The Forgotten Feminine Within and Among Us

For much of my life, I imagined God as somewhere above me.

Beyond the clouds. Beyond the stars. Beyond this beautiful, complicated world.

Like many of us raised within the Western tradition, I inherited an image of the Divine that was overwhelmingly transcendent; holy, majestic, and other.

Yet over the years another question quietly emerged.

Where is the Divine that lives within creation?

Where is the wisdom that breathes through forests and rivers, through birth and grief, through the body, through the ordinary tenderness of daily life?

Where is the face of God that dwells here?

Long before I encountered Anne Baring's writings, I found myself drawn toward this ancient image of the indwelling Divine.

The Shekinah.

In Jewish mystical tradition, the Shekinah is the Divine Presence that inhabits creation. Anne Baring describes her as restoring a forgotten image of spirit; not a God removed from the world, but a sacred presence that lives within it, uniting heaven and earth in one seamless reality.

When I first read those words, I felt something unexpected. Not discovery.

Recognition.

Not because I had discovered something new. Because I had remembered something ancient. I began to wonder whether humanity's deepest wound was not simply the forgetting of the feminine. Perhaps we had forgotten something even more fundamental. We had forgotten that the world itself is alive. That spirit lives within matter. That creation is not separate from its Creator.

When the world becomes merely an object, forests become timber.

Rivers become resources.

Animals become commodities.

People become consumers.

Even our own bodies become machines to manage rather than living expressions of soul.

What if the Great Mother is not asking to be worshipped? What if she is asking to be remembered? Not as another deity. But as the living presence that continually births creation through relationship.

As I have lived with this question, I have found myself returning to another great mystic.

Teresa of Ávila.

Her masterpiece, The Interior Castle, imagines the soul as a luminous castle with many rooms. We spend much of our lives wandering the outer chambers, believing the sacred lies somewhere beyond us. Yet Teresa insists that the deepest chamber already contains the Divine Presence. The journey is not outward but inward; not toward acquiring God, but toward awakening to the One who has always dwelt within.

When I first encountered Teresa's vision, I was struck by its familiarity. Her language is different from mine. She speaks of Christ. I speak of the Great Mother. Yet both seem to point toward the same mystery. The source we seek has never been absent. It has been patiently waiting within us.

Over time, I have come to wonder whether these are not competing images but complementary ones. The Shekinah reminds us that the Divine dwells within creation. Teresa reminds us that the soul is already the dwelling place of God. The Great Mother reminds us that all life emerges through relationship. Together they reveal something that has become increasingly alive for me.

Perhaps it is the heart that is the gateway, the meeting place. Not because it belongs to any one tradition. But because it is where transcendence and immanence embrace.

Where heaven touches Earth.

Where the Infinite chooses intimacy.

This has also changed how I understand Jesus or Yeshua.

As a young adult, I understood Yeshua primarily as someone to follow. Today I still honor him deeply. But I also find myself drawn to what his life revealed. Not simply the uniqueness of one extraordinary human being. But the possibility of a humanity fully awake to and in relationship with Divine Love.

The past few years I have been studying the Aramaic teachings of Yeshua through the work of Neil Douglas-Klotz, I have found myself hearing familiar passages in an entirely new way.

Language does more than communicate ideas. Language shapes consciousness. It shapes what people can perceive. It shapes culture itself.

In Aramaic, many of the sharp divisions that have become familiar to the modern Western mind simply do not exist. The same word can point simultaneously inward and outward. The same breath moves through body and spirit. The same reality is experienced within the individual and among the community.

Douglas-Klotz notes that the Aramaic preposition beth carries both meanings: within and among. When Yeshua speaks of the Malkuta—traditionally translated as the Kingdom of Heaven—the same expression can be understood as being both within us and among us. The inner and outer are not separate realities but two expressions of the same living field.

This has profoundly changed the way I hear one of Yeshua's most beloved teachings.

"The Kingdom of God is within you."

Perhaps it is equally true that it is among us. Not because there are two meanings. Because there is only one Relationship.

The Divine is not hidden inside isolated individuals. Nor is it only somewhere beyond us. It is continually arising in the living field between us.

I have also become fascinated that the Aramaic word Malkuta is grammatically feminine.

For me, this is not simply a linguistic curiosity. It has become a contemplative doorway. For centuries we have imagined kingdoms as places of hierarchy, domination, conquest, and rule. But what if Yeshua was inviting his listeners into something far more organic? What if the Malkuta is less like an empire...and more like a womb? Less about domination. More about participation. Less about authority imposed from above. More about life continually being born from within.

The Shekinah reminds me that the Divine dwells within creation.

Teresa reminds me that the soul already carries an inner sanctuary.

The Quechua remind me that life is sustained through ayni—sacred reciprocity.

The forest reminds me that every living being flourishes through mutual relationship.

Each tradition seems to illuminate a different facet of the same mystery. A seed cannot blossom without the dark generosity of the soil. Roots must descend before branches can reach toward the light.

Perhaps this is why the Great Mother has become, for me, such a compelling image, because she reminds me of the fertile ground from which life continually emerges.

The One who receives.

The One who nourishes.

The One who patiently whispers, "Come home."

Then something extraordinary begins to happen. The heart opens. Not because we force it open. But because it has finally found its roots.

There is one place where Teresa's vision and my own contemplative journey seem to meet in a particularly beautiful way.

Again and again I find myself writing about creating the conditions for life to unfold. Teresa spends seven mansions describing how the soul gradually becomes spacious enough for the Divine Presence to be consciously received.

The forest creates the conditions for life through reciprocity.

The mycelium creates the conditions for water to be held.

The womb creates the conditions for new life.

The heart creates the conditions for love.

None of them manufacture life.

They prepare the vessel.

Perhaps the heart is less like a castle—and more like a forest. Or perhaps it is both. A castle whose innermost chamber opens into a living forest. Where an ancient spring rises quietly from the earth. Where the mycelium waits patiently beneath the soil, weaving relationships no eye can fully see. Where roots descend as branches reach toward heaven. Where every living thing participates in a generosity far older than itself.

Perhaps this is what Teresa discovered in the deepest mansion. Not an escape from the world. But the realization that God had been present all along.

Perhaps this is what the Kabbalists glimpsed in the Shekinah. The Divine dwelling within creation.

Perhaps this is what the Quechua have long practiced through ayni. That life flourishes through reciprocal relationship.

And perhaps this is what the Great Mother has been whispering to me through my own contemplative journey.

Not another doctrine. Not another certainty. Simply an invitation.

Become still enough to remember that the Source you seek is already seeking you from within.

Perhaps the forgotten feminine is not simply the return of an ancient image of God. Perhaps it is the remembering that Divine Love has never been absent from the world. It has always lived; within the soil, within the forest, within the river, within the body, within the soul—waiting patiently for us to enter our own Interior Castle and discover that, at our center, we are not alone.