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Restoring Right-Brain “Feminine” Values to Society
It is common knowledge that the human brain is made up of two hemispheres, and that each hemisphere specializes in particular skills. Professor Roger Sperry, Nobel Prize-winning Psycho Biologist, wrote, “… there appear to be two modes of thinking, verbal and nonverbal, represented rather separately in the left and right hemispheres respectively, and … our education system, as well as science in general, tends to neglect the nonverbal form of intellect. What it comes down to is that modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere.”
The intelligence of the right brain is a part of all of us, and we are all using it more in every day life as we enter an era wherein right-brain skills are increasingly prized,yet we live in a culture that is still left-brain dominant. The realm of the left hemisphere (the "masculine hunter/killer" side) is logical, linear, abstract, sequential, analytical, literal and functional. To read and write we use the skills of the left hemisphere.
The right realm (the "feminine gatherer/nurturer" side) includes intuition, creativity, metaphor, poetry, empathy, dreams, art and synthesis. This hemisphere comes into play as we contemplate images and the world around us. While the left hemisphere of the brain conceives of life as generally an “I am” experience, separate from all else, the right hemisphere of the brain experiences reality as frequencies, energies and patterns —a totality in which we are all connected. Through three million years of evolution, the two hemispheres developed to work in perfect balance, yet our culture has favored left-brain skills and values.
In cultures that value strengths of the right brain feminine power is celebrated. In a survey of 150 cultures today, anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday compared cultures structured around male dominance with those that embrace female power. She found a clear correlation between female power in society and the Goddess veneration found in these cultures. Where the divine has a feminine face there is a correlation with the society’s honoring of nature, women’s role as officiators of sacred sacraments, connection to the land and female power.
In these right–brain integrated societies there is egalitarianism rather than women holding power over men. The worldview is holistic and oriented in the embodied rather than the abstract. These cultures value community, birthing, nurturing, empathy, intuitive intelligence, earth, nature, connection and interdependence. The orientation of time is not linear, but is cyclical and aligned with the eternal cycles of birth, growth, death and renewal. The divine is understood to be embodied in every person and in nature, not somewhere else, abstract and disembodied. Sensuality and sexuality are honored as sacred. These feminine values belong to both women and men; they are a valued part of society where the feminine is not suppressed. They are not women’s tenets, they are societies’.
History takes us to our collective connection with Goddess veneration. When we look at what we know of Neolithic and Paleolithic history we see a time when humanity understood the creative principle to be female. We find no evidence of organized war. There is a correlation between peaceful coexistence, a Great Mother and right brain values in society. The Great Mother lives on timelessly in our psyches. The archetype of the Great Mother is a part of all men and women. An archetype is an inward image in the human psyche that exerts a powerful influence on the nature of an individual personality and in turn, on the larger culture. Poet David Whyte says, “An archetypal image is much bigger than we are—it has informed human life since the beginning of time and transcends individual experience.”
The archetype of the Goddess has been suppressed in our psyches and our culture. While we have been acculturated to easily accept the masculine pronouns for God, we are challenged to accept the female pronouns. Even though we hold that God is beyond gender, the female pronouns seem awkward. Carol Christ, PhD, Religious Studies at Yale, writes, “Theologians frequently assert that God has no body, no gender, no race and no age. Most people state that God is neither male nor female. Yet most people become flustered, upset or even angry when it is suggested that the God they know as Lord and Father might also be God the Mother, or Goddess.”
The Mother has left memory in us all. For so long, our left-brain dominant theological journey has made heaven (the realm of God) an abstraction, Earth a proving ground for the soul and life a time to earn immortality. The Goddess is earth. Her heaven is here. Her children are born into Her divinity—they do not come from a divine realm to a troubled earth to one day return to heaven. Heaven is here.
The great teachers whose wisdom provides the foundation of the world’s religions have modeled for us what it means to be divinely embodied. All of the world’s faiths have at their core magnificent wisdom—it is misinterpretation that brings disharmony and division right up to this present day. If looking at some of our foundational beliefs helps us to come into that balance and regain our interconnectedness with each other and nature then we need to do it. We are all using the right hemispheres of our brains more, and accepting the left bodes well for humankind.
We are the co-creators of heaven on earth. Leadership for a new era will be based on the integration of the feminine as expressed through both women and men. The restoration of the sacred feminine has profound implications for every sphere of leadership within families, communities, businesses, health, education, governments and the global economy. The United Nations’ World Conference on Women affirms that the advancement of women is central to every dimension of global development. A sustainable world cannot be built using the old, out-of-balance model. The feminine face of the divine has been missing for far too long.
Thankfully, “the Mother" has left a memory in us all.
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Dale Allen is a veteran of multinational corporate and commercial communications. Her dynamic performance of “In Our Right Minds™” has been described as a “Cape Canaveral lift-off!” She was a featured speaker at the Kauai Wellness Expo with Dr. Wayne Dyer and performs at universities, conferences, corporations, theaters and holistic learning centers around the world. More information and DVDs of “In Our Right Minds” are available online at www.inourrightminds.com.
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