Goddess Wisdom and Nonlinearity

Goddess Wisdom and Nonlinearity Transcript

Padma Menon  00:00

Today, I want to talk about nonlinearity. And why this is important for us as women in these times. By non linearity, I mean, the freedom to not always move in a straight line that is the way of the mind. It can be with our life, with events, with planning, in all sorts of ways. But in a simple way, it means the freedom to not just think of everything in a linear way as advancing, going forward, progressing. And you know that in our lives, the lives we live in today, we attach great importance to linearity. However, our soul yearns for non linearity. And particularly as women, you will know how much your bodies are nonlinear, the very biology and rhythms of your bodies are nonlinear. And so there is this yearning for this freedom and spaciousness of non linearity. There is a practice in the goddess tradition, which is the practice of the crow. And in this particular practice, we are embodying the movement of the crow. Now, if you have watched the Crow, you will see that the crow doesn't hop around in this straight, linear way, it looks as if it's roaming around or meandering, so it hops sideways, it can retreat, it can turn around, it can, you know, move a little bit forward. And it's actually very fascinating to watch crows, I love watching them. So they are they're hopping around in this seemingly meandering way. But at the same time, they have an absolute presence, they're very sharp and present. So in between the meandering, you can also see that they will, with great sharpness, go towards a morsel of food or an insect or something that they have noticed. So there is this combination of incredible presence and sharpness, but in this really nonlinear spacious, meandering way. So the crow practice is one of the things that we do as part of the goddess practices to bring our bodies into non linearity. So non linearity, you might think, is something like being vague, or when we even the very words we use like meandering or roaming around, they don't have very purposeful meaning in our culture. So that is why in the goddess tradition, the meandering this nonlinearity combines with absolute presence and sharpness. And what I find is that when I work with women in this practice, they tell me that it really allows them to feel, how their mind is so attached to linearity, how the mind is so conditioned to linearity, and you can feel the difference in that how the body appreciates, and can be present with incredible sharpness in non linearity, while the mind is really pushing towards that linearity. And people talk to you about it, people talk to you about the nature of the mind, but when you can actually feel it in your body, you really feel the nature of the mind. And through this practice, we actually bring the mind into appreciating, enjoying and being present, just like the crow, very present and purposeful in nonlinear linearity. So I hope that next time you see the common crow, you will know that it holds great teaching and wisdom for us in these times.