Masculinity: A New Story

Session Four: Life at the Center

with Woman Stands Shining ~ Pat McCabe

“True power is masculine and feminine as a functional polarity.” — Pat McCabe

Is masculinity wholly determined by culture, or are there aspects of it that transcend culture? In this conversation, Pat McCabe, a Dine (Navajo) woman adopted into the Lakota Way, offers a view of the masculine and the feminine that draws from sources outside Western culture. Hers was not an intellectual journey, but, as she shares, a deeply embodied and experiential one.

I intended to edit this down below its two-hour length, but in the end I couldn’t bear to cut anything because the material was so relevant to the inquiry of this course. Divide your listening into two sessions if you like. I invite the listener to receive the gift of this conversation by slowing down and entering a state of receptivity to Pat’s stories, thought process, and laughter.

About Pat

Pat McCabe, known as Woman Stands Shining (Navajo), is an artist, writer, ceremonial leader and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace and her paintings are created as tools for individual, earth, and global healing. She is an active participant in Indigenous Peoples gatherings worldwide, has worked with the International Center for Cultural Studies in India and with Sarvodaya with Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne in Sri Lanka, as well as with organizations and gatherings in the U.S. Her recent work includes being a cultural consultant to the Pachamama Alliance, Inner Circle Invitee to the Language of Spirit Dialogue – Dialogue between Quantum Physicists, Linguists, Scientists and Indigenous knowledge keepers.

A Conversation with Pat McCabe

Questions for Study, Meditation, and Discussion

1. Identify any point of tension within yourself between the desire to “serve thriving life” as a provider, and the life-destroying nature of our economic system that gives us the means to provide. Feel the discomfort of it, the absence of easy answers.
2. In the exercise of your masculine creative powers that Pat describes (whether you are male or female), how do you connect them to the feminine connection to the source of wisdom? How do you make sure they stay moored to “thriving life”?
3. Visualize within yourself that women’s dreaming circle Pat describes, with its closer access to wisdom from the dream state. Enter a state of receptivity and reverence for that feminine function. Feel a longing to access it, to have it available in your life, and form the intention to recognize it in whatever form it next appears.

Follow-up Conversation with Q&A