The Women Of Earth are at the Ipanema beach, in Brazil. The sun has just set, leaving a smoky orange hue in the sky, gradually darkening purple into night. I look to the left and the small granite boulders are densely populated by people looking towards the Dois Irmãos Mountains on the west, behind which amber sun rays still linger. The ocean in front of me is one of deep dark blue, with a fairly smooth metallic surface, alternating with sequences of tall waves. I hear the waves crashing with a loud roar onto the sand behind me.
I get out of the water and wrap a sarong around me as I continue to watch the waves. The beach is packed, as one can imagine happening on a Saturday evening in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the city of beaches and parties, and parties on the beach. But around the different groups of sunset watchers, hard-core volleyball players, samba dancers of impromptu bands playing, and many many vendors of everything from cocktails to grilled cheese, to necklaces to teddy bears, I look at the Women Of Earth.
Four of them have just ran the length of the eastern part of the beach and came back, all wearing wide grins. The light is getting darker but Lisa Maria’s teeth shine brightly, as she looks at me with such felt Aliveness that no words are needed to communicate her blatant Joy. Meredith comes up next. Her face glows and widens with big loud laughs after sprinting sideways in her last stretch of sand. I look over to Anna and Juliana sitting closely, so close it’s as if they hold a precious secret between where their hips are touching. Tamara and Danielle promptly meet the women runners and they all decide to celebrate together by jumping into the water with no reservations. These women are radiant!
I look and appreciate all their different bodies. Most women are in their late 30s and early 40s. I start seeing a whole new quality of body shapes, one that comes from the appreciation of their Being-ness in their physical form.
A few weeks ago, Sónia shared at the table that she was feeling scared because as she was getting older, because she was losing her beauty. She was scared because she was losing her value as a woman. We all listened to her with care and depth. But then all of a sudden something else burst out of my mouth. I cracked up laughing and said: “Yay! You are losing your Patriarchal value!”
In Patriarchy the value of a Woman is defined in Patriarchal Thoughtware: Women are mommy sex slaves to men. Their value lies in being a decorative feature to raise the man’s status by adapting to whatever profit-driven fashion appearance she needs to have, while being eager to please any male sexual desire and fantasy. And every woman walking on this planet has experienced how the attention and generosity of men—and many times also from women— completely change as women’s bodies change with age.
To survive in Patriarchy, women develop many other Survival Strategies to please the teenage-boys in adult bodies such as:
doubting themselves
using their sexuality and sexual energy to manipulate, control, and take revenge on others
speaking meekly, in a childlike way or not speak up at all
giving their power and authority away to any patriarchal man, usually the biggest patriarch (so they are safe from the harm of the patriarchal man)
pretending to not see patriarchy in the men and in the women
pretending they do not have value and eventually allow themselves to forget their power
dumbing down on what they say so that men do not think they are intelligent, and possibly more intelligent than them
faking pleasure and delight to not cause men to feel sad, scared, or angry, because patriarchal men use any of these emotions as an excuse to blame and punish women
becoming the man’s mother emotionally and energetically, by making their relating about taking care of the man’s physical, psychological, and emotional needs
thinking their are inherently wrong or that something is deeply wrong with them
comparing themselves with other women
competing with other women for the attention of men
competing with men for the image of a successful person
trying to be a successful patriarchal woman, or successful feminist woman, or a successful woman
never relating sexually with men
valuing money or thinking that money has value;
The list goes on and on.
This is why I am celebrating. Because Patriarchal thoughtware has no value in Archiarchy. Patriarchal value has no value to Archiarchal Women. It is just as interesting to her as collecting dog scabs. In fact, losing patriarchal value gives a woman an advantage to value things other than pleasing and placating ‘men’, and an advantage to live from an orientation other than surviving Patriarchy.
What Sónia and the other Women Of Earth are cultivating comes from a completely different value system. It comes from valuing:
Being With instead of being ‘right’
Each other’s becoming their Archetypal Lineage and Bright Principles in action so these Archetypal forces do their work in the world instead of being successful
Experimenting and Discovering instead of knowing, or teaching
Becoming interesting enough so that the forces of evolution like ECCO can move them to where Evolution needs them to go, instead of the linear life plan or having certainty
Transformation rather than control
Negotiating Intimacy in the small here and small Now ongoingly, with aliveness rather than relationship constructs of any kind
Gaining new Possibilities rather than gaining more money or other material value
Unfolding of each other’s highest Potential instead of status
Inventing Archiarchy rather than complaining or competing political parties
Looking at others as Esteemed Archan Colleagues in the Team instead competition or models of comparison
Creating with glee in the tension of nothingness and unknown instead of following trends and fantasies.
Ballerina-dancing ecstatically in the Groundlessness adventuring instead of a retirement plan.
The list goes on.
I am celebrating the taking back the Authority to decide what else to Value, and how the new Values come from a direct ecstatic preference and not a replacement of one moral ideology with another. I am celebrating how the change in Values created a change in the women’s experience.
These Archan values show in their 5 Bodies, and also in these Women’s appearance. Lisa Maria runs to the water with such wild abandon that she could not care less about how she looks to others or if her bikini bottoms cover her butt evenly She runs without tucking herself back in. No Woman is sucking her belly in. Tamara jumps outrageously into the next wave. In that jumping her body makes a most bizarre contorting move, one I have never seen her—or anyone else—do. It is glorious and beautiful because it is unrestricted, uncontrolled—a True body movement expressed out in the open, wildly, in the packed Brazilian beach.
These women’s bodies, their postures, their hair, their skin, their clothes, their shape, their form is a direct expression of their Beings. They are not the bodies of women trying to stay young, sexy, and successful. These bodies glow and move with exuberant joy, with radiant aliveness, and with the ferocious savagery that women can when they are truly alive, on fire, and in their power, creating together.
As Women Of Earth on fire can.