The Fire Inside

If we want to give women as a gender – and not just in the shape of a few determined individuals – their place inside of the structures of power, we have to think harder about how and why we think as we do. If there is a cultural template, which works to disempower women, what exactly is it and where do we get it from?

This is not the path of giving more of ourselves to the world at the cost of our deepest knowing self; this is the path of finally, finally learning to trust that we already know everything; we just have to learn to remember.

I became aware of a whole new perspective on feminine and masculine energy, and that’s when I realized the key that was missing. Instead of trying to fit my body and its biological rhythms into a paradigm clearly suited to male physiology, I needed to create a paradigm that included my physiology at the center.

A feminine-centric recovery paradigm assumes that you are already whole and perfect; it is not you who is broken but the system; you are the expert on your own life, and therefore you make the template, and you make the rules.

If you had hormonal constancy, as men did, you might not be taking your cues from your body about when to rest. You would have to build that in: Sunday is the day we don’t work, God’s day. But if what defined the days was you, your biological clock and calendar, then every day might as well be Tuesday. Perhaps you wanted to work for two weeks solid

We must see that spirituality is a continual movement away from compartmentalization and separation and toward embracing all of life. We must especially learn the art of directing mindfulness into the closed areas of our life. When we do, we will face the patterns from personal history, the conditioning that shields us from the pains of the past. T

“More hormonally one-note,” Jordi said, referring to the graph. “Imagine what it feels like to be a man. No cycles. No deaths-within-life. No transformation from one kind of person into another.”