Is there a separate spirituality for ladies? Due to the fact I usually blog on difficulties of women’s spirituality, I sometimes acquire comments or emails from folks who object to the concept that there is something separate to say about spirituality for females. They normally create some thing along the lines of ‘spirituality is about moving previous distinctions like race and gender, to a universal understanding that transcends these categorizations.’
In theory, I agree. But to yoursite.com that spiritual growth takes location inside our each day lives, in the moment to moment experiences that we have, we need to take into account the realities of our lives, and the way they typically differ from men’s. And to the extent that spiritual growth calls for self-awareness, we have to have to address the distinct gender conditioning that we normally receive, especially related to religion and spirituality.
This is what women’s spirituality is for me, but I have come to realize this is pretty diverse from how numerous individuals view it. If you Google ‘women’s spirituality’, a lot of the listings you will get back are related to goddess worship, or feminine systems of divinity, often pagan or wiccan in orientation. The reputation of these traditions has exploded in recent decades, partly as a reaction against the patriarchal leadership of the world’s important religions, and the part these religions have frequently historically played in the suppression and persecution of females.
I like female symbols of divinity, but to me, discarding the world’s main religions wholesale on sexist grounds, and/or redefining God as female, is missing the point. Spiritual understanding and expertise DO transcend gender. Light is not male or female, and neither is power. And mystics within just about every key religion have described quite equivalent experiences of divine light and energy. Personally, I am extra interested in addressing how women can develop within whatever religious tradition they have adopted, and how they can enable to adjust the role of women inside those.
So in that context, what are the components of a modern women’s spirituality? I feel it has to address these elements of women’s lives that are nonetheless unique from men’s, because these aspects identify what components of our spiritual paths might be distinctive too. For instance:
– How can we juggle perform, household, our health, and a spiritual practice? Studies show that we still do the majority of child-rearing and housework, regardless of regardless of whether or not we work outside the property, in addition to parent and other caretaking, so juggling is a particularly difficult aspect of our lives. Lots of women put their spirituality totally on hold till late in life. For me, acquiring approaches that we can integrate spiritual practice into our days, and begin to see our everyday lives as an instrument for spiritual development, are essential.
– How do our bodies and our image of them impact our spiritual journey? Several folks tend to feel of spirituality as anti-physical, but if you study the mystics in any tradition, you speedily learn nothing at all could be additional from the truth. Our bodies are the instrument by way of which we encounter sacred moments. And we females tend to have a difficult relationship to our bodies, constantly wanting to be thinner, curvier, taller, shorter or younger. How does that block our capacity to embrace our physique as an instrument of our practice? How does it influence our mental and even physical overall health? And how does having a female brain and body influence how we knowledge spiritual moments?
– Associated to this is, how is our power distinctive, and how does that effect us spiritually? A lot of mystic traditions teach that we every single have a non-physical power body or power centers by way of which we connect to the globe in addition to our physical bodies. How are women’s power bodies distinctive? How does that impact how we knowledge each the planet and spirituality? How does our power change in relation to our physique as we go by means of the various phases of our reproductive life cycle? I realize this could be as well new-agey for some, but I have found that most females uncover this information and facts extremely important.