A Statement In Front Of My Sisters.
Perspective makes all the difference in the world. How we interpret, make meaning, and understand reality ends up shaping how we relate to, respond to, and therefore create reality.
Let’s take a look at all those photographs of world leaders shaking hands (like the G8 summit, or the Trilateral Commission, or Congress). If you’re like me, one of the things you notice is it’s a picture of a handful of men getting together to broker major deals of global consequence. Yah, and maybe there’s a couple of women somewhere in the photo. What does this mean?
My earlier, younger interpretations went something like this: It’s a man’s world. It’s a boys club. It’s Patriarchy, dominating the world to serve it’s own nefarious desires.
In the emerging field of transformational technologies (from The Landmark Forum, to Life-Coaching, to Evolutionary Enlightenment) one of the most consistently shared themes is shifting our position from a Victim/At Effect/Survival of life, to one that is profoundly Responsible/At Cause.
This fundamental shift moves us from the passive to the active position. It’s not that we say that patriarchy is not real, or that abuse did and does not exist – we are not denying reality, just shifting our relationship to it, and paying attention to the difference between facts and meaning. From this perspective I can say that, yes – most of the leaders of the world are men, and – what am I going to do about it?
A first step in ‘doing something about it’ is to notice all the ways in which I am whining and complaining about the situation (it’s oppressive that the work of raising children is not valued with money – what’s wrong with all these sick bastards that keep dumping toxicity into our environment just to make a quick buck – the G8 leaders look like a Darth Vader Convention, etc. etc…). These ranting frustrations quickly fade in the face of the enormity of the question, what am I going to do about it? What am I going to do about it? What am I going to do about it?
And this is the question we are holding now, as women: How are we going to be full partners in creating the future? How are we going to be equal players on the world- stage? These questions evoke images – perhaps of a future when we will see photos of men and women equally represented in the halls of power…And it is right here that we’ve missed the mark.
In the Teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment we shift the question, and ask “What will it take for us women to be the shapers of culture? What is needed for us to be the writers of history?” – and suddenly the game changes. Because creating new culture and writing history requires doing something totally new – it is about pioneering something that has never existed before – it is creating a whole new order of things. It is not about ‘reinventing the wheel’ and painting it with a Feminine face. It is not about building up enough confidence to get in on the existing photo-op. It is about building up enough confidence to go where no one (neither man nor woman nor consciousness) has gone before.
In the wide evolutionary perspective of Evolutionary Enlightenment I can recognize that I, as the Universe, have no desire to work to get into those older pictures. What I really desire is to create the new social structure, the new politics, the new photograph that reveals an evolved, higher, more profoundly moral and intelligent reflection of culture and governance that serves the Whole. The practice of Evolutionary Enlightenment reveals to me that ‘I the Universe’ want, and more so – need – to be the one who makes that old photo, like dinosaurs and Neanderthals, extinct; a wonderful snap-shot in Evolution’s scrap-book.
Andrew Cohen, in his courageous, relentless stand for women’s emerging potential (courageous because it is no small task to be a man demanding that a bunch of post-modern feminists Become greater than they think they can be) has said that it is only in profoundly coming together that we Women can achieve the outrageous results of pioneering, birthing, giving rise, ferociously creating a truly new future. And I’m not alone in thinking he’s right. So look around ladies. It looks like we’re the Ones. We have to hold the enormity of this undertaking together. For it seems to be within the very nature of this ‘Higher Togetherness’ that the mystery and capacity of evolutions next great leap forward can be unleashed.
