THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD

Question of the Day: What is meant by a maternal consciousness? Historically speaking, in our culture the role of men has been to create, to make new things, to fix broken things, and to defend us from things which could hurt us.  All of these are wonderful and necessary roles for the preservation of the human race. However, most children saw their mother in a different way.  She was not a creator, a fixer or a defender, but rather a transformer.  Once a woman has held her baby inside of her body for nine months and brought it forth in pain into the world, this woman knows the mystery of transformation in her body.  She knows it intuitively, yet she cannot verbalize it.  She just holds it in a deeper level of consciousness.  She knows something about mystery, about miracles and about transformation that men will never know (which is why males had to be initiated!). The feminine body can be seen as a cauldron of transformation.  Her body turns things into other things—her body turns a love act into a perfect little child.  Yet, in her heart, she knows SHE did not do it.  All she had to do was to wait and eat well, to believe and to hope for nine months.  This gives a woman a very special access to understanding spirituality as transformation, if she listens.  Adapted from The Maternal Face of God (CD) (part of On Transformation: Collected Talks, Vol. 1)