What does it mean to turn to the source of life in oneself? If we were Muslims, we might turn towards Mecca. But this place is not a physical place, even though a physical place can symbolize it. It is a place of origin. It’s the headwaters of our soul, the place from which the pure water of life flows, something pure and holy within us.

 

In meditation or prayer, we can deliberately turn to this place and feel its purity and holiness. When we turn, we begin to return. We ascend in consciousness. Or we could look at it the other way, that we welcome the headwaters of our soul to descend into us. However we look at it, there is a joining, and we experience ourselves differently as that happens.

 

I know for me, and perhaps for you, there are times of profound longing and desire to touch that Reality and to share it as clearly as I can, allowing the essence of what I have touched to remain intact as it expresses through me.

 

Did you ever desire to share that part of yourself with another person? This is how it is sometimes for me: 

I don’t want to just talk about the latest dust-up in the social world around me. I don’t want to focus on the current craziness reported on the evening news. I want to share the currents that flow from the headwaters of our souls. I want to meet in the heaven of our Being.

What do we find in that place? And what wants to speak through us when we find it?

 

Here are two dimensions we find in the higher realms of consciousness: the Feminine Face of God and the Masculine Face of God—Mother God and Father God.

 

Mother God has been largely unseen and unknown in Western culture. There are biblical portrayals of Eve and Mother Mary. But God is most often seen as masculine. 

 

When Mother God shows herself through a human being, it is magnificent. Written by gospel songwriter James B. Coats in 1946, the song “The Sweetest Gift” portrays this. These words are from the lyrics:

 

She brought no silver, no pomp or style.

It was a halo bright sent down from heaven’s light,

The sweetest gift, a mother’s smile,

The sweetest gift, a mother’s smile. 

 

When Mother God shines down upon us through anyone, it is breathtaking and deeply moving. Life changes when you know you are loved in that way. You are enveloped in her, surrounded by her. You are made whole. 

 

When we return to the headwaters of our soul, we encounter Mother God. We commune with her. And we inherit the capacity to speak for her in the world, not so much in words but in the spirit we bring: 

You are mine. You belong to me. You are surrounded by me. You are precious.
I know who you are. I hold the unfoldment of your life. You are loved as one of my own. 

This is the bright halo sent down from heaven’s light through someone who lives from the headwaters of their soul. 

 

Returning to that place, we also know the masculine face of the Divine, Father God. This is the creative fire that makes all things, including us. It is the source of the radiation of transforming Love. From here, the authority—the divine authorship of the Creator—is known. It rules our soul with profound Love, and we are set free to be who we are. This is the Fire of Creation, which is not just a power or an energy. It is the Being of the Creation expressing itself through everything.

 

The expression and embodiment of the Divine Masculine is hard to find in the world. We long to know it and see it in other people, especially through men. That’s not surprising when you consider that it is a primal reality that creates us. It is the activating fire of our Being.

 

When human culture cannot find Divine Masculine in expression through people, it settles for something else—human beings expressing a distorted form of masculinity, devoid of the pure headwaters of Being. People settle on a self-serving, egoic form of masculinity.

How else do you explain the current world tendency to sleepwalk into autocracy—to adulate so-called strong men who seek to rule as dictators? And they are almost always men. It is mystifying. Though it is easy enough to see how one aberrant male could act like a dictator, it is bizarre that large segments of the human population applaud them while they do it.

 

And here is the reason. All people have an innate desire to know the true Father at the headwaters of their soul. If the reality of that is not embodied in the world they know, and if they are not wise enough to find it within themselves, they settle for an imposter. This is not the true authority of the Creator. It is the autocratic rule of a distorted, vacuous male.

 

So, what is the answer? When there are people who return to the headwaters of their soul, come to know Father God, and then express and embody him in their life, the world will stop settling for a counterfeit expression of masculinity.

 

Anyone can know this, regardless of gender. And until a sufficient number of people do, the world will continue to embrace autocratic men. If human culture can’t find the real thing, it will find some kind of counterfeit. If people don’t find the truth of Father God, they accept an aberrant, distorted version of human masculinity.

 

Imagine a world in which men begin to see and know all this. Imagine their expression of the Divine Masculine growing clearer and clearer and stronger and stronger. What might happen then? 

 

Imagine if women begin to have this experience, too. How might the world change?

 

This is the flaw in some versions of feminism that promote feminism alone as the solution for world civilization. If we don’t account for the appearance of Father God in that picture, something is missing, and people know it. And so, until people awaken to that great need, there can be a cultural reversion to aberrant male autocracy.

 

We are witnessing the rise of the feminine in our world, which has the promise of bringing wholeness and peace to humankind. But the seeds of its undoing are present in that movement if it doesn’t celebrate, at the same time, the emergence of the Divine Masculine in the world. 

 

We need the power and glory of the true Father, along with the expression and embodiment of Mother God. Can we acknowledge and honor that without being ignorant of the historical failings of men? Our honoring of the Divine Masculine shouldn’t overlook what tends to happen to men in our culture and the excesses and extremes men go to. And then, on the other side, there’s the vacuousness of men who don’t know the divine masculine within themselves or express it.

 

One of the most moving songs in the musical Les Misérables, sung by the character Valjean, is “Bring Him Home.” It includes these words: 

He is young,
He’s afraid,
Let him rest,
Heaven blessed.
Bring him home. 

Are these not the words of Father God to all men on the planet and, in fact, to all humankind? And who are they who can speak for Father God in the world? 

Bring him home.
Come home.

Only those who have come to the headwaters of their soul hear and know the voice of the Father as their own. Only such people can bring the halo bright from heaven’s light, the sweetest gift, the surrounding Love of Mother God.