The Importance of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders

A friend who knows me well was surprised (when she finally got around to reading my blog) that I am focusing a lot on women’s spirituality. That’s because in the classes that I teach I often warn people about the various subcultures present in spirituality, all of which, to my Buddhist-trained mind, just seek to reinforce a limited personal identity, rather than helping us break free of it.

Here in Los Angeles, I meet so many people that define themselves by their membership in a particular meditation group, or wellness program, or yoga style, etc. While I don’t doubt that they are  benefiting from what they learn, I am often uncomfortable with the level of certitude, and even self-righteousness, that often accompanies it. This self-righteousness is no different in my mind than the self-righteousness of the religious right, which many of these same people regularly bash and denounce as ‘arrogant’.

The human ego thrives on a sense of tribe, and on categorizing everyone outside that tribe as ignorant, wrong, or even downright evil. So I am suspicious of tribes, and of my own tribal instincts. So much so that I don’t even consider myself a member of any one religion or spiritual tradition, despite the fact that my spirituality is the foundation for my life. Of course we all have to have opinions, but defining ourselves according to them only binds us more to delusion – it doesn’t liberate us, which is what I view the purpose of spirituality to be.

So, getting back to women’s spirituality, I am often uncomfortable with the tribal feeling of many books and sites labeled as such. Too often they seem to be  a backlash against the patriarchal history of the world’s religions, and in my view they ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’, by rejecting everything those traditions have to teach us because of past discrimination. To me that is a grave mistake, because the true teachings of Buddha, and Jesus, and yogic masters such as Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharshi, and of hundreds of other mystics within all of the world’s religious traditions, can lead us to spiritual liberation. They have nothing to do with gender (or any other level of identification, for that matter.)

However, one of the biggest problems historically, and one of the biggest crimes against women, in my view, is the restrictions placed on their access to teachings and official roles. Many religions restrict women’s rights or abilities to read certain scriptures, or to teach or preach. Since scriptures are often considered the word of God, or a conduit to enlightenment (in the East), this sends the message that women are ‘further’ from God or enlightenment, and that they don’t have the right to communicate directly, or to learn, teach, or preach on their own. They have to get everything secondhand.

I recently read an interesting book that highlights this issue called Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality. I posted a formal review on Amazon, so won’t do that here, but basically this book focuses on the role of women within the three ‘religions of the book’ – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The author interweaves religious history with interviews of contemporary women who care deeply about their religions, and derive great knowledge and sustenance from them, but are unhappy with the restricted roles of women within them. Many of these interviews are very touching, much more so than I was expecting, because these women have really struggled with this issue.

I wonder how many more women have just given up, denouncing all spirituality or religion? Or accepted their second-rate status, internalizing the idea that ‘men are closer to God’ (or enlightenment, or liberation, or whatever?) Or settled (in my view) into a backlash tradition, focused solely on goddess worship or other staples of women’s spirituality, giving up altogether on the idea of enlightenment or union with God or nirvana, or whatever you choose to call it?

While Taking Back God focuses on the official role of women in organized religion, things aren’t altogether different in the New Age community, or in many Buddhist or Yoga centers. Although there are more women spiritual teachers, authors, and religious leaders in America than elsewhere in the world, they are still vastly outnumbered by men (just check out the Amazon bestsellers list). This despite the fact that according to book marketing surveys, women outnumber men as the purchasers of spiritual and religious books by as much as 4 to 1. In other words, women would appear to be more interested in spirituality in general, but the majority of books, teachers, organizations and resources out there are male-dominated.What is the message sent by this?

I have seen a bit of this myself, even in my small role as a meditation teacher. I don’t fit the ‘mold’ people are expecting, and can sometimes see the surprise on their face when they enter the room for their first class. Part of that is also cultural, as they are often expecting someone Indian or Tibetan. While most of these people would say when asked that of course spiritual truth or knowledge is not tied to a particular culture or gender, there are subconscious biases that creep in. Initially, they’d feel more comfortable with a Tibetan monk than me, no matter how long I have been doing this.

So, my answer to my friend, the reason I do focus on women’s spirituality so much, even though I am wary of over-identifying with gender issues, is that I think it really matters how many women religious leaders and spiritual teachers there are out there. And I think full access to scriptures, and leadership roles, and teaching positions – within every tradition – is imperative. Women’s access to enlightenment, their relationship with God/Tao/Nirvana/Brahma etc., can’t be secondhand. In a way, changing this is the most essential form of change that can occur, because our spiritual and religious beliefs define our organizational view of the world. If we see women as ‘lower down’ the totem pole, even subconsciously, we are denying ourselves our full power.

Defining Women’s Spirituality for the 21st Century

It occurred to me recently that even though I have subtitled this blog Women’s Spirituality for the 21st Century, I have yet to write a post defining exactly what women’s spirituality means to me. Since I recently taught a workshop on the topic, and in the coming weeks will be reviewing several women’s spiritual books, I thought now was a great time to communicate exactly what I consider women’s spirituality to be.

First, I’ll say what it is NOT to me. It is not goddess worship or a redefinition of the divine exclusively in sacred feminine terms. I mention this because if you google ‘women’s spirituality’, a lot of the listings you will get back are along these lines, many of which highlight wicca and/or pagan traditions that emphasize feminine symbols of divinity. The popularity of these traditions has exploded in recent decades, partly as a reaction against the patriarchal leadership of the world’s major religions, and the role these religions have often historically played in the suppression and persecution of women.

I like female symbols of divinity, but to me, discarding the world’s major religions wholesale on sexist grounds, and/or redefining God as female, is missing the point. Spiritual knowledge and experience transcend gender. Light is not male or female, and neither is power. And mystics within every major religion have described very similar experiences of divine light and power. This includes women mystics, which is why one part of this site is devoted to profiling historic women mystics, particularly those that achieved their realizations within the major religions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism.

So in that context, what are the components of a contemporary women’s spirituality? I think it has to address those aspects of women’s lives that are still different from men’s, because these aspects determine what parts of our spiritual paths might be different too. For example:

- How can we juggle work, family, our health, and a spiritual practice? Studies show that we still do the majority of child-rearing and housework, regardless of whether or not we work outside the home, in addition to parent and other caretaking, so juggling is a particularly challenging aspect of our lives. Many women put their spirituality entirely on hold until late in life. For me, finding ways that we can integrate spiritual practice into our days, and begin to see our daily lives as an instrument for spiritual growth, are key.

- How do our bodies and our image of them impact our spiritual journey? Many people tend to think of spirituality as anti-physical, but if you study the mystics in any tradition, you quickly learn nothing could be further from the truth. Our bodies are the instrument through which we experience sacred moments, whether the inspiration of a stunning sunset, the tug in our heart when we feel love for someone, or a more formal practice such as yoga or chakra meditation. And we women tend to have a difficult relationship to our bodies, always wanting to be thinner, curvier, taller, shorter or younger. How does that block our ability to embrace our body as an instrument of our practice? How does it impact our mental and even physical health? And how does having a female brain and body impact how we experience spiritual moments?

- Related to this is, how is our energy different, and how does that impact us spiritually? Many mystic traditions teach that we each have a non-physical energy body or energy centers through which we connect to the world in addition to our physical bodies. How are women’s energy bodies different? How does that impact how we experience both the world and spirituality? How does our energy change in relation to our body as we go through the different phases of our reproductive life cycle? I realize this might be too new-agey for some, but I have found that most women find this information extremely valuable.

- How does gender conditioning impact our path? Specifically, what messages have we received about what it means to be spiritual women, and are they empowering or disempowering? Many religions restrict women’s access to leadership positions, and emphasize nurturing and service as women’s primary religious roles. While these can be important parts of our path, an overemphasis on them can also keep us from pursuing contemplative practices and our full spiritual power. If you believe in enlightenment or full spiritual liberation (as I do), then these practices are an essential part of deepening our spiritual connection.

On this site, I am always on the lookout for books, techniques and other resources that address one or more of these questions in an accessible and contemporary fashion. At the same time, many of the resources offered here are not gender-specific, because much of the spiritual journey isn’t either. We are all trying to free ourselves from the constraints and obsessions of our egoic mind and emotions, and deepen our connection to God, Jehovah, Goddess, Allah, source, spirit, light, the Tao, nirvana (or whatever you prefer to call it.) Our gender impacts our pathway, but doesn’t change the destination.

If you are interested in some meditation techniques you can incorporate into your busy day, try the Meditation for Busy Women series. If you are interested in women’s spiritual books, try the Women’s Spiritual book list, or look over recent reviews on the Book page. Or go to the Women Mystics page for posts profiling both some contemporary and historic women mystics, or the Motherhood page for some recent posts on spirituality and motherhood.

More On Women’s Spirituality: The Religious Mommy Wars

When I started this blog, I vowed I would NEVER devote space to perpetuating the ‘mommy wars’. For those of you that have somehow missed this debate, it consists of a seemingly endless parade of psychologists, feminists, social scientists, religious leaders and the like writing books and doing media interviews on the subject of whether it is ‘better’ for women to stay home with their children or work outside the home. According to the media (which has made A LOT of money on interviews, book plugs and the like related to this topic), we mothers are practically at each others throats daily about this issue. (For more background on this issue, go to this post, or check out the Amazon.com reviews for Mommy Wars by Leslie Morgan Steiner or The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts – not to be confused with The FeminIST mistake.)

I vowed never to cover this because my own experience is that in real life mothers are much more understanding of each others decisions than the media lets on, and because the delineation between the two camps is really not so clear (many moms, like myself, work from home or have side business endeavors.) Also, the main result of so much coverage of this issue seems to be massive GUILT trips for both sides. Stay at home moms are made to feel guilty for not using their educations, not contributing to the GDP, not setting a progressive example for their children, and not furthering feminist aims. Working mothers are made to feel guilty for neglecting their children, furthering their own ’selfish’ career aims, causing developmental problems in their children, and destroying the traditional nuclear family.

I changed my mind, and decided to post about this issue because recently I have been doing a lot of research on motherhood and how it is viewed by different religions, and I ended up finding yet another version of the mommy wars - a religious one. Everywhere I looked, I found statements along the lines of ’motherhood is God’s special work for women.’ Now in and of itself this idea doesn’t seem so bad, and in fact I started this blog partly because I believe there is a powerful spiritual component to motherhood. The problem lies in the way this view is used to limit women’s participation in other spiritual practice and study, or to exclude them as religious leaders.

The argument is usually phrased along the lines of ‘women don’t need to meditate/study scripture/understand theology etc. to find God, because they have a special connection to creation through their children…all they have to do is raise their children well.’ Although seemingly benign, this argument has been used for thousands of years within every major religion to exclude women from higher teachings and practices. What surprised me was finding it in so many contemporary teachings, including many ‘liberal’ ones with a focus on women’s spirituality (I talked a bit about this in a prior post.) By positing ‘goddess’ religions, in which women’s ‘natural’ nurturing and care-taking aspects are exalted as superior, women end up being defined just as narrowly, and their relationship with God is once again tied to motherhood, or at least ‘mothering’ energies.

The real cost to women is that they are receiving yet ANOTHER message about what they are ’supposed’ to be like or want, and this time the price is their soul. A woman who doesn’t feel particularly nurturing or maternal, doesn’t have children, or has them but doesn’t center her life around them is made to feel at best unspiritual, and at worst, against God. And of course there is no gender parity here, as no one is saying that men who don’t feel paternal or don’t have kids are against God, or that when they do have kids that precludes them from studying scripture or becoming religious leaders (except among celibate clergy of course.)

To me, spirituality is a journey of self-discovery, and then of God-discovery, as the boundaries between self and God gradually merge. This process has been, and is, the same for mystics of any gender, within any religion, as has been demonstrated by the most famous mystics (male and female) from all traditions throughout history. When rules are laid down for how that ’self’ is supposed to feel and act, self-discovery is stopped in its tracks, and instead of a spiritual journey you just have obedience, or GUILT when you can’t comply.

So let’s stop defining what women and mothers ’should’ be in any form, and instead focus on discovering ourselves.

The State of Women’s Spirituality

I have just been reading a ton of women’s spirituality books, and have been somewhat disheartened. Writing on women’s spirituality seems to fall into two categories:

1) Sacred feminine/goddess worship: The general theme is that we have a special feminine power, and our main connection to mystic experience is through this. This feminine power is ’sensual’, ‘connected to nature’, and more ‘from the heart’ then men’s power. We naturally connect to divinity through this power, which manifests especially through our relationships to others.

2) Motherhood and wifehood are women’s special spiritual ‘work’: We are the ‘nurturers’ of the world, and the love we manifest as caretakes, especially as mothers, is the foundation for our connection to God.

Does this bother anyone else? They both seem to me to be updated versions of old steroetypes. What about women who don’t feel that nurturing? Or who choose to manifest their power in traditionally masculine realms? Or who, heaven forbid, don’t want to be mothers or caretakers? Are they excluded from a spiritual life? Many of these books seem to be saying that. In the guise of combatting patriarchy by celebrating womenhood, they end up defining us in the same way men did for centuries - as wives and mothers first.

It really is this strange trend that feminism wrought, when applied to spirituality. Many women spiritual writers in the last thirty years or so have focused on critiquing the ways the major world religions have excluded and persecuted women. And of course that is much needed. But the result has been defining feminine spirituality solely in terms of goddess worship and the sacred feminine, and too often these ended up being watered down to overused ideals like ‘nurturing’ and ’sensuality’.

And what about the idea that spirituality is about moving past these kinds of identification altogether? Moving even beyond gender ideals, and experiencing pure spirit? This is the kind of feminine spirituality I am interested in – one that addresses the unique challenges many of us modern women face, particularly in balancing work and family and spirituality, but that ultimately moves us beyond these definitions altogether.