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In the after-shock of the US election, two visions bring hope and transformation. Death has arrived on our doorstep, and so has rebirth.

The Path of She, in its deepest roots, is this journey from lost daughter to Goddess Queen — a modern Goddess tale that invites you to embrace your own life story, with its beauty and wounding, as the content and catalyst of your healing and transformation.

I was attending a workshop on the Buddha’s doctrines on love. As the teacher delivered his dharma talk on this topic, I shifted into a meditative state and opened to this love he spoke about.

What I experienced wasn’t an idea or an emotion, but more a place or part of my being where I was love. My whole being was infused with an absolute peace and acceptance of everything and everyone. There was no separation between me and this love; it was in me and outside of me at the same time, everywhere and in all things.

The same message — one that seems simplistic and naïve at a quick glance — comes to me over and over again: to mend our soul and heal our world, we need only show up to the love that is Goddess, that is life, that is here, now, all around and within us.

The hero’s journey comes to us through the comparative mythology writings of the late, brilliant Joseph Campbell. There is another mythic storyline — the hera’s journey of descent and return from the realm of the Dark Goddess — that comes to us from the ancient Goddess tales of Persephone and Inanna. As the seasons turn and darkness descends in the natural realm, the hera’s path beckons you to journey into your inner darkness and the vast mysteries of this world. And though this is a hard path, of trials, sorrows and endings, its rewards are immeasurable, because the treasures you find at the end of your journey are nothing less than your true, beautiful Deep Self and the magnificence of your whole/holy humanity.

Man or woman, gay, trans or straight, victim or privileged, we're all born into a misogynist world that force feeds and constrains us within narrow, damaging male and female stereotypes and roles. For some the harm is direct and brutal, for others it's more subtle and subtext, and none of us can escape the ever-present cultural negation of women’s ways, values and spirituality, and the mirror distortion and limitation of men and masculinity. In this exercise, I invite you to explore the gendered tear inside of you, but gently so.

This week marks the two year anniversary of the UN’s HeForShe Solidarity Movement for Gender Equality. HeForShe invites men to join and support women in the fight for women’s equality and strives to reframe feminism from its man-hating stigma to a movement that seeks to benefit men and women alike by embracing the feminine side of our humanity.

With the approach of Fall, the energies of the sacred dark begin to stir in your inner landscape — calling you to a new cycle on your journey of soul — compelling you to seek within the secret desires, dormant potential and lost stories that can guide your spiritual pathwork in the weeks, months and seasons to come.

The hera’s journey provides invaluable teachings that can help you navigate the deepest roots of your journey of soul, and source the primal, transformative powers of the sacred dark.

Here are four lessons from this potent myth to guide your spiritual pathwork in the fall season.