Feminism and the Election: The Gift of Acceleration by Kelly Brogan, MD and Louise Kuo Habakus

© Kelly Brogan MD. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Kelly Brogan MD. For more articles, sign up for the newsletter at www.kellybroganmd.com

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Cars were at a 12 minute standstill and the traffic light repeatedly cycled green to red. In the streets, throngs of sign-toting New Yorkers were giving voice to their passion. There were tears and profanity. The waves of protesters streamed endlessly. “F**K TRUMP” was the choice mantra of this movement. The perplexed Nepalese driver turned and said in his broken English, “Why is dese womens mad? I know what woman is. Hillary has not even little kindly heart. She is no woman.”

The Candidate Archetypes

If we can zoom out and dispassionately examine the leading characters in this near-Shakespearean drama, we observe that there is a unique alchemy at play here. For the first time in US history, we have the Democratic Party — perceived as a heart-centered ideology — aligned with a female candidate, and the Republican Party — perceived as cold, self-interested pragmatists — aligned with not just a male candidate, but a caricature of rapacious patriarchy.

With the help of mainstream media’s carefully curated and theatrical representation of reductionist platitudes, an expected voting majority was led down the yellow brick road to meet Oz; Oz, in this case, being the redemptive victory of the first ever female president over this embarrassment of a Republican candidate.

As the media showcased Trump’s unscripted and uncensored boorish behavior, we watched women rally. They donned pantsuits. They exhorted each other towards unity in indignation (“Wake TF up! He’s disgusting. He hates disabled people! He’ll be the end of us all.”). They assembled in places like Wellesley College, desperately eager to bear witness to the piercing of the glass ceiling and usher in a new era. We watched as leading female celebrities campaigned to seize this moment in history.

Women all over this country needed Hillary to be the redemptor. To heal us. To right the wrongs and to confer a power we have felt stripped from us.

It’s only natural that women would look to a woman to help lead us home.

What happens when in our desperation for the solution to be simplified, we allow ourselves to be duped… when we can’t bear to scratch beneath the surface to recognize our projections and how we participate in our own co-option?

The Shackles of Old Feminism

Co-option? What? How?

Yes. It’s time to take a good hard look at a type of feminism that, practiced today, only serves to keep us indentured and arrested in our development as women.

Classical feminism is men versus women. It’s burning bras. It’s fighting for what’s ours. It’s throwing our lipstick away, gunning for every shred of external validation offered to men — from clothing to salary to parenting roles to frontline combat units. It’s “no thanks, I got the door for myself.” It’s even cultivating aggression and hate.

It may feel empowering. But when we engage feminism primarily from the masculine principle, it contributes further to our silent and chronic oppression.

Look at where playing the game has gotten us. One in four of us is medicated beyond any contact with our own souls, let alone our emotions or our psyches. We are neutered of our hormones, electively and passively, without true informed consent. We are placed in stirrups in our moment of awakening, strapped and commandeered by men (and women) who seek to control and dominate through fear. We shear off our breasts and slice out our ovaries and uteri (and vaccinate our babies) to be safe and smart according to industry-defined standards.

We have done this under the illusion of our sovereignty as we float more and more distantly away from creative power, from cosmic feminine energy, from the great divine mother of the Adi Shakti.

The Masculine Principle in Extremis

We know this old style of feminism because we’ve lived it.

So many of us women have been feminists in the masculine principle for years. Decades, actually. We have said “Anything you can do, I can do (better)…” We have looked for places to exercise force, totalitarian viewpoints, aggression, and righteousness through the lens of entitlements. We have seized on birth control as a feminist’s right; the elective c-section as the empowered and civilized choice; and the cervical cancer, human papillomavirus Gardasil vaccine as a preventive boon for women everywhere.

This kind of feminism is evidence of women divested of our own divinity, giving our power away to the perceived opposition. It is Stockholm syndrome at its worst.

We must get this.

When a woman who puts aside her fierce grace, her deep nurturance, her unparalleled powers of intuition, and her unique potential to create a collective, she becomes trapped in her masculine principle. There are many of us. But it is time to evolve. Let us explain…

The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Hillary Clinton represents our tendency to be appeased with exactly what keeps us imprisoned. She is not a feminist’s candidate though she may appear, in form, to be.

She is, in fact, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

What did that taxi driver mean by her absence of heart? Hillary is one, perhaps extreme, example of the illusion of feminine progress, with all of her masculine principle foregrounded and her shadow elements festering beneath the surface.

There are many examples of this. Watch this video interview of one of the true activists on this planet lays that case bare. And also consider where you get your information.

You won’t hear this true story from mainstream media, take it from us! When we rely on the mainstream media for our news, we fail to see the strings pulling on the marionettes as we take in the show. We may absorb the platitudes of party politics and the triumphalism of Hillary’s gender-busting candidacy. But we fail to see the Story of Separation, the subterranean hate, and the old model of feminism that she also represents. Sometimes, it’s hard to even entertain the possibility that what we want to believe and what is true may actually be in tense conflict.

To elect her because she has a vagina is a more aggressive act of sexism than it appears. It is a vote for stasis in this story, for the status quo. It is a vote for the world-destroying machine to which she is beholden. It’s why we women feel placated to have put a vaginal canal in the oval office. It’s the excitement and celebration of illusory gains while we drift farther away from our true prospects of healing.

The Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing

On the other hand, Trump is, indeed, a wolf in wolf’s clothing.

He is the crass womanizer, the ostentatious vulgarian, and the attention-seeking chauvinist. He is boastful, blunt, and rude… the embodiment of the patriarchal masculine exposed.

But the real gift in this moment in time is that we can look at what the unbalanced masculine is in a man and in a woman. And we can use this insight to reframe our expectations for what an empowered woman and national leader can and will be.

Maybe the system needs to fall apart so we can, together, begin to grow the tendrils of a new, better system to replace it.

In order to respond to this call to action, we need transparency. We can work with the wolf, particularly, if he is lone, without a pack of already deeply established industry and dynasty-level corporate and financial ties to Big Pharma, Big Chem, Big Ag, and Big Business. Think about how many liberties we have sacrificed in the name of “safety” — only to learn that the real danger lurks inside. That the fox is indeed guarding the henhouse. In many ways, the necessary change — environmental, consciousness, healing-based change — will come from the people, not from the president.

Here’s why we, and sacred activists like Bayo Akomolafe and Charles Eisenstein are saying that they felt this coming and that perhaps this needed to happen.

We all need to wake up. Sometimes Kali-esque destruction is a part of this process, and can catalyze the deepest forms of healing and regeneration. We need to activate the divine feminine to heal this planet.

Trump is something we can work with, push against, define ourselves through if we use the rupture of his election to ignite and channel latent energy. Sometimes the darkness reveals the path toward the light and invites more and more of us to walk it than would otherwise.

The Hurt is a Buried Treasure

The process that has been kicked off is one of a collective mourning. At the risk of generalization, those who are grieving today, wailing, and gnashing their teeth, are those whose hearts we need most enlivened to usher in the New Story. The grace in this is that people are now feeling.

As activists on behalf of women, families, and health freedom, we recognize this feeling because we have been peeking beneath the veil of the Mainstream Media narrative for collective decades.

We have felt what millions are feeling today, for a quite a long time.

It is, potentially, the first stage of true awakening to service to feel this deep ache inside. These emotions have been IN THERE all along, simmering and percolating and roiling. In our sisters, mothers, and aunts. In our girlfriends, wives, and daughters. The rage, the grief, the indignation, the rip roaring pissed off, seriously God dammit, I’m not taking it anymore, ENOUGH is ENOUGH line in the sand. But we’ve been sublimating these feelings for decades. We can count on two hands how many truly activated women we’ve walked this path with over the past several years.

After all, there’s been plenty of fuel to our fire. There are a lot of Establishment-engineered transgressions that could’ve woken all of us up. But many have been unaware or otherwise not set off by the knowledge that there is more to the story than meets the eye and a whole lot to be pissed about. We find ourselves in a place of seriously grave instability on this planet. It’s an instability that cuts to the core of all of our ecosystems from environmental to human to microbial. To begin with, we have:

So much is so wrong. We feel the pain of this inside and now maybe you do too, more consciously.

The anxiety, depression, and fear are palpable. We know that we are disconnected from something vital. Men and women alike have lost contact with the proverbial mother as we are divorced from our greater sense of recognition, safety, belonging, and love. We know this wound. It is a feminine wound. A community wound. A family wound.

But we also know, deep down that there is, indeed, a more beautiful world that we know is possible. And we look upon the tears and screams emerging today, in the wake of this election, with a feeling of expansive possibility for the women of the world.

The induced awakening of women nationwide will be a gift of acceleration to us as a planet. Trump is, perhaps, exactly what we need to wake women up to ourselves rather than to lead us to the celebration of our own continued captivity in a narrative that has no room for our divine feminine power.

Moving Into a New Feminism

It is time to move into the new feminism. Our feminism. The feminism that the world demands to heal today. It is not a warring posture, vaginas versus cocks. It’s not women who seek to mimic the dress, comportment, and energy of stereotypical men. It’s not the level playing field. It’s not “our turn.”

This new feminism takes a good hard look at our several thousand year history of divorce from community, matriarchy, and deep wisdom. It sees that our collective hurt must be owned and worked with and fully integrated for true healing. It understands that the most powerful force on this planet is a woman’s divine compass — a compass that only knows the feeling of the collective as one. It knows that we can shift out of our righteousness and into a place of core stability because we already have everything we need if we choose to trust it, feel it, and own it.

We women are working with the deepest powers of manifestation and creation known to this world. But we have given it away.

It’s time for a reclamation.

The reclamation is not a grabbing. It’s simply a radiating. It’s an energetic commitment to healing the self in service of healing the planet. Perhaps, as Regena Thomashauer says in her new book, we need to let our pussies (not our minds) lead the way out of victimhood and into radiance. Yes, this much maligned, abused, and despised part of us that we need only to reunite with as our most trusted connection to a power we have given away.

We must let the rage and pain move through us, come together in ritual, and then work creatively with the energy that only knows to see the other as self. To see each human as a cell in the greater organism. Uniquely, instructively essential.

Hillary has shown us what the old feminism looks like, mired in orthodox power structures, dogma, and non-integration. The new feminism is emboldened by possibilities herein. It is always curious and compelling, the gifts that pain and suffering will bring if we let them flow to the surface, swirl around, and transform us in the crucible of a heart-centered consciousness. If we do this, together… if we let the seeds planted by this election grow, they will yield the leaders, healers, and true earth-bound revolutionaries who will ready us for the New Story in ways that are not yet made apparent by the current binary system of options.

Perhaps the wolf in wolf’s clothing will inadvertently and even unintentionally heal the entire landscape.

 

Kelly Brogan, MD

Kelly Brogan, M.D. is a Manhattan-based holistic women’s health psychiatrist, author of the New York Times bestselling book, A Mind of Your Own, and co-editor of the landmark textbook, Integrative Therapies for Depression. She completed her psychiatric training and fellowship at NYU Medical Center after graduating from Cornell University Medical College, and has a B.S. from MIT in Systems Neuroscience. View full bio. Want to share this article on your own blog? View our reposting guidelines.

Walking as a WiseWoman by Anyaa T McAndrew

There is a Karen Taylor-Good song that we use in the Shamanic Priestess Process™ called Use Me Up, that goes like this: “ When I meet my maker and my time on earth is done, when I stand before Her (word change mine) looking back on where I’ve come, I can only pray that with Her grace and love, She will say,” I used you up”. Use me up, let me give everything I am, pour out my heart and soul according to your plan. Use me up, let there be nothing of me left, no chance to love untaken, not one regret.”

As we move into the 2nd half or even the last 3rd or 4th of our lives, seasoned women of consciousness, what I am calling The Shamanic WiseWoman, know that time is now precious to give our remaining gifts to the world, to “use up” our time here fulfilling our purpose, telling our stories and leaving our own unique legacy. Our spice and seasoning  comes from years of hard knocks, tough lessons, and dark nights of the soul, and as equally from the joyful celebrations, pleasures and adventures of our lives.

We are intended to honor the gifts we have already given, and the thresholds already crossed, so that we can gain the energy to renew ourselves again and again. In the holy spaces we can create together as sacred women, we can rise from the ashes of old wounds and old ways, and consecrate our lives toward new ways of offering ourselves in service to our world which can so greatly benefit from our wisdom.

I am thoroughly enjoying walking as a WiseWoman these days, but that was not so until recently. I have been an eternal youth most of my life, choosing not to have children and instead focus on my sacred work and my “freedom” to be eccentric and forge new trails. I have been discovering new facets of myself as I embrace my wisdom and care less about self-image, accomplishment and achievement. Through all the twists and turns of my life, I have indeed cultivated the mother energy within me. Now she is becoming the grandmother! I am also discovering a new kind of spiritual sensitivity, a profound connection to the animal kingdom, and a deepening connection to my own inner mate.

These revelations were not available to me in younger versions of self.  I am able to be more present-centered, less distracted by the glamours of the world, as I drop into the last cycles of my life. I no longer have goals, because I want to follow more of what inspires me and less of what drives me.  Because I encounter it more often, I am drawn to explore the mysteries of death these days, and I look forward to doing this with a strong circle of strong women.

Are you eager to engage your own inner WiseWoman?  Do you savor the experience of a women’s circle?  Are you willing to ceremonially integrate your life lessons so far?  Are you ready to concentrate your life force on your sacred soul purpose, even as you move toward befriending the death mysteries?

We (Mary Manera, me, and Jacoba Groenwegen) completed our first session October 19th-23th at Isis Cove Community NC, as the Smoky Mountains were on fire with autumn color. For those who could not make the October session, we will repeat this first session in Cincinatti Feb 23-26th, 2017. Then we will form a committed circle to go forward to the Cincinnati in late April and complete in late June. An application process ensures you are resonate with where we are going, and you will be a huge part of the evolution of the Shamanic WiseWoman Process™.

Visit this page for more detail:

https://goddessontheloose.com/shamanic-wisewoman-process-path-of-the-sacred-feminine-elder/

McAndrew, MA, LPC, NCC is an Ordained High Priestess, and a congregational leader of Full Moon Sanctuary. She is dedicated to the path of the Divine Feminine, facilitating women’s awakening and empowerment for the past 40 years. She is the creatrix of the Shamanic Priestess Process, the Shamanic Magdalane Mysteries and retreats, workshops and processes for women. For more, visit www.goddessontheloose.com

Marianne Williamson on Women in Religion (Powerful!)

Marianne Williamson speaking on women and religion at the Parliament of World’s Religions, in October 2015, Salt Lake City Utah.

Marianne’s voice is clearly becoming more powerful as she moves even more directly into her wise woman, sacred activist, priestess self…..the Goddess and this goddess, is fierce! And it’s about time that these words be spoken….thank you Marianne, for speaking on behalf of the herstory of women in patriarchal religions, and the priestess within all of us.

 

Women Awakening through the Priestess Archetype by Anyaa

YURT Altar

Initiatory ceremonies are the domain of all religions and spiritual paths. The path of the female mystic, or priestess, can be seen in its own light in these times of great turmoil and change at the “Turning of the Ages.” It is unique not only because it is a feminine path, but because it has been absent from our psyches for thousands of years. We have witnessed the shadow side of the Divine Masculine, the Patriarchy, gain ascendancy and foster many forms of oppression, including the suppression of women’s rights, Holy Inquisitions, and the negation of feminine mysticism. Over millennia we’ve had priests but no priestesses; a male God, but no Goddesses. It has been out of balance, but things are changing.
One of the features of Patriarchy has been an emphasis on “solar initiations” or those that focus on transcending the body to join with Spirit. Fire-walking, warrior sweat-lodges, the Sun Dance, mental meditations, some martial arts, and many forms of vision quests use the mind and endurance to reach out of the body and thereby elevate consciousness. By contrast, the Divine Feminine employs “lunar initiations,” or those that call Spirit into the body, a welcome alternative to jettisoning out into the universe to make a connection! The feminine loves the sparkle of life, the senses, getting down into body, the pleasures and pains, joys and tears of earth.
Another feature of Patriarchy is our loss of soul connection to our bodies. The result is that most of us center ourselves from our neck up, denying the life-force energy that enlivens us and makes life worth living. We identify heavily with our thinking and action based on thought alone. But as women reclaim their Divine Feminine natures, the true feeling function of femininity gets to play and be re-membered. Shakti dances into ecstatic bliss. Aphrodite revels in sacred sexual pleasure. Pele fully runs the life-force energy of fiery passion. Inanna consciously surrenders to the death-rebirth mysteries. Baubo laughs her bawdy belly laugh. Kuan Yin cries her tears of compassion for all living things, while Gaia pours forth her infinite abundance. Priestess consciousness allows the many faces of the Goddess to be soulfully expressed, as the human woman learns to step into her spiritual power.
After a long suppression, the Divine Feminine and the priestess archetype are returning to cultural consciousness and acceptance. Women walk differently on a spiritual path when they are fully encouraged to express their soulful nature. They are wild, willful, chaotic, earthy, sensual, sweet, empathic, merging, deeply emotional, passionate and compassionate. These natural soul qualities are the qualities of the Divine Feminine seeking to awaken the priestess within the woman. Through our wild desires and intricate passions, we find our soul stirring and our spirit calling. We stop silencing our deepest dreams and allow the voice of the Goddess to come through as our own. This awakening, can result in the full empowerment of a woman as a priestess whose temple is the everyday world. She exerts her influence in all of her roles—as daughter, mother, lover, career woman, neighbor and in every interaction she has, moment to moment. The divine feminine and the divine feminist are joined. We can embrace a movement of soul and spirit, human and divine. We can experience the sacred in our daily lives and express our life force energy in everything we do. We can include the essential factors that make the new feminine mysticism, the priestess within, grounded and practical, yet imaginative and sacred.

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The Shamanic Priestess Process is Coming to Central Florida!

Sun in the hands

WHAT IS THE SHAMANIC PRIESTESS PROCESS—AND WHY SHOULD I BE INTERESTED?
The Shamanic Priestess Process is a life-changing initiation & spiritual process for women. As the Shift of the Ages progresses, as the Feminine is called to take the stage, we… as sacred women walking a spiritual path… discover that indeed, We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For! The Divine Feminine is returning, and women are called to participate in the healing of ourselves and our planet.

We learn that the old “power over others” patriarchal model has kept us from discovering who we really are. The Shamanic Priestess Process empowers women to walk through their own fears to gain their own personal power, magnetism, and explore their passions.

Shamanic Priestess Circles become catalysts of change in the lives of every woman in Circle.. We awaken, enliven and integrate the priestess within. We find our own sacred work, and bring forth our unique gifts to serve ourselves and the world in a bigger way.

WHEN IS THE SHAMANIC PRIESTESS PROCESS COMING TO CENTRAL FLORIDA?
This month, from November 14-16 2014, we’ll do several previews around central Florida, to “gather the women.” We’ll be doing them in New Smyrna Beach, Deltona, Casselberry, and Kissimmee/Celebration.

The preview will give you a “taste” of what the Shamanic Priestess Process is like. If it resonates for you, we’ll invite you to join us for the FIRST Central Florida Shamanic Priestess Process Circle, which will begin in January and complete in July. (More details on the below and on our Facebook page.)

I hope you’ll be able to join us in November; below are the dates/times of the gatherings. Please choose one you prefer and email Melody or Roxanne, our coordination team, immediately to confirm. We have limited space and it’s first come, first in.
1. FRIDAY NOVEMBER 14, 2014 from 7 to 9:30pm in New Smyrna
2. SATURDAY NOVEMBER 15, 2014 from 11am to 1:30pm in Deltona
3. SATURDAY NOVEMBER 15, 2014 from 7 to 9:30pm in the Orlando area
4. SUNDAY NOVEMBER 16, 2014 from 1 to 3:30pm in the Kissimmee/Celebration area
YES, you may invite your friends! And YES, teens are invited to attend with their mothers!

The 2.5 hours we’ll spend together at the preview will answer your questions and allow you to feel your resonance with the Process. We’ll connect via phone or Skype with Anyaa McAndrew, our facilitator, who has been seeding the Shamanic Priestess Process around the U.S. and Canada for the past 14 years. Find more about Anyaa on this website.
The power of our gatherings won’t always be immediately felt, so we also have a Facebook page for women to post questions, ideas, insights and allow the energy to build.

WHEN WILL THE FIRST SHAMANIC PRIESTESS CIRCLE IN CENTRAL FLORIDA BEGIN?
In 2015. On Jan. 23-25, we’ll experience our Shamanic Priestess Introductory weekend retreat. You can register and attend the January retreat (which is only $260) without committing to the entire Shamanic Priestess Circle. After the January retreat, only women who are committed to the Circle will be able to attend the remaining sessions.

Our first central Florida circle will have 20 women and will run from January 2015 to July 2015, meeting every other month. In these gatherings, we’ll explore:
• The New Priestess & Women’s Mysteries
• Initiation of the Priestess Within
• Enlightening the Shadow Between Women
• Telling the Stories of Our Spiritual Journeys
• The Archetypes We Carry
• Sacred Marriage with the Inner Masculine
• Conscious Death of the Old Self
• Sacred Rebirth of the Shamanic Priestess
• Emergence & Ordination

I’M INTERESTED. WHERE CAN I GET MORE INFORMATION?
Go here for the flyer, and for more information about the Process go here, for audios describing the Shamanic Priestess go here and for what women who have done the Process have to say, go here. You can also read interviews here and articles here!

Callanish, the Sacred Feminine and the New Earth: On the Grand Cross of 2014 by Anyaa McAndrew

Callaniush MoonriseWhen we know about the sacred timings, and choose to participate in them, we have the capacity to influence the outcome of things. Events are not pre-determined. Consciousness is what the Universe is made of, so as we add our own conscious intent to the great forces at play, there is the possibility that we just might help move events along in a direction that we want them to go. In this case, our direction and intent on our trip to Scotland was to re-connect land and sky, soul and spirit, masculine and feminine as it once was in pre-patriarchal, pre-Celtic, Neolithic times. Continue reading “Callanish, the Sacred Feminine and the New Earth: On the Grand Cross of 2014 by Anyaa McAndrew”