Body of Wisdom

Over thousands of years of patriarchal power, men - with women's help - have developed our global culture. But at what cost to our living systems, including our physical and mental health? We have gone crazy: over-consuming and acquisitive, bent on dominating people and nature. Yet we feel unnourished and dissociated from source. According to Hilary Hart we have reached a crisis point. The whole of life needs regeneration and renewal, nourishment and love and it is women who are needed to take responsibility, to restore balance to an unbalanced world. For it is women who are naturally connected to the earth and nourishment. It is they who carry the bloodline of the mother. Women's bodies are in sync with the physical world in ways men's bodies aren't; the blood flow itself is at one with the life force energy flow of the body of earth, and carries the spiritual as well as the physical. Drawing on interviews with the world's most visionary spiritual teachers, Hilary Hart's book becomes more profound with every page. Sections, for example on Purification, Earth, Wholeness, Receiving, Community, persuade us that there is a potential source of power in all women; that we are by nature shamanistic. Presenting us the evidence through the stories of myth, the customs of native communities and images of feminine power from all cultures - as well as through the dreams and experiences of ordinary women – she explains how it is that through giving birth we have a template in our bodies and hearts to replicate the mysterious female nature of Earth's generative powers, to bring light into life in order to revitalise and heal the earth. Women's bodies are alive, says Dr Guan-Cheng Sun, Taoist and Chi Gong teacher. A woman's heart is connected to the heart of the Earth, our planet's seat of consciousness. Body of Wisdom tells us that the body and its organs are spiritual vehicles with many, many hidden and mysterious processes. Through the attunement of the organs to earth and the seasonal cycles, we are part of a vast system of inter-relationships affecting the whole web of life. For example, when parts of the body like the breasts are sexualised and objectivised, as they are today, we 'cover like a veil' our spiritual power. In fact, says Dr Sun, an energy point in a woman's chest works with the breast to provide spiritual as well as physical nourishment to a child. If this chakra is active, a woman constantly emits nourishing light through the breast into life. And when a woman purifies the uterus through menstruation, it mirrors her capacity to purify multi-dimensionally; to clear space, release the toxic, and allow the new to enter - not only for herself but for others too. As Sufi Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee says "the substance in a woman's spiritual being can directly interact with the sacred substance, or light, in creation. It is a substance that men don't have". Powers that are natural for women are often simple, so much part of life that we do not honour them. In a chapter on Nourishment Dr Sun sees the prevalence of diseases such as multiple sclerosis, lupus and other auto-immune disorders - more common in women - as a sign of how women deplete themselves by giving too much. Women need to become conscious of energy exchange and be more responsible for nourishing ourselves through the most basis aspects of life. Maintaining healthy relationships, being careful of who we make love to, where we spend our time, what we eat, influences the energy we can emit back into life. A particularly powerful chapter on Longing – which, says Hilary Hart, is a spiritual gift and another mystery of wholeness – describes a woman's longing as a living sign of unification, a state of vulnerability and a deep need for the soul to be part of life. She longs to know that life is sacred and to experience the creative power running through the core of life; to know that God is not only Transcendent - located in heaven beyond earth - but is also Immanent. The Divine Feminine is the experience of God in creation. The journey requires restoring the sacred feminine, healing wounds that dominate our consciousness and our unconscious. But sometimes it is more challenging to think what is already available to us. Hilary Hart, author of three books on women's spirituality and its role in collective evolution, says we need to explore the gift of deep listening and attunement, for life to enter us and circulate more deeply; We need to belong to life itself, 'where longing and pain are part of civilisation trying to awaken'. She points out that this is not a rejection of men or men's power and she concedes that these generalities about earth and gender are not absolute: that some men identify more with earth elements, while some woman might orientate towards the heavenly realms. But, concluding with exercises to illustrate her themes, she suggests that it is now imperative for women to take responsibility for a spiritual work that only women can do. As she says "It is not for women to become powerful but to wake up to their power."