Imagine waking up in the morning to a world filled with joy and possibility. The sun may be shining, or not. Your bills may be paid, or not. You aren’t sure if the kids actually settled their differences, finished their homework or put out the trash before going to bed, so you don’t know what your morning is going to hold. Perhaps someone close to you is gravely ill, or your company is facing cutbacks. But as you open your eyes from the inner world of dreams to the landscape of your physical life all that you see are the limitless possibilities and wonders of being alive!

Where on earth do you come from? How did you get like this, and can we bottle you?

I am a shaman woman of the 21st century. Many years ago, I asked my teachers to let me come live and work with them in the majestic beauty of the natural world in which they live, away from the crushing pressures of modern civilization. They told me, “No,” that was not my pathway in this lifetime; I had struggled and worked too hard to find a deeper meaning to my life and my world than to run away in search of an illusion.

They said, “Lynn, when you can learn to sit like a sacred Buddha amid the pandemonium of your life, never leaving your center, counting your bad points as well as your good and exploring your weaknesses until you discover the great strengths which they hold, then we can talk about how well you might do amid the pandemonium of ours, if you still wish.”

They were right, of course, as they have been about all that we have done together. I am very much a person of this modern world. In fact, I rather like electricity and running water, secure shelter from the extremes of nature, getting on a plane to go to the far corners of their world and then returning to the comfort and familiarity of my own. I was as baffled by their refusal to accept my gift of the gloriously uplifting music of Tchaikovsky and Mozart as they were baffled by the notion that anyone would rather listen to a tin box than the glorious sounds of an iguana skittering across the parched land, the spirit of the wind rustling across the Outback, empty save for the thundering hooves of a herd of wild camels.

There is so much about this modern world that needs to be fixed, and it is sometimes overwhelming. My greatest passion in life, however, has always been finding seeds of enlightenment so that I can sow those seeds as far and as wide as possible; it is my chosen pathway in life.

As a shaman woman, I have learned to look at my world in terms of both the reality of what it is – not to be confused with what I wish it were so that it would feel less threatening to me – and more importantly the energy that is behind what is, driving it to be the reality it has become. A shaman is one who has learned to choreograph the energies of the universe, the life force, toward a higher purpose in life. In order to choreograph energy you have to first understand what that energy is.

When I look at the energies that are driving the chaos, confusion and destructiveness of our modern world, I see a world that is utterly out of balance, from top to bottom, so out of balance that it is out of touch with the life force, itself. It is a world where there is seldom any balance between the energies of the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine, a world that is often bereft of feminine consciousness, altogether. This world is the culmination of forces that were put into play many thousands of years ago when the rise of the patriarchy forced the goddesses of the universe underground.

The loss of the sacred feminine in our lives is a disaster, for this earth on which we live is a female planet. Mother Earth is the great womb for all that lives upon her, human beings included. A seed falls to the ground and she receives it. The great sky gods send rain and sun down on her and she receives them, awakening the nutrients within her. She takes them into her womb, where a great mating of the masculine and feminine powers of nature takes place. In this way, the seed is transformed and life on earth is born. How can we humans possibly expect to survive, let alone thrive, without both the vibrant feminine and the vibrant masculine consciousness that facilitate life on earth in the first place?

In the shaman way of understanding things, just as life on this earth relies on a mating of the masculine and feminine forces of nature, everything that lives carries both a male and a female shield, two very different sets of energies that depend on one another for their ultimate fulfillment. The male shield is analytical and outward oriented, forceful and aggressive although not in the way of domineering and control, which are the result of a very wounded male shield. The female shield is intuitive and receptive, going within to the place of introspection and dreaming and then expressing love and understanding back out into the world through intuition and creativity. The male god brings his driving force to the divine feminine’s powers of intuitive creativity and receptivity. Both are equal warriors in the fight against ignorance. As the power of the masculine explodes and the power of the feminine implodes, the sacred spiral of life is set into motion.

Speaking in very pragmatic terms, it is the male shield which teaches us how to organize our consciousness, especially out in the everyday world. The female shield teaches us about the sacred dream, about going within to the place of introspection and contemplation to receive the wisdom of our consciousness. The male shield teaches us how to express our dreams and bring an exchange of energy back from the world, such as money or food of other material goods. The female shield teaches us how to live. Can you see how one without the other can create a bit of a problem in our societies and for our world?

My teachers all say that the crises and conflicts we now face are actually part of a great shift in energies on this planet, a shift, by the way, that was spoken of by ancient peoples hundreds, even thousands of years ago, both in terms of the state of human consciousness and in the physicality of Mother Earth, herself. It is a shift that marks the awakening of the great dreamer god who has, in a sense, been dreaming our dreams for us with his unbridled need (in the absence of the divine feminine to counterbalance him) for domination and control.

Importantly, it is a shift that also marks the return of the goddess to our world, bringing the driving force of the masculine shield back into balance with the receptive powers of the female shield and restoring the great feminine powers of intuition and conscious dreaming that have been maligned and devalued for so very long, our ability to dream a better world for ourselves instead of relying upon the vagaries of someone else’s dream for us.

Always remember this: beneath today’s pragmatic, male-oriented reality is a whole other world of power that can be reached only through imagination. Inspiration so often comes after a period of reflection, during which the seed of creativity is planted. It is the feminine trait of contemplation that brings you to the altar of your imagination, the place where all things are possible, for what you imagine is, indeed, real. If you can dream it, you can do it. Just ask the Wright brothers; ask any of the great artists, inventors, musicians, the builders of our world. Even the greatest scientific inventions begin with a dream; they begin with someone saying, “You know what, I have this idea that what we’ve come to think of as impossible is actually quite possible, after all.”

So imagine: you wake up in the morning to find a stirring deep within you, a peace and a contentment that animates your entire existence and fills you with joy and possibility. You know that no matter what may happen – for life is always going to have its ups and its downs, its struggles as well as its rewards – you and your world are going to be alright. This stirring is the power of the sacred feminine being reborn into this world through you, in balance and harmony with the sacred masculine. All you have to do is open yourself and receive her into your consciousness. The goddess has returned to your world, bringing the energies of life back into balance, and all of the possibilities of life are once again within your grasp.

Lynn Andrews is a mystic and author of the New York Times and internationally best-selling Medicine Woman series. She is a shaman teacher who is recognized worldwide as a leader in the field of spiritual healing. Learn more at www.lynnandrews.com