Women’s Energy Bodies – Phases and Life Cycles

I have been wanting to do this post for some time. The cycles of women’s energy bodies is a neglected area, within both conventional and new age spiritual teachings, and also within both mainstream and alternative healing systems. Note that I am not a healer, so my primary interest in this subject is spiritual – how knowledge and use of our various energy systems can contribute to our spiritual growth, mostly through experiences that are only available when we have full access to our personal power. These kinds of teachings are primarily found in Vajrayana Buddhism and Kundalini Yoga traditions, but I have also found some in various shamanic traditions, pagan traditions, the medieval Christian women mystics, Kabbalah, and Sufism.

I am using the generic term ‘energy body’, because I am trying to write from outside any one particular tradition, each of which have their own terms and mappings. This post is too high-level to compare and contrast the various mappings, but I welcome any comments on the subject. I also don’t have space to provide references for everything I am saying – this is my own take anyway – but I have included a few book suggestions at the end for those interested.

I have broken this down by life phase, and focused on what I think it is most important for us to develop within each phase from a spiritual perspective. This is pretty high-level (and long!) but I wanted to get it out there as a resource in this form, and I can do more detailed posts on each phase if there is interest(please comment to let me know.)

The Basics of Women’s Energy Bodies

In general, women’s energy bodies are more open, absorbent, and fluid than men’s. Men’s are denser and tend to function more naturally like a shield. We women soak in more of the energies around us – which can become the fuel for intuition, but can also become a source of dispersion and mental distraction.

The sensitivity of our energy body runs in cycles corresponding to our monthly menstruation cycle. During the first half, leading up to ovulation, our energy body is a little sturdier, and we are more outward-oriented in response. In the second-half, leading up to menstruation, we are more sensitive to external energies and often more inward-oriented.

Adolescence: Swinging, Deepening, Settling Into Cycles

Adolescence is when these monthly cycles first kick into gear. In addition to being a phase of intense hormonal and physical changes (including in the brain), it is a period of intense psycho-spiritual changes. Just as a girl’s body is transforming into a women’s, her energy body is transforming into a women’s energy body. And the problem in our culture is that this is mostly processed on a sexual level.

In addition to being absorbent, our energy bodies are more attraction-oriented. We are like little magnets, pulling other energies towards us, particularly in that first half of our cycle. And we are generally socialized to use this power sexually, to attract others (mostly men of course, but friends and admiration, too.) This can prevent us from recognizing that this power, the ‘yin’ aspect of creation, can be used for other pursuits, particularly creative ones (and I am using ‘creative’ in the sense of anything we want to create in our lives, not just artistic endeavors.)

So the most important thing for us to focus on in this stage is developing an identity and relationship to our power that is not based on sexual attraction.

Focus on recognizing that procreative energy is not just sexual; it is part of your overall personal power, and can be directed into all of your endeavors, particularly creative ones.

Early Adulthood: Sexuality, Mating, Conscious Understanding of Cycles

Ideally, our late teens and twenties are a period of developing our personal power, learning how to direct it through manifesting our goals, and consciously understanding our natural psycho-spiritual cycles. But if we have only come to own our personal power through our sexuality, our focus will be too heavily on attracting others. This happens to most of us to a certain extent, and few of us emerge from this period with our full personal power at our disposal. We lose an opportunity to gather ourselves up, in a sense, for our larger life’s purposes, including our spiritual realization.

I believe that from a spiritual perspective, owning our personal power is the most valuable thing we can do during this phase – more valuable even than explicit spiritual study or practice. And we can own our personal power through any activity that we feel passionately about, and strive to excel within. Having concrete external goals during this phase helps teach us about the ebbs and flows of our energy cycles. That being said, developing a meditation practice during this time is particularly beneficial.

Focus on developing personal power, and manifesting it concretely within your life, whether that be through higher learning, career, sports, the arts, hobbies, or (of course) spirituality.

Pregnancy: Ride the Bliss, Release/Surrender, Enjoy Increasing Connection to the ‘Other Side’

For those that choose to have children (more on that later), pregnancy can be an amazing time for developing your intuitive and creative abilities (nausea, backaches, and constipation aside, of course.) Ideally, you have come into this phase with a well-developed sense of your personal power and cycles (if not, these lessons are harder to access.) During pregnancy, your energy body gradually becomes more and more open, which can be disconcerting if you are constantly around people. On the other hand, if you can withdraw into yourself, you can sense your increasing connection to ‘the other side’ (I will leave this vague, like the term ‘energy body’, so that I can keep this non-denominational.) It is as if carrying a life within you has opened a doorway for that life to come through, and you can now go through that doorway the other way too.

This is a wonderful time to go inward. Meditate, read spiritual books, explore intuitive and creative interests, and of course, prepare yourself for the challenges ahead.

Focus on developing intuitive abilities and riding the bliss as part of being increasingly connected to the other side.

Motherhood: Carrying the Load, Balancing Energy Needs of Mother and Child

The ‘doorway’ of pregnancy closes pretty quickly post-partum, generally in the first eight weeks. In addition to the hormonal changes and sleep-deprivation, it can be brutal. That being said, some women glide right through this transition phase (more power to them.) If you have developed your spiritual awareness, this phase will be easier, as you will be capable of continuing to ‘travel’ to the meditative planes you discovered during pregnancy on your own.

Whether you will have the time or energy to do so is another matter! Your energy body is now literally extended outside your body, to encompass your baby (they don’t call it the ‘fourth trimester’ for nothing.) You will not fully reclaim that energy for almost two decades (and some women never do). And the same is true for each additional child you have. On an energy level, motherhood is a sacrifice, plain and simple. Hopefully, it is a sacrifice of love. If so, it can bring you as much back spiritually as you put into it.

For that to happen, you have to make peace with the sacrifice, and you have to pace your energy use and development in accordance with your children’s maturation. Ideally, at each phase of growth, your children own more and more of their own personal power, and you can take just a little bit more back for yourself. Gradually reclaiming this energy is key, and taking good enough care of yourself that you are not entirely swallowed up by motherhood, psychologically and energetically. This is primarily what spirituality is about during this phase.

Focus on striking the right energy balance between sustaining your child/children with energy appropriate for their age, and reclaiming your personal power as he/she/they grow up.

Maturity Childfree: Increased Gathering, Exploring Advanced Teachings

For women who do not have children (by choice or circumstance), the pre-menopause adult years are a tremendous spiritual opportunity. I feel it is very important to say this, because in many religious traditions, a women’s spiritual worth seem to be equated with motherhood (check out my post on the Religious Mommy Wars for a semi-rant on this.) Those who put this forth seem to be forgetting that most of the better known mystics in all religious traditions, male or female, have not had families, and in most cases, have been celibate (see Women Mystics for some.)

While many people think this is for moral reasons (sex is impure and all that BS), if you read the actual teachings in mystic traditions, it is clear that originally there was a recognition of the energy benefit of celibacy and/or childlessness. In fact, in the more complex energy-based yogas, such as some lineages of Tantric Buddhism and Kundalini yoga, remaining childless is considered a benefit or even a requirement in order to receive advanced teachings, especially for women. That is because in order to technically accomplish some of the practices, you must have access to 100% of your procreative energies, which these practices help you redirect into meditative techniques. A woman who has children simply has too much of her energy dispersed for much of her life. (Of course, a lot of women didn’t live much past their childbearing years until the last century, so perhaps more mothers with grown children who have fully reclaimed their energy will explore this.)

This is not to say that we mothers cannot achieve enlightenment, or spiritual liberation, or whastever you wish to call it. It just makes certain energy techniques, and certain paths, more of a challenge, for certain periods of our mothering years. And childfree women do not have these particular challenges. So the sky’s the limit! Explore your personal power, and spirituality of all types, particularly energy-based ones. Intuitive fields, divination, energy healing systems, and the creative arts also draw on this energy.

Focus on expanding your intuitive and energy knowledge, and redirecting your procreative energies into the mystic teachings of whatever spiritual tradition you are a part of.

Perimenopause: Transition to Mystic-hood

Perimenopause is the transition period leading into menopause, which physically can last anywhere from 1 to 10 years (which for most women would fall in their mid to late forties and early fifties). Unfortunately, this phase is not even recognized as a phase by many doctors and healers, because the signs can be slight and fluctuating, and because these traditions were originally developed primarily by men, based on an understanding of men’s bodies.

Just as this is a period of physical transition with fluctuating symptoms and signs, so it is on the energy and spiritual levels. Ideally, a mother has reclaimed much of her energy for herself (or at the very least is out of the intense early childhood days), and a childfree woman has explored the mystic levels of her awareness. Both are now preparing for what can be a complete rebirth as a mystic during menopause.

On the energetic level, the entire perimenopausal period is a prepatory one. The monthly energy body cycles are starting to dissipate, and with appropriate preparation will settle into a permanent state of increased intuitive sensitivity and strength.

Focus on developing or continuing to deepen a meditation practice, and on exploring energy and mystics teachings that appeal to you.

Menopause: Birth of a Mystic

I use the word ‘mystic’ loosely on this site, to refer to spiritual seekers and teachers that focus on personal and direct experience of divinity. To be a mystic does not imply enlightenment, but it does imply a certain approach to spirituality – not a philosophical one, but an awareness-based one. Our awareness is infinite, but we are usually too weighed down by our human thoughts and emotions, and our own sense of self, to experience most of them.  Put generally, mystic spirituality is about getting outside of that human self, and travelling through our awareness, to other planes. This requires an unusual level of knowledge and control over both our awareness and energy body.

We can practice mysticism at any point during our lives, but as I’ve tried to ouline here, there are challenges and distractions to our doing so at each prior stage of our lives. Ideally, at and after menopause, these are all gone. If we own our personal power and have developed our knowledge of the mystic levels of our awareness, menopause is a time we can take this to the limit, if we haven’t already. Many Eastern and native traditions acknowledge this phase as the most spiritual time in a women’s life. If we haven’t become a mystic before this, know is the time.

Focus on fully reclaiming and/or owning your personal power, deepening your spiritual understanding and practices, and go for it – become a mystic, whatever that means to you.

This post has gone on long enough, so here’s a brief list of some books that have related material.

The Sorcerer’s Crossing: A Woman’s Journey, by Taisha Abelar

Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause, by Dr. Christiane Northrup

Initiation, by Elisabeth Haich

The Female Brain, by LouAnn Brizendine

Lady of the Lotus-Born: The Life and Enlightenment of Yeshe Tsogyal, by Gyalwa Changtub

Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism, by Judith Simmer-Brown

The Subtle Body, by Cyndi Dale

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.

Book Review: Your Truest Self – Embracing the Woman You Are Meant to Be

Your Truest Self: Embracing the Woman You Are Meant to Be, by Janice Lynne Lundy, is a lovely new women’s spirituality book highlighting twelve diverse contemporary women spiritual teachers and authors. Ms. Lundy is herself an Interfaith Spiritual Director and the longtime Lifestyle writer for Women’s Lifestyle magazine. She has authored three previous books, including Coming Home to Ourselves : A Woman’s Journey to Wholeness.

Your Truest Self is an interfaith book, focused on twelve principles, or ‘Transformational Truths’, of the spiritual growth process, not specific to any particular religious denomination. Each of the twelve principles is elucidated through the life story of one spiritual woman, and as a group they represent a variety of spiritual traditions. Some of the women are well-known, such as singer Naomi Judd, who in recent years has become a proponent of mind-body medicine, and Rev. Dr. Iyanla Vanzant, New Thought minister and author of five NY Times bestsellers. Others are less well-known (at least to me) such as Joyce Rupp, member of the Catholic order Servants of Mary, and Mari Gayatri Stein, author of The Buddha Smiles: A Collection of Dharmatoons.

Ms. Lundy interviews each of these twelve women, and every single one comes across as someone I’d love to have dinner with (and I’m not that social.) They are down to earth, wise, honest, and, in the hands of Ms. Lundy, very revealing about the joys and challenges of their own spiritual journeys. The intimate experiences they reveal are the best thing about the book, and the most useful, for those of us journeying ourselves. Rev. Vanzant talks about the crises of faith she experienced after the death of her 31-year old daughter, and Ms. Judd discusses her battle with hepatitis C. Many discuss the self-doubt, stress in personal relationships, and fears of social ostracization that they faced as they explored new spiritual paths and practices.

In each chapter, Ms. Lundy takes the major theme of each woman’s journey and discusses it in the context of her own spiritual growth. She then presents a set of reflection questions for the reader on that topic, and a ‘Peaceful Pause’ – a contemplation or meditation exercise corresponding to the chapter’s theme. I think most women will enjoy the combination of interviews, personal stories, and prescriptive guidance. The format creates a kind of spiritual ‘sampler plate’, providing just enough of a sense of each woman to help you decide whether you would like to read more by or about that individual.

One thing to be aware of, however, is that this book is not as linear as many spiritual ‘prescriptive’ titles out today. It does not present a step-by-step ’self-help’ plan, although the themes are progressive from chapter to chapter. Featuring a different teacher in each chapter requires a shift in language and approach that prevents an overall philosophy from developing. Frankly, for me that is a plus, as too often today spirituality is presented like a workout plan or diet, with specific instructions and techniques that end up undermining the very personal and individual nature of the process.

So, if you love reading about other women, and If you think of your spirituality as exploratory rather than prescriptive, this book is for you. You can also read more about the author and the women featured in the book at  http://www.awakenedliving.com/.                                  .

For more book reviews, try the Book page, or to read about other women mystics, including Joan Borysenko, a contemporary teacher and author featured in Your Truest Self, try the Women Mystics page.

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.