Lets get honest. Even in the most illuminated and seemingly spiritually advanced traditions, there is still a great deal of male chauvinism. I hear people say how lovely it is that Shakti is conceived as the force of kundalini itself and must slowly rise up the body, refining herself as she goes in order to ready herself for her union with her consort, Shiva, resting in resplendent perfection in the crown chakra. Or how, in images of Yab-Yum the male figure is the deity and the feminine aspect is his consort. If you go to Wikipedia you will see this expressed. In one fail swoop, the cosmos is rendered an all-male deity club where women must refine themselves to be worthy and where the women are merely consorts. It is a fact that both forces of masculine and feminine rose within me AS THE FORCE that IS kundalini when awakening took place beginning in 2006. The intense energy living in me was the locus of the union of these two forces now vibrantly alive in my body. I was one with the father and mother. They were one within me. It was I who had to refine myself, to catch up. Both sides of the energy cycle had much to teach me, both the north and south poles of the vibrant nimbus of energy now licking like sensual flames all over me. But we speak of the feminine having to refine herself and no one so much as bats an eyelash. Does anyone bother to stop and look at these stories and realize that all the god stories and goddess stories are merely stories about us written large against the spiritual skies of our inner world? Who realizes that when we began looking to see a deity in the clouds or sky that we had defacto set that deity apart from ourselves, placing a VERY frustrated and angry and probably sexually frustrated bearded male god in a untennable situation. Well of course he would smite and destroy. Who wouldn’t? And where on earth is the softening aspects of the feminine in all of this? Without her we have had ten thousand years of stiffened hardened madness. And look at how this has played out in humanity. So the feminine inside each of us, EACH of us, is vital but so is our awareness of them…..
As long as we continue to do this, we continue to turn a blind eye to our own divinity because what works here on the small level also works on the larger spiritual levels as well. The curious thing about belief (and its brother named bias) is that you wont experience a thing that you have barriers erected for. This is how for centuries people have seen women as lesser to men, essentially like cattle to be traded and sold in marriage. Little more than slaves.
This is changing in a big way. While change has been gradual and perhaps too slow for some, it has nonetheless created a change that does not show signs of changing back or reverting anytime soon. Yes, we still have the throwbacks, but on balance, things are better than they have ever been. And they can continue to keep getting better.
Here is my contribution….
Below is an image from the Hindu tradition of Shiva playing his flute to his consort, Parvati, a manifestation of Shakti. Shiva has the nimbus around his head in green, but Shakti does not. Perhaps she is having to refine herself, her energy, before she has the same radiance as her consort Shiva. As someone who reads auras, I can tell you that the energy surrounding women is every bit as brilliant as that around men. In some cases, it is stronger in women than in men. This makes sense since women will bear life and will have to carry this new life with its own energy sheath in a protective manner. Having a strong bio-energetic field could have its benefits. I show you the image just as I came across it and then the image that I changed to include a nimbus for Shakti. Hers is violet, which suggest intuition. It is a nice warm color yet very spiritual, a nice counterpoint to Shiva’s halo. I hope that you use this image to help raise awareness in a simple way that BOTH of the sexes are equivalent. Please feel free to do so with attribution. A nice remix of sorts. It is a small thing, but is another drop of change that we all need if you ask me.
Waking The Infinite 
I love this, great post ~ I’ve been contemplating this subject for a while. What does it mean for our spiritual awakening if we can’t embrace both sides? I feel it is of utmost importance that we come to embrace our feminine side.
I think it’s what’s making the world so off balance. Until we come to recognize the necessity of both we won’t be able to come to peace with ourselves.
Great writing, thank you for sharing these important thoughts.
❤ ~ Andrea
Over time and after touching upon the divine feminine I came to realize that what has passed for feminine energy was in truth a heavy lean towards the masculine. Our world has grown up around using masculine energy to protect ourselves, or to play the game the way the guys have…..and the feminine has gotten shoved away. Hidden. Surrounded by a strong mote of masculine energy in women often. So women have unknowingly become masculinized while men have been told not to be feminine either lest they be seen as weak. The thing, though, is that this wasn’t why the feminine was hidden…..it was due to fear over just how strong she is. We fear feeling any kind of balance in ourselves….weird homophobia lingering, shame about who we are, etc. But if we just let a third of what we are come through…..we have been keeping our finger in the dyke holding back the floodwaters. Time to let go and realize this does not make us androgenous. It hasn’t me. It has clarified my focus on what these two mean within myself and released a huge flow of energy. In the hidden documents Jesus says “I am one with the mother and father.” This got changed to just “the father,” but it is clear that there were versions that spoke directly to the dual energies and what they did in the body to awaken, resurrecting in a manner of speaking. Nag Hammadi discovered in 1945.
I am yammering because I realized as I was getting ready to go to bed that I had forgotten to add a paragraph to the post on this….but perhaps because its something I have said so many times in other places over and over that I forgot. Your comment reminded me. Glad to see others who see this as important. Personally, I think that its a force that will just continue but I think it could grow stronger and move faster if more are aware. I don’t think its the answer to all our problems, but I do feel it is a big piece of a much more sane puzzle. Women would be more at peace, men would be more at peace. Slowly the tide is changing….stay at home dads, women who are more equal….women in the board room….men who feel free to explore their sensitive side….which is no doubt a big part of the feminine in themselves. Preaching to the choir! Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment!
In Vedanta it is said that without Shakti, Siva has no function; there is no manifestation. Turning yab yum around from the conditioned way … the male force finds and enters the feminine Origin or Creative. Merges. Is.
It’s useful to remember, that we are as feminine as we are masculine, carrying all the men and women from countless lines and times of life which converge to this one for a while; or – depending how we look at or experience life – the male and female resonances in the human collective ocean which our cellular memory identifies with. The parents are our indicators in this life – the archway through which we grow and discover.
After conception the embryo is female until she develops male parts at around the – is it? – 3 month mark. The cosmic matrix is the mother, the She. The Ocean.
The centuries of Hard Stiffie which you refer to, are the selfhood split from the matrix which develops from invasion, rape, exploitation, “belief/bias”. And how lonely and alienated!
We all carry these memories, and work on them.
I would expect myself, to enjoy a big flow of energy/shakti. But I am most of the time, tired and vulnerable, physically and emotionally. Perhaps I am paying off my male-creative overdraft, by being the vessel and acceptance. Looking back at age 64, into past excesses and mountain-ranges, this makes perfect sense. The YIN.
I like your Shakti’s violet aura flower. Look how together they form two circles or spheres which enter each other to cross fertilize: or like a figure of eight, infinity: or vesica pisces of sacred architecture.
When only the male wears the halo, there is no fertility, no birth, no conversation among the genders of the mind.