“The return of the Goddess” –

what does this mean to you?

By Lynn Andrews

I like the way that Dannion and Kathryn have framed it, “Reclaiming the Goddess,” because that is what we are doing when we welcome the return of the Goddess to our world. We are reclaiming a very sacred part of ourselves and our spiritual consciousness which has been much maligned for many thousands of years.

When you reclaim the Goddess, you are reclaiming sacred feminine within you. It is a part of the Great Spirit that resides within each and every one of us, man and woman alike, alongside the sacred masculine. In the Great Spirit, the Divine love and wisdom of the universe, there is no separation between the two. They are the two faces of God, two sides of the same majestic harmony, and when they are not claimed and celebrated in balance with one another, there is no harmony. There is no harmony, and ultimately the life force, itself, is destroyed.

The Goddess, the sacred feminine, is the consciousness of receptivity, the ability to go within and sit in introspection and contemplation with the Great Spirit in order to receive the sacred teachings of the universe. Whereas masculine energy moves outward, exploding into the physical world with the force of our conviction, feminine energy implodes inward to the place of mystery, the realm of the unknown where all of possibility resides. Shamans call this the “universe that lives within,” and it is from the essence of this universe that all life is born.

The conscious of the sacred feminine expresses itself through intuition, the sense of knowing that comes with being completely present and in the moment, free of the distractions and mind chatter that block our ability to receive the wisdom of the universe and apply it in any given situation. Intuition, maligned as it has been throughout the life of the patriarchy, is one of the most fundamental aspects of our conscious awareness. It is the intelligence of your body-mind, where you feel what is true with the source of your being, your body-mind, without reasoning it away and being filled with doubt. Intuition simply sees the truth of any situation or expression in your life, a truth that lives within your own heart and your own soul. The goddess knows with her body-mind, and this is the surest knowing of all.

It is through the sacred feminine that we access the sacred dream for our lives. This is the great dream that was formed when you sat with the Great Spirit and all of the Masters and beings of light in the universe before you were born, discovering what lessons you needed to learn during this lifetime so that you could reach towards enlightenment, our spirit’s destination.

Throughout most of the modern world, this dream becomes clouded from our vision almost from our first independent steps in life. We forget the great dream for our life that was born into this world with us. We become sheep at a very young age, giving up our own sacred truth as we are conditioned to fit into a world that does not embrace the sacred feminine. As Grandmother said, in The Woman of Wyrrd, “We forget who we are in this world of illusion. And it is the one thing that we must forgive and cure.”

            The many thousands of years of the patriarchy broke the female spirit and the sacred feminine within us. All of us, men and women alike, have a feminine self and a masculine self, and they are designed to work together and compliment one another in harmony and balance. It is the sacred feminine, with its consciousness of receptivity and intuition, that enables us to go within to discover and know our truth and our own sacred dream in life. It is the sacred masculine, with its outward orientation, that shows us how to go out into the world to manifest our truth and our dreams into reality.

Through the millenniums of patriarchal domination, our female self has been separated and demeaned, diminished within ourselves and our cultures. Those who embrace the sacred feminine, and women, especially, have been put down. When you are continually run down and not approved of, limited by others, you begin to feel lesser.

            There is one way to heal the feeling of being lesser, and that is through self love. This is what reclaiming the Goddess is all about, moving into the unconditional love which is the Great Spirit and reclaiming your self love.

            Remember this: the only place you are ever going to find love of self is in the moment. In our lives, these moments need to be strung together like beads in a necklace. You don’t hold onto a moment of joy, a moment of peace. They come and they go, because change is inevitable. What you do is become receptive to the joy, receptive to the peace so that you take the feeling within you and absorb it into your consciousness. When you do this, you can even begin to change your very DNA. When you embrace the sacred feminine within you, you rejuvenate your body as well as your spirit. You get out of God’s way and you get out of the Goddess’s way. You let them in. You let the life force in. That life force is love; it is of the Great Spirit, and it is the most powerful force in the universe.

To find self love, you have to let the Great Spirit into your inner universe. You are one with the Great Spirit, and the Great Spirit is part of you. Know this, and bring it within you forever.

            The love of the Great Spirit is unconditional. You don’t have to be a ‘good girl’ or a ‘good boy,’ whatever conditions you put on being worthy of love, in order to be part of the unconditional love of the Great Spirit.

            When you accept the unconditional love of the Great Spirit into the center of your being, you find self-love. This does not mean you are without flaws and vulnerabilities; it doesn’t mean you aren’t going to make mistakes and sometimes really mess up. What it means is that when you do, it’s OK. It has nothing to do with your being part of the Great Spirit or of being ‘worthy,’ whatever that is. The Great Spirit does not put conditions on love for us. We are the ones who put conditions on love. Why? Putting conditions on love moves it from the inner universe of feeling and knowing and oneness, to the outer world of emotion and separation. Why would you want to separate yourself from love?

The world is bereft of feminine consciousness. To bring Mother Earth back into balance, we must bring back our awareness of her. Woman has always communed with woman in an unspoken language. Her roots are entwined with the essence of Mother Earth, for she, too, is feminine. We are all in need of world harmony. Mother Earth has been misunderstood, but she is the universe. She is the womb for all that lives.

Carrying your gift of consciousness from the heart of woman, of Mother Earth, trek toward the summit of higher knowledge. Because of male and female imbalances, the earth is in danger of dying. Remember that the power of the masculine explodes as the power of the feminine implodes, and a sacred spiral of life is set into motion. One cannot live without the other. The masculine God is in search of the feminine Goddess. He brings gifts of driving force to her powers of intuitive, creative receptivity. Both are equal warriors in the fight against ignorance. Balance your masculine and feminine energies; this is your struggle in life and a great source of power for you. [From The Power Deck, Cards of Wisdom, by Lynn Andrews.]

Lynn Andrews is the New York Times and internationally best selling author of the Medicine Woman series, a shaman teacher acclaimed worldwide as a leader in spiritual healing and personal empowerment. Learn more at www.lynnandrews.com.