I have just returned from a beautiful women’s retreat, where, without planning on it, we kept on returning to the subject of death. I listened to an older woman share how she related to her own death being apparently near. I heard another’s love-filled story of accompanying her father in a process of conscious dying. I was deeply moved. How is it that our hearts open so wide when we begin to normalise death and yet are we so defended against that in our culture?
Consumerism’s goal is to pursue endless growth, an ever-upward climbing crest of the wave. Yet nature herself shows us that every rise is followed by a fall. The predominant values of patriarchal culture are those of high energy, never-ending expansion and extroversion. To restore a healthy, feminine-inclusive approach to creativity and business we need to learn to let ourselves experience the other side of the spectrum: shades of withdrawal, silence and emptiness. What would it take for us to open our hearts to those unwanted phases of life, welcome them home and receive their gifts?
For me it was a stream of disappointments and things going “wrong” that recently turned my ear to the teachings of Lady D.
When I finally stopped resisting, she invited me into a deeper intimacy with life. After giving up the need to achieve or prove anything, she showed me the sweetness of this moment. When I let go of my fixed ideas of how life should be, I received what was real. I sensed her in every transition, every out breath and so close to my body. She showed me that to love is to say YES to loss and that I must learn to tolerate being empty, before I can be filled up.
When I invited her in my creative inquiry, she appeared as a toothless, cackling hag and spoke to me in those words:
“I don’t care about your plans to get to the top and stay there. When it’s time to go down, it’s time to go down. I know you don’t like me. Your whole society fears me, runs from me, denies me. But you can’t! I come in when you think it’s all perfectly under control, when you’ve grown so tall, you think you are immune to nature herself.
I come as your accidents and cancellations, tornadoes and earthquakes. You think that if you follow the next motivational guru, you can overcome me or transcend me but that is not so. I will not tolerate your intellectual illusions and plastic realities that are not in touch with the pulse of life. No matter how many successful campaigns you run, I will take you down when you forget, that you are not the source of your success.
When you don’t want me I am your personal failure. When you listen to me I am your rest, your fermentation and transformation. To receive my precious gifts you must surrender to my terrifying void and give me what is mine to take. If you steal from me you will create nothing. Everything has to come back to me, to return to ground.
Taste my medicine. Surrender and I will make you lovely. I will bring you close to the Great Unknown. I will offer you the sweet fruit of the moment.”
With autumn arriving, we will get the opportunity to meet Her in the falling of leaves and darkening of days. We may sense Her close on the dark moon or at the time of our bleed. She will visit us every day in small and big ways and is here right now. As we embrace her, we contribute to a more life sustaining culture.
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