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Women Are ‘Woke’

November 16, 2017 By Ayesha

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

It’s fitting that a woman would single-handedly give birth to a new era of ‘wokeness’ because for women, being ‘woke’ is our birthright. It is a form of power.

When we say “stay woke”, we issue a command to be alert, and aware of the systemic injustices taking place around you– even if they don’t affect you, just yet. In this dramatic age of un-innocence, ‘stay woke’ has become the rallying cry of the zeitgeist— a trending reminder that we should all be obliged to be the change we wish to see.

Stay woke.

And even though millennials put a hashtag in front of it, sold it on a t-shirt and made it cool— we didn’t create it.

We’d have to go back to 1962—when ‘woke’ first appeared in a New York times article by black novelist William Melvin Kelly— in which he writes, “If you’re woke, you dig it.”

Ten years later, in 1972, the term appears in a play called “Garvey Lives” during which a character says, “I been sleeping all my life and now that Mr. Garvey don’ woke me up I’m gon’ stay woke.”

And then, during the eighties, nineties and the aughts, as we transition from funk to hip hop to neo-soul— woke takes a nap, that is, until 2008, when a woman single-handedly revives the term and its cultural relevance.

On February 26th 2008, the same day that former candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would debate in Ohio, Erykah Badu releases an album called New Amerykah– her soulful meditation on community, poverty, urban violence, identity and cultural complacency —all of the themes that would resonate in the decade to follow.

And in one Song, Master Teacher— an ode to her search for a beautiful world, Erykah repeats ‘I stay woke’ for much of the duration of that 7 minute song.

It’s fitting that a woman would give birth to a new era of ‘wokeness’– or consciousness, because for women, being woke is more than a hashtag.

For womankind, being ‘woke’ is our birthright. It is a form of power.

The world often defines women, whether to our benefit or detriment, by our capacity to mother— that is, our miraculous ability to carry, deliver and sustain life. Rarely do we consider how this creative capacity, rooted in the most instinctive division of labor by sex— extends beyond the domestic sphere.

We ‘mother’ more than children. We give life to communities, movements, and cataclysmic social change in ways that are often quiet and unsung. In fact, our capacity to ‘mother’ outside of the home has been one of the most dramatic social forces history has ever seen— though rarely acknowledged.

Women’s movements follow a common pattern. Whether it is protesting the price of bread, organizing for the end of a brutal civil war as women successfully did in Liberia, or using the hashtag #MeToo to dismantle the silent culture of sexual abuse, women unite and incite cataclysmic change whenever their ability to preserve and sustain life appears to be under attack.

This fascinating history of powerful female collective action is often misunderstood and overlooked—relegated to the anecdotes, the footnotes and the margins of our pages. Still, it is precisely in those marginalized spaces where we work our magic. In living rooms, beauty parlors, porches and stoops. In unexpected spaces, women gather to activate their social networks and spark social change.

We all know about Rosa Parks, the woman who refused to stand on the bus. Less is known about the Women’s Political Council, the small civic group of women who actually called for the Montgomery Bus Boycott— and then, using their homes as headquarters, organized the communication and arranged the carpools that made the movement sustainable.

We may always wax poetic about the words from King’s ‘How Long, Not Long’ speech—but we rarely mention Amelia Boynton Robinson, the woman who brought king and the SCLC to Selma to campaign for voting rights, and made her home headquarters for the planning and execution of the march.

The truth is, our modern playbook for grassroots organization, used by politicians and activists today, was quietly crafted by women–over thousands of years.

We index the rise of womankind by the number of women holding political office or residing in the C-suite. We applaud those who lean in, and while this kind of progress is of critical importance, we must also acknowledge the powerful current ignited when women stand up— together.

By placing human need above politics, and human life above property and profit, female ‘wokeness’ inspires a new vision for society that has yet to appear.

Our society sleeps on this ‘wokeness’ but our consciousness is more significant than ever.

We live in a frightening world of increasing extremes— a world where global warming, poverty, diminishing natural resources, terrorism, misogyny, bigotry and xenophobia are ever increasing threats to human life. It’s important that women awaken to their own power, not just as sustainers of individual life— but as defenders and protectors of humanity. And we, as a culture, must begin the dialogue about incorporating this form of ‘motherhood’ into our communities, our politics and organizational culture as the appropriate counter-balance to power as we’ve come to know it.

xo,

Ayesha

Cardi B. and the Art of the Come-Up

October 16, 2017 By Ayesha

The meteoric rise of current belle du jour, Cardi B., is being cast as a modern day fairytale. But is her astonishing come-up from dancer/Instagram fame to the A-list the work of a fairy godmother, or a woman on a mission? That’s the thing about women, people are always underestimating us, and that almost always works to our advantage. History is filled with women like Cardi B., women who suddenly rose from obscurity into the stratosphere– women like Cora Pearl, Josephine Baker, and even Dita Von Teese. The truth is every woman has the power to live the life of her dreams, but before we step foot on the world’s stage, we first have to recognize this power within ourselves. In this video I explore these fascinating come-up stories and identify exactly what it takes to engineer your own destiny.

Dating One Man at a Time is a Terrible Idea

August 24, 2017 By Ayesha

Why is any single woman in 2017 still dating one man?

It is a riddle for the ages.

At a time when women have unprecedented autonomy and access to the opposite sex, we still commit to men who are not committed to us– effectively placing ourselves on the losing end of the negotiation that we call romance.

I thought about this in the aftermath of ABC’s historic season of The Bachelorette as I watched womankind rally behind the losing suitor, a man who oozed passion and charm, but refused to bend a knee. In the end, bachelorette Rachel Lindsay chose the man willing to propose, over the man willing to promise– and women were offended.

I get it. Some of us have a real weakness for promises.

After all, promises are the strips of scotch tape that hold flimsy relationships together. When coupled with passion, they will keep a woman physically and emotionally committed to a man who is unwilling to reciprocate. Promises are kindling for situationships-– fuel for the virtual harems that have become the norm in this hi-tech age of un-innoncence.

Forget reality tv– in reality, there are women who choose promises (and pillow talk) over power– every single day.

The Last Supper

My former lover thought I was one of those women.

I know because he invited me to dinner, not once, but three times about a month after our liason had flat-lined. I politely declined.

Maybe another time.

Our situation, after all, had ended in an ellipses…polite communication punctuated by extended periods of his absence. And when I discovered that he’d taken interest in another woman– I made peace with the ordeal and quietly moved on.

But after his fourth offer, I caved. Perhaps it was his persistence, or my own fatal curiosity, but on a random weeknight in summer, I found myself anointing my pulse points in Chanel and wiggling into a blue dress that hugged my curves like an Audi on the Audubon.

We met at a restaurant where the most delicious power struggle ensued.

He was an attractive, older man with oceanic eyes and sandy, leonine locks that like him, resisted being tamed, but on that night, they were bridled by a taut black headband, and he’d swapped his usual graphic tee for a crisp button-down shirt.

He greeted me like we were long-time lovers, and gallantly reached for my chair. He even caressed my fingers from across the table as he swan dove into my eyes, telling me everything he thought I might like to hear. He had been busy with work, so busy there hadn’t been any time for romance–with anyone. But he would make it up to me in the Fall. He promised.

At the suggestion of a future date, I smiled, and took to his ego like a butter knife to bread.

I told him how grateful I was for all he’d done for me. I assured him that he would always have a special place in my heart (this is true). I told him he was so smart, sexy and successful that I knew he could have any woman he wanted.

But right now, I said just as his chest began to swell, I want to be with a man who adores me. A man who is serious about me. A man with whom I can travel and enjoy life. A man I can respect. A man who respects me.

And right now— that’s not you.

I reached for my water glass, and politely changed the subject.

He spent the rest of the night shifting in his seat, searching for the perfect comeback–casting rhetorical lassos that failed to ensnare.

As exhilarating as it was to offer my cheek as he leaned in for a parting kiss, that encounter was not about revenge. It was about power.

His sudden rebound had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with his ego. He was the kind of man who needed the reassurance of knowing that his charm had been so intoxicating– so virile and strong– that I’d be spellbound, even in his absence. He was like a bull in a china shop– let lose, he would break every beautiful thing in his path.

He wanted me in his harem– that is, he wanted me, the woman he was seeing, and anyone else who caught his fancy at the same damn time. This is how harems are formed– around men who offer just enough passion and promise to keep women physically and emotionally invested.

I had to give it to him– he was good at what he did. But I was nobody’s concubine.

You might win some… but you just lost one. – Lauryn Hill

A Woman’s Right to Choose

Some of us want butterflies and nothing less. Some of us need fire, even at the risk of getting burned. And maybe our partiality to men who fuel our deepest fantasies offers some insight into why modern dating is the way it is– and that is nothing like Mother Nature planned it.

We find bands of women in these informal harems of lovers, ex-lovers and friends, their love lives more-or-less mirroring episodes of The Bachelor, when women are biologically predestined to be The Bachelorette. We were designed to have options.

The closer women get to real power, the more they cling to the idea that they are powerless.”- Hanna Rosin

The power of choice is our birthright.

That’s not a feminist mantra. That is scientific fact.

To understand our enormous power, we must first understand how humans came to exist.

At the dawn of humankind, in a small region of East Africa surrounding Lake Victoria, our predecessors, Homo erectus females, were dying in catastrophic numbers. The cause— an anatomical bottleneck. The growing brain size placed expecting mothers in grave peril, as the struggle to push a large head through a narrow birth canal often resulted in the death of both mother and child*.

And then natural selection came along with an adaptation that gave rise to homo sapiens— and the most powerful female primate on the planet.

A random genetic mutation did away with estrus, the recurring period of sexual receptivity in female primates also known as “heat”. In our evolution from estrus to menses, females gained the power to override their neurological circuitry and the commandment of potent sex hormones. She now could have sex at any time of her cycle, and she gained the ability to choose when, if and with whom she mated.

The power to postpone sex gave women a significant sexual advantage over men. Women came to understand that childbirth could mean death, and developed the foresight to select the best mate— a man who was not only handsome and virile, but generous and willing to help mother and child survive the deadly parturition, infancy, child and young adulthood.

With this new adaptation, homo sapien males needed more than good looks and hard-ons to get it on. Now, they had to woo women— and our earliest male ancestors did this by offering protection, commitment, and the iron rich meat that women so desperately needed. That means, ancestral men literally risked life and limb going into battle with wild animals– just to gain access to female sex.

This evolutionary tale is critical in understanding the dissonance between male and female desire that began at the dawn of our species. When Mother Nature gave women veto power over sex, for the first time in primate history, males and females desired different things. Men were after sex; women, a long term investment in the safety and well-being of she and her children. This dissonance would forever force the two sexes into complicated negotiations in order to establish the terms and conditions of mutual sex. Today we call this negotiation dating.

Date, Mate, & Negotiate

If dating is a negotiation where men and women are establishing the terms and conditions of sex, then all too often women fail to petition for their interests.

We know that the party with the most options, the one most willing to walk, has the upper hand– but our cultural attitudes about femininity, sexuality and fidelity, in particular our unique practice of “slut-shaming” , systemically encourages women to act against their own self-interests.

Instead we settle for the intangibles— things like attention, hope and validation— for which, in exchange, we give our most precious resources— our energy, our emotional labor, our power, our bodies, and perhaps most significantly, our time.

A dame that knows the ropes isn’t likely to get tied up. – Mae West

She’s not promiscuous; she’s pragmatic.

In season 2 of the HBO series Insecure, a heartbroken Issa attempts to balance multiple casual sex partners at once. She calls it a ‘ho-tation‘– but let’s not confuse a rotation with promiscuity. It’s called being pragmatic.

We need to rethink sex, power and female fidelity altogether.

Sex-without-strings has never served women well, so much so, our species literally evolved so that human females could avoid it. For the better part of human history, for a woman, choosing the right mate (or group of mates) was a matter of life and death. Today, our survival may not depend on it, but our overall well-being certainly does.

Today we have normalized the practice of enjoying and disposing of women with cute terms like “situationship” and “friends with benefits“. The term “hook up” originates in the African-American vernacular, meaning to give someone something of value as a favor. Derrick hooked me up with VIP passes… one might say.

Women are hooking men up with their bodies, emotional labor, time, and energy– and they are getting very little out of the deal.

It’s because we’ve taught women that sex is not about them– and that what they are offering both physically and spiritually is of little value. We sold an entire generation of post-liberation women a lie. We’ve lured women into being concubines–under the guise of keeping it casual. We’ve taught women that not having their needs met is better than being alone. We’ve taught women to wear their loyalty and self-sacrifice like a badge of honor, even when it means thwarting their own goals. We’ve taught women how to defer their power in the name of love.

But we were designed to discriminate. The power to choose is our birthright, and we can’t choose without options.

Options allows us to hedge our bets. It gives us leverage, and enough emotional distance to discern the intentions of our men. It prevents us from wasting valuable time with suitors who are unwilling, or incapable, of investing in us. Taking the time to choose gives us a chance to see if those enticing promises materialize, and to recognize the men who fake futures in order to get our presents, in the present.

It flips the script, giving us the means to act on our desire, rather than merely exist as the object of someone else’s.

And perhaps, the best way to avoid being apart of a man’s harem, is to have one of your own.

xo,

Ayesha

PS: Every single woman has the unique ability to captivate and enthrall. Discover what makes you irresistible with my psychology-backed 13 Feminine Seduction Archetypes™ quiz.

*Even today, human females have the most difficult parturition process. The 96 hours following the onset of contractions is the greatest mortality risk a typical human will ever face.

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On Respectability Politics: Why Fierce Women Misbehave

April 21, 2017 By Ayesha

Pop icon Janet Jackson found herself on the scorching end of a media firestorm following news that she was divorcing her billionaire husband, Wissam Al Manna, a mere 5 years after marriage and 3 months after giving birth.

The questions and name-calling ensued. Is she a gold digger? Was she in it for the baby all along?

We’ll never know, and frankly, it doesn’t matter. Women like Janet don’t ask permission, or seek validation in the eyes of society– and yet they make history.

From Cleopatra to Eartha Kitt, when we study the history of the most phenomenal women to walk the Earth, you discover that they all defy rules of respectability. They flout convention, rise to power, start movements and wars, enrapture men, and above all, they never–ever–hesitate to put themselves first.

Powerful women don’t follow rules, they follow their heart.

There is an unwritten code of ethics to which women are expected adhere– cultural expectations of how we behave, how we love, mother, and connect to the opposite sex. These ‘respectability politics’ signify the way we police each other, and the way men police us. These notions of female chastity, purity, beauty and goodness weren’t created to empower us. They were made to check our ambition and control our sexuality.

Maybe respectable women don’t marry for money. Maybe they don’t divorce their husbands three months after giving birth. They don’t put their desires first. But guess what? Powerful women (sometimes) do.

Our notion of feminity as being soft, accommodating, considerate and ‘nice’ holds us back.It prevents us from initiating the bold moves necessary to create a life of meaning. As you’ll see in this video, the women who make history– the politicians, the activists, the sirens, and the stars– all behaved ‘badly’ at one point or another. Like Maxine Waters, they raised hell. Like Josephine Baker, they danced provocatively. Like Coco Chanel, they took on lovers. Like Martha Stewart, they built empires, and made enemies.

It’s important for any human being to have a firm moral compass, but any woman who aspires to acquire power or resources, or the very least, to a life of her choosing, can not be afraid to be misbehave. ‘Nice’ women finish last.

-Ayesha

Your Vagina Has the Power to Heal!

March 16, 2017 By Ayesha

When we hear the term ‘vagina power’ or ‘pussy power’, we often think of a woman’s sexual prowess, or even her willingness to use sex as a bargaining chip. Too often, our sexual power is based on the belief that a woman’s chief role in sex is to provide a soft, pleasurable haven for a man– a space for temporary rest and ecstasy.

But what if I told you that your vagina is so much more than a Holiday Inn? What if I told you it was a temple, and a veritable pathway to physical, emotional and spiritual transcendence? What if I told you that women possess a powerful, healing energy that men can ONLY access through them? What if I told you women don’t just receive in sex– we actually give men something they crave on the deepest level.

In order to comprehend this, first you’d have to completely redefine sex, and extract it from its modern interpretation.

In the ancient world, sex was considered an act of sacred communion, a merging of two cosmic energies, and a means of creation and transcendence. Today, sex as a physical act performed for the sake of reproduction and pleasure.

In fact, the very word we use, ‘sex’, is derived from the latin ‘secare’ which literally means to divide– the opposite of communion. The word sexuality enters the english language in 1389, just as western views are totally shifting away from the sacred toward the profane.

Our perception is distorted. What we see on television and in pornography is a product of the male imagination. It comes from a hyper-masculine place where a woman lacks sexual agency, and her vagina is little more than a receptacle. Most significantly, sex, in its modern iteration, is totally divorced from its spiritual nature, and this rendering blinds women to the real source of their ‘vagina power’.

So what is her power? It lies in her mysterious, creative, revitalizing energy that when cultivated has the power to heal, transform, create and ultimately transcend. It is an energy that we don’t even have a word for in our language– though in eastern philosophy it is referenced as Shakti, kundalini, or even yen.

Even renown psychologist Carl Jung wrote in his spiritual autobiography that women have access to a divine energy, that men can only connect to through them!

In this video, I share how all women have potential to access this energy and to fundamentally change a man through sex. I talk about how this ‘whip appeal’ is healing to men, but how our modern society not only keeps women in the dark about this power, butreinforces beliefs and practices that actually DEPRIVE us of this power.

Have you experienced your power to heal?

xo,

Ayesha

“Hurt Bae”: When A Man Leaves You Emotionally Bankrupt

February 20, 2017 By Ayesha

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There’s a new viral video, affectionately titled “Hurt Bae” that offers stunning insight into the dynamics of many contemporary broken relationships– the type of emotionally lopsided relationships that most of us will encounter at least once (perhaps repeatedly) in our dating lives. Created by “The Scene”, the short features two ex-lovers facing in their first intimate exchange following a tense break-up.

Even in the relationship’s after-life, it is evident that the power dynamics are still uncomfortably skewed in his favor. We see a woman who is visibly broken and looking for an emotional reciprocity that simply isn’t there (and maybe never was).

I see a woman who has given way more emotional energy than she’s received. I see a woman who is empty–emotionally overdrawn.

It makes you wonder– how many of us enter new relationships in emotional debt, hoping to find someone willing to make a deposit? And perhaps, the first deposit in our emotional bank account has to be the investment we make in ourselves.

In this video I discuss creating intimacy in a way that doesn’t leave you broken and bereft. Watch the original video here.

Powerfully yours,

Ayesha

Beyonce’s Powerful Hidden Message to Womankind

February 14, 2017 By Ayesha

In the wee hours of a Sunday night, I found myself engaged in a heady Twitter exchange about whether superstar songstress Beyonce had either evoked the orisha Oshun or the syncretized Virgin Guadalupe of Mexico.

I thought it was clear.

She had evoked both dieties– and more. I saw references to the Roman Venus, the Hindu Kali Ma, and possibly the Egyptian Isis.

Beyonce’s performance of motherhood, beginning with her decadent photo series (worthy of a wall at the MoMA) and culminating in her ten minute medly at the Grammy awards, had not been about honoring one particular diety– but rather using her global platform (and twin fetuses) to challenge modern notions of femininity and motherhood by conjuring the image of powerful creation deities that predate judeo-Christian culture.

Every goddess she called forth represented a unique message to womankind–it’s one of those many instances in which her visual artistry is more significant than her actual song.

For some 25,000 years mankind honored women as the creators of life, primary providers of food, builders, artist ands, healers, priestesses and leaders. Across cultures, motherhood, above all, was perceived as nothing short of supernatural.

Feminine creativity, the power to manifest physical and psychic reality, is one of the Goddess’ primary aspects. People identified ‘the feminine’ as the source of all being–and as such, men and women in the early gynocentric societies tended to live in partnership, rather than domination.

Today, when we evoke cross-cultural images of the the Great Mother, as Beyonce has, it is not a cue to retreat to old ways, some romanticized, pastoral version of herstory.

The evocation of the divine feminine is a call for women to acknowledge their own sacred energy as a legitimate source of independent power. Reawakening the Cosmic Creatress on a global stage asks that we, as women, use our innate powers to take control of our destinies.

I invite you to explore her use of spiritual imagery as we unravel the her hidden messages to woman kind.

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Beyonce as The Virgin of Guadalupe

With the elaborate use of lighting optics and holograms, Beyonce, dressed as La Virgen in her signature gold spiked crown and mantle, appears and reappears on stage– a nod to the three apparitions of The Virgin Mary before Juan Diego, an essential aspect of La Virgen de Guadalupe’s legend.

La Virgen de Guadalupe is simultaneously a figure of religious reverence and cultural rebellion.

In 16th century Mexico, a poor Aztec Indian named Juan Diego was said to be walking through the Tepayac hill country in central Mexico when he encountered a beautiful woman surrounded by a ball of light. Speaking in his native tongue, she identified herself as the Virgin Mary and asked that a church be built on the site. She appeared before him three times, asking that a chapel be built in her honor at that site.

Juan protested that no one would believe he’d seen her, so she pointed and suddenly among the cactus grew roses– the flower of the heart and of her love for humanity. Juan gathered the roses in his cloak and headed straight to the bishop. As he unrolled his garment, an image of the Virgin as a pregnant, dark skinned Indian woman appeared with stars on her cloak, a crown on her head, and rays of sun surrounding her.

Today Catholic scholars have openly doubted the historical existence of Juan Diego, but this we do know– following the Hernan Cortes’ conquest in 1521, a Mexican temple honoring the Aztec creation goddess Tonantzin was dismantled and replaced with a chapel honoring the Virgin Mary. In Mexico, this apparition was named La Virgen Maria de Guadalupe–and from the beginning she was a connection between their polytheistic, goddess past and their Christian future.

The Aztecs … had an elaborate, coherent symbolic system for making sense of their lives. When this was destroyed by the Spaniards, something new was needed to fill the void and make sense of New Spain … the image of Guadalupe served that purpose. -Patricia Harrington

Many Aztecs continued their worship of creation goddess Tonantzin through La Virgen. Her belt is said to represent her pregnant state. Even her artistic rendering, always cast in the shape of a yoni, surrounded by roses and baby angels, suggests her fertility goddess origins.

Infused with a note of kisch (maybe even a nod to Kehinde Wiley) Beyonce references the La Virgen by draping herself in a blue-green mantle, and surrounding herself with roses, Guadalupe’s sacred flower– said to represent maternal love and fertility.

Surrounded by women who represent the cherub angels on one of the iconic renderings of La Virgen, they wear blue-green dresses, the color of her mantle, and dance atop a bed of roses, her sacred flower. They also, for a moment during Beyonce’s Grammy performance, evoke a powerful reference to The Last Supper.

La Virgen embodies unconditional motherly love, but more than anything she embodied refuge from colonial conquest– a means of honoring their original creation goddess under the guise of Christianity. Newly converted natives continued to come from afar to worship there, often addressing the Virgin Mary as Tonantzin.

Her blue-green mantle was the color reserved for the divine couple Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl that represented the dual cosmic energies, and her belt is interpreted as a sign of pregnancy. La Virgen was called “mother of maguey (the aloe plant) and the source of the sacred beverage polque, also known as “the milk of the Virgin”. Even the rays of light that surround her image are said to represent the spines on the maguey plant.

This is why Beyonce’s choice to represent her is fascinating. The singer is deliberately blurs the line between the Christianity and gynocentric spirituality. As such, she reminds that our goddess past is ever present, still influencing the way we worship and connect today. She directs our attention to a time prior to the ascent of patriarchal judeo-christian religion, when the divine feminine served as a projection of our power as women to create, transform and manifest physical and psychic reality.

The Message: Patriarchal society elevates the concept of feminine chastity as a means of punishing women for their sensuality and encouraging them to suppress this creative, magnetic, life-affirming power. This wide-spread suppression of our erotic instincts is not only confusing to women, but detrimental to our relationships, our spiritual and mental well-being. Our ability to manifest anything we want is nothing short of miraculous. Honor it.

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Beyonce as Oshun

Beyonce evokes the Yoruban goddess Oshun by wearing her signature color yellow and gold jewelry. The deity reins over the sweet (fresh) waters, hence the billowing effect of her cape.Beyonce’s african jewelry serves to further emphasize her reference to African spirituality.

An archetypal symbol for the feminine principle, Oshun reins over the sweet waters (fresh water) and the realms of sensuality, creativity and abundance. In Beyonce’s recent body of work, Oshun is a well-known artistic reference to West African matriarchal iconography.
Ochun represents the creative and procreative force that exists in all women, the passionate, erotic energy that can be channeled into the creation of new art, new life, or even a new reality. This life force has many names in eastern philosophy, from shakti to kundalini, but most notably, it is the one powerful aspect of femininity that patriarchy attempts to suppress, opting instead to subject women to the contrived virgin/whore binary, both of which deprive women of their instinctive powers.

Sensuality, creativity and abundance are the gifts of Oshun.

Standing on the stage adorned as Oshun, in gold jewelry that adorns her enchanting, pregnant body– Beyonce represents two realms of womanhood that are traditionally kept apart– woman as mother, and woman as lover. All too often our society attempts to reduce womankind, in all of our manifestation power, to vessels of life and pleasure. In a sense, we are laborers– our bodies designated to deliver life and to deliver pleasure– in both instances, our bodies are at work for others.
The fascinating aspect of Oshun, and all of the creation/love deities like her, is that she embraces pleasure for the sake of pleasure. When we engage in ‘self-care’ we activate our own inner Oshun. She walks around with a honey pot tied around her waist, this nectar symbolic of both sexual release, and her own inner contentment.

In this image, Beyonce evokes the orisha along with her mother and daughter. She is simultaneously referencing the powerful mother/maiden/crohn trinity that predates modern religion.

In myth, Oshun seduces out of fullness. She transforms the lives of those around her by ‘sharing’ the sensual, abundant energy she carries within. Hence her gifts to civilization, are music, dance, art, poetry, and the passion that ultimately spawns new life.
When we talk about empowering women, so often we do so in within the context of denying our sensuality– not wanting to be seen as vessels of erotic energy. Sensuality carries a distincitly negative connotation in patriarchal society–there are women who can not imagine connecting to their body if it isn’t in the context of making babies or pleasing a man. What else can we expect in a culture that exalts above all else, a virgin birth?
A critical aspect of our empowerment is acknowledging and owning this creative life force; the Oshun, within us. We all have access to this mysterious and magnetic energy; some of us are overwhelmed by it, and others suppress it, but we all have access to this creative energy that mankind has exalted for years—and we can use it to heal, transform, and take charge of our personal and sexual destinies.
The Message: In order to give pleasure, one must know pleasure. Keep your ‘honey-pots’ full. Your pleasure is a privilege for yourself and a gift to others.

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Beyonce As Venus

Having emerged from the sea a fully developed woman, Venus, like her Greek counterpart Aphrodite, is the goddess of passion, eroticism, and creative force. She is goddess of the waters, the source of life and the element linked with emotions. Like women, water has the capacity slake, transform and destroy. She represents the transformative power of love and sexuality, and our capacity to grow through joy and pleasure.

Often portrayed in the nude, bathing or wringing her hair after emerging from the sea, her exposure lacks of self-consciousnessness– much like Beyonce, who stood before the world, ripe in her womanhood, and exuded total and utter confidence in her body. When we as women connect to the Venus in us, we experience a lightness of being. When we are passionately involved with a project or a partner, Venus moves through us.

In this image of a reclining Beyonce, she still incorporates Mexican influences, and the gold of Oshun, but also poses like the Renaissance depictions of the Roman goddess Venus.

A depiction of Aphrodite (the Greek equivalent of Venus) with her son Eros. Aphrodite/ Venus is often portrayed reclining.

Venus is said to have risen from the sea, fully formed. Water is a powerful metaphor for feminine power– representing our capacity to slake and destroy.

Roman theology casts Venus as the yielding, fluid female principle, not unlike the chinese concept of tao, which is essential to the balance of dual cosmic energies. She tempers the masculine and can bestow abundant gifts of military victory, sexual success, good fortune and prosperity.

Sandro Botticelli’s famous ‘Birth of Venus’.

Beyonce, recreating the classic Birth of Venus while incorporating Egyptian imagery and Oshun’s golden yellow.

The message: Our society leads women to live in their heads, but sensuality happens when we connect to our bodies whether it be through dance, massage, or even sex– and we own every inch of our splendor. Contemporary images of beauty are designed to induce ‘longing’– beauty as we know it is a product of commercial culture. Real beauty happens when we ‘altar’ ourselves–even if not on the world stage–at least in front of the bathroom mirror. In an eros-phobic culture, self-admiration is considered vanity, but in actuality it is one of the gateways to feminine power.

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Goddess Tripping Into the Future

When we reclaim the divine feminine, we acknowledge our goddess past. This is not an act of worshipping or even longing for an entity without, rather, it is about acknowledging something sacred within. As we goddess-trip deeper into the 21st century,with all the unique challenges and opportunities it will present woman kind, we must recognize that the sheroic qualities humans worshipped for the better part of history are not fantasy– they are in us. We are vessels of deep love, pleasure, creativity, knowing, and miraculous healing energy. We have the capacity to heal ourselves, to heal our world, to transform any condition, and to create any reality. We. Are. Magic.

Powerfully yours,

Ayesha

PS: The shadows of these great goddesses continue to exert their pull on womankind today through the force of psychological archetypes. Discover the 7 feminine archetypes that underscore your life story, or take a free quiz to uncover the captivation ‘goddesses’ within you.

The “Goddess Complex” aka How to Play Games You Can’t Lose

February 7, 2017 By Ayesha

“Do whatever it takes. This is a hustle.”

I’ll never forget the woman who christened my TV career with those frank words of wisdom. She was the head of on-air talent at NBC Universal– the woman responsible for turning the likes of Tamron Hall and Brian Williams into household names–and I was a plucky 21 year old who’d talked my way into the C-suite of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

I sat breathlessly as she watched my demo tape– a bootleg collection of fake news reports I cobbled together as a summer intern, in hopes that someone might catch a glimmer of star quality in a girl with big hair and a mild speech impediment.

Her feedback was blunt. She told me I was green (the industry euphemism for terrible) and headed straight for a world of rejection.

And then she swiveled in her chair, looked me dead in the eye, and promised me I would make it.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

I did. I became a local news reporter three months after graduation and I owe it all to her.

I wish I could say she placed a high-level phone call, right then and there, on my behalf. I had no such luck.

The only thing she did was tell me I would make it— and I believed her.

Armed with the belief that success was inevitable, even if not immediate, I became fearless. The deluge of rejections I received from news directors around the country never fazed me. I ignored the ‘grown-ups’ who told me I was being unrealistic.

Instead, I used my graduation money to fly to a media conference in Chicago where, dressed in my very best pantsuit, I handed those terrible tapes to anyone who’d have them. That is how I met my first boss– the woman who put me on air.

And at the tender age of 22, I had learned the lesson of a lifetime .

Fulfilling our desires has little to do with preternatural talent, beauty or luck and everything to do with adopting this mindset:

Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Winners win because they expect to win.

How to Play Games You Can’t Lose

We have little control over how the events of our life unfold, but we do control our interpretation and response.

When we play games we can’t lose, we expect to win– and every event that occurs, whether positive or negative, is simply working to move us forward. In this playbook, failure doesn’t exist. Neither does fear.

This is the attitude that separates the creme from the crop.

Most people are primed, beginning in childhood, to view failure as fatal. Failure is perceived as some sort of moral shortcoming, a blemish on our character, or even karma’s bitchy wrath. It means we did wrong. We are flawed. It checks our faith and brings forth our deepest insecurities. Failure is uncomfortable and as such, we resist at all costs.

In our attempts to curb failure, we play small. We avoid the bold risks that lead to real change. We end up lusting for things instead of really activating the faith it takes to attain them.

Even worse, when people sense our fear of failure, they take our power.

When a man senses you are afraid to lose him, he loses the incentive to demonstrate his commitment. A boss that knows you are afraid to exercise your options, has little incentive to promote your talent. A client who senses you need their business has no incentive to pay you your worth.

A New Definition of Success

We often define success so narrowly that we practically guarantee a loss.

When life gets tricky, we lose sight of the big picture and become obsessed with individual outcomes. We get wrapped up in winning over one particular man when the ultimate goal is deep, committed love. We give up after one failed business venture when the ultimate goal is economic independence. We rue over one failed ‘vegan challenge’ when the ultimate goal is simply a tighter tummy or better health.

We forget that ‘failure’ is merely feedback, and a signal to move forward, perhaps via a different road. Instead, so many stop just short of their destiny, derailed by the inevitable twists and turns of the journey.

When you surrender to the process, when you demonstrate the radical trust of which all women are enormously capable, that is when you begin to play games you absolutely can not lose.

How to Slay On and Off the Court

“I just never give up. I fight to the end. You can’t go out and say, ‘I want a bag of never-say-die spirit.’ It’s not for sale. It has to be innate.” -Serena Williams

When I think of women who play games they can’t lose– I think of Serena Williams. (Though every woman on my G.O.A.T. list qualifies.)

With 23 grand slams under her belt, this is a woman who knows how to win. Her entire career has been built on defying expectations. She shrugged of those who ridiculed her muscles and her curves. She ignored those who doubted she could prevail well into her thirties. She even ignored those who labeled her confidence, arrogance.

And that’s not even taking into account her wins off the court– her romantic hit list is a sampling of Hollywoods most notorious–and enticing– bachelors.

That’s why people were shocked when she announced her engagement to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. She’d kept the relationship under wraps (smart woman) and few even knew they were dating. In fact, the gossip blogs, for years, had been playing a game of ‘Guess-Which-Ex’ — as early as a month prior to her engagement announcement, rumors swirled that she’d reconciled with her long time romance, hip-hop heartthrob Common.

But women like Serena don’t make u-turns.

On and off the court, she doesn’t lose sight of her ultimate goal. She plays to win. And she has never allowed anyone– no man ( no matter how intoxicating), critic or opponent, to derail her .

This is what I call the “goddess complex”, an unshakeable belief in oneself that unlike the pseudo-psychological “god complex”, is rooted in healthy self-awareness.

How to Win… in Love

As women living in a society where rules of the game were largely established by men for the benefit of men, it is imperative that we bring this “goddess complex” in to the realm of love.

One of my favorite sayings is “people enter your life for a reason, a season and a lifetime”.

For me, growing up meant learning to tell the difference.

It’s easy, during the initial stages of romance, to fantasize about a lifetime of happiness with the interesting man sitting across from you at dinner– but that’s a slippery slope.

Every man we encounter on this journey to deep, lasting, spirit-based intimacy is not meant to be a soulmate.

Some men come into our lives bringing pleasure. Some men bring us wisdom. Some relationships, even those that end in heartbreak, bring us greater inner-strength and self-awareness. You may meet men who introduce you to new experiences, new people, or challenge you in exciting ways. You may meet game-changing men who bring you deeper into the depths of intimacy. Some men are in fact in your life soley to prepare you for the real love you seek.

We run into trouble when we try to make seasonal men the love of a lifetime. Not only do we sabotage our chances of encountering the real love we crave– we often overlook the ‘gift’ of the liaison.

All love begins with authenticity and intention. Honor your authenticity. Set you intention. And then surrender, completely, to the process. This is the only way to truly enjoy men, and lets face it, romance should be about pleasure.

The irony is that the more we are capable of loving with a light touch, the more the men in our lives crave being near us.

By raising our expectation, we raise our vibration and our energy shifts in palpable ways.

You develop something greater than courage and confidence– you develop conviction, the sense that nothing can stand between you and your destiny. You stop operating from a place of fear– and start acting from a place of love, deep self love. This changes the power dynamic in every relationship. You begin to attract the people and opportunities that are aligned with your best interests.

When you expect to win– you literally change the game.

How to Adopt a “Goddess Complex” in 3 Minutes or Less

It’s no secret that most people live their lives avoiding failure, and yet find it at every corner.

You can forever shift this power dynamic by shifting your mindset. In fact, by the time you finish reading this passage you will have adopted what I call a “goddess complex”.

Unbeknownst to you, you probably already have a “Goddess complex”, but only in certain situations.

Like driving.

Driving is as liberating as it is dangerous. Every time you get behind the wheel there are a number of potentially fatal events that can happen. And yet, every day, we pile into the drivers seat and push the gas.

As we head for our destination there are red lights, traffic snarls, detours, tolls, accidents, slow pedestrians, fender benders and bouts of road rage– and yet none of these occurrences, aside from complete catastrophe, deter us from arriving at our destination.

Why?

Because we totally expect to arrive. If we, for a moment truly doubted our ability to arrive safely, we wouldn’t drive in the first place. We’d be too scared!

But society doesn’t condition us to fear driving. Society conditions us to fear the big stuff– like romantic rejection, starting anew, or pursuing our wildest dreams.

But these destinations are no different than those on the map. When you drive, the only thing that matters is that you know where you’re going and you trust that you’ll arrive.

The same principle applies to everything thing else you desire in life.

One Final Note

Women at the top of their game succeed because failure is NOT in their playbook.

Think about your greatest desires– not those that have been chosen for you. Not the dreams you feel you should have. Consider the visions you have for your life that speak to your spirit.

Remember this, so long as you are willing to play the game all the way to the end– you can not fail.

No one and nothing can stand between you and destiny.

So love like a goddess. Work like a goddess. Live like a goddess.

You are indomitable. The world is yours for the taking.

With persistence and power,

Ayesha

The whole world steps aside for the woman who knows where she is going…

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