Our Mother’s Light: The Path to Womanhood
The difficulties that present themselves on the road of growth come not from what we don't know but from what we think we do know. For American women, spiritual growth and intellectual development become a task of three major parts. The first is identifying/recognizing the presence of a colonial influence and perspective in our approach to everything. The second is being honest and vigilant in extracting/avoiding these tendencies. The third is taking strides towards understanding, accepting and honouring the true position our gender holds. Only then can our pride in womanhood be legitimate; only then can we truly value the power or strength of femininity.
Nowadays, the typical woman defined as "strong" is the one whose values, actions, behaviours etc. revolve around her capability to manipulate the world around her, including people she calls her partners or companions. If we are such women, we may know nothing more than how to do our hair and nails; how to look and smell good, how to spend money so as to con the common man into marrying the beautiful fools we've become. Everything about the modern woman revolves around what we have arbitrarily decided should be the roles and responsibilities of a man. It is then to our surprise that when they refuse to fit into the mould we have prepared for them, we end up alone, divorced or with several children, all fathered by the different men who managed to escape our talons. All the while we each feel justified in viewing ourselves as the victims of yet another useless male who doesn't understand us. But do we ourselves even understand "us"? We see this pattern of behaviour and loss all around us, everyday. We see it in ourselves, in our families. Still, we continue to defend every excuse we can produce in order to cling to our agenda of controlling everything and everyone in our environment. Throughout America, women are so strongly focused on a dishonest existence that, as a gender, we are choking on the empty standards being forced down our throats. Gasping for air in our fabricated reality, we are in dire need of examples that work.
The good news is that we do have access to just such examples. We can observe success, honour and inspiration in the lives of traditional women all over the globe. A big part of the dilemma we face in America is the education, or lack thereof, that we are offered in this colony. As human beings, we must understand our undeniable and inherent vulnerability to what we're exposed to. If we accept that we cannot control in the world around us; it is, therefore, safe to say that we are only a product of our environment. Where then, do we point the finger? Well, the truth is that if you find yourself in a ditch, you have to first see how it was that you ended up there. Who was it that exposed these ideas, notions and values to us? More importantly, what was that person's intention or goal in exposing us to these ideas, notions and values? Was it to serve our best interest or to place us exactly in the predicament we now find ourselves in? When we investigate the path these ideas took to reach us, at the end of the road we simply see evil and confusion. All over the globe we see evil in its quest to gain ground, using whomever and whatever is willing to succumb to its will. This is what we are up against.
In the case of us women, the methods used to condition our minds away from family oriented values and towards self indulgence are many. We must work hard to avoid taking solace in the false sense of triumph that comes when we think we've figured it all out. Humility is the most valuable key to advancement. The more humility we have, the wiser we become. If we acknowledge the true identity of a woman, we know that our dynamism has no end. We are capable of just about anything if we value our work and understand one another. This is one of the major resources that this system has taken away from us by introducing the more popular, competitive and insecure approach to relationships with others. Solidarity with other women is our true source of strength. Now that all of our attention is consumed with how to deal with the opposite sex, we take the potential of our solidarity for granted. As a result, we lose sight of how to establish quality bonds with one another. Often times, any connection that is made between women is surrounded by gossip about all the things a man is or isn't, what he does or doesn't do, what he does or doesn't know. We tend to think that our capability to formulate judgments and opinions about the opposite sex or of one another makes us powerful or valuable to other women. We establish these relationships from the mindset of what we call partnership in crime. In reality, all the time and energy that we put into trying to define a man takes us away from what defines us. It weakens us like any distraction that takes us away from a goal. Let's face it -- this reality alone is what has built the talk show industry. This facet of mainstream media is supported and led predominantly by women. You can now become rich and famous for simply expressing an emotional opinion about the imperfections of someone else.
Men and woman are simply different; and until we stop seeing this as a problem, we will continue to cause disharmony. For example, in a typical relationship, a woman feels the need, or even the right to stand on equal ground in every situation when it comes to her man. We fight and defend this principal of equality without stopping to realize that even in nature this concept doesn't exist. If two leaves on the same tree, on the same branch, blowing in the same gust of wind aren't exactly the same, then what is?
Inequalities are what provide and guarantee the balance that feeds our families, our communities and the universe. Instead of asking ourselves how we can figure out how to do everything a man does, maybe we should be asking ourselves who it is taught us it was a bad thing to be different from him? A woman will live out her existence differently because nature established her to be different. A man will live out his existence differently because nature also established him differently. It was on purpose! It is our differences that strengthen the world around us; it is our differences that are to be embraced not compared. Everyone contributes something different to the harmony of things; it's what makes human beings dynamic creatures.
Nowadays, it is unlikely for a woman to allow any man to tell her anything, let alone to assume the leadership of the family unit and establish himself as the family father. This is a result of the false sense of pride that we've been sold. For there to be a notion of equality, it has to be established by someone else. We just showed how in nature there is no such thing as an exact equal of anything. Therefore, whoever presents this notion in your household has his or her own reasons for doing so, which may not be in the best interest of your household. If it goes against nature itself, how can we possibly benefit from it? That external force, the modern system, in this case, is what ends up dominating both of you. That's the real problem. It's not your spouse you should hold your pride against; it is the third party dictating the rules and regulations that should be observed in your family structure. That's why we have our culture. A functional structure of gender roles and a functional structure of a family are available in our own culture. Why work so hard to defend someone else's culture when we have our own?
At the end of the day, with or without a man present, we have the responsibility to be women. We must maintain our focus if we are honest in defining ourselves. We are mothers, sisters, aunts, daughters, wives, etc. Each one of these roles carries huge responsibilities; yet we are consumed with trying to increase our responsibilities by taking on the role of a man or pointing out all the inefficiencies we've allocated to him. Often times we find ourselves taking on battles that do not deserve our energy. We have the responsibility of providing stability and support to our household, but this can succeed only if we expose ourselves to the tools that will help us do just that. Around the world, women are the backbones of the home and ultimately of civilization. This colonial system is quite aware of that and weakens women in order to exploit us; yet we are not equally -- or even -- aware of our strength.
We spoke earlier of the importance of considering the intentions behind what we're exposed to. We can now recognize this aspect in the situation colonized women are in. It is not by accident that we find ourselves being worn out by the same scene again and again. So much energy is invested in producing conflict between genders because the modern system knows that if it can ally itself with the woman, it can bring the whole household to its knees. Ultimately, this modern system abandons the future of our families into the hands of the corruption, disorganization and disharmony we have been given. Until we wake up to this reality and start to consider the bigger picture, we are dooming our communities.
This perspective from which to reconsider the colonized woman may be challenging, for we are talking about the framework on which our current perception of womanhood is built; and it's no easy pill to swallow. However, if we exercise enough honesty in our lives, we see that we are facing the reality that our roles have been defined by a colonial influence: a foreign influence that has its own agenda and values to protect, not our traditional agenda or values. If we take a look at where we are, we can only predict that this colonial agenda will continue to neglect our best interest, which is spiritual.
In the next issue we will investigate and retrace the path that led us away from our own symbols of family and womanhood. We will begin to understand how to return to our traditional symbols and invest our pride and protection in them instead of in the seeds for destroying our families and communities.
