Marlies Cocheret and Ellen Emmet - 'The Feminine Face of God'

Interview by Renate McNay

Hello and welcome to Conscious TV, my name is Renate McNay, and my guests today are Ellen Emmet and Marlies Cocheret. This is going to be the first program in a series I planned to do on women and consciousness, or what does the feminine face of God look like? The way it came about was that I realized one day that I interviewed so many men for Conscious TV and only a handful women. And I asked myself the question: Wow, where are all the women? What happens to women after they have woken up, how do they manifest in this world? And so there are lots of questions around that and I hope I can bring some answers and a little bit more clarity into this whole picture. And I would like to start first by asking Marlies to say something about herself.

Renate: What are you doing, Marlies? What is your work?

Marlies: I work as a therapist and as a spiritual teacher, Adyashanti asked me to teach in 2000, so since then I also offer satsangs and retreats, and when I started teaching I started offering satsangs for women only, about 13 years ago, and I still do that - which I love. And also satsangs for men and women in retreats. That's mostly what I do...

Renate: Ok, thank you, and you, Ellen?

Ellen: My main activity is a therapist, a psychotherapist, and now with a non-dual perspective. And many of my clients are women, mostly women. So in that work I bring previous trainings and kind of movements and Jungian type explorations, but always with this non-dual understanding as the underlying perspective. And I also teach a body exploration, the yoga of non-duality, to groups, weekly sessions and also weekend retreats.

Renate: So, when women come to you, what are they looking for?

Ellen: You mean in the therapy?

Renate: yeah, in your movement classes. You teach also non-dual yoga and...

Ellen: It depends...

Renate: Are they looking for emotional relief or are they looking to find out who they are?

Ellen: Some women come who have found me through the non-dual circles and they have had an awakening to their true nature but they want to explore the feeling of limitation and separation which is sometimes very connected with being a woman. So that's some of the women that come to me and others are just women who have no knowledge of the non-dual teachings but who are suffering. Their pain is always take shape around their feminine identity. So of course we want to explore their experience within that feminine identity.

Renate: Ok. And you, Marlies, I know you have a passion for working with women. What is your interest in doing that?

Marlies: It just kind of grew. I never really thought I'm gonna go work with women. It was more that early on in my life I had a few sexual rapes that I experienced and that was a healing journey. And in that healing journey I felt at some point just whole inside. And quite naturally there was an interest in sensuality, sexuality, awakening and bringing everything together and then women's groups started coming out of that. And now it has really more moved into a passion that I found that so many women suffer - I mean men suffer, too, but we are talking here about the female - so many women suffer and as it has been my own journey to completely take seat in myself and abide as myself in the body, that's kind of what I bring in. It's wonderful to know I am that or that I am nothing. But for me it's even more wonderful to know I am everything, including the body, and as a woman to take seat in that and hold that and not doubt myself - because there is a big doubt in the conditioning of women. So that's kind of my passion in what I bring in.

Renate: So you both mention the suffering of women and the question is: Why do we suffer? And I mean what you said, Ellen, in your notes you gave me: because we are disconnected from who we are. And you said it's also important, before we start the journey, bringing any balance into our feminine and male side, we need to know who we are.

Ellen: Yes, that's right.

Renate: That is the starting point.

Ellen: Well, it's not always the starting point, but hopefully it is a point that you arrive at. Now I certainly didn't start there. I started with just suffering and being very much identified with, just only knowing the reality of feeling I am a woman. And what propelled me on a kind of seeking path was an eating disorder and a real disconnect with the body and depression and things that really played up in the physical body. And those were the things that set me on a seeking path. And I did find on the road before I met my teacher, some glimpses into what later on became bigger answers. But as long as I hadn't awakened to my true nature I was just in a way perpetuating the suffering, I was just perpetuating the separate entity and consolidating the identity of a woman. But then I met my teacher and had a glimpse into my true nature and understood that what I am is not a separate identity, is not limited to being a woman, a body and mind. And from then on, from that point on the healing journey, which of course included a kind of unwinding of that feminine suffering, was a totally different story and there was infinite space for that healing and there was no longer an agenda for it to happen and in that kind of freedom and spaciousness it just wants to happen, that healing happens naturally. It doesn't happen necessarily easily, it takes time and there is lots to say about that....

Renate: So you pay a lot of attention to what you feel inside your body and that is such a big part in your process of bringing healing, staying true to the signs of your body. Is that correct?

Ellen: Yes, that's true. Because where does suffering happen if not in our direct experience - By that I mean the feeling of being separate or limited and for women that takes particular shapes. However, most of us haven't been necessarily modeled how to welcome these layers of suffering. It requires a real quality of listening. But a listening directly at the level of the body to the raw sensations that we need to somehow - allow. Especially in this kind of culture of the mind. My teacher who is a beautiful teacher, is very much a man

Renate: Would you say who it is?

Marlies: Francis Lucille. So the packaging of the teaching in my case was, you could say - masculine although it's a bit of stereotyping - There was a lot of emphasis on higher reasoning although he was also guiding these very deep explorations of the body which were beautiful and very much at the level of feeling but nevertheless the packaging was very masculine. And so a woman somehow has to do her home work beyond that and it's not obvious, because you have to kind of step back with the teaching and continue to make it your own and descend deeper into unchartered territory.

Renate: If I can bring myself at this point in this picture, I found that very difficult. For me, when I entered my spiritual path, it was very spontaneous out of not knowing. The only thing I knew before was how to raise children and being a good house wife and a loving wife, that was my world. And I loved this world. And somehow I got thrown out of this world and all of sudden there was this question: Who am I and what is God and all this, and I started to feel such a longing in my heart to find that out and so I was ready and also I met Iain at this point and I was ready to leave everything. But I did not only leave my family, I also left myself as I knew myself and then everything started to unfold for me in a very intuitive way like a kind of awakening. And then Iain entered a profound teaching which is the Diamond Approach and I entered this teaching with him and in this moment I felt I got completely disconnected. And that was like you said: a male concept. A very beautiful concept, and I was so stunned by the beauty of it with the way this teacher explained True Nature, that my my mind completely disconnected me from my senses, what I felt in my body, you know. When I started to awaken naturally I also had many gifts that arose, I became a healer, I could heal people, I could do all kinds of things. And as I shifted more into the mind, into doing inquiry into my mind and finding out through my mind who I am I completely started losing touch and that is - to look at that now - is incredibly painful for me .

Ellen: Yes

Renate: So, how was it for you? (laughing) I mean, your teacher was Adyashanti.

Marlies: Yeah, Adyashanti and before that a few others. It was Osho and Barry Long and then Adya and then also Daniel Odier. So, interesting, all male teachers, even though some of them have quite a female teaching. I feel - again, it's suffering that brought me - it's not really suffering only, I think it is for most of us - but there was a deep longing for something. And I knew that something, when I would so-call find it, I knew that that would be it. I just knew it. And I remember when I went to Osho I just left Holland from one day to the other and I arrived there in the ashram and the moment I sat there I was home for the first time in my life. But then really a whole can of worms opened up because then really the deepening process happened. I had never been really a person that was kind of hanging out in emptiness in that way just hiding in there, because there was so much conditioning that was just coming out so I feel very early on for me the process was really becoming embodied, to come in the body. I see it often as the light of awareness just starting to wake up every cell in the body. And to me it's like when we wake up to our true nature that's kind of like this (opens her arms). And then we descend, we go in and twe touch everything in the body and bring that fullness to life. And that's what I love about the feminine. To me, you could say, the masculine is awareness and the feminine is that aspect of the Divine that brings that fullness, that juiciness, that body, that flesh to life. It's wild, but it's what I am passionate about and very touched about how it's not only bringing my attention for instance to my belly, but to really resting as that love here in the body, So it's really completely out of the mind but it so-called starts as you bring your attention there but then you are here as space in the body. So then it's really bringing body and space all together as One. And that brings that fullness of life, the wholeness. So it's kind of like (sighs) the spiritual body and the physical body are being empowered by this awareness that we are, as the true nature...

Renate: Did that come easy to you - to be in the body?

Marlies: No, no (all laughing). Well, yes and no. I think what helped me in my teenage and early twenty years I was a top athlete. So I was very much in that way in the body. And I think if I wouldn't have had that I wouldn't be sitting here the way I am sitting because that was like training 4 times a week and really brought me here. But to really bring me here in a conscious way: no, that has not been easy, because that has been sorting out through conditioning, partly collective of the female, partly what came down the line, the lineage, and partly whatever karma I came in with, so that was very challenging and very beautiful; a kind of completely falling in love over time, I can that say now, I couldn't see that in the beginning, like a falling in love with my own humanity and falling in love with this female form completely - as she is, as she moves, as she talks, as she is weird here and there and (all laughing), just everything, just the whole enchilada (all laughing). But I feel a deep love, and to me that is the feminine, that's love and it's wonderful to wake up to our true nature to know this love and then to live as this love; and that sounds also really cool but to truely live as this love as this body love and formlessness as one. That's not for sissies.

Renate: No, no. Maybe, that's why so many men are trying not to go there (all laughing). Yes, because, you know, if you listen to a lot of these people, actually I also interviewed, it is all about transcendence, it's all about leaving the body, the world. You know I went through many years of that as well myself

Marlies: And you know, that is understandable. And I don't know how that is for you (turning to Ellen), but that's understandable because to me it's also love trauma. So people wake up to their true nature, yes, beautiful, and then people start meditating more but often when they meditate they are sitting in their numbness not even so much in their so-called transcendence. It's a numbness of trauma. At least that's how I see it and to truly wake that up takes a tremendous courage and perseverance and intimacy

Ellen: And guidance.

Renate: So, say more about that

Ellen: About guidance?

Renate: Yes, or your experience with that because you had a lot of traumas to go through.

Ellen: What's funny, is that before I woke up to my true nature (laughing) I already had explored quite a lot, I had gone to I don't know how many workshops with teachers like Marion Woodman, people who truly truly are able to guide women into descents, true descents. You really go into the underworld but you truly go there from deep body work and working with dreams and you go into this kind of unravelling of the ego structure and explore the feminine world there and the darkness under. And then you come out the other side with the intention of bringing up to the light some kind of shadows... I am saying it the fancy way but this points to real experiences, I had had quite a lot of journeys and I thought I'm in touch with it all. But if feels to me like then when you realize your true nature then, as you say, the courage is needed, you need a lot of courage, but the courage is there because now you can really let go, now you can really face what is here, because you are in love with your true nature, because you are in love with...

Renate: The truth.

Ellen: Right. So then in that understanding, and as you turn towards it and open yourself to it and abide in it and things begin to surface much more than they might have in the past and you no longer have such a need to have the narrative for it, or to have the resolution for it. So right now we are talking about the feminine and the masculine and they are really beautiful themes, but if we go deeper, in a way it's just pure healing, pure energetic healing that takes the shape that it takes after each one of us awakens to our true nature and if this happens to be a female body, that unwinding, that path towards healing is going to be expressed through this female embodiment. But I don't have it very clear, I am starting to understand how it works and what this female body mind, how it works, what she loves...I am also understanding the alchemy with the masculine and I understand that the healing of the feminine is nothing without the healing of the masculine. For example, when I say that again, it is just a concept, isn't it? So ask Marlies what I mean by that.(all laughing loud and long)

Renate: That is one of the questions I have. How do those two come together in one spiritual unfolding? How do we balance that, how do we find equilibrium in that. What can we use besides our relationships and I guess, the world is a mirror, to bring more balance in that, because it is not so clear-cut, it is not so easy to see that, I find that for myself, I don't know how you experience that.

Marlies: I have found it's a very natural process, especially when I look back, before that I had really no idea, but I really notice when I look back in my life that our true nature brings us, gives us exactly what we need at every moment. And especially when we stay true to our true nature it gives us whatever masculine or feminine balance that needs to happen. So for instance what comes to mind right now, is, you know, I live with a certain illness and so it was for periods of time very very challenging to be with that. But in other ways it is an incredible invitation for me to go in the body and fully absolutely totally receive the experience that's here, sometimes with incredible discomfort and tiredness, so then I truly started to sit with that five, six years ago when I couldn't do anything else beside that, because life put me there. And then I felt it was just such a loving process of really entering the female, this female form, with the light of awareness, so in that way it was a natural coming together, let's say of the male or masculine and the feminine. Because I see the masculine more as very focused, focused awareness, that's really wonderful. And the female is more the form and the aliveness so to speak. So bringing that together in that way. And in the process I could see there was a lot of stuff that the body held, that was not me, it was my mom. So now I would sit with that and certain realizations would come but just holding that energy, tasting and feeling it, it was almost like kissing it, becoming truly intimate with it which for me is a very female thing or feminine. And then it released itself and often with words like: oh, this is her, this is not me; and then more space would come, would be revealed, so then it's in that way a coming together, not that I thought about it when I went through the process. It's more when I look back. There is a coming together of awareness and space and presence and form. And then really the primordial abiding deepens then as I see the Ultimate that's underneath that, where I or we can rest more deeply

Renate: So you did all that without guidance?

Marlies: Yes.

Renate: It just unfolded.

Marlies: It unfolded, well, of course, I was with Adya and doing a lot of meditation, but mostly I was at home and up in the night for hours and hours and days also. I was kind of in my cave time I call it, for years I was just home in my cave and here and there when I had enough energy I would to go and teach and see some clients and for the rest just be home.

Renate: yes, yes, I think you just touched on something important when you mentioned your cave. The importance for women to have times when they only belong to themselves. And I only realized lately when I started to investigate in that subject that I always belonged to somebody. Yes, I belonged to my parents, and then right from my parents I belonged to a man, my whole life. And I remember you spoke in one interview we had last year together about the solitude and about the silence you have to enter - for healing.

Marlies: Yes

Renate: Completely undisturbed by anything.

Marlies: That's my experience. And as you say, especially for women - I think, for men and women - but for men it's easier. That's more in his makeup to do that. For women it's easier to call your girlfriend: hey, blablabla and to fill up the space (laughing)

Ellen: Which is also very important for women.

Marlies: That's true, too. Well, we take the pressure off the high pressure cooker. When we sit in our soup, then, you know, there is a certain pressure of that energy that needs to be fully, as I call it, received. You can say welcomed and that's already really, really nice. But to me it's to really taken to heart, being touched and kissing it. I like kissing. (all laughing) Kiss yourself and kiss whatever is here. And then it naturally unfolds and then it naturally can transform and then it can be itself. And we need time and space for that, to really fully be more and more resting in the spaceless and the timeless.

Renate: And you, Ellen, how do you take...I also know you are also very precious about silence and you know, I remember, I texted you once - no, no, we were supposed to talk on the phone - and then you wrote back: I had the whole weekend people at home and was talking so much, I need to be silent now. And you know what? I just loved that. It really touched me that you are...it showed me how much you are in touch...now I start crying (all laughing)...how much you are in touch with your own needs.

Ellen: I can be (all laughing) - not always, but I do feel I am more - I think it's funny because I want to say that one of the things I received from Francis was something in a way that you were talking about, the kind of masculine capacity for higher reasoning and kind of shedding lights, giving form, delineating. And I think I really received that from my male teacher. And it is what has allowed me to sit, to be more courageous, to be on my own, to be in my solitude, to be with the raw experience. I think previous to that it was overwhelming and there was no indication of what to do with it, it was just avoided at all cost. Most of it. But now, yes, absolutely. Now it happens naturally. It happens in the flow of life even. It feels, there is this silence underlying. Even this moment...

Renate: Do you still have sometimes raw experiences and what does Rupert think about that...? (all laughing).

Ellen: So you'd like to know...(laughing) Well, relationships...

Renate: It's also difficult for Iain when I have one of my raw experiences. (laughing)

Ellen: I think it can be difficult for Rupert in this case and for myself because sometimes feelings can really overflow in this body mind... And I feel it's part of that process of alignment of the female body. That there is, in a way in the female body mind there is such a density of suffering, of pain body, as Eckhart Tolle calls it, that's maybe deeper in a way than the male pain body, or different. And then, when you are in a relationship, with a man, the pain body, in each one, get triggered which is a great opportunity, especially if you share the understanding, but - not but - AND the container gets broken over and over again, the vessel. You find yourself in chaotic territories of feelings, raw feelings, vague feeling, it's messy business at times and...

Renate: It is supposed to be that way.

Ellen: Yes

Renate: But life is messy in a way. It's the male which wants it all organized and clean.

Ellen: It can be, it can be, that's why I feel, within the context of a relationship the healing, which is no longer individual healing, it's universal healing. That feeling takes the form of the masculine eating a bit of that feminine, increasing his tolerance for chaos, for tears, for shouts, for...

Renate: Isn't it the world, because, it's the spirit and the woman is the world. It's the matrix of creation, isn't it? Isn't it that the female is the matrix of creation, and the spirit enters this world? Could we say it like that?

Ellen: Yes.

Renate: So you are feeding the spirit with the feminine

Ellen: I don't know what I am feeding (all laughing) but it is real. It's something that's been cut off slightly from the masculine. That's been turned away from. But it's also in their nature not to be like that. I don't think I mentioned that a man does not need to be like a woman, a woman doesn't need to be like a man at all, but the healing seems to take place in a kind of alchemical exchange and...

Renate: It needs each other

Ellen: Our relationship is one form it takes, but not everybody is in a relationship, that doesn't mean that it's not occuring.

Marlies: But I see in that, it's very natural for the female or the feminine to move, it's fluid, fluidity. So it's natural to cry. The more we welcome it the more the natural flow comes and it goes. The more it is stopped like: Hey, it's not supposed to be there or this is not spiritual or now you should be over it or whatever - then it gets truncated and gets hard and then it gets even more that the more we as women, so to speak, can fully receive our own sadness or happiness, it doesn't matter, it's the flow of life. It is the world in that way, yeah. Shakti is the world, she comes in the world, we come in the world. We bring life and aliveness and part of that is this fluidity of tears and laughter and everything. And that all wants to be itself. Cry wants to be a cry and happy wants to be happy and abiding wants to abide and the more that's naturally received, is, everybody can relax, but it's a learning and the man in general has just different ways they don't need, as you say, (turning to Ellen) they don't need to be in a female body. They are just very different.

Ellen: But when you say that, you know this is so true, that this movement, I feel, that is the feminine. And I think women also have lost touch with that. We said that at the beginning of this panel together. When I worked last week and when I was with a group of women and at one point we were just abiding with the feeling and I encouraged it, there was a difficult feeling to really... And this woman started crying but then - anyway, I won't describe her process, but at the end she came and she said: I finally understood that this sadness - at first I was feeling it but it was kind of contained within the story, its story. It was MY sadness and I was feeling its cage. I was holding it a bit. And then through the guidance she just stayed and stayed and became much more in touch with the raw energy of it. Still sadness, but sadness in freedom. Sadness no longer belonging to this illusory entity that nevertheless is appearing in this great movement of aliveness and then she said, I cried even more. And she cried, and for her it was a big understanding that her feelings did not belong to her, her body was a vehicle for feelings. That there was a function to these feelings. That there is a reason for them. And if we let them through, as you say, we must, we have to.

Renate: Right. Somebody was telling me something very beautiful a few days ago. He did quite some work, extended work with the native Americans, with the Indians, and, what they told him was, when they are grieving they dig a little hole in the soil and they let their grief into this hole because they believe this nourishes the earth.

Marlies: Yes

Ellen: And it does.

Renate: It does. Everything we own and we allow - like you said - is nourishing everything, and it's our soul and the...

Ellen: Can I say something? In my experience, I have felt overwhelmed with feelings and at times I have needed the clarity and fire and boundary of the masculine because of, I think, of a level of forgetting, at the level of the pain body, I think that there is an overwhelming of feeling that is less natural, it needs to heal, it's a flow of feeling that's sick, you could say, that needs to heal

Marlies: That needs that safety and then in that masculine it can ...

Ellen: Exactly. Beautiful.

Renate: There was something else I heard, something Thich Nhat Hanh said, which - gosh, you know, I cried and cried when I heard that - because it showed me my - disattachment? (looking at the others) I don't know if this is the right word...

Marlies: disconnection (all laughing)

Renate: My disconnection. (laughing) Thank you. When he was asked what we can do for the world he said: Listen to the earth cry. And I thought: Yes, I want to hear that, because only then I know what the earth needs and what my body needs, because they are one thing. And I want to learn that

Ellen: We'll teach you.

Renate: Thank you (all laughing)

Ellen: We teach us. We know how to do that.

Renate: You know when I read your notice yesterday I thought gosh, there is so much to learn for me, you know, around the body and being in the body and bringing the Spirit into the world. (laughing) So, one question I was also pondering was how we are all sitting in front of a man, established already, trying to get enlightened or waking up, giving our power away (all laughing). How would a teaching of an enlightened woman look like? What would be the difference? How would a woman teach freedom? What would it contain that a man's teaching doesn't contain. Any ideas?

Marlies: Well, first of all it contains a female body. And a female body brings naturally a female movement, as a male body brings a male movement and...(pondering)...When you asked the question it makes me think... I don't have a perfect idea about it, I often think, well, how different it is when a group of women come together or a group of men come together. And in that way I would say there is something more about connectedness and there is less I would say - but these are all generalizations - as now, as we are taught, there tends to be a teacher on the stage, tends to be mostly males, but luckily there are more females coming; so there is a male teacher on the stage and then there is the audience, which is a little lower so we have this, I call it, patriarchal difference, the male or the teacher - there are now also more females - they know it and then the student is learning and projecting and we think as a student: well, he or she will know it all and if I do really what he or she tells me then I will get awakened or whatever. So we kind of give our power away. But the thing is: The teacher gets kind of also hooked in that same situation, gets identified also, you know. So to me, true feminine teachings is more about connectedness and as I teach women's circles, about connectedness, equality, and then I still have the label teacher, but it's more flowing. But it's also a process. Because when I started teaching there was an insecurity and there was this idea: waking up has happened to you so I'm supposed to know it all. But the truth is: I did not know it all (laughing). So there was a certain defensiveness and protectiveness because I didn't know how to teach. It was just - a teacher asked me to teach, so ok, and now I notice, and that's also the embodiment, so now this is more here embodied, so now I don't feel any offendedness any more, this is it, take it or leave it.

Renate: Ah, I think that's beautiful in itself what you just said. I didn't know what to do. You know the trust into that not-knowing, being the knowingness, but not knowing. That is very much the...

Marlies: Absolutely

Renate: Feminine, yeah.

Marlies: And in that now I feel more as a female, I really bring in the body. I really bring in awareness, presence and the body. And together as one, really as our humanity and our divinity, I talk a lot about that, humanity and divinity the more they are welcomed and received they fall together as one. They are one and the same and there is no separation, and then space, emptiness is wonderful. The feminine is fullness and bringing that together is all of life. You have a saying within Kashmere tantrism, there you have Shiva and Shakti, and Shiva is shriveled to a corpse if he doesn't welcome Shakti, you know, he is nothing without her. And that's for all of us within ourselves and without, it's a total inclusiveness that goes together with natural abidance. In the beginning there was more like: Oh yeah, I need to rest this emptiness or abide in this void and the whole thing and I really don't care anymore. There is just an absolute ease and an absolute natural resting and then there is the feminine that wants to live bubbling up (laughing) and dances and sings and is alive and makes chaos and...

Renate: and the maid cleans it up (all laughing)

Marlies: That's right. So that's my answer.

Renate: And you? you have the wisdom...

Ellen: No, I don't know about that...I just remember when I used to go to satsang in the beginning with Francis and I would sit there and listen; ok, so part of what you just described was happening. But there was a transmission of the truth as a deep resonance, you know, Self to Self and then after satsang, I was just remembering yesterday, the natural bubbling up for like two hours after satsang, that what for Francis refers to as the perfume, the way it would express itself through this body mind, I guess that was the feminine, completely flowing I remember, just freedom embodying through dancing and sweetness and playfulness and all these...and it changed all the time, I laughed a lot and it was very happy moments. But it was also the quality of flow and definitely the body very much and flow for me, I think flow and connection and relationship. So now I don't give formal satsang but I definitely am with people in a kind of teaching capacity and sometimes I feel that I, because my teacher was Francis, and my companion is also a teacher and they are both kind of very strong masculines. I better say the right thing and better not move to much

Renate: Behave... (all laughing and talking at the same time)

Ellen: but I slowly slowly...

Renate: You had to behave in a non-dual way, right?

Ellen: Right, non-dual correct, politically correct non-duality...oh no, actually that's not what they are but...

Renate: Clean and pristine.

Ellen: But for me to try to imitate them that is just completely impossible, but nevertheless those were my models and there are things that I love about, for example about the yoga, but I can feel the more I teach she is just, the more she's just ...she ain't gonna...(all laughing) it's gonna come...So you can't suppress the feminine

Renate: It's coming!

Ellen: It's here!

Renate: It gets stronger and stronger. That reminds me...

Ellen: I have to read that quote that you sent me so we can refute it (laughing)

Renate: Which quote was that?

Ellen: Oh, forget about that. It was so completely off the charts, the one about the...

Renate: The Hindu one ?

Ellen: The Hindu one.

Renate: Yeah, I know, oh yeah. If you are born into a female body you are not going to get enlightened. But maybe in the next life, you have another body, you are lucky.

Marlies: But the same with the Dalai Lama. If there would be a female Dalai Lama - would she be accepted?

Renate: Well, maybe we have to wait a few years (all laughing)

Marlies: I am curious, you know, the Dalai Lama speaks about how he meditates every day for hours for the new Dalai Lama to come through and sometimes it's like...oh you know - you never know...

Ellen: maybe include the possibility of female

Renate: I actually heard a few years ago, I just remember, that an incarnation of Jesus is here born somewhere in Africa and she is a girl! (all laughing)

Renate: Well, anyway, I have written down a quote the Dalai Lama said: Western women will save the world.

Ellen: Western?

Renate: Western women will save the world. And we do experience the freedom, much more the freedom and the coming out than any other or a lot of other countries.

Marlies and Ellen: Yes, yes.

Renate: So we have about a couple of minutes left. How can we, what can we talk about? (laughing)

Ellen: How many minutes do we have...exactly? (all laughing)

Renate: Hm, maybe it's helpful if we can talk a little bit about what are the female qualities? so women can recognize them. I don't know if that is a good idea or do you have any other thing where we can help to clarify the picture for our audience?

Marlies: As I see female qualities in my own experience is fluidity, is the quality to be intimate with our own bodies, but also intimate with others, male or female. And also, what Ellen said, there is something necessary for women to share. There's something in the brain that's literally different for men or women. Women have left and right brains that are connected. So connectedness... and also motherhood and gentleness and fierceness. To me the main is like compassion and fierceness, firmness and gentleness. That together. To me nothing can stay standing, or nothing can not open in the face of combination of true gentle and softness and firmness and to me those are feminine qualities. That's what comes to mind right now.

Renate: Anything to add, Ellen?

Ellen: Well, I really like all those qualities that you named. I feel like one more, maybe I would like to add, but it's not a quality, but this sense when I drop into the feminine, funny but I don't really like saying: the word feminine (laughing)

Marlies: Yeah, you don't have to.

Ellen: What could I say? (all laughing) Maybe it's sensitivity but sensitivity in the sense of...

Marlies: Refinement?

Ellen: It's going down under, you know, in the darkness, in the realms that are... dark, that are unknown, that are not seen in the light, that are half seen, half not seen, that are half alive, half dead. That is the capacity to kind of descend. I feel that's a feminine trait. Just to go down, to go down into the body and into the unknown, into the...

Renate: I would love to talk more about that but we do not have the time.

Ellen: You don't really descend, it's not like you really go down there...but there is this kind of natural...

Renate: Allowing...

Ellen: Yeah. And I feel it's really important to remember the art of descent so that you don't get overwhelmed by the forces that are down there. I think it's our job as women in the world. We need our men to respect that job (all laughing).

Marlies: Yeah, well, I meant to respect that job but mostly we need to own that, we need to own that back really, that's how I see it, because we cannot really expect anybody outside ourselves...

Ellen: That's true

Marlies: But we can ask for help for that, for support, but it's really we need to own that truth.

Ellen: Yeah, and if we own that, we create it and then the universe will respond.

Marlies: Yeah, yeah.

Renate: I am sorry...

Ellen: Yeah, me too!

Marlies: I feel we just started.

Renate: We will continue, there is so much to explore. Well, thank you both for coming and thank you for watching Conscious TV, and from Marlies we have an interview already on Conscious TV and also from Ellen, if you are interested. Good bye, I see you soon.

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