Starting a feminist movement within the space of spirituality and wellness
Who introduced you to meditation? Which spiritual celebrity opened your mind to take a new path? For me, it is Siddhartha (the Buddha), the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, Sadhguru, Paulo Coelho, Roger Gabriel, even Søren Kierkegaard. Do you love Echkart Tolle? Paramahansa Yogananda? Jon Kabat-Zinn? Thich Nhat Hanh? Cool. Me, too. So, which female figure in spirituality taught you to meditate? Or are all the women you know tarot card readers, astrologers, lightworkers, and reiki masters?
I studied philosophy at university and achieved a postgraduate degree in the subject, so I am well accustomed to the way men dominate the philosophy realm. I was a software engineer for a couple of years, and I’ll leave it to your imagination how sexist that industry is. Now that I am entering the spiritual realm, which often intersects with philosophy, I see that the masculine dominates still. When will it end?
Yeah.
I don’t know about you, ladies, but I am getting a little tired of being told how to create a daily meditation practice by men. Men, who never had to worry about childrearing if they really didn’t want to, because they could easily get out of it culturally. Men, whose families never pressured them to be married if they wanted to join a monastery in the Himalayas. Men, who traditionally leave home to work, so can also go out for a meditation session any time they want. Men, who can choose easily to be single and without children, dedicating their lives to their spiritual endeavors.
Heck, I even used to think it was really cool that Siddhartha left his family to wander the Earth for years looking for enlightenment, releasing his attachments. But now that my husband left my daughter and me without a trace, I am not so sure anymore.
Human life on Earth means you have a family, you procreate, you are within a web of relationships. But men get to choose that apparently. And they’re praised by the spiritual community if they give up their relationships in order to get closer to God. But women don’t get that luxury. But why would we want it?
The experience of being a human mother is as spiritual as it gets.
Women can meditate. Moms can figure it out. We don’t need to do what they’re telling us about meditating — like practicing at dawn and dusk. We can take care of our kids and figure out another way to move toward our higher selves. We can talk back to the spiritual community if we feel our voices need to be heard.
I am here to speak up, y’all.
Women have creation literally within them. We embody a female energy of nurturing and creative power. We manifest physical things out of non-physical things — babies. We can find our own path to connect with the divine. And men shouldn’t be the only ones out there teaching ‘how to be enlightened.’ We can teach, too.
We can find a new way. Maybe it won’t be the ‘traditional’ way that men have given us for millennia. It’ll be a new, exciting way. It’ll involve intuition, feelings, flowing movement of creation. Or maybe it won’t. But women will be in the forefront doing it, I know that. More and more of us will be here supporting ‘regular’ moms — people who create life — in their meditation practice.
We must.
Someday, when our grandchildren are old, there will be libraries full of feminine voices explaining how to reach enlightenment. Medium will be full of posts like ‘20 Quotes by Women on How to Practice Mindfulness.’ I mean, I hope that by then, humanity will have moved past this half-assed notion of mindfulness as a way to live fully, but if mindfulness is still popular, it will be a woman’s world. Women will have introduced totally new ideas about your soul and your divine light. Women will lead satsangs with timeless wisdom and people will make pilgrimages to hear their sermons. Meditation is sexist now, but it doesn’t have to be.
That will be a beautiful world.
If you enjoyed this article, you might like my other writing about meditation. Please also check out my meditation classes and coaching services.
