WOMAN AND POWER
However reasonable they might think they are, people do not ‘really’ listen to reason. Undercurrents of emotional and subtle subjectivity cloud perception. This is so for both genders, but more so for women who find it hard to fully feel and be themselves.
Women are not aware of their power and acquire a form of power through forms of powerlessness.
Why is woman not herself? Why is the feminine spirit repressed even partially, and with it the foundation of the sacred?
It is not enough to say that men are afraid of the strong irrational force represented by women. Women themselves are afraid of it. Woman must make a tremendous effort to impress the world reasonably. In this respect, two very important characteristics related to woman’s constitution come into play. Both have to do with her feeling nature and her automatic responses to life.
First. Woman’s sensibility is such that it is often hard to bear. We are almost always seeking relief from it. This is difficult for men to understand, even the most sensitive. Women are susceptible to the subtlest of impressions from the environment and this usually means other people’s emotional world. These impressions become a sensory experience that supersedes all else, bordering on obsession.
Second. Woman’s nature is devotional and sacrificial, particularly because of nature’s call to motherhood. This is inbuilt, regardless of birthing actual life forms as it refers to her containing (enfolding) physical and psychic capacity. Woman will sacrifice herself for another, going to extremes to adapt and bend if it means preserving life. She does this spontaneously in relationship, often to get what she wants but, mostly, to maintain the peace. In general terms men will sacrifice for an ideal, a noble concept of humanity that does not involve the great depths of visceral dynamics of feeling-involvement with human beings.
This means that woman finds it difficult to maintain the impermeability required to effectively pump up the force necessary to get her point across, or even to coat it in a logical context. She often appears unclear, illogical.
This may be why woman finds it difficult to be herself in the world. She doesn’t really know why, because it is not a question of knowing. She just IS. Rationality can dilute her full perception of the undercurrents that shape reality.
Success for a woman is marked by the capacity to hold the feeling nexus while impacting the world with her particular brand of feeling-wisdom. For this, the integrity of the inner world must be as important as the outer. In fact the outer world depends on it.
