Welcome to the Wisdom Tree Podcast. I am you host and spiritual mentor, Dr. Genie. For anyone new here. I am a historian, feminist philosopher, minister of spiritual humanism, and a DreamBuilder coach certified by Mary Morrissey and the Brave Thinking Institute.
The Wisdom Tree Podcast is brought to you by the Choose Love Ministry and together our mission is to promote our four core values of Wisdom, Compassion, Equanimity, and Agape (Love).
Thank you for joining me for part 2 of my four-part women’s history month series on Feminine Superpowers. During the last episode we talked about the first superpower of Intuition. Women’s intuition isn’t just a saying – its true. While both men and women can access an inner knowing, for the feminine it is a stronger connection and a superpower.
Unfortunately, over the last several thousand years, the power dynamic in the world has shifted and the superpowers of the masculine took control over society. The natural gifts of feminine were domesticated and silenced and women were relegated to a life of serving the patriarchy, having little power over their own lives.
At times women have come together and created powerful change in the world, but every time we do, we are put back in our place. Two steps forward, three steps back. We can see this with the wildly successful women’s march from 2017 – and since then we have seen women’s rights go backwards and threats of more loss of autonomy and freedom are in legislatures all across the U.S. One politician has even proudly boasted he would love to go back to the time before women had the right to vote.
There is no better time than now for women to reconnect with their lost natural superpowers. Last week we reconnected with our intuition and if you missed that episode you can find it on my Facebook page, on my blog, and here on the Wisdom Tree podcast.
This week I want to dive right in so we can cover the next 3 superpowers.
Superpower #2 is Perception.
Perception is like a lens that filters everything that comes into our awareness through our senses. What we see, what we feel, what we hear, what we notice, what we understand. How we interpret every stimulus that enters our sphere of awareness. Everyone has perception. Everyone perceives the world in a unique way.
For the masculine, perception is a very linear thing. – very black and white. There is not a lot of grey area. Right and wrong. Good and bad. Yes and no. It’s very hard for the masculine to shift their perception. And this can be a good thing because it gives us the backbone to fight for our beliefs – but it can also become toxic when a person is so unmoving and unable to alter their perception.
For the feminine, perception is expansive – considering all the information that comes in from our senses, including our intuitive senses. Sometimes life is not as simple as good or bad – black or white. There is a grey area. This is a feminine superpower because women can shift this lens – they can shift their perception and see situations in a different light when new information or new stimuli is introduced in their awareness. This skill is helpful in negotiations, in peace making, in cooperative living, and in meting out justice. Women tend to be the peacemakers in their families – the matriarch of the family brings everyone together, she mediates family drama, and she understands people make mistakes and need to be guided. She gets the idea that no matter how thin you make a pancake there are always two sides.
Matriarchs are rare in families today, I have found. People move so far away from their families. In my own family, there was no matriarch because the two elder women could not perceive anyone’s needs but their own. They were gossips and tore both sides of my family apart and I have no relationship with my aunts, uncles, and most of my cousins. These women were very masculine in their perception skills – you either played their game or you were on the outside of the family. They couldn’t shift their perception to see that I had a right to be my own person and set boundaries. Its quite sad, really. And I know many people can relate.
Feminine perception is a skill that needs to be honed and a vital element to perception being a superpower is having a well-developed sense of discernment and sensitivity. Perception is not just your view of the world – is your world a safe place, can you trust people, do you believe most people are good – Can you tell when you are being manipulated or gaslit? Can you sense when someone has more to say but they can’t open up and so you are missing part of the story – or are they intentionally hiding something from you? Can you tell when someone who made a terrible mistake in the past has grown and become a better person who deserves a second chance? To use your perception, you must be able to discern the meaning of what is being said and not said, by filtering all the information coming in through the senses, ALL the senses, not just one – so that you understand what is real and true in a situation. Connection to intuition is a big help here.
Because the feminine has been domesticated and relegated as second-class citizens – women do not trust their inner warning system or their skill of discernment – and not having a connection to their perception creates toxic situations. Domestic violence, gaslighting, being taken advantage of, not setting, or keeping boundaries – these are situations that keep women from independence and success.
What have we lost as a society without the superpower of perception? We see other countries and other people not like us as the enemy – our perception of the world is that it is dangerous and everyone is out to get us. So we choose war, a lot – we choose to spend money making terrifying weapons and not ensuring our children can go to school without being victims of those weapons.
And that brings us to superpower #3
Superpower #3 is Community Building
The feminine is social and works very well in cooperative groups. Women are known to be organizers of social groups, benefit organizations, clubs, and nonprofits. If you’ve had a kid play school sports or participate in band, you know who was in the concession stand, who was making food, who was ordering uniforms, who was organizing the fundraiser and the trips and transportation.
Society has always been very important to the survival of humans. Matriarchal societies are egalitarian – power is shared cooperatively, and women played a significant role in maintaining the community. As the hunter gathers you needed enough people in your tribe to be safe and complete work – but not too many where food could become scarce. It’s likely in a matrilineal society where men joined the wife’s tribe, that the process of choosing the man and bringing the new member into the community was arranged by the women.
A vital component to building community is the ability to empower others. Egalitarianism, unlike even communism (where women’s roles were not defined by Marx) empowers each member of the community to share their skills, express their voice, and become the best versions of self they can.
In the progressive/gilded age in America, women came together and created community centers to help immigrant industrial workers learn English, they helped feed children, and gave space for groups to gather. They organized the suffrage movement.
But even when showing such competence in organizing, women were passed over for joining top social organizations or were relegated to “auxiliaries” and were allowed few opportunities in those organizations except fundraising and organizing events . And this is where women have been in their use of their community building superpower – organizing events for men only communities, or men run clubs and organizations. There are few examples of autonomous female groups to compare to the plethora of male social groups.
Girl Scouts, YWCA, Suffrage Clubs, League of Women Voters, and NOW – these are the only national level organizations I can think of, though I’m sure there have been others…oh, well, the DOAR, DOConfederacy – but those are exclusive organizations that few may attain membership so I don’t think they count.
But there are dozens of traditionally mens only clubs where women were not admitted, and maybe still are only allowed as auxiliary but not full members. Masons, Lions, Kiwanis, Rotary, Bohemian, Knights of Columbus, YMCA (now open to all), FOE (eagles), Shriners, Moose (now open), and of course they have Sons of the AR, and Sons of the Confederacy and until recently the US Congress was a boys only club. There still may not be restroom facilities for women member to easily access.
Women accept auxiliary posts where they work very hard on behalf of the male centered organization in lieu of creating their own organizations because they do not realize their superpower in bringing a group of women together to work cooperatively to better their communities and the world. Women increase the success of every organization they are allowed to be part of – even Congress. It’s time to reconnect with this superpower and create women-centric national organizations to do our work together.
What have we lost as a society? Clearly, our idea of community has become skewed and constricted. We take and take without much thought for our responsibility to the tribe – to the community. WIIFM is the most destructive paradigm of the human mind.
And our last superpower might help us with that….
Superpower #4 Transformation
Feminine Transformation is about transforming the Self – the individual – the consciousness – making an internal shift that brings us in alignment with our highest potential and allowing that inner transformation to influence the process for others. Masculine transformation is an external process. If you want to transform your body into one that is more fit, that is a masculine process. If you want to transform a rock into a carving, that is a masculine process. If you want to transform negative thoughts into empowering thoughts – that is a feminine process. We use the butterfly as a symbol for transformation – and the caterpillar’s transformation is both a physical and spiritual process – so both masculine and feminine. But because the caterpillar creates the cocoon and inside it completely dissolves into goo and then wholly remakes itself – something a human can only do spiritually – this makes for a beautiful symbol for feminine spiritual transformation. The problem is that we don’t learn how to transform spiritually/consciously – we are only given instruction to transform our body and our behavior – because what others see and perceive is what is important in a patriarchal world.
A reminder again – both men and women have both masculine and feminine energy within them – men can access inner transformation just as women can access physical transformation. For women, inner transformation is a superpower.
Women are excellent transformational leaders. They are able to see the potential in someone and guide them to their path. Transformational leaders need the skills of emotional intelligence, creativity, inspiring storytelling, adaptability, collaboration, and communication. These are all characteristics that give the feminine this superpower.
Unfortunately, they are not given these opportunities often and they doubt their own potential and fail to transform themselves and create a life they love. Self-doubt is by far the biggest paradigm women have to face in their attempts at success and this self-doubt affects their manifesting ability and disconnects them from their superpower to transform. Unfortunately, for thousands of years patriarchal stoicism has been a very powerful tool and what you are feeling inside and how you need to transform your inner world has not been considered as important as bucking up and pulling yourself up by your boot straps and showing the world that you have your shit together.
Again, another feminine superpower deemed not vital for the survival of humanity. But what have we lost as a society? Inner peace. Happiness. Contentment. Ourselves free as the butterfly.
All three of today’s superpowers, perception, community building, and transformation require that we pay close attention to our senses and understand whatever the current situation might be. These are problem solving superpowers, and especially in a cooperative setting with a group of equals.
How can we acknowledge and reconnect with these natural abilities?
Work on listening. Listen to others around you – listen to their words, their tone, and to what they don’t say but show through behavior. Listen to your own inner voice. Listen for needs, desires, longings, and discontents. Where can I better understand a person? Where can I join with other women to solve problems? What is my soul longing for?
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