Rebirthing of the Feminine

You are living in what might be the end of an approximately six-thousand-year period of patriarchal history and conditioning. The feminine in both females and males has been horribly oppressed and suppressed. Rebirth of the feminine means going out of the town and into the sometimes lonely frontiers of mutation and metamorphosis. This realm is dying for the rebirth of the feminine. In terms of your individual psychology, rebirth of the feminine may include the re-empowerment of your intuition, an emphasis on authentic loving relationships and living of life as compared to emphasizing vertical spiritual transcendence or optimized functioning. Rebirth of the feminine means a reawakened connection to the body, the earth, spontaneity and unstructured time, eros as oceanic merger as compared to pornographic sex on the level of the genitalia or as metaphor for power. Without rebirth of the feminine, you are stuck in the hell-matrix of the patriarchy where, as Jung put it: “The life giving rhythms of the eons becomes the dread ticking of the clock.” Rebirth of the feminine allows for the further possibility of the inner alchemical marriage of your masculine and feminine elements and yields the empowered androgynous wholeness that is your birthright.

M. Scott Peck has an interesting definition of love: “I define love thus: The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Someone once said that, “Love is cool, it is not hot.” It is crucial to distinguish love from passion, infatuation, codependence and sentimentality. It is also said that love is a verb, not a noun. What you love is what you spend time on. Sometime in the Nineties an eighty-year-old woman, who was a Jungian analyst, gave a talk I attended in Boulder. At the end of her talk there were questions from the audience and the first one came from a young woman. “Now that you are an elder,” asked the young woman, “what can you tell me as a young woman about love?” The elder woman replied, “When I was your age I was desperately trying to be loved. But now I know that it is better to simply be love.” A few love quotes: “In real love you want the other person’s good. In romantic love you want the other person.” — Margaret Anderson “You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing [...]

We are culturally conditioned to contemplate people, opportunities and states of being from the point of view of immature masculinity: How much money will it make? What’s hot? What’s not? Is it loaded with enough bells and whistles to spike my blood sugar? t is easy to get so caught up in the bustle of life that we don’t take time to reflect on what’s really going on. Oracles are meant to be archetypal mirrors of where we are in our lives. Keeping a journal is another great way to reflect on what is happening. As Socrates says, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Wise contemplation involves listening to the quiet, compassionate voices within. A shortcut to wise, feminine contemplation is to ask of each possibility: Will I remember this well on my deathbed?

We live in a world where the feminine values, like maternal nurturing, are often woefully lacking. You do not need to be a female to be capable of maternal nurturing, but you do need some connection with your inner feminine. M. Scott Peck has an interesting definition of love — “I define love thus: The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Someone once said that, “Love is cool, it is not hot.” It is crucial to distinguish love from passion, infatuation, codependence and sentimentality. It is also said that love is a verb, not a noun. What you love is what you spend time on. Sometime in the Nineties an eighty-year-old woman, who was a Jungian analyst, gave a talk I attended in Boulder. At the end of her talk there were questions from the audience and the first one came from a young woman. “Now that you are an elder,” asked the young woman, “what you can tell me as a young woman about a love?” The elder woman replied, “When I was your age I was desperately trying to be loved. But now I know that it is [...]

This is a time for rebirth, renewal, fecundity and growth. Sail forth now while the tide is high, follow your guiding star and the life force will fill your sails. This is a propitious time for new life, great endeavors, creation and metamorphosis.

Love, especially romantic love, can take us into dark places and even shatter our world. But “apocalypse” means “unveiling.” Love often wants to take us into the dark night of the soul, where truth can be unveiled. Don’t fall for the delusion that love is supposed to be warm and fuzzy. The mythologies about romantic love from all cultures and traditions that allow for it always include the descent into darkness. Two are in love but some inexorable force seeks to keep them apart, as in Romeo and Juliet; Two lovers become a triangle of conflict, unrequited love, love betrayed, the allure of temptation and becoming the betrayer, the loss of the beloved through illness, separation or death. These are not recent inventions. The soul may be seeking the love apocalypse and its truths, which can only be revealed in the darkness. Some Jung quotes on love: “Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other.” “In spite of all indignant protestations to the contrary, the fact remains that love (using the word in the wider sense which belongs to [...]

M. Scott Peck has an interesting definition of love: “I define love thus: The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Someone once said that, “Love is cool, it is not hot.” It is crucial to distinguish love from passion, infatuation, codependence and sentimentality. It is also said that love is a verb, not a noun. What you love is what you spend time on. Sometime in the Nineties an eighty-year-old woman, who was a Jungian analyst, gave a talk I attended in Boulder. At the end of her talk there were questions from the audience and the first one came from a young woman. “Now that you are an elder,” asked the young woman, “what can you tell me as a young woman about love?” The elder woman replied, “When I was your age I was desperately trying to be loved. But now I know that it is better to simply be love.” A few love quotes: “In real love you want the other person’s good. In romantic love you want the other person.” — Margaret Anderson “You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing [...]

Cooperation and interdependence are emphasized here. American culture tends to emphasize rugged individualism in a way that is often absurd. For example, the “Army of One” ad campaign for the U.S. Army or the Marlboro man riding alone through the prairie with only his horse and his trusty cigarettes for companionship. But we are social mammals born into a world of interdependence. If you are able to read this card, then someone took care of you when you were a dependent infant. Every breath we take depends on plants converting the carbon dioxide we and other animals exhale and which they convert to freed oxygen. Fritjof Capra, in his book, The Web of Life, developed a systems view of life in which he recognized two polarized yin-and-yang-like tendencies in living systems — the “integrative” and the “self-assertive.” This card emphasizes the integrative, and challenges you to see how certain self-assertive tendencies may undermine efficiency and the greater good. This is a time to emphasize cooperating with others, working in ways that are beneficial to all concerned. Cooperative interdependence is not merely with other people, but also with the organic matrix and with the Tao, the unfolding of events. Cooperate with [...]

M. Scott Peck has an interesting definition of love: “I define love thus: The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Someone once said that, “Love is cool, it is not hot.” It is crucial to distinguish love from passion, infatuation, codependence and sentimentality. It is also said that love is a verb, not a noun. What you love is what you spend time on. Sometime in the Nineties an eighty-year-old woman, who was a Jungian analyst, gave a talk I attended in Boulder. At the end of her talk there were questions from the audience and the first one came from a young woman. “Now that you are an elder,” asked the young woman, “what can you tell me as a young woman about love?” The elder woman replied, “When I was your age I was desperately trying to be loved. But now I know that it is better to simply be love.” A few love quotes: “In real love you want the other person’s good. In romantic love you want the other person.” – Margaret Anderson “You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing [...]

M. Scott Peck has an interesting definition of love: “I define love thus: The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Someone once said that, “Love is cool, it is not hot.” It is crucial to distinguish love from passion, infatuation, codependence and sentimentality. It is also said that love is a verb, not a noun. What you love is what you spend time on. Sometime in the Nineties an eighty-year-old woman, who was a Jungian analyst, gave a talk I attended in Boulder. At the end of her talk there were questions from the audience and the first one came from a young woman. “Now that you are an elder,” asked the young woman, “what can you tell me as a young woman about love?” The elder woman replied, “When I was your age I was desperately trying to be loved. But now I know that it is better to simply be love.” A few love quotes: “In real love you want the other person’s good. In romantic love you want the other person.” — Margaret Anderson “You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing [...]