Power and truth: The Four Faces of Woman

MANILA, Philippines – The history of women through the ages could well be the story of humanity. 

Australian and Chile-based author Caroline Ward chronicles her personal journey towards spiritual empowerment alongside other women’s stories in “The Four Faces of Woman” (O-Books, 2008). We realize that these stories do not simply resonate with the female population of the world, but also with every soul who has ever been in search for authenticity behind one’s being-in-the-world. 

As author Mike George avers in the book’s back cover, “The Four Faces of Woman” is not just about and for women, but equally for men. All of us wear the same faces and masks in our movement through life; how “in every man there is a woman, there is the feminine…the same underlying reasons why we distort and suppress our spiritual power.”

As the book narrates, we all have the face of the “divine feminine” in each of us, which sadly fades away in time. To wear back our face of original power, dignity and truth is what this journey for a meaningful life — as the book reminds — is ultimately all about. 

Ward has run “The Four Faces of Woman” workshops across the globe since the 1990s and compiled her learnings and insights in this honestly-written, self-reflective book. She invites us to ponder how every human soul goes on a personal voyage via the archetypal “4 faces/phases” in life.

Offering a framework for understanding the 4 faces as actual “phases,” the book helps us see how we are conditioned by external factors from childhood to early adulthood, how we rebel against this and, in the end, how we can reclaim our lost identity.

The Eternal Face: ‘I am’

The first is called the Eternal Face, defined as the “seed, essence, original form,” the voice of the innocent girl-child that is defined by internal awareness, free from outside expectations.

It is awake to itself, free from inhibitions, filled with awe and wonder, a playful, joyful, creative mind. In its sheer being of freedom and joy, it simply says, “I am.”

The Traditional Face: ‘I am who you say I am’

The second is the Traditional Face, the face of adaptation, conformity and protection.

It is the face dictated by rules, codes and conventions, by external moral authorities such as family, church, school and other structures and personalities that have set boundaries to protect the young one’s innocence and freedom.

Its mental chime says: “I am who you say I am,” and it is therefore externally defined. Its security lies in this conformity to set traditions. In Philippine literature and culture, the character Maria Clara in Jose Rizal’s novels, the obedient daughter, epitomizes the face of traditional woman. 

The Modern Face: ‘I am not who you say I am!’

The 3rd is the Modern Face, which is of resistance, reform and activism.

It is the face of disillusionment and anger over tradition and thus seeks out to overturn the existing rules to create its own. However, in its bid to resist the structures and strictures of the traditional face, it gets mired in feelings of anger and animosity that continue to bind the spirit.

It says, with indignation, “I am not who you say I am!”

The Shakti: ‘I access the power to be who I am’

The final of the faces is called Shakti, after a Sanskrit term that has 3 meanings — divine feminine, goddess and power.

It is the face of the spiritual in us, the impulse to self-change, to reflect and intuit the inner conscience. It is an awakening of our intention for renewal and transformation.

Free from the Traditional Face’s penchant for blind obedience and from the anger and animosity that trap the Modern Face, the Shakti comes from a deep knowing of its identity as a spiritual being. It has the ability to access the divine to empower itself physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Its script is, “I access the power to be who I am.”

Ward also offers tools, called the 8 spiritual powers, with which to claim the final face/phase of the Shakti, apparently the higher self in each one. Interestingly, each of the 8 powers has a corresponding goddess in the pantheon of Indian goddesses, not to mention a set of virtues they are especially known for, and which we can develop for ourselves as well.

This part of the book French artist Marie Binder illustrates with beautiful sketches of each archetypal goddess.

Achievement vs spiritual

Another thought-provoking contrast that Ward paints is the difference between the world’s “achievement model” — which says one must become somebody, one must attain self-development, one must “do” to achieve the best in life — and what she calls a “spiritual model.”

Ward asserts that the achievement model has given birth to a culture of hypercompetition that now dominates a “post-industrialized, patriarchal” world. What she offers instead is based on what she has learned as a seasoned facilitator and a meditation practitioner for over 15 years.

The spiritual model says, “I am that which I seek. Who I am is already good, if I can only be that more often.” It is through this method of cultivating self-awareness of one’s core values through a sustained meditation practice, that one is able to tune in to this often unheard voice inside.

New intelligences

Ward — in her book as well as in her workshops — also shares creative methods of bringing to fore what she calls “new intelligences,” or how the Shakti attains mastery of the Emotional, Spiritual and Creative Intelligence. In between anecdotes, Ward discusses how she employs the “feminine” arts such as beadwork, images and storytelling to help women get in touch with the divine in them.

Propelled by her own deep realizations following the experiences of losing a lover, of the subtle competition with male figures, including her father, of sustaining her positive vision for women and, mostly, of being affirmed by women across all sectors that she has met along the way, Ward draws the red thread across the book:

How each one has the power to go beyond the limits of conditioning through a sustained connection — which she calls meditation — with one’s self and the Divine Source. In her opening dedication, fittingly enough, she also refers to this Divine Source as her “Comforter of Hearts.” 

Ward’s narrative, and the men and women whose stories made it possible, is a testament to how embracing the numinous within each one is the unrecognized balm to heal many of humanity’s wounds, to finally unveil the original dignity behind all the masks we wear. – Rappler.com

 

(First published in The Point, Center for Spiritual Learning Newsletter, August 2012)

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