September 3, 2002
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Divine Pride part 2
by Nora Jamieson
When I think about what naturally follows from, "And who do you think you are?" What comes is "God?" "And WHO do you THINK you ARE? GOD?"
"Ahhh," I realized, "here is the medicine". I realize, of course, that pride is Divine, is of the Divinity. And this is what all the fuss is about. Women should never have the hubris to think we are from the Deity, that we are Divine in our essential nature. Perhaps it was the Church Fathers, corrupted by power, who slowly infected any sense of Divine Pride with original sin. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins and while men also suffer from inhibitions against knowing Divine Pride, they at least have a male god with whom to identify.
Having been raised Methodist, a religion where the feminine is almost totally expunged, I was hardly exposed to the Divine Feminine except for occasional mentions of Mary, Mother of God, a pale version of the more ancient and sovereign Cailleach --whom I had been working with during the previous year --and the Sky Walking Dakinis.
In the redwoods we begin the daily practices. I tell her that over the past few years I've had several meaningful dreams, more sacred somehow, larger, more encompassing, more like teachings than reflections of my personal psyche. I share several with her and she casts new light on them. Some of these dreams are callings to the Divine, populated with Dakini figures, an Ancient White Haired Buddah-woman and a wrathful Dakini Snake who instructs me through fear. I am astounded and humbled by the messages of the dreams and then the struggle between my Western linear cognitive self and this felt sense of radiant pride begins in my mind. The Border Patrol becomes quite strong for a few hours but rather than being distressing, this tells me that I'm on the right path. Two nights before I am ready to leave, I have another healing dream.
I am in the shower, reciting a prayer which is a calling to the Deity who is me and not me. I say to a friend that this invoking is in the present tense and I'm thrilled because that means She is alive. I feel a shimmering erotic pulse move through my body and I begin to stroke my belly round and round feeling a deep erotic love toward myself and my body. I begin moving up and down the shower wall, pressing my body into it and then I experience a whole body orgasm emanating from my center.
We had begun that day talking about the five Dakini families and the poisons of envy and inadequacy. We decided I needed an archetype to guide my mandala work with the Dakinis. Given my deep attraction for the Dark Mother (or Hag) and Simhamukha, the black lion headed wrathful Dakini, (who is an emanation of Yeshe Sogyal) and my blue-green pond dream I mentioned above, we are guided to Yeshe Sogyal as an emanation who can help me transmute my poisons into medicine. Yeshe is blue-green. Blue represents Vajra Dakini who changes anger into mirror-like wisdom, and green is Karma Dakini who transmutes envy into all-accomplishing wisdom.
For two days we work with the mandala practice, make a collage of the mandala and a feather and bone fetish which I leave in a secret place on the mountain where she lives. It is time for me to leave. I am changed irrevocably by the permission I now have for the cultivation of Divine Pride. During the next several months, I come to see that the deeper intent of Feminist Spirituality is to develop Divine Pride by identifying with the Divine Feminine. While Feminist Spirituality is a practice of honoring the earth's cycles and identifying with those cycles in women's lives and thus identifying with the cosmos and Goddess, we often don't take it in deeply enough to transmute our poisons of self-hate and insignificance into a sense of deep and radiant sovereignty. Unfortunately, our identification with the Divine can become a role we playact and which has to be continually reinforced from the outside.
The practice of Divine Pride, on the other hand, is an ancient acknowledgment of the fierce Divine radiance of "the Original lustrous radiant sunrise of our being." (As Mary Daly wrote.) Organized religion tries to put out this flame as a sacrilegious expression of hubris, particularly in women. And while Tibetan Buddhism is guilty of rampant sexism, some of its practices give us a way to work with the demons that obstruct our clear vision of ourselves as women. Tibetan Buddhism is also one of the few living practices that revere Goddess in the form of the Dakini. Historically, Buddhist women were great models and teachers for the development of Divine Pride. As Miranda Shaw writes in Passionate Enlightenment,
Identification with Divine female role models gave women an unassailable basis for self-confidence, namely, the Divine Pride that comes from awakening one's innate divinity. The presence of Divine female exemplars who openly rejoice in their femaleness, free from shame and fear, seems to have empowered women to speak the truth fearlessly, to be physically and mentally adventurous, and to be argumentative and aggressive when it suited them. In the Tantric biographies, women freely and without apology reprimand men who need to be recalled to a direct vision of reality, by challenging his prejudices, shattering a cherished illusion, or puncturing an inflated self-image. Women's sense of freedom from male authority in this movement was reinforced by the fact that women were not dependent upon male approval for religious advancement either in theory or in practice. There was no male clerical body to bar their way and no promise of metaphysical gain by submission to male authority. (page 69)
Much to my delight, in reading Shaw, I recognized elements of Cailleach, the Scottish Hag Creatrix in the form of an old woman with a blue-black face, one eye in the center of her forehead for clear, unified vision and a tufted tooth, expressing her wild nature. It is said she created Scotland by striding over the sea from Norway, strewing boulders from her apron. I have always loved the Hag from any tradition because Hag means Holy Woman, Old Holy Woman. In the past year, I took every New Moon day as a day of silence to be with Cailleach in research, meditation, art, walking, and prayer. I had found Cailleach when searching for the Creatrix in my Scottish lineage, another aspect of my attempt to cultivate pride. She demonstrates the art of sovereign egolessness and a Western model for Divine Pride. She is likened to the Hindu Kali, of "I create to destroy," and I found aspects of her in the blue-black Wrathful Dakinis that I studied with my teacher.
Cailleach guards the sacred well. Three potential future kings approach the well thirsty for a drink of its cool waters. She demands a kiss from each of them. The first two are repulsed by her, outraged at her demand, and go away without the blessing of the Cailleach. The third recognizes her Divinity and kisses her, whereupon she turns into a beautiful young Maiden. If we peer deeply into this story, beyond the patriarchal overlay, we can see that she is "challenging the future king's prejudices, shattering a favored illusion or puncturing an inflated self image." (Shaw) The Cailleach tests the future king's ability to transcend any affliction or fear or arrogance that would cause him to miss or reject the Divine presence in the old woman at the well and those people he will someday serve.
Scotland and Tibet are far from each other, yet we see the principle of Divine Pride reflected in both Cailleach and the Tantric biographies of women who identify with Divine female role models.
I have come to understand that an inflated ego and a depreciated ego are simply distortions of ego, two sides of same coin that reflect a deep attachment to chronic, inaccurate patterns of perception. But Divine Pride is deeper than ego. It is an experience of radiant inner Divinity and is used in the service of the Divine. The future King must honor the Goddess' cycles and thus the land. This is similar to a Buddhist teaching that we must accept things as they are in themselves. This doesn't mean we must accept oppression and hate but that we must accept the unavoidable pain of a life lived. We must see hatred and oppression clearly before we can act in a compassionate manner. The King must serve all the people, must have the ability to recognize the Divinity in all. At the end of this story, Cailleach gives the King a riddle. "Would you rather I be a Hag by night and a Maiden by day or a Maiden by night and a Hag by day?" The future king thinks upon this and responds, "you decide, it is your life," recognizing the unassailable Sovereignty of the Divine.
When women identify with the innate Divinity within us, we experience our radiance, our sovereignty, and a call to serve that is not born of servitude or oppression. We understand that each of us are is born in and of the Divine, whatever emanation we worship, and therefore the greater authority is that which is within us. We hew to this voice, this radiance, in service to all humanity. This requires great scrutiny and integrity on our part, but not so much that it paralyzes us. We must audaciously risk answering the question, "And who do you think you are?" with, "I am Divinity."
And to this the Witches and Dakinis say "So mote it be" and "A La La Ho."
Nora Jamieson
I've been facilitating women's circles for 15 years and have a local Full Moon Circle that's been going with pretty consistent participation since 1993 as well as a Woman's Spirituality circle that has met for ten years. I've been a psychotherapist for 20 years, have studied Wise Woman healing, Cranial Therapy and the Energetic Body, Dakini practices, Feminism, and Women's Spirituality among other paths. I am an ordained Minister in the Church of Gaiabriel and have an deep and abiding interest in mysticism, the mystical body, feminism, the Dark Mother, and healing. One of my concerns is understanding how the mystical and political can live and heal together.
Contact Nora: norajamieson@attbi.com