“Gather your burdens in a basket in your heart.  Set them at the feet of the Mother.  Say, ‘Take this, Great Mama, because I cannot carry all this shit for another minute.’  And then crawl into her broad lap and nestle against her ample bosom and take a nap.  When you wake, the basket will still be there, but half its contents will be gone, and the other half will have resumed their ordinary shapes and sizes, no longer masquerading as catastrophic, epic, chronic, and toxic.  The Mother will clear things out and tidy up.  She will take your compulsions and transmute them.  But only if you freely offer them to her.” 

Mirabai Starr, Wild Mercy  

I attended The Divine Feminine contemplation and writing workshop offered by Mirabai Starr in February of 2020.  I was able to join in this three day experience as part of my 500 hour yoga teacher training philosophy component.  The workshop was an open invitation to explore what it might be like to lay down our burdens, and it was a joy of witnessing our own and each other’s lived experience.  It was also the last public event and practice I took part in before the lockdown in March of 2020.  Mirabai Starr’s hand was one of the last hands outside of my immediate family that I touched for many, many, many months.    

What follows is a bit of my personal experience with the Divine Feminine & Divine Flow in the context of this workshop, as well as the ways in which I explore, incorporate, and practice it as a spiritual seeker who teaches and practices yoga as a way of life. 

Burdens

Being born and raised in a patriarchial society, even with feminist movements in their fourth wave and the work of intersectionality on the rise, it is impossible not to absorb the hierarchical authority structures and perfectionism inherent in the systems.  After thousands of years of linear thinking, evaluative language, and moralistic reckonings at every turn, the patriarchy is in the air, the water, and the soil.  And this is how its essence seeps into our pores, whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not.  

Mirabai’s offering that weekend was a focused and aspirational practice of laying down one’s burdens and crawling into the bosom of the Divine Mother.  After a beautiful introduction to the feminine nature of wisdom, rest, and the Holy Indwelling, filled with song, chant, and poetry, she invited us to write a letter to the Divine Feminine, emptying the contents of our hearts. This seemed unusual, lovely, scary, exciting, rebellious, and right.  What was most unexpected, for me, was her next invitation:  “Write a love letter to yourself from the Divine Feminine.”  Here is the love letter I received:

My dear one, rest your head now.  You have done great work.  All is well, all is well, and all will continue to be well.  When next you wake, you will continue your work, but instead of beleaguering you, you will be filled with ease.  And the ease will carry you, and the ease will overtake you.  And the ease is me.  There is nothing more you need to do, say, think, or be.  Just keep being here now, with me, for this long while; and when you are ready, I will rise with you.  We will go together in the night, all the nights to come, and all the nights that ever were.  For you are not alone.  You never were; and you never will be.  Breathe deep - Breathe shallow; Breathe me, and I will Breathe you.

Typically, we are taught to bear our burdens, take up our crosses (and everyone else’s), keep calm and carry on.  Often it appears that the calls to rest are buried beneath authoritarian commandments.  Yes, we can rationally prove that the invitations to rest are in all the books, teachings, and scriptures we encounter growing up, but it would be a hard sell to show that they are taught, prescribed, highlighted or practiced. For instance, “Keep holy the Sabbath” doesn’t feel particularly restful for me, but I would offer this is because I am a woman, and it is expected that women do all the things that make rest possible - for all the other people.  So, even if rest is taught and encouraged and commanded, the actual step by step how to make rest possible for one’s own dear self never comes into play when you are a householder.  

The insatiable nature of capitalism also plays its part and pushes us to produce at all hours of the day and night now that we live in a post-modern world.  If we are resting, we are losing money.  Now that feminism is in its current stage, it seems that women are double-burdened, if not triple-burdened with the work of bearing and raising children, producing goods and services throughout the economy, and creating emotional and/or spiritual spaces of growth and connection.  Because we can.

Well, just because we can do something, doesn’t mean it is a wise thing to do.  What Mirabai’s workshop revealed to me is that laying down one’s burdens and offering them to “the Lord, the Great Mystery, the Indwelling, the Imminent, the Mother” at the altar of our own heart allows the power of divinity to transmute them.  These burdens can be the nourishing soil of freedom, lightness, and happiness.  Vietnamese Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings on the transformation of suffering resonate with this.  When we come home to our suffering and take care of it with the soft light of our attention, it can be transformed into happiness.   Resting from worry and rumination, from multitasking, perfectionism, and the drive to “be all things at all times to all people” is a radical act of subversion and a way to crush the patriarchy, work that is incumbent on all of us regardless of whether we identify as female, male, or nonbinary, because the patriarchy has no gender.

“‘Un-genderizing’ God” and moving toward the nondual or non-separate nature of God was also part of our practices during the workshop.  And while still allowing and encouraging practices of devotion (Lover praising, worshiping, and moving toward the Beloved) we played with simply being with the ineffability of the Divine and even with “God as dove with wings of compassion and wisdom.” Part of the play comes from understanding how balance occurs.  Mirabai offered us this question:  How can a pendulum finally come to rest at center if it’s not allowed to swing back & forth?  We see this kind of swinging in society all the time:  from conservative to liberal, from ultra-orthodox to ultra-progressive, from a black president to a white-supremacist president.  Many of us, of course, exhausted from the extremes, are wondering when these pendulums of our communal systems will come to rest at an equal, equitable, and equanimous center.  The answer seems to be long in coming.

Permissions & Blessings

The extremes of our communal systems appear inevitable and uncontrollable, but the swinging of our own devoted heart is within our control.  We can choose how we practice our spirituality, how we direct our devotions, and the ways in which we walk the paths of our own choosing.  Of course, this kind of choice-work can only happen when we accept that we are our own authority.  

Permissions, authority, obligations, duty, allowing and blessing are all wrapped up in our experience of the masculine and feminine natures of divine experience in our Westernized (read:  Patriarchal or Abrahamic) world.  During the workshop there were extended discussions of giving permission and giving blessing.  Permission can be given, of course, without agreement, love, or well wishes.  Inherent in the meaning of the word blessing is favor, agreement, and support.  We can feel in our body the difference between receiving permission and receiving blessing, especially from the people we cherish the most, like our parents, grandparents, partner, spouse, or dear friends.  Mirabai’s offering was for us to consider that not only does the Divine Mother permit you to lay down your burdens and rest, she gives you her blessing to do so.   

Spending time with the Divine Mother can be an antidote to the toxic masculinity most of us have been experiencing for the majority of our lives.  This swing to what some might consider another extreme can be a great comfort.  However, many Christianized people can feel uneasy about entering into this feminine space for fear of idolatry; so Mirabai offers orthodox explanations and examples of divine femininity:  the Shekinah (or Sabbath), the holiest of holy days is feminine; and the matron saint Julian of Norwich’s direct experience of God as mother (allowing Christ to be mother, as well) are two the stand out in my memory as being especially impactful.

These illustrations bring with them permission to explore the Divine Feminine in our own lived experience.  When we accept it, we shift the authority from hierarchical masculine leadership (Sts. Peter, Paul, and the long line of popes, archbishops, bishops, priests, ministers, and pastors) to the collective wisdom of fellow Spirit-seeking women, men, adults, children, and all humans.  When we can acknowledge the gift of seeing “Wisdom as Woman” in the Judeo-Christian teachings, and “God as Friend” in the Sufi tradition, we can move from a vertical model of top- down mountain- top lectures in which knowledge and permissions are handed out from one to many, toward a more equitable, horizontal structure of communal harvest in which wisdom is collected from many and shared with all.    

I spoke to Mirabai only twice during the three day event:, once in the whole group setting, and once after the closing worship practice.  I waited to speak to her before heading home, and I asked her why we feel compelled to seek external permissions; why are we even asking for permission to explore, to rest, to follow our heart in the first place?  She smiled and laughed and said, “That is a good question.  I’m not sure!”  We then talked for just a brief moment about the hierarchy, the authoritarian patriarchy, and I left contemplating where true authority lies, where it lives, and where I go from here. 

Divine Flow 

Since even before the workshop I have been exploring and experiencing what I’ve come to call Divine Flow.  It is the Creative Spirit Energy of the Universe.  For me, Divine Flow is non-gendered and beyond gender.  It is simply the Loving, Creative, Spirit-Energy of Existence, not only the Ground of Being, but also the Sky of Being, the Atmosphere, the Magnetosphere, the Energy-Sphere of Being.  

In practice, Divine Flow looks like paying attention to what some call coincidences and others call synchrony.  It is stepping into the creative energy of the universe and allowing myself to cede control for however long I can manage, to stop struggling against the current and float a little bit, feel what it's like to be held, moved, lifted, and set down again; it is tasting the sweetness of the water, breathing in the aroma of salt and sky, and listening to anahata, the unstruck sound of the heart.    

Sometimes the practice consists of prayer-like longings to be wrapped up, scooped up, swaddled in Divine Flow.  Sometimes it is to call out for answers and then wait, like sitting on the shore and allowing the tide to join me in its own dear time.  Other times it is allowing myself to be carried along on a divine web, a divine netting that is open to the air and sun and from which I can step out at any time.  I am never trapped.  It is always my choice to connect or disconnect, to step into or out of the flow.  And I am never judged or damned when I step away, take a break, forget, become distracted, or get lost in a world of thinking I can, should, or have to do everything on my own.

When I am with Divine Flow there is always a lightness, a balance, a center of stillness inside the movement - never sensations of gripping, of extreme tilt, of struggling against unexpected turns.  The experience is one of gentle undulations in which stillness and steadiness are felt deep within, a paradox of movement within the stillness and stillness within the movement - just like the still, quiet pool at the bottom of the breath - just like asana practice - those moments in which I shift my weight from one side to the other, from front to back, from right circles to left circles, to infinity shapes, and then begin to allow settling to happen, my body resting at what feels like center in this present moment, the echoes of movement radiating outward like ripples from a drop of rain on a still pond.   

My practice of Divine Flow has revealed itself to be one of co-creation.  I have studied, practiced, trained, and worked to move toward an understanding of what it means to love and be loved, and to become skilled at creating a container in which others can explore their own relationship to loving and being loved.  In the midst of this work I have been given opportunities to create these spaces in hospitals, schools, and military bases through my yoga classes of movement and meditation.  I know at a core level that had I not stepped into Divine Flow at countless moments along my journey (back when I didn’t have a name for it), I would not have been prepared for these newest adventures, nor would these occasions have even come to “fall in my lap.”  

The Femininity of Divine Flow

While I speak of Divine Flow as being beyond gender, it is not lost on me that flow has a feminine quality.  “Flow” is the creative force of svadhishthana, the sacral chakra, and water is its element.  Flow is resonant of the menstrual cycle and the waters of birth.  These “birth waters” can be seen even in the Judeo-Christian teachings:  flowing streams in the garden in Genesis; the spring of living water in the Old Testament; Christ as the spring of living water in the New Testament.  All of these illustrations point toward the moving energy that sustains life, cultivates new life, and makes possible any amount of rebirth.  

In Tantric Hinduism and Buddhism, shakti energy is seen as the dynamic feminine equal of the passive male consciousness and initiates creation and birth, as well as destruction and death.  Inherent in dynamism and initiation are action and movement, and in some traditions shakti is understood to be the prana or life force that flows through the nadis, the energy channels of traditional Indian medicine.      

Divine Flow offers me a sense of sustained and supportive movement while providing stillness, like the way we live on the earth even as it spins and revolves suspended by the invisible cosmic forces of our universe.  It also offers me a sense of infinitude - a sense that the energy is unending; it circulates throughout our systems and throughout existence, never dying and always continuing.  It is self-existing and does not run out.  

Staying Awake

In my workshop notes, at the bottom of the last page circled in blue ink, I found this gem:  “The need for permission is the opposite of trusting your inner voice.”

Throughout all the years I have been seeking external affirmation and validation, sleep-walking through a patriarchal swamp, it has been easy enough to absorb copious amounts of intensity, heat, short-sighted & self-centered power, and unmitigated confidence.  Now, taking time to practice contemplation, to turn my focus inward, listen, and connect to my own sweet svadhishthana and anahata chakras, I reconnect to the essence of air and water.  I can be with their energy without the unhealthy masculine that has permeated my experience for most of my life.  The chakra practice allows me to soak in - and soak in - the watery feminine flow of ongoing creation and the airy, balanced lightness of the uncreated, eternal life force energy.  This experience adds wisdom to my power, and understanding to my confidence.  Through this and other energetic, contemplative, and somatic practices I continue to step into the Divine Flow.  I continue to stay awake to the ways I am able to offer wisdom and power to others in the co-creation of individual and communal ease and rest. 

The Buddha and the Christ both taught that it is good for us to stay awake.  For me and my practice of Divine Flow, I find that it is good to stay awake by stretching my attention to take in the sight, sound, scent, flavor, and sensation of my circumstances.  How is my body sensing and responding to the events of my life?  What are my emotions telling me about what I value?  And what I need?  This way of looking deeply into my lived experience allows me to feel that I am fully alive and connected, not separate - and also that I am not alone.  Other humans on the journey are also beautiful vessels and vehicles of the Divine Flow from whom I feel support and strength as one of many strands of the Divine Web.  In this community of individuals connecting to their own hearts and wisdom centers, with permissions and blessings flowing freely, my greatest hope is that together we each trust our own inner voice, lay our burdens down, and lift each other up, celebrating a life filled with freedom and bliss.

“The secret is out.  The celebration is overflowing its banks.  The joy is becoming too great to contain.  The pain has grown too urgent to ignore.  The earth is cracking open, and the women are rising from our hiding places and spilling onto the streets, lifting the suffering into our arms, demanding justice from the tyrants, pushing on the patriarchy and activating a paradigm shift such as the world has never seen.”

Mirabai Starr, Introduction to Wild Mercy

Feature image by Nasa via Unsplash.