Your attention is the most sacred and precious thing you have

Photo: Barbie Robinson

Many women I work with tell me that they are deeply challenged in these times. Some of them speak to me about the way in which the divisions of the times affect them in intimate relationships. Some of them say they do not know who they are any more, what their lives are going to be and how they can find a spiritual practice that does not bypass the everyday reality of these times.

Many of you already know there is a battle for your attention at the moment. This is not a new event. For some years now, your attention has been the most valuable resource in the world. Where you invest your attention is your reality and your universe. Capturing your attention is big business now because your attention is profit in the form of luring you to spend your time and money.

I don’t have to give too many examples, I am sure many will come to your mind—social media and shopping are a couple of examples. Fear is also powerful attention enslaver. And there is plenty of this in our times! Fear is powerful because it paralyses you. The Natya Sastra describes fear as that which immobilizes you, and makes you tremble, become anxious and confused.

Fear has been an ancient way of constraining women. Women have been afraid for eons to be who they are. Women’s bodies, their passion, their sensuality and their very beingness have been mediated out of mainstream existence. And spiritual traditions have mostly followed the same trajectory. Many spiritual traditions require women to surrender everything that is womanhood. How many spiritual traditions are celebrated that embrace women’s menstruation, childbirth and menopause without fetishising them as “fertility” related? (The thing with fertility is that is instrumental, it services the so called species survival narrative.) How many spiritual traditions are truly sourced from the experiential basis of the divine source being a woman?

And this matters because if we want a more connected way of daily living, we cannot continue with the same old philosophies which have brought us to these times. Whether you are spiritual or not, it matters how you hold that source narrative in your being. As a woman, when your body is the source of life and when you have a narrative that says the divine source of life and creativity is not a woman, it is the basis of a profound and enduring disconnect in your consciousness.

We cannot invest our hope in existing philosophies deigning to give womanhood a seat at their feet. The most ancient practices in the world had the wisdom to recognise that the feminine as the source of life is congruent with the reality of body and Nature. And it is only through the body that this congruence is experienced. The ancient practice of dance in India is a technology that knows the nature of both mental and embodied consciousness and the way to hold these in balance. It also knows the intimate connection between this dance of the body and the dance of Nature and Cosmos.

To speak of these things using languages our minds have created trivialises the practice because our languages do not have important words that value the body and its wisdom. My invitation to women is to give your bodies a chance to fully manifest their consciousness. To do this needs nothing external to you, just your sacred attention. To manifest your womanhood fully is to set yourself unconditionally free. This is not freedom from anything, but freedom that inevitably emerges in that manifestation of your full being.

So the next time your attention is being lured by fear, drop your weight into your feet, cling closer to the earth and gently liberate and swing your hips. (For these simple practices go to my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVrNn67qCzCW7Bq4HdFeBnA