Meeting the Divine Feminine
A man over 50 asked me recently:
“How do I be strong in my relationship? How do I move from a place of ‘helping’ or enabling (based in a long-standing pattern of fear of abandonment) to more of a position of strength, equality and differentiation?”
I shared with him some of the elements of the old European Myth “The Firebird” as elucidated by Michael Meade. Parts of this story pertain to the encounter with the Divine Feminine and I told him that I think that is important work for men to do as they sort out how to approach their woman in a more mature way. How do men do the work of encountering their Inner Feminine?
Some things they can do are to spend time with other “moist” men. Men who have cooled their inner heat and are in touch with their own inner springs of nurturing energy and creativity. They can spend greater lengths of time in Nature or learning how to bring forth beauty and nourishment from the Garden. They can cultivate a relationship with their inner muse and pursue the creative projects that She asks of him.
Part of what may come to a man as he does this work is the idea that he needs to woo her-that divine inner woman.
He may need to go to the Ends of the Earth, where the Land meets the Sea, and put up his silk tent, set out fine foods and wine, and play his harp and sing the songs of his heart’s longing.
As he does that, the divine feminine will want to draw close. When that happens, there can be courtship and the possibility of a divine marriage. Then there can be a new energy that comes into the man and subsequently into his relationship with his woman.
This is not new. This is old, but it seems to have gone out of the repertoire of how men and women do things these days. It seems that in order for men to come back to this moist place by the water where they rediscover an interest in wooing their inner and outer woman, they need to track across the desert of their own anger and dryness for many years. They need to submerge in the endless vats of grief that accompany their waking days. They need to wake up to the truth of their longing and their confusion and their need to learn something new about how to approach the situation. Then they may be open to encountering this old idea again.
Once the man has dined and danced with his inner feminine a bit, he will have the courage and the imagination to approach the woman of his days in a new way. Even before approaching her, he will start to put out a scent that will start to attract her like a bee to a flower. As he connects with and starts to sing the songs of his hearts longing, which is an age old song of Life’s longing after Itself, he may notice `”eyes that saw him when they were first courting” starting to track him as he moves across the room. She may engage in some new/old humor and they may start to joke and laugh in some ways that changes the tone and temperature of the room. He might compliment her on her wit, on the way the light catches her hair in the morning and she will smile at him from a place of deep, deep longing in herself.
These are things that are possible for a man and his Beloved. When he takes the steps that initiation asks of him, he will be born again, and he will be able to bring that new Life into his marriage.
At this point he will know himself to be the man who has the moistness of heart and the fire in his imagination to participate in taking his marriage into the domain of Presence where he and his wife now reside. Walking through that place together, he and his beloved will gradually discover that they are off on the next round of their infinite journey!
