Section 11-D WHAT IS WOMAN? YOU ASK
What are women anyway? The patriarchy has trained us men to regard women from the surface: makeup, clothes, how much skin is showing? How big are the bulges? What jiggles? What curves? In show business they call it “tits and ass.” That is the usual limits of a man’s attention placed on a woman. “What would she be like in bed?”
But what is a woman really? What is a woman underneath the surface? Where does Woman lead to? What does Woman represent? We men rarely experience deeper qualities of relating to Woman because we lack the discipline to notice the feminine invitation. Our Patriarchal immaturity impedes us from entering feminine worlds that are rich with experience beyond our wildest imagination, a healing balm for wounds we’ve been too immature to face.
There are “Woman spaces” so clear with awareness and piercing with intelligence that nothing of your being is left unseen. If you have any secret embarrassments or faults they are no longer concealed. The Goddess sees all. There is no chance to turn away and hide. You are terrified to be so exposed, but through finally being seen you find that you are accepted completely as you are. No judgments come from the Goddess at all. Here is where the healing of the false mask takes place. She sees your false mask as exactly what it is: your false mask. You think you can keep this a secret but she already knows. The secret is only for you. Perhaps you need to use the mask. She accepts that you need to use it. Your inauthenticity and your childish antics are clearly seen and accepted as your own uncertainty, and your uncertainty is also accepted. The healing happens because since you cannot hide the false, you gain the courage to be true. All your efforts, whether they fail or succeed, only receive the Loving Goddess’s smile that sees and recognizes and accepts.
There are Woman spaces hot as the nuclear furnace at the core of the sun. Woman’s fierceness blasts forth, rips off your skin and sears the meat from your bones like dry dandelion fluffs blown from the stem. Your hair smokes. Your eyes squint in the roar of the flames. You wobble so much you can barely stand. No defense can protect you. All that remains is knocking bones; your trembling crackling skeleton shaking in its hollow shoes. It is then that you realize that nothing of your pain could possibly ever equal the pain experienced and now being expressed to you by Woman. If you can bear the pain that Woman now risks sharing, and if you do not wither in its presence or blame her back from your own weakness, you are recognized for your strength and courage and you achieve a great Victory. You are worshipped by Woman in a way that makes your juices surge simply for listening and witnessing. The vulnerable appreciation, by Woman, of something so simple as your listening, is even harder to bear than her nuclear storm.
There are Woman spaces so wise and magical that poetry drips like sparkling dewdrops from her lips, answering every question you dare or care to ask. She stands before you, a naked oracle nymph, who only wants to caress your mind with sweet assemblies of clarity and truth. Here wonder prevails. In the presence of such easeful wisdom it is no longer necessary to defend yourself with sane sounding reasons, or to profess that you know. A great healing takes place because you are permitted to fully relax into not knowing, and for the first time the wondrous present opens up for you and becomes truly habitable without fear. You can start to play. And the faeries play with you. Joy abounds and the Joy is intensely endless.