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Response to the 435 Comments on 'Why It Is Wise to Worship a Woman'

Many readers assumed that this devotion was a one way street. But when we bring the spirit of worship into marriage, it can create a relationship of mutual adoration.
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Awakening coach, writer, teacher and public speaker

Awakening coach, writer, teacher and public speaker
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I wrote an article here at the Huffington Post that appeared on Thursday. It was titled "Why It Is Wise to Worship a Woman." Some people seemed to enjoy and appreciate the article. And some people, well, how can I put it... they didn't.

Last time I looked it had gotten 435 comments. Half of them were offers to slash my tires and TP my house. I started out the long journey of replying to every one, including the offers for knee cap dismantling, but realized that there was no way to get to them all.

So, for whoever is interested, here is an explanation and elaboration on what seems to have been a somewhat inflammatory article. This is a rich topic, and multidimensional, so I'll keep these points short, and hence numbered.

  1. A lot of comments equate the word "worship" with a sense of making oneself inferior, and the other superior. I did not use the word intending that connotation. To worship, for me, is similar to adore, to feel devoted to. It means, at least to me, to look beyond the small and sometimes irritating habits of the personality, and to see into the essence, into the place where we are all already whole and complete and awake. When you see someone else in that way, all sense of higher and lower dissolves, in fact even the sense of someone else dissolves, and a dimension opens where there is real love.

  • Many readers assumed that this devotion was a one way street, which then appeared to be a regression to an infant wanting Mommy. Theistic worship is like that, yes. The devotee worships the deity, but we don't hear that the deity worships the devotee. But when we bring the spirit of worship into marriage, it can be a two way street. We worship each other. This happens both as an atmosphere of appreciation and leaning into greater depth, but it can also become a conscious ritual. Each morning we bow to each other, intentionally, and start a new day where we commit ourselves fresh to a deeper dimension of love. [Sounds oh, so, Californian when I read it here!]

  • Some readers wondered, in anticipating disgust, what would happen if we suggested the opposite, that a woman should worship a man. Horrors, we hear. Of course this reaction is because for millennia women have not exactly consciously chosen to worship men, the feminine has been subjugated by the masculine. Man has dominated in business, in politics, in science, education, medicine and religion for thousands of years in almost all cultures as well as religious traditions. So it has only been in the last few decades that we have seen women given a chance to participate fully and share their gifts. For a woman to fully love, to feel devotion to, yes, dammit, to worship her man does not need to be a return to subjugation. On the contrary, it allows her, for the first time, to choose to open her heart and to love without restraint. It is not a position of weakness and defeat, but an assertion of her huge power to love. Some asked what would be the reaction if the article were reversed: Why it is wise for a Woman to Worship her Man. Well, stand by with the rotten tomatoes and gasps of horror, because Chameli my wife, is preparing a post on her blog on the feminine side of this dance of mutual devotion.

  • Some people were also offended by my use of the word "delicious" while referring to an evening with my wife. I guess it was interpreted to imply lustful delights behind locked doors. It was taken in a Monty Python "nudge nudge wink wink" kind of a way. Well, in fact I am British by birth, and I did grow up on Monty Python. As a Brit, I tend to use the word "delicious" like "exquisite" or "perfect" or "sublime." On the evening in question we took a walk in the forest in the night, we talked a while, we savored being together. In that spirit I posted on Facebook my delight in, and gratitude for, my marriage.

  • The article was also interpreted as advocating a worship of the personality. Some women wrote, "please don't worship me, I don't want to be put on a pedestal and then thrown away in disappointment." But this was not the intent at all, and that is not how we live. When we first met, we had both had several relationships that were painful and frustrating. We had both hurt and been hurt. We had both withheld love, and had it withheld from us too. We had both used people, and been used. So when we first got closer, we made a conscious decision to try something new, as a conscious experiment. Early on, we soon recognized that we each have many different dimensions. On the surface is the personality, almost entirely conditioned by family and society. It can be mean, it can be vengeful, selfish and cold; it will use others for its own grasping for significance. People sometimes call that dimension the "ego." As far as I can see, we all have that dimension, however spiritual or not we may think ourselves to be. We are not suggesting that you direct worship to that dimension of each other. In exhaustion and frustration with the smallness of the personality, many people lately have discovered meditation, or yoga, or prayer, or some portal into a dimension that is peaceful and spacious and unconditionally loving. We generally only glimpse that dimension in snapshots.

    • Most people we know, including ourselves when we first started to experiment, feel a profound and painful schism between the spaciousness and peace of meditation and the often rocky road of personal relationship. Our marriage has been devoted to bridge that schism through conscious practice, and what I have called the intention of worship is just one aspect of that. We do not direct worship at the conditioned habits of the personality. We play with them and make humor from them. We direct our worship to the deeper dimension in each other, which is not conditioned or wounded or separate at all. And conscious worship calls forth that hidden dimension, it brings it to life and invites it to dance. We have learned to be both ruthlessly honest and also humorous with the conditioned habits of the personality. They cannot be made to go away, but it is possible to look deeper into your partner to the dimension of pure and undiluted yum.

    If you were one of the four hundred and something people who commented on the article, thank you for your time and attention, whether you were appreciative or disgusted. Since this is a hot topic for many people, I'd like to invite whoever would like to to join me for a tele-seminar where we can actually converse and go deeper together. This is just for HP readers, and it is free. It will be on Friday August 6th and 6pm Pacific Time, that is 9pm on the East Coast. Tire slashers and knee cap breakers also welcome.

    You can register here.

    All the best,

    Arjuna Ardagh

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