The Power of The Belly - Pamela Kribbe
My attention here is focused
primarily on how the inner female energy has been affected by this
violence.
If you look at the collective female aura, as exemplified in
the energy field of an average woman, you will see a void, a hole, in
the area of the belly.
The area of the lower energy centers – the root,
navel, and solar plexus chakras – has become disempowered and empty.
For
many women, there exist in those centers, and usually only
half-consciously, feelings of unworthiness, fear, and uncertainty. The
original female power of the belly is one of being vital and grounded. A
woman by her nature feels connected with Earth and the rhythms of the
seasons, and the wisdom in her heart is one based on a natural sense of
self-worth. Unfortunately, this has gotten lost through the ages and
without that base, that natural strength in the belly, a woman cannot
connect in a balanced way with the world around her.
She easily gives too much of herself to others and loses herself in that giving, and so she often is unable to take up her personal space and set boundaries.
If you have been wounded to the core through rejection, (sexual) violence, and humiliation, a shift in your energy field will occur: your consciousness leaves your belly, which is the seat of emotion, connection, and intimacy.
When it is too painful to be present in that area of your body, you will dissociate from yourself and pull your consciousness out of the belly.
Your consciousness then rises up and lodges in the upper part of your aura, with the result that feelings become dull and depression can settle in, or a feeling of fatigue and of not having full access to your energy. In addition to the trauma of the violence that has taken place, and the deep emotional confusion that arises as a result, there is also now the sadness and the emptiness of having lost yourself.
This is, in short, what has happened to the female psyche. Even though not all individual women exhibit this pattern to the same degree, this has still been a general trend, which one can summarize as follows:
Because old patterns can be carried on from previous lives, there might have been damage done to your female energy in the past that has yet to be sufficiently healed in this current incarnation.
In addition, as a woman, you become affected by the general female psyche, by the prevailing image of women and the collective experiences of the past.
Each woman has to deal with what I am describing here; it is not easy or natural for any woman to own the power of her belly and really be present from her heart in a grounded, self aware way.
Because this is a time of transformation of consciousness, it has now become all the more necessary to heal the energetic wound in the belly.
If you are going to develop on a spiritual path, and you feel the urge to live from your heart and your most sincere inspiration, you will discover that you, as a woman, are faced with deep-seated fears. To stand out, to make yourself greater, and to enter into conflicts, does not come easily and brings you face to face with tough questions about self-esteem and being true to yourself. In a sense, as a woman, you are asked to transform a part of the collective pain of all women.
So in the healing of your own pain, you create new paths for the collective consciousness to expand.
Spiritual development is widely seen as opening your heart, connecting with others through love, and letting go of your ego.
However, for women who have to deal with a lack of strength in their belly, this is where a number of pitfalls lurk.
If you connect to others without remaining solidly present in your belly, in your center, connected with your needs and your truth, then connection with others can quickly lead to a loss of self, and even to exhaustion.
If you are a highly sensitive person with an open heart chakra, who easily senses other people's moods and emotions, you will benefit from a solid sense of your own limits, and for that you need a strong ego.
And by "strong ego" I mean you need a clear sense of where you end and where the other person begins. That sense enables you to be aware when you give too much, perhaps because you want to be liked or you dare not say "no".
What a healthy ego affords is that you feel clearly and accurately what is happening with you in your interaction with other people.
The word ego has become distorted, and has come to stand for everything that is lower and should be released, but for women, this form of self awareness and establishing boundaries is extremely important.
For men, the process of development is quite different.
Men have been raised with a different kind of morality.
They are encouraged as a boy to differentiate, to compete, and to distinguish themselves.
This can be quite painful for men who do not feel at home doing that, who are naturally sensitive, thoughtful, or quiet.
But in any case, men are less encouraged to be giving, while ambition and aggressiveness are positively valued. In men, too, there exists an energetic wound caused by experiences of the past. Men have become split from their own female energy, their feelings and intuition, and they experience this as a loss of joy, emotion, and connection.
There is a void in their heart – less so in their belly – and this void torments men just as much as women suffer from the empty space in their abdomen.
Both sexes have become damaged by the traditions in which you live and both sexes have become wounded in different ways, thus regaining wholeness involves different means by the two sexes.
For men, the emphasis on opening the heart is generally beneficial. Connecting with their feelings, allowing their vulnerability to show, and acknowledging the female energy in themselves, are fundamental ways toward healing for men.
But for women, it is in some way exactly the opposite.
For them, the road to self-healing is through being true to themselves, maintaining clear boundaries, acknowledging their male energy, and recognizing and manifesting their unique gifts. Energetically, it means that you take the energy of your heart, your soul, all the way down to the level of your belly. Thus it means descending deep into that cavity of the pelvis, which symbolizes the primal force of the female energy.
One of the ways in which women can come home to their base is through dealing more consciously with the anger that is stored in them. Many women suppress emotions of anger or disappointment, because anger calls up fear, or makes them feel powerless.
Anger is threatening because it might bring you into conflict with others, and if you feel you are not able to stand up for yourself and to express your anger, you feel powerless.
Then the anger can turn into depression, passivity, or cynicism.
However, you can start to regard anger as a valuable signal that something or someone is violating your boundaries and so you feel hurt; a signal you can use to create positive change in your life.
By welcoming the anger, you take yourself seriously, which means that the force contained in anger can be expressed in a positive way.
The first step is to not see anger as something bad and to not condemn yourself for it.
This is more difficult for women than for men, because they are more used to denying themselves and giving up their space to another, rather than demanding their natural boundaries.
This is the reason why I want to address highly sensitive women who walk the spiritual path: take care of your belly power, own it, rest firmly within your own boundaries and dare to stand up for yourself.
You tend to associate spirituality with love, light, and connection, and those are essential attributes, but a balanced connection with the world around you depends on your ability to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong for you, to separate and detach when needed instead of unduly merge and connect. For that you need to fully value yourself, your own need, your own talents, and all your own emotions.
I lived during a time when free expression by women was not accepted, let alone valued.
I felt a strong connection with the message of Jeshua Ben Joseph and with the essence of the Christ energy.
I was touched by his words, his charisma, and in that life I went deeper and deeper within to remember who I was.
There also lived in me a rage regarding the powers that forbade me to be who I was: independent, powerful, willful.
I was regularly thrown back on to myself and I struggled with feelings of powerlessness and anger. My belly was seized by the energy of frustration, and below that lay dormant a sense of inferiority, of self-doubt. It was my mission to come to terms with my lack of self-esteem and to let go of other people's judgments.
This is the challenge for all women.
When women are not fully present in the area of their belly, they tend to give too much to others from their hearts, to empty themselves in relationships with others, such as their beloved, their children, their parents, their friends.
To lose yourself in the other person is all too often a sign of not fully being at home with yourself, in your own base. If a feeling of emptiness or alienation is dominant there, it is tempting to reach out to another to ease that feeling.
You do this seemingly from love, but another motive lurks there: you need the other in order to feel accepted and good about yourself. However, true spiritual growth means you learn to question – from what motive am I connecting with the world around me, with my beloved, my friends, my children, my parents?
Now choose one of those relationships and put your attention on your belly. Feel from that level how much space you occupy in this relationship or how much you receive. For example, imagine your loved one and ask within: "Do I feel fully accepted in the area of my belly when in his presence?" Do the same with a girlfriend. Breathe deep into your center as you think of her and feel your response. Do you feel something is blocking or preventing your breath? Experiment with this as a guided meditation.
The key question is: can your belly relax in the relationship? Do you feel accepted and are you free to be yourself? Or do you feel you have to make all the effort and posture yourself in an unnatural way? Perhaps you feel depleted of energy when you are with the other person; then your consciousness rises up toward your head and your awareness leaves your foundation, your belly. When that happens, do not condemn yourself, but look with loving honesty at your own fear of being true to yourself and of taking up your rightful space. By recognizing your own fear, you transform it. And you are not doing this alone. The collective energy field of women is changing. What you give to yourself benefits others and vice versa.
Copyright © Pamela Kribbe - Permission is granted to copy and
redistribute this article on the condition that the URL www.jeshua.net
She easily gives too much of herself to others and loses herself in that giving, and so she often is unable to take up her personal space and set boundaries.
If you have been wounded to the core through rejection, (sexual) violence, and humiliation, a shift in your energy field will occur: your consciousness leaves your belly, which is the seat of emotion, connection, and intimacy.
When it is too painful to be present in that area of your body, you will dissociate from yourself and pull your consciousness out of the belly.
Your consciousness then rises up and lodges in the upper part of your aura, with the result that feelings become dull and depression can settle in, or a feeling of fatigue and of not having full access to your energy. In addition to the trauma of the violence that has taken place, and the deep emotional confusion that arises as a result, there is also now the sadness and the emptiness of having lost yourself.
This is, in short, what has happened to the female psyche. Even though not all individual women exhibit this pattern to the same degree, this has still been a general trend, which one can summarize as follows:
- the belly, which is the seat of emotion, sexuality, and intimacy, and is naturally and strongly connected with Earth, is relatively empty. It feels threatening to be present there, both because of the pain that lingers there as a memory and because of the power that lies dormant there – it is scary to encounter that power.
- as a result of the retreating movement, a gap has been created in the energy field between the upper and lower energy centers, between the area of the heart and the area of the belly.
- the energy of the heart, the center of inspiration and love, cannot express itself, flow outward and naturally connect with the world and with other people. This flow is blocked either because of too much fear and uncertainty, or because there is a need to connect so strongly with another that you lose yourself in that person and become emotionally dependent upon them.
Because old patterns can be carried on from previous lives, there might have been damage done to your female energy in the past that has yet to be sufficiently healed in this current incarnation.
In addition, as a woman, you become affected by the general female psyche, by the prevailing image of women and the collective experiences of the past.
Each woman has to deal with what I am describing here; it is not easy or natural for any woman to own the power of her belly and really be present from her heart in a grounded, self aware way.
Because this is a time of transformation of consciousness, it has now become all the more necessary to heal the energetic wound in the belly.
If you are going to develop on a spiritual path, and you feel the urge to live from your heart and your most sincere inspiration, you will discover that you, as a woman, are faced with deep-seated fears. To stand out, to make yourself greater, and to enter into conflicts, does not come easily and brings you face to face with tough questions about self-esteem and being true to yourself. In a sense, as a woman, you are asked to transform a part of the collective pain of all women.
So in the healing of your own pain, you create new paths for the collective consciousness to expand.
Spiritual development is widely seen as opening your heart, connecting with others through love, and letting go of your ego.
However, for women who have to deal with a lack of strength in their belly, this is where a number of pitfalls lurk.
If you connect to others without remaining solidly present in your belly, in your center, connected with your needs and your truth, then connection with others can quickly lead to a loss of self, and even to exhaustion.
If you are a highly sensitive person with an open heart chakra, who easily senses other people's moods and emotions, you will benefit from a solid sense of your own limits, and for that you need a strong ego.
And by "strong ego" I mean you need a clear sense of where you end and where the other person begins. That sense enables you to be aware when you give too much, perhaps because you want to be liked or you dare not say "no".
What a healthy ego affords is that you feel clearly and accurately what is happening with you in your interaction with other people.
The word ego has become distorted, and has come to stand for everything that is lower and should be released, but for women, this form of self awareness and establishing boundaries is extremely important.
For men, the process of development is quite different.
Men have been raised with a different kind of morality.
They are encouraged as a boy to differentiate, to compete, and to distinguish themselves.
This can be quite painful for men who do not feel at home doing that, who are naturally sensitive, thoughtful, or quiet.
But in any case, men are less encouraged to be giving, while ambition and aggressiveness are positively valued. In men, too, there exists an energetic wound caused by experiences of the past. Men have become split from their own female energy, their feelings and intuition, and they experience this as a loss of joy, emotion, and connection.
There is a void in their heart – less so in their belly – and this void torments men just as much as women suffer from the empty space in their abdomen.
Both sexes have become damaged by the traditions in which you live and both sexes have become wounded in different ways, thus regaining wholeness involves different means by the two sexes.
For men, the emphasis on opening the heart is generally beneficial. Connecting with their feelings, allowing their vulnerability to show, and acknowledging the female energy in themselves, are fundamental ways toward healing for men.
But for women, it is in some way exactly the opposite.
For them, the road to self-healing is through being true to themselves, maintaining clear boundaries, acknowledging their male energy, and recognizing and manifesting their unique gifts. Energetically, it means that you take the energy of your heart, your soul, all the way down to the level of your belly. Thus it means descending deep into that cavity of the pelvis, which symbolizes the primal force of the female energy.
One of the ways in which women can come home to their base is through dealing more consciously with the anger that is stored in them. Many women suppress emotions of anger or disappointment, because anger calls up fear, or makes them feel powerless.
Anger is threatening because it might bring you into conflict with others, and if you feel you are not able to stand up for yourself and to express your anger, you feel powerless.
Then the anger can turn into depression, passivity, or cynicism.
However, you can start to regard anger as a valuable signal that something or someone is violating your boundaries and so you feel hurt; a signal you can use to create positive change in your life.
By welcoming the anger, you take yourself seriously, which means that the force contained in anger can be expressed in a positive way.
The first step is to not see anger as something bad and to not condemn yourself for it.
This is more difficult for women than for men, because they are more used to denying themselves and giving up their space to another, rather than demanding their natural boundaries.
This is the reason why I want to address highly sensitive women who walk the spiritual path: take care of your belly power, own it, rest firmly within your own boundaries and dare to stand up for yourself.
You tend to associate spirituality with love, light, and connection, and those are essential attributes, but a balanced connection with the world around you depends on your ability to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong for you, to separate and detach when needed instead of unduly merge and connect. For that you need to fully value yourself, your own need, your own talents, and all your own emotions.
I lived during a time when free expression by women was not accepted, let alone valued.
I felt a strong connection with the message of Jeshua Ben Joseph and with the essence of the Christ energy.
I was touched by his words, his charisma, and in that life I went deeper and deeper within to remember who I was.
There also lived in me a rage regarding the powers that forbade me to be who I was: independent, powerful, willful.
I was regularly thrown back on to myself and I struggled with feelings of powerlessness and anger. My belly was seized by the energy of frustration, and below that lay dormant a sense of inferiority, of self-doubt. It was my mission to come to terms with my lack of self-esteem and to let go of other people's judgments.
This is the challenge for all women.
When women are not fully present in the area of their belly, they tend to give too much to others from their hearts, to empty themselves in relationships with others, such as their beloved, their children, their parents, their friends.
To lose yourself in the other person is all too often a sign of not fully being at home with yourself, in your own base. If a feeling of emptiness or alienation is dominant there, it is tempting to reach out to another to ease that feeling.
You do this seemingly from love, but another motive lurks there: you need the other in order to feel accepted and good about yourself. However, true spiritual growth means you learn to question – from what motive am I connecting with the world around me, with my beloved, my friends, my children, my parents?
Now choose one of those relationships and put your attention on your belly. Feel from that level how much space you occupy in this relationship or how much you receive. For example, imagine your loved one and ask within: "Do I feel fully accepted in the area of my belly when in his presence?" Do the same with a girlfriend. Breathe deep into your center as you think of her and feel your response. Do you feel something is blocking or preventing your breath? Experiment with this as a guided meditation.
The key question is: can your belly relax in the relationship? Do you feel accepted and are you free to be yourself? Or do you feel you have to make all the effort and posture yourself in an unnatural way? Perhaps you feel depleted of energy when you are with the other person; then your consciousness rises up toward your head and your awareness leaves your foundation, your belly. When that happens, do not condemn yourself, but look with loving honesty at your own fear of being true to yourself and of taking up your rightful space. By recognizing your own fear, you transform it. And you are not doing this alone. The collective energy field of women is changing. What you give to yourself benefits others and vice versa.
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