“…identification prevents you from dealing with the pain-body. Some women who are already conscious enough to have relinquished their victim identity on the personal level are still holding on to a collective victim identity. “what men did to women.” They are right – and they are also wrong. They are right inasmuch as the collective female painbody is in large part due to male violence inflicted on women and repression of the female principle throughout the planet over millennia
This may give her a comforting sense of identity, of solidarity with other women, but it is keeping her in bondage to the past and blocking full access to her essence and true power. If women exclude themselves from men, that fosters a sense of separation and therefore a strengthening of the ego. And the stronger the ego, the more distant you are from your true nature.” (The Power of Now by Eckart Tolle)
Identifying with the collective pain body of women is another way of continuing to use a victimhood framework to view one’s own experiences. The ego loves to feel a part of something and to clearly define itself as against something – and identifying with the collective pain body of women is another way of strengthening the ego, but also an excellent way to trap yourself in psychological time (always looking to the future for things to get better) and preventing yourself from accepting and loving yourself for who you are in the now – who you truly are. You are not your mind, thoughts, or pain body, you are simply yourself – who and what you are in the present, in the now, in the silence…
So how can I be a feminist and also be at peace and live in the now? How can I be empowered by social justice movements and hopeful for change in civil and social rights and yet still accept the world for what it is and be in the present moment?
pacific ampersand 