Today is the day of the Summer Solstice and it is also Father’s Day, at least in the UK.
In Scandinavian countries “Midsummer” is as big as Christmas Day. It is a national holiday where the country grinds to halt and everyone heads for the countryside. Local communities dance around a Maypole and observe many other traditions. One such custom (popular with young women!) is picking seven different types of flowers and putting them under your pillow, so your soul mate or (future partner) will appear to you in a dream!
I am in London this year and I did get as far as picking seven flowers. Then I couldn’t bear to ‘crush them’ by putting them under my pillow, so I just put them on my bedside table in a glass of water. And did have VERY thought-provoking dreams where a mysterious man with a mysterious name appeared. Food for thought and another blog!!
I observe with great interest that this year Father’s Day and the Summer Solstice coincide. I can’t help but meditate on the meaning of this. Does this announce an era of enlightened and spiritually aware “fathering”?! I sure hope so! I shared the thought on Facebook earlier this week and lot of people responded It seemed to pluck a string in people’s hearts.
This post is about “pushing that idea a little further”. In our society there is a great awareness of what I will call “The Wounded Feminine”. Centuries of patriarchy have put many women generally in very difficult situations. Some authors romantize the matriarchal cultures of an older time. Many women I work with in private shamanic practice are now reclaiming the power and strength of the Divine Feminine and I see a new paradigm being born, the paradigm of BALANCE.
There is less awareness around the fact that many men suffer an equally severe wound. Let’s call this “The Wounded Masculine”, for lack of a better phrase. Again, in shamanic practice I have the privilege of working with many men who now wish to reclaim a larger spectrum of functioning and break out of stereotypes that can be suffocating.
So what I am really observing is women recalling and integrating their Inner Masculine aspect and men doing the same with their Inner Feminine side.
Balance is not achieved by blaming and perpetuating ‘wound (or victim) consciousness’. If we wish to arrive at ‘healed consciousness’, we all need to give ourselves permission to connect to our larger selves outside space and time, to our own Divinity, to the template of Divine Wholeness we all carry within ourselves.
Here it is good to remember that the words WHOLE and HOLY are come from the same root stem. The word HEALTH is related as well:
To be HEALTHY we need to live from a place of WHOLENESS and HOLINESS.
The Swedish word HELG (meaning a Holy Day, a “holiday” and, in current use, “weekend”) is also connected to this.
MIDSOMMAR (Midsummer) is a HELG in Sweden. One of the holiest and most celebrated occasions of the year. And I wish everyone in Sweden a GOD HELG OCH GLAD MIDSOMMAR! A happy weekend of Midsummer celebrations! My Swedish husband and two of my sons are there right now.
Back to the point I was really trying to make: in shamanism we pay close attention to synchronicity.
Father’s Day coinciding with the Summer Solstice is a BIG synchronicity.
Personally I think and hope that this “rings in” a different era of enlightened and spiritually aware parenting. Of boys being allowed to explore and express their feminine side. Of girls being encouraged to discover and experiment with their ‘masculine side’. A paradigm where all of us realize that we are ‘larger than life’ (larger than THIS life at least!) That Outside Time we are so much more than we remember right now. We are multi-dimensional beings tasting life on Earth, with all the rewards and limitations of material reality.
And maybe, in origin, we are neither male or nor female, or equally likely we are both. Both genders are expressions of vessels tasting human existence.
In Southern cultures (warmer climates) the Sun is often perceived as male and the Moon as female. In Northern (colder) climates the Sun is generally female (Sunna in Old Norse, is a female Sun Goddess) and the Moon is male (seen as a “gubbe”, a very old man….)
So personally I have never concerned myself with the question if the Ultimate Creator Being is God or Goddess, male or female. Seems to me that Creator Beings can’t create anything that is not contained within themselves, so they are both and none and far more than humans can perceive. And so are we! Any limitations here are the limitations of human perception.
My Big Question is: could all of us together, both genders, including transgendered people, start creating a paradigm of BALANCE between the Feminine and Masculine from today onward? That, I believe, is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children (and grandchildren and children yet unborn) on Father’s Day 2015, also Sunna’s Day, the day of the great Sun Goddess…..
And on a different (but related subject): yesterday I finished and posted a small film about a rock art seminar in Spain where we work with the concept of the HIEROS GAMOS or SACRED MARRIAGE to restore “balance between the worlds”. I invite you to have a look and connect with the concept of GNOSIS: direct revelation, experiental knowledge of the Divine. In our mystical magical work on ancient land in Spain we try hard to to achieve BALANCE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz9n5SwcjsI
Imelda Almqvist
Life Force TV Interview about shamanism with Imelda Almqvist
www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk
Imelda Almqvist is a Dutch shamanic practitioner, teacher and painter based in London, UK
imeldaalmqvist 