The Yin-Yang of Life

He paced back and forth across the room like a caged animal. He spoke about life behind iron bars in a penitentiary, and other stories about a life in which he spent more years in institutions than with his family. For 14 hours he stayed with me. I sat curled up on a sofa, transported by his honesty about unmentionable human pain, as he guided my passage through the dark night of the soul.

More than once through life, I have discovered that our earthly guardian angels appear in the most unexpected individuals. My closest friends were oblivious to my reaching out in need at a critical moment that could have ended my life in the mid-1980s. I refused to upset my parents with my unbearable pain following yet another blow in life. The previous night, remaining awake, I wrote a series of poems to stay alive.

On the second night, the last phone call I intended to make was to this Cree man, whom I initially met through his girlfriend, a fellow journalist. Frank enjoyed visiting with me for long, intense conversations. He respected me because of my commitment to produce tough, materially unrewarding, journalism that challenged the ongoing injustice inflicted upon Aboriginal people.

Those 14 hours apparently were life-changing for both of us. Frank’s girlfriend later told me that he felt a renewed sense of dignity in not sexually taking advantage of my vulnerability, and experiencing a friendship with a woman in a new way. As for me, I swear to God that Frank saved my life in understanding human pain – non-judgmentally, I must add, unlike most people around me.

Frank brought me a second gift – the first gift residing in his compassionate presence. The wooden board had a poem glued onto it, titled Don’t Give Up, which I still keep in a special place with my other spiritually meaningful items.

Hi oral testimony ascended from his own wounded soul, as a step in his journey to healing and renewal, in which he also expressed a sentiment that remains in my consciousness, powerfully. Do not trust books, he cautioned.

Indeed, in the coming years, as I became immersed in media literacy, I fully realized Frank’s words of caution as I came to understand the incredible damage of so many books through the centuries that had demonized the spiritual belief system of Indigenous peoples – wrongly – and further undermined the integrity of Indigenous cultures because of the blindness and arrogance of Euro-western peoples.

Paradoxically, as a writer through the past 30 years, I have tried to right these wrongs, through images and written language, even sometimes in essays published in books.

Through time, I found my focus shifting to explore what is at the root of the imbalance within Euro-western culture. This quest for understanding has never ended.

In earlier research, I had discovered the parallels in spiritual belief systems among Indigenous cultures and in Western and Eastern cultures prior to monotheism. In these older systems, gods and goddesses held various symbolic roles, to represent life-affirming and destructive powers and energies in relation to planetary life. They were seen as interconnected with the choices made, and the respect given, by the human species.

In a masterfully researched book, the late Leonard Shlain (1937-2009) illuminates how and why a split in human consciousness happened particularly in the West, a split that influenced extremely violent recurrences at specific moments through the centuries.

Shlain, moreover, identifies the ways we can restore balance within ourselves – and already are, through the discerning uses of visually-based communication technologies – to revitalize a fuller understanding of interrelatedness with the human family as well as other planetary life.

His book’s title THE ALPHABET VERSUS THE GODDESS, The Conflict Between Word and Image identifies starkly what Shlain argues to be a formerly unrecognized root cause of the sorry history of the treatment of women – predominantly told to us through “his story,” since the earliest days of written history.

Leonard Shlain worked as a professor of surgery at a medical school and also as a vascular surgeon operating on carotid arteries that supply blood to the brain. He observed firsthand the profoundly different functions performed by each of the brain’s hemispheres, and felt inspired to “propose a neuroanatomical hypothesis to explain why goddesses and priestesses disappeared from Western religions” [Shlain, 1999, p. viii, ix].

I consider his hypothesis so important that, in this blog post, I want to provide a few highlights from his medical and scientific knowledge about the brain’s physiology, and introduce his use of terms such as the feminine principle and the masculine principle. In the next blog post I will select examples of how the shift between visual/oral cultures to alphabetic cultures wreaked havoc in human life and upon the earth’s environment.

I believe that if more people could understand how human consciousness functions, we could take more responsibility in our choices and actions, by learning how to integrate our brain hemispheres more holistically. Our willingness to expand our awareness can help us evolve more peaceably as human beings. Doing so is possible and no longer can be dismissed as sentimental bafflegab.

Perhaps a million years ago, writes Shlain, the human brain began to differentiate its mirror-image hemispheric lobes from other vertebrates. Human brain lobes became functionally different, a specialization called `hemispheric lateralization.’ Today we refer to the `right brain’ and the `left brain,’ two cortical lobes connected by a bridge of neuronal fibres called the corpus callosum [p. 17]. The split in brain function happened in order to rewire one lobe, the left brain, and thus accommodate the evolutionary onset of speech.

Regardless, even today in a human fetus, the right lobe matures more quickly than the left, and the initial ways of engaging the world by a newborn, in turn, privilege characteristics of the right brain.

“The right hemisphere integrates feelings, recognizes images, and appreciates music. It contributes a field-awareness to consciousness, synthesizing multiple converging determinants so that the mind can grasp the senses’ input all-at-once… The right brain is nonverbal…” [p. 17].

“The left brain’s primary functions are opposite and complementary to the right [lobe]. The right side is concerned with being, the left with doing. The left lobe controls the vital act of willing… and knows the world through its unique form of symbolization – speech…

“All the innovative features of the left hemisphere – doing, speech, abstraction, and numbers – are linear… An appreciation of linear time was the crucial precondition for linear speech [p. 22]… [for example] the comprehension of written words emerges in a one-at-a-time fashion” [p. 5]. “Words are tools… We use them to abstract, discriminate, analyze, and dissect the world into pieces, objects, and categories” [p. 21].

To clarify how we `see’ the world, Shlain describes how the human eye operates like the brain. Within the retina of each eye are two functionally different types of cells – rods and cones – that are opposite yet complementary. “[R]ods and cones correspond to the division of tasks between the right and the left brain” [p. 24].

“Rods share with the right brain the ability to perceive reality all-at-once… Because rods supply the big picture, they are the key component of a visual, physical, and mental state known as contemplation… This receptivity affects the whole body… and a person slides into the integrated mental state of being.”

“Cones, in contrast, congregate densely in a small spot in the central part of the retina, called the macula… Concentrating on one aspect of reality at a time, cones view the visual field as if through a tunnel… Cones allow an animal to scrutinize. Scrutiny corresponds to the mental state of concentration… Cone vision [Shlain suggests] created the necessary parameters for the left brain to invent the all-important idea of next, which led, inexorably, to foresight (or next-sight) – a sense of the future” [p. 24-5].

You may be asking, so what does the above have to do with treatment of women through the centuries? I will explain the connection more fully in my next blog post. Here, I can sum up Shlain’s physiological descriptions as his introduction to prove, scientifically, how and why the human animal’s response to “images” calls upon the right brain, while the response to “linear text” calls more upon the left.

In his diligently researched book, Shlain shows that every time a culture (whether Western or Eastern) shifted its religious focus from images to written text, not only were entire societies ruptured by violent upheaval. But, moreover, women lost power, were brutally treated, and their feminine spiritual representations – in images – were marginalized or destroyed.

That fact, for which Shlain provides historic evidence chronologically, brings us to address the meaning of the `feminine principle’ and the `masculine principle.’ Shlain is not the first, or the only, thinker and practitioner to use these terms. His focus on how and why the brain evolved, however, helps to further legitimize their use as identifiers:

“Because of their different roles, evolution, in time, equipped men and women emotionally to respond differently to the same stimuli. This resulted in men and women having different perceptions of the world, survival strategies, styles of commitment, and, ultimately, different ways of knowing: the way of the hunter/killer and the way of the gatherer/nurturer. In accommodating these differences, nature redesigned the human nervous system, radically breaking with all that had gone before” [p. 16].

The redesign, of course, was the aforementioned hemispheric lateralization of the human brain. Shlain emphasizes how both modes of survival – gather/nurture and hunt/kill – are combined in each human being, man and woman. “The lateralization of brain, eye and hand affects how each person perceives, manipulates, symbolizes, and, ultimately thinks about the world… Every individual has encased in his or her skull both a feminine brain and a masculine one [right brain and left brain, respectively]” [p. 27].

Therein resides the innate, naturally-endowed, hope for the future of the human family, as well as the healing and well-being of the planet. Each and every one of us has the biological capacity to draw upon, and develop more fully, our inner, invisible resources to live more harmoniously on this beautiful home we call Earth.

My next blog post will outline the sad history of what has happened because so many people, regardless of technological advances, through many centuries, unconsciously marginalized our more holistic human potential, not recognizing our innate power. Instead, it was intentionally repressed by self-serving religious, political and economic power holders who prefer that we remain unaware of how to access and, then, act upon our full innate intelligence to co-create a better world that supports dignity for all.

To watch a seven-minute segment of an interview with Leonard Shlain, which focuses on the content of this blog post, click onto THINKING ALLOWED. This website has a series of insightful and inspiring interviews with highly esteemed thinkers and practitioners, whose wisdom remains through their good works and these interviews.

The confluence of several events in recent days compels me to speak to why the `sacred feminine’ needs to be revitalized, because doing so is totally relevant where the tar hits the road. In other words, every culture, systemically, needs to examine the treatment of its women and do whatever is necessary to restore respect and dignity to human life.

Recent events include: the shooting of a girl in Pakistan who advocates for girls’ education; the suicide of a Canadian girl who was mercilessly victimized by bullying; and the widespread evidence in a recently televised documentary film Sext Up Kids about the dehumanizing of adolescent girls and boys, and children, as the consequence of the hypersexualizing of Western society.

First of all, Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old Muslim girl, was airlifted to the United Kingdom this week, after being shot by the Taliban, the extremists of fundamentalist Islam, because she publicly advocated for girls’ education in Pakistan. According to a report on October 15th in The Associated Press, it is not yet determined whether Malala has suffered brain damage. Regardless, she will “require prolonged care to fully recover from the physical and psychological effects of trauma.”

How many other thousands of girls have had and will have their lives threatened, and sometimes terminated, by the misogynist fundamentalism of not only Islam, but also other religions and/or cultures, globally? What must be distinguished, however, are the fundamentalist elements of particular religions and cultures that are so destructive to human life and the human soul. We must not demonize an entire religion, culture or nation when violence occurs – too often a convenient tendency in human behaviour – yet which does nothing to resolve the problem of political and social injustice.

The problem of silencing dissent – such as the international quest to attain equal human rights for women – resides in the doctrines and actions of authoritarian, repressive power holders in religion and government. Both, working hand-in-hand through centuries, have distorted and misused the original teachings of founders of major world religions, such as Jesus of Nazareth and the Prophet Mohammed.

In a fascinating book, which provides an in depth perspective about why and how women’s power became diminished through the centuries, globally, appears this passage:

“The Prophet taught his fellow Arabs that in Allah’s eyes every mortal was equal. A woman could own property, enter any legitimate profession, manage her own earnings, and was an equal in legal cases (Sura 4:4&32)” [Schlain, 1998, p. 281].

Given the above citation, it follows that women were allowed to pursue education too, as equals to men within the original Islam faith. So, what happened, we may ask? Well, how that story unfolded I will explain partially in my next blog post, not just regarding Islam yet Christianity more so.

Meanwhile, I would like to direct my readers to another source, Dr. Faheem Younus, whose article “Malala Yousafzai: Does Islam Even Give You a Right to Education?,” originally published in The Washington Post, concurs with my conclusion.

The horrific and immoral act against the life of Malala illustrates `bullying’ on a huge, systemic scale. The scale is that of religious fundamentalists distorting original spiritual teachings – and thereby de-sacralizing the `sacred feminine’ – as an excuse to continue to inflict unconscionable repression of women in the name of religion. Doing so is outrageous, regardless of who does it in the name of any, and all, religions!

But, the predominantly secular society of today’s Western culture, most notably in North America, cannot be complacent. In the West we are afflicted with a more insidious problem to address, and essentially transform, whose tentacles also impact on the human family through globalization and ubiquitous digital technologies.

The problem in the West is `market fundamentalism,’ which I first mentioned in a September blog post about the writings of Paul Hawken. Clear parallels exist between Hawken’s call to challenge the corporate desecration of the earth and the ways we can denounce, and stop, the abusive treatments of female human life.

Meanwhile, the visible trunk of this problem, rooted more deeply in North America in the aftermath of the Second World War, that I provocatively identify here, holds up an economic and educational structure that has warped the very core of Western society. The reason is, it feeds off a variety of addictive behaviours – grounded in materialism and consumerism.

Western culture seriously needs to look at all of its institutions from family life to education and health care, to examine what and who we value, and the reasons why. As Holocaust survivor and spiritual psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl observed more than fifty years ago, in regard to North America society, it is afflicted by an “existential vacuum.” Indeed, his book Man’s Search for Meaning became a classic in American university studies. Is it even read today?

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith similarly observed a major problem in the same era, in reference to the continuing over-production of material goods, documented in his book The Affluent Society (1958). He pointed out at the time, too much was invested in things and not enough in people. Has anything changed?

The twin addictions of materialism and consumerism are accompanied by crude measures of achievement, including superficial and arbitrary measurements of physical beauty. One major destructive consequence is the phenomenon of eating disorders. I am not alone in naming this issue, nor the first. Please see my blog post on Marion Woodman, a Jungian psychotherapist who helped many women with eating disorders and more.

These `systemic addictions,’ I suggest, are the primary root causes of further problems in Western society today. Such problems include, but are not limited to, increasing mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety and the above-mentioned eating disorders. These are triggered by a black spider’s web of social and economic pressures imposed upon younger and younger girls and boys, unnecessarily, to conform to ridiculous images foisted on them by the dark side of popular culture.

Yet nowhere in the news do I see the above-mentioned root causes identified – and that systemic blind spot is the core issue that we in Western society, as fellow human beings and community members, need to tackle – intergenerationally – on many fronts. Media literacy is one front.

For it gets deeper and darker, because popular culture is infused with market forces that reduce human life – indeed, all planetary life – to commodities. And worse is the result of commodification of life itself today – a hypersexualized society, where soft porn (now mainstream) and cyber bullying intersect. The human spirit can be, and is being, shattered through the indiscriminate, mean-spirited, selfish, mindless uses of digital social media.

This regrettable fact brings us to the suicide of Amanda Todd, a 15-year-old girl in British Columbia, whose life did not have to end so tragically if more of her peer group and more adults, respectively, had been compassionate and paid attention to the signs of despair. There are no excuses. Where is the modelling among adults for young people to develop caring qualities?

The YouTube video of Amanda’s page-by-page letter leading up to suicide is not sensationalist, but painfully revelatory. I give Amanda’s mother credit for supporting the video’s continued YouTube presence, for people to reflect, and engage in group discussions.

A more recent CBC-TV news item this week exemplified the potential for healing and building trust, through showing a “restorative circle” at an alternative middle school in Ontario. This talking circle is a safe space for students to discuss bullying and related issues. Its regular practice has greatly reduced bullying in that school. Healing our youth profoundly is needed.

The Canadian documentary Sext Up Kids provides the sorry evidence of the 24/7 peer and social media pressures upon our youth. This non-stop misuse of social media is creating another type of addictive behaviour. Meanwhile, the fashion/cosmetics worlds need to have their heads and souls examined, as well as the corporate owners and editors of women’s magazines, and their advertisers, who perpetrate utterly stupid, and degrading, hypersexualized representations. The film shows us samples.

On the website Counselling Connect, look up an informative blog post focused on one of the film’s screenings attended by helping professionals, and audience discussion with CBC-TV filmmaker Maureen Palmer. Also, see further listed resources.

Shameless individuals are making pots of money from the exploitation of children. They exist because consumers create a market. The only language understood is one based on profit-making. Boycotting the products of corporations who manufacture and market this crap is one strategy. Let us support, financially, alternative clothing entrepreneurs and create new businesses. Support the people who cherish the inner beauty and dignity of our youth and children, and who have talents, for example, to create funky clothing that kids will want to wear. The difference is, it will be age-appropriate rather than make our female children look like hookers.

To sum up, we all are participants in the problems, as well as the possible resolutions, simply by being alive at this historic moment, as planetary citizens and consumers.

We need to create safe spaces, across genders and generations, to name and deconstruct the problems. Equally important is to give our supportive presence in order to assist the youth to retrieve and reconstitute the shreds of their self-respect, dignity and respect for others. We need to stand together and turn around what is being destroyed by the dark forces in a society that has lost direction in how to value children’s lives as sacred.

Let us together co-create a new kind of humanity. Making change is possible, when the willingness is there. If that were not true, we still would be living in caves.

My upcoming blog posts will explore how the heck we got into this mess, taking us back through history. The story begins when our ancestors actually were hunters/gatherers living in caves, told through an author’s perspective considered ground breaking at the time. I would argue, it still is today.

When is knowledge “written in stone” not `written in stone’? This is not a trick question. It relates, however, to the question that I raised in my previous blog post: Where does the expression “written in stone” originate?

My proposed answer to where the expression originates is, the `Ten Commandments.’ Biblical history tells us they were inscribed on a stone tablet, as witnessed by and imparted to Moses by God. Moses’ task was to communicate them to his tribal people as religious laws by which they are instructed to live, henceforth. This event is related in the earliest Judaic-Christian documents which, thereafter, have been widely distributed, re-translated several times, and passed down through many centuries around the world in diverse cultures, within the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.

Although religious historians and theologians continue to debate – following so many translations – how the original meanings of biblical text have become distorted through time and subjective interpretation, the Ten Commandments are understood today to be `literally’ the same as when originally documented in stone and on paper.

Interesting to observe, however, is how radically different is the Western culture which, through the centuries increasingly has relied on literal rather than visual knowledge, in contrast to Eastern and Indigenous cultures which, conversely, continued through the ages to recognize the perennial wisdom infused in pictorial images.

The conceptual bias of Western society is evident in how those of us living in it are socialized, and also how Western culture systemically constructs a particular perception of the world. This perception privileges intellectual analysis over the experiential and holistic. Such fractured wisdom plays out in every institution of our society, from repressed emotions within a family constellation, to mainstream schooling and allopathic health systems that omit the complement of holistic treatments.

For all ways of knowing have their value and place in human consciousness. But, our potential fuller consciousness remains split and disconnected unless we develop our innate `inner ways of knowing’ that have been systemically marginalized in the West.

That fact is why – as I outlined in a blog post earlier this year about ancient symbols – a lot of North Americans through the 1960s, who intuitively sensed something vital was missing within themselves, sought the missing pieces by engaging in Eastern and Indigenous cultural practices and beliefs, and have never looked back.

The reason is, they were engaged in the quest to seek wisdom that lies beneath, in other words, wisdom that has layers of meaning, not all of which are visible to the eye or to the intellect.

To clarify my opening question, that read, “When is something `written in stone’ not written in stone?,” let us consider rock paintings. These are the earliest known images created by human beings to relate stories through pictures.

While the Ten Commandments, regardless of language or culture, communicate the same message through time using `alphabetic’ written words, the meaning and value of ancient `symbolic’ pictorial images continue to evolve through time, in accordance with the willingness by new generations of human beings to seek deeper understanding.

Doing so may not be an accident in regard to their original creation. First of all, note why I am comparing the initially engraved yet timeless Ten Commandments in the West with ancient rock paintings and, more specifically here, the petroglyphs near Peterborough, Ontario. These examples of inscriptions implicitly communicate that our earthly existence is connected to a spiritual dimension, because both types of documents have been inspired by visions.

These inscriptions, moreover, explicitly indicate the types of relationships considered important. Note how the Ten Commandments focus only on human interactions with fellow humans or the human relationship to God. Yet rock paintings and rock carvings inclusively depict human interactions with all species as well as in relation with Spirit.

Regarding Indigenous beliefs and practices, two conversations come to mind, from which specific statements have remained in my consciousness. One conversation occurred on Manitoulin Island with Native visual artist and poet Michael Robinson (1948-2010). His spiritual insight speaks for itself in his artistic imagery. Note one of his online quotes: “I have worked hard at removing `man’ from the `centre of all things’ by putting him in his rightful place. Equally, among all living things.”

In Robinson’s conversation with me many years ago, I recall him pointing out that traditional Indigenous practices are not static through the centuries yet, instead, evolved through time to express the spiritual teachings pertinent to what each generation needs, given the challenges of each historic moment.

That statement not only made profound sense but, moreover, blew out of the water the arrogant assumption of so many hard-wired Western observers, from missionaries to scholars – and even artists such as photographer Edmund S. Curtis – who all erroneously judged Indigenous peoples as frozen in time and incapable of adapting to change. Sadly, such judgements were imposed very conveniently to justify the ongoing destruction of the way of life of Indigenous people, from politics to spiritual practices.

The second conversation happened in the 1980s between Ojibwa-Cree elder Peter O’Chiese and Fred Wheatley, Ojibwa elder and Ojibwa language instructor at Trent University, Ontario. Its outcome is partly heard in Wheatley’s voice-over narration in an eloquent short film The Teaching Rocks (1987), beautifully shot and directed by Lloyd Walton, initially for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. O’Chiese, who had taken a group of Native people to live in the traditional way in the mountains of Alberta through most of his life, and who had visions, did not want to be recorded on video nor have traditional teachings written down.

O’Chiese was willing, however, to impart some of his knowledge orally to cross-cultural audiences at several traditional elders’ gatherings at Trent University during the 1980s, which I attended. I also felt very fortunate to receive insights from elders who lived their teachings experientially rather than passing on knowledge from books in which the original meanings too often were distorted. All audiences at these gatherings were forbidden, in fact, to write or tape-record and, instead, encouraged to give full attention to the oral teachings as spoken.

I encourage my readers to watch The Teaching Rocks, which imparts teachings in several ways to its viewers. For example, Fred Wheatley’s voice-over narration uses a relaxed style of oration. As for the content, he communicates the essence of the message rather than specifics. The cinematic presentation enhances this traditional approach of storytelling, mirroring the peacefulness evoked by scenes of contemporary animals and marine life in their natural settings juxtaposed to close ups on various images on the petroglyphs. The elements of the natural world – earth, fire, water and air – also are interwoven through the film.

Within the content of the narration, something else important is communicated, as per what I mentioned above. The teachings in the rock art are absolutely not static, but rather are infused with a vitality that speaks to human beings through time, in different ways that are pertinent to what needs to be understood in each era. O’Chiese even pointed out to Wheatley that not everything is meant to be known and communicated widely until human beings are living in a certain way to appreciate the messages.

Among the Peterborough petroglyphs is a large, female image that powerfully evokes the `sacred feminine.’ As I have communicated in several of my previous blog posts, the feminine principle appears to be recognized in human consciousness much more through the holistic representations of knowledge than when depicted through the linear, usually analytical and disconnected thoughts, in written forms of communication that are ubiquitous in Western culture.

Here I come full circle from referring to inner ways of knowing and the wisdom that lies beneath in regard to prehistoric pictorial art – where the fuller meanings are not immediately visible at the physical surface – and return now to the innate inner ways of knowing within us.

What I identified during my own spiritual quest and healing journey, through experiential awakening as well as extensive research, are the following inner ways of knowing: the body, feelings, intuition, imagination, dreams, the unconscious, the soul, the world of Nature, and spiritual experiences.

We deepen and expand our consciousness by developing these ways of knowing to enhance the functioning of one further way of knowing – our rational mind. The latter is essential in synthesizing, and facilitating the expression of, what we learn through acknowledging the full range of our innate capabilities.

What I would like to note, and elaborate on at a future time, is how media literacy – conventionally understood and practiced as a set of critical thinking skills to analyze popular media – has a potentially significant, and yet untapped, role by including a more holistically enhanced set of critical thinking skills. We then can direct such skills toward the fuller understanding of how humans construct all forms of knowledge, what motivated them through the ages, and why we need to pay attention to whatever, consciously and unconsciously, influences what and who we value in the past, present and future.

Doing so can help the human family better understand each other as fellow biological and spiritual beings. Through carrying out that part of our purpose here on earth, we reawaken, and practice, our innate spiritual qualities to engage more effectively in the other part of our purpose – to live on Earth more respectively, and compassionately, in order to restore the wellness of all forms of life on our planetary home.

My next blog post will focus on a fascinating book that illuminates why and how the cultural shift to the written word from pictorial images caused the demise of the feminine aspect of human consciousness and, in turn, diminished the value of women.

More than thirty years ago I began a journey that would change my life forever, a journey that blessedly continues. For it is a journey of discovery in which the traveller learns how to negotiate the inner as well as the outer world of relationships, and their meaning, on this physical plane of existence that we humans call Earth.

The first major transformation presented me with spiritual experiences that opened my consciousness to the recognition that our earthly dimension is not the only existing dimension. Whatever language one chooses to apply – spiritual or scientific – let us simply say that multiple levels of energy exist, on Earth, in the Cosmos, and beyond, that the human species is only beginning to understand.

This blog post, however, focuses on a second major transformation that, once again, shifted my consciousness unexpectedly, following a decision to explore the origins of outer world inequities in social justice. At that time, twenty years ago, I embarked on an interdisciplinary graduate university program in Global Transformation Studies.

But something else was beginning to awaken within me. A tiny voice was hearkening – the inner voice of intuition. It began to nudge, increasingly, my intellectual awareness that global transformation could not happen without personal transformation. Little did I know that that voice would grow into a roar that would reverberate through every cell of my body in coming years.

Little did I know that my intellectual journey, to dig more deeply into historic origins of cultural racism – and conclude that the systemic consciousness of Western culture is fractured – next would propel me into a very personal discovery of what a fractured consciousness or `soul woundedness’ actually means, and the healing required. So, the deeper digging eventually morphed into an inner archeological excavation of my own psyche.

My second `transformative’ shift, metaphorically speaking, was like an inner tsunami in slow motion, shifting the layers of my psyche, – yet each layer subsequently re-stabilized – similar to the readjustments essential following the shock waves that accompany a planetary tsunami. Another way of describing it, experientially, is feeling one’s head – that is, intellectual mind – drop into one’s physical body, not just with one resounding thud but instead through a process of rather unsettling reverberations through various layers of the unconscious.

Doing so is what I call “awakening the feminine.” Believe me, folks, it is quite the trip. The good news is, what I describe is the nature of the `death and rebirth’ process that Marion Woodman so eloquently relates in her own life story in the documentary film Marion Woodman, Dancing in the Flames, the topic of my previous blog post.

This news is important to recognize, namely that authentic transformation requires the death – or letting go – of something that needs change, even release, in order to make space for something new that supports life more healthfully – whether personal or planetary.

The dictionary definition of `tsunami’ identifies it as “a very large ocean wave caused by an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption.” Added to that is the declaration that the event is massively destructive and, yes, of course, that is tragically true – yet only a partial truth. Note, once again, the force of nature here is `under the surface’ and `invisible.’

Therein is the dilemma of today’s growing number of natural disasters around the world, and the tendency of news reporting about them. The focus is on visible dramatic conflict and the resulting destruction. But, these news stories illuminate what is so out-of-balance with mainstream storytelling today and popular culture. They focus, respectively, yet sometimes simultaneously, on the negative and on the extremes of bad behaviour.

Such negativity feeds fear and influences people to regress into insular, out-of-date thinking and reaction. We need to reconnect with the deep, innately holistic, human yearning that is calling us to develop new ways of thinking and creative response to our troubles.

The physical body of the earth, including its many – and, again, invisible – underground layers that descend to the core of its being, is communicating a powerful message that humans continue to ignore, at our peril.

Whether within the body of our planet, or within our individual human bodies, we tend to ignore a key quality of the feminine principle – what resides beneath the surface and is invisible is namely that which bestows both life-giving and death-wielding as well as regenerative powers.

Tsumamis, for example, repeatedly are telling us, visibly and materially – because that seems to be the only language to which human beings will pay attention – that something profound needs to die. What needs to die is the selfish, exploitative abuse of everything that sustains life on this planet.

What needs to be birthed by us, as fellow human beings – and some among us, bless each and every person, already, are dedicated to the task – is a new, more respectful, way of existing on this earth, as a biological/spiritual species.

The orientation of human thought that needs to shift radically is our collective mentality of control. This is true in every walk of life, whatever we do and whatever we believe. Instead, how can we acquire the lessons of humility, so essential through our life journey in order to access, through ongoing efforts, deeper levels of spiritual maturity?

As film story consultant Tom Schlesinger pointed out at his June workshop in Toronto: “As earthlings we like to control things.” For that reason, he also emphasized that the first thing that a good storyteller must be willing to do is to let go of the linear, analytical control of trying to force a story into a certain shape. Instead, develop awareness of where the real power of the story resides by opening intuitively to one’s muse, to enable the `invisible’ layers of the characters’ unconscious to be expressed through their emotional truths.

In the real day-to-day world, we need to pay attention to the voices, and the stories, that the earth and all life forms on it, are trying to tell our species, in order to help us remember that we depend on the health of all earthly forms of life to survive.

That fact, physiologically and psychologically, is why our ancient stories and mythologies hold so much importance today, to relearn the messages they have been telling since initially created. For the original ethos of stories resides in their role to awaken the human heart and spirit to make meaning of everything that befalls us, no matter how daunting.

Therein resides the reason why ancient epics remain so popular, such as in Hollywood movies, and why documentaries that show the tenacity of the human spirit in confronting adversity similarly win our hearts, and inspire us – viscerally and psychologically, through awakening the feminine aspect of our consciousness.

The feminine and masculine aspects of human consciousness are innate within every single person regardless of gender, or any other forms of identity and category that the human mind has constructed since our earliest ancestors created images on rock.

But even stone – and whatever images have been carved into it or painted on it – have an invisible energy that continues to provoke the `awakened’ human mind to try and understand the meaning of images in new and different ways. Some archeologists today, for example, are more open-minded, in recognizing that what initially was assumed by earlier scientific investigations now is being rethought, more holistically.

Please read two of my blog posts published earlier this year titled, Environmental Wisdom Shown in Ancient Symbols and Unearthing the Feminine – Marijas Gimbutas’ Work. In my ongoing research to understand human consciousness, I continue to find other thinkers and practitioners who appear to concur with my own conclusion made two decades ago: The `fractured’ consciousness in Western culture has a long history. Indeed, the fracture resides in the split between the feminine and masculine principles.

I once heard an Indigenous friend refer to the rocks as “our grandfathers,” because they are the oldest form of life on the planet, and contain knowledge still to discover. Is it not interesting that in the sacred sweat lodges of Indigenous peoples, rocks are placed in the central fire, their energy transformed into heat, while smoke rises toward the Great Spirit from matter that originated from the earth – from the sacred feminine, evoking a natural, transformative process interrelating elements.

Is it also not interesting that a common expression in Western culture, “written in stone,” implies that anything `written in stone’ is permanent, rigid and static. This expression definitely is in contrast to the examples that I provided above. It raises the question, where does the expression `written in stone’ originate?

In my next blog post (after Canada’s Thanksgiving weekend), I will make an educated guess, based on a fascinating book that I am plowing through. I invite your suggestions.

By the way, I hope that no one feels as if you want to run screaming into the hills because you perceive that `awakening the feminine’ is comparable to riding in the centre of a psychic cyclone. Not at all.

I intentionally chose a focused, long term journey to grapple with, and transform, counterproductive relationship patterns, moving through a series of emotional layers that took seven years. This period included interludes of reflection to make peace with each layer of newly revealed psychological material, as well as dealing with the inevitable and the unexpected, as day-to-day life unfolds. With that experiential knowing, I felt equipped to be a more holistically awakened helper for fellow travellers.

I thoroughly enjoy facilitating workshops and teaching courses about, and based on, my model of transformative learning that integrates the feminine and masculine principles. Please look up my workshops, to see the diversity of what I have offered, while I develop further offerings through the future.

Marion Woodman Dancing in the Flames is an extraordinary documentary life story of a Canadian Jungian analyst who pioneered the exploration of the `Sacred Feminine.’ The film speaks eloquently and powerfully to this historic moment, in a poetic approach that illustrates, as much as tells, how the inner and outer life of each human being mirrors the sacred and visceral life force energies of our planet Earth.

Marion Woodman‘s down-to-earth, personal narrative is powerful in and of itself and, more so, accompanied by renown mystic scholar, teacher and author Andrew Harvey, as “guide through the labyrinth of Marion’s life,” and also by her husband Ross Woodman.

Ross, her life partner, has stood steadfast on the shores of her inner and outer travels to welcome her home each time. Nevertheless, he found himself transformed as well, in the continuing journey of their inner and outer marriage in which each partner was awakened, singly and together, to negotiate an ever-evolving relationship. The film, then, also presents to us an incredible love story.

The poetry of the storytelling is enhanced by visual and musical elements that enable the drama and poignancy of the story to enter our bodies, touch our hearts and resonate with our souls. Woven through the fabric of the film story are dynamic, brightly coloured, mythical animated figures from the amazing art of the late Academy Award winner Faith Hubley. They holistically bring alive the telling of a deep, multi-layered story, as does original music by Canadian composer Jim McGrath.

The playfulness of Hubley’s animations, and McGrath’s music, together offer the perfect counterpoint to the dramatic content of Marion’s life, whose series of life crises that she has navigated are jaw-dropping. Playfulness also is evident in the working relationship between Marion and director/editor Adam Greydon Reid, who first became enchanted by Marion through taking one of her workshops.

During the 1990s, after reading several of her books, I also took one of her weekend workshops, focused on the body and movement. What really floored me at the time was, here was a woman, labelled by our society as a senior citizen, showing movements through her own graceful physical example, after a period of being in a wheelchair as the result of cancer. Wow! I was impressed then, and Adam apparently still is impressed, as we see and hear in one of his off-camera responses to Marion’s lively spirit. Adam gives a hearty chuckle, exclaiming, “Man!”

Why I understand Marion’s story as so important is, it takes me back to a significant transformative threshold in my own life, when I began a seven-year journey focused on how to connect my body with my soul. Initially, of course, I did not have the language to understand my disconnectedness and the necessary journey to change my life or, otherwise, experience total breakdown. I could have ended up severely broken if I had not set out to discover the wilderness of the soul. This trip to deeper understanding never really ends.

Indeed, Marion shows us that a life journey that embraces a fuller discovery of the layers of our unconscious – and how to live and to relate more fully in the larger world – never ends as long as we have breath in our body and, essentially, a willingness to keep learning. The latter, in fact, is what keeps the spark of being alive so vibrant.

Andrew Harvey is introduced to us in a film scene that shows his passionate style of public presentation to an audience. This presentation serendipitously frames the heart of the discussion between Andrew and Marion in Dancing in the Flames. For her life story speaks to the dance of opposites within us, and the possibility of their eventual unity, parallel with the same dance of death and rebirth unfolding on our planet:

“Everyone knows there is a tremendous crisis going on, and that there is a great death happening now, – environmentally, socially, politically, economically – and that this great death potentially threatens the whole of nature and the whole of the human experiment. There is also a great birth of a new kind of humanity.”

Well, perhaps the “everyone” in that audience was aware of such a crisis – and I certainly am. If so, his audience undoubtedly yearned to hear the other part of Andrew’s expansive proclamation, that there is good news in the hope for the birthing of a new kind of humanity. I totally am on board with Andrew, in my own professional work to help fellow humans awaken to the much-needed evolution of consciousness at this moment.

The problem is, a lot of folks are in denial of any crisis. They do what Marion and Andrew point out in the film: become more acquisitive and oblivious to environmental harm caused by obsessive consumerism – the sadly prevalent reaction to an inner hunger for a sense of security and wholeness that all of the material possessions in the world can never fill.

Why Andrew has such deep respect for Marion Woodman resides in his recognition of her as “a sign of this birth… a sign that it is possible to live a full, passionate, dignified, deeply concerned human life, with profound mystical awareness and really embody the Divine.” Andrew is quick to add that Marion’s down-to-earth saltiness shows us, furthermore, that the qualities of rebirth are not grand and fancy, but instead “very embodied and real.”

The film’s title Marion Woodman, Dancing in the Flames is very apropos, because we hear, and see, animated through the art images, how Marion’s life journey took her through several fires of purification – metaphorically speaking – from her first major crisis of life-threatening anorexia as a young woman, to coming close to dying of dysentery while travelling alone in India and, later in life, receiving the diagnosis of terminal cancer then proving the doctors wrong.

My golly! Just surviving one of those crises, let alone three crises, illustrates to us a very determined woman who mentally, emotionally, viscerally, and spiritually, took the bull by the horns to journey through a series of transformations that reduced her to the core of her being. Yet, the ultimate gift, needless to say, has been the hard-fought and hard-won gift of life itself – and grace and gratitude for it.

We walk with Marion through the story of her life, as she matter-of-factly describes it. She experimentally knows a profound truth, the very message that she wants to communicate:

“Death is going to happen often in your lifetime, or you are going to have to go through a death of the soul. But, out of that, something new will be born. That is what I think about the Earth right now. We are going through a death. But, for that to manifest, something is going to have to happen to the soul of human beings, and we are going to go through anguish to get there. But, that is life… If I could look back through my life, I could see what had to die, in order to give me life, painful though it was at the time. I thank God for that.”

The film story, in fact, presents what had to die in Marion’s life, and engages us emotionally, regardless of where each of us might be on our own respective journeys. Her honesty and bravery are humbling. For she speaks directly from her own awakened experience rather than pontificating from some philosophical or psychological pedestal.

Marion Woodman, in fact, illustrates how the wisest and best healers among us are those who have done their own healing, authentically, before assuming the mantle of healer and spiritual teacher.

Indeed, she knows, from the deepest part of her being, the ways in which addictions are the plague [my term] of our dominant economic system today, in which materialism and perfectionism are two foremost addictions, visibly evident through eating disorders and chemical abuses.

Marion relates her “step by step by step” journey to change from working as a creatively gifted, unconventional school teacher to training at the Jung Institute in Zurich in midlife, in order to help people with addictions and to expand on Carl Jung’s work to pioneer a feminine psychology.

In doing so, Marion points out in the film how her life pursuit to find, and manifest, the feminine principle is not solely for the benefit of women yet, moreover, “an emotional vibrancy that comes from the body right through the whole being” that both men and women can discover and express, to be more fully human.

The reason is, the connection with the feminine principle is related with discovering a different, fuller masculine principle that moves beyond the limited and disconnected masculine of patriarchy that demands power, control and submission. Those self-serving, misguided forces undermine the feminine and, in turn, destroy the planet’s life force.

Watching the film simply to enjoy the creative spirit and beauty evident in the animated art images, that evoke an emotional and visceral understanding of the power of dreams, makes viewing the film worthwhile. Do not feel that you need to comprehend Carl Jung’s archetypal language about our dream world.

As an example of Marion’s down-to-earth examination of her life, click Two Marions to witness her experience of how a split in our identity often happens in early childhood – a phenomenon to which I bet many people can relate. I sure can.

Indeed, you might surprise yourself in regard to what you could discover, if you really pay attention to Marion’s own personal telling, about how dreams, and related experiential learning, awakened her inner life to facilitate healing and renewal. In doing so, she unites the dance of opposites within and heals the split in consciousness that occurred in her childhood.

The uniqueness of Capri Vision’s Marion Woodman, Dancing in the Flames is how it interconnects a deeply personal story with the story of the Earth, particularly at this moment in time – and from a position of love, joy and reverence rather than anger, pain and despair.

Passionately and compassionately, the film speaks to the soul woundedness that calls us to begin and understand the multiple levels in which human and planetary healing relate and – most importantly – that a `new humanity’ is possible.

As Andrew Harvey points out, Marion Woodman is a living example.