The Four Faces of Woman - with Caroline Ward

The Four Faces of Woman – A Story

Chapter 1: The Eternal Face

What we once were, still are and will become again. Who we are at essence, our natural firstborn innocence and strength, lives eternally. It is authentic and real. There was a beautiful little girl. Her spirit shone like the multiple rays of the sun. Everyone delighted in her company; she was natural, free - the embodiment of joy itself. She trusted everyone and that trust was returned. When people met her, they could not help but smile spontaneously. She had the power to transform even the saddest of souls. This little girl's freedom was the freedom of Innocence. She seemed somehow fearless and very happily lived that way. She had no awareness of danger - no concept of what it meant to stay safe. Hers was a totally joyous life.

She was free. She was powerful. She was Innocence.

Chapter 2: The Traditional Face

Before too long, the adults who journeyed with her in life began to fear for the little girl's safety. And so they began to put up fences, invisible boundaries to keep the malicious ones at bay. They created rules and guidelines to keep her in and others out. They were determined to look after this precious gift of free spirit that had been entrusted to them. And the Innocent One grew. And where she had once delighted in the sweet chasing of a gentle breeze in an open field, or the precarious climbing of a gnarled and wise old tree of the forest, now she could no longer do as her spirit wished. The rules said that there were dark and unknown creatures of the forest and that the field was too open, leaving her too vulnerable and alone. She began to shrink in her being. And she grew. And the list of rules grew. But now, not all the rules were spoken or written. Sometimes there were things the Innocent One just knew. The traditions became law and the law was not to be broken. Soon everyone forgot the reason for the rules, but only remembered the rules themselves. With good intention they were stifling enough; without good intention, the rules became like a noose to strangle.

Now she was limited. She was bound. She was imprisoned.

Chapter 3: The Modern Face

The rules protected her from what was outside the rules. Now she could not help but remember the freedom, the long ago experience of unfettered delight, for this now not so innocent one there was great sorrow. She rebelled. She mustered her courage and held her vision of freedom. Alone or together with others, she created revolutions, took up causes and crusades and desperately fought to regain her half remembered freedom, but the struggle became the prison itself. This she did not see. For the first time in such a long time she felt relief. At least she didn't have to follow those senseless rules anymore. Indeed, she began to make up rules herself. New rules, modern rules. Rules that kept the past out. Rules that denied the old traditions. Boundaries of separation and distaste. She erected walls of hatred. And thought she was free. And she was not. She had created a revolution revolving back to where she began. She had built her own prison. But she was blind to the bars she had welded.

She was lost.

Chapter 4: The Face of the Shakti

And when she was a very, very tired woman, when she couldn't be any more lost than she was, any more desperate or hopeless, it was then she was truly ready. Only then did her ego allow her to listen to the quiet Voice of Innocence and to feel in the stillness the Power of that Innocence. At the point when all seemed completely without purpose, purpose was revealed. She began to let go of her bitterness. She began to seek light instead of resigning to the darkness. As the not so innocent one rose tentatively from her shadow, she reached out beyond anything she consciously knew and began to ask her questions. Who am I? Who is God? What is the meaning of my life?

And so she awakened, and began the journey back to herself and to god. She discovered that her greatest strength now was her ability to see her different faces as they emerged… to see without judgment, to see with compassion and with detachment. And with these new found powers, step by step, she re-encountered the Divine within herself, she recognized that same divinity in those around her. She finally understood that her capacity to surrender was not meant for human beings, but for her to yield to the Light, to wrap herself in the universal divinity that goes by many names and needs no name; to remember the time, her part and her wisdom and offer it to humanity’s renewal. It was the time of the Great Turning and she began to remember that she and many others like her are always called at this time to hold the beauty and power of the Divine Feminine here on earth, to bring the energy of the Immortal One to reawaken the hearts of humanity.