By Jay Van Liere
They say that one who experiences enlightenment, Nirvana, can forsake all attachments of this world and go live in peace and cosmic bliss in some sylvan solitude. They say many a “realized” or “enlightened” Yogi has left his family and his wife to go finish his life in seclusion deep within the forest. Well, though on the spiritual path, I can most assuredly assert that I am not one of these, for Woman is She who makes my world go round. She is the spark of joy and happiness that fills my soul. For me, life is better shared…..and I do so want to share it with Woman. This personal quest for the balance of masculine and feminine in my own microcosm has blossomed into a desire to help heal the earth and heighten our awareness for a need to embrace the divine feminine and foster Her return to a place of prominence in this world.
The Love of Women
At 37 years old, and having had my fair share of relationships, I now realize that love is beyond time; love transcends all temporality. On this journey that is life, I have fallen in love with two women: one was four years ago, and the other was two months ago—but the latter ran the other way. I’ve done nothing but search my feelings since, to the seed of my heart and soul. And I love her completely, all that she is, and all that she isn’t. Here is where I know time bears no hold over love, for we were together only a month.
In midlife and still trying to be somewhat of a macho independent—open to love, but rational (so I thought) and wary—I did not expect to become so smitten, much less stumble and fall head first into Cupid’s arrowhead. Whereas at first I questioned this emotion, for it all seemed much too quick, too fast for love, I now know there is no question in my mind that I love her with all my heart. I felt that mutual connection right away, that spark that sets Venus aflame. I had tried to quell and cool the emotion, for I had seen much of the hardships our culture’s materialism could impede on relationships. I needed to be calm, realistic, rational, and unattached…I needed to keep my head; for many times these things just don’t work out in today’s world of Facebook postings and smart phones.
I should tell you a bit about me, for it will help with the narrative of my adoration for all that is divinely feminine. I have a deep love for Woman. Please do not take this as egotistical, for it does not come from that small self. Throughout my life I have been an athlete of varying preoccupations. At this stage it is surfing, backpacking, and the occasional mountaintop scale. At times when I’ve wrongly looked at the glass as half full, I’ve had to slap myself a few times because I am very blessed—my body and mind are in good health, and it has attracted the attention of the opposite sex. Along my journey, this has hardened me in some ways. My ego ran with it, and I became callous, selfish, uncaring, and sometimes a cheating womanizer. This character flaw, this consciousness flaw, was my Achilles’ heel through most of my 20s. Then, in my early 30s, I gave up drinking—a preoccupation that knew no moderation and had no conscious—and finally began to listen to that Inner Voice, my Higher Self speaking truth to me. Then I began to learn to transpose myself into another’s shoes, to wear Her feelings as if they were my own. If I could prevent all the hurt I caused to some wonderful women in that period of selfishness I would…..if I could go back and change it all, I would jump at the chance. However, we only have the now, and in this present moment I am focusing my love of all that is feminine on the pure essence of Mother Earth.
The Love of Gaia
Concerning much of my life’s occupation, I am a pseudo-scholar when I’m not paying the rent, and I am an investigative journalist of sorts. Like many other souls, through cosmological research and intuitive experience I have come to believe the stories and evidences that our Earth is an actual cosmic consciousness known as Gaia, much like Ewa in the film Avatar. She is of the female polarity spectrum, gleaming and gorgeous, feminine and motherly in all Her effulgence.
Aside from human woman there is but one other aspect of this earthly plane that brings me similar soul-level joy, this is the Earth Herself, Gaia, and all Her endless wonders and beauty. I embrace hiking through Her forests, across Her meadows, up Her mountains, through Her gorges, and along Her undulating rivers and coastlines. To amble through Her plant kingdom, mineral kingdom, and animal kingdom keep the dreamer and child in me alive. Mother Gaia—this is my church and temple. Every venture into her quiet solitudes rebirths me a better man, a fresher man, a soul renewed and invigorated, ready to face the day’s challenges once more. She has always been one of my greatest healers. Mother Gaia, thank you. I love you so very much.
But She suffers. For as a collective, we humans, Her caretakers, have betrayed Her with our greed, our powerful lust, our violence, ignorance, laziness and complacency. She suffers from the pains of the mutilations of our warped, oxymoronic “modern civil-ization”: Her veins sucked of their life, Her land and water defiled, Her other children, the flora and fauna, eradicated in the name of subjugation, competition, and profit. She suffers acutely, not only from Her own mutilation, but also because She truly feels the pain and the torment of the collective of Her children upon Her.
Our Mother and the spiritually attuned people upon Her know that the time to change is now; that there must be a return to the Feminine Divine of peace and universal love if the human race is ever to survive and our precious Mother ever to thrive once again. The rule of men has had its chance, some 13 millennia since the later days of Atlantis, and I believe it has failed miserably.
Oh Female, oh Woman, oh Feminine Divine! You quell the rapacious and angry spirit of modern man; beguiled by the trickeries and illusions foisted upon him in our dross of matter. Everyday do I pray for the return of Venus, Isis, and Aphrodite, of the love vibration of female perfection and maternal warmth, the sanity elixir that would heal so many bellicose and broken men. I am a man, and for years now I have been pleading and praying for the higher powers in the cosmos to help us return this Earth, our Mother, and all humanity upon Her back to a harmony of soft, loving, and fostering feminine guidance.
I used to be an angry, aggressive, and sometimes violent man, getting into fights with other men. Of course it never solved anything: It merely brought pain, grief, and remorse down upon me. Looking back, it was all macho ego refuse. Then I went the spiritual route, and now I loathe violence and confrontation. Today, I want to be more like Woman, gentle and motherly. When I am in touch with that side, I have experienced the most peaceful, the most blissful moments in my life. I’m still on the journey, and still very much a fumbling and fallible man, but my desire is to embrace and live my feminine side always.
We men of the world have had our chance. Time’s up. Let us concede with some vestige of dignity; let us pass the baton to Woman, to the Feminine Divine. May it be a new era of planetary leadership, one where there is a balance in the numbers of both female and male leaders; and one where the male portion is representative of those men who are peaceful and gentle, those who have connected with their feminine side.
And so I put out the call to all of humanity: Please may we return to the Feminine Divine?
If we seek Her inside of us, we can contact and ultimately become that unconditional motherly love. If we all attune to that Mother inside us, hate and violence diminish, and the Greater Light overcomes. If we embrace the Feminine Divine within, no longer could we senselessly ravage this glorious Mother Gaia who sustains us with life. She is us, and we are Her.
Jay Van Liere is an independent scholar and spiritual seeker. He embraces spiritual cosmologies from all over the world, both ancient and contemporary. The Akashic teachings of Rudolf Steiner and the cosmic teachings of his spiritual science, Anthroposophy, have had the most profound impact on Jay’s spiritual path, research, and view of our world and the cosmos. Based in San Diego, CA, Jay enjoys mountain summits and backpacking, places of dynamic land-meets-water, and casual strolls through Gaia’s sylvan blessings. He believes a great awakening is happening around the planet, one that is ushering in what Steiner referred to as the “Michaelic Age”. Jay’s fiction has appeared in Ashe Journal and Aquarian Solutions. He is a contributor at Realitysandwich.com and its sister site, Evolver, where some of his more in-depth investigative and cosmic treatises can be found (http://evolver.civicactions.net/user/jay_van_liere). Contact Jay on Facebook at Jay Van Liere.