Now here was I, new-awakened, with my hand stretching out and touching the unknown, the real unknown, the unknown unknown.
D.H. Lawrence
I’ve been surrounded, captured, and touched by the Sacred Feminine over the past week. I don’t know exactly what that means. I don’t really feel a need to figure it out. There’s something powerful about its mystery and my attempts to parse it out, drill it down, box it in feel not only futile, but counter-intuitive.
As I’ve been in conversations (with myself and with others) these past days, particular imagery has come to me again and again. It’s as though I’m looking at a city or landscape from far, far away. Gathering overhead is this swirling pillar of a storm cloud. It’s gaining in strength, height, and power—sci-fi like, really. In my imagination (though far stronger) it’s as though I’m witnessing all the power of the Sacred Feminine gathering her forces and preparing to make herself known. But unlike an actual swirling storm, she is not destructive. Her presence will be beautiful, expansive, empowering, and healing. But at least right now, she remains a bit distant…waiting…
Waiting for what?
Waiting for me to understand. Waiting for me to speak of her. Waiting for me to call for her. Waiting for me to recognize her—within myself. Waiting for me to wake up. Waiting for me to touch the unknown.
Sogyal Rinpoche, a Tibetan spiritual teacher, says, “We often assume that simple because we understand something intellectually…we have actually realized it. This is a great delusion.” Women need to understand the Sacred Feminine in our heads, but most of all we need to “realize her” in our souls.
And the moment does come. When we set out to find the integrity in our feminine souls, when we defy and venture beyond prefabricated identities and little cages and patriarchy’s dogma into the circle of deep feminine ground, the moment of realizing Goddess Within comes.
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine 
The new space has a kind of invisibility to those who have not entered it.
Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation
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{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Ronna, your words are gloriously powerful and stir me intensely.
Thank you for being a strong, powerful, independent, feminine woman who has the ability to make a difference in my life.
.-= Tracy Todd´s last blog ..Superman – Still my Hero. =-.
The feeling’s mutual, Tracy. Indeed: the awareness of the Sacred Feminine in one another. Hardy unknown: alive, pulsing, powerful, and showing up! Thank you.
Ronna,
I am feeling that we are on the same wavelength right now (maybe more than usual) … I wrote just yesterday about languages that speak beyond the boundaries of rational thought and traditional reason … and the language of the body was one of the ones I spoke about … and this is to me just one way that the divine feminine expresses itself.
Of all the people I know you embody the divine feminine as much as any other … so I believe that even though she may feel a bit distant to you still, she is there, maybe more than you even realize. At least in my view, you are already speaking from her … maybe the understanding comes, at least the brain understanding. It seems clear that your spirit already fully understands.
Mmmm, Lindsey. Thank you for these words. And I agree with you: there is something larger, deeper, more true about her than I have known or been aware of previously. AND she is closer than ever before. Could you know how much this means to me? “…you embody the divine feminine as much as any other.” and “It seems clear that your spirit already fully understands.” Rest and a powerful energy combine when I begin to embrace these truths. Undoubtedly, you speak her voice on my behalf. The rhythm and reciprocity are stunning. I am deeply grateful.
Ronna, thank you for this beautiful post – and for the links as well. I just went on a retreat in Mexico – and the previous week, they had hosted a retreat on the “Sacred Feminine” – so that has been in my head for a while. You sparked the conversation with my own self on this topic and the resources are perfect. Thanks my friend!
You’re more than welcome, Laura. And clearly, the radiant cloud gathers. Our own “Sacred Feminine” retreat is definitely on the way. (How can it not be?!?) Maybe not on the beach in Mexico, but equally divine just because we’re speaking of her, inviting her, acknowledging her in ourselves.
How wonderful for you to share this time of emergence and acceptance.
I believe the greatest difficulty in this process of realization and acceptance is the fear. Not fear of the Sacred Feminine we all embody–but the perceptions of us once we have freed that core of ourselves. It is, I believe, fear of what happens when we stop living in the “I’m going to do” or “I’m working to become,” and are willing to stand in the “I am.” The power that exists within us not only fills us–but emanates from us and is palpable. That power is daunting to those without it.
The stepping off the ledge moment is understanding that you can’t step back into the comfort of status quo. The real beauty is that once you step off–turning back isn’t even a question.
.-= Julianne Fuchs-Musgrave´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.
Absolutely, Julianne! I am SO with you on this. And, as I think back even on my own life, I am aware that there have been significant stepping-off-the-ledge moments where implicitly I knew there would be no turning back – and still I stepped. The sense of power within – even in the midst of the unknown and fear – was/is palpable.
But more than ever before, I feel it emanating – in me, in the women with whom I’m having these incredible conversations, even in this morning’s comments on this post. For me, the power is not as daunting as it is seductive. Not in a ravenous, destructive way; but, in a nurturing, embracing, and deep-roar-from-within, WOMAN sort of way. Beautiful.
Thank you so much for your words!
Thank you!
Just started reading Dance of the Dissident Woman last week and I find myself torn between needing to create space in which I can fully chew and digest the words and thoughts because they feel like meat to my starving soul and the urge to plow through it, to know all of it NOW.
I asked my husband if he would read it because it so accurately discusses how I’m feeling, what I’m experiencing (at least the beginning does).
I feel this rise of the Sacred Feminine too; I’m not sure if I know her fully enough, or if I know how to embody her properly, but I feel an urgency. Like something is rising, coming… a wave about to break. Or like your imagery, a storm about to arrive (though, not in a negative way – like the welcome relief of rain in the height of summer). I’m not sure if I’m quite in the right place yet and I’m scrambling desperately to get up to speed so I can be ready to embrace her, so I can be open for her to flow up and out through me. I hope she’s waiting for me to be ready…
Yours,
Megan
.-= Megan Potter´s last blog ..Daring Monday: Overcoming Jekyll & Hyde =-.
Megan. So glad you let me know you were in “Spam” so that I (nor anyone else) missed your words! I’m so with you on this book! I’m rereading it again now and though I want to move through quickly, there’s something so deeply soothing and “home” about it that I don’t want to miss a word. Sue Monk Kidd speaks directly to me as her background is so closely aligned with my own; her language feels familiar and her movement so resonant with where I have been, am, and am going.
I love that you’ve asked your husband to read it – and I’m hopeful he will. Please let me know what his thoughts are!
Clearly, as I’ve read women’s comments today, this gathering “storm” is not unique to me. It’s a force to be reckoned with, something that will not be subdued, and a intoxicating fragrance that I WANT to be mesmerized and transformed by. I totally believe She is waiting…and moving simultaneously. She tempers urgency with patience…and that gives me the freedom to do the same.
So grateful for your thoughts, your presence, your starving soul.
I feel myself very much in a similar place. I also feel the force ripening, the movement flowing, the gathering storm coming (I feel like the Earth Herself is part of that, with the recent earthquakes, tidal waves, and now the volcano). There’s a lot of awe I feel, which definitely shades into fear, sometimes quite strong fear, sometimes, but also into gratitude and joyful celebration at other times. It’s a big disruption, or rather She brings a big disruption, but as you say, Ronna, it’s also beautiful, expansive, empowering, and healing.
I also like what Julianne said about stopping ‘living in the “I’m going to do” or “I’m working to become,” and are willing to stand in the “I am.” ‘ That’s also where I am, more and more often, moment by moment.
I’m stunned so much by this thing I’m going to say next, that it’s hard to touch, hard to stay with it:
…but this rich network of women, connecting by all of us holding the hands of this vast InternetBeing, this fully-alive electric organism right here participating in this transformation with us… this thing we are all doing right here this moment, on blogs, on Twitter, all of it, is huge. It really is. I’ve been thinking a lot about a quote from the Dalai Lama — “the world will be saved by the Western women.” And it seems to me that this is exactly how we’re doing it. I think you are so essentially, fundamentally right, Ronna, in standing so strong in a place of saying that conversations, especially renegade conversations, are the most life-affirming, healing, transformative things we can be doing. These conversations are the midwives that bring forth the new thing we all are hungering for, waiting for, breathing towards.
May we all speak and listen the world into being.
OK. I’m just not going to say anything Karen, but “thank you,” and “EVERYONE: go read her words again!!!” So powerful. So perfect. So poignant. And I’m deeply grateful, humbled, and for sure – “breathing towards.”
Yes, may we all speak and listen the world into being.
Ronna, thank you for speaking into being the experiences you are having. In Hawaiian culture we believe that words carry power (mana) with them. I found your post via our Fempreneur forum…quite unexpectedly. As I was reading the comments my head was thinking, “yes, this is what is happening in the world.” However, when I read Karen’s comment, the part she had a hard time staying with, I experienced a complete tingling throughout my entire body; something I believe happens when I am experiencing TRUTH. And suddenly her words became part of my experience and it was/is powerful.
This is all quite new to me and I know that I am on a life-path I cannot deny and that I am part of the global movement of “Western women” who will save our world. What part I will play, I cannot say right now. But women of this mindset and heart-connection who are feeling the rise of their mana in their beings are crossing my path and surrounding me completely and I am grateful for you and for the women here.
In the spirit of aloha,
~Yvonne Kamamalulaniohailionaona Ohumukini
Yvonne: Thanks so much for being here, for speaking mana, for affirming Karen, for acknowledging your own converging path. It is powerful, beautiful, and so, so TRUE!
Your site is about truth. Your truth, our truth, my truth. These are not always one in the same. Rather they can be different, vastly different, and still parts of the same. Like a toe and a gallbladder are each a part of my body.
I agree that I am feeling something. This wondrous ability to set our deepest thoughts and feelings adrift in a sea of bytes and hertz, and for them to bump into, join up with, play and create with others has changed the landscape of our lives, of our thoughts, even of our hearts. I am reticent to call it feminine. Partly because, while many of those who are shining for me right now are goddesses, not all are, some are actually men. Partly because there is something exclusive, something excluding, about labeling it as only ours. And, to be totally honest, because there isn’t much about me that feels very feminine.
Whatever it is, it is building. Growing. Becoming. It is. As if surrounded by butterflies, it is motion in stillness. Shimmering, expanding, changing shape. I agree that my knowledge is far ahead of my realization.
This is, in itself a great truth.
There is something unfolding and unfurling. Opening to a fullness and a place for filling that are eternal, vast, unending. We are all part of it. Shining at different frequencies. Vibrating a great harmony that fills our souls, ushers us forward along our gifted path.
Thank you for this conversation, Ronna. I am honoured to be a part of it.
Hugs and butterflies,
~T~
.-= PicsieChick´s last blog ..Is there room for doubt in gratitude? =-.
So beautiful. Especially: “my knowledge is far ahead of my realization.”
I wonder if maybe, just maybe, this growing, becoming, expanding thing that we’re experiencing and attempting to name is all about realization…without the need for knowledge; emotion without rationality (though hardly irrational); embodiment in deeply spiritual, mysterious ways.
It is a gift to be surrounded by like souls, by butterflies, by still motion, by truth – with you.
“Synchronicities are no accident,” I wrote today, and it is no accident that all of us are here, commenting, experiencing the shivers of real, deep and divine resonance with this particular conversation. And from each of you, Ronna and everyone, there are connections and threads within my own background that feed into this glorious awakening of the Sacred Feminine. It is reaching out for the threads and weaving together the threads of our stories and histories. And perhaps finally in this lifetime, it is safe for the wise women to awaken and usher into the greater, more public consciousness the feminine face of the Divine.
Blessings to you all,
Bobbye Middendorf
The Write Synergies Guru
.-= Bobbye Middendorf´s last blog ..Synchronicities Are No Accident–Blog Challenge Post 10 =-.
Bobbye, may it be so! The idea of such just invites me to breathe deep and rest. Ahhhh. Indeed, may it be so! Thank you.
And sometimes she rages
in my breast at my forgetting…
Always to re-member!
.-= Sharon Eden´s last blog ..Three Essential Steps To Fierce Leadership =-.
Mmmm, Sharon. So lovely. Thank you! More resonance. More truth. More beauty.
Touching the unknown… collectively touching Her… with the experienced hands of many… helps make Her more known. Like here. More than 20 hands have touched this Sacred Feminine with you, Ronna. This kind of communion makes me gasp. Makes me breathe more deeply, and feel relieved by this blessed, shared reality. Thank you for an extravagant offering.
I agree, Erika. Both gasping and breathing more deeply. The sign of something powerful and beautiful. Thank YOU!
Ronna, “The Dance of the Dissident Daughter” cracked open my safe world years ago and left me forever changed. Thanks for a fabulous post (and beautiful artwork, too). L.
Thanks, Lynn. It is a significant book…especially for those of us who have known life in the church. So grateful for your presence.