Womanhood & Love

I’m lucky to have a friend that I feel nearly fully understood by. This friend happens to be a male. I had assumed that we shared insights on most things. Although I am aware of the differences between men and woman I recently seemed to have neglected the fact that there are some insights that I have that belong to women solely. These Insights are the consolations for the growing pains of becoming a mature woman; insights that are our gifts to the next generation, our families, work, spiritual life, intimate partners and friends. These insights may be of a transpersonal or extremely personal kind and gaining the wisdom of how to dole them out is another sort of maturity. We slowly, sometimes through painful lessons or perhaps by raising children learn to emulate Mother Nature. We learn how to decided and to know what to give, when to give it, how much to give. We learn to give in accordance to our personal cycles and the cycles of the other (whatever or whoever that may be). We learn to hold back or rest when we need to so we can regenerate for ourselves as oppose to take taking from another. We also learn to take and receive in this way.  We learn the pattern of nature through our body’s cycle. There’s a start, a build up, fecundity, growth, birth, subtle decline, ending and then it begins all over again. We learn to trust this pattern and that it applies to everything in life. We have more patience because of this trust in nature’s order. We do our best to be the gardener of our own heart, of the hearts of others and of our environment. We kill and pull weeds, cut down overgrowth, and plant new seeds. We want to make sure every thought, creation, relationship, endeavor, growth phase will be able to complete it's cycle, end, and go to the next level or if need be replaced with another.

Sometimes if we had a weak, broken or absent female role model it takes a great strength of will to acquire these insights for ourselves. Hopefully we’ve had a surrogate wise woman help us out along the way. Whether we are straight or gay we have to strip ourselves from social objectifications of women, stereotypes, our parent’s expectations, and overly “masculine” types of “feminist” thinking to respect our true personal feminine nature. We also have to learn to respect the diversity we find of this feminine nature in other women instead of seeing them as “weak” or “too butch”.

All this learning seems to amount to learning to love, to receive love and to be love. We are the human embodiment of the love principle and because of this our “feeling” is very important to maintaining a balance.  Love is the starting place from which all wisdom, patience, arts, medicine, strength, courage, spirituality and reason come from. We have a huge role and responsibility in the grand scheme of things. Coming into our natural sense of self generated self-worth and dignity is imperative if we genuinely want a change for the better, be it a personal or big picture change. It’s also our strong hold against falling into the trappings of Hollywood, MTV, political rhetoric and advertising that we are so bombarded by everyday. We can insure that if we like something it is of our own choice. If we vote for someone it is because we agree with them not because they are popular among our peers. If we follow a particular path it isn’t because it is the trend of our social group or something that would impress someone. If we find a mate it's because we know it is the right time and this is the person we want to commit to not because we are under pressure to get married or need a man.

Evolving into “the human embodiment of the love principle” is not as glamorous as it sounds but it is miraculous. We have to deal with all kinds of crap and get really pissed off at times. The love principle in us may get shoved into a dark hole buried underneath, cynicism, protectionism, denial of our sexuality, desperation, fear, dependency/co-dependency, overly punitive thoughts about our self, having to compete with men at work, childhood abuse, sheer ignorance, a purely materialistic view point, trying to be a “modern” woman, trying to be a “sex kitten”, trying to be perfect, trying to be street tough and whole lot of other types of sludge.

We most often think of love in intimate relationship terms. Learning to love in this way is important and will teach us a lot about where we are in life but there are definitely perquisites to being able to love in this way.  Indeed many women have had to learn to truly love in this way as their marriage evolved. This type of love is also not very glamorous but is miraculous; however achieving this type of relationship doesn't have to be a goal necessarily. It seems to be an awesome opportunity however to practice all you learned about how to love in life in general. The below songs are my favorite songs about womanhood. Plus my favorite song about transpersonal and interpersonal love. These songs go out to all my sisters and yin warriors who are in the good fight, wielding the power of love.