We are not of the world?

What happens when we no longer see ourselves as "of the world."
What happens when we see ourselves as separate from the world and a part of something that lives outside of this planet?
What happens when we are brainwashed by a patriarchal religion and thought patten that separates the spiritual from the flesh?

And Jesus prays to "his father" knowing that he is to be arrested. "I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world." (John 17:15-16)

This was not always the thought pattern. It has only been the thought pattern for the past 4000 years of patriarchal rule and domination. Once we take ourselves Out of the World, we then begin to see reasons to rape, pillar, dominate, pollute, take what is not ours, destroy, wage war on our neighbor, murder, steal, abuse, neglect, etc etc etc. We no longer See this world as the Mother; the One we grew from; the One who nourishes us, the One who parents us with Her visual teachings as we move through each day!

Goddess religions which survived for 300,00-400,00 years before the Bronze Age of Patriarchal Infiltration, set the imagery of Oneness with the Divine; and the Divine was the Entire Creation. As a result the peoples were a community; not an individual. Thus there was a reason to love the neighbor, help the neighbor, understand the neighbor and work together for the betterment and enlightenment of all.

I thought of this on my walk today as I was standing in the Forest looking at the sun coming through the trees; as I walked upon the sacred earth; as I observed the budding of trees readying themselves for Spring; listening to Crows flying overheard and a Woodpecker looking for bugs now coming alive with the warmth; and gazing upon what I now will Call Mother Tree!

Monica Sjoo & Barbara Moor in The Great Cosmic Mother says this: "Lesbian and even hetero feminists who are 'into the Goddess' have opted for cultural-political separatism; they have 'left politics' and political solutions, that is, by blaming the world's problems on men, and then refusing to have anything more to do with 'the man's world'--i.e, 'Let him clean up his own mess." The glaring problem with this separatist  solution is that 'the man's world' is still filled with a majority population of women and children--it is women and children doing most of the suffering 'out there,' and to turn one's back on 'the mans' world' is to turn one's back on them." (pg 416-417)

(Do you see how the current political and religious institutions have this mentality even within the patriarchal structure?)

They continue: "A genuine understanding of 'the Goddess' would not allow us to do this; a true ontological experience of the Great Mother, and of the complete physical as well as spiritual bonding-together of all life on earth, would not allow us us to turn our backs on 'the man's world'--for we are in and of that world now and its suffering is an extension of us, as we are an extension of it. In a true reliving of the world's first religion, we can make no distinctions between 'the life of the spirit' and 'the life of the flesh,' FOR THEY ARE ONE (my capitalization). And so, we make no separation between 'spirituality' and 'politics.' WE ARE THIS WORLD, we cannot leave it. We can only  work to transform it as we transform ourselves, in acts of evolution and revolution." (pg 417)

This All came barreling Down on me standing there looking at Mother Tree; Belly Button protruding as most women's do during pregnancy. The message very clear to me: WE ARE THE WORLD AND THE WORLD IS US AND ALL IS GODDESS!

Now, I spent time with the patriarchal lies but knew on a deeper level that something was wrong with the separation of my spiritual self and my physical self. I would cry when I saw pictures of Native Peoples laying in the ditches at Wounded Knee wondering how in the world one person(s) could in the name of God just out and out take land away from people and then march them outside of their community and then kill them? What part of "Do not Kill?" did this people not understand? I searched my Bible, I talked to my Pastors and what I go was more, "There is this evil in the world and if all would believe in Jesus there would be peace on earth." What? There wasn't peace in the very church I spend most of my life totally involved in. Oh yea, Original Sin?

I recommend that everyone read The Great Cosmic Mother. It will finally put the pieces together as to what has happened to bring us to this point. And it is frustrating and scarey and like some of my feminist sisters, I too want to run away and just live out the rest of my journey reading books and dancing under the full moon! But this book has unsettled a soul that was already totally unsettled.

So here is the response to John 17: 15-16 and the reason we must all find ways to be activists:

"...the Goddess does not 'live' solely in elite separatist retreats, dancing naked in the piney woods under a white and well-fed moon. The Goddess at this moment is starving to death in refugee camps, with a skeletal child clutched to her dry nipples. The Goddess at this moment is undergoing routine strip-and-squat search inside an American prison. The goddess is on welfare, raising her children in a ghetto next to a freeway interchange that fills their blood cells and neurons with lead. The Goddess is an eight-year-old girl being used for the special sexual thrills of visiting businessmen in a Brazilian brothel. The Goddess is patrolling with a rifle slung over her shoulder, trying to save a revolution in Nicaragua. The Goddess is Winnie Mandela in South Africa, saying 'Don't push me." I.e., the Goddess IS the world--the Goddess is IN the world. And NOBODY can escape the world. We know this, but we forget it." (pg 417-418)

If we embrace this then we can't engage in anything the Patriarchal Ideology brainwashes people with. But we can't hide away in our Forest Cottages and hope something will change. We must speak the Truth in whatever way the Goddess asks us to do that. But first we must transform our own thinking. I still find myself thinking and saying things that show I have not been totally cleansed of this bullshit mentality.

We are the Garden and the Garden is us! And it and we are beautiful! We are the Goddess and the Goddess is us! We are the other and the other is us! When we embrace this we no longer find it right and worthy to rape, destroy, dominate, put down, pollute, etc etc etc.

And by the way; who the heck wants a Savior/God who clearly says they are not of the world? Does that sound like a good mother who would say to their child: "oh by the way, you might of been birthed by me but I am not apart of you and you are not apart of me." 

Blessed be!