Womanspiritspeaks: 52 Weeks with the Divine Feminine

Barbara Garland

Description

An interactive journaling experience based on the author's journey to the divine - designed to lead the reader on an exciting journey of self-discovery.
For every person who has struggled with the idea of an exclusively male god, this journal is a year-long spiritual challenge to help clarify their relationship to themselves and the Divine. It is a deep dive to help resolve doubts and struggles that are real and human. Inspired by the author’s own spiritual journey, this journal is a human voyage to the Sacred, to help you find your own god self, your own Soul.

Sujets

• Spiritual
• Self-help
• Spirituality
• Goddess
• Journal

Informations

• Publié par: Balboa Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9798765233719
• Langue: English

Extrait

WOMANSPIRITSPEAKS: 52 Weeks with the Divine Feminine
A journal with writing prompts for digging deep
 
 
 
 
BARBARA GARLAND
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2022 Barbara Garland.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Balboa Press
A Division of Hay House
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.balboapress.com
844-682-1282
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
 
ISBN: 979-8-7652-3370-2 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-7652-3371-9 (e)
 
Balboa Press rev. date: 08/30/2022
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Introduction
How to Use This Book
Week 1The Goddess of a Thousand Names
Week 2The God/dess Speaks in Signs and Wonders
Week 3Embrace the Capacity to Be with What Is
Week 4I Love You, You Are Enough
Week 5Divinity is in Everything and Everyone
Week 6A Woman’s Inward Journey
Week 7Sitting With Uncertainty
Week 8Embracing My Humanity
Week 9The Paradigm of Wholeness
Week 10Balance - the Key to Wholeness
Week 11I Am God/dess
Week 12Inviting – A New Paradigm of Co-creation
Week 13Say “Yes” to the Presence of the Sacred in All Things
Week 14Where Opposites Meet
Week 15Forgiveness
Week 16Making Space
Week 17Truth with a Capital “T”
Week 18Holy Mother
Week 19Dancing the Dance of “Yes”
Week 20Being Love
Week 21Transfiguring Anger
Week 22More on Being Love
Week 23Sitting in the Muck
Week 24The Shadow of Perfectionism
Week 25The Courage to Be Authentic
Week 26The Pregnant Void
Week 27An Interconnected Life
Week 28She Who Weaves the Web of the World
Week 29Freedom to Be
Week 30What is Your Song?
Week 31That Which Brings True Joy
Week 32Practicing Joy
Week 33The Heart’s Longing
Week 34Being and Doing
Week 35Creativity
Week 36Coming Back – In the World, but not of the World
Week 37A Challenge with Closure?
Week 38The Transforming Darkness
Week 39Relaxing into Being
Week 40It’s That Simple
Week 41Love is a Superpower
Week 42Transmuting Grief
Week 43Patriarchy Must End
Week 44Spirals
Week 45Walking Through the Storm
Week 46Deep Soul Healing
Week 47My Heart is Cracked Open
Week 48A Moment for Self-Care
Week 49Reclaiming Myself through Spiritual Practice
Week 50Pebbles in the Stream, Ripples in the Cosmos
Week 51Tick-Tock
Week 52Why?
Afterword
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have been blessed with many soul sisters who have encouraged me and taught me along my life’s journey. I want to especially acknowledge my daughter, Dr. Kristen Hosaka. She is an old soul who always keeps me grounded in reality. In addition the women in my spirituality groups have been invaluable teachers who willingly live the questions of life and who walk with me on this spiritual path. Our many discussions have been the catalyst for this book.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to every woman on a spiritual path, but especially to my granddaughters Alex, Mara, and Maddy. I hope that it will be a guide as they navigate their spiritual lives.
INTRODUCTION
For many years I have been called by the Divine Feminine. Even as a young child, I felt a deep pull toward the Sacred. However, I had no words for my inner calling except those taught by my family, which was devoutly Christian and even more devoutly Southern Baptist. When I was seven, I remember looking out of my window at the full moon and being filled with an inexpressible longing for something more. I called my dad and told him I wanted to invite Jesus into my heart. It was not until years later, that I realized that the full moon was not Jesus, but the Divine Feminine calling me to her.
I always questioned why I, as an intelligent and faithful Christian, was denied the office of deacon, elder, or minister just because I was female. However, during the feminist wave of the sixties and seventies, I lived in a Christian bubble in conservative west Texas. The church I attended was a more liberal Baptist church, so I was not yet allowing those feelings of doubt and struggle to surface in my consciousness. In the late seventies, as my first marriage was falling apart, I was faced with survival questions, like buying a car and having credit in my name. At that point, I began to openly question the patriarchal system and how unjust it was for women. As I questioned the political realities of the time, I also began to question the religious ones.
In 1985, my second husband and I moved to Kansas and joined the local Presbyterian Church. While the Presbyterian church was more welcoming to women than Southern Baptists (they actually allowed women to be elders and ministers), I still felt as if there was something missing. I was on the church staff as the director of a community outreach center for women leaving abusive relationships. In that capacity I facilitated several women’s support groups. As I listened, I became more and more conscious of the inequities and injustices suffered by women. I began to read authors such as Mary Daly, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Carol Christ, Sally McFague, and Merlin Stone. And as I read, I got angry – angry at the patriarchal system, at the patriarchal church and its patriarchal god, and for a while, at men in general. I also became frightened.
Having been reared in an intensely patriarchal religion, I was terrified to think of God as having feminine characteristics or to contemplate any kind of spirituality that whispered that I, too, was divine. I struggled to reconcile what I was reading with what I had been taught. The new ideas that I was exposing myself to resonated in my bones as deeper truths. I couldn’t let them go. Ultimately, I had a big dream (which I describe in week 2) that gave my soul permission to continue with my studies.
I continued to read – Scott Peck, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Sue Monk Kidd, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Carolyn Myss, Judith Duerk, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Caroline Fairchild, and many, many others. With each new author, I felt the calling of the Divine Feminine. Over time I learned to trust that still voice inside of me and to recognize it as HER voice. And She called me to a different view of my spiritual path.
Frequently I use the term God/dess in these essays. While I believe that the Source (God, God/dess or whatever you name your deity) is neither male nor female, but rather a combination of both, our Christian culture, especially Protestant Christianity, has almost completely obliterated the idea of a Divine Feminine. Thus, we have a toxic patriarchal culture which demeans and denigrates the feminine. I feel called to the Divine Feminine as a counterbalance to the patriarchal structure in which we are all indoctrinated. We must see and understand the feminine as deeply as we see and understand the masculine before we can achieve real balance.
At the end of 2019, I was participating in an on-line prayer intensive led by prayer artist, Janet Conner. During one of the guided meditations, I heard the words, “The Dance of Yes.” Even though I had no idea what I was saying yes to, I chose to make the “Dance of Yes” my mantra for 2020.
I have been journaling off and on for over forty years. It was in those journals that I gleaned deep feminine wisdom. In early 2020, as the pandemic began, I decided to go back through my old journals and collect the most important lessons that I had learned over time. I felt called to put these into a journal, which I called “The Wisdom of the God/dess.” These were usually a sentence or two that felt like nuggets of feminine wisdom. Then I felt led to expand upon these nuggets by writing an essay about each one. When I look back over them, they feel almost channeled. I sometimes don’t recognize the words as mine.
Later in another guided meditation, I knew I needed to write a weekly blog. I already had enough essays for a year, so it felt like the next logical step on my spiritual path. After teaching myself to build a website (which was much more difficult than writing those essays) I launched womanspiritspeaks.com in October 2020. Each week I am led to write about my