Before I move into a focus on sacred purpose—the callings, gifts, and offerings that you are here to bring— I want to re-introduce the concept of Patriarchal Spirituality, a term that I define below. And I invite you to engage in the exercises that relate to this concept, so that you can explore the possibility that some of its tenets have permeated your lens on spirituality and the art of self-creation. That’s not to say that some of its premises aren’t helpful as stepping stones on the path, but it is to say that if our experience of spirituality is limited to them, we will limit the outer edges of our healing and expansion. Detachment is a tool—its not a life.
In the book Unseen Rain, Rumi said this: “Some people pick up their tools. Others become the making itself.” I always loved this, because it reflected my tendency to see the transformational journey as primarily a self-originating process. That is, one where you clarify your direction and find your answers at the heart of the self, itself. Rather than seeking to transcend your localized self on a quest for the ‘absolute self’, you seek your awakening right in the heart of your selfhood. You plumb its depths for information as to why you are here, and you actively shape yourself into the being that you are here to embody. Your awakening is not up there, or out there—its in you, as you. You are the laboratory for your own expansion. Or, in Rumi’s words, you are the making itself.
Here is a reading from Grounded Spirituality that cuts to the heart of one of the primary distinctions between a patriarchal model and one that is more embodied and feeling-based. In this case, the distinction between the “monkey mind” and the “monkey heart.” Living through the witness, or living right in the heart of feeling…