The Inner Patriarch

Wednesday 11/2/22

Beloved reader, 

In Part Two of, The Rising of the Divine Feminine and the Buddhist Monks Across the Road: A Memoir, I write about how when we moved back to Australia in 1998-2000, I became deeply depressed, and how Voice Dialog therapy essentially saved my life. 

Mental health is of course incredibly complex, and while the conversation around mental health is gradually gaining traction and being discussed in mainstream media, it is still perhaps not talked about openly by the majority, which sadly adds to the suffering of human beings all over the planet. Perhaps one day humanity will get to a place where mental, emotional, and spiritual health will be talked about in the same way that we discuss physical health. My experience while living and working in Manhattan was that almost everyone I knew saw a therapist as part of their regular practice of self-care.

May more and more human beings all over the world utilize therapy as an essential form of self-care. ✨🌟💖🙏🕊

In the meantime, I would like to raise awareness about Voice Dialog therapy developed by Hal and Sidra Stone (which, from what I understand, is similar to Internal Family Systems therapy, developed by Richard Schwartz.) The basic premise of both is that we are all made up of many different parts, and we also have an Aware Self which is kind of like an observing awareness. I write about the observing awareness in my book and how a variety of spiritual practices from a variety of the world’s faith traditions, can help to cultivate this Aware Self or observing awareness.

How this relates to the #RisingoftheDivineFeminine is that simply by growing up in our culture, every woman (and man) on this planet embodies their own Inner Patriarch as discussed in depth in Voice Dialog founder, Dr. Sidra Stone’s book The Shadow King: The Invisible Force that Holds Women Back (cover illustration by Judith Brown, 1997.)

“It has been easy to observe the outer patriarchy, the legacy of thousands of years. And, there have been some changes in the outer patriarchy:  laws have been changed and women were granted some rights and some amount of legal autonomy and protection.

But there is something that has not changed: the Inner Patriarch who lives inside every woman. He carries the rules and expectations of several millennia of patriarchal domination. He has been passed on by mothers to their daughters—it was a way of teaching them how to live successfully in the outer world of patriarchy.” — Sidra Stone 

A short description of the Inner Patriarch, written by Voice Dialog facilitator Astra Niedra, may also be read here.

By recognizing and becoming conscious of the effects of the Inner Patriarch, we also become aware of how the Divine Feminine is another option we may consciously choose to employ.

For example, Creative Nonfiction Magazine founding editor, Lee Gutkind, just wrote and published an article called Battling the Book, where he approaches writing the way he may approach going to war. The language used in the patriarchal paradigm is that everything is a battle, a fight, a war. Common language examples include the fight against cancer, the war on drugs, etc. In Gutkind’s article he writes, “You curse and struggle with that elusive, annoying narrative arc that simply won’t fall in line.” Alternatively, the way of the Divine Feminine is more about the Surrender part of the Dance of Will and Surrender with the Divine Beloved; about dropping into the Flow and connecting with what is beyond our control.

Gutkind writes, “You own it. The book doesn’t own you (even if it feels like it does, sometimes).” Again a patriarchal approach to dominating something rather than utilizing a divine feminine approach, perhaps giving birth to what may want to flow through you. It doesn’t have to be about ownership. As Kahil Gibran writes in The Prophet (he’s one of the more enlightened men in history):

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you
yet they belong not to you.

Gutkind also writes, “Because thankfully, eventually—though sometimes much later than you feel you can bear—you gain the edge and gradually begin to control the book and take command.” Again an approach of the dominant patriarchal paradigm of control—and perhaps the yin to the yang of control is trusting the process. And this is not to say that one way is better than the other. We need both the yin and the yang. The key is becoming aware of this dominant patriarchal paradigm that exists in both our outer and our inner worlds.

Once we’re aware of it, we then have free choice.

This is all to say that by identifying the patriarchal paradigm in writing, I am aware of how the Divine Feminine approach can be different—but only if the writer is not identified with or dominated by their own Inner Patriarch. And to reiterate, when we are aware of this Inner Patriarch—particularly female writers—we then have free choice.

In everything I read these days, I am observing how the way of the Divine Feminine is being remembered, rediscovered, and re-claimed by more and more women (and women writers) all over the world. This is evident in books like Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead by Tosha Silver (published in 2014) and Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes by Elizabeth Lesser (pub: 2020) and The Heroine with 1001 Faces by Maria Tatar, PhD (pub: 2021.)

In Cassandra Speaks Elizabeth Lesser writes of the well known phrases that embody the male propensity to fight. For example:

“And what the heck does “no-holds-barred” refer to? That one surprised me. I had used it in a sentence describing what I felt for my newborn grandson. “I just love him, no-holds-barred,” I told a friend. Hmmm, what kind of metaphor is that, I wondered. I assumed it was a sports saying that meant relaxing all the rules of the game. But I didn’t know that the “holds” in this phrase refer to wrestling moves.” (1) 

She goes on to make the point:

“Every time I hear a strong, opinionated girl or woman described as bossy or bitchy or intense, I interrupt and suggest other words, like smart, powerful, brave, or, as Toni Morrison described herself, gallant. When a woman cries at work, or when a man asks for help, admits his fears, shares his heart, I like to acknowledge that kind of emotional intelligence as risky and courageous. Substituting one word for another may seem inconsequential, but words shape people and cultures, and “what starts out as a sound, ends as a deed.” (2) 

Words matter. Perhaps more than we know.

And the more conscious we can become about the language we use, perhaps the more we will add to the evolution of human consciousness, which adds to the freedom and liberation of human beings, which in turn, frees us from the dominant patriarchal paradigm.

May more and more human beings all over the planet become aware of their own Inner Patriarch, and by becoming aware, May we make more balanced and harmonious choices which, in turn, will help to preserve our planet. ✨🌟💖🙏🕊

~

(1) Lesser, Elizabeth. Cassandra Speaks (p. 194). Harper Wave. Kindle Edition. 

(2) Lesser, Elizabeth. Cassandra Speaks (pp. 198-199). Harper Wave. Kindle Edition.