There are different kinds of fear. One kind of fear is useful; its the kind of fear you get when you're about to cross a street and suddenly jump back out of the way of a speeding car. This is the kind of fear we can thank our ancestors and our autonomic nervous system for. But then there's this other kind of fear; this socially taught, culturally biased fear like the fear of failure, or the fear of inadequacy or the fear of fat.
Studies have shown that young girls (as young as 6 years old) are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of war, cancer, or losing a parent, but there is a greater fear hidden behind the fear of fat. Disordered eating, from self-starvation to binge-purge cycles to compulsive overeating, has reached higher numbers than schizophrenia or Alzheimer's disease in the US, though research remains unfunded, treatment is routinely not covered by insurance and the media continually distorts the image of both sickness and health. What could possibly be keeping our society from recognizing and confronting the issue?
Author and clinical psychologist, Anita Johnston writes, "It is impossible to discuss the causes of disordered eating without questioning the experience of being female in our society today." It is interesting that on the spectrum of disordered eating, 95% of those struggling are female and it is almost* entirely ignored by healthcare providers, insurance companies and the government. The culture of the Western world has long devalued and undermined the role of the feminine. But let me clarify here. I am not only referring to women. On the contrary, as I've written previously, there is both a yin and a yang within all things including people, therefore it may be that issues of femininity affect those who identify with their yin side more readily. While the large majority of those struggling with disordered eating do identify as female, the 5% who do not are by no means insignificant. The phenomenon of disordered eating is indeed a denial of the feminine forces within and around us, but it is not only a women's issue.
The story we tell as a culture is based on a history of patriarchy, logic and domination. The masculine has been hoisted up on a pedestal, towering over the feminine aspect. We have disowned cyclical nature and emotional or intuitive knowing in favor of linear and analytical thinking, man-made inventions and structures have greater respect than the natural landscape and the goddess has been banished. We have, as a culture, continually denied and pushed the feminine out of our awareness. Thus, we have developed a cultural bias towards a naturally masculine shape of angular bodies and left-brain thinking over emotionality. Indeed, the parts of her body women most frequently cite as their "problem areas," are her belly, hips and thighs- precisely those parts of her body tied indissolubly to the feminine aspect of carrying and sustaining life. We hate our curves because we are taught to value only the linear. We are afraid of fat because we are afraid of the feminine. ("We" meaning ALL of us!)
The words health and whole both stem from the same root. For true healing to occur, we must embrace all aspects of ourselves; the yin and the yang. But that in itself is not enough because we must also recognize that within every yin there is a yang and within every yang there is a yin. Thus, as Rudolph Ballentine writes, "there are four of us in here. Inside me, besides the more apparent phallic/assertive masculine, there is also the more yin testicular. But that's just my first foot forward, my obvious persona, as Jung called our more surface identity. There's also my anima, my feminine side, and it has two aspects, too, the yin passive and nurturing and the yang [feminine]. Somehow I have to coordinate all four. No wonder there is so much confusion about gender roles and sexual identities!"
While I would probably alter his terminology a bit for myself, I think he makes a poignant point. In tantric and yogic vocabulary, the kundalini shakti is the creative feminine force opposing and complementary to shiva. This energy is represented as a snake coiled at the base of the spine; Ballentine continues, "when uncoiled, she will force her way upward, bursting through barriers to stir up feelings, emotion, and creativity, and to give life. She shatters the established order with her thrust toward evolution... Individual fears, social forces, and economic interests converge in an unconscious conspiracy to keep this kundalini shakti pacified- plugged into intoxicating consumerism, drugs, and workaholism- undermining the ecstatic electricity of her unleashed power." This feminine aspect is largely ignored in our society, and when it is recognized, is usually seen as uncivilized or even demonic.
Take a second look at that kundalini image: the snake. What kind of symbolism does the snake image hold for you? If you're like most Westerners, you think of frightening boa constrictors and fatal venom, then you might look a bit deeper and think of the trickery of the snake in the Garden of Eden; and this particular snake's trickery is often paired with the weakness of Eve for giving in to temptation. So the snake's image in modern Western symbolism is a mixture of fear, trickery, and the weak feminine (leading to the idea of a Fall from Grace and initiating the unending quest for salvation).
But remember that our modern Western culture is traced back to the Greeks. In ancient Greek gnostic mythology, there are a couple of snakes worth noting here who have a slightly different story to tell. These snakes are found in the creation myth of gnosticism where the goddess Sophia created a snake named Laldaboath who in turn created Adam and Eve. However, Laldaboath was not nearly as Divine as Sophia and when Adam and Eve began worshipping her, Laldaboath got jealous and forbade them to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Sophia then sent Ophis, another snake who's name means Divine Instructor, to instruct the two to eat of the fruit of the Tree.
I'm not much of a history buff so I don't know how exactly the Gnostic system of though evolved or was lost, but I know that there is little or no remains from this myth in modern Wester mainstream culture. And it's a pity. The trickery, temptation, and fear are only one side of the story; the yang masculine side, not bad in and of itself but unbalanced in the absence of the yin feminine/kundalini shakti.
There is, however, one remnant of the Greek symbology of the snake in the modern day West: The rod of Asclepius. You would probably recognize this healing symbol, but perhaps don't know the name. This is the famous symbol of a snake winding up a staff; the symbol of medicine, still used ubiquitously in the healthcare industry. The image is strikingly similar to that of the Kundalini snake winding up the spine, and it is in this similarity that we can connect the Divine feminine to spiritual evolution and to healing.
This connection is particularly relevant to the healing process in disordered eating. To reconnect to the feminine force within and around us uniting with the internal masculine energy, allows for balance, growth, and healing. Johnston writes, "when there is balance and these two sides act in concert, we have what is called the "Divine Marriage," where the masculine honors and supports the feminine," and the feminine honors and nourishes the masculine, however, "we live in a society where the balance between the masculine and feminine has not been maintained... this imbalance has been internalized within our psyches... The epidemic of disordered eating... is clearly a consequence of the imbalance between the masculine and the feminine within society and within ourselves. Recovery from disordered eating calls for a deliberate, conscious attempt to reclaim our feminine side so we can bring the masculine side back in balance."
This is not a individual journey. May the growing numbers of people struggling with disordered eating be a call to all of society to bring back the goddess; Put the pieces of the Yin-Yang puzzle back together to integrate our whole selves and make society whole again.
Long Live Ophis!
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