Thoughts From My Shower: The War on Women - What's Really Going On

Thoughts From My Shower: The War on Women – What’s Really Going On

By Christine Agro

As I stepped into the shower today I was contemplating ‘The War on Conservative Women’, a commentary that Michelle Malkin, self-proclaimed conservative syndicated journalist, wrote today.

Ever since I read it early this morning I’ve felt that inner percolation that comes with a major piece of awareness. It isn’t that Ms Malkin is a conservative, or that she herself is a name-caller, what is bothering me is that again, still, women are pitted against each other. In her commentary she explains that she’s been called worse than a ‘slut’, referencing Rush Limbaugh’s outrageous labeling of Georgetown student Sandra Fluke who last week testified before a Democratic hearing on Women’s Health and Contraception.

The implication is ‘get over it’ as she goes on to pull out past degrading remarks made about conservative women. Always nice to add salt to wounds mind you.

So as I stepped into the shower still mulling this commentary over it led me to think about the bigger picture with regard to the current environment women are experiencing. Here’s what I saw: All the uprising around the world, the battle being waged with, for and by women in the United States – all of this is raising the boiling point to where, as Spirit in female bodies, we hopefully will choose to break the collective agreement we have been playing out for centuries. That agreement: to down play our innate power and accept living in a world that is sorely out of balance with the Masculine Principle informing everything from laws to religious edicts to social and cultural mores and worse where we accept what comes from that imbalance.

Many of us have experienced those moments in our lives where it takes the pure inner fire of ‘enough-is-enough’ to create change in our own lives. Whether it’s ending a relationship or taking that step to assert yourself. It is the inner fire of ‘this is not ok’ that burns through the unconscious agreement that had you locked into a certain way of being.

Today I saw that this is what is happening. We are being pushed to the brink of ‘enough-is-enough’ and ‘this-is-not-ok’ and I hope that enough frustration, anger, and outrage will build so that we can and do finally break this unconscious collective agreement.

Let the Feminine Principle rise up and create a healthy balance with the Masculine Principle. Let us be who we truly are, instead of who we agreed to be centuries ago.

Christine Agro is The Metaphysical Feminist. She is the Founder of FEMSocial.com a unique social networking site for women that offers both a community and experiential classes and courses that help empower women. Christine is also curating the on-line project Symptoms of Dis-Empowerment and hosts Fully Empowered – a live talk radio show heard on A2Zen.FM

Thoughts From My Shower: All My Life's a Spiral

Thoughts From My Shower: All My Life’s a Spiral

The Harry Chapin song has been running in my head since I started looking at this but instead of “All My Life’s a Circle” I’ve got “All My Life’s a Spiral” playing.

I was in the shower and I was looking at how I create and manifest. I have been aware of a flow and ebb dynamic. It’s a dynamic that I talk about often. (Love the Flow, Embrace the Ebb!) I’ll come up with an idea or a project and begin to bring it to life and then at some point there’s an ebb and the energy seems to stop moving forward. I’ve learned to shift my focus to something else when this happens. Inevitably though, at some point, the project will begin to flow again. When it does, I pick it up where I left off and continue moving forward.

Next I found myself contemplating a dynamic that is made very evident in my conversation space, particularly with women. It’s the Spiral Conversation. We begin talking about one thing, and then move on to something else, then touch on the original thing, then off to something else, then touch on the first and second thing. It’s a communication style that drives my husband crazy because once he leaves a topic, he’s left it.

Why I'm Broken Up About LEGO

LEGO  has been in the news a lot since they unveiled LEGO FREINDS at the beginning of 2012. LEGO FRIENDS are made specifically with girls in mind. Many people are saying ‘what’s the big deal? They’re toys.” or “I don’t see anything wrong with them?” I find many things wrong with LEGO FRIENDS, but many of these same things we can find in so many other toys – subtle messages that tell our girls who they are, what they are capable of and what opportunities are available. That’s why some people feel like ‘so what?’ We are so conditioned to accept programming in our lives, that the action of speaking out about something is increasingly foreign to us.

In an opinion piece by David Horsey in the LA Times entitled “Are Lego Friends the Enemy of American Girls?” he basically says – 'hey they aren’t so bad, I’ve even checked with my feminist daughter who doesn’t seem to mind them.’ (I paraphrase) He goes on to say in his opinion, this isn’t one of the things we should be focused on.  I whole-heartedly disagree with him and here's why.

You Can Run For Election, You Can Vote...If You Can Get There

You Can Run For Election, You Can Vote...If You Can Get There
By Christine Agro
The Metaphysical Feminist

When I read the news that women in Saudi Arabia had been given the right to both run for election and vote without the approval of a male guardian, I was at first excited and then I felt like I was revisiting that famous Seinfeld episode with the rental car. “You know how to take the reservation. You just don’t know how to hold the reservation.”

Saudi Arabian King Abdullah has lifted the ban on women being able to run for election as well as the ban on women voting, but women are still not allowed to travel, work, study abroad, marry, get divorced or gain admittance to a public hospital without permission from a male guardian.

Hence my Seinfeldian experience. Unless the woman who runs for office actually has the support of the men in her life she can run, but how will she actually hold office? She can’t drive, travel or work for that matter. And Saudi Arabian women have been given the right to vote, but if voting takes place a step outside their doors, unless a man gives permission to travel, they will not be able to exercise this right.

The King might as well have given women the right to fly to the moon. I’m all for ‘something is better than nothing’ but I just can’t see the silver lining in this. King Abdullah has pushed for changes in women’s right, but this seems like a hollow gesture, unless he has a master-mind plan of easing women’s rights slowly into their culture so that it creates limited friction among the ultra conservative.  Maybe the case as the lifting of the ban doesn't go into effect until 2015.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime – congratulations to the women of Saudia Arabia for winning the right to run for office as well as winning the right to vote. I hope you can freely exercise both.

Redefining Resolution

Redefining Resolution
By Christine Agro
The Metaphysical Feminist

It’s that time of year again – New Year’s Resolution time. Although studies vary, with a range between 75% and 98%, the general consensus is the majority of us fail at fulfilling our New Year’s Resolutions. The same studies lay blame on process, intention, self-help gurus, but maybe the reason we don’t succeed has nothing to do with any of these things. Maybe, our inability to stick with our resolutions has to do with the word itself.

The world resolve has two meanings. As a verb it means to settle or find a solution to a distasteful situation. As a noun it means to have a firm determination to do something. As someone who is always interested in the energy behind words – if you ‘RESOLVE’ (in its verb form) you are sitting in some pretty negative energy. You are resolving to find a solution to an otherwise unpleasant situation. If you have a RESOLVE (in its noun form) to accomplish something – it’s a much more powerful energy. You are committed even determined to manifest what you have set out to do.

So you see, there are two totally different energies for the exact same word. When I hear someone speak of New Year’s Resolutions – almost always what I hear is “I’m resigned that this will always be like this.” Rarely do I hear people speak of resolutions with an impassioned determination to create change in their life. When I do, they undoubtedly succeed.

As with all change in our life, it doesn’t come easy or free. We have to want it and demonstrate that we are willing to do the work to get it. Creating change in our lives is connected to conscious living. If you live unconsciously you eat unconsciously, you speak unconsciously, you work unconsciously and your statements of resolution are words not intentions.  When you live consciously everything you do from the food you choose to the words you use to the friends you surround yourself with, everything, becomes a conscious choice.

As we sit at the brink of a new year, what are you determined to change? What do you have a RESOLVE to do this year?

Join Christine Agro For A New Year's Day Meditation

Set The Stage 

2012 Meditation

Join Christine Agro on Sunday, January 1, 2012 at 9 am ET for an hour long meditation and energy work session to help you set the stage for the year ahead.

Christine will incorporate the information she has gathered about the year ahead, to help you move into the new year in harmony and alignment.

Meeting via Tele-conference.  After you register you will receive information about how to join the call.

Your regular long-distance charges will apply.

You MAY use SKYPE for this call.

Register now! $12.00 USD 

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Free for FEMSocial Members!

Live Your Life – Sometimes Easy To Say, But Not To Do

As women we can be confronted with many blocks to living a fully empowered life and please remember I’m not just talking about women in North America. This is women around the world. Laws, religion, culture, society and family all offer blocks for women to live their own life. I call these blocks ‘symptoms of our dis-empowerment’. They are the situations, experiences and beliefs that keep us from truly living our life.

Take a woman living in India - her culture, her family even her religion may say her role, her purpose is to marry. Take a woman living in Jerusalem -her society, her religion tells her she must sit at the back of the bus. Take a woman living in Egypt -her society and laws tell her she cannot vote. Take a woman living in Saudi Arabia - her society and laws say she cannot drive.

Yet in each of these countries woman are claiming their right to live their lives. How do I define ‘right’? I define it as our ability to see within ourselves and within others innate personal value. The ability to not buy into a notion of less, lacking or limit based on gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. To see that laws, rules, guidelines and acceptable mores are subjective based on the influence of those who ultimately benefit by what is established and followed as the truth.