In the time when women ran the world and the world returned the favor, the materfamilia in every community took the girls who no longer walked in young girl’s bodies into the forest and taught them to catch their song. Once a song was in its rightful hands, the girl taught it to the other women. When her elders could sing the girl’s song without the slightest trace of disharmony or discord, the women returned to their community and taught the song to the men. Taking possession of her song and teaching it to her elders was how the girl learned to occupy her song and make a home within herself.
When she had her first blood, when she wove her first basket, when she married and when she had children, when her mother died, the community gathered around her and sang her song. When her time came to leave this world, the community stood at the old girl’s bedside and sang her into the Great Mother’s arms.
There was one other occasion when her song was sung. If at any time in her life she broke with what was sacred to her, the community circled round her and sang her song. They did this because they knew that the remedy for such a miscalculation is the remembrance of one’s True Identity, that when we hear our song, we cannot dismiss what is sacred to us.
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It’s one of the world’s best kept secrets: Discovering our Sacred Self, knowing and operating from this brilliant, luxuriant, robust, invisible core of our being is the most creative journey a woman—or a man—can take. Though the mystical literature of all religions describes this journey as a deep dive into contemplation and renunciation—a withdrawal from the world—21st century women are redefining those parameters to allow them to live out this part of themselves in the midst of our exacting 21st century days.
Spirituality in America
A new study by the Fetzer Institute on the state of spirituality in America done just before COVID reveals that 86% of respondents—men as well as women—identify as being spiritual and 60% aspire to be more spiritual. Organized religion is on the decline and a statistically based preference for “spirituality” over “religion” is on the rise.
2020 sounded a clarion call: To thrive we must live at the hub of the wheel. Careening round the rim will no longer do. The search for what is meaningful, for what matters most to us,
to discover and sing “our song” has become part of the American conversation. (www.spiritualitystudy.fetzer.org)
The Contribution of Women’s Spirituality
Several years ago, I interviewed Rabbi Laura Geller for a book I wrote profiling fourteen modern day women “mystics” of different spiritual traditions. Laura was the third woman in the history of Reform Judaism to become a rabbi. She spoke eloquently about what she called “the Torah of our lives,” her belief that “… we grow in our understanding of God as we come to understand our own life stories and our relationships more fully.” When she could not find the rituals and ceremonies she and the women in her congregation needed to more deeply understand and celebrate their lives, she created her own.
Like the girls and women in the fable at the beginning of this article, women actively integrate their spirituality into our everyday life. We pray, we meditate, we affirm, and we include our relationships with others and how we move through our personal and professional challenges as pages in the “living Torah” of our spiritual practice. Google “women’s spirituality” on Amazon and you find over 50,000 books in this category, the majority of which help the reader cultivate greater awareness of the holiness in each present moment or contain stories of other women who have a personal, intimate relationship with the God of their hearts.
The Science That Supports Our Experience
The Fetzer Study proves this longing to close the gap between what is meaningful to us and how we live our lives is not just anecdotal. Neuroscientists also speak about “neuroplasticity,” “entrainment,” and the awareness of a “unified field” as just some of the benefits yoga meditation has in the brain that empower people who meditate daily to live with greater capacity, satisfaction, and gratitude. As these scientific markers of human potential are integrated into the conventional wisdom, women of all faiths, of all backgrounds, and all social and economic status actively seek firsthand experiences of their own highest potential—especially in light of recent events.
Organizations such as Self-Realization Fellowship are offering free, daily online meditations and inspirational services to the public that are currently attended by over 11,000 people each week—not just from America, but from 80 countries around the world. The opportunity to discover one’s song, then sing it with thousands of others in the privacy of our own home, is opening new doors inside each participant and to the reality of being part of a global family that meditates together contributes to the Greater Good.
The Value of Meditation
Though the popularity of hatha yoga has turned Target stores, fitness centers, and online workouts into modern day temples of physical fitness, yoga is actually a time-tested, scientific
system of universal beliefs and meditation practices that nourish and expand our connection to our Sacred Self.
Every human being is—consciously or unconsciously—waiting for the moment when we can finally say “Yes” to the Beauty inside us—to the Joy, the Peace, the Truth of who we really are. We have always known there was something “special” about us—at least, always hoped this was the case—but when we confine our thoughts and our potential to the limits of our “shoulds” and our fears, to how we’ve always done things, to “doing” instead of “being,” the consummate experience of the Sacred within us remains at bay.
Meditation opens us to our song and to the interdependence of all life. It facilitates the gradual, always unfolding discovery of our “wholeness” that empowers us to make peace with our past, live more fully in the present moment and, thus, alter the course of our future.
7 Tips to Reclaiming Your Sacred Self
- Decide what is sacred to you—what values, feelings, people, places, objects and forms inspire and energize you. What calms you? What takes you into The Quiet inside you? What aspects of your life best support and expand your connection to Life? What brings you joy? Peace? Understanding? They are your elders; the singers of your song.
- If this is not yet clear, explore what is not sacred to you. This often calls up images of a didactic, distant, authoritarian arbitrator of right and wrong, of heaven and hell. (Obviously not someone you want to have any relationship with at all!) Learn thorough your opposites.
- Take some time for your Self. Every day. Be in Nature. Mine the Silence. Practice Stillness. Learn to meditate. Listen for your song.
- Start an internal dialog with the Sacred Self you are courting. Listen for and to your Inner Voice. Frequent, honest, warm-hearted conversations are integral to every good partnership.
- So is asking for help when you need it—from others who have the kind of connection you are seeking, and from the Universe to show you what’s next.
- Push the edge of your habitual envelope a titch. Have your “yes’ and have your “no,” but stretch yourself. Be adventurous.
- Then, do the legwork. The God you are courting is also courting you. Open your eyes, your mind, your heart. “If you build it, He / She / It will come.”
