Aligning with the Force of the Creative Mystery

Wednesday 11/9/22

Good Morning Beloved Reader,

On this morning after the election, the news is still unfolding with the New York Times reporting “Control of Congress Hinges on Closely Fought Races.” I feel compelled to share one of my favorite memes I’ve seen in this election cycle:

Meanwhile, in other news ✨🌷🌈🌼🌺☀️🌿🧚🏻‍♀️🤸‍♂️😎💃🕺✨🌟💖🙏

I am delighted to report that the Brevity Blog: Daily Discussions of Craft and the Writing Life, want to publish an article I wrote about Feedback. If you have not heard of the Brevity Blog, it’s “the place to discuss issues related to the writing of creative nonfiction” and it’s a fantastic community resource for writers. I was amazed to learn they presently have more than 87,000 subscribers.

Dinty Moore (a male writer) began the Brevity Blog 25 years ago, but I’m fascinated to observe that the vast majority of articles I’ve read on the Brevity Blog are written by women. And it intrigues me to speculate as to why this may be.

(Side note: I enjoyed reading Dinty Moore’s books: The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still (Algonquin Books, 1997) and The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life (Wisdom Publications, 2012.) For my MFA critical thesis I wrote about The Accidental Buddhist as an example of what I defined as a successful memoir: one that has both literary and commercial appeal, in addition to enduring appeal—I read and enjoyed it 20 years after it was published. And a side note to this side note 😁 an excerpt of my critical thesis is published in the literary journal, Tiferet: Fostering Peace Through Literature and Art, and can be read here.)

But back to speculating about why the Brevity Blog attracts so many female writers. (Please do let me know in the comments if you have any speculations too.)

Suzanne Kingsbury, Gateless Writing Academy founder, brilliant book shaman, author whisperer (and Fulbright Scholar) elucidates one possible reason why women, more than men, may be interested in writing about the writing life for a supportive community of writers. Suzanne speaks extensively about the voice of the Inner Critic. I have endless gratitude for how she helped me to understand my own voice of the Inner Critic and its pernicious effects on creativity.

Suzanne gently points out: 

“For a white cisgendered heterosexual male, deep voice, 6 foot tall, who may have grown up with money and education and the experience throughout his life that he’s been listened to and heard, particularly if he came from a family where abuse was NOT present—a functional and fair family—the voice of the inner critic may be very low. 

And when the voice of the Inner Critic is quiet, it’s very hard to have empathy for those whose Inner Critic is loud.

So in our overarching culture, from the voice in the hierarchy that’s at the top of the heap, there has been a dismissiveness of the Inner Critic.”

Perhaps this is one of the many reasons why women writers have been subjugated for so long—so many have believed they need to write in the same way that men write, but why should we? What is stopping our culture from honoring both the yin and the yang? The divine feminine in addition to the sacred masculine?

And “Why divine?” one friend asked me.

I replied, “Why not?” But the full story is deeper: it involves studying world religions for two years in interfaith seminary in addition to hearing a talk by Anne Baring which also planted in my heart the seed of the Divine Feminine.

Anne Baring b. 1931. MA Oxon. PhD in Wisdom Studies, Ubiquity University 2018. Jungian Analyst, author and co-author of 7 books including, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Around the World (Conari Press, 1996.) Her most recent book, The Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul (2013, updated and reprinted 2020), was awarded the Scientific and Medical Network Book Prize for 2013. The ground of all her work is a deep interest in the spiritual, mythological, shamanic, and artistic traditions of different cultures. Her website is devoted to the affirmation of a new vision of reality and the issues facing us all at this Crucial Time of Choice:

As a Jungian analyst and a historian, I would like to offer an archetypal overview of why the current crisis may have come into being; showing when, where and how the masculine and feminine archetypes – reflected in the image of a God or Goddess – became separated, and why this separation has had such a deep impact on Western civilization. I am not speaking only of the pandemic but the far greater challenge of climate change.

On the Divine Feminine she writes:

The voice of the long-silenced Feminine is needed to heal the Wasteland—the current state of the planet and the lives of the billions of men, women and above all, children that are blighted or destroyed by human cruelty, greed and ignorance. Centuries of conflict between nations, religions and ethnic groups have brought us to the present time when we must find a way of transcending this archaic pattern of behaviour or risk destroying ourselves as a species. Will we choose to imitate the patterns of the past, or can we embrace the truly immense transformation of consciousness we will need to make if we wish to forge a different future for coming generations?

And

Women, the Feminist Movement, and the Need for Balance

There is now a situation where women are in danger of turning against men and seeing themselves as rivals rather than partners and co-creators with them. The #MeToo movement could run the risk of this. Maintaining the balance between the Yin of the Feminine Principle and the Yang of the Masculine one both within women and men and in society as a whole is essential if women are to move beyond their anger and men beyond their defensiveness against it.

But yes, the #MeToo movement was the tipping point of bringing the insidious level of sexual harassment into mainstream consciousness.

May the awareness of the Divine Feminine also be tipped into mainstream consciousness and in recognizing the existence of the dominant patriarchal paradigm, may we all now together move forward in sacred partnership and live our lives Aligned with the Force of the Creative Mystery. ✨🌟💖🙏🕊

As I have written about in earlier posts, perhaps a key aspect for this to transpire is for our present day men to cultivate the courage and the humility to listen to women.

I agree with Anne Baring, and many other spiritual teachers I read and listen to, in that I have a sense that the survival of our species may depend upon this evolution of human consciousness.

~

I have also begun a new Instagram page where I post about books that belong in the canon of the #RisingoftheDivineFeminine, in addition to books that inspire, and encourage us to walk the mystical path with practical feet, and to heal ourselves and in so doing, repair our world.

I invite you to follow along here: https://www.instagram.com/camillareadswrites/