10.3.24 | Sukie Colegrave: Uniting Heaven and Earth | Part I of II (Free Reading Discussion)

Today and in the decades ahead, life on our planet faces a crucial juncture. Over the course of the last millennia, the rising dominance of masculine values, such as reason, domination, and hierarchy, has diminished the feminine realms of intuition, creativity, imagination and emotion. The natural world and the natural self have both yielded to the relentless drive for technological control. It is now clear that this imbalance robs our culture and our lives of their full richness and worse, imperils the quality of life even as we seek to improve it.

How did this psychic and cultural one-sidedness evolve? And how can we redress the imbalance before the damage becomes irrevocable? Drawing on her subtle understanding of Chinese philosophy and mythology, Sukie Colegrave charts the historic emergence of masculine consciousness out of the original, undifferentiated oneness that many believe characterized the prehistoric, preconscious periods of social life.

Uniting Heaven and Earth addresses an essential task of our time — reintegrating the feminine spirit into both consciousness and culture so that we may recapture that vital harmony but on a higher level that embodies our full awareness. Until we restore this balance, we, as individuals, remain prisoners of the need to find wholeness through institutions, ideologies, and relationships, while our culture threatens to devastate the natural world.

This work draws on the author’s extensive knowledge of archaeology, mythology, Chinese philosophy, as well as the ideas of Freud, Jung,  Erich Neumann, and Rudolf Steiner to create a provocative blending of Eastern and Western perspectives that offers dramatic relevance to our time.