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| ISBN-13: | 9781890350956 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The Golden Sufi Center |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 355 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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The Unknown She
Eight Faces of an Emerging Consciousness
By Hilary Hart
The Golden Sufi Center
Copyright © 2012 Hilary HartAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-890350-95-6
CHAPTER 1
ENTERING the SECRET
"Is there a spiritual science grounded in the knowledge that transformation for women can happen in accordance with our nature as women? Yes, it exists. It is an ancient science as old as human consciousness itself. And for some women it is the way home."
Angela Fischer
STEPPING INSIDE
Angela Fischer and I are sitting by the woodstove in her living room laughing. We have been talking about spiritual transformation in women and our seriousness has given way to elation. I find myself on continually shifting ground as I try to understand and conceptualize what comes so naturally to her, and she tries to explain a way of being that is beyond explanation and beyond conceptualization. So we end up laughing — again and again — at each other and ourselves as we cycle from bewilderment to concentrated effort with a willingness to work together until something essential within her heart has been revealed and recognized.
Angela communicates from within a spiritual terrain that is often unfamiliar to me, describing a process of transformation that is in its essence a way of being. Organic and sometimes deeply hidden, the path to God as Angela lives it draws a person fully into life, includes a nurturing and instinctual relationship with the physical world, and reveals the divine in the most ordinary things. God seems to come to Angela, a wife and mother of four children, in the sigh of her child as often as in the depths of meditation.
This path of transformation, this way of living, is infused with joy and driven by love, has little or no outer form, and relies on a continual state of inner attention and receptivity. There are no goals and no expectations; rather one offers oneself to what is Real by relating to what is present within every moment. It is a path of surrender, in which one embraces the wholeness of one's own being rather than striving for anything beyond oneself.
As Angela tells me, awakening this wisdom within the collective consciousness of the world can bring a new balance to our lives and reveal how God is present in His creation in this particular moment. It is an ancient path as well as a path suited for the specific needs of our world today. And for some women it is the way home, a way of transformation that recognizes and values elements of being a woman that our Western culture and its spiritual systems have largely ignored.
I spend almost two weeks at the end of the summer with Angela in the small village in northern Germany where she lives with her family, talking about her life and her relationship to God. One of those weeks is set apart for a retreat with fifteen people, mostly women, from nearby cities and towns. I stay with two friends of Angela who live next door and I spend much of my time with them, with other women from the retreat, as well as with Angela and her family.
Angela and I meet for at least a few hours every day, usually in her house, to meditate and talk. Sometimes we talk over tea or dinner; sometimes we walk together, alone or with her children as they ride their bicycles along beside us. When I am not with Angela or the other people from the group, or writing about our conversations, I run or walk alone on the endless trails in the woods nearby, explore the local shops, or ride a bicycle down long village roads past the farms and fields.
Her family's brick house sits on a small street surrounded by an incongruous mix of farms and newly built suburban homes. Less than a mile from her home, beyond a field of Shetland ponies and the railroad tracks, the village ends at the edge of the vast wood where she and I often walk together.
Angela is a strong woman in her mid-forties with graying hair and translucent blue eyes. She has a physical power and presence that manifest in the way she moves through the many tasks of her day, and she seems consistently attentive whether she is roller-skating with her daughters or leading a meditation meeting. Despite the demands of this book and the retreat, she stays closely involved with the routines of family life. Her husband and children remain a constant presence in our time together, and her children especially swirl around us in a continual reflection of love and life.
For twenty years Angela has been a guide, helping people, mostly women, find and follow the thread within themselves that leads them deeper into their hearts and allows them to live their love for God more fully in the world. Since meeting Irina Tweedie, a Naqshbandi Sufi, in 1985, she has combined her own experiences and understanding of feminine wisdom with the wisdom of the Naqshbandi Sufi path.
Throughout our meetings Angela is increasingly open with me, and yet there are times we both feel the inaccessibility of what she knows and lives so naturally. Some of the frustration and confusion we experience together are a natural part of the emergence of feminine power and wisdom, which often lives in secret, and expresses itself in mysterious and unexpected ways, sometimes revealing itself openly and sometimes seeming to work from a place of darkness.
Entering Angela's physical house echoes my own confusing passage towards that which she holds most dear. The front door of the house opens into a very small space, and one must immediately pass through another door to enter the dining area. To step into the living room, one must open two doors back to back. Some of the doorhandles turn one way; at least one handle turns the opposite way. I often feel turned around and halted, sometimes laughing, sometimes frustrated when I come to meet and meditate with her.
I visit Angela in her home, and later we speak in my home when she comes with her family on vacation to California. Our discussions and our time together lead us around and around, spiraling us to a deeper meeting ground, through growing openness. Throughout the process, some particular dynamics of women's spirituality reveal themselves, and yet we are both struck by the feeling that something essential is beyond view. But that which comes so naturally to Angela is elusive in part because of its naturalness. As with everything simple and natural, the thread of the miraculous is woven throughout, not as something separate, but as something essential to its simplicity.
TRANSFORMATION AND THE PHYSICAL BODY
One evening Angela and I sit in her living room, she occasionally feeding the woodstove that fills the room with a strong heat — a relief from the late-summer chill outside. It is dark now, and we can hear her husband cleaning in the kitchen after our dinner together, and her children playing upstairs. We sit for a while, listening as the noises of the house recede, and enjoy the way the room slowly warms from the stove.
"These are interesting times, aren't they?" Angela asks me. "It seems there is a need now for something ancient to come into consciousness. But talking about feminine wisdom, feminine ways of being, is not for the purpose of returning to how things have been. There were times when women's spiritual traditions thrived, and had great influence in the community. But those times are lost, and they are lost for a reason. Humanity is elsewhere, at a different point of evolution. But an essence remains — an essence of feminine power and understanding that can be re-awoken now, for a new purpose. And if women come into contact with this essence within themselves, they can be of service in a new way. For these reasons I think it can be helpful to remind us of this ancient wisdom within ourselves, wisdom that is the root of spiritual transformation in women.
"Every soul has her own way to God," she tells me. "Everyone is treated differently on the path and every path is unique. This is why it can be difficult to generalize about spirituality. Yet for some women there is a need to recognize that who we are as women plays an important role in our journey home. And there are hints and traces pointing to how ancient feminine traditions have recognized this, have always understood that spiritual transformation can happen in accordance with our nature as women, which is different from men's nature. What is natural for women, what we know so deeply, can be the basis of how we grow. And sometimes these things are easily overlooked because we take them for granted, because from one point of view they are so simple, so ordinary. But from another point of view they are truly precious.
"Of course from an absolute perspective it does not matter if you are a man or a woman," she continues, as though addressing a concern I had not yet voiced. "Our essential nature is the same. On the level of the soul, it is the same. But we are born into this world as human beings. We begin with either a male physical body or a female physical body, and we know there are some important differences between the two. We go back to the source from here, from this physical world. The spiritual path includes the physical world, and spiritual realization includes the physical dimension. Otherwise we would not be here. So the path can be different for men and women because we begin from a different point, a different starting ground.
"The body is the earth within spiritual life. The earth that gives ground, receives the heavenly light, and nurtures the spiritual process. The physical body is of tremendous importance for the spiritual transformation in women, yet it is the element that is most often overlooked.
"Of course, when I talk about the physical body I also mean something much more expansive than we are used to associating with the word 'physical.' The physical world reflects other levels of truth in its own particular way. The physical differences between men and women are not just biological, but much more complex and multidimensional. But the physical dimension has been ignored for so long within our spiritual systems that I feel it is helpful to bring it back into consciousness, so that transformation can be recognized as inclusive, a process that works within wholeness.
"For women, everything is included," she tells me. "We just need to live who we are. Of course we need to come to know who we are, and this is the journey. Coming to know who we are means we come to know how God has made us. We come to know the secrets of creation, the mysteries of how God reveals Himself in this world, for these secrets are put into the female body. God has entrusted these secrets to women as a physical consciousness. Women's spiritual transformation means to make the mysteries real, to make them conscious. It is a process of going back, or returning to the source, but at the same time it is a process of realizing creation. And without the physical body there is no realization."
The room is warm now; Angela closes the stove to bring the fire to coals and we both push aside the small blankets we have been sitting beneath. "Women have a particular knowledge about creation and the miracle of creation," she says. "We know the ways God reveals Himself in the world. This knowledge is in all women because we give birth. And I don't mean one has to become pregnant to live this wisdom; it is inherent in who we are. This knowledge exists at the deepest level of our consciousness, and the spiritual process can help us become more and more aware at this level, awakening this consciousness which is, in essence, the Creator in His creation, the divine in physical form. It is like a secret gift, a specific way that God is part of His world through women.
"This consciousness gives women a unique role to play within creation. It allows us natural access to the creative darkness from which all life emerges. We can access this darkness, and work within its silence to guide life from the emptiness. We live in two worlds, helping light enter existence, wherever it is needed, and we are attentive — with great care — to all that is born."
WHOLENESS
Women's particular responsibilities in the process of creation reflect an inherent wholeness and a natural access to all levels of life. Angela explains that spiritual transformation for women naturally reflects this wholeness as well.
"Most everything in a woman's life is included in her spiritual path. So she does not need to go from here to there," she says, gesturing across the room. "She has the ability to go just where she is, to go without going. It is important for all of us to break this conditioning that we have to become someone or something else. A woman can walk her path within where she is. Of course through discrimination and attentiveness she comes to know and live her real self, which is free. But her transformation includes who she is in a unique way.
"You see, it is often not like this for men. Men's journeys are of course towards themselves, but at the same time they seem to journey away from themselves, leaving their bodies behind. They master their instinctual nature — which is an expression of the body in the world — and transform these energies. Most of the practices given in all kinds of traditions are designed to assist this process. They are easy to recognize, emphasizing ascetic trials like fasting, physical endurance, and controlling sexuality. And we consider these as general spiritual practices, not recognizing that they might be inappropriate for women. Women often don't need these practices, because they stay where they are; their connections within life, within the created world, provide the ground for their transformation. Our bodies can be included because they do not need to be purified as men's do; they are already pure.
"Working with men, you can push them, just push them with a lot of energy, yah? Just — umph!" Angela says, thrusting her open palm into the space between us. "You cannot do it with women like that. Women lose connection to life and their physical body. They need the container of being connected to life. And in this container the whole transformation process takes place. The flow of the process is, in part, guided and fed by the sacred substance within our bodies. If a woman disconnects from her body she cuts herself off from this essential source of spiritual energy, the divine potential that allows her direct understanding of her own divine nature and the sacredness of all life.
"The alchemical process of transformation for women happens within a container, a vessel. The container is like a basket woven by the threads of life and earth, woven by women's connection with their feminine instincts. Or you can see it as a cocoon within which the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly takes place, secretly. Like a cocoon this container of life spins around the inner process. The cocoon is the protecting cover within which the deep process of purification, melting, and creation takes place. It is the container that carries, embraces, and feeds, but also hides and somehow veils for a while what really happens. At the same time the cocoon maintains the connection to earth, to the body. In this way whatever happens on the inner planes — on other levels of reality — has an effect on the body, on the world of matter."
Angela tells me that spiritual exercises which stress renunciation or disdain for the body or the world can sometimes be harmful for women. "If a woman does practices that encourage a detachment from her body or her everyday life, she can cut her instinctual connection to life. If this happens, she denies the energy of life itself, and the love that is in life and in really living who one is. For a woman it is often the stream of life that connects her to the Absolute. Women know that this stream flows from the circle of the uncreated eternal into this world and with this world back again to God.
"Women know we are in relation to life around us. For example, meditation is very important. But what's the point of sitting on your meditation cushion, your attention somewhere else, when your child is hungry, or when your plants need watering? Women instinctively know that life itself can be a meditation. It is part of feminine wisdom that the spiritual world and the material world come together in the wholeness of life where neither is sacrificed for the other.
"I have found that many women are helped when, at the beginning of their path, they feel that everything is embraced, when they understand that they don't have to cut their lives, or themselves, in parts, and leave some behind. Spiritual conditioning can tell us that we have to turn away from our ordinary lives. And in the beginning for some women it might appear as a kind of relief to turn away from the demands of life that confront us again and again with our restrictions and attachments. But women often know, instinctively, that this is not right for them, and they are so relieved to see this wisdom reflected back.
"So then how does a woman's process look?" she asks. "It takes on as many forms as there are women. But one thing is the same, and that is love. The great Sufi master Bhai Sahib said that women need only a few spiritual practices. They are taken by the way of love."
One of the first steps on a woman's journey is to understand that she already embodies the most essential dynamic of her spiritual evolution — the natural capacity of longing that manifests throughout every level of her experience.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Unknown She by Hilary Hart. Copyright © 2012 Hilary Hart. Excerpted by permission of The Golden Sufi Center.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,1. Entering the Secret Angela Fischer,
2. In Relation Pansy Hawk Wing,
3. Blaze of Light, Blood of Creation Andrew Harvey,
4. The Storming of Love Jackie Crovetto,
5. The Twenty-Two Taras Ani Tenzin Palmo and the Nuns of Dongyu Gatsal Ling,
6. Women's Ways of Living Sobonfu Some,
7. The Unknown She Lynn Barron,
8. Everything Holy Myosho Virginia Matthews,
Contributor Information,
Notes,