EP 14 Is the Hindu Goddess a Feminist?

[00:00:00] Hindu Goddesses or in the form of Hindu Goddesses before, there is a very strong Hindu Goddess form in the Hindu philosophy and mythology and then while researching for the woman's day I came across an article called Is Hindu Goddess a feminist and it said yes I want

[00:00:21] to know and find out if a Hindu Goddess is a feminist and I was sitting with the very image of Gali whose has her foot firmly on ship, her husband a very good start indeed Catherine. It's certainly a good starting point for the discussion isn't it?

[00:00:42] Yes I've always find Kali so interesting because she has such a formidable presence doesn't she you know the lolling tongue and the wild hair and her implements you know the sword and the

[00:00:58] skull and there she is with her feet firmly planted as you say on her husband Shiva and yet we consider her a loving mother. Her own journey is coming to use Shivanshakti as her instrument to get people out of their misery and here we are Catherine Rowan.

[00:01:21] There is a quality as long as the women are behaving like the men in the workplace. I've never properly understood physics so I have learned most of my quantum physics this way and from what you mentioned, from a very wonderful way with these beautiful goddesses and all

[00:01:35] the dresses and the stories and stuff it's a lot more fascinating than a lot of quantum physics books although I will read those now. This is India a story in the making and I'm your host Laveena Tandon.

[00:01:48] Hello and welcome to India a story in the making often we find ourselves saying that God is a man and the world is patriarchal and then my upbringing in India has been amongst celebrating Navratra,

[00:02:09] strong Poma Kali, Durga, Navdurga all of that and I thought when feminism come to Hindu goddesses or in the form of Hindu goddesses before it's a very strong Hindu goddess form in the Hindu philosophy and myology and then while researching for the woman's day I came across

[00:02:37] an article called is Hindu goddess of feminism so yes I want to know and find out if a Hindu goddess is a feminist and then further researched and found this amazing woman who worked in the

[00:02:53] so to say finance the KPMG's of the world and all this finance world has a child a family all of that and then the journey took her to a place where she took a stock of herself

[00:03:07] and found herself crossed a lot of us drew this everyday balancing act as a mother as a wife as a homemaker and an aspirational woman and why not and then suddenly in this whole

[00:03:21] hamster wheel we lose track of me and the soul and she is a western setup in a western setup and now uses Shiv and Shakti the concept in coaching women from fear to possibility

[00:03:38] and I thought wow I need to talk to her not only about the path that do you and what do you think of it is Hindu goddess feminist and her own journey in coming to use Shiv and Shakti as

[00:03:53] as her instrument to get people out of their misery and there we are capturing a very absolutely gorgeous and beautiful woman and I'm sitting with the very image of Kali who's has her foot firmly on ship her husband a very good start indeed

[00:04:18] but it's certainly a good start before you put this a scout on this bit yes I've always find Kali so interesting because she has such a formidable presence doesn't she you know the lowly tongue and the wild hair and her implements you know the sword and the skull

[00:04:37] and there she is with her feet firmly planted as you say on her husband Shiva and yet we consider her a loving mother yes and the loving mother is here and also another emanation much much softer

[00:04:52] than than Kali but also another representation of the divine feminine because they're they're in fact one the different presentations they show us different aspects yes of the feminine yes so so first of all welcome happy on that note of feminism over patriarchy

[00:05:14] I think I want to ask you is Hindu goddess a feminist but before that I want to ask the person looking like you born as a christian raised as a christian how did you arrive where you arrived

[00:05:29] what is your story from the big lead way you born what yeah okay well I guess it's going to have to be a part of history isn't it yes I was born in England um but some people will be hearing my

[00:05:42] accent I had a stronger R the most English people I lived some of my childhood in the United States I had an American education between the age of seven and sixteen but I went to you know finish

[00:05:55] my education in England went to an English university into you know conventional type of type of job and into found my way into what was at the time called personnel management now called HR or human resources and I think at that time I graduated from university in 1978

[00:06:20] and equal opportunities legislation been passed in the UK in 1975 so I was like among that first wave of women who with expectations of equality in the workplace and I guess it didn't take me too long to discover that maybe it wasn't quite as equal

[00:06:38] as I as I might have as I might have thought but I was I was ambitious so I yeah I did things the way that was expected and everything went along fairly okay until I was sort of like in my

[00:06:51] mid 30s and married and wanting to have a child and doing a very busy job and management consultant this was like I can't do it all and I was feeling a bit burned out as well and I decided um

[00:07:05] that I would take the route of leaving my full-time job and becoming self-employed because I thought that needed a little bit better that I could still do some work and have a child but

[00:07:16] it's still in the you know maybe I can have it all type of mode yeah we all want to just have it all for some reason and now I would say yes you can have it all but not all at the same time

[00:07:29] but I actually was feeling quite burned out at that time when I first left and the whole process of um you know changing to become self-employed and then having a baby and becoming a mother

[00:07:42] and actually that was a bit of a it was a confrontation to my identity because I identified very much until that time as a professional woman and I used to grab the door you know with a

[00:07:55] Samsonite briefcase in the day. Power dress? Yes power dress it's the 1980s the early 90s the big shoulder pads and all the rest yes short curly hair and suddenly I was going out of the door

[00:08:08] with a with a baby changing bag you know nappies and all the rest and it was a big confrontation to identity and I started just questioning a lot of things at the time it's like the world to me

[00:08:25] didn't seem to be stacked up in any way to support women's lives that well it's like if you have a child and you still want to be a professional person at that time before there were the online

[00:08:40] possibilities it was really you either had to go back to work full-time or stay at home with your child or do what I did sort of cobble together something being self-employed and doing a bit

[00:08:54] of that here and there which worked for me by the way I'm not complaining of my choice but it wasn't you know I was starting to sort of just ask questions about the way things were and because

[00:09:07] I've been in HR and then I'd worked in management consultancy I've moved into an area called out placement which was basically doing what we now call career coaching but with at that time

[00:09:18] senior managers would be made redundant and at that time in the late 80s and the early 90s a lot of the city banks were sort of they called it downsizing a lot of big corporates were doing

[00:09:29] the same so I was working with people on questions basically what they wanted to do with the rest of their work with the rest of their lives what sort of you know work they wanted to do did

[00:09:40] they want to continue in the same thing helping them with their CVs you know all of those things and when people are have lost a job and especially at that time I mean I think maybe now

[00:09:52] it's actually more common for people to change jobs and have what's called a portfolio career but it wasn't several decades ago and you're assessing other people's CV and at the same time questioning your own well yes you do because when you're working with other people and you're

[00:10:09] hearing about their lives and what what they find challenging or their hopes and dreams and I was discovering that a lot of people had gone into work because it made sense

[00:10:25] because that was where they could you know earn good money have a job be supported by the company or a lot of people had done even like university degrees in a subject that that made sense

[00:10:37] because they were following family footsteps or it just was what they'd been encouraged to do at school and I was discovering that a lot of these people really had deep seated desires maybe to have done something completely different yes and I think the equality bill that you spoke

[00:10:53] about so they did bring the equality bill but they didn't bring the support structure that should have come with it but that's partly that's partly that also that just because you pass

[00:11:07] of law it doesn't mean that people's mindsets can don't change as instantly as the law is due and so when we're and I think maybe this is a segue into talking about patriarchy because

[00:11:18] you know if you've already got you know the people in your management structure who are accustomed to one way of working just because of law is passed and they're told that okay now

[00:11:30] we're going to you know it's going to be it's going to be different you need to give equal opportunities to the young women that are coming through as well as the young men and it wasn't only

[00:11:40] the equal opportunities legislation wasn't only about gender of course it was you know it was so it was yeah it's right um so you know we have you know it was meant to be equal opportunities

[00:11:53] to recognize all individuals as human beings would be the way that I would see it but we know we've had mindsets that people you're often unconscious of their bias and discrimination in

[00:12:07] their mindset just because of the way that they're born and brought up and we have this in all countries yes and organizations and and we see it even today to do still to do with gender to do

[00:12:18] with race to do with sexuality we're still talking about that several different parameters journey but we are talking about it so so you were working in this busy woman going out with the

[00:12:29] samsonite as well as a nappy bag there were two separate things it was a samsonite before the baby and afterwards it's the nappy bag and it was like yeah the confrontation of my identity is

[00:12:42] like okay so who who who am I really all of this yes um and then because I've been working in personal development and because I felt burned out and because I was working with people who've

[00:12:57] been made redundant and I started to realize that I actually needed a new skill base I mean I was quite good at what I did but the fact that I've burned out was probably because I was dealing

[00:13:08] with a lot of psychological material with people and at that time I've been trained as a management consultant for the two weeks counseling course so I started studying the psychotherapies and and actually having psychotherapy myself to give me that deeper understanding and deeper

[00:13:27] way of working with people so from there and that did do that that did enable me to work with people in a deeper way but from there I started to get interested as well it's like from there

[00:13:39] into the deeper aspects of psychology and then into some spiritual traditions but although I've been brought up as a Christian I had always been interested in Eastern philosophies and I had started reading initially like I was drawn to some of the the Chinese systems to Dallas philosophy

[00:14:01] so I threw the exposure to ideas to do with Yin and Yang I was looking then differently at masculine and feminine also because I've had some exposure to Jungian psychology you have their

[00:14:17] ideas of the inner masculine and inner feminine so these ideas were now I was now trying to looking at these into life and looking at well even though I thought there was a quality I've

[00:14:32] been told there was a quality I've addressed my work as though there was a quality really what's happening here is that women are being trained there is a quality as long as the

[00:14:45] women are behaving like the men in the workplace so that was really my question is okay so that's the case and you know I read information and you know within the psychotherapy trainings that

[00:15:03] I done I was presented it with it as to what is the inner masculine and the inner feminine that's both in men and women are we in a situation where we're just accenting the masculine and

[00:15:16] the men and women because the feminine is being suppressed and you can't get rid of it because it's an energy but it can distort and appear in shadow form so my thinking was turning this

[00:15:31] way my thinking was turning this way so more in the form of masculine and masculine and feminine energy than the masculine and feminine form yes as energy so I was questioning what constitutes

[00:15:47] the feminine is it myself and of course by that time I was a mother so I was I was seeing I was looking at the feminine maybe differently I could see that maybe in my work I've been

[00:16:03] I'd sort of accentuated maybe what we call the masculine I'm talking about the inner masculine so we're talking about the goals the structures and maybe not the sort of like the feminine aspects of myself even though I'm actually quite feminine women and boys have been

[00:16:21] what did this mean how could I show up as a mother and as a wife in a more feminine way so these sorts of things were were questions but also I was looking at yeah through the Taoist

[00:16:37] philosophy in Yin and Yang and how did that relate and that that started then I was I was interested I've been interested in yoga for a long time so I'd studied yoga and I started

[00:16:48] studying Qigong and then I got into some of the you know beyond these sort of exercise practices into the meditation practices to living practices and so over a period of years I became interested

[00:17:03] in in these in these traditions but I still felt that there was still a lot of patriarchal by that time I had some works patriarchal overlay in both yoga and and Qigong and over time I'd

[00:17:16] started reading books I read about some well I think I mentioned to you before there was a the first book that I read that's that I became curious about some of that like the Indian and the the

[00:17:30] Buddhist tantric systems as a book called Passionate Enlightenment by Miranda Shaw and she wrote about women in tantric Buddhism so I'm going to stop there and ask you what was

[00:17:42] that one question that was digging you through was the question let's say this way how do I show up in the world it was also that but it was also what what would what would society look like if we were

[00:18:05] if master and feminine generally consider were considered as equal because to me you can't have true equality within patriarchy okay so I'm going to reframe this so what was happening if was there someone having something happening in your personal life as well as the

[00:18:25] professional life for you to question the equality despite the equality act and say you know what I don't feel equal yet how am I supposed to envisage and masculine give me that one question

[00:18:41] that was leading and the background of what was happening with you that was leading you to Yin Yang then Chigol then yoga and then a tantric practice so there was a whole range of things so the first

[00:18:57] thing in my 20s was was an illness I wasn't well and so we could we could call it a women's illness in this case it was like a chronic thrush now women's chronic candidate and I

[00:19:12] I believe that I've been triggered when I was taking the pills a young woman so that was a question is like okay you know maybe you know maybe I haven't been treating my body in a way that it needs

[00:19:25] to be treated and so some of the things that I investigated initially were in the alternative health sphere in trying to solve that problem which I did solve part with some convention medicine part of the alternative but in alternative medicine you often have an energetic philosophy behind

[00:19:46] those treatment quite different from like in western medicine and obviously you've got the iabetic system that's based on an energetic philosophy so that was really my first it was like introduction kept being introduced to things which were confronting the mindset that

[00:20:06] I've been talking let's put it that way so from there that's how I started looking into energy and douse practices and yoga and some of that was was yeah initially it was health related I was

[00:20:20] trying to find ways to to make myself you know hundreds percent back to health without this irritating health issue not life threatening but very annoying and so yes so so yes there was

[00:20:37] there was that and I think that's not an uncommon way that people start asking questions yeah it's through through illness but there were a couple of other things as well I I and also I wasn't

[00:20:52] when I mentioned you like going into therapy and like one of the early things with therapists that said to me it's I think at the time it was very fashion it become fashionable to start to talk

[00:21:02] about feelings except people didn't really understand that they were really talking about thoughts so people were saying like even in in work context I feel this or I feel that and

[00:21:13] a therapist sat there and said Kathy you can't feel that anything with a bat on it is actually the thought a feeling is what's actually in your body if you're saying I feel this and I

[00:21:23] feel that the report and thought so she informed me that I didn't know the difference between thought and feeling and that in itself was quite because I think that's a common one actually

[00:21:36] many of us are brought up that way to not not be that present to our feelings or not to be able to fully express feelings and often for women the feeling that you are not allowed to express

[00:21:50] as a child in many cultures is anger and for little boys it's often sadness they're not allowed to cry so yeah so we have this repression of emotions which I believe is which is what I would say

[00:22:05] is part of how we we repress or invalidate the feminine and it's how we're invalidating the feminine in in boys who become men is because they're they're not allowed a full range

[00:22:18] of expression and emotion nor are nor are little girls so we have these that's how we start to develop these more distorted expressions of feminine and masculine where they're sort of like more

[00:22:32] polarized you get women who are maybe more submissive more reluctant to say no or to set a boundary than they would be naturally and men who maybe are less sensitive to their feelings because they

[00:22:49] haven't been allowed them than they would be naturally and we get these distorted forms of masculine and feminine which we all know about because we find closed doors this is what you know we get a group of women together and they're they're talking about their boyfriends

[00:23:01] or husbands or whatever that they will say things weren't they oh men this and men that and that and the other and I'd well I've never been privileged to be in a man's group when they're

[00:23:10] talking about women but you know there are yeah stereotypical thoughts about men and women yeah but as I see it this is like these are distorted forms this is like the forms of the

[00:23:21] feminine and the masculine that we get within a patriarchal paradigm or structure but is that what we truly are and we have in the spiritual in many spiritual terms the world over the concept

[00:23:35] of the divine feminine and divine masculine and I believe that's often you know when either women or men have an idealized view of what they want to find in their perfect woman of a perfect man they're looking for somebody who embodies this defined masculine of the divine feminine

[00:23:53] and of course we're all coming up short yes it's very lovely so you everyone has so you this was a person few Kathy who was working and doing the masculine so to say

[00:24:08] duties and had a mother who was doing this was going through a struggle within about how to show up because both the masculine and the feminine energies were present in you they were having a difficult relationship in the house and difficult balance to strike at work and then

[00:24:31] you need what that gives you the answer okay so it was I think my journey is probably common to most people you don't always get the answer handed to you on a plate very easily there's a

[00:24:45] search yeah there's a search and we we talk about that often as a spiritual search or you know it's like in all cultures all traditions there's this idea of the human search for meaning

[00:24:59] the human search for discovery and I believe this is saying I believe it comes from the Sufi tradition that's like I looked for myself and I found God I looked for God and I found myself

[00:25:09] and it's so like you don't know necessarily what we're looking for in the beginning I mean I certainly probably have been often in my life dealing with that who am I question

[00:25:21] and if you stay with that question for long enough you discover it but so it was in stages so for like five years I studied a a Daoist presentation called the universal Dao so it's maybe a commercial

[00:25:37] well it's it's been it's been formulated for westerners to understand but the person who has formulated that way is he lives in Thailand his name is Mantel Chia I studied that for five years

[00:25:53] and because I was interested in in that in those practices they have some practices you know like specifically for men and specifically for women and there for the health of the you know the

[00:26:04] male being highly productive organs and I became interested through this book I told you about passionate enlightenment and I read other books as well I became interested in in in in in Tantra

[00:26:18] but of course I a bit reluctant to use that word because of the numbers of different presentations that Tantra has and the number of different ways it's been distorted and people have different

[00:26:29] understandings of it but I became interested in this this idea that the amount that I read at that time was just that okay this was a my understanding the time was it was a non-patriarchal system that

[00:26:43] looked masculine feminine and they're equal but different contributions so when I first came across the concept of Shiva and Shakti I was thinking that Shiva and Shakti were a bit like

[00:26:58] the in Yang which they aren't by the way but they that right so I I was interested in this was there a tradition here that had teachings which could show us what what were the qualities of the

[00:27:16] divine masculine and what were the qualities of the divine feminine and how we could transform our distorted presentations of the feminine and the masculine what would life look like for any of us if we had a paradigm which is not patriarchal where which is weighted towards the masculine

[00:27:40] but one that was genuinely recognizing yes because I come to the viewpoint that there was no true equality within patriarchy it was like everybody was making compromise for that equality there's only quality where women actually enjoyed it there in Alaska then but and the feminine and both men

[00:28:02] and women were stunted and I believe that's that's why we have many of the problems that we have in the world you know we can talk about um you know environmental issues and all the the

[00:28:15] destruction in the environment if we're truly honoring feminine and masculine and in all systems the earth is considered his family so why would we be not be honoring the earth which is referred

[00:28:28] to as mother and many traditions it's like and why would we be not why would we be dishonoring women in many maybe the most cultures in the world if we are understanding the different but equal

[00:28:45] contributions of feminine and asking because when I'm talking about feminine it's not like okay it's the feminine that needs to dominate in this life matriarchy as opposed to patriarchy is not it's like what if both are honored equally how would that improve our world how would that

[00:29:01] improve our relationships and of course how would that improve the deal for women so through her I started to understand that Shefa and Shakti are not in the air so we're not talking about movements of energy so we're talking about a as I learned to understand it

[00:29:21] and we're talking now we talked about you know these Hindu deities but this is the esoteric explanation if you like her for deities so it's non patriarchal so my understanding and the way that

[00:29:38] I explain it to other westerners is it's like a pictorial quantum physics now because my mixed education American and English somehow rather my science education did get a little bit confused at school so I'd never properly understood physics so I have learned most of my quantum

[00:29:56] physics this way and what I went to think from a wonderful way with these beautiful goddesses and all the dresses and the stories and stuff it's a lot more fascinating than the the lot of

[00:30:06] quantum physics books so though we'll read those now but um so so if we could go Shiva and Shakti so Shiva is so if we say the basic building blocks for creation you have to have consciousness

[00:30:19] and energy the basic building blocks so Shiva is is consciousness the ground of consciousness Shakti is his power to create and that's why you always see them in union because you you can't separate consciousness and the power to create they are one and God in all traditions

[00:30:37] all religions is seen as one God is oneness we we are not you know seen as this perfect one is so here we have God as Shiva and Shakti together an honoring of the masculine and feminine

[00:30:53] together so so Shiva is consciousness or the ground of consciousness the containing principle so we could say it's a bit like you know if we talk about like the the ocean

[00:31:07] and the wave or um the air and the wind you know it's it's all air but the wind has a power to create the wave is the power but it's still water so it's a bit like that when we talk about

[00:31:23] consciousness and energy it's all they're all one they are one they're not separate but in this case we're looking at them separately for the purposes of looking at their different functions

[00:31:35] so when we go to Kali and why she's standing on Shiva because he's her ground she's the power so in this presentation the feminine is power all energy all power is feminine and of course we're talking about the feminine and the masculine here as a genderless concept because

[00:32:00] all men and all women have feminine and masculine events and then we're going to the psychology but then we've got the question of okay well maybe women have a little bit more Shakti right and then why would you depict it that way that the power is feminine well

[00:32:21] I think in these ancient peoples they're always looking at you know if you're looking at your answers in life and it's women that give birth yeah creation what gives birth to the so it

[00:32:33] doesn't make sense from logical think that or logical thinking that what gives birth to the whole universe would be depicted as in female form so the power to create comes from the female of

[00:32:50] course the masculine has a role in it who of course they're never separate they're one they're one but the actual power to create the gestation the birth you know the human form the breastfeeding

[00:33:05] that comes from the female and thus the form to depict that power is female is female I got so you have all so that's why you've got the one Shiva they will got the same husband the one

[00:33:19] Shiva the many different Shaktis because energy when we look at moving from from you know energy into form we have all the different forms of creation so when we talk about yin and yang and

[00:33:36] she's been chucking no she's been chucking or not yin and yang in these Indian traditions the two movements of energy are seen both as feminine so you have the Dakinni movement the yogini movement and the Dakinni movement the yogini brings something from space into form

[00:33:52] the Dakinni takes it from form back to space so then when we're talking about individuals and their fears to possibilities and how I use it often that what I'm actually doing is working with the Dakinni movement people's fears their fixed beliefs about themselves their emotional

[00:34:12] obstructions like you know we find world-locked anxiety you know other things like that but these teachings tell us or well all teachings of physics energy can't be destroyed but it can be transformed so we can transform those distorted that's how it was in the system those distorted

[00:34:36] presentations of energy back to the pure wisdom energies because in this system we see that there's an original mind that we all have that is linked to the pure wisdom so pure consciousness so we are

[00:34:50] all the divine feminine masculine we all have that capacity our possibility but we're all because of our conditioning and culture and stuff we all have some distortions yes so what we're wanting

[00:35:03] to do is help the individual to be as much of this their divine presentation as they can and recognizing that we're all unique and we're all individual as well because we're all representations in particular all representations of women and of one consciousness and one consciousness

[00:35:23] we're all that so how we we're all God God comes through the eyes of every single human every single every single life form you know the dog the cat everything we're all different but we're

[00:35:33] all representations of that oneness and so if we see it like that the way that I see it is like okay there's where it's like a a beautiful huge jewel in each one of us as a facet of that

[00:35:45] and so how can we have a world where every single facet is not important to the whole how beautiful you have actually my question would have been do you for from a person coming from a christian tradition normally the millions of gods and goddesses in in hinduism

[00:36:06] really are very confrontational and they say oh you don't even have one god but you have actually within one stroke said that there is actually just one god in hinduism as well yeah there is

[00:36:19] just one it was very confusing to me at first because like you have in the different tradition you know within the esoteric traditions the indian you know associated with hinduism and this this too mainly that i've been introduced to once kashmashahism and the other is shri vidya

[00:36:36] i know more about shri vidya in shri vidya the presiding deity is drapoi sundari but she's vashiva and shakti so she's the the shri vidya the equivalent probably vrmah and and um in that tradition so there are different different presentations and the different traditions and i

[00:36:54] did get confused initially it's like wait a minute why are there why are there so many but if you take it if we relate it to us as individuals you know we all have different parts of our personality

[00:37:07] so each one of us we present as a professional woman present me as a partner maybe as a mother um you know the all different parts of our personality so if you see them like that but these

[00:37:19] are all like just different personalities of the one divine mother yeah so you say you have an navarachay the story of the divine mother in the form of dorga and as you know in that story

[00:37:30] she turns herself into kali because she turns herself into her fearsome form to address the great demon in that story so these they they they turn themselves one into the other and you

[00:37:45] probably know you know like they all have like 108 names or a thousand innate names and they all have the names of each other if you look at those lists of names so it's very it's very fascinating one it's all one they're all five different personalities different representations

[00:38:01] of the feminine which is energy and which is power so we have this really interesting and different concept of power that we can use to a patriarchal with where his powers often seen as force or power

[00:38:15] over and it's seen as hierarchical strength and here we haven't got a hierarchical system really it's more it's it's different i mean yeah and the word i might use might be synaqui it's more

[00:38:27] like it's a it's a more circular system and instead of having power over what we're saying this system it's about learning to be power and to be in the flow of power so we're putting people women and

[00:38:41] men in touch with their their natural innate power and how they use it because power is energy so it's your power it's your choices of how you're how you're showing up in the world

[00:38:54] how you're behaving how you're using your skills and your um you know your qualities to contribute in the world that's your power ultimately your power is in what you what you do and of course in

[00:39:09] the system well i think in all religions really we're we're in different ways we're told to that what we do in the world is a contribution to others and it's certainly not about hurting

[00:39:23] anybody else it's about it is about making our contribution to a whole it's the way that that i see it and the way that i so although i'm a western woman and i work within a like a coaching

[00:39:36] framework these ideas are very much you know the model from which i'm working for and how i'm seeing each person you know as an individual and what is where are they inhibiting their power what what what's and usually when it's inhibited it's usually it's belief

[00:39:58] you know conditioning conditioning it's like a cocktail of thoughts and emotions that we've got up on wind around level and to get in touch with your real power the authentic yeah and that's

[00:40:10] it's all different we all have a different presentation we all have it you know we're all here for different reasons so it's putting people in touch with the me that sense of meaning and

[00:40:20] that purpose which i think is that real search that many of us are on well i think all human beings are on yeah absolutely to define to discover the authentic meaning have that

[00:40:32] meaning sense of meaning sense of meaning and and what am i here really for yeah how gorgeous i mean is that before i go into your work i want to then get rid of this question of

[00:40:46] is well hindu god is a feminist and it actually i know the answer now but go on say it so okay so i would say they are the feminine right so the concept of feminist comes up like from a system

[00:41:06] like patriarchy where you need you need the concept of being feminist because it's like a triathlon system it's like that's what it's like the opposing movement to it it's like we need it

[00:41:17] for the balance it's like feminism comes up whether it was like you know the movement that we've had in countries all over the world and they're actually only just over 100 years for women to

[00:41:28] have the vote and for women to have financial rights and rights to own property and things and many countries they still don't but all of this is a result of feminism but it's about as i see

[00:41:39] it it's about the quality yeah i got divorced so you know that there were lots of things that sort of happened which made me put me down this or like personal development pathway a problem in the relationship and i had a partner who had quite traditional views

[00:42:01] and values and was more maybe more all-fashioned in his approach to women and feeling that they were subordinate and to be controlled a bit maybe so yes that didn't work with somebody like me in the long term i looked i really liked your thing when you said that

[00:42:22] there was a box that was created for me that's how i felt that's how i felt that's how i felt and it can be done too yeah i think i think that may be something that many of us

[00:42:33] resonate that when you first meet somebody in any relationship that you you know as a relationship develops you suddenly become aware that there are limits on it first with certain people and maybe that's all it was meant to be is what you what you've had

[00:42:53] that doesn't seem to be able to grow in my case it felt like there was a box i was limited and if i tried to step out of that box and do the things that i wanted to do you know go and do yoga and she

[00:43:04] gone and look into these alternative health practices that was super threatening and it created yes some conflict in the relationship that i wasn't actually able to resolve in a way that felt comfortable to me because there is patriarchy there is feminist movement to counter that patriarchy

[00:43:25] but actually what really we are talking about equal and when we talk of equal you said that it is not really the masculine the feminine they're just form but these energies are complementary to each other and they are creating the universe and the universe can only

[00:43:45] sustain if they are complementary and treated as equal so it's not about feminism it's about equality it is about that and it's like it's interesting so i think it's interesting the words that we have

[00:43:57] even in english because you know even the word the people often use about patriarchy refer to the matrix ma matrix mother so we even know we there's there's a bit of us that our words have come

[00:44:12] from from from from those words of the matrix like here we have the time and the space matrix and in the isotere tradition it's kali she is the time and space matrix so we have to have her

[00:44:27] there because everything that's created that we have in this moment is we're within the time and space matrix right so all of these different goddesses and they're not like they're not really

[00:44:39] the same as some of the goddesses like the group of roman goddesses because in this case they're actual energies so let's say kali's time and space and have bovina shri's space with others that represent you know different aspects you could literally go through and

[00:44:55] relate it to different concepts and quantum physics so it is like a pictorial quantum physics their energies these goddesses brilliant now about your work how are you using this you told me a little bit that you're using your unwinding a person's conditioning to

[00:45:19] let them be in touch with their authentic self or their me yeah yeah well i think in modern coaching you'll find most those coaches probably say some of the similar things that we you know we're help we're that that's what we're doing we're helping people to achieve

[00:45:37] their potential so but i put my work in a spiritual context so i have a range of a range of tools that work energetically with with people sort of like thoughts and emotions it's one of the

[00:45:58] the lovely things i've learned from studying these systems that's all the tachric psychology is that the concept of mind includes both thoughts and emotions these are mine just both and when

[00:46:10] we think about it that's true when we have like an emotional reaction like the types of reactions we have that um the column were to use these days would be triggered we're triggered it's like a

[00:46:23] reaction we can't stop it's an habitual reactive pattern and one of the reasons why it's so difficult to change it is because it's it's an emotion connected to a thought or a belief

[00:46:40] so we need to unwind that so the tools that i use help to unwind that but we're specifically getting helping people moving down into the body feeling that emotion

[00:46:55] i mean what i'm actually doing is and this when we say she bet and shut you we can look at it as like space and form so these emotions and these thoughts are in form and for most people it's very common

[00:47:13] for them to think of themselves as this physical structure and for thoughts and emotions to be dominant that that's that appears to be what the person is but if you can use a spiritual tool and

[00:47:28] show them you know that actually they're they're this they're also pure awareness that they have the power to be aware of these thoughts and these feelings so that's not the form of who they are so i use a guided process which helps somebody

[00:47:45] into awareness so from that place when they're in awareness we can dissolve the the obstructions the obstructed torus longs of thoughts and feelings over time it's not instant nothing has as long yes you know it's over a period of time and then do the structure from this system

[00:48:05] it's like an emotional map based on the five elements but it's a map of the wisdom quality so you could say it's like a full expression of the full expression of emotion and it's a kind of practice actually there are dakini's that's the dakini's that take the

[00:48:28] abstracted emotions from inform back into space but then they're transformed into the wisdom qualities it's a practice which is called it's called internal acmeal working in the central channel of the body with these energies bringing into the central channel there are things that you do

[00:48:46] that's over time the practices of the so i often will give clients i mean they're not interested i can just do these practices that are non-tradition specific that i've learned because the root of it many of the traditions the practices are the same but you have different

[00:49:06] presentations different cultural adaptations so i don't expect every i i like these goddesses i wasn't thought of within do i love all these goddesses and if somebody likes them which many women actually do then i will i give them that practice because it's good for them to have

[00:49:26] a practice they can do for themselves daily as opposed to one that i need to facilitate really they do that and over time yeah it transforms what we say in the practice is that

[00:49:38] enables a person to instead of being stuck in a fixed mental pattern they then be they get to the point where they're able to flow with emotion because we don't we don't get rid of emotions the

[00:49:51] idea is not to get rid of our emotions but the idea is to respond appropriately into situations where they react inappropriately so we refer to this as like dancing in space and you have like

[00:50:02] you know the um the Tibetan tradition so you have the paintings with the keys in there they're dancing they're dancing in space and this is what it means to be able to be

[00:50:12] this is actually what it means to be in the flow of power actually to be able to be respond appropriately in every moment it's a big ask kind of a big deal and what to be able to do that

[00:50:24] that's what we have freedom from a coaching context which is often about people they're feeling lost and so their initial presentation maybe i'm feeling lost i don't know what where i'm going with my

[00:50:38] with my work or what to do with my life but they're not working you know is there a way they can go self-employed and sometimes maybe it's you know predominating mixed up with that is

[00:50:50] um or relationship concerns i often find i mean for most people it's not you know the areas of our lives aren't that separate are they so for many people i'm working with you know their upfront

[00:51:06] problem but then it's what's created the upfront problem yeah it's the underlying problem and often that that is manifesting in somewhere other than in the relational realm not necessarily like a romantic

[00:51:17] partner but in the relationships that work with their family and all of that so we have to look at you know how they're relating to people how they're reacting how they're responding what's

[00:51:29] it's causing the issue um yeah and we start we just we start with where the where the person is and the journey is according to what needs to be done yeah wow how does one get in touch with

[00:51:43] okay so i have a website it's catherinerohan.com and the easiest email is Catherine at Catherine Roman.com Catherine is C A T H E R I N E R W A N oh brilliant thank you so so very much

[00:52:02] and we have a section called High Five India in which i will ask you five rapid fire questions and then you have to answer is that okay now then you get a high five and from my last person i

[00:52:16] interviewed david stoller said it's always supposed to be with right hand i'll give you a high five with the right hand in the end that's the reward so we're going to high five so india for you

[00:52:34] in one word you know the word that came was with mother and i think it's because of the way that i've been introduced to the the the goddesses we've been talking about and therefore i associate

[00:52:47] with a divine mother what is it that the western mindset doesn't get about the hindal system or philosophy well i think because there's a you know patriarchal viewpoint imposed on it that and because it's it's not understood that a lot of what we're talking about here is metaphorical

[00:53:13] teachings are metaphorical so there may be a tendency at least in the past in history to look at the stories to look at the art the paintings and take them literally rather than understand

[00:53:26] the symbolism in it so it brings to the question do you think hindu goddess is feminist to me they are the feminine so i suppose you could say that you could call them the ultimate

[00:53:40] feminists they are the feminine but because they are the feminine they wouldn't have a concept of feminists because feminist is something that comes from outside the feminine you have to be feminist to bring something back towards the feminine so it's more equal that you're

[00:53:55] talking about it's neither patriarchy nor feminism it's equal and complementary yeah well it's neither patriarchy nor matriarch it's not about anybody having power over somebody else it's about recognizing the different but equal contributions of masculine and feminine and to see them as gender-free concepts

[00:54:14] as well that we all all men or women have both the masculine and the feminine of course women or have the slightly more of the feminine in them that's how it's here what is the one thing that

[00:54:30] the world can learn and is lacking from the concepts that you have learned okay well i i do generally believe that dis invalidating the feminine dishonoring it not understanding

[00:54:46] it is the root cause of many of the world's issues not only the issues we have today with regard to gender but even if we take things like you know the problems we have with the environment

[00:55:01] the earth is generally taking the most systems feminine we're respecting the feminine we're respecting the interrelationship of all kinds of life which is part of the feminine philosophy then we wouldn't be out plundering the earth we'd be trying to keep things in balance

[00:55:18] and there's probably a lot more we could say on that one as well if we get into wars and conflict or anything else yes indeed um women for you so if we say that

[00:55:32] that women i think what women bring and what women are wired to bring is is a sort of life positive attitude i think i believe most women are focused that way generally it's not

[00:55:55] women that start wars and through bombs women are going to be much more concerned about life the children being healthy and everything else like nurture nurtures so women are wired to

[00:56:14] support the nurture life this would be sixth but i'll still ask i don't want you to leave people with one thought from your shiva shakti and tamthik philosophy that would rest their mind when they're in conflict or it could be also what rests your mind in conflict

[00:56:38] in conflicts okay so you could say a wonder or you could say any mantra that you use or anything okay well when we're in conflict and we've just talked about wars we have to remember that it's

[00:56:54] what's inside us we tend to project out what's inside us so the place to always go is inside when you're in conflict and this is what i've learned from these traditions that this is

[00:57:07] in these are inside these are danties and all their stories are talking about what's going on inside us you know internal wars that we fight the internal terrorists that we have

[00:57:20] we draw up our thoughts and our beliefs what we're being mean to ourselves um so when we're in conflict we look inside what are the two thought forms that are actually in conflict and how what do i

[00:57:34] need to do to sort of find the middle ground there so it's about solving it in a conflict rather than projecting it outside and blaming it outside on us how beautiful i think i could not

[00:57:49] have ended it better do you want to leave us with any mantra or that is uh well we can we there's loads of there's loads of and you do so many much yes so we could yeah well we've got

[00:58:03] kali here so we've got uh got yes the all kali in our heart it's a very very simple one yeah but shiva over there on the last shiva so we've got two the last one brilliant thank you

[00:58:17] very very much beautiful way to end it is not power is not about having it on the other or having other it is complementary masculine feminine their forms but they're also energies which are present

[00:58:35] in both men and women and they complement each other and understanding that and then doing a journey in words to see where we stand i think it is definitely a journey through the thoughts

[00:58:50] and conditionings of our life and that's what actually catering does and that's what a lot of us have to do so it's not about patriarchy or my or matriarchy of feminists or masculine it's about the beautiful energies that complement each other and make the world an equal place

[00:59:10] a balanced place balance something we are all doing every day trying to strike and living through it and that deserves a beautiful high five oh one more time one more time kathri oh there you are

[00:59:28] and on that beautiful note of high five we have to say that it's not about the masculine or the feminine or patriarchy or matriarchy men women in their forms complement each other and in their

[00:59:41] energies come pick a come as one and the journey really is for us to deal with conflicts more inward and then being in touch with the me and not letting that last it's a it's a tough task and it's

[00:59:55] definitely a balancing act but it's a balance it's the balance on which the universe stands and it also is our universe that is standing on it so please share your journey with me

[01:00:08] as they say like subscribe and follow if you can and that would be great so thank you take care and God bless listen to my podcast audio on apple spotify binge spots or wherever you get your

[01:00:23] podcast from and watch the video of the podcast on my youtube channel levina tundin new episode every sunday