Independence Day

I love my book.

I wish that I could spend time with the women who authored this book.  Some times women come into the presence of other women and they know that they have entered a particular zone of comfort, and they know that is a lasting thing.  Or, at the very least, they WANT it to be a lasting thing. 

That is how it is with this book.  I feel these authors KNOW something that I know, too, and I feel a bond with them.  Of course, that is what the book is about.  The ways that women know.  The positions we hold in our knowledge of authority and truth. 

Their premise is of the movement or stablilty of a woman's progression through the different postions of knowledge.  This awareness of postion is explained using the metaphor of Voice.  Many women were interviewed for the study which these authors presented as this book and in the interviews, the subjects used the metaphors of vision and voice repeatedly, which is how the authors came to adopt their theme.

The silent woman is one who holds the postion that truth and knowledge comes from an outside authority, and that she has no voice in the matter.  She knows no truth other than what is presented to her and she is unaware of that concept.  She has no awareness that she has a Self.

The receptive knower comes to an awareness that knowledge can be transferred with words.  The voice bringing the knowledge comes from outside of her being.  Her awareness is dualistic.  The outside authority is right or wrong, black or white, up or down.  With this awareness, she begins to distinguish her voice apart from the outer authority.

The third major position is the subjective knower.  The woman in this postion distinguishes her inner voice from an outer authority.  The truth of her self concept and existence comes from an inner awarenes.

I love reading these thoughts of positions and awareness, truth and authority and the process of evolving as a woman.  With each word, I see myself, my friends and family.  I understand the words that reflect my own knowing and the experiences in my life, joyful and painful, both.  There seems to be a flow into the connected paths of our jouneys in life when personal experience is mirrored in the thoughts and words of others.

In that flow and connection to these words, the narrative of my own life is affirmed. 
If it were up to me, every woman that I know would read this book, yet I know that not every woman is ready to read this book.