The active Mother (Shakti) stands on the inactive Father (Shiva)
(Continued from Part 1, yesterday.)
The Use of the Gender Metaphor
Before we go further, let’s look at the use of the gender metaphor to describe levels of Reality far beyond gender.
The formless God is not a man and God in form is not a woman. So why use a gender metaphor to represent them?
It’s a metaphor adopted by sages long ago. Here’s Lao-Tzu using it for instance:
“Nameless indeed is the source of creation
But things have a mother and she has a name.” (1)
The Father is the nameless and formless Source of creation; the Mother is the Creator of things; operating in the world of forms, where her children use names, she has a name.
Sri Ramakrishna takes us closer to the deeper meaning of the gender metaphor when he distinguishes between movement and stillness:
“That which is Brahman [the Father] is also Kali, the Mother, the primal Energy. When inactive It is called Brahman. Again, when creating, preserving, and destroying, It is called Sakti. Still water is an illustration of Brahman. The same water, moving in waves, may be compared to Sakti, Kali.” (2)
Archangel Gabrielle uses it in the same way:
“You are all birthed — the universe is birthed — through the movement of the Divine Mother. It’s an active, physical, mental, emotional — however you conceive of – movement. …
“But, dear heart, you are not simply of the Mother. You are of the whole [i.e., the Father]. So of course you are of the stillness, of that energy that moves only through the Mother. It is part and parcel of who you are. Now you see, as you come to this time of Ascension, to this conjunction of energies, it’s not either/or, masculine or feminine, stillness or movement. It’s both.” (3)
Let’s stop the camera here.
It isn’t any kind of movement that’s being focused on here. It’s the movement best known as Aum/Amen, the Word of God, what Sri Ramakrishna called the force “creating, preserving, and destroying” worlds and universes. (4)
And the stillness is not the kind you’d find in a nature park on a Sunday. It’s a transcendental cessation of all material movement; without movement, the material world vanishes; it disappears. Consequently, this stillness would appear to us like a Void.
I had a conversation with Archangel Michael about the derivation of the gender metaphor and he said it came from the Mind of One:
Steve Beckow: Where does the distinction of the two [Divine Feminine and Masculine] stem from?
AAM: It has come from the mind of One to assist those to understand the differentiation [between the Father as stillness and the Mother as movement], and that both are necessary and present in all, all energy and all energy forms. …
It is never meant to be gender-restrictive!…
You see, that knowing innately of the differentiation came to be so abused, misunderstood, so that, if you look to the Old Testament of your Bible, for example, you see the patriarch, the autocrat, the unmoving father figure that is demanding in many ways and must be adhered to, and then you see the female figures in servitude — it was never intended this way! (5)
“To assist those to understand the differentiation” between the Father as stillness and the Mother as movement. So the metaphor is a teaching device, to help people differentiate among the two high aspects of God – the material and the transcendental.
We’ve arrived last with the Divine Mother, who explains that her energy “is not gender based.” (6) She explains why she uses the gender metaphor:
“Consider with me for a moment what the Mother Energy is. There are reasons why you have this paradigm, this archetype [the gender metaphor].
“It is the Mother Nurturer. It is the Mother Disciplinarian. It is the Mother who ‘course corrects’ you as you grow. It is the Mother who sees you grow into the truth of fulfillment, the evolution of your maturity on every level. …
“I am not a thundering, punishing Mother – nor is the Father for that matter!” (7)
OK, it helps us orient to God wearing the mask of the Mother or of the Father. It provides a step up as we endeavor to realize God at one level after another.
She gave a lengthy and authoritative discussion of the relationship between her and the Father on An Hour with an Angel in 2012:
Steve Beckow: Mother, you are the Father as well as the Mother. Can you, if at all possible, explain to our listeners what the difference is between your aspects as the Mother and the Father?
Divine Mother: Yes, because, as I have said, I am All. I am One. … When I am Father, there is a stillness, complete.
So she has just validated the distinction between movement (the Mother) and stillness (the Father).
This is something that the human race is simply learning now. It is the union and conjoining of stillness with movement, and how that is the balance of everything. When I am in the Father, I do not require that movement, for that is not the way that I have created the Father. So, they are the two halves of the whole. …
In many traditions, I am considered the Mother of All; in some traditions, the Mother of God, Source, One. Now, what does this mean? It means exactly what it says: I am the beginning and I am the completion, the end. Each of you — and I have strongly encouraged you not only to discover but to find the masculine aspect of yourself, and the feminine, the stillness and the movement — you cannot have creation of any kind without both. …
You say, ‘Mother, how can you do both?’ It is who I am. (8)
She once said to me, “my being is bigger than you can fathom, dear one. … It is simply larger than any of you can imagine, particularly at this point. (9)
So the gender metaphor is a teaching device to help us to distinguish at the deepest possible level between this cosmic movement and transcendent stillness. (10) In this lifetime, we’re required to work with both because both are necessary for creation.
But behind all that and everything else is the purpose of life: To realize ourselves as God. The gender metaphopr helps us distinguish between two aspects of God – the active and the inactive.
What the Divine Mother said in another connection applies here:
Divine Mother: It is a way of connection, and it is a way of understanding and entering into a higher vibration of being. So it helps the emergence into my energy.
Steve Beckow: Sort of like stair steps?
DM: That is correct. (11)
Thus the teaching device that the gender metaphor is provides useful and manageable steps up in a ladder of realizations. In the seven-chakra system, the realization of the Mother occurs when the kundalini reaches the sixth chakra and is called savikalpa samadhi (samadhi with form or movement).
The realization of the Father happens at the seventh-chakra and is known as nirvikalpa samadhi (samadhi without form or movement). We use our understandings gained from the gender metaphor to distinguish out the goals of realization and understand them when realization happens.
Very much further down the road, beyond the twelve dimensions, we end our journey in complete knowledge of our identity with God, resulting in our return to God. (12) For that purpose and consummation did the Mother make all the worlds and universes.
(Continued in Part 3, tomorrow.)
Footnotes
(1) Lao Tzu, The Way of Life. The Tao Te Ching. trans. R.B. Blakney. New York, etc.: Avon, 1975, 1, 53.
(2) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 634.
(3) “Archangel Gabrielle on the New Golden Grid, the Process of Ascension, and the Advent of Global Prosperity – Part 2/2,” channeled by Linda Dillon, August 26, 2013, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/08/archangel-gabrielle-on-the-new-golden-grid-the-process-of-ascension-and-the-advent-of-global-prosperity-part-22/.
(4) The three phases of creation, preservation, and transformation are known to Hindus as the gunas or cosmic forces, which make up Aum.
In my view, creation, preservation, and transformation = rajas, thamas, and sattwa (gunas) = Akar, Ukar, and Makar (Aum) = Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva (the Trimurthy).
(5) “Archangel Michael: Welcome to This Time of Re-Awakening – Part 2,” channeled by Linda Dillon, September 30, 2013, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/10/archangel-michael-welcome-to-this-time-of-re-awakening-part-2/.
(6) Divine Mother, “Mother Mary Discusses the Divine Quality of Hope-the Foundation, the Bedrock of Human Existence,” February 21, 2013, at http://counciloflove.com/2013/02/mother-mary-discusses-the-divine-quality-of-hope-the-foundation-the-bedrock-of-human-existance/
On the Divine Mother herself, see “On the Nature of the Divine Mother,” May 12, 2019, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2019/05/12/on-the-nature-of-the-divine-mother/
(7) “Transcript ~ The Divine Mother: New Year’s Message 2017,” December 29, 2016, through Linda Dillon, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2016/12/31/new-years-message-2017/.
(8) “Transcript of the Divine Mother on An Hour with an Angel, May 7, 2012,” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/the-2012-scenario/what-role-are-the-angels-playing/transcript-of-the-divine-mother-on-an-hour-with-an-angel-may-7-2012/.
The Mother said she was much bigger than just Shakti: “I am the clasp between the Father and the universe and your world. And Shakti has been experienced — yes, inter-dimensionally for eons as you well know – but she is not the totality of my being.” (“The Divine Mother: Come to Me as I Come to You – Part 1/2,” Oct. 17, 2012 at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2012/10/the-divine-mother-come-to-me-as-i-come-to-you-part-12/.)
(9) Loc. cit.
(10) Or as Jesus said, “a movement and a rest.” In A. Guillaumont et al. The Gospel According to Thomas. New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1959, 29.
(11) “The Divine Mother: Come to Me,” ibid.
(12) In spirituality, this is known as a dualistic approach. I regard it as appropriate for people who are in service to the Divine.