The Feminine Bio-Spiritual Axis & the Truth Detector.

This post weaves a few things I’ve been considering over the years and more recently. It is sparked by a dream I came across while going through old journals. This dream is from February 12, 2018. I was on day 10 of my cycle, and so around, or a little before ovulation. Dreams that year were intense as Pluto was squaring my moon.

Here’s the dream which I have called “Truth Lies Beneath the Earth”.

Sitting side by side with a man (I was on the left of him), we were pulling something up from under the earth. Each of us had our own thing. The objects were similar but different, they were films or videos contained in boxes. The man and I could tell if the content on the films or videos were true or not because we had a device that scanned each box. The boxes were covered in a material made of tiny fine crystal or sand, and the truth detector made a sound if the content was true. There is a lot more to this dream but for the purposes of sharing in this post, the most important bit is the truth detector and the material covering the boxes.

I was struck by the fine sand-like crystal covering of the boxes and this immediately made me think about the pineal gland. The pineal gland contains small calcite crystals, not one crystal but many microcrystals, along with older “brain sand”. Researchers are investigating the role of the crystals in processes such as electromechanical transduction and piezoelectricity. That’s all a bit beyond me right now but I would like to find out more about the pineal gland, and I suspect there is a link between the pineal gland and how we are affected by the electromagnetic field. Indeed, the pineal gland may be our truth receptor.

The other question on my mind is if there is a link between menopause, the pineal Gland, and DMT. It is common for women during menopause to experience sleep disturbance. This can lead to the reduction of melatonin, the primary hormone secreted by the pineal gland. Decreased melatonin can apparently lead to reduced immunity, and disturbed circadian rhythm. Melatonin can inhibit the pituitary’s release of hormones LH (luteal hormone) and FSH (Follicle-Stimulating Hormone), which affects oestrogen production.

Melatonin interacts with the pituitary gland and oestrogen, but the exact relationship is complex and still being researched. As with many aspects of the female- hormonal- psycho- spiritual experience, we don’t really know. Bearing in mind that the medical field of gynaecology was initially studied, charted, and practiced by men. Though studied in the ancient world, gynaecology only emerged as a formal medical specialty in the 18th and 19th centuries, and there were very few women gynaecologists in those days. The history of gynaecology makes for interesting if uncomfortable reading. The fray is dark, the rabbit hole is deep, and according to Mary Daly (whose views are admittedly strong), in 1987 Gyn/Ecology.

The rise of Western gynecology was built on the massacre of women healers, replaced by male medical practitioners … the purpose and intent of gynecology was/is not healing in a deep sense but violent enforcement of the sexual caste system.

Today research is still relatively scant. In “Clinical Reproductive Medicine and Surgery: Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Ovarian Axis and Control of the Menstrual Cycle” scientists Beshay and Carr say:

The menstrual cycle is the result of an orchestra of hormones…. it involves the interaction of many endocrine glands as well as a responsive uterus…. the menstrual cycle remains a complex process where many aspects are still not well understood. (Beshay and Carr, p.31).

And

Consideration of pineal melatonin functions provides a new dimension into the understanding of the neuroendocrine mechanisms governing the cyclical phenomena of the female reproductive system (Sanyk 1992).

The pineal gland, according to Descartes, is “the principal seat of the soul and the place in which all our thoughts are formed”. The spiritual aspects and functions of the pineal gland have been well documented in eastern religions such as Tantra, and more recently in the West by Dr. Rick Strassman, M.D., author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Strassman, who has dedicated years of research to the pineal gland, suggests that it is the “factory for a powerful brain chemical called DMT (Di-Methyl Tryptamine) which when produced induces a person into a psychedelic and mystical experience” (Collective evolution, 2017).

Of the curious nature of the pineal gland, Strassman says,

All other brain sites are paired, meaning that they have left and right counterparts; for example, there are left and right frontal lobes and left and right temporal lobes…. as the only unpaired organ deep within the brain, the pineal gland remained an anatomical curiosity for nearly two thousand years…. no one in the west had any idea what its function was. (Strassman, quoted in collective evolution, 2017).

The pineal gland apparently secretes DMT during sleep states, dreaming, birthing, menstruation, dying and near-death experiences.

Based on anthropological reports of mystical and magical states of menstruating women and the recent findings on the connection between menstruation and the pineal gland, it does seem likely that menstruation is indeed “the medium of a spiritual-communal bond” (Sjoo and Mor, quoted in Noble, 1991, p.27).

So, what of menopause? How can we begin to better understand the psycho-spiritual dimensions? If sleep is disrupted and melatonin production decreases during menopause, it is tempting to consider that women have less access to the spirit world, but this does not appear to be the case.

For myself, I sometimes wake in the night, somewhere between the hours of 2.00 am- 4.00 am, the time when melatonin production is strongest. When that happens, I go with it. I get up, make a cup of tea, write down dreams, meditate, lay in the silence and the darkness. It feels like a sacred time when I am deeply attuned to myself, and there is a sense of the veil being very thin.

I am making sense of my dreams in a way that I could not before. The meaning comes quickly, and the guidance is clear. Looking back over old dream journals is fruitful as I synthesize the enormous amount of nocturnal information that has come to me over the past decade, much of that time being the perimenopause stage.

This is an exciting area of research. The science is interesting, and I would love to find some primary resources from the ancient world about gynaecology, however our lived experiences in the here and now will give us a wealth of information.