Crumpled in a hospital chair, I'm looking at my mother in the strange soft light of a heart monitor. She is fast asleep as fluids drip, drip from plastic bag to tube and a respirator keeps time, ironically slow as I ponder how fast it all goes. I am recalling old times: childhood, holidays, summer at the lake. I am also thinking about recent conversations. This day has brought a pandemonium of talking faces—nurses, doctors, family, strangers—uttering a muddled cacophony of prayers, consultations and advice. Now quiet settles around us, just me and my mom. Here, in the dim stillness, I realize what has been missing all along. 
​ The Mother. 
​
At times like this, when insecurity, confusion, and tender emotions chase my inner child like ghosts, I always pick up the telephone and call my mom. When life bears down with the heart-breaking weight of human mortality, I yearn for her nurturing touch.
The greatest calm, the best relief, arrives out of her fierce grace and unconditional love—her support and sanity. She rocks me gently with her wisdom and sings lullabies of truth. Who do I call now? Who is the Mother when mother is ill: silent and tangled in tubes? 
    
Mother is an archetype. Mother energy extends far beyond any one persona. She is a vital pulsation that gestures through Nature, from the subtlest phenomenon to the grandest expressions of life. She is the matrix from which all things manifest. The health and integrity of psyche, both individual and collective, is dependent upon its relationship to the Mother principle.  

A long-standing patriarchal hierarchy has deprecated the value of nature. Social mythology overtook nature-oriented mythology until the soul of Mother became condemned. She has been blamed extensively, by both religion and society. The feminine principle has been viewed as the source of sin and shame since the fall of man. Whatever the mar on society–the syndrome or pathology–it may be traced back to the wicked blunder of Eve.
    
The hospital coffee shop is a liminal space between the inside and outside energies. There I sit, warming my bones with a cup of soup. At the next table sits an elderly gentleman, stooped and wrinkled. He is probably someone’s great grand-father. He gives a crooked, toothless smile. “I like your dress,” he says after a moment. His comment snaps me into a long-forgotten self awareness as I quickly gaze down to recall what I am wearing. It is a modest sundress, the skirt’s hem grazing the tops of my feet. “Thank you” I manage back, feebly. 
    
“Girls these days,” he continues, “in their short, short skirts...It’s no wonder there is so much sexual violence when they insist on dressing like that.” I am stunned, speechless, as our eyes hold for a moment. He just smiles his approval of my modesty, as if what he has insinuated is the most obvious, natural truth. This Mother-blaming, feminine debasing story is his truth, his myth—an old, wrinkled, decrepit man of a myth. His attitude toward the feminine reflects a cultural manner of speaking about Nature that denies her of intelligence. Her wisdom cannot be seen for the blinding seduction of her commodity. Her accessibility is interpreted as an invitation to possess her assets. This story cannot serve society anymore. Nor can it serve nature, as she is slowly raped and depleted of her resources, simply because it is possible to do so.

Returning to Mother means reunion of masculine and feminine energy—within our individual psyches, our social communities and our relationship to the Earth. Returning to Mother means honoring the sacredness in Nature. It is a psycho-spiritual journey toward wholeness as together we seek to live in alignment with the planet's rhythms. The Mother presents healing for the rift that can still be seen in our modern culture between men and women, earth and spirit, psyche and nature. She is recognized as God/dess: the essence of God in all things.
             
My grandmother enters the hospital room with a look of serene inner knowing. My mother’s face lights up, then crumples into a sob. Hers is the familiar face that laughed at my childish antics, the same that sternly scolded my stubborn will. Now this face looks vulnerable and tired. My mom reaches for her mother. She needs, just as I need. No matter how much time passes, babies are always babies and mommies are always mommies. The two women, fleshy and grey, invite me into their generous embrace. It smells like home. Four generations rock gently as I slide my hand to my round abdomen. Here my unborn daughter rests nestled in the womb. Mother energy passes now from my mother’s wounded, weary body to my own fertile one.  
        
The Mother is an archetype that crosses gender and expands boundaries. She is too abounding to fit inside one personality and too dynamic to be measured. The Mother remains steadfast in her nurturance and unconditional love.  And she is so much more. As nature, she is in constant evolution, expansion, and cyclical generation. She changes as the moon changes, pulsing with the rhythms of the tides. And because she is energetic, dynamic and transformational, she remains accessible to every member of humanity, as we continue to evolve in our equality, expanding our awareness. The Mother beckons us to remember her. 

Everyone needs the Mother.
​

Read more on these topics. 

Suppose you are shopping to find the perfect gift for the person who has everything. ...who, in fact, IS everything. What would you give the Universe? 

Mystic teachings seek to remind us that every person is an expression of the universal Infinite, and therefore, each of us is a divinely unique reflection of the “universal everything.” The archetypal image of Goddess Lakshmi embodies the abundance of the Earth and the richness of life’s miracles. She carries this message for you: 
तत्त्वमिस = “Tat tvam asi” = “You are that...” ​

My mama was a Christian believer. She was also my best friend. 
Throughout my childhood we shared a profound Love for God.
I realized fairly soon after high school that my relationship to Spirit expands into a mystic matrix far beyond the dogma of any one church. ​
Adventure pulled me far from home but I always imagined my mama beside me. I wanted to share every new insight and experience:
travels, stories, faces,
death-defying places,
heart-wrenching ecstasy,
prayers, drugs, and tragedy...
She beckoned me to lay it all down at the foot of the cross. 

Meanwhile, I was starting to remember God/dess–the essence of God in all things. ​

My mother and I: we were speaking two different languages. I thought she was simple-minded, deluded, brainwashed and judgmental. She worried I might go to hell. 

Our hearts were entwined, but our voices were strained. We cried. We yelled. We threw up our hands and rolled our eyes. We spent a whole lot of energy trying to change each other's mind. A whole lot of energy...wasted. 

If we were going to maintain our soul connection (which I desperately wanted) I would have to learn to listen. 
...to listen and to hear. 
...to look at life from her perspective; through her heart's vision of truth. ​
I had to make my words mindful and clear. 
...to grow into humility and patience–courage, compassion, and creativity. 
...to focus on our sameness rather than our disparity. 

It took years to learn to harmonize our voices. But our affection was bigger than our need to be right. We stopped trying to prove our point, to change each other's mind.
Instead, we sought to bless each other with the living fruits of a Love divine
–a Love beyond all opposition. 

And it was worth the struggle. 
In her final days on Earth, I sat beside my mama's bed. 
We talked of life, of death, of redemption, of sin, of karma, of heaven, of spiritual wisdom, of choices, of Love. 
We were speaking the same language. 
​Love for God means love for people. 

...A couple weeks ago we moved a ton of books from our storage unit into my home office. They're research books from my doctoral dissertation days. After graduation, I boxed them up and put them away, not sure if I would ever look at them again. As the books slid to the back of the closet, I was happy to let them...along with the incessant stress that had surrounded them during my academic hustle.
​Now, two years have gone by
–two years reconnecting with my family, my friends, my community...my own self. 
These days I find that I am empowered to re-engage with my work on the sacred feminine.

Opening those boxes was a bit of a homecoming for my psyche. I tore through each one like a Christmas surprise, elated by every new discovery...and memory. In one box, I found a stack of works on ecology and environmental activism.

I picked up the first title: Green Yoga by Georg and Brenda Feuerstein. It seemed like the perfect read, just in time to accompany this week's 50th Earth Day Celebration.

Georg Feuerstein has been contributing comprehensive research and insight as a yoga scholar since 1971. His written work constituted the bulk of my early yoga studies. Green Yoga, written in 2007, was one of the last works he produced before he died. It's like a final word on the potential for human consciousness–as if awakened eco-awareness is the inevitable conclusion to a life committed to the teaching and praxis of yoga. 

This book stacks all the statistics side by side; everything that bums you out about the human impact on the planet. Plastic barges in the ocean, toxic rivers, deforestation–it is all there, laid out as a singular, unavoidable reality. The Feuersteins dare their fellow yogis to come out from hiding in denial...to take responsibility for the Earth. 
And it works. 
Green Yoga has motivated my partner and I to reexamine our consumption, reduce our impact, and commit to eco-conscious action.

​But not everyone would like this book. 

There are members of our universe, even members of my own family, who would certainly scoff at this information. They might feel attacked and defensive. They might feel ashamed, confused, and/or annoyed. They might get irritated...angry...throw up their hands and roll their eyes. Trying to connect with those people who radically oppose your world-view is an incredibly difficult task. You try to change their minds and they resist until you are both the enemy. Your rage turns you into the very monster you say you oppose. It feels like a social and psycho-spiritual chasm much too wide to bridge. It just doesn't seem worth the effort. 

But it is. 

It's worth the effort. Because, while we live in an "us versus them" kind of world, we must face the truth: we are ultimately one people. We share the oceans, the rivers, the trees, the air. We are all in this together. 

Green Rage is real. It is simply misplaced passion. Your passion for the environment misses the mark when you forget your love for the people. It doesn't work to lump individuals into groups, calling them all "simple-minded, deluded, brainwashed, and judgmental." Casting shadows won't work. Spreading shame in the footnotes of studies and statistics–that doesn't work. Guilt generally backfires. 

A motivation of lack, and hatred, and fear will not sustain the planet.
Those tactics haven't worked so far. 
We must be inspired by Love–respect for the Earth that we live on, gratitude for her resources, appreciation for her beauty. Across the globe, and across the street–we are speaking different languages but we are saying the same things. We all want freedom. Abundance. Life. We want water to drink. Clean air to breath. We all want the blessings–the living fruits of a Love divine–a Love beyond all opposition. 

For this to work, we must tap into our courage, our compassion, our mutual respect.
We must clarify our words and harmonize our voices. 
​
And we must listen. 
Ultimately we are speaking the same language. 
Love for the planet means love for the people.