Creating A New Version of Yourself As Part of Nature, Not Its Governor

: By Pia Orleane, Ph.D.

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One of the foremost scholars of cultural myths Joseph Campbell (a man with a clear connection to the divine feminine) pointed out that one function of myths is to put one’s way of life in harmony with nature. He spent his entire life studying worldwide myths and how those myths affected people’s choices in daily living.

The myths of our current culture seem to separate us from nature. How have we allowed our myths to define who we are? We live with an imbalance that we intrinsically know is wrong. Our myths have given our children a legacy of confusion.

Our children grow up in a culture that defines its members with desperately out of balance gender-specific roles that place masculine attributes above feminine attributes. The result of this “training” is that girls try to act like boys to be more accepted and boys ignore any aspects of the feminine that could contribute to their being more balanced individuals. Such divided, linear, and regimented thinking causes our children to continually strive for an imagined future via a science called progress, while ignoring possibilities that may be whispered in dreams or otherwise be derived from the imagination.

A clear example of balancing one’s life with nature is evident in women’s biological urges to slow down and be quiet during the time they are losing blood. Nature-based myths that require treating the fertility cycle as a sacred reality that holds the power to open our own creativity are quite valuable.

Existential psychologist Rollo May, another man deeply in touch with the divine feminine, pointed out almost five decades ago that we should be able to retire from a world that influences us too much and be quiet to let solitude work for us and through us. We seem to have lost touch with this wisdom. Women’s natural biological cycle is a key for all humans to listen to the timing of our own bodies and to accept the creative spark of life. Acknowledging the divine feminine keeps our own divine spark of creative potential alive.

Cardiologist Ari Goldberger discovered that the healthy heartbeat is not regular and rhythmic, but contains chaotic irregularities that actually determine the organ’s health and the individual’s survival. We must remember that life is change, and change is always involved in creativity. If we allow ourselves to be non-changing (or stuck), we die.

Women have always had a special time nature sets aside to expel the old and make room for the new. Men have a more challenging time designing retreat time for their own clearing and creative process. However, men can create their own retreat times by going camping either alone or with other men who have a similar purpose. The ManKind Project, MenSpeak, and A Circle of Men are examples of groups that encourage men to retreat together to regain the balance and harmony that they have lost in society’s warped value system.

We all need to honor times to slow down, listen, and wait. The divine feminine brings inspiration when we are just being rather than when we are focused on doing. When we wait before acting, our actions are accomplished more efficiently and more quickly because we have respected the pause in the creativity cycle. When we honor our own natural timing and become examples to others, everyone benefits from participating in the rhythms of life.

Our Ability to Be Creative

While hundreds of researchers have looked at what causes eminent creativity (that which produces extraordinary pieces of art or brilliant ideas) and everyday creativity (that which produces the art of living), no one is acknowledging that creativity has lessened in modern cultures. Even in school, science and progress are valued more than teaching our children the art of living.

One of the greatest downsides of a patriarchal culture is that it separates us from our connection to nature, from the voice of the divine feminine, from our own divinity, and from our own innate creativity. When the Judeo-Christian patriarchal culture changed the structure of our belief systems, we lost much of our creative potential as humans.

Fundamental religions have taken creativity away from the divine feminine and assigned it to a male god. When women’s cycles were dismissed, dishonored, and disempowered, what women have to teach about creatively cycling through life in accord with nature was silenced.

By living the male model of progressive thinking and action, our lives have become hurried and harried. We perceive that we do not have time to slow down to smell the roses, to listen to the still small voice of our intuition or our spiritual guidance, or to connect with another person or an animal in a meaningful way—at least for any length of time. Human connection has been downsized to stealing a few hours to have lunch with a friend, a quick sexual encounter, or sadly, sending a catch-up email.

Linear, progressive thought and value systems that focus on speed, constant achievement, and advancement have left little time for listening to and honoring our innate creativity. The creativity cycle has been dashed through the pressure of crunching time to get more done. It has been shut down by beliefs that there is only one Creator (God as Creator) who endowed only certain special individuals with the ability to create.

Creativity Arises From Spontaneity

No one can define for another what is creative. The essence of creativity involves doing something that is out of the norm. Creativity arises out of spontaneity and cannot be bound by standard definitions. Any spontaneous action that brings something new and different can be creative. Results of such actions can include new recipes, new ideas about work projects, or sudden resolutions to long-standing problems.

Our creativity has been limited because of our separation from nature and our egotistic self-centeredness as humans. We are not the best of God’s creations, nor are we necessarily highest on the chain of intellect, compassion, or interest in our environment. Look at the intelligence in dolphins, the compassion in whale communities, and the unconditional love in dogs to see how we are lacking. We are, perhaps the species with the largest ego and the strongest desire to control others.

Humanity seems to be moving increasingly in the direction of separating ourselves from the rest of nature. Technological advances speed us up and simultaneously reinforce values of separation that will ultimately destroy us if we don’t remember who we are and our connection to everything in the universe.

The more we separate ourselves from nature, treating our precious lives merely as a daily grind to “get things done,” the more we become lifeless robots. We must create to be fully alive. Mahatma Gandhi reminded us all that there is more to life than increasing its speed.

Slowing Down and Listening

Slowing down and learning to listen are lost arts on the road to living a more creative life. Let me ask you these questions: Can you slow down? Can you change your values to allow time to listen? Can you accept that you are a divine part of nature? Can you create through your thoughts, your ideas, your spontaneous insights, and your intuition? Of course, you can!

The real question is, will you make that choice? If you can, you will be making space for the divine feminine’s inspiration and intuition to guide you.

We must honor our biological and creative nature, and we must return to recognizing that we are part of nature, not her governors. Please, readers, consider what I am saying. Please allow time to really absorb the possibilities of being in the world in another way, a way that allows space for previously unthought-of ideas and spontaneous actions of all kinds to arise. Space is the mother of creativity. Allow space in your life, and your creativity will naturally increase.

As I move more and more slowly, creating space, what I am aware of in my own body reflects the dropping away of patterns and structures of who I used to be and how I was in the world.

I am now creating a more fluid version of myself, one that is capable of flowing with the energies of the present, capable of listening to the guidance of the divine feminine, and capable of re-creating myself in new ways, moment-by-moment. I experience silence as moving waves—ripples of newness and possibility—as I ride the waves of my ever-evolving self.

©2017 by Creative Wave, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Bear & Co.,
a division of Inner Traditions Intl. https://innertraditions.com

Article Source

Sacred Retreat: Using Natural Cycles to Recharge Your Life
by Pia Orleane Ph.D.

Outlining the sacred retreat process, the author explores dream cycles, divine sexuality, and practices for reconnecting to nature, increasing creativity and intuition, and clearing suppressed emotions. She also looks at the benefits for women and men of separate sleeping during menstruation. Through this wisdom, we can restore our natural cycles, allow the divine feminine to once again blossom alongside the divine masculine, and, with the return of balance, heal our world and our hearts.

Click here for more info and/or to order this book.

About the Author

Pia Orleane, Ph.D., is an author, lecturer, and former practicing psychologist. The recipient of an international award from Saybrook University for her research on the importance of natural cycles for life, she travels the world giving talks on the value of the divine feminine and natural cycles. She lives in Europe.