FSB Author Article
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from the book Let Your Goddess Grow!
by Charlene M. Proctor, Ph.D.
Published by The Goddess Network Press; May
2005;$19.95US/$24.95CAN; 0-9766012-0-6
Copyright © 2005 Charlene M. Proctor, Ph.D.
Grow a Balanced, Empowered Self
Generating woman-power to overcome inevitable everyday problems, or perhaps deeper issues of self-love, acceptance, or forgiveness, is about knowing the spirit-power within at an intimate level. The word empowerment means power put into action. When you reach the point of empowerment, you operate from an unfathomable sense of spiritual balance, a profound knowingness that you are composed of the All and are able to use it in the real world. It's impossible to generate self-love or put any spiritual principle to work until you fully embrace all aspects of who you are. Loving self is about loving spirit. Your power to effect change and cope is your inherent spirit-power put into action.
To be balanced and joyful people who love freely, we must feel our sense of power at the very core of our being. But true empowerment is not based upon feelings of superiority from being either a man or a woman, or from membership in an exclusive organization. Empowerment stems from belonging to the "divine I." You are a rendition of divine power from the minute you are born, with an invitation to draw at will from that account, which is always in balance. But to launch thoughts into reality, we need to rely upon images of a higher power that exemplify our true selves. If we want to feel balanced, with an all-encompassing sense of self-love, we need to believe that we arrive as an example of a balanced image of the Divine. It is our natural state.
To some extent, we've been doing this for centuries, because religion nudges us toward a higher power who is compassionate and loving, creating goodness, managing the universe with love. We identify with divine imagery by "being" like father and son, because it helps close the conceptual gap between who we are as humans and our spiritual source, that which constitutes us. It's important to see ourselves reflected in the Divine because we have relationships with those ideas -- they often validate and guide our earth journeys. Our knowledge of being divine must emanate from us at a very deep level, becoming our mental equivalent. We are the All, as we've already discussed, so we are also God. We are our spirit-power.
But our spirit-power is a balanced image of creation, with both masculine and feminine ideas, because we are one and the same; in fact, we are left and right halves of the brain, reconciling the intellectual and the intuitive, comprising both ordered and chaotic activities. As humans, we're simultaneously active and receptive, inheriting a physiological harmony at the chromosomal level. We are all composed of both masculine and feminine. If we continue to conceptualize the All with gender duality as we've been doing for ages, it's about time we recognized ourselves in a balanced image of divinity, one that includes both He and She.
Currently people are spending a lot of time talking about balance. We're astounded that everyone around us leads such lopsided lives of frenzy. Everyone is looking for a remedy to rebalance life, especially women. If the world is a manifestation of what we think, what we see is an unbalanced reflection of our own spiritual composition. The spiritual equation we are using to fuel our thought process to manifest reality is out of balance. We can't bring that power into our reality because we don't recognize it in ourselves.
Self-image stems from how we visualize the Divine. Without identification with both aspects of divinity, our world will never even closely resemble anything in balance. Until we recognize that the Divine is at work through us, a divine mother as well as a divine father present and at work in our lives, humanity will not feel empowered. Certainly, women will not reach their full potential. Even men need to revitalize their feminine side to live more balanced lives. Our institutions need it. And it's overdue.
Copyright © 2005
Charlene
M. Proctor, Ph.D.