Author: Anyaa McAndrew

This IS The Tipping point: Giving Death

by Anyaa McAndrew and Gary Stamper

A couple of years ago we lost Anyaa’s fifteen year-old Westie companion, Miss Lily, a shamanic healing dog if there ever was one. Miss Lily had already been through a couple of “shamanic deaths” where we almost lost her, but this time there was no saving her. Anyaa felt strongly that Miss lily was ready, and she made the heart-breaking decision to gift Miss Lily, and our community, with consciously “giving death’ to her. In a beautiful ceremony at one of Miss Lily’s favorite places, we gathered community, many of Anyaa’s Priestesses, the circle of men that were at the Cove, and with the help of our vet, Tami Shearer, we all said our goodbyes as we ushered in the conscious passing of this beloved friend, as the painless process took place. There was not a dry eye to be seen.

It seemed as if Miss Lily understood the process and surrendered to it, as we all did. Her passing was her last living gift to us, although her gifts continue to this day for all who hold her memory.

We all now face similar challenges, only on a global scale never before seen.

Classic Shamanism, as opposed to Core Shamanism, is generally entirely involuntary. The individual is chosen by the spirits, often with no warning, and is not allowed to refuse the “gift”, or they will suffer illness, and/or insanity, and/or death. Classic Shamanism is nearly always accompanied by a traumatic death-and-rebirth experience, after which the personality is radically changed.Core Shamanism, on the other hand, is generally entirely voluntary. The individual chooses the path, rather than being chosen for it by the spirits. Although the seeker may feel “drawn” to shamanic practices, they are not in danger of illness, insanity or death for refusing to follow a particular path. They may choose their own human teachers, and they may stop at any time; although their lives may be poorer for it, they will not usually be penalized by the spirits unless they have made specific bargains.
Our “Collapse” will be approached through both paths. We must choose to change or the change can choose us. One is consciously “giving death,” and the other is entirely out of our control.
Anyaa and I have chosen the marriage of the two paths to help birth in a new world using a process we’re calling “Integral Shamanism.” From the Integral path, it requires the widest perspectives possible, which means that we absolutely must step out of denial about what’s happening today: the collapse of the industrial age and the battle for control of the planet. From the Shamanic path, it means we must welcome and usher in the death of the old so the new can emerge. There’s a strong tendency around denial to think that if we just envision the future we want to live in, that we can make it happen, and to a degree, that’s true. We need a vision of where we want to go, but it cannot happen through reform or incremental change. Because our culture is so death phobic, and because we don’t really relish losing our lifestyles, we don’t want to focus on the death of the old.  It’s important to understand that WE must also die in the process, and that this deathing process is good and right. we are dying to the patriarchy within us. This frees us from the tyranny of a debt-based, consumerism at-the-expense-of-the-rest-of-the-world lifestyle that keeps us addicted, stuck and far from free.  Once we can really get that, we can cheer on the coming demise of the old way, we can re-learn from the shamanic traditions that death has a season and a cycle and is our ally. We can learn from death, and grieve, and then begin to move on into regeneration and rebirth with the new energy that we have gathered in the process.
The time is now and the cycle is complete. We need to “give death” to the old power structure that has controlled the planet, and we cannot give up or stop standing for what we believe. This is where the Integral Warrior lives. The reason we now have the ability to do this is because those power structures are crumbling and their actions are becoming more and more transparent by the minute: FEMA camps, GMO foods, vaccinations, surveillance, giving up our rights for safety, the outright theft of trillions of dollars going to the elites as they attempt to push the rest of world deeper into global totalitarianism. We recommend the recently released film “Thrive” to see the whole picture from a compassionate and well-informed perspective. Those who have bought and sold our country have been openly talking about “The New World Order” for quite some time. Even with all this information that is available to us, because of our denial, we still cannot stop thinking about these now known facts in terms of conspiracy theories. We don’t want to seem ‘crazy’ or like some kind of extremist, and we don’t want to think that the power elite could really be that malevolent, so we put our suspicions away and go back into a semi-sleep. That’s their plan: to keep us asleep long enough to implement their plans.
Our job now, men and women, as Integral Warriors, is to fight them with everything we have.  We cannot stop with only a vision of the future, we must gift the planet with the death of patriarchy and the power elite. We must be actively giving death to an already dying, but not dead, empire. By consciously entering into our planet’s Dark Night of the Soul, we engage the SacredActivist as championed by Andrew Harvey and expressed in his recent book, “TheHope“. The spark was ignited in December of 2010, following Mohamed Bouazizi’sself-immolation in protest of police corruption and ill treatment. A series of protests and demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa has become known as the “Arab Spring” even though not all participants in protests identify as Arab. To date, three governments have been overthrown as a result of the Arab Spring. It’s not hard to include the current OWS movement, first in the US, and now spreading across 80+ counties, as part of a greater whole, the hundredth monkey, the tipping point so desperately needed to shift us into the creative power of the next structure of consciousness that wants to emerge on the planet. As the Nation magazine points out, “After decades of exploitation, murder, and fraud, the corporate state is facing a genuine uprising of the people.” It’s about time.

Now, not all of these movements want the same thing. In the Arab Spring, most people want more freedom, better wages, and a chance at a middle class lifestyle. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that 7 billion people are not going to enjoy the same version of the middle class that we in the U.S. are in the process of losing.  In 2004, the United States accounted for 4.6 percent of the world’s population and 33 percent of global consumption–more than $9 trillion U.S. dollars.

Our role, as integral thinkers at the Strategic level of consciousness, or higher, is to first mid-wife in the death of the elite power structures, to hold the vision of those corrupt systems crumbling, and do whatever is needed to help them along as quickly as possible. Don’t be an observer in this drama. Don’t go back to thinking that we just need some good reforms, some band-aid fixes to help us hobble through to the next crisis. We have gone far beyond that, folks. Instead, if you are not informed, if you are avoiding reality, commit yourself to seeing the biggest possible picture of what is really happening on the planet. The number of information resources out there is staggering. Jump on board this very fast-moving train of consciousness, and don’t get lost in utopian visions of the future just yet. The time is NOW to help the shamanic deathing process. We must engage, because it’s only through sheer numbers of consciousness that we can break through to the other side where we have a chance to do everything differently.

We are winning, as is evidenced by the fact that the power elite can no longer hide anything from us, but we have to open our eyes and be willing to look at it. The outcome is not settled, and we can’t give up, and we can’t yet focus on the rebirth. We must focus first on Giving Death to the old ways.  If we act quickly, we may be able to mitigate some of the pain of powering down as opposed to collapsing.

In the meantime, we must remember that we can only help others if we first take care of ourselves. We are reminded of this every time we fly when we get our emergency flight instructions before taking off: “Put your drop-down oxygen mask on first.” In other words, give others the gift of your presence and wisdom in the new frontier….whatever that may look like.

Crosby-Nash on #Occupy

 

An Integral Approach to Consciously Collapsing

By Gary Stamper
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Something is glaringly absent in the Integral Community. As I point out in the introduction of my book, Awakening The New Masculine: The Path of the Integral Warrior,” here is the precipice humanity is teetering on:
 “Never before in human history has humankind been this close to a global psycho-social and spiritual awakening. At the same time, never have we been in such danger of being swept into a global totalitarianism, potentially more oppressive than any system known before. Technology, at the hands of little boys pretending to be men, has led us to this new geopolitical reality.”
What’s missing is paying attention to and addressing the biggest event that mankind has ever faced: The Shift.  As a result of this obvious omission, couched in multiple perspectives of first-tier thinking and shadow, I find it difficult to to think of the Integral Community as…well…integral. Even what might be the first stage of second-tier thinking, Integral, or turquoise in Wilber’s model of altitude, or yellow, in terms of Spiral Dynamics, with one of its primary focuses on competency,  lacks the compassion needed to empathize with the depth of pain that the coming changes are going to bring to the planet and the billions of people who will suffer through these times.
While the world, unions like the EU, nation states, and the people contained within these structures begin to feel the pain, and as things are speeding up, looking like a giant sink with the plug pulled with the accompanying whirlpool sucking everything down with with it, the Integral Community seems to be mostly ignoring the bigger picture.
Read More HERE

 

Shifting with the Perennial Principles: Truth, Beauty and Goodness by Anyaa T. McAndrew

My husband Gary & I were talking about what kind of winter we want to experience, and then we pulled the card Abundance, 3 of cups. We discussed how that meant to us that we were to practice more appreciation and express our love to each other more often. Goodness, Goddess, Love, Light….are all the same thing to me. I need Goodness to have a reason to live. They are a basic requirement to move through a winter where Gaia is birthing and the world as we have known it is shattering. 

I watched a short video tonite featuring an amazing song called “Creation Calls” and footage from the Planet Earth: Complete BBC Series. It was some of the most beautiful mother nature probably ever photographed. Beauty. How can we live without it and stay sane? I have never purchased a song from a Christian singers’ album, but I downloaded that beautifully arranged piece. The song calls me to honor heaven and earth and the intense human journey we are walking between them right now. Check it out at www.andiesisle.com/creation/magnificent.html 

Gary & I are hosting Conscious Transition community meetings in our Full Moon Sanctuary here in the mountains. We come together every few weeks or so and talk about how we are feeling, what we are doing to prepare, and what we believe about this Great Turning that we are in. That’s Truth. We seem to need to speak it aloud and express ourselves to feel connected. I noticed something really wonderful happening at our last meeting. The more we moved around the circle and the more personal truth was spoken, the more we all affirmed it in each other and spoke more of it. By the time we ended the meeting, everyone was filled with joy and enthusiasm.

Truth, Beauty and Goodness (Light, Love) seem to engender each other these days, They are bringing people together in ways that has perhaps never happened before, at least on this scale. If you cruise the internet, if you read your emails, if you talk to your people, you will find it, that is, if you are willing to move through your fears and see what is really happening on all levels.

On a physical level, we are hearing about the immanent collapse of the world monetary system, the violence, the people rising up and saying NO, the patriarchy striking back but still being challenged and exposed, the inept governments and silly politics. It’s trufascinating to witness the chaos and how it is all unraveling. On the other side the amazing inventions, ideas and potentials are staggering. I heard an interview last week with Benjamin Fulford and he encouraged us to take faith that the darkness this planet has seen for so long is indeed changing. Soon we may be able to actually invent and create the designs that have been suppressed for so long by the power elite. These days I am not even bothering to capitalize that term power elite as I have in the past. They are an outgoing ruling party all over the world.

Emotionally, the collective is breaking down and many are breaking through. Many of those I talk with express a very strong knowing that now is the time to work through our past and let it go. As my priestess sister Grandmother Ruth Anne says “We don’t need it anymore! I exist right here and right now”. As we complete a 16.4 billion year time wave, the past is in the way of our next step. So, many of us are participating in all kinds of processing work including Shamanic BreathworkTM, couple’s work, forgiveness work, recovery work, whatever works to gets us through the places where there is emotional stick-um. We really can get to a place where we feel good in our own skin, and in some kind of balance with enough truth, enough beauty and enough goodness.

Spiritually, the teachers and healers and celestial sourcers are giving us a mixed bag, but the same essential message. This is humanity’s butterfly moment! This is the time we have been waiting for and we are the Ones.  It is time to become multi-dimensional, loving, spirit-centered without letting religion get in the way, and with an Indigenous Spirit… trusting, open, wise, surrendered and  in love with the Earth. There are many messages about the civilizations here with us, assisting us behind the scenes and those of us who feel connected to the stars being called forward to help. If you are spiritually connected to what is happening, it seems that you are not only happily along for the ride, but ready to assist Mother Earth in her labor. As I am, you may be in awe of what is unfolding before our very eyes, because it is us!

This is the ride of our lives, of lifetimes, and we can choose to go through it kicking and screaming or with grace. It may not be easy at times, but if we can say yes to it, and feel gratitude and appreciation for the learnings, the many, many souls that are riding with us and those unseen realms that are assisting, we can be sure to be in the right place at the right time having just the right experience for our own leap in consciousness.

I myself am choosing to go through it with plenty of Truth; my eyes wide open in bearing witness to the suffering so that those who are suffering do not feel abandoned but blessed. I choose to help put an end to any suffering that I can influence, even if I simply imagine standing and watching on the inner planes. At the same time I choose to invest my witnessing in creating the new world, the promised birth into a new higher consciousness and thousands of years of peace, finally!

I have to have Beauty, too. To feel my own beauty, and the sensual beauty of nature and my four animals who along with the mountains, keep me connected to nature, is part of a daily experience that I ask for the Grace to never have to live without. I love really good healthy food, preparing it and enjoying it with my Beloved, my friends and my soul families. I cherish art and good music and lovemaking. A winter filled with friends and enjoyment of all kinds will deeply fulfill me.

And Goodness, Goddess, Love, Light  is the magnet that draws me forward in this transition. I get to learn how to vibrate faster, to open more fully to the celestial realms, to download more light and to express more love. When I slow down long enough I can feel the quickening, the intense energy that is coming through our atmosphere in the form of solar storms and comets and those energies I don’t have terms for. I feel and hear and see the Unity Consciousness that is taking root as hearts open, as my heart opens and we all collectively heal.

The leaves are turning in our Western North Carolina Mountains, and the view from my window affords me a daily panorama of Beauty. The Truth is that I can only live now and watch it unfold as I stay present with What Is. No one really knows what the future holds for any of us or for Earth. Great Mystery is in her finest hour. The Goodness calls me to seek the Light & Love of the Unseen Worlds and let it in.

May your Autumn be blessed with Truth, Beauty and Love.

Priestessing During Gaia’s Dark Night Before the Dawn

Anyaa McAndrew, MA, LPC, NCC, Ordained Priestess

What an amazing time to be alive! What is occurring on the planet these days is moving us at lightening speed. Can you feel it? Depending upon who you talk to, listen to, and read, you may feel depression, anguish, grief, anger, hope, inspiration, and upliftment all in the same day, or even in the same hour! Are we all becoming bi-polar, or is something else happening?  We are collectively finding ourselves faced with some of the most difficult situations, circumstances, challenges and patterns, depending upon what it is we need to move us into a place of surrender. For me personally, some days life is magical and grace-filled, and some are filled with complete disillusionment and frustration.

Would it make a difference if you knew that every day you are living the equivalent of 274 days? That every month you are living the equivalent of 8,000 years? The Pleiadians, keepers of the 5th Dimension, and through teachers like Barbara Marciniak and Barbara Hand Clow, tell us we are now moving at a frequency of 100,000 years per year! We are clearly at the Great Shift, the Turning of the Ages, the Collapse, the Planetary Dark Night of the Soul, the end of Patriarchy and the Mayan Calendar, and the end of time as we know it. We are also in a process of Ascension, moving into Unity Consciousness, and birthing a New Earth. That is a lot to hold spiritually, as tiny 3-D beings.  We are asked to do just that, to hold this vast terrain of consciousness within our consciousness, to hold the tension of the opposites, so that we can come all the way through these times into a new world on the other side. The more beings that have eyes to see, and ears to hear what is happening, the closer we get to the Tipping Point that gives us the momentum we need for the ride through to the other side. And what a ride it is!

 

Graphic by Prescott Hill

Sometimes I imagine that I am in a room filled with clocks and calendars. There are sundials, and grandfather clocks and pyramid calendars, alarms, timers, astrological wheels, and dates of all kinds floating around in this room. All of the clocks are going off at the same time and the calendars are all marked with intersecting dates and timings. The sense I get in this imaginary room is that I am here for a reason, a really important reason, and I am a part of this Great Timing. I have a part to play, and so do many others who are here with me or come and go from this place as I do.  I and We, are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, but not quite as simply as it sounds. The We is bigger than our egos, or even our soul’s plan. Our bigger multi-dimensional Selves are here with us and they have all signed up together for this Divine Appointment. What a party!

If Gaia is birthing into a new dimension, then I am going with her. Unity Consciousness implies that we are all in this together, aren’t we? Another way I imagine these times is that we are traversing a very narrow passageway as a Planetary Being, like going through the black hole that so many talk about at the center of our galaxy, the place where the Winter Solstice Sun has been rising for the past several years. In order to move through such a dangerous passageway, we must deconstruct, purify, dissolve, surrender and totally trust the Great Spirit. I imagine it getting very dark in some of our lives and on the planet as we move through this collective Dark Night of the Soul. On the other side is the Great Unknowable Mystery of a New Time on Planet Earth.

The Truth is, none of us knows what the future holds. Those who say they do, are just projecting one of many possible scenarios that are reflected back to us: good guesses and calculated scientific possibilities all the way to ancient prophecies and present channelings. Will we experience more earth changes, solar flares, a polar shift, 3 days of darkness, ETs walking among us, or Mother Earth continuing to give us really clear messages that she will no longer tolerate the rape of her land and the destruction of her species? As a woman of consciousness, perhaps a woman who carries the priestess vibration, what do you intuit about these times? Do you know that you are here for a good reason? Your life purpose has called you here. You have a front row seat in this theatre of Great Change. You have a place on the wheel of time as it ends, and then we start anew.

The calling to the Feminine is very loud these days. One of my favorite teachers, Lucia Rene, says that the Patriarchy has already been unplugged and now is the time for women to stop running away from what scares us. It is the time for us to step into our personal power, and our spiritual authority. Lucia calls this the Solar Feminine, the One who will step into leadership through feminine values like Economies of Care, Networks of Grace, and Communities of Compassion.

The Shamanic Priestess is one who understands that to die and be reborn many times in one lifetime is the hallmark of these times. She is a being who has walked on the edge and lived to tell about it. She is learning to confront her fears, to move her past through her, to a place of peaceful resolution, and to help others do the same. She knows the value of priestessing others. She sees and feels the pain and suffering in the world, and practices transmuting and blessing as much as she can, so that all of life on earth can shift. And she is the woman who knows she is Sacred and that everything she sees and everything she does can be Sacred. Making Sacred is also to bless, to sanctify, to honor, and give thanks for all the life forms that are leaving us, including many of those close to us, including people, animals, land masses, the great oceans, the rainforests and plant life, and all the old patterns that no longer serve us. The Sacred Woman has done this through the ages. She understands that these times call for ritual and ceremony because we are going through the biggest Rite of Passage this planet has ever known!

The Shamanic Priestess is also learning to be a midwife to what wants to come into life. She downloads the light, radiates compassion and love, and tells the truth, to shine on what we all really want to co-create. She learns to draw on the ancient wisdom in her DNA, in her bones, in her lineage as a sacred woman from the past, to inspire and enliven the new visions. Some call these codes of light that are now being activated by the intense astronomical activity happening on our planet. I feel it as subtle knowings that I am shifting my perceptions and things that used to be important to me are falling away. Time is speeding up and my consciousness seems to amp up, and I want to slow way down. I want to savor every moment and live in the NOW, not the future or the past. The teacher of my lineage Nicole Christine used to say “The Hopis tell us that when the world speeds up, slow down.”

We are slowing down so that we can really feel all the ways we exist in every dimension, every space and time, to merge in this time, the end of time, into a new way of being.

This article is written to be a call to the Shamanic Priestess, because her time is NOW.

If you have an inner priestess that wants to come forth into the world of the Shift, now is the time. If you already claim yourself as priestess, then you know the value of holding the field for others, because others already come to you for counsel. You are not afraid of your power and you feel it is part of your Sacred Work to serve in these times. You are in good company with thousands of other women on the planet who are waking up to the Priestess Within.

 

Why It Is Wise to Worship a Woman

Arjuna Ardagh

A few days ago, after a particularly exquisite evening with my wife Chameli, I put this post up on Facebook before going to bed:

“I have had many, many great teachers in my life. A super abundance. No one and nothing comes close to the woman who is now asleep in the bedroom. My marriage has become the guru, the salvation, the muse, the crack through which the divine shines through.”

When I woke up the next morning, there were the usual offerings of people who liked the post as well as comments. One man had the vulnerability and courage to post this on facebook:

“Thank you Arjuna for this sharing, I feel like [I’m] in front of a choice which is between feeling envious of what you have and I don’t, or instead to decide that ‘I want that too,’ and, as you show, it is possible…”

I was touched.

Over the next days, I got several more messages like this from men: vulnerable men, honest men, rare and courageous men. They came in as private messages on Facebook or through our website, and they all said basically the same thing: “I read your Facebook post. I want what you have. Show me how to get it.”

So, friends, here it is. The short guide on how to worship a woman, and why it’s the wisest thing that a man can do. First of all, lets pop a few very understandable doubts that you might have. I’m familiar with all of them.

1. “I’m wounded and damaged in my relationships to the feminine.” So am I, dear brother, so am I. My parents divorced in a messy way when I was four. I grew up alone with my mother. She did her very best to provide for me, but she was unhappy and insecure. By the time I started to have relationships with women myself in my early teens, I discovered that I had a mountain of resentments, fears, and separation in my relation to the feminine. The conscious practice of worship can become a part of healing the wounds.

2. “Arjuna, you’re lucky. You’ve got an incredible partner. I’m together with a woman who’s not like Chameli.” I really don’t have the ultimate answer to that doubt or question. It certainly could seem to be the case that I’ve been lucky in finding a great woman, but here’s how it happened for me. I’ve had a lot of less lucky connections in my life. I’ve experienced my share of the manipulative side of the feminine: the victim, the rageful, the vengeful. And I have seen the ugly side of the masculine psyche in myself. A few weeks prior to meeting Chameli, my wife, something deep and profound shifted in me, which I believe can shift for anyone in the same way.

3. “I don’t have a partner at all, and I sometimes doubt if I’ll ever meet anybody.” Being with a partner where worship is not flowing, or not being with a partner at all, are basically two aspects of the same situation: you’ve had an intuition or a glimpse of the possibilities of a deeper love, and you want more of it. The solutions are the same.

4. “I feel my heart is closed down. I live in my head a lot, and I wouldn’t even know what worship was if it broke into my house at 2 o’clock in the morning and held me at gunpoint.” That’s where the whole thing starts for all of us, when we realize that we don’t yet know how to love. And that’s that the big question that you have to consider: “Is that okay with me?” Never mind how much money you make, or how many friends you have on Facebook, no matter how nice a house you live in, or no matter how big a car you drive, no matter how impressive your partner’s bust size, or how much you meditate and become spiritual… have you loved for real, in a total and undefended way? If not, and here’s where you have to be honest with yourself, is that OK with you? Is it OK to die one day without the heart’s gift having been fully given?

Eight or nine years ago, I came to that question in myself, exactly that, and I discovered that the answer was, if I was was raw and vulnerable and uncomplicated, that it was actually not OK. If I died one day without having fully loved, it would not have truly been a life well lived.

Many many years ago, I went to Bali for a vacation, on my own. I met up with some other young travelers there and we hired a Jeep to take us on a tour of the island. We drove up right to the highest point of the island, where Tourists don’t usually go. Our guide took us to one of the most sacred temples. It was surrounded by a big brick wall with an ornate entrance. After removing our shoes and wrapping scarves around our heads, we stepped together through this entrance. Inside, there was a short courtyard and then another brick wall with another entrance. After more preparations of lighting incense and giving offerings, we stepped through the second entrance. We were allowed to go through the opening in one more wall, but that was it. All together there were ten walls around the deity in the middle. Hindus could go beyond the fourth wall. Devotees of that particular deity could go beyond the fifth wall, and so it went on. The only people allowed to approach the deity directly were those who had given their lives completely and totally to its worship. Everyone else could come a little closer, a little closer, to the innermost beauty, but not all the way to the center.

I’m not a big believer of the worship of statues, but there’s a beautiful symbolism to what I saw there, because a woman’s heart is just like that. At the essence of every woman’s heart is the divine feminine. It contains everything that has ever been beautiful, or lovely, or inspiring, in any woman, anywhere, at any time. The very essence of every woman’s heart is the peak of wisdom, the peak of inspiration, the peak of sexual desirability, the peak of soothing, healing love. The peak of everything. But it’s protected, for good reason, by a series of concentric walls. To move inwardly from one wall to the next requires that you intensify your capacity to devotion, and as you do so, you are rewarded with Grace. This is not something you can negotiate verbally with a woman. She doesn’t even know consciously how to open those gates herself. They are opened magically and invisibly by the keys of worship.

If you stand on the outside of the outermost wall, all you have available to you, like many other unfortunate men, is pornography. For $1.99 a minute, you can see her breasts, maybe her vagina, and you can stimulate yourself in a sad longing for deeper love.

Step through another gate, and she will show you her outer gift-wrapping. She’ll look at you with a certain twinkle in her eye. She’ll answer your questions coyly. She’ll give you just the faintest hint that there is more available.

Step through another gate with your commitment, with your attention, with the small seedlings of devotion, and she’ll open her heart to you more. She’ll share with you her insecurities, the way that she’s been hurt, her deepest longings. Some men will back away at this point. They realize that the price they must pay to go deeper is more than they are willing to give. They start to feel a responsibility. But for those few who step though another gate, they come to discover her loyalty, her willingness to stick with you no matter what, her willingness to raise your children, stick up for you in conversation, and, if you are lucky, even pick up your dirty socks now and then. And so it goes on. You’ve got the gist by now.

Somewhere around the second wall from the center, she casts the veils of her personality aside, and shows you that she is both a human being and also a portal into something much greater than that. She shows you a wrath that is not hers, but all women’s. She shows you a patience that is also universal. She shows you her wisdom. At this point you start to experience the archetypes of women, who have been portrayed as goddesses and mythological figures in every tradition.

Then, at the very center, in the innermost temple itself, all the layers of your devotion are flooded with reward all at once. You discover the very essence of the feminine, and in a strange way that is not exactly romantic, but profoundly sacred all the same, you realize that you could have got here with any woman if you had just been willing to pass through all the layers of initiation. Any woman is every woman, and every woman is any woman at the same time. When you love a woman completely, at the very essence of her being, this is the one divine feminine flame. It is what has made every woman in history beautiful. It’s the flame behind the Mona Lisa, and Dante’s Beatrice, and yes, also Penelope Cruz and Heidi Klum. You discover the magic ingredient which has lead every man to fall in love with a woman.

When you learn how to pay attention to the essence of the feminine in this way, you fall to the floor in full body prostration, tears soaking your cheeks and clothes, and you wonder how you could have ever taken Her, in all of Her forms, for granted even for a second.

So just a couple small questions remain. First, do you get what I’m talking about? Does it jive for you? Does it make sense? And second, if yes, how are you going to get from where you are now to being able to the full capacity of your heart to love for real? I’d be glad to share more about this if we get to know each other better, but here’s how you get started.
First, do what I did, and create an altar in your room dedicated to Divine Feminine. Put only symbols of the feminine on it. I have a painting called “Beatrix” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I have a statue of Quan Kin. Populate your altar with anything that reminds you of the feminine, and spend a few minutes of the day in worship. Yes, worship. Adoration. Devotion. Offer up rose petals. Offer poems. Offer everything, and beg Her to reveal Her innermost essence to you. This will work miracles whether you’re single and waiting to meet the right woman or whether you’re already in relationship and long to meet your woman in a deeper way.

The second way to get started: make a practice, a discipline, of telling your woman, or any woman, ten times a day something which you adore about her. “I love the smell of your shampoo.” “I love the way you laugh.” “The color of your eyes is so beautiful.” Of course, you need to keep it appropriate. You can go as far out on a limb as you like if you’re in relationship with a woman, but with anyone else remember the gates. Keep you communication appropriate to the gate number that you find yourself at. Appreciation the curve of a woman’s breast, for example, if she happens to be the cashier at the supermarket, would equate more to harassment than worship.
So here’s enough to get started. Of course, there’s a lot more we can say about this. Feel free to post your comments below, and I’ll use them as the foundation for future blogs.

Follow Arjuna Ardagh on Twitter: www.twitter.com/awakeningcoach