CRONE

Words of Wisdom:Regenopause

Barbara Marx Hubbard: from a transcript of a talk. (www.barbaramarxhubbard.com)

As women experience menopause, anticipating decades of fruitful years ahead, the realization dawns that they are entering the greatest period of freedom and creativity in their lives. The opportunity to give birth to their authentic feminine self opens, and often, new work in and for the world presents itself.

We call this new phase of life Regenopause… a pause in the life cycle of the older woman when the possibility of remaking herself by choosing from her deepest impulse becomes evident.

As our bodies age, creativity and spirituality awaken. A dynamic motivation arises to move toward regeneration and renewal, to develop new vitality, and to contribute to the greater whole. As female bodies are capable of transformation to give birth to the child, they are capable of this later transformation as women give birth to their essential selves, and extend their life span, education, and creativity.

It has been suggested that there is a cellular potential that is activated when women get vocationally aroused and say YES to their life purpose. Perhaps women are triggering new hormones through their passion to express and create that releases dormant potentials within them.

Perhaps there is a deeper plan or design, that is arising in us all at this moment in time when the planetary system is in crisis and need. Perhaps, to make this design visible, we have to work together in a way that women throughout history have done in times of emergency. Perhaps women are called to draw upon our biological instincts to love our children as ourselves, to truly move together toward solutions for the whole human family.

The power of nature itself would be behind such a movement, and the best of the men would not resent this power, but realize whole-heartedly that a partnership model is desperately needed to move ahead in times such as ours. Women entering Regenopause would become a vital resource to connect the larger human family, and to act as models and mentors for women with less experience called to this purpose.

Younger women may well live over 100 years, and have few or no children. This is an entirely new situation for humanity. Imagine our young women realizing early in their lives that their deepest purpose, whether they have children or not, whether they marry or not, is to give birth to their own essential selves and their expression in the world. As essence meets essence, as women develop true connections with each other, the wisdom and experience of older women working with the energy of the young would unleash a vast evolutionary potential for lasting change into the world.

Words of the Star Goddess

“I who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters, I call upon your soul to arise and come unto me. For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe. From me all things proceed and unto me they must return. Let my worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold; all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you. And you who seek to know me, know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the mystery; for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without. For behold I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire”

About Sophia, Journal Notes

‘Sophia’ is one of the many names of wisdom uniting the whole planet and all creatures in a living body. She is sometimes imagined as the world soul living at the center of the earth. She is the pattern, the template, and the architect of life.

We often call our planet ‘Mother Earth.’ She gives, nourishes and sustains life. But what do we, as individuals and as the human species really know about our mother? Not what do scientists know or what does the Bible say. Rather, what does she say, what is her story? Where did she come from? What’s she really like in herself – who is she really? And who is she becoming?

At one time the greatest crime possible was matricide.

Sophia is a subtle spirit, Quintessence, or anima mundi, pervading the world. Quintessence = the Fifth Sacred Thing = Spirit! She is the spiritual DNA of the planet. When we are awakened to Quintessence, we are multidimensionally present. We know the body through the body, the emotions through, the emotions, and the mind through the mind. Quintessence is Spirit that orders the universe and gives it life and vitality.

Mary Daly: “Quintessence names the unifying living presence that is at the core of the integrity and elemental connectedness of the universe and that is the source of our power to realize a true future – an archaic future.” (Quintessence...Realizing the Archaic Future)

Sophia is the wisdom of the Goddess. In pre-patriarchal times, she was understood primarily through the body. The rituals that bound humankind to the to all-pervasive wisdom were enactments of sacred sexuality: the experience of oneness – not an abstract One but an all-at-once union with all that is.

Sophia is the wisdom of transitions. The pattern underlying all of life. Although Sophia has been claimed by many Christians and often identified with the Holy Spirit, she is not a divine being separate from the world; she is not a religious figure, or a transcendent being to be believed in on faith. Wisdom is known directly.

The planet earth is in transition. She is going through a big initiation, becoming someone she is not. It feels to humans from our place on the surface of this great being that everything is falling apart. There is a mad scramble to get control. The human ego wants control.

The ego has gotten a bad rap lately and although it may just be a matter of semantics I’d like to say something in defense of the ego. This whole patriarchal era that humanity has been going through has been, in part, about developing a strong ego-consciousness and a sense of individuality and control. Over thousands of years, humanbeings have succeeded in building strong egos and now teachers seem to be telling us to let go of the ego. But really what we need to do is put the ego in its place. We really need to let go of any sense of identity-with the ego. Instead we can learn to shift our sense of identity to the true self or soul, which has access to worlds unknown to ego. Ego allows us to function in modern day civilization. It gives us a sense of order and sanity. At one time people went off into the wilderness to contact cosmic consciousness and gain wisdom. But now, by shifting at will back and forth from ego-centered to soul-centered, many people are capable of living within society and at the sametime participating in the cosmic dance, enter the dream while awake, so to speak.

Sophia's Journal

I can’t keep quiet any longer. Linda has been struggling to find something to say about our friendship for years. Although I know it’s not easy I think it’s about time. She’s not getting any younger.

It’s not easy to write about our communications because the are not spoken out loud or written down. They don’t follow a linear cause and effect, pattern. The first clue that we are in-touch across worlds is an overwhelming sense of meaningfulness. Our words are feelings and sensations: a ringing in the ears, the chirp of a bird, violent storms and gentle breezes. Our interactions are not a one-way thing, I’m not some off-planet entity, I Am the planet, the earth is my body. My wisdom is in my body, everywhere around and about you. All it takes is a collective shift in perspective.

Linda is not purporting to “channel” me, she is very clear about this. I think that’s one reason she’s kept quiet so long. So let’s be clear I have my own voice and she hers. The Story of Sophia that Linda posted below (December 31 2009) doesn’t really have much to do with who I really am.

The Revealers of my story are called Gnostics. Although it is about me, Sophia, it mostly describes the actual experience of groups of women and men. A momentary shift in perspective which gave them a vision of their origins and potential as a species. The story describes the first realization of a species consciousness.

An experience of great significance. Awesome. In their attempts to describe and teach, the Knowers told stories, danced, sang, made love, and eventually created a picture with words of my break with the father god and my alignment with the Earth. I chose to leave the off-planet control center and alignment self with you all. I make mistakes. And according to the Gnostic Story, humanity has deviated from its course. We are in this together.

Linda’s Journal

I’ve known Sophia since I was a child. I didn’t have a name for her then. Our relationship started out with a sense that the universe was a safe place and that I was being watched over by a loving being and I loved her back. As my intellect developed I began to call her Sophia and declared myself her lover, philo-sophia. She is an illusive lover, a shift-shaping seductress.

In my search for her I read about Goddesses and Archetypes. I studied the work of Marija Gimbutas with a sense of awe. Getting closer. But I wanted a story, the story of Sophia. I studied esoteric christianity. I was looking for words that resonated with my own experiences. I read a lot of books about Sophia. But my very favorite is Not In His Image by John Lash.

Mostly I find Sophia now in my garden. It’s that time of year. And soon I’ll catch glimpses of her at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

Oil Explosion in Gulf

It is time the human species woke up from our stupor and recognize what indigenous peoples and adherents of goddess religions have known all along: that “the Earth’s living matter, air, oceans, and land surface form a complex system which can be seen as a single organism and which has the capacity to keep our planet a fit place for life." (James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth)

When I hear the phrase “oil-spill” I imagine a bucket of oil accidentally knocked over. The explosion on April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico may have been unplanned but it was neither accidental nor insignificant. It is the result of an intentional rent in the surface of the living organism that sustains planetary life. Man (sic) knows little about life in the depths of Gaia’s waters. He has violently entered into Her dark mysterious depths and released an event with cosmic consequences.

Physicists have recently found that the matter-energy of the earliest universe was already, by its very nature, bound to form living systems. This means that life evolves as the essential process of the cosmos as a whole and is not just something happening at a special point. The source of all matter is increasingly being acknowledged to be a basic universal consciousness. (Elizabet Sahtouris, Earth Dance)

The source of all life is a basic universal consciousness. The Sea is a source and origin of life on this planet. Life began in the sea about 3,900 million years ago and for the next 3,400 million years or so, life was found exclusively in the sea. It is only about 500 million years ago that the first living organism struggled onto the land.

The creation stories of many traditions describe the sea as a primeval chaos out of which ordered life on earth is created. Life beneath the sea strains the limits of human understand. It is invisible to the human eye just as the collective unconscious is unknown to waking conscious. When content from the collective unconscious breaks through into consciousness it is experienced as chaotic, without order, often violent.

Water is a mirror of our mind. Images from the depths of the mass mind have been set loose, they are black and sticky and out of control. Human beings struggle to maintain order, searching desperately for someone to make it right, and someone to blame.

Dr. Masaru Emoto has done research on the characteristics of water showing that water physically responds to emotions. He has proposed that we picture clean, clear water, cool and full of pure nutrients and send the energy of love and gratitude to all the living creatures in the Gulf of Mexico…. "I send the energy of love and gratitude to the water and all the living creatures in the Gulf of Mexico and its surroundings. To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, fish, shellfish, plankton, coral, algae, and all living creatures. . . I am sorry. Please forgive me....Thank you....I love you."

Finding New Ground

Those of us who called ourselves “radical feminists,” which among my friends meant “lesbian feminists,” back in the 70’s, felt that we were living at the end of an era for sure. We were talking about a macroevolution – the transformation of one species to another. I remember actually feeling this, feeling like we were becoming a new species, it’s hard to describe without sounding like I thought we were evolving into a superior being or something. It wasn’t like that at all. In fact, although it was an exciting and meaningful time, there was also a sort of sad feeling. Like you realize you live in a different world than people you’ve known for years. But I never felt this was “happening to me,” that I was being swept up in an evolutionary process or apocalyptic ending. I was convinced that WE, mostly women, were active participants, and that we were choosing to evolve along with other sentient beings.

Adrienne Rich expresses this sentiment in the following lines from the poem Transcendental Etude in her book, The Dream of a Common Language.

. . . there come times—perhaps this is one of them—

when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die;

when we have to pull back from the incantations,

rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly,

and disenthrall ourselves, bestow

ourselves to silence, or a deeper listening, cleansed

of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static

crowding the wires. We cut the wires, . .

No one who survives to speak

new language, has avoided this:

the cutting-away of an old force that held her

rooted to an old ground.

Finding New Ground

In 1966 I was hospitalized after trying for the second time to kill myself. This time, instead of taking pills, I ran my car into a parked car in the middle of the night. I remember trying to wake up following the crash. I couldn’t remember who I was or where I came from. I could not see; there was only darkness. I could not move. I was falling through space. I struggled to remember where I was and suddenly I remembered running through tall grass with other young girls and all my fear and pain left me as I felt the grass against my face and heard the laughter of my companions.

It was dawn; we were running uphill in grass that grew over our heads. The light filtered by the flat tall stalks was blue, the air smelled of lemon. Suddenly the air filled with sound. It was as though the wind had a voice and was calling to us. I was overwhelmed by a sense of tremendous urgency. I ran as fast as I could and arrived just as a meeting was beginning at an outdoor bowl sculpted out of the side of a hill. Women sat on blankets and chairs in a large semi circle. Three elders stepped into the center space as I found my place. They were wearing brightly colored clothes, their eyes sparkled, and there was an aura of wisdom about them.

Although I have elaborated on these first memories over the years and written several stories about a group of women coming to Earth from a place at the galactic center, what I actually experienced after the auto accident was very brief, but intense and full of meaning.

I had the sense that I participated in a meeting conducted by three elderly women whom I have since come to call Crones. The meeting was basically about how our relatives on Earth were calling for us to help them. There was much discussion about what should be done, but in the end it was decided that a group would be sent to Earth and I volunteered to go.

When I first woke up to the reality of the hospital room, I knew I was not the same person that had been in the car wreck. The memories of the “other place” gradually faded but my life began to change dramatically. My world became increasingly women-centered and woman-identified; I discovered I was lesbian and eventually became active in the Women’s Movement. I had a strong sense that my life was guided by a purpose I was only dimly aware of. I found myself in situations with women I had never met before, but whom I recognized as sisters on the same journey. My interest in philosophy shifted from logic and the philosophy of science to metaphysics. Although I had studied philosophy for many years, it wasn’t until this time that I realized that the true philosopher was a lover of Sophia, and although I had no idea of who Sophia was in the Gnostic or Christian traditions, I intuitively knew it was Sophia guiding my life.

According to Carol Parrish-Harra, founder and Dean of Sancta Sophia Seminary, Sophia represents the hidden aspects of the female psyche that emerge from time to time and must be intuited or subjectively realized. In order to find Sophia we must have faith in ourselves and confidence in our own subjective knowing.

Sophia has been ignored in patriarchy but the women’s movement and the new consciousness emerging globally through women is giving momentum to the next step in the evolution of humanity. The next creative advance in evolution involves leaving behind dualistic patterns that polarize men and women, humanity and nature, spirit and matter, and mind and body.

Women and Conscious Evolution

We [women] are becoming aware that we can consciously evolve; that our new “organ” is something which enables us to will our own further evolution. The more aware we become of our own evolutionary process, the more we are empowered to will and direct that process: an incredible evolutionary leap, a macro-mutation on a level with (and having a similar dynamics to) the development of language.

These are the words of Barbara Starrett in 1976 in her article “I Dream in Female: The Metaphors of Evolution." Before it was published my friend and colleague, Jere VanSyoc, gave me a Xerox copy of the article. Someone on the East Coast had sent it to her. We didn’t have the internet or email in those days but there was a large global network of mostly lesbian feminists connecting in the Background sending each other messages filled with a sense of urgency and vision, reaching out to others living the same Dream.

Today more and more women are becoming aware that we can consciously evolve, that together we can direct our own evolution and participate in the greater evolutionary process of which we are a part.

But first we’ve got to stop thinking of the evolutionary process as linear. Scientists may have a more comprehensive understanding but most of us imagine evolution progressing in a linear pattern. The universe is said to have a beginning at an identifiable point in the past and to proceed a straight line culminating at point in the future.

The biblical story of creation is an example of the linear perspective: The world begins with an act of creation by God, then proceeds through the age of the patriarchs to that of the prophets to the incarnation of Christ; it will continue through the age of the Church to a final apocalyptic conclusion when time will end. The secular view of the evolution of civilization is similar; human civilization is seen to grow from the ancient, “primitive,” cultures of the Old Stone Age through various transformations to our present, “advanced” society.

We need a new image of our evolutionary process before we can see how to consciously evolve, one that fits our experience. Helena Blavatsky, a foremother of the 70’s Women’s Movement, pointed out that the linear Darwian account of the evolutionary process begins at the “mid-point of total evolutionary progression” and only considers biological phases of our physical development, ignoring the spiritual dimensions. Darwin’s focus on the physical, Blavatsky insisted, omitted the mental, creative, and visionary life of human beings. In other words, Darwinian evolution omitted consciousness.

Blavatsky, in The Secret Doctrine, imagines evolution moving in a spiral pattern, making loops or circles but moving forward at the same time, so that patterns but not particulars are repeated.

The spiraling movement and direction of evolution is guided by the organizing patterns of consciousness itself. Consciousness is the creative force of evolution. As evolution proceeds, the wisdom from previous ages emerges at the beginning of the new age to serve as a guide during the transition.

As one age draws to a close, wisdom from previous ages emerges. As the current patriarchal age draws to a close, the wisdom of the previous age, with its goddess-centered culture, has been emerging primarily through women.

This does not mean that one age is determined by what came before. Our foremothers don’t direct our destiny; rather wisdom from previous ages is present as possibility and creative potential and is available to each one of us.

Since consciousness evolves in a spiral, each time a similar organization of conscious energy comes again it seems to be on a somewhat “higher” or more complex level, which is built on, and inclusive of, the preceding developments. In order to evolve, to enter a new age or another loop in the spiral, we must consciously and completely absorb and include the wisdom of our ancestors in our very being. As a species our ancestors include the rocks and mountains, plants, trees, the four-leggeds and winged ones.

Our bodies are a vehicle of consciousness. Consciousness feels and senses, touches, reaches out and withdraws. All bodies are vehicles of consciousness. As Christian deQuincey points out, the ancients knew what anyone who interacts honestly with the natural world knows: “Matter itself tingles with the spark of spirit, and therefore nature, in all its forms and glory is sacred to its deepest roots” (Radical Nature).

Whatever way we imagine it, the pattern of evolution seems to be a process of including and transcending. The new age includes and transcends elements of the preceding ages. What seems to be missing today is the includes part. Patriarchal thought and religion are all about transcending. As if the “lesser” beings – the trees and animals, minerals, mountains, rivers, and so forth – could be left behind. We need to renew our relationship with the others evolving along with us.

David Abram in The Spell of The Sensuous says that in indigenous, oral, cultures “language functions not simply to dialogue with other humans but also to converse with the more-than-human cosmos, to renew reciprocity with the surrounding powers of earth and sky, to invoke kinship even with those entities which, to the civilized mind, are utterly insentient and inert.” A rock, for example, may be addressed with respect and reverence as evident in these words of an Omaha medicine person:

Unmoved

from time without

end

you rest

there in the midst of the paths

in the midst of the winds

you rest

cover with the droppings of birds

grass growing from your feet