copyright Bela Johnson, published by Inner Tapestry, February/March 2003

What are our values? Webster defines a value as "that which is desirable or worthy of esteem FOR ITS OWN SAKE" (italics mine). How do we honor and safeguard these estimable qualities we hold dear? Do we allow others to substitute their value system for our own deeply cherished ideals? If we are to access the Divine Feminine within, our Wisdom Self, it is important to stand back and reflect on our values, rather than analyzing or rationalizing them. Values are deeply held feelings, and may not make logical sense in a self serving culture which implores us to submerge creativity and intuition so that the shiny consumerist machine may continue to surface and demand our attention. The feminine reflective process is crucial for both men and women to discover whether old values truly hold meaning for them or merely echo more of others' cherished beliefs than their own (parents, respected peers, institutions). And though discerning where the values of others have superceded our own is a process, Toltec healer Don Miguel Ruiz gives us tools to free ourselves of this spell in his book, THE FOUR AGREEMENTS.

Feeling the need to justify our values within the context of a rapidly changing world can lead to disintegration of their deep, personal worth. Surviving and thriving though change is part of the human experience. Maintaining our personal values in the face of change can be challenging. We all want acceptance, but at what cost? At what point do we sell our souls? In SACRED CONTRACTS, Caroline Myss traces this soul-selling to our inner Prostitute, an archetype she maintains we all relate to, from time to time. Reflecting on our values requires that we allocate daily time during which we calm our mental chatter in order to make room for the voice of the Wisdom Self. This can be done by simply sitting and quieting ourselves in meditation, breathing through the colors of the rainbow from red to violet to clear the CHAKRAS or energy centers of the body, or any other creative means to draw focus to our inner, rather than outer life.

If we postpone reflective time in favor of simply fending off the discomfort arising from such musings, we may find ourselves moving into addictive patterns or toward substances which distract us from our inner world. Before we know it, we might automatically begin reverting to old values which no longer serve our choice to live more consciously. Effective personal growth takes place when we bring our desires and intentions into conscious awareness. When brought to the surface through our reflections, these deeply held values are what help to produce an enriching and satisfying existence. Again, values are a FELT thing, not something we can intellectualize. I know it may seem obvious, but time and again I have been asked the question, in one form or another, "What is a feeling?" This might best be answered by clarifying what a feeling is NOT. A feeling is not a thought. If we are thinking our feelings, we are not feeling them. And if we are not in touch with our feelings, our values are lost in the mainstream intellectualism so prevalent in current times.

Our feeling function, our capacity to relate to one another and communicate, our sensitivity to the feelings of others - all of these are thought to be "feminine" traits. The energy of the masculine, on the other hand, carries creativity into expression and form in the world, as well as protecting and supporting the more vulnerable feminine qualities of the self. Jungian Marion Woodman speaks to this right relationship of masculine and feminine in her many works on conscious femininity, and states that conscious masculinity cannot emerge until we integrate the feminine in a conscious way. All human beings are composed of both YIN (feminine) and YANG (masculine). In our own culture and now the industrialized world, a driven patriarchy holds sway. This is detrimental both to the feminine as well as the masculine within us. Our relationships have become top-heavy, headstrong, intellect-oriented. What will hold us together, then, if our deepest feelings are denied, if love is only a word spoken from the mind rather than felt from the heart? In THE FISHER KING AND THE HANDLESS MAIDEN, Jungian Robert Johnson speaks to the wounded feeling function in Western human beings, and says, "An Eskimo probably would die of clumsiness if he had only one word for snow; we are close to dying of loneliness because we have only one word for love."

In our driven society, we have lost reflective time and are challenged to reclaim it. Our work, threatened by corporate takeovers and downsizing, can become all-consuming. We schedule our children, schedule our friends. We are even encouraged to schedule lovemaking, in order to "keep that spark" in our intimate relationships. But sharing our bodies with another when we have lost heartfelt desire is yet another symptom of how wounded our feeling selves have become. Many of us come home from work exhausted, eat quickly to fill a void, and zone out on television, not realizing the full impact of the images we consider to be "entertaining." As these images register deep within our bodies, and we can be sure they do, we become numb to violence, both outwardly as well as inwardly. We lose respect for our bodies, for the physical well being of others. Our frantic pace means fast food, fast travel and fast relationships. We are too tired and spent to allocate valuable time for discussion, to work out our inevitable disagreements, and often the solution to this lack of communication is to dissociate and attack "the other." We polarize and see that other as "enemy," whether it is our life partner, our rebellious teenager, our boss, or another government. This is a no-win situation, where both feminine as well as masculine are devalued. There is no "relationship," our values are lost.

In an odd way, we can thank Dan Quayle and his notorious family values speech aired during the 1992 presidential campaign where he verbally attacked TV's fictional single mother, Murphy Brown. Since then, we've been hearing a lot about the degradation of our values, particularly the family variety. Yet although it might appear that we've lost a more sentimental version of home and family suggested by old television shows such as OZZIE AND HARRIET, perhaps we are, in a circuitous way, moving toward more authentic relationships. As each of us becomes aware of a deeper need to reconnect to the Wisdom Source within, we become clearer on what our values represent. If we honor our feelings around these values and set our priorities accordingly, more genuine and heartfelt perspectives emerge. Deeper communication is possible, as we begin to share more meaningfully. Our relationships become tinged with deeper hues of feeling.

In order to enrich our life perspectives and deepen our values, we need creative solutions, need to honor the voice of the Wisdom Self. In WALKING IN THIS WORLD, artist Julia Cameron offers that, "Creativity is inspiration coupled with initiative." This is yet another affirmation that we need both our feminine feeling values as well as our masculine action principle to initiate creative solutions to ANY problem. She recommends we access this creative energy through quiet walks in Nature, along with other introspective practices. As winter encourages us to slow down and move inward, perhaps we can benefit from pondering the words of poet William Wordsworth:

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings,
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous form of things
We murder to dissect.
Enought of science and of art:
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.