*The Path to Women's Empowerment

Today’s empowered woman feels great and I am no exception. Depending upon how we honor our feminist foremothers, we’ve learned to be secure about being single, single mother-dom, or asking the butcher for a single chicken breast. During the last 30 years, Empowered Female evolved into a voting block and an impressive entrepreneurial force, dramatically influencing consumer behavior. On the home front, we can love the men in our life without losing our authentic self in the process and pretty much do as we please. I never take these choices for granted. As my mother’s daughter, I realize the great privilege of these powerful opportunities, having grown up as a witness to her lack of voice in our household, in a time and family structure where women were viewed as less important than men.

However, experiencing empowering conditions, either on or off the world stage, and living it as a truth, is different than teaching it. Sure, modeling empowered behavior for next generation of young women means we must teach them to craft the universe any way they see fit. Under our watchful tutelage, these empowered young-things are groomed to think independently and engage in a bit of rule breaking to institute change. With such uncorking, women will continue to manifest competence in the global arena and in their personal lives too, finding ways to claim their gifts more vigorously.

With all this momentous power, women are deliciously full of themselves, like overripe peaches. (I once had a friend who talked about opening a ranch for kids for almost 20 years straight – she always reminded me of a passionate, overripe tomato, ready to burst.) Peaches or tomatoes, if our energy is directed well, and in conjunction with Spirit, our state of empowerment will become the next community and world service impact point.

But lately, I’ve sensed a tremendous need to empower women who challenge us to reach even farther out of our comfort zone to get the message across. American women who miss the memo that they are enough just as they are but got sidetracked with addictions or bad relationships. Teen mothers who stay behind in domestic violence scenarios because they have children to feed and nowhere else to hide. Women who need to know they are composed of infinite, unlimited divine substance. They need help believing they are unlimited because they can be nothing else.

For these women who are closer than our backyards, what happens when we illuminate their path of empowerment? A little navigation translates into endless possibility because they can embrace the truth of their divine nature. We can teach them to do better than survive, moving from homelessness toward economic autonomy and self-sufficiency. With our help, they can learn to love themselves so deeply and completely that they become “self ful-filled” despite how many sleepless nights two jobs and two breastfeeding babies bring. We can show them how to go beyond what was expected, grasp life by the wheel and drive the bus, no longer satisfied by being a passenger but to lead others with love.

Ernest Holmes, who wrote The Science of Mind, once said realizing that all action starts in and is a result of consciousness prepares your mind to receive the best that life has to offer. When we become increasingly aware of the one presence and one spirit binding us, we are able to drop all limitation from our purview. I believe that is where we muster the courage to put our divine nature at the top of the daily menu and choose to live abundant lives of meaning. It’s the place where we learn to trust life again, not settling for an ordinary, peripheral existence. The space we accept our own divinity is where we grow, no matter what side of the fence we live on.

This is why The Goddess Network has chosen to partner with Lighthouse PATH, a shelter for homeless women and children, to make these ideas accessible. Last year, I developed the seven spiritual lessons in Let Your Goddess Grow into a 7-week internet show they participated in from their residence. I met with these women once a week in a live session. These beautiful souls, who searched for independence and ways to turn on the positive thinking channel, linked with people like you who were searching for the same. By connecting the homeless and others who participated in the workshops and tele-classes across the nation, we learned to expand our minds to manifest new realities. It reminded us we are all One Spirit – just in different stages of realization. And we realized that our purpose, as teachers, is to invite hope that empowerment is not just around the corner – it’s already there if we allow it.

Feel full of yourself, as Patricia Lynn Reilly reminds us, but remember to share some of your essence with those who need to be where you are now. The homeless and those in seemingly challenging circumstances may be beginning to see themselves as the gift to the world and simply do not yet know it. In any way possible, please lend your support for the Empowered Female Yet To Come. Let’s pull each other higher, until we can no longer see the ground. To this vision, let our collective voices pay tribute to our past, yet let our actions, as Ernest suggested, be a way to experience an unlimited, empowered state, filled with love of Self. This will always surpass what we think of our individual capabilities. I have no doubt we can accomplish this together, as long as we do so with wisdom and love.

© The Goddess Network, Inc. and Charlene M. Proctor, Ph.D. 2007. All Rights Reserved. See http://www.thegoddessnetwork.com/connect.php?page=eshow for more empowering thoughts! Register for The E-Show, a series of enlightening lectures!