I have always vibrated inwardly at the appearance of a rainbow, observing it even as an adult with the awe and gaze of a child; that magical moment when sunlight passing through water droplets in the exhaustion of a downpour creates a multicolored bridge.
That suspended, iridescent moment represents the celebration of the passage of condition; in the darkness of the rain, in the absence of the sun, when the clouds recede, a beam of light is enough to manifest one of the most incredible, yet taken for granted, natural spectacles on this planet.
Nature celebrates the passage of condition in this way, on a spiritual level each manifestation represents a symbol, and the contact between Light and Water, the two elements fundamental to life, manifests the rainbow.
Are we humankind able to celebrate and respect the parallelism of this process in what is the most important passage of human existence, birth? The manifestation from the nonmanifest to the manifest, the common saying “coming into the light,” may perhaps have a much deeper meaning than we superficially think.
Obviously, I am not talking about the simple joy or toast to the birth of a child, but an act that involves deep inner contact with the heart, emotions and even the spiritual aspect. We are a society incapable of praying, bowing down and becoming humble before greater forces; we are going through the maximum phase of the materialization of every aspect of life, of identification in the constructed character, in the theater of social masks, a historical phase in which life-giving cells have become commodities of exchange.
A compartmentalization of reality limited only to what can be touched, not in the confidence of the senses, but in the immense and illusory effort to have control over reality, life and death.
This detached and aseptic attitude totally clashes with the force and power of the act of birth, of giving birth to a creature.
I am extremely convinced, along with other pioneers, that a different, responsible, loving and connected attitude during gestation and birth can collectively create a new paradigm, can create peace, in the deepest sense of the word.
I consider myself a seeker of life and soul, and in my varied studies and research, I have not found any religion or philosophy that really gives value and dignity to the role of the feminine in perpetuating life or, if any, these elements have been lost in the darkness of time, and only thanks to the tireless work of Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas has it been possible to unhinge a deeply rooted patriarchal view in the research and historical placement of many finds of ancient anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines.
In all ancient cultures there are many references to deities related to fertility, love and sacred sexuality, protective goddesses of childbirth and lactation but they are always external elements, nothing speaks of or testifies to the spiritual and physiological role in the act of giving birth of the woman, as the sole and undisputed protagonist of that process.
Absurdly, I am reminded, that in the most recent religious context known to us in the West, as a collective memory, the protagonist in our historical memory is Mary herself, who in that cave, together with Joseph and two animal mammals, the ox and the donkey, gave birth to Jesus.
The woman imbued in the body with fear, physical contraction, vegetative system alertness, for a protracted time of thousands of years, has inwardly implemented a process of removal; she has renounced being the protagonist of gestation and birth, of being an active and indispensable part of the preservation of life. The “curse of Eve” crept into women’s bodies, into the womb became the fear of giving birth, the fear of giving life.
And fear transmits fear, giving rise to generations of individuals contracted in the body and alienated at the level of consciousness. In the work I propose of body-release trauma resolution, I am noticing a parallelism of physiological blockage; what for generations has not been verbally expressed by women through the throat, we find the same blockage at the vaginal and cervix levels. Large masses of pain not expressed orally, through crying, screaming and wailing for fear of losing control or simply because they are labeled “hysterical” by the morally respectable and bigoted society, become restrained and contracted masses at the muscular and nervous system level, placed in the viscera, in the uterine muscular part, in the vaginal mucosal fluids that become predominantly acidic, contrary to life. For generations the intimation – shut your mouth, close your legs – has resulted in a degenerative process, which has resulted in restrained thoughts, gossip, envy, manipulation, desire for revenge and curses (saying evil). This is not real feminine energy, it is not being a woman, you cannot give birth and then say bad things about the man who allowed you to become a mother, all of this is contrary to Life and that rainbow, which I mentioned at the beginning of the article.
The rainbow as a celebration of passage, an arch that unites, a bridge, paralleling the act of birth, the result of the interpenetration of male fire and female water, giving birth to the nuances of the infinite possibilities of human existence: creation. The bridge between the spiritual worlds and the material world, the womb as the first home in matter. This is genesis.
