Karen Tate Transcript

Karen Tate interview

Summary:

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest today is Karen Tate. Here’s a little intro that Karen sent me. Having discovered the feminine face of God and what that means for women, men, and the species of Mother Earth, Karen became an emissary of the sacred feminine, combining spirituality, feminism, and women’s empowerment to offer the world a real alternative to the domination and oppression of patriarchy, the rule of men, and the authoritarian father. Her work has taken the form of tours to sacred sites of Goddess around the world, teaching, giving workshops, and messages from the pulpit, writing books, and she’s the host of her own radio show, “Voices of the Sacred Feminine,” for the last eight years, discussing issues of sex, power, politics, and religion. She’s married to her husband, Roy, for the last 30 years, whom she describes as the wind beneath her wings. And let me see. Yeah, I think that pretty much, oh, and you’ve written a number of books, which I’ll list on batgap.com and links to them so people can check them out on Amazon. “Sacred Places of the Goddess,” “108 Destinations,” “Walking an Ancient Path,” “Rebirthing Goddess on Planet Earth,” was a finalist in the National Best Books of 2008, “Goddess Calling,” “Inspirational Messages and Meditations of Sacred Feminine Liberation Theology” will be coming out this spring, if it’s not out already. And in the fall, you’ll be putting out an anthology, “Voices of the Sacred Feminine–Conversations to Reshape Our World.” So good. I don’t think I’ve ever really covered this topic too much. I did have an interview last summer with a woman named Connie Huebner, who says that she talks to the Divine Mother, actually the Divine Mother speaks through her. In fact, at a certain point in the interview, it became Divine Mother speaking and I was talking to Divine Mother instead of Connie. And everyone’s heard the term Sacred Feminine, but let’s start by simply defining it, because there might be many definitions of it and we might be saying different things to different people without knowing it. So how would you define it?

Karen: Well, that’s very true, Rick. It does mean a lot of different things. In fact, when I teach about it, when I write about it, I am always writing about it from different perspectives. So you can either talk about the Sacred Feminine as deity. You know, some people believe that there is a God or a Goddess in the heavens that actually cares about us and hears our prayers. There’s archetype, or if that’s a term that maybe might not be familiar to some of your listeners, think of it as like maybe a role model. Goddess provides us role models to emulate. Then there’s ideals. What does Goddess spirituality stand for? If you are a Goddess advocate, for instance, what are your values? You know, what do you live by? And Goddess is also, you know, some people feel as if she is like the consciousness of the cosmos, the consciousness of the planet. So, you can go in all of those different directions, depending on your audience, depending on, are we talking politics or are we talking spirituality? You know what I mean?

Rick: If I were asked to define it, and I’m not an expert like you are, I would try to do so in terms of, I think, the fourth thing that you said, which is that we’re not just talking about some mythology or fabrication of human …

Karen: Dogma.

Rick: Yeah, or just some cultural thing that has no relationship to actual reality, but we’re talking about some fundamental reality, some fundamental principle of intelligence that is part of the governing intelligence of the universe, perhaps the ultimate governing intelligence of the universe. But I would try to, and we might bring in physics or something, but I would try to actually understand it for my own sake in terms of it being a real thing that we’re talking about here, that actually, you know, we’re describing some very deep level of nature’s functioning and trying to understand what it is.

Karen: True, true. And sometimes consciousness kind of falls under the deity category, you know, sometimes it fits there. Because, when Christianity came along, it took all the sacredness out of the material world, and that has given men license to not just dominate women and the species, but also the planet. You know, Christianity comes along, and we’re thinking about transcendence, we’re thinking about life when we leave this planet, as if that’s what we’re primarily aspiring to. And so what had come before, when people really saw the earth as sacred, when they didn’t really distinguish, between life here as being sacred or not, we’ve sort of lost that sense of everything around us being sacred, of us being a part of the divine spark, of Mother Earth, of, all of us having a piece of divinity within us. And that has really given man and humanity, I’m using the, you know, archetype man here, that has really given men license to dominate, oppress, exploit. I really do believe until we can once again see each other as sacred, see the earth as sacred, see the species that are disappearing every day as sacred, we don’t have much hope of saving ourselves on this planet.

Rick: Interesting, yeah, I’m reminded of, who was it, James Watt, who was Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, and responsible for the environment, and he explicitly stated that, we could do whatever we wanted with the environment, because Jesus was coming and everything was going to end anyway. And he was also notorious for canceling the Beach Boys concert on the Washington Mall, because he felt they were too decadent, and replacing them with Wayne Newton or something, who’s some Las Vegas lounge lizard.

Karen: Well, and you know, you also have the end-timers, the end timers are just waiting for the end, because they’re absolutely sure they’re going to see Jesus and go to heaven with him. So, you know, those sorts of people don’t care what we do to the planet, you know. They have a very short-term view, or they don’t believe they have anything to worry about. They’re science deniers, and, they may be the death of us if we don’t convince them pretty soon that they should be worried, and we do have to fix things.

Rick: Do you think they’re convincible?

Karen: I don’t think all of them are, but I think we, I hope there’s enough of us that can have enough influence that, we can,take hold of the situation. You know, and people like the Koch brothers, who are only, you know, care about the, the bottom line, you know, they’re worried about their pocketbook. You know, we really have to start caring about more than what’s in our bank book. We have a responsibility. We are caretakers of this earth, and that is certainly more important than, how much wealth we acquire.

Rick: So you would say, deducing from what we’ve just been saying, that the schism in today’s society, between those who think global warming is a hoax and it’s real, for instance, is not just a matter of simple scientific ignorance or, kind of religious indoctrination. Well, it’s sort of actually a matter of, it’s a reflection of a deep cultural trend that has been 2,000 years in the making, in which the world, the Earth, is seen as mere material and devoid of any intrinsic divine tendency or quality, and therefore, at our mercy, we can do whatever we want with it. Whereas those who would see the earth as intrinsically divine or, imbued with intelligence or divine qualities or whatever, would no sooner damage it than cut their own hand. It’s part and parcel of who and what we are, correct?

Karen: Yes, yes, and let me clarify. What you said is absolutely true, but there’s a middle ground. There’s a balance point. The people that we’re describing that don’t seem to understand that we have finite resources and we have to be more responsible, you know, are the end-timers, the ones that don’t think anything can happen to us because Jesus will protect us and that we can be irresponsible and not pay the price. And then the folks who believe that, yes, everything is sacred. Well, the people who tend to believe that everything is sacred also realize that, yes, things have been put on this Earth for us to utilize, but not exploit. For instance, I’ll give you the mythology just very briefly of an Inuit goddess Sedna, S-E-D-N-A. There’s a planet actually named after her. You know, we think of her as the environmental goddess. She’s the goddess of the people like around Newfoundland, Alaska, those icy waters around Canada. And Sedna governs the animals of the waters. And like the Inuit people, the Alaskan people, they live off those animals. They use their blubber. They use their teeth. They use their skin to survive. And Sedna says to mankind, she says, “You can utilize the animals of the sea, but you only use what you need. And if you get greedy, I will cut you off.” See what I’m saying? So the idea is it’s this difference between, yes, Mother Earth provides what we need to sustain ourselves versus the people who just think the resources are infinite. And, this idea that we…there’s this hierarchy. There’s God and there’s man, and then there’s everything else beneath. And man believes, because the Bible tells him so, that he is entitled to dominate the Earth rather than be a caretaker of the Earth. And in dominating the Earth, everything who is not him, then it gets exploited rather than cared for. Does that answer your question?

Rick: I think so. I’m kind of reminded of the way nature itself works. I mean, a lion doesn’t go out and kill 100 gazelles just because it can. It kills one gazelle, that it needs to eat. And generally the weakest and sickest of the gazelles who can’t get away from it as easily. And that sustains the lion, and it also improves the gene pool of the gazelle population.

Karen: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, nature in so many ways really does give us a template for how to live, if we would only pay attention.

Rick: Yeah. Right. So, we’re not paying attention. And you can cherry-pick the Bible. I mean, you can find all kinds of contradictory things in the Bible. There is that thing about giving man dominion over the Earth, although the interpretation of that could easily mean you take care of something if you have dominion over it. I mean, you have dominion over your children, but you don’t send them into child labor camps or something. You don’t exploit them, you nurture them. But also there’s the bit in the Bible about God being omnipresent, you know. And if God is omnipresent, and I still haven’t talked to a Christian who totally groks this, to my knowledge, then, you know, God permeates everything. That intelligence permeates everything. And as Jesus said, “Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.” So, if you’re doing something injurious to the environment, you’re doing it to Jesus. You’re doing it to God. You’re kind of offending the inner intelligence that governs nature.

Karen: Well, that part of the Jesus story fits hand in glove with Goddess spirituality. You know, very much in alignment there. But as you said, people can cherry-pick, people can interpret anything they want. I mean, I’ve interviewed Frank Schaeffer, part of the right-wing elite, and he said, “Karen, let me assure you that they can even find things in the Bible that justify their idea that they don’t have to help the poor, that the poor are just lazy takers.” You know, we hear that in the news now. And that, you know, their riches are gifts from God, and, the people who are poor, well, they’re being punished by God. Not that maybe they didn’t have the same, you know, opportunities in life, you know, as if there’s a level playing field out there, between the rich boy who grows up with a silver spoon in the mouth and the person who grows up in the ghetto. Well, if you watch “12 Years a Slave,” I mean, 150 years ago, the Bible was used to justify slavery. So you can use any scripture to justify anything if you want to interpret it the way you want to interpret it.

Karen: Absolutely.

Rick: Yeah. So, in your introduction that I read, you said, “Having discovered the feminine face of God and what that means for women,” can you tell a little bit more about the nature of that discovery? Was it just an intellectual thing? Was it some kind of mystical, spiritual experience, or what?

Karen: Well, sure, and thank you for asking that, because I feel like if I could discover her late in life, then I had hoped that other people could discover the great She, you know, in these broad strokes that we’ve defined her, that other people could, too. You see, I grew up in the Bible Belt. I spent most of my life in New Orleans, and trust me, you don’t hear about the sacred feminine in the Bible Belt. Now, you do hear about Mary, okay, but Mary is a female archetype that is a safe woman in patriarchy. You know, she’s benign, she’s not uppity, she’s not going to make any waves. That’s the kind of woman that patriarchy feels safe with. And so, okay, I’m about 30 years old. My husband and I moved to California, where he grew up as a teenager, and a whole new world opened up to me. Believe it or not, I went to a class. Looking back on it now, it was just a fluff class at some place called the Learning Annex. I think they have them around the country. And it was about Goddess, and it was a slippery slope from there. I started to understand everything about the feminine face of God that had been, I think, purposefully hidden from me in the Bible Belt. I learned about it on an intellectual basis. I also learned about it on a spiritual basis. I found out that there were feminine faces of God across the globe, where the only one maybe I had heard of was Mary, and she wasn’t a god. And so I started traveling to sacred sites across five continents. And it really changes you. It changes you as a woman when you find out there is a feminine face of God, and that God is just not in the male form. You start to realize that you’ve kind of been duped for maybe decades. Suddenly the life that you had being subservient, being a second-class citizen, well, you might get a little angry because you realize maybe it wasn’t meant to be that way. You start to see it as a strategy to have cheap labor, to have second-class citizens. So then the politics enter into it. So, yes, it’s a spiritual discovery, and it’s a personal development. Then you realize that if everyone understood these ideas, that there should be equality, there should be partnership, there shouldn’t be domination and exploitation, then you take that outside yourself and into your communities, into all your relationships, into the world, and you see how the world could be a much different place without this hierarchy and domination that patriarchy automatically brings to society. Because you see, you start to understand that if your mythology is only about a male God, then you end up with male authority. And male authority is patriarchy, rule of the father. That means anything from a woman can be chattel to her husband’s property, and he has control over her literal life. I mean, we see that on the planet today. It’s not just in the past. Or it might mean that women are only making 76 cents on the dollar, and there’s still men trying to determine if a woman should have right to contraceptions or abortion or what jobs she may be able to have in the world. So it’s this discrimination that patriarchy automatically sets up. And this domination, I mean, we see domination everywhere. It’s whites over brown and black-skinned people. It’s one country over another. It’s men over women. It’s humanity over species on the planet. It’s this hierarchy, because some people are considered more valuable than others, or some things are more valuable than others.

Rick: So if there’s a feminine face of God, is there a masculine face of God?

Karen: Absolutely, absolutely.

Rick: And is it necessarily bad in some of the ways you’ve just been describing, or has that too been distorted and perverted to greedy, selfish purposes? In its pure form, it would be okay.

Karen: Yes, yes. I think in its pure form it could be okay, because we believe in feminist theology, we believe that it used to be about the “we” and the “us,” and then it became about the “I” and the “me.” Of course, male archetypes like Jesus, for instance, that’s perfectly fine. That fits hand in glove with sacred feminine ideals. In fact, many men are starting to talk about how males, who have also been hurt by patriarchy, we have to talk about that, that they are developing new role models. For instance, instead of growing up to be this dominator warrior, then maybe he is actually the protector. He doesn’t go out and be aggressive when it’s not necessary, just to acquire oil or acquire wealth, if you get my drift. He is there to protect the family unit. The wife, the female, and the children are at the center of society, and he protects from the outside. Where the way things are now, it’s the male at the center, and it’s women and children on the fringes suffering the most. Women do 80% of the work on the planet and have 20% of the assets.

Rick: Yeah, an example of patriarchy hurting men is all the wars that have been fought, mostly by men, and mostly started by men, and fought by men, and it’s the men who die. Of course, it’s all the peripheral damage and the collateral damage, so to speak, that takes place among all sexes. But, go ahead.

Karen: But men have also been hurt, not just in that way. Men really have been prevented, just like women, from really being their authentic self. Think back when you were a kid, and you leave the domain of your house, the loving arms of your mother, if you were fortunate enough to have a loving, nurturing mother, and you go out into the world, and what are you taught as a little boy? It’s kind of survival of the fittest, the bully on the schoolyard. He’s the one that sort of dominates, and what if you’re a young boy who isn’t into sports, and maybe you’re more into the arts or something like that? Well, in a lot of places, you’re going to have a rough time if you’re not into being on the football team, and if you’re a young man who maybe is more sensitive. I mean, that’s just one example of how patriarchy hurts men.

Rick: Or if you’re gay.

Karen: Yeah, or if you’re gay. Or if you’re a Christian, look at the kids who have killed themselves, because they’ve been told that they’re an abomination, rather than, “You know what? This is a big world, and there are lots of ways of being. You don’t have to fit into this tiny little box.”

Rick: Probably most of the people listening to this broadcast, you and I included, would agree that there aren’t entirely separate ultimate gods for each religion, that they’re all sort of interpreting whatever god may be, each in their own way. And these days, NASA tells us that there are 40 billion potentially inhabitable planets in our galaxy alone, so presumably there are countless other ways in which God is understood or interpreted throughout the galaxy, throughout the universe. But here on our planet, you could almost classify religions on the Karen Tate scale of patriarchy, or whatever the feminine counterpart of patriarchy is, matriarchy, by their mythologies and their treatment of women. I mean, probably fundamentalist Islam is not too high on the scale, and in Saudi Arabia women aren’t allowed to drive or vote or anything like that. Do you see any contemporary religion on the high end of the scale?

Karen: Well, I’ll answer that, but let me piggyback on what you just said. You know, it’s not just fundamentalist Islam, it’s also fundamentalist Christianity. I mean, I’ve interviewed women on my show who have been in the evangelical movement, that they’ve escaped from groups like the Quiverfull movement. They’re like the Dugars, Duggars, Dugars, that you see on…

Rick: 19 kids and counting, yeah.

Karen: Yeah, yeah, and these women who have escaped, and I literally mean they feel like they have escaped with their lives at great cost and a very difficult thing to do. They tell me that they, you know, women are basically breeders. In fact, they tell these women that when they get to a point where it’s not safe for them to no longer have children, well, if they die in childbirth, then they’re a martyr for Christ. These religions that tell women that they will be coddled and they will be taken care of if they are submissive, they tend in a lot of cases to attract men who are dominators, men who are abusers. And you end up in this vicious cycle. I mean, television has made it look like, you know, with that Mormon show with the multiple wives, I forget the name of it, but you know what I’m talking about. They’ve sort of glamorized these ideas, but when you really look at what’s going on, it’s really not like they’re showing you on television. You asked the higher end of the spectrum, you know, where are their religions? You know, I think there can be higher ends of the spectrums in most religions.

Rick: Within each religion, yeah.

Karen: Yes, within each religion. There are wonderful Muslims. There are wonderful Christians. There are wonderful pagans, Buddhists, Shinto[ists]. I mean, you know, there are people doing good work who don’t fall into this domination and exploitation and fundamentalism in all religions.

Rick: So perhaps if as society evolves, as higher consciousness prevails on the planet, which hopefully it is doing, we won’t see religions fizzle out. We’ll just see their better qualities become more predominant and their more unfortunate qualities diminishing.

Karen: I hope so. I’ve looked into this a lot, and I don’t have all the absolute answers, but fear and desire for control are a lot of the motivating factors of the people who tend to clamp down and put the shackles on people rather than being open and being willing to be tolerant and try new things. You know, in interviewing people, it seems like the only way to reach these people is to try to start having common ground, because once you can find something, you know, that’s common ground between you, then maybe you can develop a dialogue. And,then you can eventually maybe have compassion and understanding and ultimately maybe even some sort of aspect of love. But, you know, you have to engage these people and, you know, think of how successful the gay movement has been in the country. When gays came out of the closet and people who were anti-gay started realizing that that person sitting next to them, you know, at work or maybe their family member was gay, when they realized that these people really weren’t abominations, then suddenly there was support, if you know what I mean. So, but as long as we see people as the other, as long as we don’t get to know one another as human beings, because, you know, we really do have so much more in common than we don’t. Think of mothers around the world. I’m giving a talk tomorrow at the Goddess Temple of Orange County on the subject of forgiveness. And there was this wonderful story in the news about these two men in Iraq who got into a fight and one stabbed the other one and killed him. This is in a Muslim country, Sharia law. The family was entitled, when this guy was hung in the public square, the mother of the family was entitled to kick the chair out from under the killer of their son. Well, the mother goes up to the chair where the guy is standing there with the noose around his neck and she hauled off and she slapped him so hard she probably could have knocked the skin off his face. But you know what? The next thing she did was she took the noose off of his neck and the next scene you saw was her and his mother embraced, crying. This is the kind of thing we need. You know, we need to be able to come together in our mutual humanity to save ourselves, you know, because who’s benefiting from this domination? Not the 99%, the 1%.

Rick: That’s a nice story and it brings to mind all these divisions like the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Shia Muslims and the Sunni Muslims and all this crazy stuff that’s going on in these countries. And a bigger dose of the kind of love that mother displayed, the kind of forgiveness that mother displayed, seems to me could dissolve these ancient conflicts.

Karen: Well, you know, Rick, it’s ancient conflicts but it’s contemporary conflicts. Everything is about dividing us, you know, it’s all of these wedge issues. You turn on Fox News, it’s hate the liberal, hate the black person, you know, hate the brown skin person. It’s, you know, it’s the science believers against the non-believers, you know, it’s the gays versus the straight, it’s the Christians versus the Muslims. You know, I feel like that if we could just come together in our humanity and forget these wedge issues, then maybe we could focus on the real problems. But it feels as if people are manipulated, you know, they’re manipulated by, you know, corporate conservative media who wants to maintain control, maintain the status quo. And as long as we’re fighting each other, then we don’t turn to them and say, “You know what, we’re tired of the domination, we’re tired of the exploitation.” Heaven forbid, maybe oil should be free. We shouldn’t allow multinational corporations to steal water and destroy economies in other countries or rape and pillage the planet. You know what I mean? There was something that just came across the news this week in Oklahoma. We actually, in Oklahoma, they’re actually charging people who are getting their power from solar.

Rick: I saw that, yeah.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. And so.

Rick: Go ahead and explain it because others didn’t see it.

Karen: Yeah. In Oklahoma, they passed something now in Congress where if you are getting your power from alternative sources like solar, then you have to pay a subsidy like one hundred dollars a month as a fine for using solar. Why? Well, because the oil companies own the politicians and they don’t want any competition. So how patriotic is that? I’d almost say that’s sedition or traitorous in a way, because that is self-interest for the oil companies rather than thinking about the greater good. And we have to start thinking about the greater good, not some bottom line of some corporation who is exploiting the environment and exploiting their workers.

Rick: Well, I totally agree with you, and those are my political sentiments. But ironically, you know, you just you preface that whole spiel by saying that we have these polarities and we need to somehow reconcile and eliminate these divisions, these polarities. Yet then you went into the sort of the liberal perspective on the whole thing, which any conservative listening to would say, wait a minute, that’s the liberal perspective. I have this perspective. So we almost need to step back further and say, what is the bigger picture that can embrace and incorporate and resolve these polarities? What is the larger solvent into which these separate parts can be dissolved so as to reach some kind of harmony or unity?

Karen: But well, Rick, but wouldn’t you say conservatives used to be about conservation? Wouldn’t they have want to do the best thing to use the resources of the planet to, if things have gotten.

Rick: I don’t know if that’s the derivation of the word conservative. If you go back to Teddy Roosevelt’s time, you know, he was a Republican. But on the other hand, he was up against conservatives who wanted to commercially exploit all the national parks or what he wanted to create as national parks. And so.

Karen: Well, well, think of it this way. Remember when greed was one of the seven deadly sins and suddenly, you know, you get this Ayn Rand Gordon Gekko ideas in the mainstream that greed is good, you know. So it’s almost as if we have to we have to shift to common sense, you know, maybe in my opinion. Granted, I think the liberal view is the common sense view. Why would why would a government charge their people a fine for finding an alternative means of energy if it is saving these people money? If it is, you know, helping the planet, it’s kind of crazy because they’re putting the the needs of oil companies over the needs of their constituents, the citizens, the taxpayers who they’re supposed to be representing.

Rick: Well, you know, if if things work out as I in my most idealistic moments feel that they will, we won’t even have oil companies. Fifty hundred years from now, even though there may still be oil in the ground, because we will have realized the folly of burning oil to to generate energy and newer technologies will have come along, which make which obviate fossil fuels. But in the meanwhile, as you say, there it’s like every single really serious problem on this planet. To bring this back to a more spiritual discussion, as far as I can see, arises from a sort of an individual narrowness, in the narrow vision. And that, I believe, is a very that has spiritual implications because we’re told in spiritual circles that our innermost nature is unbounded, is infinite, is a vast source of potentiality. Yet we get narrowed down into what’s good for me, as opposed to, you know, to heck with everybody else. So it seems to me that the ultimate solution to this narrowness of vision and all the political and economic and ecological consequences of it is to make access to our inner unbounded nature much more common and easy so that it becomes more and more the norm rather than the rarity.

Karen: Well, true. You know, I think we have to think about ourselves more as a collective, you know, the common good. Remember the old saying, you know, the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto me.” You know, I think I said that right.

Rick: Unto you.

Karen: Unto you. Yeah. I mean, in other words, treat people the way you would want to be treated. I mean, I learned that as a child growing up. But what happened to that? It seems like some people live by that, but some people feel entitled to exploit, you know. Maybe it’s been the way they’ve brought up, maybe they think they’re a select class.

Rick: Well, it’s a egoic consciousness again. It’s “I, me, mine.”

Karen: Yes.

Rick: And that reflects, that attitude reflects a certain level or lack of level of spiritual development, or rather childish level, immature, undeveloped level of spiritual maturity, in my opinion. And that when spiritual maturity blossoms more and more, you become more broad in your perspective, more universal, more all-embracing. I mean, look at Jesus himself, or any of the saints throughout history. It wasn’t about, you know, “What can I get for me?” It was more about, “How can I help others? How can I alleviate suffering?” You know, there’s a kind of a natural fullness that once one’s own cup is full and begins to runneth over, one begins to naturally serve and want to serve as much as possible, rather than just, you know, grab all the cookies you can grab.

Karen: Absolutely. Or think, I have a chapter in my new book, “Goddess Calling,” comparing Star Trek ideology to goddess ideology. Remember when you had that scene between Kirk and Spock, if you’re a Trekkie, and Spock says to Kirk, because Kirk wants to save him and risk the ship, and Spock says, “No, it’s about the needs of the many, not the needs of the few.”

Rick: Right.

Karen: You know, and then there’s another spiel that Captain Picard says later on in the series when he’s talking to someone from the past, and he says, you know, humanity of the future isn’t concerned with their personal wealth anymore.

Rick: Right.

Karen: You know, that’s what I think we’re aiming for, because really, you know, when you look at the fact that CEOs make more than 350 times more than their workers today, and it used to be maybe 50 times more than their worker, how, I mean, really, how many lunches can they buy? I mean, how many boats can they buy? Really, what are they ever going to do with more money than they can spend in a lifetime, you know? So what’s the point of this exploitation? I mean, I know myself, when I lay in bed at night before I discovered any of this, and I had the house, and I was married, and I had cars, I would lay there, and I don’t know, there was an emptiness. There was this hole that for a while I filled with, projects, and then I started realizing that when you are in service, as you said before, when you are in service, I think that hole fills within you, you know? I think we were meant to be on this planet not to work ourselves to death, not to acquire as much wealth as we could acquire. I think we were put on this earth to become the best that we can be, to be our authentic selves, and to empower others, to uplift others, so that we can, raise the consciousness of humanity.

Rick: At least that’s what some of us are trying to do. I don’t know if everyone would relate to what you just said. Many people seem to have been put on this earth, or believe they have been put on this earth to accumulate as much, you know, there’s that saying, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

Karen: Well, and there’s also the one about, that Jesus said about a rich man has as much chance of getting to heaven, what’s the eye of a needle say?

Rick: As a camel passing through the eye of a needle.

Karen: Right, right, exactly.

Rick: I thought you were from the Bible Belt.

Karen: Well, you know, I let that go a long time ago. I don’t quote those things much anymore. But, you know, but the thing is, it’s fortunately for shows like yours and shows like mine that, we do have a voice for these kinds of things. Because, you know, we don’t see this kind of stuff in the mainstream media anymore. Even within Christianity, you know, we aren’t hearing these kinds of things from the pulpit everywhere. You know, things are shifting. We have the new Pope now who is, you know, telling the folks, you know, forget these social issues. You know, we need to think about poverty. We need to think about how we treat each other. You have progressive Christians who are bringing a feminine face of God into their churches, into their liturgies. You know, so the idea of a feminine face of God really is much more prevalent today than it was even 10 years ago. Because, and I think really what’s behind it is more and more people are willing to use some critical thinking and see what’s happening out there. And they realize that we need a new normal and that the values that society has been living by for so long just aren’t working for the most of us. Because things have really gotten too lopsided and we need to bring partnership back to the equation. I think maybe that’s the key word for all of this. It’s partnership between the masculine and feminine, God/Goddess, you and I, man and woman, countries, corporations. We need to create situations where there aren’t winners and losers, but winners and winners. Some people I think even call it game theory. I think there’s such a thing in game theory about winners and winners rather than winners and losers. Because then we’re looking out for the whole rather than just me, me, me.

Rick: Interesting, yeah. And I would say that this kind of upwelling of critical thinking and more kind of enlightened way of thinking, that too is symptomatic. There’s something deeper going on. There’s a sort of an awakening of a deep primordial consciousness on the planet which is manifesting itself in a variety of ways. Just as perhaps in a dry ground which finally receives some rain, all kinds of different plants begin to sprout up. So the plants are symptomatic of some deeper nourishment that’s being provided. I think that deeper nourishment is kind of like getting more and more awake.

Karen: I think you’re right. I mean I’ve been interviewing people on my show, astrologers, philosophers, visionaries, and we’re entering the age of Aquarius. And it used to just be a song by the Fifth Dimension, but I think it really does mean something. I think in the next few decades this awareness that we’re talking about is going to grow and we’re going to have that morphic field idea, that hundredth monkey idea, that tipping point where there’s going to be enough of us that care about this, that these other ideas of domination and exploitation, those are going to be, they’re going to go the way of the dinosaur. They’re going to become extinct. And maybe it’ll just be because of self-preservation. Maybe it’ll just be the self-interest of the 99%. I don’t know what’s going to be the motivating factor. But people are saying that our evolution is accelerating and things are happening quickly and there’s more awareness, there’s more transparency. And so I think that’s what you’re talking about. I think that it’s a shift that humanity is moving toward. And maybe one example of this is a gentleman I’ve interviewed on my radio show a few times. His name is Patrick McCollum, and he’s a pagan and he’s a goddess advocate. He oversees like all the chaplains in the country, in the prison system. He’s addressed Congress, and so he’s kind of up there. He told me that 40 years ago his house was almost firebombed for talking about goddess. Today he’s talking about goddess to the highest echelons of society. There’s a quote from Al Gore in his “Inconvenient Truth” stuff about goddess. People know this stuff. I mean Bill Clinton was on David Letterman last year talking about this idea of game theory and winners and winners. And we have a distribution problem. So people might not always use the sacred feminine label, but people are talking, but they are embracing the ideals that are under what I call the sacred feminine label.

Rick: Well, pretty much everyone has heard the term “Gaia,” right, with reference to the Earth. I believe that has a feminine connotation, sort of a goddess connotation. So I guess the idea is that the Earth itself is a being, and we give it the name Gaia. I think it was James Lovelock that first applied that term. When we talk about there’s this upwelling of higher consciousness that’s resulting in changes in the way people think and changes in political and economic structures and so on, I kind of like to zoom back and think of that as being Gaia’s response to a dire situation that we have created on the planet. That it’s the antidote, it’s the infusion or the injection that’s needed to counteract the potentially lethal consequences of the way we’ve been proceeding. And that this upsurge of higher consciousness, of enlightened consciousness, is precisely, it’s deep enough and profound enough and influential enough to be the one thing which could actually turn things around. Without that, just tinkering on the level of trying to change people’s politics or change people’s religious attitudes, I don’t think we’d get too far.

Karen: Well, and I think an example of what you just said may be, it seemed to me when Hurricane Sandy hit the northeast coast, and all of these people who were devastated, who normally never experienced this, it seemed like suddenly we were hearing a little bit more in the news about climate change. As long as it was the people in the south being pounded, pounded, pounded, nobody cared. In fact, they said, let’s give up New Orleans. We don’t even have to go down there and fix it. Nobody wants to live there anyway. But now that we’re seeing, I mean, look at the winter we had this year. And they’re talking about El Niño is going to be worse. So I think as people start to suffer the effects of climate change, they’re going to be forced to look at this stuff that people like the Koch brothers have been pouring millions of dollars into disinformation. I think they’re going to wake up and they’re going to say, “Wait a minute, we’ve been lied to. And we better try to do whatever we can if we have time left to fix this.” And yes, it may very well be the consciousness of the Earth herself who is pulling the strings, so to speak, pulling the strings cosmically from an astrological standpoint to maybe raise our consciousness, but also pulling the strings in nature so that we see a profound effect of what humanity has been doing to the planet and that we can’t keep doing that anymore.

Rick: Well, 90 percent of the cells in our body are non-human. They’re just little microbes and whatnot, most of which are benign and essential and we wouldn’t live if we didn’t have them. But essentially we’re a colony. We, human beings, are a colony. And if you’re doing something injurious, something wrong, such as maybe smoking cigarettes, eventually that colony reacts and warns you that something is wrong. So I think that what we’re seeing with the climate and so on is an increasingly stern warning from nature. It’s also just scientific. You can leave all that out of it and just say it’s a scientifically describable consequence of what we’ve been doing to the environment. And the consequences are going to get more and more difficult to ignore over time. So whatever your spiritual orientation, it’s going to become more and more compelling to make changes.

Karen: Well, and to piggyback on that idea of the cells in our body as a colony, expand that out. The Hindus, I think, had the idea a long time ago. They called it the sea of being, which is really sort of the oneness concept, that we are all part of the sea of being. If we really believe that, we would be living our lives very differently. If we really believed we were interconnected with each other as human beings, with the species on the planet, with the trees, with the rocks, with the atmosphere, beyond the atmosphere. If we really thought that we were just this little microcosm of the macrocosm that so many of us believe, then we would live differently because we would understand that whatever we do or say has some sort of ripple effect out there, even though we can’t see it.

Rick: Yeah, the Hindus have a pretty sophisticated understanding of it, with the whole concept of karma, that every little thing you do sends a ripple out through the universe, which ultimately comes back to you. There’s a saying in the Vedic tradition, I forget the Sanskrit, but it’s, “The world is my family.” And it’s interesting because the other night on Rachel Maddow, I caught some instances in which Ronald Reagan was speaking and saying that, “You know, if we were invaded by some alien civilization, we’d forget all our petty differences on the Earth and all kind of come together to deal with the crisis.” What I found ironic was that he was applying the same mentality to alien civilizations that he was complaining about with our relationship with the Soviet Union. In other words, they too are our brothers, you know, it’s not only the world is our family, but the universe is our family. All he did was kind of expand it out a little bit.

Karen: True.

Rick: But there really needs to be an appreciation of the consciousness itself, and speaking of Hinduism, there have been a great number of examples of saints who’ve experienced this very viscerally and permanently. Consciousness itself is not only unbounded, but is the essential constituent of everything, is the essential constituent of the universe. It’s the stuff of which everything ultimately is made. And I don’t know how that relates to what you just said, but I’m sure you can bounce off it and say something good.

Karen: Well, you know, I do believe that consciousness is everything. I think that our thoughts, we do create things with our thoughts. We are either proactive or reactive human beings. And if our consciousness is evolved enough that we can try to always be proactive, we create our existence to a certain point that I think is a more positive life for ourselves, you know, our everyday life. If we’re a reactive human being, if that’s the sort of consciousness we have, then, you know, we tend to do, you know, these knee-jerk reactions. We don’t always act in our best interests and, you know, we don’t maybe act in the most evolved sense. You know, that may be part of what you’re talking about.

Rick: There’s something I was thinking about when I was listening to some various YouTube recordings of you a couple of months ago while cross-country skiing in the local park. By the way, you referred to this last winter. I love this last winter. It was so nice and cold. There was so much snow. I had a great time. But in any case, you were saying you had this talk where you said God is a Democrat or something like that. And I was thinking about that. I was thinking, yeah, but God is also a Republican, a Nazi, an atheist. I mean, it’s like every expression of human life, if God is omnipresent, is just one or another quality of the field of all possibilities, which we might refer to as God. So, God is the murderer and the murdered. God is the rapist and the raped. It’s like if God is omnipresent, if God permeates, if divine intelligence permeates everything, then everything is the play of that divine intelligence, whether it’s armies slaughtering each other or some heavenly, beautiful situation. What do you think about that?

Karen: Well, let me go in two directions with that. First of all, I have to tell you, so many people have read that sentence and not read any more to get the context.

Rick: I heard your whole talk.

Karen: Okay. Well, what I was trying to say in that is if, you know, given the current political climate of what Republicans are doing in the world today and Democrats were doing in the world today, if you were someone who was a Goddess advocate, then you had to look, you know, you had to reconcile your spirituality and your politics. In other words, it’s Democrats that are more likely to be for environmentalism. It’s Democrats who are trying to get the minimum wage. It’s Democrats, you know, who are trying to protect women’s rights, you know. So it’s, you know, it’s the Republicans who are cutting food stamps. It’s Republicans who want all the tax breaks for the rich and care about the 1%, not the 99%. So I was trying to say that Goddess ideals are more in alignment with the Democratic platform than what the Republican platform was. Okay. Now, but the other thing is it’s interesting that you bring this up about sort of this negative and positive, this duality, so to speak, because, tomorrow when I give this talk on forgiveness, I mean, we’ve all had horrible things that happened to us in our life. You know, we’ve been victims of someone or something. And I think what I’ve started to understand is I think that the difficult things that happened to us in our life, you know, those things happen so that we learn something, quite frankly. You know, I don’t think they’re just these random things that, you know, of course shit happens, but I think shit happens for a reason, so to speak, you know, because it goes back to that idea of there’s a silver lining in every cloud. So the murderer, for instance, the murderer may, you know, you may have experienced your loved one being murdered, and it may somehow teach you something that you need to learn in this lifetime. I experienced a lot of discrimination growing up, and I think that taught me about not just my self-worth, but also how important it is to give other people a hand up and empower. So I think the whole, you know, it goes, you know, I hate to talk in cliches, but this idea of the whole world as a stage, and even the Hitlers, you know, even the Republicans, even the Dick Cheneys of the world, the Putins, the Genghis Khan, all of Nero, all of these people, you know, I believe that they, you know, they were like an actor on a stage serving a purpose. To teach a greater lesson. And maybe that’s just how I have come to be able to rationalize bad things that happen. But I can tell you whenever something bad has happened to me, if I look for the gift, I usually find the gift.

Rick: Yeah, I agree with you. A lot of people, I mean, there’s that book, “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.” I never read the book, but a lot of, I have friends who don’t believe in God because they figure, how could there be a God? When such terrible things happen to people. But I think, you know, my answer to them would be, zoom it back farther, you know, because if you’re just thinking of God as this good force, then you’re not thinking of God as the totality. The totality would have to contain all the pairs of opposites. Hot, cold, good, bad, fast, slow, evil, you know, whatever. Otherwise, God, by definition, is not omnipresent.

Karen: Right.

Rick: He’s off in some corner, or she’s off in some corner, you know, being good. And all the other stuff is over here. Then God is not omnipotent. Then God is not really what I would define God to be, which is the sort of all-pervading intelligence governing the universe on every level, from the subatomic to the intergalactic, and everything in between. And one more point, and that is that, and again, this might just be a cosmology that helps me to make sense of it all, but it actually resonates with a lot of traditional mystical understandings. If this intelligence has created the universe as a way of knowing itself, experiencing itself in a sort of a living way, as a way of expanding happiness and expanding knowledge, then there’s not only intelligence, but there’s an evolutionary impulse at the core of everything. Therefore, things which may appear terrible in the big picture, actually are, and this is what you just said, actually are serving, or are conducive, or are part of that play of the evolutionary impulse working itself out. To take an example, if somebody’s murdered, perhaps they murdered somebody in the last life, and now they’re experiencing what it’s like to be on both sides of that equation, and a lesson is learned and they move beyond it.

Karen: Or I think about Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, for instance. They’re kids who were maybe killed in car accidents. They went on to create Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Those sorts of things, good things come out of bad things. And so yeah, believe me, a friend of mine who I think is very wise sometimes, she says, “Karen,” I would get myself all worked up about what a Republican’s doing now, and she’d say, “Karen, just relax. Everything is perfect. Everything is happening the way it’s supposed to happen.” That’s hard to do, it’s hard to just kind of sit back because you don’t want to be steamrolled. But she was saying, “Do what you got to do, do your activism, but understand that everybody is just playing their part in this cosmic dance, if you will.”

Rick: Yeah, there was a section in Chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita where Arjuna wants to see Krishna’s true form, and Krishna says, “No, you can’t handle it. You don’t want to see that.” And Arjuna says, “Yeah, yeah, I really want to see it. Please show it to me.” So finally, Krishna reveals his true form, and he sees all this slaughter, all these beings kind of being crushed in teeth, and all this kind of wild stuff, and all kinds of good stuff also. But he says, “It’s just too much. Take it away. I just want to see you back in your normal human appearance.” But, you know, it was sort of meant to illustrate that from the cosmic perspective, from the perspective of God, the intelligence governing the universe, everything that’s happening is happening within that intelligence as part of its Leela, part of its divine play.

Karen: I feel sorry for people who don’t believe that there is anything out there, because I think believing that there’s something out there, something out there that does care about us, that is trying to help us evolve, I don’t know about you, but that gives me hope. I don’t like the thought that everything’s going to go black when this life is over, and this life is really meaningless, and it doesn’t really matter what we do. I don’t know, I think all of this is much too sophisticated for it to mean nothing.

Rick: For sure. Somebody suggested that I interview Sam Harris, you know who Sam Harris is?

Karen: Yeah.

Rick: I’m a little intimidated because he could wipe the floor with me, but I’m actually interested in reading his books and just really understanding deeply what the materialistic perspective is, that there is no God, no intelligence governing everything, that it’s all just a mechanistic universe, if that’s his perspective, I assume it is. Because I think, as you just said, you can be a happy person with that perspective, I suppose, you can be a successful person, but there must be some deep underlying insecurity, I should think. If you think that everything’s going to go black when you die, if you think that you are something which can die, then there must be a deep underlying fear, to my way of understanding. I’ve talked to people who just say, “I used to feel that way,” and I can say this myself, and now I’m so nicely grounded in that which I know to be indestructible, that there is no such fear anymore. You could tell me I was going to die tomorrow and it was like, “Okay, let’s have lunch.”

Karen: Yeah, yeah, because imagine when that person’s loved one dies, or they get a diagnosis of a terminal illness, or just whatever the situation where they maybe need some hope that there is something beyond themselves that maybe can intercede for them. I don’t know, I rather like to think that there is something beyond just me and this bag of water that is my body. I interviewed Anne Baring recently, and she was talking about this idea that she thinks that there is a consciousness out there, and the consciousness is actually trying to help us evolve.

Rick: That’s what I’m just saying about that evolutionary impulse, yeah.

Karen: Yeah, and I think people who have that outlook are actually healthier, happier people. I’m biased.

Rick: Me too, but I want to bring it back to not mere belief, because belief doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans, because without experience it’s a castle in the air, it doesn’t have a foundation. I don’t believe that I’m looking at my hand, I experience that I’m looking at my hand, and it would be absurd to say, “Do you believe you’re looking at your hand, or do you have faith in your hand?” It’s a concrete experience. Regarding angels, let’s say, which I don’t experience, I would have to take that on faith or belief at this point, because it’s not my direct experience, although I have many friends for whom it is direct experience. So, I think ultimately one should aspire to deepen one’s experience, so as to make all the mysteries of life, to approach them scientifically and experientially verify or refute them one way or the other. Is there a God? Let’s find out, experientially, let’s not just believe in it.

Karen:Hildegarde von Bingen, for instance, Julian of Norwich. A lot of these mystics even under the oppression of patriarchy were having these experiential visitations or apparitions or knowingness of the world around them that was beyond what the church was describing as God. And I think when we as individuals, we understand that we don’t have to have an intermediary between us and the world around us. And I think once we have an experience, then it just gives us that certainty, that confidence, that I think that shifts our perspective for all time, especially when we’re not looking for it. When it hits you between the eyes like a clue by four, and something happens to you that it’s hard to even language, but you know something has just happened. And if you’re a rational human being not prone to disillusionment, I think you know then, you just know.

:

Rick: I should mention that mystics are as abundant today as ever, if not more so, and they’re not necessarily going to be wearing burlap sacks. You know, they might be wearing business suits, but there are plenty of people out there who are having cognition and experience of the deepest realities of the universe, every bit as clearly and vividly and perpetually. It’s not necessarily just a flash that comes and goes, but it could be a continuum as any mystic who ever walked the earth.

Karen: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean we read about that all the time, and maybe there are more of them. I don’t know if it’s because communication is just better, so we have contact with more people and their experiences, or it’s because humanity is evolving more quickly. Humanity’s awareness is evolving to the point where more eyes are being opened to, you know, that it goes beyond the Bible.

Rick: I think both. I think there’s a greater, the technological means of disseminating awareness of this sort of thing are greater. Our conversation right now is evidence of that. And also I think that there’s a kind of an upwelling of higher consciousness, an awakening of consciousness taking place on the planet. And perhaps the two are interrelated, that this higher consciousness dawning wants to have means to perpetuate itself in a practical way. I’m kind of anthropomorphizing it by saying it wants to, but the technological marbles we’re using are an expression of that awakening consciousness which facilitates its propagation.

Karen: Well, and maybe, and think about it this way, maybe it is the next logical step. Maybe this is just being pragmatic, because, all right, we know our resources are finite, okay? So we have to get to the point where growth is not everything, because we can’t continue to grow. We have to figure out a way to cut back, and so maybe the next step is really our development as human beings. Maybe that is really the next frontier.

Rick: Yeah, and just to play devil’s advocate to that, I would say that there’s nothing wrong with growth, but it needs to be evolutionary. Growth, in accord with dharma, to use an Indian term, it needs to have an evolutionary quality to it. Growth just grows.

Karen: For growth’s sake, yeah.

Rick: Growth can mean cancer, you know, that’s a growth, but it’s not the same as the growth of a child, which has an evolutionary value. So there are potentially technologies which could give us complete abundance on this planet. Everyone could have a much higher quality of life, and much nicer houses, and much better food, and all that stuff. But we need to kind of locate the means to achieve that in ways that aren’t self-defeating.

Karen: Right, and I guess by growth, you know, I was talking about how this ever-expanding search for money. I mean, like here in Los Angeles, I mean, every little green space, they’re going to put another shopping center on it. Seriously, do we really need another shopping center? I guess I’m talking like that. Can the growth be limited to research and development for the health of humanity? Can it be things that are going to improve our lives, the quality of our lives, more people’s lives? Or is it just going to be things to put money in other people’s pockets that are really meaningless? Does that make sense?

Rick: Totally. I mean, it reminds me of last week’s interview with Adam C. Hall, who was a real estate developer in Malibu in Southern California. He was sort of dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself kind of attitude, and he would have been putting in those shopping malls if he could make a buck. Then he kind of, his whole life fell apart, and he underwent this huge metamorphosis. Now these days, he’s back to doing real estate development, but he’s taking pristine, undeveloped areas and preserving them and doing a little development in them in order to sort of subsidize and finance them, but in a way that doesn’t mar their beauty or their purpose. Now, that’s growth too. It’s just not the kind of cancerous growth that has been so predominant.

Karen: Yeah, destructive growth.

Rick: So, growth is good, but greed is not good.

Karen: Right, right. We’re on the same page there.

Rick: Yeah. So, it’s funny because then a lot of the, I think, criticisms that conservative thinkers or pundits sometimes level at liberals aren’t necessarily valid. It’s not that we’re anti-growth, anti-money, this and that, that we want to sort of go back to a primitive culture. It’s rather that the growth needs to have a benign quality to it, and we see so much of the opposite that it’s gotten really dire. And there might be some people who have anti-conservative bias who would like to go back to a more agrarian society and all, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. You can’t get…the genie’s out of the bottle or something.

Karen: Right.

Rick: You can’t forget a technology that you already know.

Karen: Right.

Rick: Go ahead.

Karen: Well, I was about to say, I think it’s about balance, you know. That’s what it is for me, and you go back to the ancient Egyptians. The ancient Egyptians were so keen on trying to have balance because they knew that if things went out of balance, they had chaos, and chaos was something they really feared. Well, the sacred feminine, one of those ideals that we attribute to the sacred feminine is the idea of balance because we believe that it’s so important as well, you know, just like the ancient Egyptians because you look around society, you look at the income disparity. You look at all the imbalance all around the world in all of its many forms, you know, whether it be some people, the power they have over others, or, everything is just so out of balance, and that’s what’s creating all society’s ills. And if things were more in balance, sure, it might mean that some people might have less power or less money, but again, we’re going back to Spock and Kirk, you know. It’s about the needs of the many, not the needs of the few because these few certainly, I mean, you’re telling me a hedge fund manager is more important than the teacher who’s teaching your children or the social worker that’s trying to help the least among us or the fireman who’s going to save your house when it goes up in flames. So we really have to, I think, go back and reassess what our values are, and, you know, maybe we were like, you know, teenage kids in college and out of the house for the first time going crazy with all of this greed is good, but I think we have to rein things back in and reassess and say, you know what, maybe we did drink too much, and, you know, we’re going to just drink in moderation from now on. You know, we’re not going to drink until we puke, kind of a thing. I mean, I don’t mean to be crude, but you know what I mean. The excess. Yeah, we don’t need the excess, we’re just fine doing things in moderation, keeping things balanced.

Rick: Yeah, I think that’s an important point. As you probably know, the 85 wealthiest people on the planet, their collective wealth equals that of the entire bottom half of the human population, the poorest three and a half billion people. Going back to taking nature as an example, nature not only abhors a vacuum, it abhors imbalance. When things tilt too far in one direction, nature moves to rebalance them. And I would say nature is far more, using nature here in the sense of God that we’ve been talking about, the divine intelligence governing the universe, is far more powerful than any puny little human endeavors.

Karen: Well, and if I could throw in there, just indulge me for a minute, the idea of nature teaching us something. You know, this whole idea of trickle-down, that’s sort of been this fallacy. Did you ever see anything grow from the top down, or does it grow from the ground up?

Rick: No, good point. But I guess the point I’m making is that there’s something going on here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? There’s a move afoot, there’s a stirring, there’s an awakening.

Karen: I think there is, I think there is a stirring, and it’s exciting, isn’t it? I mean, I know some people are maybe afraid, change is a scary thing, but are we going to ride this rollercoaster of life, white-knuckled in fear? Are we going to lift our arms and scream and just enjoy that ride? I think this is an exciting time to be alive, you know, I really do. I mean, imagine, maybe I’m just a wonk, okay, but when I saw Jimmy Carter on David Letterman the other night talking about female vaginal mutilation and his new book, and, you know, I thought to myself, you know what, I could just imagine the eyes pop open across the country when he’s in detail, you know, talking about female genital mutilation, this idea of this discrimination of women across the globe. I mean, it’s exciting because there’s a transparency now,that all of this ugliness can’t be hidden anymore. And I think we’re going to get to a point where enough people are going to be fed up with all of this ugliness and we’re going to see the change. I have hope for humanity, I really do.

Rick: I do too, and you know, nobody likes a really uneven boxing match or race or anything else, and so nature seems to entertain itself with really close calls.

Karen: Yeah.

Rick: And it seems like, God, it could go either way, if the rate that global warming is progressing, we could exterminate ourselves. But I have hope, at least, if not belief, that the pace of awakening will continue to accelerate to match and ultimately surmount the pace of the negative influence, which would be destructive influence.

Karen: Well, I hope so too, and I think shows like yours and mine and there are a lot of wonderful things, coming on television now that I think are speaking to different ideals and raising awareness. Everything isn’t on television isn’t the Kardashians, you know. More and more people, I think, are waking up. At least I know we are in California.

Karen: Sure, well, we get the television out here in Iowa too.

Rick: Oprah had Adyashanti on last week.

Karen: Yeah, well, yeah, obviously, I just sort of meant, sort of this red state, blue state mentality. Because remember, I used to live in Louisiana, and I still have friends there, and it’s this constant struggle to raise awareness, because these are good people, you know. But they’re just living in this bubble, and, you know, we just have to pierce that bubble and let a little information in.

Rick: Yeah, well, you know, in places like Texas, which is a fairly conservative state, now they’re beginning to see the effects of global warming. There’s just been a severe drought, and the whole cattle industry is flopping, or fracking. You know, there’s so many people in Texas who’ve been adversely impacted by fracking. And so, if you don’t recognize these things initially, it’s going to — the slaps across the face are going to get a little bit more insistent until you actually have to recognize them. And so I don’t think that anybody anywhere is going to be able to — I mean, what if Greenland really melts, you know, the way they’re predicting it, and the sea level rises by several meters? And most of the world’s population is going to be inundated and have to migrate. At that point, will anybody be able to deny what’s going on?

Karen: I think so. I was just talking to Bob Hieronymus on 21st Century Radio on Easter Sunday, and that was one of the points he made. He said, “Will the South be able to continue to be in denial when we lose the Gulf states, when Florida goes under, or maybe, you know, Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty?” Can you imagine that picture? The Statue of Liberty, you know, is, you know, 10 feet below water or something like that. I really do believe it may be we let it go that far, but I think then — I don’t know. I just have to think that people are going to then wake up and see who’s been lying to them, and there’s going to be a radical shift. And they say the millennials, you know, the millennials are really — you know, they’re going to be our future because already these young people have grown up at a time where they didn’t enjoy the robust middle class. They are suffering from this huge student loan debt and very little opportunity. And they see that, you know, with this quagmire in government, you know, Republicans are blocking, you know, any hope for change. And everything I read says that they want a government that is going to work for them. They tend to have a little bit more of a socialist leaning where they want to, you know, use government to better their lives rather than, continuing this path that we’re on. And I guess, to me that sort of feels like the needs of the many, not the needs of the few. So, maybe it’s just a generation away.

Rick: Yeah. And, you know, we don’t have to look far back in history to see how radically things can change in a generation. The 40s compared to the 60s, the 60s compared to now, you know, the 1800s compared to the 1900s. It doesn’t take too many generations for really radical change that is pretty much unforeseeable by almost everyone except the greatest visionaries to actually come to pass.

Karen: Yeah, I think it’s that perfect storm idea. I think it’s just going to take the right things to happen at the right time and I think something can ignite really quickly. I just hope it happens in my lifetime. I want to be around to ride that roller coaster.

Rick: That’s an interesting, yeah. I was talking with Adam Hall last week about the metaphor of surfing and that you want to catch a wave at the right time while the surf’s up. And we were talking about how the surf is really up right now. There’s definitely, if you’re interested in catching a wave, it’s a very good time to do it. I’m speaking in terms of kind of hopping on this spiritual bandwagon to switch metaphors and taking advantage of the great evolutionary opportunity that presents itself. Crisis usually brings with it opportunity. In fact, I think it was Elisabet Sahtouris who said that the Greek word for crisis means opportunity, something like that. And we’re in a very critical situation, but we’re in an equally opportune time.

Karen: Maybe humanity does better under pressure.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. When you’re in high school, when did you actually get down to working on that term?

Karen: When you really had to.

Rick: The night before, maybe.

Karen: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, more people are being willing to, I think, challenge taboos. I don’t think all of the institutions that used to so totally control us, I’m not sure they have the power they used to have. I think that’s all crumbling,little by little. And I think that that’s part of it. You know, it’s scary in a way, because if things do crumble, then what replaces the vacuum, you know? But that’s, again, my shtick is you go back to the ideas of the sacred feminine alongside the divine masculine. You know, it’s these values that we call sacred feminine values that we have been missing in society, that have been devalued in society. When you put those alongside the masculine values, again, what do you have? You have balance. And because it used to be that we didn’t talk about intuition, inspiration. You know, if you talked about nurturing and caring, well, that was weakness. Well, we realize that we really do need those things, as much as we need, as much as we need cognitive thinking and assertiveness. And all of the things that the masculine brings to the equation. But we can’t just live in the masculine frame of mind. We have to have the feminine frame of mind along with it, whether we’re talking about in our own psyches, or whether we’re talking about the values out there in society.

Rick: Yeah, I’m glad you brought it back to that, because we’ve been talking about all sorts of things we haven’t … It’s really not an either/or situation. It’s really just a matter of balance.

Karen: Yes, yes, because it’s been out of balance. I think we’ve accepted the way we’re living as normal for so long. But what people don’t realize is a feminine face of God was worshipped as long ago as 30,000 years, long before there was ever a male God. And I know I didn’t know that growing up. I was 30 years old before I understood that. People maybe raise an eyebrow and say, “Oh, that’s crazy talk.” But you go into the museums of Europe and you see it. I think the United States suffers a little bit because we are such a new nation. We don’t have the benefit of an archaeological site down the street. We don’t have the benefit of museums like the Louvre, you know, or the British Museum or the Anatolian Museum and all of these wonderful places that really speak to this ancient history. That’s undeniable because you go into these museums and, you know, you can see the Venus of Willendorf that’s 35,000 years old. People really conceived of the sacred in the feminine form. And it was probably because they didn’t understand the role that males played in creation. They knew that women brought forth life. They could bleed without dying. Henceforth, the world and everything that it provided for them to sustain themselves was the feminine. I think that’s why for so long it was the feminine that was the face of God.

Karen: Do you think there were societies in which were out of balance too much in the feminine as we now are on the other pole or what?

Karen: Well, you know, look, absolute power corrupts absolutely. But what feminist scholars are saying, I don’t think there were ever matriarchies where women controlled men the way patriarchy has had their boot on the throat of women. We think that there were egalitarian societies, that men and women had their roles. But it was, you know, but women were also the teachers. Women were also also the adjudicators. They weren’t restricted to a second class role. So, you know, we’re aiming for an egalitarian society now, just like we think in the best of times there was once an egalitarian society in the past.

Rick: Okay. Good. One thought that came to mind a few minutes ago when you’re talking again about balance is just that, so we’re not saying do away with technology. We’re just saying balance it. And if the Divine Feminine were more balanced in collective consciousness, then we would still have technologies, perhaps even much more sophisticated ones. But they would have a much more sort of balanced purpose and application and not be so harmful. We’re not doing away with money. We just want things to be more balanced where we don’t have this huge polarity between the haves and the have-nots. You could probably use half a dozen other examples where it’s like the institutions and the technologies and whatnot that we have are okay, but they just are way out of balance and they need to be brought into balance and they will continue, but in a much more benign way.

Karen: Yeah, I mean, I think the governments have to be for the people and not the corporations.

Rick: Yeah, we’re not going to get rid of government.

Karen: No, we’re not getting rid of government. It’s just going to really serve the people, the taxpayers, instead of everything being geared toward the benefit of the corporations who we know so many of them don’t even pay taxes. Or the Mitt Romneys of the world pay 15% where you and I are probably paying 28%. It’s all of these little practical things or going back to technology, will technology be used for the betterment of society or will you use, I mean, we see it on television all the time, how the military industrial complex will take a new creation, a new invention and turn it into a weapon of war. Well, I would love to see a world where the globe has the globe’s best interest at heart. I know people fear the idea of a global economy, but I go back to the idea of Star Trek, in Star Trek times we shared resources. It was about the common good and rather than there be one country that can dominate another country. I mean, imagine in Africa some people don’t even have clean water to drink. To me that’s unconscionable. I think it’s unconscionable that our country could have taken us to war in Iraq on a lie, or that the bankers could have destroyed our economy and nobody’s paid for it. It’s all of these different things that the elite and the powerful can’t continue to run roughshod over the needs of the many, and that’s really what’s happening.

Rick: And so you would see all those as examples of patriarchal consciousness, which wouldn’t have happened and will not happen in the future if the sort of the Divine Feminine counterbalances that.

Karen: Yeah, if the Divine Feminine values are valued in society again, if they become in vogue, like greed became in vogue, then we would be, we would all be acting in ways that would be for the common good. You know, I would love to see the day where greed becomes taboo and if some, and people like the Koch brothers would be shamed and ostracized from society. Maybe I’m getting a little crazy here, but my point that, you know, they wouldn’t be elevated, you know, those kinds of actions where you use your money for, you know, for selfish gains rather than doing a Bill Gates kind of a thing where you give away half your wealth to help humanity because you realize that you really don’t need all of that money. You see, that’s kind of the difference, where we become a collective family, we are in this together, whether you’re a woman in a burqa in Saudi Arabia or you’re Hillary Clinton in the White House.

Rick: So, on a practical level, how do we get from here to there? You and I are talking about it, and you talk about it all the time on your show, and you help to sort of raise awareness of the importance of the Divine Feminine and so on, and there are other speakers and authors who do the same. What can listeners do to help to bring about this sort of transformation?

Karen: Well, I think we all have to do something. I think the days of sitting on the couch and just bitching on Facebook, I think we have to go beyond that. I think we all have to become social justice advocates. I think the easiest way to sustain momentum is to find something you’re really passionate about. Maybe you’re passionate about animal rights, maybe it’s the environment, maybe it’s getting out the vote, you know, whatever it is, maybe it’s GMOs, maybe it’s Doctors Without Borders. I mean, there are a million good things out there that need volunteers, that need money. I would say get involved in something and do something. Give your life meaning and be of service. Do what you can, and I think if all of us start to do that in our own little spheres, I think it sort of, it sort of helps that paradigm shift, you know. Buy less, one less latte at Starbucks every week and collect that money at the end of the month and send it to a worthy cause. Donate to battered women’s shelters. Have a book club. Do movie nights, you know. Show documentaries that’ll educate people or read books that will, you know, evolve your consciousness and the consciousness of your friends. I get together monthly with a group, we call it Wisdom Circle, and we talk about things and we don’t always have to agree, but we talk about, well, what do we think, you know, God is, or what is…you had an experience of the consciousness of God, tell us about it. I mean, we just, we’re trying to improve ourselves, become the best that we can be, and we just shift away from this idea of putting all of our energy into work, into money. I don’t think we were put on this planet to work ourselves to death, and I think especially Americans, that’s sort of what we’ve been indoctrinated to do. I think we have to start, you know, developing ourselves as human beings and trying the best we can in the myriad of ways that we have available to us to take responsibility for our own education, to learn. To know what’s going on, to know what’s going on out there. Don’t be a low information voter, be educated, know who you’re voting for, do they have your best interests at heart because so many people vote wedge issues rather than even their economic interest. So, I don’t know, I think those were maybe a half a dozen, dozen different things that we can do, and don’t feel like I’m just one person. Because this is a cumulative effect because if a lot of people start doing this, you know, call your congressman when you don’t like, you know, that they’re not doing anything to create jobs. I remember when the Congress switchboard was shut down, when Republicans were talking about getting, privatizing social security. We could do that on every issue, we just have to focus our intention and just get a little bit organized, because you know what, there’s more of us than there are of them. We are the 99%.

Rick: Yeah, and I would suggest that, there’s one more element. I interviewed, what’s his name, Foster and Kimberly Gamble a while back who made the “Thrive” movie, I don’t know if you’ve seen that, but we were talking about how back in the 60s, there were the activists who were protesting the Vietnam War, and then there was also a certain faction of which I was a part, who were sort of the meditator types, that felt like real social change was going to happen by going within and developing consciousness, and we both sort of looked at one another askance. The meditators are just sitting on their butts, according to the activists; the activists are just out there yelling in the streets, but they haven’t really looked at themselves. And Kimberly made the point that, or maybe we both did, that these days, the meditator types are becoming activists, and the activists are becoming meditator types, but they’re not leaving their original position, they’re just adding…the mystics are getting more into service, the activists are getting more into mysticism, and that both together make a better package, because you have, if you’re established, there’s a verse in the Gita, “Established in being, perform action,” if you’re acting from the level of pure consciousness, from the level of the intelligence that governs the universe, then your action is in accordance with nature’s intentions, and you don’t inadvertently sort of create more harm than good while trying to change a social or economic situation.

Karen: Well, you know what, I would label that, Rick, I would label that wholeness.

Rick: Wholeness, goodness.

Karen: Wholeness. And you know, and again, that would be something I would call a Sacred Feminine ideal, it’s wholeness.

Rick: Yeah, balance.

Karen: And yeah, I mean, it’s just like women want wholeness, you know, Christianity told women it was okay to be like Mary. Well, you know what, we need to be like Mary and Mary Magdalene, if women want to be whole, kind of a thing, you know. So yeah, I love that. And you know what, and it’s also, we have to walk our talk, you know, how do we treat our family, how do we treat our friends. If you know there’s a little old lady in the, you know, two doors down in your apartment complex or down the street that’s, you know, having trouble making ends meet, give her, you know, send her a casserole once a month. You know, be kind to one another, care about one another, treat each other the way we would like to be treated. You know, take a moment and think that maybe your life is okay, but somebody down the street is struggling. Is there anything you can do to maybe make their life just a little bit a little bit easier? And I think if we all did that, what a different world we would be in, instead of not even knowing who our neighbor is.

Rick: Yeah, and you know, that is really a potent spiritual practice. Spiritual practice doesn’t have to be just be sitting with your eyes closed. In traditional societies, in India they call it “seva,” and it means selfless service. It’s not just a do-gooder kind of thing, it actually is meant to, you know, diminish the ego. As you serve others, you become less greedy, less self-serving.

Karen: Right.

Rick: So it can be a very profound means of, even if you’re exclusively interested in enlightenment and spiritual realization, and you think the world is an illusion, getting out and actually helping people can help you attain that enlightenment much more. And people who are kind of solely focused on enlightenment are often very narcissistic and self-indulgent.

Karen: Yes, yes, you know, they perceive themselves as like the guru. But, you know, what you said just reminded me, my husband and I took some interesting classes at the Kabbalah Center here in Los Angeles recently, and they’re very big on being in service. What I found really enlightening was the fact that they actually tell their students that their service to the world keeps them safe. And that’s sort of their ticket to be safe in a dangerous world. The more good you do, the more you can be of service, that’s really the way that you can ensure a happy life, that you can ward off bad things. And it’s interesting and maybe there’s something to it. So whether you’re doing good things purely for selfish interests because you want to ward off the negative or something bad from happening, or you do it simply because it makes you feel good, or simply because you think you want to, just do it anyway, because we all benefit.

Rick: Yeah, good. Okay, well, I have the impulse that it might be time to wrap it up, although I’m sure we could keep bouncing this back and forth all day. A lot of interesting points to keep discussing. Is there anything you feel like we haven’t really touched upon that you like to in interviews or in discussing all this?

Karen: Well, I know I think we’ve had a really well-rounded conversation, Rick. I think we’ve talked about spirituality and politics and just how we can be in the world, living every day, you know, as we call it being an everyday goddess. You know, I would just invite your listeners to maybe check out my books or tune into my radio show. I would love to give the first three of your listeners in the United States who maybe hit me up on Facebook or send me an email, I’ll send them a free copy of my book, “Walking an Ancient Path.”

Rick: Cool. Well, I will put links to all those things, and you make sure that you’ve sent them to me. I don’t know that you have, but I’ll put links to all those things on batgap.com, on your page on batgap.com. Yeah, I see you. Here’s your link to BlogTalkRadio and your website and everything. And people can jump to click to be the first to get a free book.

Karen: Yeah, so I think if we were to sort of just encapsulate the whole conversation or what the Sacred Feminine is in one word, it’s partnership.

Rick: Yeah.

Karen: And that’s what I’d like people to go away with, knowing about the Sacred Feminine, it’s partnership. It’s not about crazy women who want to rule the world or dominate men. You know, it’s really about equality and partnership.

Rick: Well, you know, I think your own life is an example of that. I mean, even the fact that you say in your little bio here that, you know, you’ve been married to your husband Roy for 30 years, and he’s the wind beneath your wings, and you credit him for his love and support behind the scenes, enabling you to be so active in all phases of your work. So there’s a nice example of partnership.

Karen: True. I have to tell you, you know, when I write these books, I mean, I work a full-time job, and to write these books, I’m up at 2 in the morning. And when I got my nose to the grindstone, you know, Roy helps, washes the clothes, cooks the dinner, runs the errands. He set up all the equipment with Jerry. You know, we’re a true team. I think partnership works for us. I see how well it can work, and I extrapolate that out into society.

Rick: Yeah, good point. We’re all in this game together.

Karen: Absolutely.

Rick: Yeah. So let me make a couple of concluding remarks that I always make. I’ve been talking with Karen Tate. I will be linking to all of her books and shows and website and all that from her page on batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P. If you go to batgap.com, you will see at this point about 225 other interviews all archived. And indexed alphabetically, chronologically, and categorically, subject-wise, as best as we can do that. You will also see a discussion group that crops up around each interview. There will be a link to that specific to Karen’s interview and they’re discussions that have ensued from each other interview. There is a link to an audio podcast so that you can just listen to this on your iPod if you like and not have to sit in front of your computer. There is a place to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted. There’s a menu item there that says “Join our email list” or something. There’s a “Donate” button, which I appreciate people clicking to support this whole thing if they feel inclined. And there’s a few other things. If you pull down little menus, you’ll see some other things you might find interesting. So, explore it. Next week I’ll be speaking with Neelam, whom I interviewed a couple of years ago. She was a disciple of Papaji. In Lucknow, most people listening to this will know who Papaji was. He was a disciple of Ramana Maharshi. So, that will be an interesting conversation. So, thanks for listening or watching. Thank you, Karen. It’s been a lot of fun.

Karen: Thank you.

Rick: Yeah. And we will see you next week.