WHY I WROTE ‘THE DIVINE WOMAN
AND THE TWIN FLAME’
“The
roots of violence against women lie in persistent discrimination against women
and girls.” - UN
My new book, released this year,
offers a spiritual template for
individual women to explore living their full potential. But I also want to
make it very clear that for me this
feminine spirituality can be politically active and potent. By
acknowledging the horrific circumstances faced by millions of women and girls
politically, we can begin to contribute to the momentum and advocacy for
positive change. Consider:
Among the poor, women are usually the poorest.
According to a UN briefing paper:
“Violence against women and girls
is not confined to a specific culture, region or country, or to particular
groups of women within a society. The roots of violence against women lie in
persistent discrimination against women and girls.
Up to 70 per
cent of women experience violence in their lifetime, according to country data
available.
Women aged
15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, car
accidents, war and malaria, according to World Bank data.” (www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers)
The UN research reports that half of women who are murdered
are murdered by intimate partners or ex-partners. According to the World Health
Organisation, in Australia, Canada, Israel, South Africa and the US, this
figure is 40-70 per cent.
Millions of women globally are paying money for, and
enjoying, a book that eroticises contracted
female submission (’Fifty Shades of Grey’).
Many women now believe it is compulsory that their ‘pussies’
be hair-free (resembling a child’s), and that a woman’s natural body state is
socially and individually unacceptable, even ‘disgusting’.
There
is considerable evidence that younger women now feel compelled to have sex
according to pornographic paradigms.
The UN
estimates that, worldwide, one in five women will become a victim of rape or
attempted rape in her lifetime. Women and girls are systematically raped in
almost every warzone in the world. Angelina Jolie expressly confronts this in
her film, ‘The Land of Blood and Honey’.
Boardrooms remain filled with men and professionally
powerful women often have to negotiate periods of discrimination to advance to
higher levels.
As of February 2012 in Australia, women earned an average of
17.4 per cent less than men across all sectors (average fulltime weekly wage of
$1186.90 cf. to $1437.40). In some sectors, the gap was much wider – eg.
Health, 32.6 per cent. (Australian Bureau of Statistics)
Of 500 young people who contacted the Australian Kids
Helpline counselling service (Jan-March 2012) about concerns about ‘sexting’,
75 per cent of them were female and most under 19. One in three were aged 10-14.
(Wendy Squires, ‘The Age’).
Three million
women and girls will face Female Genital Mutilation between February 2012 and
2013 (WHO, ‘The Guardian’). Simultaneously, the number of women choosing
voluntary plastic surgery to alter the appearance of their genitals
(labiaplasty) is ‘sky-rocketing’. (Deborah Bateson, Medical Director of Family
Planning NSW, ‘The Age’)
As the author of ‘The Divine Woman and the Twin Flame’, I believe
that, woman by woman, the lot of women worldwide can be changed for the better.
‘The Divine Woman and the Twin Flame’ offers every woman a spiritual template
for connecting with her authentic power, as
a woman, in all aspects of her life. When a woman integrates this power,
she becomes self-directed (what I call self-sovereign)
and if she chooses to, she takes this power out into the world for the
betterment of all. This power is essentially humane and will also alter for the better a woman’s relations with
men and the masculine.
The book
explores the most important issues in women’s lives: vocation, intimacy, love,
sexuality, health and vitality, mothering and family life, creativity,
spirituality and men.
The ‘Twin Flame’ aspect of the book explores
the potential for women to form intimate relationships of the highest potency –
whether they are heterosexual or not, and whatever their relationship
orientation.
