Raising Up Women and Girls in Society
They say happy wife — happy life.
Worship empowers. Warship disempowers.
These words resonate with anyone who has ever fallen in love and floated in air with a myriad of butterflies beating their wings of appreciation. Unfortunately, as we grow older we learn that the first impression of falling into love wears off as fast as the process of falling was unfolding. As we mature in the perception of our own Self, we learn to walk — or to step — into love. This conscious approach has a wonderful side-effect: responsiveness and responsibility become our second nature, or perhaps our first.
From the relationship with a mother as an unconditional source of energy — through acquiring the body, food, affection, education, health, principles, and learning about the natural law — we slowly mature into grown, sovereign, independently thinking, whole persons with the full potential of evolution presenting itself. Yet deep-rooted trauma, suppressed emotions, and shocking impressions hinder that developmental process. They suspend our ability to relate to others in a way that is benevolent and favourable for our spiritual growth. These dents on the psyche make the mental and energetic layers of our being contract — as if squeezed by webs — producing tension and disempowered places in the physical body, which we experience as dis-ease.
Doing the work of self-healing, exploring the most efficient techniques of self-development, brings us to the realisation that the society in which maternal and paternal figures are out of sync — where the whole source of life is negligently abused — experiences the downfall of the fundamental principles of high ethics, harmony, and education. The barren soil feeds no one.
Raising up the most vulnerable elements of society, starting with our own women and girls, we open our ears to hear and our eyes to see what the Mother Earth is feeling. When we feel for our own mother, we feel for our own brother. When we feel for our own sister, we feel for the river. When we understand what it means to protect and nourish the source of life — in the family, in the community, in the land — we understand what it means to live in a way that the earth can sustain.
The tradition does not separate the welfare of women from the welfare of the earth. Both are the Goddess in her most immediate, most material form. What we practise toward one, we practise toward the other — and the practice begins at home, in the relationships closest to us, before it reaches the world.
From the Practice — Matri: After the Video
Watch the video once through, then sit in silence for five minutes with eyes closed. Bring to mind one woman — living, ancestral, or known through the tradition — in whom you have recognised the quality the teaching names: sovereignty without domination, care that does not deplete, the feminine as ground rather than instrument. Let her presence remain in the mind for the five minutes without analysis or narrative. This is the practice: recognition, not interpretation.
