A few days ago, I was devouring pages of Anastasia, the first book of The Ringing Cedar Series while helping out at a bookshop. Anastasia and the author Vladimir Megre had just made love for the first time, and for Vladimir this was an experience unmatched by any other. He felt a bliss and energy that was sustained, a feeling of aliveness he hadn’t experienced before. The act of lovemaking for Vladimir had always involved leaving him feeling tired and depleted. His feelings of elation come to a halt as Anastasia informs him that he won’t want to connect with a woman in that ‘older’ way again. He freaks out. He feels lost and betrayed, caught up in the belief that to make love in such a conscious way as he did with Anastasia is a rare event and that his own carnal needs will now not be met. He feels desolate and angry. Anastasia holds space for him as he moves through his turmoil, taking in the new information and awareness, which is unsettling his old belief systems. He releases his anger towards women, at the collective female population, which in his experience lures and attracts men by showing off their breasts, their legs and revealing themselves in ways that stir up uncomfortable feelings of lust and desire. He’s confused. He loves women, yet hates them. He feels powerful yet powerless over something he cannot quite control. A woman’s role, her integrity, what she stands for, comes at the forefront of his consciousness and Anastasia offers an explanation:
‘The pure divine intention of a woman’s beauty is to engender and support in men the spirit of the poet, the artist, the creator. But to do that, women themselves must be pure. If there is not sufficient purity they start to attract men by fleshy charms and the outward beauty of empty vessels. In the upshot men are deceived and the women suffer their whole lives on account of this deception. The change can happen through women that can grasp the truth and their own purpose.’
As I read those words, a feeling in my heart started to swell up. At the same time I also felt a sadness, as something was touched in me, as I started to feel into the places where so many of us women can find ourselves, when we do walk around as empty vessels seeking love and validation. It’s not a point I want to labour because it’s pretty much obvious. Mammoth industries have been built upon a woman’s feeling of emptiness to paint up the outside of the vessel, whilst it stealthily feeds the suffering inside. Many more subtle forms of manipulative play are all around us, as women furtively size each other up, check out each other’s hips, breasts and curves to consider whose fleshy charms could compete with mine. I’m not exempt from this game. It’s been around me all my life, and whether I live in Sydney as a funky corporate chick with the latest hot suit and pink stilettos, or I live in Byron Bay and wear a free-flowing frock and goddess jewellery, it’s still the same game.
It’s more interesting to ponder on what Anastasia is alluding to when she talks of a woman’s divine intention and of what is possible when a woman comes from a place that is totally pure. It reminds me of what I read in another wonderful book, The Thirteen Original Clan Mothers by Jamie Sams. The introduction to the book is called ‘The Legacy of Woman’. In this section, Sams writes about the Native American story of Creation, of the First World of Love that was destroyed in fire as a result of greed. She writes about the tears of love and compassion that were shed by the Earth Mother as she cried for her two-legged children caught up in the illusion of pain and separation. These tears were to be the medicine that would transform the separation into wholeness again, and in the Dreamtime, seeds of love and compassion were planted in the hearts of every human’s female side. ‘Today’ Sams writes, ‘the Original Dream of Wholeness is being nurtured in the hearts of all women worldwide. It is being birthed through their shared visions as they open their dreams to the light of love and build those dreams in tangible form.’
There is much talk today of the Divine Feminine returning back to her rightful place on the planet and of the Goddess force coming back to birth a new earth of peace and love. This is all wonderful and exciting but she bears the risk of staying stuck with a New Age fluffy label on her, unless we really start looking inwards and consider with our hearts instead of our heads what this means for each of us. Where does a woman’s longing to connect with the Goddess actually come from? Again, I’m postulating myself as the example here and I can assure you that that there have been many times when the longing has come from a place of lack, a place of emptiness, where I have sought to validate my own existence as a woman. Yet again I’ve fuelled that game of manipulation, in a subtle but powerful way.
It’s a game of manipulation that is powerful because it has ramifications beyond the woman’s own sense of worth. There is polarity in everything and if we subscribe to the notion advocated by Jamie Sams and many others – that it is women that can birth a new evolved state of consciousness – then the opposite is also true. Where a woman keeps feeding the game, where she keeps feeding the emptiness inside, she feeds a collective monster that is far greater than her own individual suffering. She feeds the suffering of those around her and the suffering of many she does not even know.
Such is her power. There is a great power in being a woman, and with any power, responsibility comes along in equal measure. As Vladimir realises in his encounter with Anastasia, a woman has the potential to infuse man with energies of sustained bliss and creativity. She also has the potential to leave him drained and exhausted. The lovemaking act is a metaphor for how we relate to everything else in our lives. Do we leave a legacy behind that is wilted, drained of its life force and ability to create? Or do we bid goodbye to our beloveds and the people in our lives, leaving them with a flutter in their heart and a feeling of aliveness that is beyond words? It is a beautiful thing to be a woman when she connects to her true purpose and allows the seeds of love and compassion to grow. And yet for this to happen a woman must journey within herself and fill any emptiness within her vessel with the love that always flows from the inside of what she truly is. It is the biggest, most powerful journey, and she does it for herself and for the entire world.
