The Cycles Within the Cycles
By Blanca Amezcua
The moon moves through darkness and illumination. Seasons emerge, reach their fullness, and disappear into the next. Tides advance and recede.
The natural world does not demand permanence from itself. And neither does the body of a woman.
Yet so much of contemporary life asks us to behave as though we were linear beings: to maintain the same energy, productivity, sexuality, emotional availability, clarity, and capacity regardless of the season we inhabit.
What happens when we begin to listen differently?
What happens when, instead of asking how to remain the same, we begin asking:
What cycle am I in?
A Rite of Passage
I am entering a new one myself.
My hormones are shifting. My body is changing. Recently, a nodule in my left breast appeared that now requires my attention and medical follow-up.
I don't need to turn this into a spiritual symbol or give it a meaning it may not have.
Yet I can recognize what its appearance has brought me into contact with.
My body is asking me to listen more deeply.
At the same time, another transition is occurring in my spiritual life.
After years of practice, teaching, inquiry, and devotion, I find myself stepping once again into beginner’s mind.
There is something profoundly humbling about discovering that deepening does not necessarily mean accumulating more certainty.
Sometimes it means becoming available to what we do not yet know.
These movements may appear unrelated—the changing body, hormonal transition, spiritual deepening—yet together they have made me increasingly attentive to the cycles within the cycles.
The Cyclic Woman
We can speak about the great passages of a woman’s life.
The young girl.
The fertile woman.
The cyclic woman.
The woman whose cycles begin to change.
The non-cyclic woman.
The elder.
And within these passages are the countless smaller movements we experience.
There are cycles in sexuality, creativity, relationships, spiritual practice, even awakening.
Cycles in our desire to participate in the world and our need to retreat from it.
There are periods when thought is sharp and directed, and others when feeling, intuition, dreams, or material from the depths of the psyche seem to come closer to the surface.
There are moments for action and moments for waiting.
Times for becoming visible and times for disappearing inward.
Times for birth.
Times for maintenance.
Times for death.
And then, unexpectedly, birth again.
The Moon Does Not Disappear
The moon appears to move between darkness and fullness. Yet the moon herself has not ceased to exist when we cannot see her illuminated face.
What changes is what becomes visible to us.
Perhaps there is something here about our own unfolding.
Not everything needs to be visible at every moment.
Not every capacity needs to be expressed in every season.
Not every period of withdrawal represents regression.
And fullness cannot be permanently sustained, yet.
There can be tremendous intelligence in learning to recognize what a particular cycle is asking of us, rather than imposing upon it what another season required.
This demands awareness.
Because cycles alone do not necessarily transform us.
A rite of passage can happen biologically while we remain psychologically attached to the identity that preceded it.
We can resist what is ending or try to recreate a former version of ourselves.
Or we can become curious.
What is changing?
What is asking to be grieved?
What wants to be forgiven?
What can finally be honored?
What am I ready to release?
What new capacity is trying to emerge?
Remaining in the Unknown
There is a particular challenge in the space between cycles.
The old organization no longer completely works, but the new one has not yet revealed itself.
We don’t know.
And the mind often wants to escape that uncertainty as quickly as possible.
Perhaps part of the wisdom of cyclical consciousness is developing the capacity to remain there. To feel, to perceive, to listen, and to allow what lies beneath our habitual ways of thinking to become fully available.
This is where I find the relationship between the feminine and the inner masculine particularly important.
Fierce Compassion and the Inner Masculine
My understanding of femininity has little to do with becoming softer, more receptive, or more pleasing.
The feminine I am interested in includes fierce compassion.
Truthfulness.
Sexuality.
Grief.
Creation.
Destruction.
Tenderness.
Power.
The capacity to surrender and the capacity to say no.
To embrace the paradoxical nature of being human.
And for this feminine movement to unfold without becoming chaotic, I increasingly recognize the importance of the inner masculine.
Structure.
Discernment.
Direction.
Protection.
Boundaries.
Agency.
The feminine can open us toward what is moving.
The inner masculine can help create the container capable of meeting it.
In my own passage, this becomes very concrete.
Surrender does not mean ignoring the body.
It can coexist with making medical appointments, following what needs to be followed, learning about hormonal changes, asking questions, and making decisions.
Receptivity does not require abandoning discernment.
Compassion does not require abandoning boundaries.
The integration of these capacities interests me far more than constructing another identity around an idealized performance of femininity.
And the same is true of transcendence.
However profound our recognition of what lies beyond the personal may be, it does not necessarily mean that recognition has been integrated into the body, our relationships, our boundaries, or the way we meet the complexity of being human.
For me, the invitation is not to choose between transcendence and embodiment, or between the feminine and the masculine.
It is to allow what has been recognized to become increasingly lived.
Recognizing Shakti Everywhere
And underneath this exploration lies something deeper. Shakti.
If Shakti is the dynamic power through which manifestation unfolds, then She cannot belong only to the experiences we prefer to identify as feminine.
She cannot be only beauty, sensuality, softness, fertility, or the moonlit parts of ourselves.
She is also present in dissolution.
In aging.
In boundaries.
In uncertainty.
In the body changing beyond our control.
In desire arising and disappearing.
In the beginning and the ending.
In what becomes visible and in what withdraws from view.
There is nothing that is not the Sacred Feminine.
The seasons, the tides, the moon, our bodies, the movement of nature—all belong to Her.
And perhaps learning to recognize Shakti everywhere means relinquishing the attempt to divide our experience into what is spiritual and what is not.
An Invitation to the Circle
This is part of the inquiry I want to enter with the women gathering in our Women’s Circle.
Not an invitation to become “more feminine.”
Not another identity to construct.
Not another ideal of womanhood to perform.
An invitation to become increasingly intimate with the movement of life itself.
Together, we explore the body and its cycles, sexuality, energy, consciousness, boundaries, embodiment, and the different passages through which a woman’s relationship with herself can transform.
We pay attention to the larger cycles that hold us: the moon, the seasons, the natural world, and the rhythms of emergence and withdrawal continually moving through our lives.
And we explore different qualities of consciousness—not as abstract concepts, but through the ways they reveal themselves in our bodies, relationships, sexuality, choices, and daily lives.
The Circle is not only for women in one biological stage.
It is for every woman who feels the calling to look more closely.
To recognize the cycle she is actually inhabiting.
To cultivate the awareness to meet its particular teachings.
To honor, forgive, and accept what she has been.
To exercise her agency while learning when to surrender.
To develop the inner stability to remain present through change.
And ultimately:
to recognize Shakti everywhere.
In what is arriving.
In what is leaving.
In what is illuminated.
In what remains hidden.
In the woman we have been.
And in the woman we do not yet know we are becoming.
If you feel the calling to enter this exploration with us, I invite you to learn more about the Women’s Circle.
