Surrender and Feminine Power

Article by Angela Fischer, February 2014

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.

-Lao Tzu

The power of the Feminine has become more present. She is returning to our consciousness. We get a glimpse of her from the corner of our eye. She is not quite here yet, but more and more women are turning towards her, seeking her, looking for ways to embody her again. We slowly begin to realize that we need her desperately. The earth is starving, humanity is starving, for the ways of the feminine to put an end to destruction and violence and desecration. We long for the return of the sacred. Slowly, at least in some parts of the world, women begin to enjoy to be women, to be grateful for a feminine body, to revalue the feminine ways of thinking and feeling and living.

Through these experiences which are given to an increasing number of women in the Western world, we are getting glimpses of what we have long forgotten: there is an incredible power in the Feminine that comes directly from the source of life. But when we consider feminine power, we tend to forget that our concept of power is shaped by a patriarchal view of masculine power. We can’t just translate masculine power into feminine power. Feminine power is different, completely different. They are both needed, and in wholeness they work together in a balanced way, as we so clearly learn from the Daoist tradition. But there is no wholeness and there can be no balance, if we try to bring together masculine power and a feminine power formed by a masculine concept.

What is missing?

We tend to overlook that there is no feminine power without surrender. In fact, surrender is an intrinsic part of feminine power. Surrender is the place where she is being born. Surrender is the mother of feminine power. If we want to allow the feminine to be embodied in ourselves, we need to surrender. We need to lie down and sink into what is the ultimate source of who we are and where we come from. We need to sink even deeper. Then we let go, then we can receive.

We cannot „do it“, cannot make it happen. Feminine power flows, like water. It cannot be shot like an arrow aiming at a target. The bow and the arrow, this is the beautiful quality of masculine power. Feminine power has no beginning and no end, it circulates, like water. But that does not mean it has no strength, far from it. Look at the water on earth, the oceans and the rivers. Look at our bodies, water keeps us alive.

The flowing water purifies, transforms, and heals. Feminine power flows between the worlds, communicates between them. To become like flowing water we need to surrender. Surrender to what is deepest in us – through giving ourselves completely to what is highest in us.

[Quote: Tao Te Ching 78, transl. by S. Mitchell]