Chapter 13 - The Divine Feminine | Eden's Flaming Sword
I mentioned in the last chapter that something incredible happens when you choose to forgive.
I had deep grief I wasn’t facing. But after choosing to forgive, amidst the anger and pain that kept gripping me, the most amazing thing happened.
It was as if everything I’d been suppressing and ignoring, gushed out of me like an uncontrollable flood. I couldn’t hold back. I allowed it. And then I felt it. An energy that spread throughout my entire body. I can’t tell you exactly where it started, but it felt like the back of my head down to my feet; a warmth that wrapped around me completely.
This energy coursed through my body, waking up what had been dormant for so long. It felt nurturing, understanding, and compassionate. But most of all, it felt loving. If that’s even the right word. Love.
I believe this is what we call the feminine energy. And it changed my life. I can say that with complete honesty. It’s one of those experiences that shifts the way you see everything.
When I speak of masculine and feminine, I’m not talking about gender. I’m describing two complementary energetic patterns that exist within everything. Every system, every cycle, every act of creation moves through both. One asserts, one receives. One forms, one dissolves. Think of waves touching the shore, like expansion and return. That’s the rhythm of it. Like breathing; you inhale and you exhale. Both necessary. Both part of the same system.
Masculine energy is the principle of doing. It’s active, outward, directive. It builds, decides, creates structure, sets boundaries. It moves toward a goal with clarity and purpose. It’s linear; point A to point B. It’s the energy of action and achievement.
Feminine energy is the principle of being. It’s receptive, inward, integrative. Instead of pushing toward something, you open to what’s already here. You receive what comes. You feel what’s present, and you allow things to unfold in their own time. It’s cyclical, not linear. It trusts the process without needing to control the outcome. It rests when needed, listens to the body, follows what the moment asks for. Like water, it flows. This is the energy of presence, of surrender, of trust.
Neither is better. Neither is worse. They are complementary. I couldn’t have written this book without both.
A woman running a business, making tough calls, pursuing goals, setting clear boundaries; that’s masculine energy. A man sitting with his dying parent, no agenda to fix or solve, just present, just feeling; that’s feminine energy. It’s not about who you are. It’s about how you’re meeting life in that moment.
Everyone has both. But, do you have access to both? That is the deep question. Both are essential. Both are powerful. When one goes missing, life will not feel whole.
I was locked in masculine energy for a long time. My body felt it had to be. With all those imagined threats and unresolved dangers bombarding my mind, I was controlling everything I could reach. Whether I needed to fight through the danger, flee from it, fawn my way around it, or freeze it out; my nervous system was running at full capacity, trying to forge an identity strong enough to prove I had worth; that I am loved, that I wouldn’t be rejected, that I will not be powerless over my environment again—and whatever it takes, I will make this reality happen. No matter what.
Talk about massive burnout. The pressure we put on ourselves.
And the feminine? It couldn’t survive that pressure. You can’t receive when you’re in constant threat. You can’t feel when feeling might slow you down; or rest when rest looks like weakness. So the feminine faded. Survival demanded it.
This is what survival patterns do. They lock you into one mode. Life can’t be lived fully from the masculine alone, but that’s what survival patterns are; locked in masculine energy. You’re trying to solve everything by fighting, fleeing, freezing or fawning, exhausting yourself because it was never meant to work alone. And the feminine? It gets shut out, exiled, suppressed and oppressed from the beginning.
Forgiveness breaks this open.
It releases you from the grip of being locked in masculine override. You are freed from the loss that was controlling you. The feminine energy that was suppressed flows back in, balancing out the masculine.
Look at the clues our ancestors left us. Mary Magdalene. Isis. The archetypal feminine that holds grief with love and stays with it long enough for something new to be born. They embrace us; and through them, death becomes a doorway, and grief becomes the womb of resurrection.
This is what returns when the divine feminine is restored. Love. I call it divine because it feels like a miracle. I can’t fully explain it. You have to feel it for yourself.
When I first completed this process, chose forgiveness and had this experience, I thought I had finished. I thought this state of love was permanent. I was elated. For a while. But nothing is permanent. You will face loss again. You will move back into survival patterns, back into grief. Because that’s life. We can’t control what happens to us all the time; but now, you know what to do.
A wise man once said: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world.” - Jesus of Nazareth.
For so long I didn’t understand what that meant, to overcome the world. I thought he was describing some kind of permanent blissful state of enlightenment, above pain, above suffering.
Oh how I wanted it. I wanted it for so long.
But the only way out of pain is directly through it. So I think I understand it now.
That in life, you will meet loss, and grief will come. But don’t be afraid to face it.
The first time is the hardest. The second time, a little less so. Still not easy, maybe never easy. But you know the path. And knowing the path changes everything.
Face your grief, and let it burn away your pain.
The Flaming Sword placed at the East of Eden, that once blocked your path to the tree of life, now opens the door.
All you have to do is choose to walk through it.