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Human life starts with a simple cry, a cry that is universal: the cry for Mother. It means warmth and love and security. It calls for food. It brings a scent indelible in our memories and primeval in our response. It brings the scent of Mother. It’s inexplicable, we just know the smell when we’re around it and barring childhood trauma that disconnected us at an early age, it’s a smell that relaxes us and makes us happy. So the journey begins before we have words for it.
Just as the child longs for Mother before there are words, so we women on our Goddess paths long for Her before we have words for what we seek. There is a sense of not belonging in the world of Father-identified Godhood, a vague unease with the male-only terms for creation, an inner tug that tells us that something more is out there. Someone more is out there. That someone loves us and waits for us. We sing a chant that flows from our lips before we realize it’s a heart-felt cry, “Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” We call for our Mother in baby words, soul words. We are answered as we were as infants, with a feeling of warmth and love as Mother hears us and holds us and reminds us that She was always there waiting for us. And just that quickly, we know – we know why our longing filled us and caused us to journey in a spiritual wilderness away from the known world of FatherGod, through dark places where we questioned our journeys and doubted our inner needs – because out there waiting in the still soft warmth was Goddess just longing for Her daughters to hear the call and call to Her in return. We are suddenly home.
I cannot say with any truthfulness that the journey is always easy. For most women I know, myself included, it was hard. It was a journey fraught with a million temptations and obstacles all designed by the paradigm of the FatherGod to bring us back, either by luring us with treats if we are “Good Girls” or by threatening us with punishment as “Bad Girls”. Many times these obstacles and lures are all within us, we drank in their existence with our first milk and they were taught to us as simple truths by our parents before we were old enough to think and question. They can make even the most dedicated doubt the journey, even after Goddess has been found. I remember hearing with great surprise a woman who was an early voice of Goddess Spirituality and deeply respected in the community express the fear and doubt she had when one of her children died suddenly that the FatherGod was punishing her for following the Goddess Path and spreading the word of it to other women. It was a surprise but also a relief. I have had those feelings myself at times for other reasons. The feeling that the FatherGod can always reach out with His long arm and strike us down or the feeling during times of struggle that maybe life would be better and easier if we just returned to the FatherGod is one that hits many women during our journey and even after we have found Goddess. We love Goddess; we long for Her, but in a culture where violence against women is far too common, where many of us have seen from a young age images of angry men hurting women and children, many of us have it internalized that though Mother is strong and loves us fiercely that She, like many women, cannot protect the children from an angry, vengeful Father.
This is why the first real step on a Goddess Path must be embarking on an internal paradigm shift. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if a paradigm is rejected but not replaced with another one, that rejected one will remain in a vestigial form under the surface, waiting to come back full force when we are going through times of pain or trauma. The rest of the stuff you do as a Goddess Path follower is all very good and useful, but it needs to be integrated into the paradigm shift. We must let us be aware of the strength of females, of women. We must trust Goddess as much as we love Her. We must leave behind the feeling that we will only be loved if we behave in the accepted manner and embrace the unconditional acceptance and love that Mama that Goddess offers freely. It sounds simple, but it can be the hardest thing you ever do. Just imagine staring into the face of whatever physical manifestation you want to give the FatherGod paradigm boldly, not trembling, not doubtful, and saying with a calm, even, confident voice, “You have no power over me.” Now imagine doing it not just once, not just that initial time that caused you to leave the FatherGod paradigm and its known environs to go looking for whoknewwhat at the time but to do it all the time for the rest of your life. That is the beginning of true Goddess Path for that is the start of claiming yourself as a Daughter of Goddess. It’s something you’ll do every waking minute as you - consciously at first and later more automatically – put aside the choices you would have made in the old paradigm and embrace the sometimes radically different choices that being a Daughter of Goddess gives you. Don’t worry, however, for you are not alone, nor will you ever be as you make these bold statements, these bold choices for there are women out there with you every day who have made the choices and faced the fears and they are your Sisters in Goddess. They are there with a ready hand and a listening ear and many, many cups of hot chocolate to sustain you as you start this journey and toddle with your first baby steps on this new path as a Daughter of Goddess. And as you gain in strength and wisdom they will also lean on you as another Sister when they know doubt and fear. This is the biggest – and to me the best – gift that Goddess gives Her daughters as they make their way home, that Sisterhood. For this is also part of the paradigm shift, there may be women who teach you, who write books that you learn from, whose words you may drink in like water on a hot day, but these women are not gurus looking for a hold over you who expect your deference. These women will not be in some spiritual hierarchy over you and have the power to say that you belong as a Daughter or not. No one can say that. Goddess loves all Her daughters and we are all equal in Her eyes, and that is how we must treat one another as we interact with one another. From now on, you are free of the spiritual power-over reality and are part of a community of spiritual equals where the only power is the power that comes from within. Don’t put your sisters who have been on the Path longer and are there to offer a helping hand or a wise word on a pedestal and expect to sit and learn at their feet. They don’t want the pedestal, and you are just as capable of a new insight as any of your sisters. Give up your submissive place in the FatherGod spiritual hierarchy and embrace yourself as a capable woman and listen for the voice of Goddess in yourself. It is time to dig deep and learn new ways of thinking so you can get rid of that submissive garbage and be strong in who you are. We will journey to the Mother together. You will be challenged and you will be required to think for yourself and question and seek answers. Just as a Mother first helps her children get their feet under them as they learn to walk then as they are stronger lets them run and play and discover their own strengths and weaknesses so our Mother, the one we have been calling to all this time, will expect us, Her Daughters, to run and play in our freedom and explore our new world and create this new paradigm for ourselves.
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