RECLAIMING THE SACRED SOURCE
PART II 

Right Relationship of Men and Women
Giving and Receiving

by Lynn Creighton

Life will not go on as we know it if women do not claim the nature and power of their own mystery.  It is not a mystery for others to ponder, but one for each woman to live in, experience and manifest.

As indicated in Part I of this series of articles, many women themselves haven't heard and can barely believe that there was a time for more than 10,000 years that the central deity was feminine.  She reigned over the efforts of humankind to plant and harvest their own food and all that agriculture provided in stores and freedom form continual hunting and gathering.  When she was killed by aggressive forces and her priestesses killed or taken prisoner, her gifts were usurped and she was forever after (until now) harnessed to the demands of the more aggressive and physically powerful masculine principle.

It is because women have for so long been disconnected from the reality of their own nature that they do not fully participate and take responsibility for their own lives.  When I use the word "responsibility", I mean the ability to respond appropriately to the experience of being alive.  Appropriate response can only come from the core of the person.  The awakening and exposure of that intrinsic core is the subject of these articles.  That core in women is hidden today, hidden to protect it from further trauma.

The trauma to women is sexual trauma and the core that is hidden contains sexual energy.  It is not the perversion we call sexuality, but rather the orgastic celebration of spirit made in response to acknowledging the blessing of the gift of life that I speak of.

I am afraid of being misunderstood.  Will people who hear me believe I am speaking of the distorted behavior that we call sexuality today: a selling to the first bidder of a momentary flash of entertaining pleasure.  This behavior is related as to our true potential as a rhinestone is to a 10 karat diamond.  The tragedy of AIDS is trying to awaken us to what we have been doing, wasting a sacred gift on trivial experiences.

What is most alarming is that most women are unaware that they are not living fully or that their true sexual nature lies buried in layers of fear and denial.  The aggression that destroyed access to the deep source of sexual energy occurred so long ago and the traces have been so well obliterated that there is no memory or reference to anything more than the minimal sexual energy now experienced.  Women have forgotten who they truly are and don't even know there is something to be remembered.

It is time for women to wake up to what has happened to them and to look beyond the form of present culture to their important restorative role.  I am writing here because I feel great urgency about this issue.  Women must begin to remember who they are and what their responsibility is.  Women must themselves come into knowing the true power and function of the feminine in order that the feminine principle can regain its appropriate status in society. 

As the receivers of life force energy from the Great Spirit, women assimilate the elements (earth, air, fire and water) in their own bodies and give birth to the physical manifestation of spirit: Human life.  This act gives women a special and vital awareness of the life force and a mandate to nurture and protect life.  Because women do not honor this function in themselves and because it is not otherwise honored either, the attention to the sacredness of women as the ones who transform the life force into form has been lost.  Through the chemistry within the body of women, spirit is manifested into life.

Women are the bleeders, the receivers of life force, the bringers of children and the ones who know how to take care of living things. Until they honor and respect these functions in themselves, the culture will not honor them and the masculine will know neither how to honor women nor how to honor the feminine within itself.

Pursuing a deeper  understanding of the feminine, I was called to Greece.  The ancient Goddess was there before Zeus and his Pantheon arrived.  I found some clues that may help us unravel this problem of right relationship with ourselves and others and come back to harmony and balance.

On the island of Crete 1,500 years after the mainland Goddess worshippers had succumbed to aggressive forces, worship of the Goddess continued until volcanic flows buried the communities.  There is evidence there of a balance of energy between the masculine and the feminine.  This balance grows out of women and men celebrating, worshipping and paying tribute to the Great Goddess together through their sexual energy.  The restored palace of Knossos reveals men and women equally important in sporting and ceremonial events.  A small ceramic relic, a very important finding among the ruins, is a woman, breasts revealed, who holds up two snakes.  I saw these snakes as phalli and the woman honoring the masculine by her stance.  Horns of the bull evident throughout the palace were for me an honoring of the feminine in the act of receiving masculine attention.  These two symbols taken together showed me the energies were held in balance by mutual honoring.

Men and women in this society were equal but not the same.  The men were givers.  The women were receivers.  This is the relationship  of masculine to feminine that created harmony and balance, allowing each its fullest expression of essence.  When the masculine gives (not taking, forcing, or demanding), the feminine can open more fully.  As the woman opens, the force of life flows through her freely without constraint.  She becomes a vessel for the life force.  The masculine receives back this gift which can only be found manifested by the fully open woman.

In this right relationship of men and women that the woman can be fully what she is: the sacred receptive vessel that contains the source of all energy.  It is within this construct that women will contribute what is needed from them: the healing, restorative voice that knows that LIFE must be honored and cared for, not destroyed and warred against.

How do we bring ourselves into this new balanced relationship with all of life?  The Women have turned to business, industry and other outside pursuits that show them that they are powerful but take them continually farther from their place of power.  Men are disillusioned.  They have worked very hard and done all that was expected, but they feel empty and alone.  What can be done to heal this rift between the reality of who we are and who we now think ourselves to be?

I believe women must take the initial steps to rediscover their place of power.  They must stop waiting for permission or for someone else to solve the problem.  They must begin to look at their own resources to find the answer.  The answer lies in each woman's knowledge and acceptance of her own sexual nature.  Why? Her sexuality is the source of her energy and the activator of her creativity. It is this, fundamentally, that has been denied and it is this that can be taken back by every woman herself without anyone's assistance.

Mothers must begin to explore the nature of their own sexuality outside, in addition to and beyond the expectations of their husbands and lovers.  Each woman is given the means for this exploration, and she must now exercise her right to use it.  Self pleasuring allows  us to fully explore and know the ourselves.  Each woman must begin to pursue her own mysterious nature so that she becomes more familiar with herself.  Thus she will gain knowledge of deeper levels of sexual vibration.  The essence of our sexual nature has nothing to do with partnership.  There lies within each woman vast realms of uncharted territory that she must begin to know.  Guiding another down those paths of exploration is another adventure.

This is work each woman must do for herself.  It is an important task.  Women asleep to their own sexual nature do not have the energy or the imagination to know what to do in the awful situation that exists on the planet right now.

It is only with truly activated sexual power that women can unleash the creative force that is urgently needed to save humankind from its own abuses.  Sexuality activates the creative force, it catalyzes the imagination and germinates new ways to find our way back to clear water and air, fertile soils, joyful children, health and peace.

Women awake to who they truly are as carriers of the life force energy, the mystery of life itself, will begin to act in their special role as creators and nurturers of life.