Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves
Dear Coach Fabulous
How can we, as women, enter into spiritual growth wholeheartedly when a part of that process means serving others and letting go of our ego?
This seems to be a major contradiction to the way we have been fighting to live our lives over the past few decades.
How can we retain our self-worth as individuals, or do we need it at all? Is our natural spiritual state to serve others?
Feminista
Dear Feminista
This is big territory we’re in here, so this will be a wide-ranging discussion. First of all, let’s not imagine a war between spirituality and feminism (or even femininity). If anything, the emerging spirituality of our times values the feminine spirit far more than traditional religion has done for millennia, so that’s progress. Secondly, we have an opportunity now to redefine our feminine power. Having spent decades trying to be like men in the workplace, suddenly the workplace is now beginning to value what are called the ‘softer’ skills of empathy, teamwork and emotional intelligence. It’s time for us to embrace our natural qualities and strengths, in order to redress the imbalance and inequalities in our society without having to disown who we are in the process. It’s not about male or female being better than each other, but learning to come into balance with the masculine and feminine qualities within ourselves.
All men have a female aspect to their personality, as all women have a male aspect to theirs. We fail to acknowledge the totality of ourselves when we limit our understanding to the perceptions and behaviour of a single gender. The optimum way to function in the world is to maintain the delicate balance between the qualities of the feminine and the masculine, as depicted by the yin/yang symbol of the Tao. What this implies is that we will honour our talents for inspiration and empathy as much as we do the ability to take action and achieve in the world. Yin and yang qualities – passive and active – may be attributed to the feminine and the masculine, but that doesn’t mean all women are exclusively passive and receptive, nor that all men are exclusively active and assertive. These may be natural tendencies, but they are only part of the story.
Having clarified that our challenge in life is not a battle but a balance of the sexes, let’s look at service – what it is and what it is not. Pure service is open-hearted giving to others, without agenda or seeking a specific return. Service comes from being the true expression of who you are, which naturally flows with open-heartedness and compassion. However, we often confuse service with sacrifice, as though we must lose or give away a part of ourselves in order to serve another. This is a distortion of service where the giving is done with an underlying intention of getting something in return, even if it doesn’t look like it on the surface.
To grasp a healthier concept of service, drink in this statement by the Dalai Lama, defining his spiritual beliefs: “My religion is kindness”. Service is not servitude. It is kindness, thoughtfulness and generosity of spirit. When we are giving from the wellspring of our authentic selves, service is as natural to us as breathing. It is not – and does not feel like – punishment, suffering or being made to feel less than another. There is no master and slave in true service, only sharing.
Now, back to the feminist dilemma – if we let go of ego, will we let go of our self-worth and the ground we have gained in creating a society of equality? The answer is: only if you have a poor definition of ego. The common perception of ego is that it is the bedrock of our self-worth and our self-esteem and what protects us from becoming downtrodden by others. In a spiritual sense, the real definition of ego is that it is just a personality construct that we have built around our true selves, that – rather than protecting us – actually holds us back.
When you are aligned with the truth of who you are, you don’t need an elaborate ego structure to take care of you because you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself without the need to be defensive. You know that there’s a divine spark within you and you can see that in others. Your natural instinct is to be kind and compassionate – you’re not doing it because you think you should, but because it’s just who you are. That is the embodiment of true service. The spiritual paradox is that by letting go of the false (ego) self, you enter the realm of the true self, where flow, abundance and real joy are found. We tend to think that by being of service we will somehow end up worse off, yet the opposite is true. That dynamic of suffering only applies when you are in servitude and sacrifice, not service.
To conclude, genuine self-worth comes from knowing who you really are and living authentically. When you do that, you enter the flow of life where there is no conflict between spirituality, service and the power of being a woman. How could there be? Your life is a spiritual journey towards remembering the truth of who you are as a soul and knowing that each and every one of us holds that beauty and divine spark within us, whether we’re from Venus or from Mars.
Coach Fabulous
If you have an issue you’d like guidance on, need some help finding direction or could just do with a bit of inspiration, email CoachFabulousCo@aol.com and a little cyber-coaching will appear, as if by magic. Of course, the names will be changed to protect the innocent (and the not-so-innocent). All material © 2006 Alison Porter
How can we, as women, enter into spiritual growth wholeheartedly when a part of that process means serving others and letting go of our ego?
This seems to be a major contradiction to the way we have been fighting to live our lives over the past few decades.
How can we retain our self-worth as individuals, or do we need it at all? Is our natural spiritual state to serve others?
Feminista
Dear Feminista
This is big territory we’re in here, so this will be a wide-ranging discussion. First of all, let’s not imagine a war between spirituality and feminism (or even femininity). If anything, the emerging spirituality of our times values the feminine spirit far more than traditional religion has done for millennia, so that’s progress. Secondly, we have an opportunity now to redefine our feminine power. Having spent decades trying to be like men in the workplace, suddenly the workplace is now beginning to value what are called the ‘softer’ skills of empathy, teamwork and emotional intelligence. It’s time for us to embrace our natural qualities and strengths, in order to redress the imbalance and inequalities in our society without having to disown who we are in the process. It’s not about male or female being better than each other, but learning to come into balance with the masculine and feminine qualities within ourselves.
All men have a female aspect to their personality, as all women have a male aspect to theirs. We fail to acknowledge the totality of ourselves when we limit our understanding to the perceptions and behaviour of a single gender. The optimum way to function in the world is to maintain the delicate balance between the qualities of the feminine and the masculine, as depicted by the yin/yang symbol of the Tao. What this implies is that we will honour our talents for inspiration and empathy as much as we do the ability to take action and achieve in the world. Yin and yang qualities – passive and active – may be attributed to the feminine and the masculine, but that doesn’t mean all women are exclusively passive and receptive, nor that all men are exclusively active and assertive. These may be natural tendencies, but they are only part of the story.
Having clarified that our challenge in life is not a battle but a balance of the sexes, let’s look at service – what it is and what it is not. Pure service is open-hearted giving to others, without agenda or seeking a specific return. Service comes from being the true expression of who you are, which naturally flows with open-heartedness and compassion. However, we often confuse service with sacrifice, as though we must lose or give away a part of ourselves in order to serve another. This is a distortion of service where the giving is done with an underlying intention of getting something in return, even if it doesn’t look like it on the surface.
To grasp a healthier concept of service, drink in this statement by the Dalai Lama, defining his spiritual beliefs: “My religion is kindness”. Service is not servitude. It is kindness, thoughtfulness and generosity of spirit. When we are giving from the wellspring of our authentic selves, service is as natural to us as breathing. It is not – and does not feel like – punishment, suffering or being made to feel less than another. There is no master and slave in true service, only sharing.
Now, back to the feminist dilemma – if we let go of ego, will we let go of our self-worth and the ground we have gained in creating a society of equality? The answer is: only if you have a poor definition of ego. The common perception of ego is that it is the bedrock of our self-worth and our self-esteem and what protects us from becoming downtrodden by others. In a spiritual sense, the real definition of ego is that it is just a personality construct that we have built around our true selves, that – rather than protecting us – actually holds us back.
When you are aligned with the truth of who you are, you don’t need an elaborate ego structure to take care of you because you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself without the need to be defensive. You know that there’s a divine spark within you and you can see that in others. Your natural instinct is to be kind and compassionate – you’re not doing it because you think you should, but because it’s just who you are. That is the embodiment of true service. The spiritual paradox is that by letting go of the false (ego) self, you enter the realm of the true self, where flow, abundance and real joy are found. We tend to think that by being of service we will somehow end up worse off, yet the opposite is true. That dynamic of suffering only applies when you are in servitude and sacrifice, not service.
To conclude, genuine self-worth comes from knowing who you really are and living authentically. When you do that, you enter the flow of life where there is no conflict between spirituality, service and the power of being a woman. How could there be? Your life is a spiritual journey towards remembering the truth of who you are as a soul and knowing that each and every one of us holds that beauty and divine spark within us, whether we’re from Venus or from Mars.
Coach Fabulous
If you have an issue you’d like guidance on, need some help finding direction or could just do with a bit of inspiration, email CoachFabulousCo@aol.com and a little cyber-coaching will appear, as if by magic. Of course, the names will be changed to protect the innocent (and the not-so-innocent). All material © 2006 Alison Porter
posted by Coach Fabulous at 5:06 pm
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