HR!Day297 - Not knowing, the Sacred Feminine and the Future of our Planet
- --- Humanity Rising Day 297 - Thursday July 22, 2021 (GoTo Bottom)
Zen practice teaches about being empty. In Zen, this empty mind can connect us with the wisdom of the universe. We call this knowing beyond conceptual thinking “not knowing.” Our ancestors 30,000 years ago lived in the mind of the not knowing. Their minds, free of patriarchal conditioning, were opened to all possibilities. When our ancestors looked at their surroundings, the animals, the plants, the moon, the caves, the darkness, the rain, the sun, they intuitively knew, felt and recognized all creations as the manifestation of the Mother, the Great Mother, which was later called in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, Prajnaparamita, the Mother of All the Buddhas, symbol of the wisdom of emptiness that gives rise to all creations, including men and women. It is through the experience of the emptiness of all things that many practitioners over the centuries have realized the interconnectedness and the interdependence of all things in the fabric of life and death. Our Paleolithic and Neolithic ancestors understood the interconnectedness and the interdependence of all things, and this understanding was undoubtedly a very important factor in the survival and evolution of humanity. The fabric of connections, interdependence and sacredness of our Paleolithic and Neolithic ancestors lasted until it was broken in the middle of the Bronze Age (c 2200-1500 BC) with the arrival of nomadic warriors tribes. This fabric was further broken with the advent of the Judeo-Christian tradition with its myth of the Garden of Eden and the destruction of the civilizations that honored the Mother Goddess.
Regarding the psyche, Carl Jung writes: “Its ancestry goes back many millions of years, sprung from a perennial rhizome beneath the earth; and it would find itself [referring to our psyche] in better accordance with the truth, if it took the existence of the rhizome into its calculations, for the root matter is the Mother of All Things… The knowledge of all the human race is stored within the psyche, as the rhizome [the original root], and potentially available to each one of us.” Our ancestors saw the whole of creation as the Great Mother that gave birth to all the forms of life that were Herself. She embodied our planet and the whole of creation. We were her children. This primordial way of conceiving the universe is still present in our psyche. The vision of the unity and sacredness of life has lived in the roots of the human psyche for thousands and thousands of years and we can always reconnect with Her. The notion of war or the underworld with darkness, lifelessness and menace was not present in our collective psyche until the trauma and anarchy of Late Bronze Age (c1000 BC). Actually, the development of the patriarchal civilization that is currently destroying our planet was rooted in the suppression, persecution and denial of the Sacred Feminine. Doesn't it make sense that if we want to heal, we should start to reclaim the Sacred Feminine from the shadows of our unconscious mind where She still is together with the possibilities for peace, guidance and survival?
Presenter
- Roshi Shinko Ilia Perez, after 20 years of training with prominent Zen masters, became a Zen Sensei in 2004 and a Roshi in 2014 both in the White Plum lineage. Since then she has been teaching and leading Sacred Feminine and traditional Zen retreats and is the Abbess of Maitreya Abbey and co-spiritual director of the Great Mountain Zen Center, both in Berthoud, Colorado. Shinko ordained as a Zen Priestess in 2006. She is the co-author of The Great Heart Way: How to Heal Your Life and Find Self-fulfillment and the creator and leader of Great Heart Way retreats. She is also author of The Zen Priestess and the Snake: A Woman's Path of Transformation and Healing Through Rediscovery of the Great Mother Tradition which is used as a textbook for her Buddhist Goddess Practices. She has led retreats in the Caribbean, Mexico, Spain and in several US states. Shinko was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and grew up in Madrid, Spain where she earned a MA in Archeology. She has two grown sons and two granddaughters.
Convener:
- Jim Garrison, President, Ubiquity University
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