O women, there is a way that we can help life so much now. It is not as you expect. It is not about your doing, although we each need to do the work we are here to do. This is about being – a state of being that is your power, and many of us have forgotten that we even have it. Your forgetting can bring despair. Please, sit a moment. Breathe. Allow. Your soul is a power, an empty space within that connects you to all life. We need only find and recognize this vibrant, healing stream that flows through us from head to toe; it is our recognition that allows it to flow out into life.When we come together without judgment, creating a sacred space for this place in each of us, love pours through our differences and creates new pathways between us. It is the Real coming into life. We are the vehicles for this awakening because it takes place in our own lives. This is a beauty that has nothing to do with our problems. It just is. And within it are the qualities of peace, healing, and nourishment for life.
Anne Scott is trained in the Naqshbandi Sufi tradition. Dedicated to working with women, Anne lectures and leads workshops and retreats around the country on dreamwork and spirituality in everyday life. She is the author of Serving Fire: Food for Thought, Body and Soul, and The Laughing Baby.
Imagine columns of light that reach from the earth to heaven. That is who we are. We need only come together from our different communities, and in the space between our differences, oneness can nourish the earth and bring the energy of real change into life.
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Women Working with Oneness: A Forum for Women in Service to Life, was held in San Rafael, California, in Fall 2004. It drew together women from different spiritual, professional, cultural, and ethnic communities. The second gathering in early Spring 2005, allowed for more intimacy because of its smaller venue. The third event brings together Blackfoot, Sufi, and Buddhist women. In all events, it was demonstrated that when women come together from different communities for the sake of the world, the pure current of love and oneness is given. This way of women working together is so new that we barely dare to believe that it is real, and that it can have an effect on the suffering that exists in the tumult of our time.
Oneness needs our differences. It is breaking down the isolation that we have come to know as women, and drawing us to the wonder and joy that is present when we come together in this new way. As one woman said in the last gathering, “We are so different. But when I close my eyes, I feel I am Home. I have never felt this before, only when I go to my land in Mexico. But here, today, I feel threads that connect me to every woman in this room. It is connecting in my heart to the hearts of other women here.”
When women come together for the sake of life, without imposition or agendas, something extraordinary takes place. A pattern woven out of new relationships comes into being, as a quality of oneness nourishes those present with a light that is unmistakable. And because we are a part of life, this nourishment goes beyond our individual lives, and touches the whole. We are ordinary women who come together from different communities, for the sake of the world.
Women are ready to work together with the energy of oneness, to help life come alive so that it can heal itself, and be nourished by the light of oneness and love. When this full agreement in the hearts of women becomes a lived reality, we will hear life sing in a new way.
This understanding appeared in a vision showing that women were ready to work together. But before this would take place, each woman needed first to be given a flower. This gift, that actually comes from within, allows women to work together, individuals within a dynamic whole. This flower is the conscious recognition of the individual soul of each woman; it affirms the innate beauty within women, a dimension of being. This is the reality of oneness, so close to us now that we need only turn towards our longing to help the world, and it is present, freely accessible to those in service to life.
Yet when we go back to our Home, for some, the rational mind can return and the despair can creep in, the doubts arise. So it is our work to remind one another of the reality that we have experienced, and to bring into our own daily lives, to learn to trust the ways of oneness. We need to remind each other of the power that women carry in their being, so easily drowned out by our own conditioning, our own fears.
There is a new language that women are finding, to articulate the feminine wisdom that has been hidden within us for centuries. It will take time for this language to reveal itself. Without this language, which is a form of consciousness in women, the earth cannot be healed by the energy of oneness. Women have a very real contribution to make now. This new language does not fit in the masculine structures of the world, that also exist within our own psyche, but it arises from within the new feminine, and is itself a manifestation of working with the masculine in a new way.
This language is emerging through the sorrow of the world, through the awakening of the hearts of humanity. We must find within ourselves where we deny our own feminine spirit, where we continue the masculine devaluation of our own real nature. Then the wisdom of the feminine will open to us, showing us how to work with the interconnections of life in a new way. And it is in our hands to value the contribution of the feminine at this time of such suffering in the world. It requires that we dare to live our deeper passion and devotion for what is Real, in the full light of day.
Women have worked on themselves so much. Improving this, polishing that, beautifying this quality, strengthening that one. But what happens if we focus instead on life, on this red bursting life that wants to be lived? It is only too easy to be caught in the cycle of self-improvement. If we unknowingly identify with the masculine idea of purity or perfection, of a transcendent quality of the divine, this identification steals our attention from where we most need it. Here, in life, in our imperfections, we will come to know the divine. This tiny turn of our attention, from what is imperfect, to what is alive, can nourish life immensely. Life is a dynamic, self-regulating organism, and it needs us not to try and fix ourselves. It needs us to turn to what is alive, what is singing, to the reality that we adore life because it sings of the Creator of both the darkness and the light.
This oneness, this love is awakening inside of us. The more we give to life, the more access we have to its power, and to the knowledge and love that is needed for life. The more we can wake up each morning and say, “My life is for You, my Beloved. Let me live my life for Your sake, for the sake of life, for the two are not separate any more. Let me sing to You in all that I do. Let me not forget what I am here to remember. And may life know that it is infinitely precious. May I remember this for life.”
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Here is a dream sent to DreamWeather Foundation at the new millennium. It came from a woman in England who had not read or heard about the new energy.
“A dream which I had at the turning of the new century seems to reflect the new emphasis on a feminine energy rather than the patriarchal energy of former times. It requires our love and attention to bring it into the world, however.
I am walking with friends in the countryside on open grassland. It is dusk. In a dip beneath a hill I see a brown eagle which is injured deep beneath its left wing, close its heart. I pick it up and hold it against my heart, anxiously considering how I may find veterinary assistance for it out here. I look down at my hands to see if the bird is all right and find it has transformed. Since holding it to my heart it has become a brown paper market bag filled to the brim with absolutely perfect, unblemished white mushrooms.
The mushrooms represent for me a feminine form of connectedness (via the mycelium with which they grow beneath the surface of the earth), a feminine form of networking rather than the former, vertical style of connecting represented by the now grounded form of the wounded brown eagle. The perfect white fruits are now above the ground, harvested, vulnerable, yet available in the marketplace (the brown paper bag). It was the heart of the old way that had become wounded but through the heart of compassion it became transformed into its new form of expression.”
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Women, Wisdom & Dreams: The Light of the Feminine Soul by Anne Scott.
Women, Wisdom and Dreams: The Light of the Feminine Soul, plays a vital role in empowering women in the work of healing their lives and the world around them. In this elegant and practical guide on feminine wisdom and dreams, Anne Scott leads us into a deepening relationship with our dream world, not only to help us understand its personal significance, but also to use the insights we uncover there to help heal our world. Asking us to cultivate a courageous attentiveness to our inner lives, Anne Scott provides valuable tools for restoring the link between feminine spirituality and social change. Reclaiming the language of dreams, practising states of inner attention and stillness in our busy lives, and gathering in groups to share from a deeper place, offer rich methods for reconnecting to the love, joy and creativity that are our birthright and contribution to life.
The Eternal Feminine
Draws us heavenward.
—Goethe
In Arabic, Barakah means blessing or Divine Grace. It is a feminine Arabic name. Barakah also carries the meaning of “soul power”, the “blessing”, “irradiation of sanctity”, or the “protective energy”, all of which constitute so many images of the celestial Femininity.
Water symbolizes the original fountain of life, which precedes all form and all creation. Many myths and legends are based on a concept of there being a primeval ocean or watery abyss that was the source of all life. In the Hebrew view of creation it is said that ‘the Spirit of God moved on the face of the Waters’ and that ‘the waters of the Torah’ are the life-giving waters of the sacred law. In the Qur’ān it is said, ‘From the water we made every living thing’.”
In the Dao-de jing of Lao-zi, the author writes, “The gateway of the mysterious female is called the root of Heaven and Earth. Though constantly flowing, it seems always to be present.”
The waters flowing, from this gateway of the Divine Feminine, stream throughout Sûfî thought and practice?
The Earth is not a static dead rock floating in space that exists solely for man’s economic purposes. The Earth was not created by God to be partitioned into artificial geographic regions, over which men will then foolishly war with one another. Rather, she is a living being, a mother, a woman, a Goddess, whom we are to love, respect and nurture – as she so patiently nurtures us…
The videos were wonderful.