The Way of the Goddess In Planetary Rebalancing

by Ariel Spilsbury
Priestess of the Goddess (Lady of Communion Archetype)

On Earth, as a species, we are now standing on a dangerous precipice. Revealingly, the same hexagram in the Chinese I Ching oracle stands for both danger/crisis and opportunity. The conditions of our deliverance from this precipice of crisis, planetarily and personally are simple: fully embrace the Divine Feminine within each one of our hearts or perish from this Earth! This may sound overstated. It is not. I did not say deny, reject or blame the masculine in order to embrace the feminine. The embrace of the Divine Feminine includes everything. The fecundity of the Void of the Womb of the Mother is the Universal example of this truth. It is the intrinsic nature of female consciousness to embrace and include and thus to allow. For the last few centuries, we have been limping along with scientific materialism, functioning with a paralyzing, dualistic, either/or reality of good/bad, right/wrong, them/us to the point of planetary genocide. The way of the Goddess is the way of inclusion, embrace and allowance. The terms of deliverance can be perceived by allowing for the possibility of a third point of light, a way that includes more possibilities than solely any given two duality pairs can offer. Our reality is now radically reflecting the logical conclusion and disease of a mechanical and polarized way of thinking.

The famous semanticist, Alfred Korzybski warned in his work that we must move past the limiting nature of the subject object construction of the English language, which forces us to think in terms of cause and effect, without regard to relationship. In the Hopi for example, language is structured to express totally non-linear thoughts that have no time reference. Korbzybski warned that we will not grasp the true nature of reality until we recognize the intrinsic limitation of the way our dualistic language structures reality. Indigenous cultures such as the Native American have languages that support holistic, inclusive, feminine thinking and thus their reality outpictures that way. Together they dance, they dream, they play, they work, they sing, they create their unified life pattern in the context of what western scientists call whole systems. They operate as if everything were connected to everything else, which “either or” thinking precludes from our western, dualistically conditioned vision. This OR that thinking creates very different results than this AND that thinking. Ah Ho Mitakuye Oyasin is a Native American greeting that means “To All My Relations”... all things in connected relationship. Connection is the way of the Goddess. Seeing how the web of connection of the whole planet is delicately interwoven, changes forever how we see reality. Astronaught Edgar Mitchell, after floating in outer space on one of the first moon missions, left as an “either/or” rational based scientist and came back as a mystic that was changed forever from having seen a vision of the whole instead of artificially compartmentalized parts. There were no political boundaries on Gaia, She was seen in truth, undeniably, as a whole system.

We are at a critical turning point in human history. There is no time to point fingers of blame about how we came to be on the brink of planetary suicide. There is only embracing now, what will bring radical, potent and immediate transformation. Why do you think that all of a sudden the awareness of the Feminine aspect of Divine Consciousness, The Goddess, is rising so fast into human consciousness? Because the Goddess now offers a crucial shift in consciousness that includes, embraces and allows. Have we not learned enough from the folly of polarized “them and us” thinking? What the Goddess comes to show us is that there is intransmutably only ONE of us here. There are the myriad emanations of the One Light that we all reflect, but we are all sourced from the One Light of Divine Love. Thus to hurt another is to hurt oneself. To only take from the Earth and not honor or give back, is asking for imbalanced reactions in the Earth’s immune system, as manifested in diseases like AIDS. The Goddess demonstrates in Her being that there is no “them”. This simple perceptual shift is the basis of the transformation that is occurring on Earth in the loving embrace of the Goddess. Up until now, “them and us” thinking has created a fear -based reality. When we chose to live in fear, we contracted our awareness away from the Divine. When we now choose instead to love, we expand, open, and further embrace the transforming power of Divine Love. The way of the Goddess is the way of the embrace of unconditional love. She is now showing us the way.

Unlike the way of struggle and suffering that we have bought as the only viable model for spiritual evolution, the Goddess is coming forward to offer us a radical alternative, evolution through ecstasy, evolution through Grace. She is simply saying, “Open your hearts and prepare a place to fully receive me. I have been with you always. Through living in ecstatic delight and communion, in joy, you make a place to literally perceive that I am You.” This is a radically different model than the dissipating “pain is gain” model of reality, with the supporting aphorism “You have to suffer in order to appreciate what you have”. The way of the Goddess is the way of ease, pleasure and ecstatic delight. All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals and rites. Evolution in the Goddess happens through enjoyment of the senses rather than in abnegation and rejection of them. She is offering a way for us to enter into spiritual metamorphosis effortlessly and through joy. The way of the Goddess is the way of ecstasy. Open your heart. You can feel Her. She is now showing us the way.

If you have lost a feeling of divine connection, one of the first steps in the process of re-connection to your divine source is to re-establish a direct, personal relationship with the Divine Mother. At some point in that process, however, you recognize that even the word relationship is not accurate, that in fact, you are SHE. Regardless of your gender, you recognize and embrace the Goddess that lives within you. You recognize that your hands are Her hands, your heart is Her heart, your actions are Her actions. The world shifts radically in that moment of personal experience and realization. However, there is no hurrying that direct experience or that realization. It is an epiphany. It is an awakening that spawns adoration. In that moment of awakening, when you recognize yourself as a Divine being, you are overcome with deep gratitude and adoration to the Source of such unimaginable wisdom. As Andrew Harvey so eloquently states in his book The Return of the Mother, “ We must open ourselves to the outrageous truths that are contained in the power of the sacred feminine, the madness of divine love, the wisdom beyond all concepts and categories... The essence of the sacred feminine is subtlety, flexibility and mystery, radiantly overcoming the definitions of the mind by love and immediate naked knowledge of the interdependence of all things and all beings.” It is this state of “radiantly overcoming all definitions of the mind by love” that I call adoration. I am often swept away in streaming tears of joyful adoration to the Source of such immense Love as I feel in my heart. Such is the way of ecstasy in the Goddess. Remember the last time you felt “hopelessly in love”. It is that attitude of adoration to which the Goddess and all life most joyfully responds.

The way of the Goddess is the way of receiving, being open to, in resonance and communion with. By embracing this feminine aspect of our consciousness, we are becoming open receptors, telepathic nodes of divine wisdom and grace. In this reception, there is nothing to DO. In the dissipating model of reality, there was an imbalanced focus on rational understanding and doing. The temple of the Goddess is the temple of “I am not”. From birth, we have been trained in Western culture, to understand the world almost exclusively with our rational minds. The Goddess is now showing us that there are other ways to “know” that have nothing to do with cognitive understanding or mental knowledge. The Temple of “I am Not” is the temple of the fecund Void of the Mother, the place of emptiness, the place of not knowing. In this place, we, for the first time, become available to the subtle wisdom of Universal Mind, that can only be accessed by being receptive, still and empty. In this state of consciousness, we become divine tools of the Mystery, able to receive subtle impressions of divine wisdom that are only available in the stillness of the Void of the Mother.

When we are willing to make this shift of awareness into the Void of the Unknown, trust becomes a way of life. In this trust, we move forward with what is being presented in our daily lives, trusting that the larger view that the Goddess within us is holding of our present reality, is far more accurate than anything we could perceive with the limitations of our ego/minds. In this process, we discover that spiritual surrender, rather than being frightening, is actually our freedom. Thus, we give up struggling in our ego to “figure it all out” and “make it all work” and gratefully surrender to the Goddess within us, by accepting Her Grace. Such is the way of the Goddess.

When we re-open with new awareness, to the primal trust of childhood, a whole new world suddenly appears. When we recognize and have direct experience, that we really are nurtured, loved and supported in every moment by the Divine Mother, regardless of what appears to be challenges in our lives, we come to know what trust actually is. Trust is the knowing that as co-creators with the divine, we are orchestrating our lives for maximum spiritual growth and can thus trust impeccability how our lives are unfolding, regardless of the surface appearance. We can relax and be the playful, spontaneous, joyful, divine children that we truly are. Andrew Harvey states this with such power and poignancy: “The future of the human race will be made by the Mother through humble, illumined, playful divine children. No more masters, no more gurus, just us here together, her divine children recognizing each other’s divinity, adoring each others divinity and working together with each of our gifts to preserve the planet for Her play to go on in it... The Mother is asking us now, to enter into this direct relationship in order to become illumined, humble and playful enough for Her power to stream through us and really transform conditions in all different arenas of the entire world. Around those who have become like children, miracles dance! It is ours to reintegrate the innocent, free, abandoned bliss senses of childhood with a full mature spiritual consciousness. Goddess is directly present in the person who has the pure heart of a child, and who laughs, cries, dances and sings in divine ecstasy.” Such is the way of the Goddess.

All these perceptions of the ways of the Goddess are a radical paradigm shift from the dissipating reality model that was based in an imbalanced rational/linear duality. It is simply the time for the return of the Goddess. Not in a separating, dualistic model of supremacy, but rather in inclusion that supports a new balance that is neither male nor female. Inclusion that is rather, simply accepting the embrace of the Divine Mother that is immense enough to contain both. Each of us psychologically contain a male and female aspect of consciousness, regardless of the physical gender into which we were born. The Goddess is the Void that contains and includes both male and female. She is now showing us the way of inclusion personally and planetarily.

One simple and practical means to assist the transformation embodied in what the return of the Goddess represents, is being proposed by the ancient Mayan tradition, as well as many other indigenous cultures. It is the return to the 13 moon female calibration of time. Quite simply the stage was set for the imbalances created by scientific materialism on this planet, by Pope Gregory in the 13th Century, who took the thirteen lunar moon calendar that had been used by cultures living in harmony with nature for centuries and instead made an artificial 12 month solar calendar, scattering the remaining lunar month’s days throughout the year. This deceptively simple act created a pattern that was not in harmony with nature and it’s natural cycles and thus set the stage for a technological, industrial model where time became a mechanical commodity that then translated into money. That model has now brought us to the brink of planetary ecocide. This is not pointing any fingers of blame. It is simply time, in the return of the Goddess, to begin to recalibrate time in honoring of the natural 13 moons of 28 days each, that occur in any given year. A woman’s menstrual/moon cycles occur in harmony with this cycle. The whole natural world is in harmony with this natural cycle.

In order to regain the immediate balance that will turn the tide away from planetary disaster, it would assist us to calibrate time in the way of the Goddess once again. This may sound ridiculously simplistic. It is not. The implications of this simple shift in consciousness are vast. The way we hold time determines a great deal about how we perceive reality. Jose Arguelles says, “In the 12 month model, time is money. In the 13 moon cycle model, time is art.” These two perspectives create radically different outcomes. As one Mayan Daykeeper named Sky Compton says, “Mechanical time’s greatest detrimental impact is the separation from Source and thus alienation from the natural world. It is simply now time to return to Source, to return to the Mother, to return to our personal, intimate connection with the cosmos!”

The wisdom of the female is the wisdom of connection, the seeing of all things in relationship. The female psyche is intuitively sourced by its natural connection with beauty. The tendency of the female aspect of consciousness to create beauty and harmony is supported by moving within the natural cycles of time. It is the nature of the Goddess to create beauty. The Goddess empowers our creations, as She directly sources through us the powers of that creation. In this process, we reveal more unique faces of the beauty and wisdom in Her creation. The Goddess is the fecund Mother Creator. She is showing us a way to freedom through our creations. As we start moving in the cycles of natural time, we are inspired by living in harmony with nature, to create more beauty. Through a simple shift in the way we hold time, we begin to transform the world around us.

As I said, the same I Ching oracle hexagram that represents danger/crisis, also represents opportunity. On Earth we are now experiencing walking the cliff of that paradox. Which way our predicament on Earth will go, is dependent on our process of sudden wakening to the preciousness of the opportunity in consciousness that the Goddess is offering us. To trust and simply come into the warmth of Her embrace, will begin to open unimaginable doors in our awareness. The Goddess is beckoning with outstretched arms. Will you allow yourself the Grace of surrendering to Her embrace? The way of the Goddess is the way of ecstasy. Open your heart. You can feel Her. She is showing us the way!