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Currents Episode 13 // Descension: A Feminist Approach to Embodied Spirituality
23 Plays28 days ago
What does spirituality have to do with the taste of an apple? With the kiss of a lover? Or with how your business is structured?
In this episode of “Currents” I break down an idea that I’ve been holding for a while. The idea of the need for “Descension” of spirituality into our bodies, into our businesses, and into our physically manifest world.
This includes an embrace of the physical as a pathway to the divine. A pathway that values the felt experience as much as the destination of our pursuits and cultivations.
It’s been said before that everything is in this moment. That begs the question: What is happening in this moment? What am I feeling? Sensing? Thinking? Touching? What is this moment actually comprised of? And how much of it am I actually participating in?
This piece is in response to a lot of talk about the idea of “The Ascension”, that we are somehow transcending the world of the physical through a massive collective process of awakening.
While this might be true, I argue that this is only half of the picture - and a primarily masculine one. The feminine/feminist side of the coin suggests that we will only achieve this collective awakening through the body, through being a living embodiment of our divinity through the businesses we create, the relationships we cultivate, and the earth we tend to.
I hope you enjoy this episode and that it gives you something nourishing to chew on.
I look forward to more conversations on the topic ahead, but this idea is at the crux of so much of my exploration of how it is that divinity can live through our works in the world. Because what we need is not to escape to something “better” but to find, bring, and live the beauty here.
With love ✨
Rei
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Transcript
Introduction to Spiritual Ascension
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi there, friends. I am so excited to connect with you about this idea that has been brewing for some time within me. Everyone's talking about the ascension. Well, maybe not everyone, but a lot of spiritual people are talking about how we are ascending into this next level of reality and awareness of the planet and our spirits and headed into a more spiritual realm where we are you know not bound by the confines of this body and this world. And that's all wonderful. Sounds really nice. It reminds us of entering heaven or something like that. And maybe that is what's happening. I'm not going to suggest that I have the spiritual knowledge. I know that we are definitely in a process.
00:00:47
Speaker
and
Critique of Masculine-Dominated Spirituality
00:00:48
Speaker
ah one where the shadow is coming up and one thing that I want to argue though is that and we may be bypassing a very important part of the process in this idea of ascension um and that it comes from a male masculine dominated approach to understanding spirituality that does not value the body, right, does not value the shadow, that is more interested in um bypassing, getting over, overcoming the confines of this physical form, which is
00:01:25
Speaker
so hard and cumbersome and, ah you know, I'd rather just be somewhere spiritually sublime and peaceful, right? The idea of peacefulness, of of a completion of this process that we're in,
00:01:42
Speaker
The whole point of being here on this planet, in this body, in this process that we're in, is to experience this process and to cultivate all of the learning and experience that comes from being in this process.
00:01:56
Speaker
So just like
Experiencing the Journey of Life
00:01:57
Speaker
with your life, why would you want to bypass the whole process of experience of your life to get to the end point, right? It's been famously said that that is like speeding through a concerto to get to the end of the concerto. Wouldn't you rather experience the highs and the lows and the ecstatic fullness of this song rather than speeding through it to get to the end. The point is not to get to the end of the song. And so I worry that in the process of trying to get to this heightened state of awareness, right, that we are jumping past over
00:02:42
Speaker
through disregarding the fundamental aspects of the process that is required by being here in this body, in this world, in this physical form.
Introducing the Concept of Descension
00:02:52
Speaker
So I argue that instead of the idea of ascension, the more important concept in this particular moment in time is actually the idea of descension.
00:03:06
Speaker
of bringing the spiritual down, not trying to pop up past and beyond, but bringing our awareness down into this physical manifest world. That that actually needs to happen first, and maybe that's even a part of this ascension, right? But that we can't we can't jump past that. And so it needs to come first, and therefore may even be more important than the idea of ascension at this particular point in time.
00:03:37
Speaker
So what is this idea of decension?
Grounding Spiritual Consciousness
00:03:41
Speaker
Decension, right, again, is bringing our awareness into this body, this physical, beautiful world, this planet, matter, our creations, our families, relationships, businesses, gardens, the earth that we take care of,
00:04:08
Speaker
all of the art and the creativity that we express through our hands and our voice and our relationships,
00:04:17
Speaker
physical food, the way that we nourish ourselves, even money and the things that we decide to create, right? All of that is physical form.
00:04:33
Speaker
All of that, I argue, is what we may want to be bringing our awareness down into and the divine down into. This idea of dissension, right? Bringing consciousness,
00:04:48
Speaker
awareness, attention, even love, right? This idea of universal awareness, bringing it down into the body.
Integrating Higher Consciousness
00:05:01
Speaker
into form and what and how we create, bringing the divine not jumping out of our body and our are experience up into something else, but bringing the awareness of that beauty, that wonder, that oneness down into this physical plane. And what does the divine look like, express as,
00:05:32
Speaker
when brought in, down, and through into this physical plane. We're not going to get there by leaving here.
00:05:45
Speaker
And so again, what is it to invite this awareness of oneness, right, into this moment, into the way that the sound is landing on your ears?
00:06:00
Speaker
into the way that your seat feels on the chair or that your feet feel on the ground. All of these planes of awareness and knowing, all of these dimensions that people are trying to transcend into are actually here right now, all around us. It's not somewhere we are getting to that is separate from this moment. It is simultaneously existent. And so what is more interesting and curious to me is how do we bring our awareness, consciousness from these different planes of existence into this one?
Interaction of Internal and External States
00:06:45
Speaker
How do we bring higher aspects of consciousness to our work and our relationships and our lives? And even just the process that is happening in our bodies, right? What are we feeling? What are we sensing? What are we experiencing?
00:07:03
Speaker
And how the external world is landing upon us and how we are affecting our external world because they're one and the same.
00:07:17
Speaker
What is within us manifests outside of us. And what is outside of us is an expression of us that brings awareness to what is happening inside of us. And so we're in this constant interplay that's available if we can bring awareness, consciousness, even divinity to our everyday moments of life.
00:07:45
Speaker
to the feel of the air on our skin and what that evokes within us, to the expression or the attempt to express something that feels deeply important to us, whether that's through art or our work or just saying something to a friend, right?
00:08:11
Speaker
descending our awareness and our consciousness into this physical reality in this particular moment in time is a way of balancing this over-masculinized approach to spirituality.
Embracing a Feminine Spiritual Approach
00:08:29
Speaker
The feminine inherently is nothingness.
00:08:37
Speaker
And it is in bringing consciousness to that pure potential void of nothingness that this whole reality gets created. And it is being created moment by moment through our awareness and our attention where we place that awareness and that attention through all the ways that this body holds awareness, attention, stories.
00:09:04
Speaker
All of that latent potential of Consciousness and ideas that meets energy held in form And bringing awareness experiencing that is the reason that we are here
00:09:24
Speaker
And so let's not skip over that, right? Because when we do, when we bring awareness to all that we're holding in our bodies, to the flavor and taste of something, to the feeling of success or defeat, that is the unfolding of this particular story, your experience, your part of this grand orchestra of consciousness.
00:09:52
Speaker
So we don't want to bypass that symphony of your life and your experience. Firstly, it just won't work, right? Because if you're trying to get beyond it, you never will, because that's actually what you're manifesting into reality. So this idea of dissension is is critical to even achieve ascension.
00:10:22
Speaker
bringing awareness to our lived experience, to the sensorial experience of the body in this moment as we move through life, bringing attention to story and to emotion to the physical world around us. I'm not trying to claim that I'm an expert at this. The only reason I think I have anything to say about it is because it's been a journey that I've been on learning how to do this.
00:10:50
Speaker
And if you're listening and this is a very easier aspect of your existence and comes naturally, please let me know because I'm always seeking to learn more. But I just wanted to bring this part of the conversation to light because we are in a moment of rebalancing masculine, feminine, and large, and I think that the realm of spirituality is one where we have been over-masculinized. And that the appreciation of the physical form, of our senses, of being in this world, is a part of the rise of the feminine. And that valuing it and suggesting that this is actually a critical key to our collective awakening, to our transcendence, to our oneness
00:11:40
Speaker
is imperative, is so important. And beyond that, it's just a way towards actually experiencing the beauty of this life, right?
00:11:52
Speaker
the beauty of the heartache, the beauty of our coming together in response to that. The beauty of the awakening that's available in everything from the beauty of a flower blooming to the most heart-wrenching situation that we can show up for, it right? That we can be there for each other in, in this physical form. Once this physical form is gone,
00:12:20
Speaker
everything happens in an instant on the energetic plane. And then there's stillness and there's nothing. And so to revel in the complexity and the miracle of the ability and capacity to experience the unfolding of this story as it happens, that's made available by this physical form that slows down energy, that gives us the element of time to experience things as they unfold. What a gift, right?
Achieving Heaven on Earth
00:12:59
Speaker
And I do believe that we can achieve, quote unquote, heaven on earth, that a big part of
00:13:07
Speaker
Our existence that's available is to bring the divine down into this world, into this realm, through more beautiful ways of being in communion and relationship with each other, in being in more beautiful ways of being with this earth, in more beautiful ways of doing business and creating things that serve and allow us to experience this world, more beautiful ways of creating art
00:13:37
Speaker
that help others notice, reach, touch into those parts of themselves experience. They're part of the symphony of life.
00:13:49
Speaker
So I just wanted to talk about this idea of dissension, right? Coming down, bringing down this loving, beautiful, spiritual awareness.
00:14:02
Speaker
and existence, this this part of us, right our soul, down into this body, into this physical world as a critical part of our spiritual path that is just starting to receive awareness and attention, and that I hope receives more and more. And for those out there who are practicing this, I want you to know that
00:14:30
Speaker
what you are experiencing is a part of a larger unfolding of the return of the feminine, of a balancing of feminine and masculine awareness and approaches to living the divine, to realizing divinity, and that the embodiment of that is is as important, if not more, in this moment in time.
00:14:59
Speaker
and to just keep going.
00:15:03
Speaker
I hope this is helpful for those who are interested in what I'm talking about, please reach out. I'll be happy to talk or chat more if you're interested in resources or approaches to a more feminine approach to spirituality. I'm happy
Dialogue on Feminine Spirituality
00:15:20
Speaker
to list some links. There are a lot of amazing practitioners here in Santa Fe who are creating everything from immersive experiences to Qigong, who I believe are an expression of this wave of way of being
00:15:38
Speaker
in these realms of accessing and transcendence through the body. And I hope that this sparks more dialogue and conversation because I think it's an important one. So whatever you do, however you do, I hope that you get to feel and experience more of the divine in your day to day. And please let me know about it because I'm curious about your experience. Thanks for listening.