We have a system based on corruption and lies, unfortunately. It also based on ideals, but often those ideals are not backed up with the kind of action it takes to live by those ideals. The reason is that living up to your ideals is very hard work, and it means progress is slow. It requires patience, fortitude, deep inner work, and a lot of healthy communication.
These are not things that our culture teaches. What our culture teaches, often, is fortitude for the sake of money, but not fortitude for the sake of social justice and social causes. We do not teach fortitude and patience for the sake of love and connection. Instead, we want our quick fix, and so we take the quick routes that get us to the ideal of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” without really knowing what happiness is. (And without always caring about the life and liberty of our fellow human.)
I’ve been exploring a lot of these issues since America’s 2016 election, when a man who had so few credentials was able to win the presidency, while a woman who had a lot of credentials and experience lost. Why didn’t people like her? I wondered. It seemed people had a different idea of how a woman “should act,” or “be,” and even though Ms. Clinton wore masculine clothes and had a masculine haircut to look “professional,” she was ridiculed.
No politician is perfect, but Ms. Clinton seemed to be especially on the chopping block, for strange reasons—ideas that she stayed with her husband out of ambition, and that she was a liar. Thus, we can gather that a woman who is ambitious and says something considered “untrue,” even though so much in our political system is taken out of context or put in the wrong contexts, is somehow “unwomanly,” and that makes her “unfit to lead.”
Now, men all around the world, in positions of leadership, are making decisions for our lives, our financial futures, our privacy and security, and the lives and bodies of children and women, when all that they care about is their own financial domination, ego, power, and status.
How did we get here?
I want to point out two things I’ve been investigating.
1. Religion
If we look beyond politics, which is a pendulum that continues to sway depending on the emotions and rage of the people, and we face religion, we see that religions teach women are inferior, that God is a man, and that the “Father” presence knows best, and knows all. If we are inundated with such a belief from a young age, it is natural that we would turn to a “father” presence to lead and guide us in troubling times. The problem is, many of us do not really understand this mysterious “father,” and many, many people have been brought up by their mothers, especially mothers who have been beaten down and defiled by our social system.
How do we make change?
I look to Christianity, since so much of America is rooted in what are considered “Christian” values. All of the books in the New Testament are by men. Every single one. And yet, there are many hints throughout the gospels of the way women are the ones who followed Jesus, stuck by him, and never forsook him. Mary Magdalene is considered by the Catholic church to be the first apostle, but many still consider her a prostitute because of what a Pope in the 5th century said, which he made up out of thin air. (People don’t know such things, because people rarely investigate.)
And so when I found the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which is in pieces and with quite a few pages missing, it shares an interesting interaction with Mary Magdalene and the apostle Peter, who was the man who ended up founding the Catholic church.
Here is how the interaction goes:
Mary Magdalene explains a metaphysical process of the soul’s journey after death, which she has downloaded from Jesus and shared with the male disciples.
Afterward, Peter says, “How is it possible that the Teacher talked in this manner with a woman about secrets of which we ourselves are ignorant? Must we change our customs, and listen to this woman? Did he really choose her, and prefer her to us?”
“Then Mary wept, and answered him: ‘My brother Peter, what can you be thinking? Do you believe that this is just my own imagination, that I invented this vision? Or do you believe that I would lie about our Teacher?’
At this, Levi spoke up:
‘Peter, you have always been hot-tempered, and now we see you repudiating a woman, just as our adversaries do. Yet if the Teacher held her worthy, who are you to reject her? Surely the Teacher knew her very well, for he loved her more than us. Therefore let us atone, and become fully human….”
When I uncovered this gem, I realized that for a very long time, women who suggest they understand the divine nature, or have intuition or leadings from the divine, are shunned by their communities, or seen as insane or hysterical.
For not only are our religious institutions rooted in masculine hierarchy, but our medical system and political systems are as well. Within our medical systems, women are diagnosed at higher rates for depression and other mental illness, and deemed “crazy” quite often when they speak about matters of spirituality, or the heart, because we have a deeply ingrained belief that women are further away from God, and not as close to God as men are.
This is why the Gospel of Mary Magdalene was hidden, and the make-up of the traditional Bible was decided upon and discerned by a group of men within hierarchy.
Even people who purport to want equality look at women as secondary, as either sexual or spiritual, as unsound of mind and unfit to lead, unless they adopt masculine tendencies.
Softness, femininity, gentleness, kindness, and a unique kind of strength seem so unusual to us, that these traits do not fit into a hierarchical, capitalist system. (This is likely why prostitution became such an industry for women throughout the world.)
2. Art
Lastly, in the early 20th century text Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke (a poet and writer who is often quoted in spiritual matters) shares that for a while women will have to be “imitators of masculine ways…and repeaters of masculine professions.” But once that passes, “some day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer signify merely an opposite of the masculine, but something in itself, something that makes one think, not of any complement and limit, but only of life and existence: the feminine human being.”
Do we see evidence of the Feminine Human Being now?
And how can we break down this poisonous system of corruption, money-grabbing, and invasions of privacy into all of our data, so that the Feminine Human Being can take root and show us the way?
*I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas in the comments.
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash