Living in Shamanic Consciousness Part Nine: Feminine Power and Shakti

Published in Sibyl Magazine September, 2018

One of the best things about being a woman is the opportunity to get together with other conscious women and experience the power of the deep feminine.  As society moves through the death throes of the patriarchy, more and more women are awakening to the joy of meeting together with their sisters in a spirit of love and support.
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I recently attended a gathering of 24 women who met for a long weekend of dance, sensuality, delicious food, deep activation and transformational initiation.  We were able to experience the pleasure of soft fabric next to our skin, gentle breezes blowing through our hair, the patter of rain outside the Temple walls, and the call of birds, cicadas and tree frogs serenading us throughout the day and night.
 
We were of varying ages, orientations, life experiences and spiritual paths.  Some of us were moms and grandmothers, while others had never raised children.  There were authors, singers, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, ministers and more.  Our common bond was our desire to explore and cherish our own inner divine feminine selves and to celebrate these unique feminine expressions within each other.
 
In order to open our hearts to one another, we had to be willing to trust.  Like most women, we had received messages throughout our lives about how girls and women are expected to behave.  Often, that included the message that women must compete with each other in order to be safe.
 
To counter this message of competition consciousness, the first step was to open our hearts to ourselves.  We reveled in our own bodies.  We acknowledged our own Shakti or life force energy.  As we connected to our own personal Shakti, we began to own it.  Our Shakti is here for our own personal pleasure and experience.  For much too long, it has been stolen or suppressed by those who feared the power of the feminine.  That changes now.
 
When we heal our connection to our own inner life force energy, we set the stage for a healing of the external splits that are so prevalent in our world.  The artificial duality between spirit and matter comes together.  We experience our wholeness and our power.  No wonder churches, governments and societies have tried so hard to suppress the feminine.
 
When we are disconnected from our bodies, we can’t feel our Shakti.  We are literally disconnected from our life force energy and we have to look outside ourselves for protection and grounding.  That makes us easy to control.  It keeps us from speaking out when we see injustice in the world.  Without our connection to our Shakti, we eventually do not even recognize injustice and oppression.
 
Once we are able to reconnect with our Shakti, we can then come together with our sisters in love and support.  We can encourage each other to follow our individual soul’s calling.  We co-create together.  We each take our place on the wheel of transformation with confidence and power.  As we transform ourselves, we transform the world.