Cultural Transformation and Spiritual Intelligence

There’s a charming paradox that develops in humans genuinely embracing a spiritual path. Over time we become kinder and more compassionate, and yet also tougher and more resilient. 

Confronting one’s deepest inner fears takes courage. Sometimes, fearless types who will tackle any adventure head-on stumble at the prospect of inner work. This is not a character failing but rather a recognition of how challenging such work can be, and how much skill is required.

Spiritual Intelligence

Our spiritual intelligence is innate and like any other quality will develop we allow ourselves to work with it. What is spiritual intelligence? It is grounded in the capacity of the soul and the wisdom of the heart. It allows us to metabolise struggles, suffering and challenges as fuel for spiritual growth. 

Every time we do this, our spiritual intelligence quotient rises, as does our spiritual confidence. So, when the going gets tough, as it were, the tough get spiritual! 

“The spiritual path can look so soft and fluffy from the outside, but although it provides sanctuary for the soul, it also zones in – with unerring precision – on exactly the thing that you would most wish to avoid, and asks you to deal with it. So there is a fierceness to awakening and healing, a tough love that truly honours our best interests.”

The path of the soul nudges, pushes, beckons, beguiles, invites and drags us to become empowered and to find our strength, and at the same time, to not attempt to control fate, but rather evolve into manifesting our destiny.

Sacred Masculinity

Ruled by Mars, the planetary deity of war, aggression, passion and drive, Aries is the first sign in the zodiac. It is all enthusiasm, ram-energy ramming its way through life and initiating adventures. Aries and Mars are the masculine energies that bring to light that which may ruffle our feathers, reveal our true feelings and show us the next steps to take. 

Studies have shown that where infants respond to mother’s voice and presence with calm entering their nervous systems, those same little nervous systems rev up with excitement when father’s voice and presence are encountered. The masculine energy can be disconcerting, disruptive, even agitating, but these things do not have to be negative. Provided that the energy itself is one of love, then these ‘divine disruptions’ can be what pushes us to evolve. 

We might gain awareness regarding sources of frustration or anger, and how we might resolve or utilise those energies constructively. We may also become aware of what we are passionate about, and what we are willing to hustle and work towards, because it means so much to us.

“There are many mixed messages around masculinity these days because as a culture, we are in the early phases of experiencing awakened masculinity in our collective consciousness. We are learning what it means and what it looks like in human expression.”

The work that spiritual consciousness pioneers on our planet have been doing to generate recognition and respect for the sacredness of the feminine is essential. It is the shift in consciousness around the feminine that provides the spiritual strength and holding capacity that will enable us to confront what is distorted and damaging in masculinity, so that it can be healed, whilst distilling and embracing its tremendous value and wisdom.

We don’t want to toss the proverbial baby (boy) out with the bathwater. We need masculine consciousness. It is half of our life force. A bird with one wing will either fly in circles, or more likely, not at all. For us to ascend, that spirit bird of the soul needs both wings healthy and intact. 

And so, we work on the feminine capacity for presence, love, comfort, guidance and protection. We create the safe healing spaces. We realise that these healing spaces are not weak at all, but powerful, transformative and strong, and deserving of respect. We find the dignity and value in the feminine. Then that part of our psyche is ready to witness the masculine, and support his healing journey within our souls and in our collective.

Everything starts within, including social change and cultural transformation. We can make a contribution to the social good by becoming more conscious of our own masculine energies. Where do you need to set boundaries, differentiate and discern one thing from the other, acknowledge where you have been off the mark or needing to transform inner demons of procrastination, impatience, fear, anger or doubt into energy to go for your dreams? 

Have you outlawed your dreams and will, perhaps allowing the subtle social inhibition that currently exists against masculinity to undermine you? This seems to exist in younger generations in particular, arising as an understandable (but perhaps not so constructive) resistance against toxic expressions of masculinity. 

Permission for ambition doesn’t have to harm the planet. Ambition can be aligned with the heart and motivate tremendous accomplishment to support collective healing. So, where and how can we reclaim our masculine energies and utilise them in service and honour of the feminine truths of the soul?

Tantric Lessons from India

Filling us with hope for the possibility of divine masculinity in all its glory whilst honouring the divine feminine in all her beauty is the gorgeous Diwali celebration celebrated over a period of days every year. 

To me, this spiritual festival of light, goodness and happiness is also a unity festival. It celebrates the uniting of masculine and feminine, and is honoured by people of many different faiths including Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, certain Buddhists and even New Agers and other non-denominational spiritual types.

Perhaps the most beautiful quality associated with masculinity is light. Diwali means ‘row of lights’ and is a celebration of light, of love and triumph over the symbolic darkness during the darkest night of the darkest time of the year (depending on your location of course). 

It is taught in numerous spiritual traditions that incarnation during dark world ages, where spiritual ignorance and cultural dysfunction is rife, is a time when you can make the most, rather than the least, progress. This is the same in our personal lives. It is often during the times when we fear we are messing everything up the most, that we have the greatest opportunity to heal and are even making the most spiritual progress (though we won’t see evidence of that until later).

When things are going well, most of us won’t look for issues to deal with because we enjoy the respite. The muddles and messes contain the sacred healing potentials. The joy of Diwali is that it promises that those messes end, the endurance is not needed forever but is so worth it for what eventuates, and that the paradigm shift will come. 

Diwali signifies something more to my heart than a joyful respite on a long path. I feel it speaks of the greater transition and karmic breakthrough, the grace of liberating a difficult and enduring pattern and leaving it behind us. Diwali is a sign that even the stuff that may seem unconquerable and never-ending has its use-by date and there is a point in our journey where it will quite simply no longer be an issue. There are times when we really need to feed that reassurance to our souls, for it can not only comfort us, but also motivate us to continue our healing journey.

The masculine principle in Diwali arises in the form of Lord Rama, the heroic spiritual warrior, king and sage in the Hindu spiritual tradition. Diwali signifies his return to his kingdom after a long period of testing, exile and challenge (14 years to be exact). This is symbolic of reclaiming one’s rightful position of dignity and authority after a period of profound difficulty in overcoming situations that were out of alignment with the Universe’s plan for the soul. 

In Taoism there is understanding that at times, ‘the inferior man will rule’. It is part of a cycle, a dark age of sorts. That is a description of an experience that we can probably all grasp. James Baldwin put it well when he wrote that, “ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have”. 

Diwali is the return of light as a symbol of reorientation towards wisdom, love and natural justice. We can aid such rebalancing through inner work – what has been driving us? What has been our priority? Awareness allows the energies to flow differently and our work in the world can become more inspired and aligned with wisdom. Then we remember the value and the joy in finding and celebrating the light. 

Krishna, Charisma and Intuition

The celebration also honours the success of Lord Krishna in conquering a demonic force that had been terrorising spiritual devotees. Krishna is a marvellously rich expression of masculine divinity. He is a charismatic charmer, rather like a cosmic rock god, inspiring passionate devotion with his seductive supernatural music. He is also an advisor in the art of war and the path of enlightenment. 

Krishna is beyond good looking. He is said to be stunningly beautiful to behold, and yet when a cherished devotee, Arjuna, asked him to reveal his true nature beyond his many appealing qualities, he perceived something so far beyond his comprehension that it aroused fear and dread and he begged the divine one to assume his more palatable form, which of course, he did. Yet Krishna is no monster. He is divinity.

Divinity cannot be comprehended with our human perspective. That is OK. That is kind of wonderful. That is the mystery, complexity and permission to take the authentic journey of your soul, and to allow others to do the same, without it needing to make sense to anyone else. Sometimes it won’t even make sense to you! That is why we need the heart wisdom on the spiritual path. There are just too many facets of spirituality that are beyond the grasp of intellect. 

“If we relied solely, or even just primarily, on intellect to decide if something was appropriate and valuable, or not, we’d miss out on the spiritual path altogether.”

The story of Krishna and Arjuna helps us understand that the masculine practice of discerning what is helpful and supportive of soul awakening is not an intellectual, but rather an intuitive, exercise. For truth to be recognisable it must be liberated from preconceived opinions. In begging for the return to his more appetising form, Arjuna also expresses the wisdom of acceptance that we cannot know the mystery and that is part of the human experience too.

Where is the feminine in all this? Diwali is also a marriage celebration of Vishnu (who is the spiritual source for both Krishna and Rama) wedding the divine goddess of prosperity, abundance, beauty and spiritual enlightenment, Lakshmi. The sacred marriage is an ancient, and alchemical symbol for connection that leads to deeper unity, and a transcendent tantric reality of a new way being born through loving integration of masculine and feminine energies.

Divine Feminine Enlightenment

Lakshmi celebrations are part of the ongoing spiritual festival. Lakshmi is the golden consciousness of enlightenment that arose through the churning of the ocean of consciousness. This churning occurred when the dark forces of asuras and the light forces of the devas went into battle for the nectar of immortality. You could see this as a symbol of our own emerging higher consciousness, churned through confronting struggles of our egos (who want to control everything) with our soul (that yearns to surrender completely in oneness with divinity). The clash of lower and higher self results in an internal battle that eventually yields priceless spiritual treasures.

Lakshmi is beloved for many reasons and one way that she is so needed in our world is to help us cut through fear of spiritual diminishment through subconscious beliefs or past life vows made around renouncing worldly possessions and pursuits in order to embrace a spiritual path. A monastic path is a treasure, and is not to be dismissed in any way, yet it is not for everyone, and everyone needs a spiritual path.

There can be inner conflict when navigating the realm of charging for your work as a healer, for example. Lakshmi is a patron goddess for those of us that want to earn an abundant income doing the work that we feel called to do, without guilt that informs us we should be struggling financially if we are spiritual beings, and without the fear that if we ask for financial exchange for what we do, we might somehow be offending the spiritual dimensions or dishonouring our gifts.

This is so much easier to access as a way of being when your internal security system is oriented in the spiritual dimensions. As your trust in yourself, in your spiritual path, and in the Universe grows, fear of financial compromise of your spirituality diminishes because you no longer see material success as a conflict with your spiritual path, you may even learn to see it as a support for accomplishing your mission in the world because you have your priorities straight in your heart. 

“The divine feminine in the form of Lakshmi can help the spiritually inclined to develop material steadiness to support the path, and the materially inclined to develop interest and commitment to the path of enlightenment. She is a golden loving mother to all and helps with whatever your struggles may have been with material organisation, financial wellbeing or confusion around the spiritual path.”

You can imagine a golden loving mother shining grace and encouragement in your heart, revealing a way beyond fear and anxiety, towards a sense of reassurance, unconditional love and comfort.

Sacred Darkness

Every year we experience solar eclipses which are a new moon hyped up on spiritual juice. New Moons are the sacred darkness. This is the darkness of the soil housing the seed, the womb holding the baby. Darkness is necessary for gestation, for development from liminal idea or subtle vision, into eventual fully fledged expression in the world. 

During Diwali we celebrate light, and yet without the challenges beforehand, there would be no celebration. The dark lunar cycle can be a time to embrace the potential power of the seed, from which great things can grow. It is a beautiful time to set intentions and also to simply reflect on the seeds you sense resting within your soul. These are the potentials, the plans, the visions that have not yet begun to manifest in ways others might be able to see, yet can be felt by you, carried within your soul.

Thinning of the Psychic Veils

On 31 October each year we celebrate Samhain or Halloween in the Northern Hemisphere and Beltane in the Southern Hemisphere. Whilst Halloween celebrates the ancestors who have passed, Beltane is a celebration of the lineages we can create through the union of masculine and feminine energies. These are festivals of hope and healing. Whilst the North is anchored in honouring loss and the South in honouring creation, they are both portals between the worlds, occurring at a time when the psychic veils that divide past, present and future, are thinnest.

This is a perfect time to ask questions and expect that the intuitive responses can come to you most readily. It is a time to become aware of your ancestral inheritances – the helpful and the potentially harmful, and to transform the harmful stuff into fuel for your spiritual path, to prompt evolution of your being. That which is no longer needed is cast aside like the outer casing of a seed that is ready to push forth into next stages of growth, expressing your soul’s truth.

October is a nature teaching in the divine healing power of paradox – of light and dark, masculine and feminine, of what has been and what can be. Give yourself breathing space. Full Moon in Aries that occurs around this time generates so much push and yet New Moon in Scorpio that follows likes to process deeply. They are both united by the planet Mars, Mars ruling Scorpio before the discovery of Pluto. Mars gives much drive for movement, inner and outer, reminding us of the primal creative drive of the masculine energies within – they must have their healthy expression! What would your healthiest and most passionate creative expression look like? Can you dare to ask the Universe to show you and then embrace the journey? 

Lakshmi is a treasured guide in our Saraswati Healing program, and she appears in the form of Yellow Tara in our Kuan Yin Transmission healing program too. Our online programs open in March and August annually. You are welcome to explore your connection to the divine feminine and the divine masculine through our various beautiful soul-honouring programs at any time. In our Community of the Sacred, you will find a warm, wise and welcoming group of humans who honour individuality and connection, and are working together to bring spiritual benefit to our planet. Find out more at www.alanafairchild.com 

Gratitude for art by Lindy Longhurst from Alana’s Wings of Wisdom Affirmation Oracle