdom, and it is for us to reveal it to ourselves, given the right conditions.

As I am writing this, and as I searched for the above quote to share with you, I came across this other one, and feel like leaping with joy because while I have read it many times before, I feel as if it is only now I have an embodied sense of it being my truth too. Which means it is possibly yours too. This is where the moon has been taking us. This is the power of the deep feminine and it is not at all what others might have us believe, those making the noise and yet still living from a masculine perspective of results and external adoration.

“The deep Feminine, the mystery of consciousness, She who is life, is longing for our transformation as much as we are. She holds back, allowing us free reign to choose, nudging us occasionally with synchronicities, illness, births and deaths… But when we make space for Her, she rushes into all the gaps, engulfing us with her desire for life and expression. This is what She longs for, this is what we are for: experiencing the Feminine through ourselves. We simply need to slow down, and find where to put our conscious attention. And it is this, this willingness to look again, this willingness to put consciousness onto our places of unconscious, to express what we have always avoided, which starts the process of unblocking, so that She may flow through.” Lucy Pearce

All is well. That we must remember. Power is power is power. Knowing the self is power. Healing the self is power. Retreating into the self is power. Finding courage, that is power. Being still is also power. There are so many ways that we can embrace our power without losing ourselves in the power of it, of trying to be anything other than what we already are, and this, this is the key to true power - and it is found in love, and it is found in surrender, and it is found in vulnerability and it is found in being deeply attentive.

Love Emma x