As a social justice activist, it has been my great pleasure to be a part of the documentary Femme: Women Healing the World. Just part of the pleasure was meeting other wonderful and insightful women who nourished and fed me by their compassion, support and wisdom. One of them was Celeste Yarnall, Ph.D who I've invited to share her blog post below with you. And if you've missed the film in your area, you're not out of luck - click here to view Femme: Women Healing the World: http://ykr.be/4ik59m1n6
The
inspiring new award winning,
feature length documentary film, entitled FEMME: Women Healing
the World,
directed by Emmanuel Itier and executive produced by Sharon
Stone, has
recently opened in both Los Angeles and New York City. Coast to
coast, audiences
are giving it a standing ovation and leave the theatre brimming
with
excitement. FEMME features over 100 women from all over the
world sharing their
views on how women will be the driving force to heal our
troubled world. We see
and hear in FEMME from global female leaders, Nobel Laureate’s,
former Prime
Ministers, actresses, musicians, teachers and women from all
walks of life from
all over the world.
It
has been my experience at these
screenings, as a co-producer and as one of the women featured in
the film to
sense the excitement that FEMME creates. It’s much like when a
stone is skipped
across a pond and we stand back and watch its ripple effect go
out into the
world.
We
are delighted to hear from men
and women alike that they are now eager to do something
constructive to help
heal our Mother Earth. Science now tells us that on a quantum
level when love
and positivity are the primal objectives in prayer and
meditation that we are
at affect in making a recognizable contribution to a more
favorable outcome.
This
phenomena is much like the
famous chaos theory, by James Lovelock, that states,”It has
been said that
something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can
ultimately cause a
typhoon halfway around the world.” FEMME seems to be
causing a “butterfly
effect” all it own. Because much like the caterpillar possesses
imaginal cells,
that unbeknownst to the caterpillar cause it to transform into a
chrysalis and
then like magic to be and become a butterfly. We humans also
possess imaginal
cells in our hearts but we simply do not know how to activate
them and become
the butterflies of our own higher consciousness. A consciousness
that connects
us to the Gaia principle. For the most part we attribute love,
compassion and
nurturing to the FEMME spirit, FEMME means woman in the French
language. Could
it be that once we embrace the FEMME spirit that each of us
might be able to
transform ourselves and our planet by balancing what has long
been missing from
our lives, which is the feminine aspect of loving and nurturing
in a
“whole-listic” way? If we take responsibility for the holistic
healing of
ourselves as individuals and the holistic healing of the world
collectively,
might this be a better direction then the way the industrial
military paradigm
(driven primarily by the Patriarchy) has take us? Is it that
primeval call
within us to activate our inner butterfly that can help each of
us become
the transformative change we want to see take place on this
planet?
In
order for us to see where we
are headed, let’s look back and see where we have been in order
to get a clear
picture in this case of why I have called the title of this
piece, Down with
Patriarchy. For myself, it has to come tumbling down
because as I journeyed
back in time with many of the women from FEMME as my guide, I
needed to go back
1000’s of years. Because it was 1000’s of years ago that this
shift to the
patriarchy occurred. A very big shift from women being
worshiped as idols
and Goddesses and being 100% responsible for creating life, to
having
absolutely no role in human reproduction at all. As Miriam
Robbins Dexter, in
FEMME states: “From the earliest homo sapiens sapiens to at
least 4000
BCE, the indigenous people were goddess-worshipping and were
equalitarian. There is very little evidence of warfare.”
Many
of the screenings for FEMME
have included a Q & A following the film and questions are
often taken from
the audience. We can feel the empowerment occurring as people
one by one become
inspired to be a part of what I refer to as the FEMME Prime
Directive.
It’s
only natural for me to think
this way because, I guest starred as an actress on an episode of
Star Trek
entitled, The Apple back in 1967. The Apple has
become famous as
it is one of the very few Star Trek episodes where the Prime
Directive was violated. Just what is the Star Trek
Prime
Directive? The Prime Directive is basically the
right of each
sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural
evolution and
this is considered sacred. No Star Fleet personnel
should violate this directive unless absolutely necessary and it
was absolutely
necessary in The Apple. A similar result has taken
place, where the
people of Delta Trianguli Vi lived to only be in service to and
worship their
god, Vaal. Their own Patriarchal leader forbade love, love
making and even
reproduction in their world. And so we stepped the landing party
stepped in to
set them back on course. But look what the Patriarchy has done
to our own
Mother Planet, with its wars and devastating weapons. The
yin/yang principle of
balance and living in harmony with nature has been violated in
every way
possible, primarily by the industrial military complex. This
complex is now so
advanced in its weapons of mass destruction that if it moves
into space, with
space based weapons, it will threaten our entire multi-verse and
there will be
no turning back. The Patriarchy has acted like some conquering
alien species
with little or no regard for the future of this planet and that
is a clear
violation of our most human Prime Directive which is
not to just to boldly
go but to be the good shepherds and stewards of this
beautiful blue ball.
What
has happened to the women all
these years? Why did we stand by and watch this domination of
women happen? As
Barbara Marx Hubbard shares in FEMME, ”We’ve had great women
in the
past, but really, in the ’60s, there was a rise of the
feminine
consciousness. At first, it was to try to be equal to men,
but after a
while, we didn’t want to be equal in a dysfunctional world.
You don’t
want to get to the front seat on the Titanic.” Marianne
Williamson
picks up the call to action by saying, “So what we have to do
is turn around
the Titanic in time. We have to turn around and we have to
turn around
now.”
In
FEMME Women Healing the World,
each of us who was interviewed was asked by our director
Emmanuel Itier,
how we would feel about the creation or re-evolution of a
matriarchal society
and each of us answered that we didn’t want a Matriarchy. All
each one of
us wanted to accomplish was an equal partnership with men. But
how do we go
about disentangling an epigenetic paradigm that began around
3000-4000 BC?
Perhaps as Vandana Shiva offers, Gandi said it best when in his
morning prayer
he said: “Make me more womanly.” Vendana explains that
Gandhi is talking
about high levels of compassion. “ But how has it been
for us women
from the dawn of time, as we view it from our rear view mirrors?Femme takes us in a visual time machine back through Goddess culture when Karen Tate explains that, “Scholars will tell you, you can look back at some of these ancient artifacts, like for instance the Venus of Willendorf.
They’re
30,000 or 40,000 years old
and many scholars today will tell you that those artifacts
point to a time when
goddess was revered. Women were also more uplifted in society.
They were the
life givers. This was looked upon as something very magical,
very powerful.”
Historically
around approximately
3000-4000 BC things began to change drastically and remained so
all the way up
to the 20th century. During this period in history a
major shift
to a Patriarchal society occurred almost all over the world,
which is as
dramatic as a polar shift might be if one occurred in our
lifetimes. This shift
made women second class citizens with the exception of an island
population
here or there for the next 5000 years. It was declared through
what was called
science in its day that there was only one seed of life
and it was found
in the male’s testes. The women, our fore-mothers were
just the fertile
or infertile soil that the male planted his seed into. A very
telling example
of a quote which was said to have been written In 350 BC was
from the ancient
Greek, Aristotle, who influenced thinking for thousands of years
by saying
this: “The male semen cooks and shapes menstrual blood into
a new human
being”. I think it was a given that even Aristotle would
admit that it
would be the woman that would nourish the male seed and nurture
it, with her
body but she would not be considered having had anything to do
with bring this
life into being.
Apparently
not one woman mourned
the passing of Aristotle. The distinction of being the creator
of life belongs
exclusively to the males of our species. Every pseudo scientific
reason was
dragged into play through the ages, such as Aristotle’s
menstrual blood
analogy, in order for the male of the human species to dominate
and control
where his seed was planted. The research from science is
staggering as
they propose every which way a man does this. It was thought
that even an
education would weaken a women so much so that it would render
her less of a
baby making machine. Author Julia Stonehouse refers to the
female, in her landmark
book Idols to Incubators, Reproduction Theory though the
Ages, women were
simply that, his incubator.
Miss Stonehouse also has a new Ebook entitled, Father’s Seed, Mother’s Sorrow.
To
truly understand the road less
traveled by a few brave souls who tried to overturn this dictum
with some
compelling science, everything from threat of death or ridicule
would follow.
And even into modern times in the early 1800’s we’d all have to
ask ourselves, why
would the good ole’ boys want to give up complete control over
what he thought
to be exclusively, his children. Besides that only male
children
seemed to be of value because it was they that continued the
male line and
females were dead ends. There was no knowledge base for nuclear
or paternal DNA
let alone the exclusive to women, mitochondrial DNA such as we
know it today.
The birth of a daughter in many parts of the world was the
veritable end of a
male line and therefore pretty much worthless. Now perhaps we
can understand
why we see certain dress codes enforced for women in many parts
of the world.
The male had to make certain that all other males were kept away
from their women.
Why? Because how else could
paternity be insured? She, in many parts of the world
would not
have any rights in divorce or death of her spouse, as to the
right to keep her
children. The children belonged to the father and/or his family
where this
thinking was a way of life.
As
we examine human rights
violations the world over such as female circumcision, abortion
of female
fetus’s, although illegal, because of the Patriarchal desire for
male heirs in
India and elsewhere, deaths and or disappearances of newborn
infant girls in
China, to every other atrocity perpetrated against women all
over the world,
including human sex trafficking. It is know that in certain
parts of the world
a box was kept next to the birthing bed with tools to be used to
the help the
midwife murder an infant daughter.
Up
to about 10,000 BC according to
Julia Stonehouse’s Reproduction Theory
this particular time period in history was based on the
female being
100% responsible for life. Intercourse virtually had nothing to
do with the
making of babies and men had no say over female sexuality.
Miss
Stonehouse’s well researched
time line led me on a path where one could clearly see that the
Matriarchal way
of life continued from 10,000 BC to approximately 3000 BC and
here we still
found the idea that the female contains the seed of life in her
womb as their
were clay statues discovered that depicted this image. Men were
given some
recognition in this time period because they collectively
concluded that men
watered the seed with their semen, however women were still
thought to be the
source of the seed of life and again men did not have a say in
women’s
sexuality.
We
would not learn here in the
Western world of the science that was daring to explore the role
of the female
ovum, (although found to be valid for fruit flies, and garden
peas, etc.,) that
without a doubt, women were 50-50 partners with men, in the
creation of human
life until 1900. Miss Stonehouse provides that it would not be
until 1960 when
the publication of a book called Ovum Humnum: Its Growth,
Maturation,
Nourishment, Fertilization and Early Development by Dr.
Landrum Brewer
Shettles shared the photo’s that would set the record straight.
We
all know now scientifically
that there are 23 chromosomes in the head of the sperm (one of
which determines
the sex of the child possibly becoming a male) and that there
are an equal
23 chromosomes within the nucleus of the ovum (none of
which
determines any other sex but female). And so people just seemed
to quickly bury
down the rabbit hole 5,000 years of Patriarchal domination,
tyranny and control
of virtually every aspect of a women’s lives, from inheritance
of property, to
any rights what so ever. We can only give respectful pause and
reflect on these
very facts that caused some Queen’s heads to roll for not
bearing certain kings
a male heir.
This
treatment of women and girls
through the ages is a very brutal and violent legacy that we all
carry
epigenetically to this very day. I call it an epigenetic
hangover because
society is still sick with this drunken use of Patriarchal power
in many parts
of the world. What is epigenetic? In a nut shelf the context in
which I am
proposing this idea, is basically all that rises above the
genome. It is what
we carry with us from generation to generation, call it
emotional baggage but
it also affects our health on a body mind and spirit level and
it may result in
how we behave. Epigenetics has nothing to do with what we think
of today as our
DNA genetic blue print of say dark hair or blue eyes, etc. It
belongs to a new
field of study all its own.
Studying
what has taken place for
women over this period of time and it indeed what is still
happening, may be
for many like opening a deep wound that
you may not have even known was still there and letting it bleed
out, however
as we said in that now famous ad campaign from many years ago,
“We’ve come a
long way, baby.” And understanding what has happened to women in
the past
brings it into the light of day and helps us heal collectively.
There
is so much that can be done
now to right the inequity that remains within our current
Patriarchal system
and FEMME calls upon us loudly and clearly to act for the
changes we want now
but do it with a forgiving heart. As T. S. Wiley states so
eloquently in
FEMME, “I think punishing men because they had a long turn
at the
helm, I think punishing them because they’re just men, is
beneath us. I think
as women, we always had enough power. We’ll have more power,
and those of
us who know it should wield it with some mercy.” I’m for
that as well,
because we need men to be our allies and partners. It’s clear we
need the Equal
Rights Amendment to at long last be passed so that we women
today, our
daughters and granddaughters have equal rights constitutionally
with men now
and in the future.
For
my part in the film FEMME, I
thought that I might share the fact that everything we know or
think we know,
is nothing more than a belief system. I said, “What many
people
don’t understand is that as the young child grows within us,
every thought that
the mother has, every meal that the mother has, every breath
she takes, is
being downloaded by that unborn child. That actual fetal
tissue is
determining itself who and what it’s going to become, and by
the time the baby
is born, 50 percent of the baby’s personality has been
actually manifested.”
If
we take the approach that
perhaps we all need to become baby whisperers to the
next generation,
because when the unborn child grows within the mothers womb it
is in a state of
delta frequency, something like a hypnagogic trance, where the
mothers every
thought, every meal, every action, is also being downloaded into
its every cell
and also directly into its subconscious mind. The responsibility
of the
parents, be they the birth parents or adopted parents or
caregivers, of any
gender, becomes huge as the infant and toddler grows. This
downloading
continues in early childhood development, especially when these
baby’s minds
next enter the higher frequency of delta, where their
imagination is wide open.
This is the time when most of us had invisible friends and we
could talk to
animals and butterflies, etc. Still, what is going on within the
family, from
what is blaring on the radio and TV, is all layer by layer
piling up in that
child’s subconscious mind. It is our subconscious, which
according to a theory
from the field of hypnosis which is referred to as Theory of
the Mind is
equal to about 88% of what we call the subconscious. I am
simplifying the
theory here for our purposes as it is more complicated an
multi-layerd that
these two equations). The residual number left for our conscious
mind, basically
who we think we are, where our rational thinking comes from, is
only 12% .
These young children don’t move into higher forms of
consciousness and
frequency, such as knowing that “I am me and/or you are you,”
until about age
12. Sue Gehardt shares her research in her 2004 book, When
Love Matters, How
Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain. I offer the idea that
our future is placed
primarily in women’s hands. However being loving and nurturing
is not exclusive
to female bodies. The idea is for everyone to take the
responsibility of being
a “conscious” parent(s) seriously. But in that spirit let’s not
forget
who it is primarily that has near exclusive access to babies. It
is we women
who must take a certain portion of the responsibility for who
and what our
children become because of this early formative period in their
life. What kind
of women and men are we helping to bring up? We need to remember
what the
Jesuits were famous for saying, “Give me the Boy and I will make
you the man.”
What
contrast might we have seen
if the Matriarchy of our ancient past had continued in an
uninterrupted line to
this day? Would there have been gender favoritism anywhere on
this planet
without religious dogma stating the male one God theory? As Dr.
Riane Eisler shares: ”All of life was really informed by a
veneration
of the goddess nature. This veneration of the goddess nature
led to a
love of peace, a horror of tyranny and a respect for the law.”
What did
this flip to a male deity cause for us women? Is this not a good
question to
ponder if one dares? When Jean Houston was asked about religion,
she offered,”The
whole nature of priestcraft, by its very nature, requires a
male and a female
sensibility, as well as a sense of God not being male out
there, but in point
of fact, having all the gendering. To engender, you must
have all the
gendering.” Or as Sonya Sophia states, “Well, God was a man,
and
then if you can’t be like God, well, take Jesus as an example,
and then you
could be like him. But where does that leave you if you’re a
woman?
It says basically that to be good and to be loved by God, you
have to be
masculine or try to act masculine or to do what a man would
do. And I
think that that kind of thinking has informed our culture for
thousands and
thousands of years” And from female Rabbi Leah Novick we
have: ”Well,
I study, Zohar Kabbalah has been my main focus for the last 20
years, and the
tree is all about this, that you have the masculine, the
feminine and then you
have the middle pillar where hopefully, everything comes to
the balance point.”
Especially
poignant is this
by Dr. Sue Morter: “The heart space is destined to rise to
its
expression in humanity again and it is time for us to begin to
honor
that. It isn’t just the heart space. It is the heart with
the mind,
the heart with power. Power without heart gets us nowhere.
Heart
without power can become a doormat, and so the combination of
our heart, our
power, our personal empowerment and our wisdom centers is the
recipe for what
is happening now in humanity.” Doesn’t this sound like a
wonderful platform
for women to use in politics?
Femme
offers us so much to think
about and challenges us all with each of the women’s interviews
it shares.
After all, all genders are here together right now and all
genders need to do
something right now. As Peace activist H. Schachna states
emphatically, “I do force
people to act. Do you need
good water? So act for it. Do you need clear air? So act
for
it. Do you need that the ground will be good and that you can
plant
plants and you can have fruit? So act for it. Stop talking.
You have all the knowledge. You have to act.”
Let’s
all act for it! And with the
inspiring messages offered in FEMME Women Healing the World we
can take action.
The action that best resonates with us as individuals.
Everyone
needs to see FEMME which
they do by going to FEMMETheMovie but let me simply share here these
beautiful words by
Marianne Williamson: ”The impulse of this moment is that we
have a
world to co-create together. We need each other. The
masculine
enters into the feminine, the feminine receives the
masculine. We need
both forces. In order for this planet to make it, yes, we
need women and
a divinely inspired womanhood, but we need a divinely inspired
manhood as
well.”
We
need sacred partnership as this
beautiful painting by Nazim Artist as seen in FEMME shares
visually with us
right now and it is that partnership at last that will heal the
world!
A-Women
– A-men!
Celeste
Yarnall is an actress,
speaker, activist, and film producer who is well known for her
guest-starring
role on the original Star Trek, and as Elvis Presley's co-star
in "Live a
Little, Love a Little." However, her true passion is in women’s
empowerment and healing on all levels for both people and
animals.
Celeste earned her doctorate in
Nutrition and is the co- author of Holistic Cat Care with Jean
Hofve, DVM, the
author of Natural Dog Care, and the soon to be released PALEO
DOG with Dr. Jean
Hofve for Rodale Press. Celeste writes a highly popular blog for
the social
action network Care2.com,
“Celestial
Musings and has contributed to Natural News Network (naturalnews.com), as well as The New Zealand
Journal of
Natural Medicine, Raw Instincts, Healthy Dogs, Naturally and
many others.
Her company,
Celestial Pets, offers a
clinical nutrition consultation service on holistic alternatives
for people and
their animal companions.
Celeste and her husband Nazim Artist
are the co-producers of Femme:
Women
Healing the World, which features Jean Houston, Barbara Marx
Hubbard, Karen
Tate and Marianne Williamson along with Celeste.
Celeste is a
popular speaker on
the Art of Wellness, on a body, mind and spiritual level. The
Art of Wellness
Collection includes Nazim’s Holistically glazed Art works, state
of the art supplements
and healing devices, along with Reiki and EFT.
Websites
include:
And
Celeste’s Blog at www.celestialmusingsblog.com
http://ykr.be/4ik59m1n6
