In terms of leadership, I’m not that interested in someone’s gender. I’m interested in their wholeness. Just because someone identifies as female doesn’t mean they’re working on behalf of the “Divine Feminine”.
If more females are moving into positions of so-called power but they’re operating on the patriarchal mindset, then it’s hardly progress. It’s only adding to the illusions and confusion around what power and equality really mean.
Side note #1: I think “patriarchal” and “mindset” should always be used as a phrase. Used on its own, the term patriarchy can trigger brushstroke judgments that anyone with a penis is a patriarchal a**hole. The patriarchal mindset is not gender-specific, it’s a paradigm that can corrupt anyone, at any age, from almost any culture.
Side note #2: I’m coming across more and more men who are heart-led and working for gender equality (which makes them Feminists). With strong spines of direction and ambition, and with profoundly tender attentiveness, these men are embodying wholeness. We are all going to reap the rewards of that brave love.
Back the to the Divine Feminine and its understandable misinterpretations… Being Divinely Feminine is not just about being in a goddess dancing circle, calling on Goddess Kali, or being super orgasmic. (Because you can do/be all of those things and get way out of balance.) And the Divine Feminine sure ain’t about being the first female president, dean, or CEO of anything. Ranking high in a broken system doesn’t necessarily make you a heroine of feminism — tho’ it very well could, and women’s history is abundant with those true pioneers.
The “divine” in Divine Feminine is about wholeness. It’s where The Great Father and The Great Mother merge. And that divine union then expresses itself through a feminine-energy vehicle, upholding and emphasizing the core qualities of the feminine.
So first the integration of the masculine and the feminine has to happen, for the truly Divine Feminine to come into form. And then that wholeness expresses itself in predominately womanly ways. Feminine + masculine union gets communicated in the language of “feminine”. (OR… if you identify as a dude devoted to wholeness, then it’s Feminine + masculine union being communicated in the language of “masculine”.) Two ideas merge, and then they express themselves in a specific way.
The Divine Feminine is the warrior and the healer… in a womanly package.
The Divine Feminine is justice and mercy… carried out with grace. It’s economics and the arts… that nurtures the entire community.
I’m direct and I love the hunt of opportunities — these are characteristically masculine qualities. I’m deeply intuitive and nurturing — innately feminine qualities. When I’m at my best, I express all of these qualities in my all-woman ways. My delivery is compassionate and often softly spoken; my business operates on a triple bottom line, and I want everyone to be well fed — even if that means I have to share my own food. That’s on a good day, of course, when I can say that I am BEING the Divine Feminine.
As feminist Germaine Greer put it, “The opposite of paternity isn’t maternity, it’s fraternity.” @DanielleLaPorte (Click to Tweet!)
Wholeness. Without that internal meeting, that creation of LOVE within us, we’re just playing a gender game. The Divine Feminine isn’t a lady label that you see with your eyes — it’s a way of being that can only be seen with the intelligence of the heart.
Danielle LaPorte is the creator of The Desire Map: A Guide To Creating Goals With Soul — the book that turned into a day planner system, a top iTunes app, and an international workshop program. A Desire Map workshop happens every weekend somewhere in the world. Author of The Fire Starter Sessions and the wildly popular #Truthbomb series, Danielle is also the co-creator of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan and co-host of the Beautiful Writer’s Group podcast.
Entrepreneur Magazine calls her “equal parts poet and entrepreneurial badass…edgy, contrarian…loving and inspired.” A speaker, poet, former business strategist and Washington-DC think tank exec, she writes weekly at DanielleLaPorte.com, where over four million visitors have gone for her straight-up advice — a site that’s been deemed “the best place online for kick-ass spirituality,” and was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes. The Huffington Post named her Twitter feed as one of the “12 of Wisest Twitter Accounts Worth Following.” You can find her @daniellelaporte just about everywhere.
