Hi Everyone, I welcome the exchange here, thankyou Caterine et al for being so brave with your expressions. You are outstanding!

To me, it reveals something essential - a means to truly advance down the spiritual path. It is that of confronting our own judgments and truly working with them.

Let's consider rape - one of the most difficult subjects going - a veritable minefield. Understandably, the divine feminine would get pretty wound up about it, when you consider how women have been subjugated, suppressed and violated throughout human history. It is indeed abhorrent. But for all those who might judge another, like Bowie for example (and I have no idea if the allegations are true), I would ask them have they ever eaten meat and dairy? Does a cow consent to having its calves taken away from it so as to provide (totally unnecessary) milk for humans? Have you ever heard a cow screaming as they are stolen from it, so it will continue to produce milk? Or watched it trying to conceal and protect them from the farmer? Does the cow consent to the standard industry practice of artificial insemination in what are commonly called 'rape-racks'? Does the cow willingly consent to laying down its life, in the most brutal of ways, so a human being can consume it?

Does this not equate to 'rape' too? Are billions not 'guilty' of it every single day? Or likewise, when we fill up at the gas station - how many people actually consult with Gaia to see if that's okay? And just look at what that's bringing the earth to. Even as you write on the internet, you're consuming energy, which I imagine many didn't ask if it was okay.

Obviously it touches something deep inside. Catherine, I welcome the brave reflection you offer about the nature of the divine feminine. I trust you're okay to delve deeper? I trust that's what you're here for (please correct me if I'm wrong and I'll happily amend my response). I have to say, it felt to me like you energised your response about what Bowie was truly reflecting to you - it felt to me like a (very understandable) conditioned behaviourism. If I may say so, my intuition tells me you probably overrode the true source pain with a very ray 1 (masculine warrior) reaction. Rather than actually softening into the pain the circumstance revealed - so you may feel what was actually going on, which can't happen if someone is projecting (this is just my view by the way, and please throw it out if you disagree - I accept that I can always be wrong).

Softening into the pain, is actually the divine feminine at work - that which is non-judgmental - how can you soften if you're reacting? And for that to take ascendance in the world, requires total vulnerability to our emotions; to what happens internally when something or someone - especially ourselves - is violated.

In fact surrender - to the degree of being able to allow 'the beast' to enter yourself - is a priceless gift. It's being "the One" and accepting your own distortion - as a part of you. At the macrocosmic level (which you have to totally embrace in order to be "the One" that you are), you have to be able to willingly embrace ALL distortion in the universe as a part of yourself. Of course for many miles down the path, we don't really like that level of surrender - because in it, we might discover our own skeletons that we don 't like to reveal (like the fact that we might have consumed meat for example). And so we project our pain outwards, so as we don't really have to consider it as our own - we don't have to take ownership - which is why most judgments happen. Rumi said "your pain is the place where the light enters". It's often banded around in spiritual circles, but to my mind, often without a real understanding of what that means - or a willingness to take that to the "nth" degree, to a place of total violation - beyond which, we reach the true abode of the One. It involves being able to totally accept distortion coming into you, without retraction and without needing to change it.

This is true mastery of the physical, is true mastery of the masculine, is truly divine feminine. Gaia is the perfect example of that to all women. She has endured the beast, softened into it, accepted it, released any reactive contraction, and is now accordingly in the ascendance.

I'm not saying it's easy, by any stretch. I'm not making light of it. And I'm not at all saying rape is acceptable behaviour - I'm definitely NOT condoning it. However, if someone manifested it as their experience, they drew it to themselves for a purpose. Just as Gaia did. If one can overcome projection, and master ones reaction to it, as we all at some point have to in some way, then we'll greatly gain from the experience.

Remember, at some level, the infinite peace of the One that you are, has been violated by the irritating confusion of relativity, and the manifested multitude of form taking shape within - countless explosions.

My heart goes out to all those who've suffered this in a very human way. But I believe you're here at Openhand because for one, we don't shy away from an exploration of the truth. We own it. Then work with it. To me, this is truly the divine feminine in ascendance. Humbly Open *give_rose* PS - I felt to share this video to help contemplate the sensibility of the humble cow, and reflections of human behaviourisms that are all-too-readily accepted as 'normal'...