IS AWAKENESS BEYOND GENDER?
In many spiritual circles, it is unpopular to explore the feminine face of awakening. Certainly, from a nondual perspective, it’s convenient to completely avoid any dialogue that refers to the role of the feminine in spirituality. And so there’s a tendency, in some of the more philosophical or intellect-based spiritual teachings, for language to be neutral or conceptual, and this can lead to a certain dryness.
On the other hand, in more earth-based spiritual teachings the pendulum swings the other way, and there is a passionate expression of the feminine as the goddess archetype, with the emphasis on the sensual and the emotional dimension of life. When this impassioned feminine arises as a reaction to the traditional spiritual emphasis on transcendence and detachment, there can be a forgetting of the necessity to be rooted in stillness before moving into the world with her myriad manifestations. If the inner transformation has not happened, then ego continues to play itself out, and, in some goddess-based circles, this leads to a kind of feminism that excludes and divides itself against the deep silent core of consciousness. This subtle inner division ends up as a distortion of the true sacred feminine if it is not attended to consciously.
Awakeness itself is genderless. The luminous truth shines equally brightly in all beings. And certainly, as has been my own experience, the superficial expression of masculine and feminine traits often recedes into the background and may even dissolve when one awakens to that which is beyond gender. When identity is no longer derived from physical and psychological form, the upholding of many gender-based behaviors becomes obsolete. This does not mean you become sexless, neutral, or bland. On the contrary, you become more whole and balanced.
Although awakeness is singular and without gender, there’s also a naïveté in trying to deny the mystery of duality as it dances through form. The Tao of life undeniably expresses itself as the polarity of masculine-feminine. Without this, there would be no creation. But these polarities are so much more than any inherited idea we have of what this looks like. They are more than role-defined responses or any historical image handed down to us by religion, culture, or tradition. In awakening, you not only transcend all gender-based stereotypes, you also become a conduit for the dance of masculine and feminine energies to play out their fullness through you. Once again, this is the beautiful and crazy paradox of awake reality!
- From Embodied Enlightenment Chapter 2, p 39.
Join Amoda on Twitter - https://twitter.com/AmodaMaa
Join Amoda on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/amodamaa/