No matter how liberated, embodied, and awake we are, our primal body is wired to fear the unknown. It’s a natural part of being human.

In addition, we’re conditioned with a compulsion to manage our anxiety by fixing and forcing answers — often before we have all the information we need to move into aligned action.

How do we accept the vulnerable experience of fearing the unknown?

How do we trust our instincts and discern when we’re moving from fear or intuition?

How do we dodge becoming enslaved by power dynamics based on control and compliance? Dominance and submission? Power-over and victimization?

As I write this, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re five weeks into social distancing and sheltering-in-place quarantines across the globe.

We, as humanity, have more questions than we have answers.

We’re desperately seeking answers to inquiries such as, how long will this last? Does social distancing really work to keep us safe? How will the government support the burgeoning unemployment populations and economic impacts? When will we have full proof testing for the virus? When will vaccinations be ready for the masses? Is a vaccination our ideal solution or is it a poisonous trap?

People are getting sick and dying every day, and some say it’s due to the virus, while others contend it’s from the complications emitted by 5G technology. These, and many other hot topics, construct the puzzle of our current circumstances and vulnerable existence. As a collective, we’ve been surfing through excessive amounts of uncertainty and polarized messages each backed by compelling ‘scientific proof.’ What do we believe and what do we dismiss?

The pandemic has a freeze effect on what we knew as ‘normal reality.’ Every day, we’re living with an unknown and undefined future. Of course, that’s always the case — however, without the protection of our normal ways of operating, the feelings of impermanence and uncertainty are more perceptible than ever.

Most messaging is geared towards fixing the problem so we can get back to normalcy. And yet, many of my clients are sharing that they don’t want to go ‘back to normal.’ Sometimes, in tears, they reveal that “pre-COVID-19 normal wasn’t actually working for me”, and definitely not for the sustainability of our planet.

A collective dark night of the soul

We, as a collective, are pockets of germinating seeds underground. Deep in the earth of our collective awareness, we’re preparing for a push into a new reality, into the next version of our lives — into our next evolutionary choices.

This is a dark night of the soul for humanity, and it holds the potential to go in a myriad of directions. Ultimately, the answers will only be revealed as we live into this together. 

We’ve taken a collective descent into the underworld of the feminine realm. We’re being schooled by a key feminine power called surrender — as we plunge straight into the darkness of the unknown.

Surrendering into a dark night, requires us to let go of exclusively focusing on our survival strategy of fixing and being in control. We must make space to draw upon the skills of our intuition, patience, attunement, and wisdom of the heart to guide our next actions.

There is no better time to stop all the busyness — even if we have a lot to do — and be honest about what needs our attention the most. Busyness is a habit. An addiction. How is it ruling us?

This pause is providing us with an opportunity to reevaluate and have honest conversations with ourselves. To acknowledge what’s dying in our lives. What we need to let go of — no matter how attached, comfortable and familiar certain beliefs, relationships, privileges, or toxic situations have become to us.

Familiar doesn’t always correspond with health, but sometimes it’s reinforced and sustained because the known feels safer than the unknown. This is our time to investigate pockets where we’ve been enduring or repressing our desires, or compromising our authentic expressions to maintain conditioned ‘shoulds.’

This is the time to prioritize listening deeply to our heart wisdom, resting in nature, nourishing our bodies with vibrant food, nurturing our hearts with grounding and loving relationships, regulating our nervous systems with deep breaths, and interrupting behaviors and habits driven by anxiety and fear.

This is a time to evaluate, with an earnest heart, how our collective habits of consuming, accumulating, and living in systems of hierarchical orders are the cause of great suffering — not just for humans, but for all of life.

Feminine power exists in all genders!!

Feminine power is universal and often referred to as lunar or yin energy, while masculine power is expressed as solar or yang energy.

No matter our gender, our feminine and masculine powers teach us how to dance with the shifting tides and fluid movements between surrender and aligned action. 

Surrender is an active expression of embodied power. It’s not the same as collapsing into helplessness, which can often activate a compulsion to seek external authorities for answers in lieu of our own inner wisdom and guidance.

Ultimately, this isn’t just about a revolution to liberate repressed feminine powers in each of us personally — and the systems that rule the masses.

We need embodied leaders on this planet to shift dynamics from patriarchal systems of power-OVER to embodied and harmonized systems of power-WITH.

Our feminine powers have been locked in cages for centuries. We’re now actively dismantling the larger systems responsible for the repression of feminine expressions. No matter our gender, we have the responsibility to liberate our feminine powers from the inside-out.

Our feminine wisdom holds fertile ground

When it comes to creating and transforming (ourselves or our creations), our feminine wisdom holds the fertile ground that allows us to incubate new life and possibilities. When in the dark, as we are right now during COVID-19, we’re encouraged to surrender into slowing down, resting, reflecting, and interrupting the habits that have potentially become too small for us. We’re in a process of shedding old skins, and making room for what’s yet to be known.

During these tumultuous times of change, if we can slow down from all the seducing external distractions, there is an incredible opportunity for innovation, growth and evolution.

Each time we stop excessive busyness and doing to spend time in our inner cave of rest and whole-being wisdom, there are a few simple question we can contemplate in earnest:

• What am I struggling to let go of? For example, what ways of being, thinking, and orienting towards my life need to fall away so I can align with who I am becoming?

• What fear-based patterns of thinking and operating are keeping me on the hamster wheel? Is this really what I want for my life?

• Where am I operating out of fear instead of love, and what do I want to do about this?

A collective movement to dismantle systems of power-OVER into power-WITH

How is COVID pointing us towards the opportunity to liberate the repression of our feminine powers?

During this time of COVID-19 it’s clear that no one has any definitive answers, and we’re collectively living in the looming shadow that humanity has been fueling and creating for decades through excessive industrialization, consumerism, and capitalistic greed.

We don’t always have all the answers when we want them. However, we can live into the questions one courageous choice at a time. Do we want to solve these complex issues through fear and self-preservation, or through the embodiment of our whole-being wisdom?

What will we learn during this time about the art of surrendering into the unknown, while simultaneously engaging in active expressions of being, listening, and tapping into the intelligence of our expanded self rather than our limited rational minds?

Are we at the brink as a species? How will we shift into a collective movement from separation into wholeness — or is it too late? Is it possible for a tipping point in consciousness to occur and shift us away from extinction?

Mother Earth and all of her species have been struggling from the overgrowth of the human population. For decades, we’ve continued to spread into indigenous people’s homes, and wild creatures’ habitats, in order to support our fossil fuel consumption.

Thousands of species a day are being forced into extinction through ocean temperatures rising, causing accelerating diseases and mercury-poisoning in the sea life. Contaminated soils from pesticides have made their way into the majority of our food sources — which affects ALL beings on the planet. Waters are being polluted by chemical companies and human waste, while toxins in the atmosphere are causing destructive greenhouse effect, which has resulted in extreme imbalances in the biosphere.

The human psyche needs a radical reset from the hierarchical structures of power-OVER to the generative and life-affirming expressions of power-WITH.

It’s time to gather trusted allies who will help us to expose the unconscious ways that we contribute to disharmony in our relationship to ourselves, one another, and the whole of life.

Let’s turn towards our sacred cave where we abide in the presence of our being and embodied power. Let’s prioritize this in solitude, and together.

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