The Spirituality of the Woman
Poppy Field in a Hollow near Giverny (1885) — MONET, Claude (1840 – 1926)
Unfortunately, we've been seeing in the news actions of oppression against a basic right: Education. Thankfully there are brave women and men worldwide acting with perseverance and dedication to defending this basic need for the enlightenment of the human being in this new modern era that we all are immersed in.
More specifically in Arabic countries, what presumably was a past discussion about who had this right persists to come back. Could we be testimonies of a new Arab spring that will not only be confined to the Middle East? We all need education, period.
That shouldn’t even be something to be discussed. But, even more than that, we should be discussing how to promote an Education with Ecumenical Spirituality. That is what will allow a new era.
How many examples will we need to understand that people, when educated academically, morally, and spiritually, are the cornerstones for a harmonious and balanced society?
The necessary respect for Women
In his article “Women in the Repair of Nations”, Brother Paiva Netto writes: “Women’s role is so important that, even with all the obstacles offered by a male chauvinist culture, no organization that wishes to survive—whether it may be religious, political, philosophical, scientific, business or a family—can dismiss her support. Now, women, when graced by the Divine Breath, are the Soul of everything, the Soul of Humanity, the good root, the basis of civilizations, the defense of human existence. What mother wishes to see her son or daughter die at war? Woe to us, men, if it weren’t for elucidated, inspired and enlightened women!”.
The necessary respect for Women is not only a matter of justice and rights but of survival. We cannot expect a balanced society without the moral presence of women “graced by the Divine Breath”.
The Feminine Spirit — An Aspect of the Soul
Since we are talking about the necessity of Ecumenical Spirituality in Education. When we study the characteristics of the Feminine part of the spirit, — regardless of the name we give — we are being specific to our psychological and spiritual aspects.
There is an understanding that it represents Chaos. Now, you need to be careful to not jump into a raging debacle. Chaos here does not represent entirely a sadistic and narcissistic disruption. Chaos is also the principle of Order as the opposite is true. One complements the other.
Alright, but what does this have to do with the Feminine part of the Spirit? Different from Order, which brings Controlled Maintenance, Chaos promotes Uncontrolled Expansion. The Feminine moves us forward, without it, there is no change or growth.
As we see in the story of the Old Testament, about the different aspects of the Spirit. Eve is what makes Adam move forward. Unlike what he would confabulate as paradise, an Orderly Stillness is similar to hell.
Eve, bathed in God’s Spirit, appears and evokes from him, change.
“This one at last, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,
“This one shall be called Woman, for from man was this one taken.”
(Genesis, 2:23)
This necessary change puts him in shame before God, not because of Eve, but because man (reason) thinks he cheated on his “ideal wife” (that is a traditional state of stillness). Then, awakens him to the “real wife” (an evolutional state of traditional progression). The Feminine, created by God, is necessary for Spiritual progression. But, here comes the balance. Both need each other. Because you cannot have progress without control. In a way that Heaven, as a Chaotic-Orderly Progression and Stillness, can be manifested.
That’s what we see in the Gospel of Jesus, specifically in the image of our Divine Mother, Mary of Nazareth. As the Divine Aspect of the Feminine Spirit, She promoted Christ’s ministry’s beginning (John, 2:1-12).
Our Holy Mother, Mary, is the pinnacle of Feminine Reality. She is the example of all women's quest to manifest their value and all men's quest to integrate the soul into the Feminine Spirit.
We can then argue that no society will endure the spiritual battles between the expansion of ignorance and enlightenment without the integration of both Anima and Animus so that the Spirit can manifest itself as an Enlightened Ignorant Soul in the pursuit of an ultimate meaning that comes from a Divine Morality.
The Spiritual Cycle of the Feminine
Eve and Mary of Nazareth, represent different cyclical characteristics of the Feminine Spirit.
In the story of Eve, she is the one that accepts the serpent's instigation to eat the fruit that will promote enlightenment to their human condition, even though believing that they would be God themselves, but that is an arduous journey. Now, what would be the shame here? It’s the awakening of the Masculine comprehension of the necessity of labor for the creation of a Utopian World. What about the serpent in the Old Testament? That’s the amoral spiritual energy generated by the unity of both aspects of the Soul. Making Eve the Real Wife, that is, the Partner who brings enlightenment to the Masculine Spirit to its Real Condition and its intrinsic cycles.
Mary of Nazareth is the woman that becomes the mother. By accepting God’s request for our repentance through Life, She gives birth to His incarnation, Jesus. Decides to responsibly take care of Him while an infant; allows His growth in God and the exposition of His Wisdom; promotes the necessary movement of Life towards a Spiritual Evolution, calling us, through Christ to not be mere spectators of it; Stay next to Him in the decisive moment of sublimation of God’s Wisdom, and trust that God’s Life will manifest in itself as it manifested through Her. She is the Feminine Spirit that awakens the Masculine Spirit to a Spiritual Path of partnership toward Divinity and gives birth to a Divine Morality. This symbolism of Mary of Nazareth as the Divine Mother shows us the reality of the path to Christ.
The spirit that reincarnates as a woman is closer to manifesting these two cyclical characteristics.
In the Apocalypse of Jesus, we see the sublimation of the Feminine in chapter 12 (Divine Mother) and chapter 21 (Divine Wife). It’s the symbolic representation of the Ecumenical meaning of these two characteristics. The Mother of Jesus, Mary of Nazareth, that now gives birth to a unity of Christ — Christianity — and Eve, as the New Jerusalem, the bride that's ready to accept the Christianism of Christ. Calling us to the reality of the Divine in the material world.
What a joyful moment will be when the Seventh Angel plays the seventh trumpet (Revelation, 11:15):
The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: “The kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Messiah, and He will reign for ever and ever.”
