Chapter One: Personal Knowledge
BODYHOOD AND BEING-WITH:
A WOMAN’S EXPERIENCE OF EMBODIED SPIRITUAL EMPOWERMENT.
A HEURISTIC INVESTIGATION
By
Betz King Psy.S., LLP
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Center for Humanistic Studies Graduate School
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Psychology
July 2006
This dissertation was approved by the doctoral committee:
Marjorie Scott, Ph.D., Committee Chair
Lee Bach, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor
Patricia Monaghan, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor
Linda Schonberg, Psy.D., Mentor
ABSTRACT
This study explores the question “What is a woman’s experience of embodied spiritual empowerment?” utilizing the heuristic research model. Heuristic investigation was used because of the personal and complex nature of the phenomenon being researched. A comprehensive literature review indicated that no similar studies had been done, but revealed some studies regarding the relationship between the body and spirituality. The researcher first immersed in the heuristic research techniques of self-dialogue, indwelling, and focusing. Data was collected from thirteen co-researchers who shared personal depictions of their experiences during open ended interviews. Each interview was transcribed and reviewed for themes. The themes illuminated were 1) Bodyhood, which included sub-themes of Using ritual as embodied prayer, Using the body to connect spirit and earth, and Trusting corporeal wisdom 2) Being-With, which included sub-themes of Awareness of the hallowed-here-and-now, Recognition of sacred connections, and Synthesizing polarities 3) Omniscience, which included sub-themes of Personalizing God/dess, Negotiating Patriarchal Influences and Recognizing the Sacred-Self. The findings of this study have significant implications for the fields of psychology, spirituality, education and modern day culture.
Dedication:
This work is dedicated to
the re-embodiment of
the Divine Feminine.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With enormous gratitude, I acknowledge the following midwives who assisted in the labor and birth of this work:
The Divine Feminine, in all of Her facets and faces.
Dr. Kyle Glasgow – If Frodo wrote this dissertation, you’d be Sam. (And everyone knows Frodo never would’ve made it without Sam...) I’m so happy you’re wearing the One Ring…
Dr. Ronda Diegel - devoted student and teacher of embodied spiritual empowerment, and my biggest fan.
Dr. Aaron Goldner - best girl-friend-who’s-a-guy, and talker-down from many ledges over the years.
CHS faculty, staff & students, for creating a community where authenticity is the norm, with special thanks to Marjie, for asking “but can you NOT do it?” and to Sid for insisting that I abandon polarized thinking. Lee and Linda, you made the writing process painless, thanks for your tireless excitement when I myself was tired.
Dr. Patricia Monaghan – championess of the Divine Feminine, the Old Ways, and Feminist Scholarship.
The Grail Lodge Companions - magic-makers and family of choice.
Voyage Counseling, where dissertation results come to life.
Family and friends, who not only haven’t seen much of me, but haven’t held it against me.
Paisley, demander of play-breaks.
Charles Schwab & Hershey’s: providers of wine and chocolate for the dissertation-writer’s soul.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pages
Chapter I Meaning of the Research Question 8
Personal and Professional Aspects 8
Social and Historical Relevance 23
Definition of Terms 32
Woman 33
Experience 34
Embodied 36
Spiritual Empowerment 38
Conclusion 43
Chapter II Review of Literature 44
Themes in the Literature 44
Historical considerations 45
Original expressions 45
The disempowerment of women 48
The separation of body and spirit. 53
Contemporary considerations 57
The re-empowerment of women 58
Negotiating The Tension 59
Reclaiming the Divine Feminine 68
Reuniting With Women Who Affirm The Divine Feminine 74
Tools for Empowerment 76
Theories relevant to the Empowerment of Women 81
The reunion of body and spirit 91
Coming Home to the Body 91
Felt Connection to the Divine Feminine 95
Expressions of embodied spirituality 98
Nature as Access to the Divine Feminine 99
Body Based Spiritual Practices and Experience 101
Pagan and Neo-Pagan Spiritual Practices 106
Chapter III: Research Model 111
Qualitative Research 111
The Heuristic Research Model 120
Roots of Heuristic Research. 120
The Model. 122
The Three Core Concepts of Heuristic Research 123
The Four Processes of Heuristic Research 127
The Six Phases of Heuristic Research 130
Initial engagement. 131
Immersion. 131
Incubation 132
Illumination 133
Explication 134
Creative Synthesis. 135
Chapter IV: Methods and Procedures 138
Methods and Procedures Used in Preparation for
Collection of Data 138
Acquisition of co-researchers 143
Defining co-researcher criteria 143
Initial preparation of co-researchers 144
Collection of Data 146
Interview Preparation 146
Summary of Co-Researchers 146
Interview Settings 148
Interview Process 149
Transcription of Interviews 150
Chapter V Presentation of Findings 152
Methods and Procedures 152
Major Themes and Sub-Themes 158
Presentation of the Data 166
Individual depictions 167
Depiction of Mama’s experience. 167
Depiction of Sheila’s experience. 171
Jeanette’s depiction. 177
Individual Portraits 180
Portrait of Hildegard 181
Portrait of Teresa 194
Portrait of Susanna 209
Composite Depiction 223
Narrative Synthesis 233
Chapter VI Discussions and Conclusions 236
Overview of Study 236
Comparative Analysis 238
Limitations 239
Future Studies 240
Implications and Applications 242
Bodyhood 242
Being-With 244
Omniscience 245
Professional and Personal Reflections 246
REFERENCES 253
Appendix A: Instructions to Research Participants 266
Appendix B: Participation-Release Agreement 268
Appendix C: Guiding Questions 272
Appendix D: Sample Interview 273
CHAPTER I
Meaning of the Research Question
Above all else, perhaps, when the feminine is sacred, the body is not left out. Flesh is not demonized. Birth is holy, and birthing bodies are sacred, and because this is true, every woman is much more than she appears to be… (Flinders, 1998, p. 148)
This chapter explains personal and professional aspects of my research question. It also explores the historical and social relevance of the research topic, and ends with definitions of the terms of the research question.
Personal and Professional Aspects of the Research Question
When I was 27 years old, I participated in a woman’s ritual called “The reconsecration of the womb” ceremony. It was originally designed by Doloras Ashcroft Norwicki, a Priestess of the Western Mystery Tradition, in response to survivors of sexual assault. The premise of the ceremony at that time was that a woman’s womb is a sacred vessel, and that sexual assault violates that sanctity. Just as a church that has been desecrated can be made holy again through the use of ceremony, so can women’s wombs be made holy again through the reconsecration ceremony.
Over the years, women began asking for the ceremony in response to other woman-centered traumas like abortions, miscarriages, STDs and invasive medical procedures. Another evolution resulted in the ceremony generalizing to all women who wished to reclaim, or re-sanctify their own womanhood.
It was this generalized ritual that I was attending, and I was hoping to heal from a series of unhealthy relationships and poor decisions regarding men. I knew many of the women present, but I was in no way prepared for the profound emotional and psychological experience that unfolded.
When my turn came to receive the ceremony, the High Priestess did, and said, many things designed to help me release fear, shame, guilt, and anything else that “no longer served” me. The ceremony culminated in a re-sanctification of my womb. It seemed so natural to embody the spiritual in healing the physical. During the actual moment of re-consecration, I was aware of a profound recognition of the woman consecrating me. I did not recognize her personality, but rather her office and role as Priestess. This Priestess was an instrument of healing, and the healing, while obviously both spiritual and psychological, involved the woman and her physical body as well. Body, mind and spirit combined in sacred space, and it felt so very right to me. It seemed as if I had been searching for my entire life, without knowing what I was searching for, until that moment. Suddenly I knew, without hesitation, what I was “here” to do with my life. I had recognized my calling. My master’s thesis, a heuristic study of “honoring a calling to be of service” explored my recognition of that calling. Recognizing a calling to be a Priestess within the context of a patriarchal and predominately Christian society initiated many years of seeking; for education, affiliation, initiation and others like myself. But the search was not unfamiliar because I had been questing for an embodied spirituality for as long as I could remember.
My first existential realization came in elementary school. Sitting in a big Northern Michigan snowbank in the backyard, late at night under a sky full of stars, I had a sudden, sharp and clear knowing that I was part of a mystery. I remember feeling lonely, like I was missing someone, or something, but I did not know who or what. It seemed as if the stars had something to do with my longing, and something to do with comforting me, but my young mind could not comprehend beyond that. To this day, I can access my best spiritual self when I am outside in nature.
Shortly after, I began attending church, solely because child acolytes were responsible for carrying the flame up to the dais, and got to ring the church bell high up in the rickety wooden bell tower. I loved to hold on to the rope and let it lift me off the ground and up into the belfry. I love carrying the flame on the long taper, down the aisle of pews, and up the three stairs to the dais, there lighting the ceremonial flame for all to witness. I could not tell you what the sermons were about, but I recognized the ritual, the use of the body in service of the spirit, and I wanted more.
Throughout elementary and middle school, I imagined myself having magical powers. I would cast spells and create elaborate rituals, and once insisted that my friends and I prick our fingers and bleed on a stone we then buried behind the school. I became proficient at girls softball, and now as I look back, the smell of the grass, the setting sun, and my own young body, strong and confident, were certainly an embodied spiritual experience. I was connected to the best part of myself, my team, and the earth.
Then tragedy shattered my world, when my grandmother and legal guardian died. For years I believed her death to be my fault, as we had been arguing about a boy with whom I wanted to watch the fireworks. My grandmother felt that was improper behavior for a young lady. After our disagreement, she went in her room, and had a heart attack later that night. Certain that whatever came next could never be penance enough for my crime of murder, I was shipped to Detroit to live with a series of families who were involved in fundamentalist religions.
My biological parents had lost custody of me in infancy after I had been admitted to the hospital with multiple broken bones and a concussion. The records called it “battered child syndrome.” When my grandmother died, my parents wanted a “second chance,” and my guardian uncle, with three children of his own, happily handed me over. I moved in with my parents, and my 15 year old brother, the summer before 8th grade. My parents were deaf and I did not know sign language. Sheltered in my small northern town, I had never seen another racial or ethnic group, nor lived without trees to climb or shorelines to walk. I was profoundly grief stricken over the loss of my grandmother, and although I might not have known my spiritual self yet, I knew that the part of me that felt connected to something larger than myself in nature was caged by the lack of forests, lakes and wildlife.
In a matter of months, I learned that my mother was an alcoholic. This was a new term to me. When drinking, she was also prone to violence directed at me. I did not know about my infant abuse at that time, and my grandmother had never lifted a hand against me. The acts of violence were almost incomprehensible. I had had no experience of being hurt.
My father spent many a night sleeping slumped against the wall outside my bedroom door so that my mother could not get in. Eventually, both my brother and I questioned my father’s decision to stay with her. We slept in the car many a night to avoid her violence, and it seemed we would have a much better life if we left her. My father cited Biblical references regarding the evils of divorce. Apparently, there were no references regarding the evils of child abuse. Protective services investigated once after I told a school counselor about being chased with a fork. I was certain the middle-aged social worker in the flowered skirt would take me with her when she came over, but she did not. I ran away, and over the next four years, found a series of unofficial “foster homes.” The courts were not involved; I simply stayed somewhere until I had worn out my welcome, and then found another place to stay.
The first family I lived with was of the Southern Baptist faith. I learned the Bible, and reluctantly gave up music, television, card games, dancing and any hope of ever dating. There was no embodied spirituality in this home, as the body was evil, and the spirit holy, and the two were separated as often as possible. They asked me to leave after finding a transistor radio under my pillow. That was, they said, all that Satan needed to enter the household. There were four more families over the next 3 years, each of them housing some sort of addiction, and each of them proclaiming themselves to be good Christians, and hopeful that I would embrace their various faiths. My father’s piousness and the hypocrisy of these families who spontaneously took me in, and put me out with the same enthusiasm, left me distrustful of the good Christian folks. I remember thinking, “This is how the Indians must have felt when the Pilgrims offered to help them. Beware religious people bearing gifts!” This suspicion fueled a slow burning but inexpressible rage, creating within me many years of angry agnosticism. I saw no use for a relationship with a God who appeared to condone substance abuse, child abuse, hypocrisy and guilt. Disconnected from family, I longed even more for a relationship with the Divine, but at that age had no ideas of, or access to, alternative options.
It was at least 5 years later that I began working at The Om Café, a very small vegetarian restaurant in suburban Detroit. It was so small that each of the four cooks had only their spot to stand in, one at the stove, one on the “line,” and two at cutting boards. Moving around became an intuitive sort of dance, and conversation was incredibly intimate. While feeding the local vegetarian population, my spiritual hunger was being fed by what I am sure was the world’s most spiritually diverse kitchen. Between the waitresses and the cooks, Rah, Jah, Jehovah, Buddha, the Lord and the Lady, and the Christian God were all represented, and I drank like a spiritual refugee from the fountain of the energy created by my co-workers.
This was the first time I learned that food had the power to heal the body, and that some people avoided certain foods as a part of their spiritual belief system. Embodied spirituality was alive and well at The Om Café.
I learned many things during that period of religious and spiritual tolerance. I studied Gods and Goddesses of various cultures. I devoured mythology with its rich and immortal cast of characters. I experimented with belief system after belief system. I felt certain that now that I was open to the endless potential, I would eventually find a religion that fit me, and that I fit into. However, it proved not to be that simple.
What I discovered each wonderful step of the way were groups; groups of like minded individuals, sharing a common belief, and gathered together to protect and promote it. Many of the beliefs seemed wonderful, and worthy of promotion, yet always I found a dogmatic brick wall, a refusal to look beyond, or move beyond, a certain point, a certain ideal. I got used to being alone with my beliefs of unlimited potential and unlimited love.
Eventually I came to call myself a Pagan. Originally meaning “of the earth,” or “from the village,” it suited my preferred methods of worship; respectful of nature, in harmony with the seasons and tides and turning of the planets, accepting of the body/mind/spirit trilogy. The Pagans often used their bodies to celebrate their faith, through ritual and communion with the earth and one another. And they were respectful of the beliefs of others, as illustrated in Bradeley’s (1982) Mists of Avalon when the Lady of the Lake suggests that Mary is a version of the Goddess and says, “All the Gods are One God, and all the Goddesses One Goddess” (p. 112). If these Pagans held such a respect for all faiths, and if they felt that religion was to be lived daily, not rehearsed weekly, and preferred to worship in the nature made by the Gods rather than the buildings made by men, I could call myself a Pagan. Of course, it looked funny when filled in on legal documents, and I could imagine the images likely running through the minds of the fundamentalists who believed Pagans to be synonymous with hell-bound sinners, but so be it. I was spiritually more comfortable than ever before.
I spent a year or so experimenting with Wicca, an earth based religion that has both God and Goddess, aligns itself with the seasons and moon phases and raises power to send towards specific intentions. I was especially smitten with the idea of having an altar, and with changing the altar dressings with the seasons. I learned how to “cast a circle” by acknowledging the four directions and the four elements, to create an energetically protected space in which to work. I studied spells, but never felt quite right about casting them. I hung out with local covens, but found them to be more like soap operas than spiritual gatherings, with the participants expressing their egos rather than service. I remained on the search.
It was during this time that I read Mists of Avalon for the first time. It is the story of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, told from the voice of the Priestesses of Avalon, who used their magic to put Arthur on the throne to protect the Old Religions from the coming crusades. I saw myself in those Priestesses, could almost remember the feeling of those rituals, although I had certainly never been to anything similar. I read that book over and over again.
Soon after, I signed up for a local healer-training program, to learn about the body, its aura, chakras, and endocrine system. It promised knowledge of the Archangels as healing guides, past life regression, inner-child work, and how to move energy through the body in service of cleansing, repairing, and recharging. I was a waitress going to college full-time, and could not afford the tuition, so I bartered with the teacher, cooking vegetarian meals for her in exchange for the tuition.
Much of the training involved the students performing healings on one another. More than once, I would find myself afflicted with the same malady I had been working to heal in another student. Eventually I learned how to work on a symptom without taking it in, and still use those energetic self-protection techniques in my current work as a therapist.
I have always struggled to balance a deep longing for transcendent and mystical experiences with a fiercely vocal inner-naysayer. This healer training course left no doubt whatsoever that body and spirit were intertwined. After many hours of class work, an internship providing healing sessions, and an exam from the Universal Church of the Master, I was ordained as a Minister of Divine Healing. I had a small private practice, with very good results, until a client became psychotic, and I quickly realized how little I knew about mental health and illness. I enrolled in the local community college, and eventually transferred to the University of Michigan, where I thought a psychology degree would be a good balance to the healing ordination.
One day while still an undergraduate student, I came across a flyer advertising an esoteric study group. There on one page was everything I had been curious about; the Qabalah (The traditional Kabbalah taught by the Rabbis is usually spelled with a "K"; the non-Kosher variety used in mystical contexts is usually spelled with a "Q", from QBL, the Hebrew letters Qoph, Beth, Lamed, meaning "from mouth to ear."), Archangels, tarot cards, astrology, and practical applications of each to daily life. Coincidentally, or not perhaps, the teacher was the husband of the Priestess who had performed my womb-consecration. He was a long-time student of the Western Mystery Tradition, and a Priest in his own rite. I called him, and wriggled through a very uncomfortable telephone interview, in which he was obviously looking for a specific answer as to why I was interested in learning about esoteric mysticism. Eventually, frustrated and fearful that I was going to fail the interview, I stated the obvious, “to help people.” I was invited to join the study group, and have never left. I received both my Priestess ordination, and Master’s degree in 1998.
A year later found me at the same womb consecration ceremony, in the same location, with the same High Priestess, this time functioning as co-Priestess, serving a group of women not unlike the group I been in so long ago.
Some kind of completion took place inside me that day, as I returned to the same ceremony that had changed my life, this time as Priestess to the women gathered. I sighed a spiritual sigh of relief at what felt like a homecoming after a very long journey. Stopping my friend’s bleeding through spiritual intention, feeling her pain inside of me, and becoming a Priestess were profound influences on my choice of dissertation topic.
Over the past 10 years, I have studied, meditated, read and participated in monthly rituals with a group which has ranged from 6 to 12 people. We descend from the lineage of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in the late 1800s, where “men and women worked together as equals in magical ceremonies whose purpose was to test, purify, and exalt the individual’s spiritual nature so as to unify it with his or her “Holy Guardian Angel” (Greer, 1995 p. 1).
Our training focuses on concentration and discipline, in service of increased intuition, then used in service of humanity. It has a high standard of ethics, and demands a high standard of psychological health from its students. Our work is primarily with the Qabalistic Tree of Life, and we also study the Egyptian mysteries, Druidism, Gnostic Christianity, the Divine Feminine, and some of the Pagan Sabbats. We gather monthly for a teaching piece and ritual, which I have come to consider my “church service.”
I find the path of the Western Mystery Tradition to be almost completely fulfilling. It does not name a Supreme Being, nor a specific dogma, but it does work to balance personality and soul, and allows for interaction with the realms of the archetypal, spiritual and mystical. It does not incite any anti-fundamentalist aversions. Best of all, it offers ritual, the opportunity to don ceremonial robes, light incense, open magical gateways, and travel the astral plane. The flame carrying, bell ringing young girl of Charlevoix found her heart’s content, and every now and then, while in ritual, I can feel her delighting and whispering, “There is magic!”
I say the path is “almost completely fulfilling” because the study is a bit too dry for me. It is an intellectual path, more based in the head than body. From my time at The Om Café, and with the local witches, I have retained an appreciation for outdoor celebration, bon fires, and the power of chanting, drumming, and dancing. The body can be such a tool in spiritual work and the senses such gateways to both eternal and internal energies! I love the heart centeredness of the eastern philosophies too. Trying to meld them all, I now consider myself a “Qabalistic Pagan Not Otherwise Specified,” or a seeker. I have found many wonderful companions on my journey, and together we form a group of “not otherwise specified seekers.” They are my spiritual family of choice. In addition, my connection to my eternal self, brought down into my body, makes me feel at home wherever I am. This reunion with myself, and all of life, came from my lifelong development of an embodied spiritual empowerment. I hope to help others do the same, and can see evidence of this longing within women in many places.
Social and Historical Relevance of the Research Topic
In a recent presentation to a conference full of nuns and Enneagram teachers, the other presenters and I made fleeting reference to ourselves as Priestesses, and the most commonly asked question after we finished was not about our subject matter, but rather, “How do I become a Priestess?”
My private practice work with women’s empowerment issues has resulted in three ongoing women’s groups, and while they are loosely formatted as “group therapy” they are actually circles of woman claiming their own spiritual empowerment. We frequently use the body to seek answers that the mind cannot find, and the topic of body acceptance is never far away.
In the last 6 months alone, I have been offered a speaking engagement, a web page on a Goddess promotion site, and an interview with a local magazine, all on the topic of being a “Modern Priestess.”
There is obviously a desire among women to walk a spiritual path that is not predicated by patriarchal precepts, but where does one find access to this Divine Feminine? As Kidd (1996) points out, the very word Goddess strikes discomfort in the heart of many women:
An uneasy reaction to the word Goddess is common among women. Thousands of years of repression, hostility, and conditioning against a Divine Mother have made a deep impression on us. We’ve been conditioned to shrink back from the Sacred Feminine, to fear it, to think of it as sinful, even to revile it. (p. 72)
Most cities now offer training in the Wicca Tradition, which is a formalized way of saying “how to be a Witch.” Since the thought of being a Witch is too far out for many women, and the word Goddess is just not comfortable, women remain on the search. The Priestess path is an option that while actually very old, is new to many, and exciting to them. I think I normalize it somehow, in my daily work as a student and psychotherapist. Although capable of working magic and healing, I am grounded, and devoted to ethical clinical work as a psychologist. When I do perform as a Priestess, it is without glamour or fanfare; a quiet offering.
My Master’s thesis explored the macrocosm of service as a life path. My co-researchers were both men and women, and the service they felt called to was not limited to the esoteric, but to any who felt called to their vocations. The research I now propose differs in that it explores the microcosm of women and spirituality. My research question explores “a woman’s experience of embodied spiritual empowerment” by interviewing women who have come to a place of embodied spiritual empowerment within a predominantly Christian and Patriarchal society. Kanis (2002) describes this embodiment as:
…the experience of being a body-person. More than having a body, a person is a body: embodied. All human experiences are realized through functioning of the body; without the body there are no human or spiritual experiences. (p. 14)
suggesting that an embodied spirituality is the only kind of spirituality there is. Yet it appears the dominate world religions continue to divide body and spirit into bad and good, black and white, sin and holiness.
The separation of body from spirituality was birthed from an even older separation of body from mind. Philosophers as far back as the 5th Century B.C. have debated the definition and purpose of the body. Esbjorn-Hargens (2004) does an excellent job of tracing this split in a recent Humanistic Psychologist article. She describes how Descartes declared the mind separate from and superior to the body while Heidegger declared the exact opposite, the mind is not separable from the body, which led to his ideas of being-in-the-world. She states that Nietzsche believed that knowledge is born from “corporal reality”, Husserl contributed the lieb or lived body, and Merleau-Ponty was influenced by both Husserl and Heidegger in his ideas of flesh, “constituted by an intertwining of sensory modalities with the elements of the perceptual field” (Shields, 2002). Esbjorn-Hargens then enters into modern times, citing how Lakoff and Johnson (1980), themselves influenced by Merleau-Ponty, have taken ideas of perception, language and metaphor to form new definitions of embodiment: “The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details.” (p. 3)
“Embodied spiritual empowerment” requires the reclaiming of all three words: the body, the Divine Feminine and the voice. For women raised on holy stories of the evils of women and their bodies, I believe the idea of an embodied spiritual empowerment is both desperately needed, and sadly unfamiliar. Mothers-to-be, upon feeling the unborn child turning in her womb, often describe a profound sense of spiritual awe? So much of the be-ing of a woman is miraculous; to menstruate in sync with the lunar tides, to suckle infants into contented sleep, these are mysteries of wonder. Carpeneto (1996) states that “to be embodied as feminine means, ultimately to be a physical being – a milk-giver, a breast-feeder, a being of fecundity.” (p. 48)
Even if women are able to turn away from the religious dogma regarding their bodies, the medical model is never far away. Creating disorders out of natural biological functions, it offers medication and countless hygiene products to help women function more like men. What mixed messages we receive from our exalted medical profession - the embodiment of larger breasts is now a payment plan away, while the reduction of the menstrual cycle to four times a year is now a pill away. If women “stay wet and moist and green and juicy” like Hildegard of Bingen implores (Fox, 1985, p. 64), if they reject the technological advances that make a predictable, relatively painless and very sterile body possible, others are often uncomfortable with their au natural sensual self command. Yet if they embrace the pills, powders, implants, tucks, support bras and psychiatric medications that society pairs with beauty and success, I believe they are the uncomfortable ones, trapped in bodies requiring constant maintenance to prevent them from doing what they naturally do.
Embodied spirituality certainly has its work cut out for it in mediating these polarities while resurrecting the Divine Feminine, which Ulanov (1989) describes as, “…not some ethereal, world-denying escape from physicality, but rather…body-based, all the way down into our instinctual life. Rooted there, it includes guts, teeth, orgasms, all fixed in the profound motions of the soul” (p. 73). Women need a homecoming to themselves, a reunion with all of their abandoned, judged and discarded parts. There has been much research to suggest that relationship is the most helpful component of the therapeutic process. If relationships between self and therapist can heal, then women’s relationships to and with their embodied selves can be the greatest healing component of all.
Most women enter therapy in some sort of pain. If therapy could help women define an ever-accessible source of meaning, create a connection to something that is predictable and comforting, and come to know and carry themselves with an embodied spiritual empowerment, the women would certainly proclaim the treatment a success. Sadly, we often work within a much smaller context, trying to calm anxiety, replace distortions, acknowledge feelings – all of which are useful and necessary – but imagine, if embodied spiritual empowerment was cultivated first, how intuition could deepen and inform the process. A woman comes to therapy complaining of depression. So often she describes that in her desire to please others, she has lost her authentic self. The mixed messages regarding her body – belly too big, breasts too small, objectified for sex but a whore if she enjoys it – combined with the male God’s abandonment of her as sinful, result in alienation from both herself, and the Divine. A recent research study (P. Gilbert, J. Gilbert & Irons, 2004) suggests that if the evolutionary defense mechanism known as fight or flight is blocked, the resulting unexpressed anger and feelings of hopelessness could be important components of depression.
Women are the victims of many injustices. Unable to battle them or escape their ramifications, depression is a very real possible. Yet the resolution of depression cannot lie outside; it must be embodied, and spiritually empowering. Teaching women to value themselves, to hold their bodies as sacred, and to conceptualize a Divine Feminine, could give them an internalized point of reference against which to weigh all else. They would have an ever-accessible fount of wisdom, and would no longer need external approval or validation. Were this coping skill available during the therapeutic journey, it could lead to both the managed care goal of “symptom reduction”, and the humanistic goal of self-actualization
Borysenko (1999) places intuition in the body, there embodied for our discovery:
The inner Light, the Divine Presence, the Big Mind, the intuition, or whatever metaphor we use to describe it, is filled with intelligence that gets decoded and comes to conscious awareness through our nervous system. Strong emotion often facilitates the decoding, perhaps because emotions are body centered and help us focus our attention. (p. 78)
It is my hope that my research into embodied spiritual empowerment captures both the journey and the present moment. I want to know how women move from “is this all?” onto a path of spiritual expression that feels like home. I want to know if there is a pattern, or some common steps. If so, I would like to offer what I discover to women who are still searching. Religion has offered one method of exploration, but Thomas Moore (2002), himself a former Catholic priest and professor of psychology, has devoted his career to the care of the soul, and believes a paradigm shift is occurring:
The religions have a precious cargo, but they often fail in either job by moralizing, intellectualizing, and defending themselves to such an extent that their real purpose is obscured. Today people all over the world are abandoning the religions in disgust and anger. Still, everyone has an instinct for transcendence. People know intuitively that some kind of spiritual life is necessary, and so many are searching on their own, or joining new churches and communities. They distinguish sharply between the personal spirituality that they have found and the religious institution they have abandoned. (p. xv)
Unconsciously, unexplored, this spiritual hunger may manifest as addiction, depression, and anxiety. National statistics on depression in women (Regier D.A., Narrow W.E., Rae D.S., et al, 1993) suggest that 12%, or twelve million women are depressed, and there are twice as many women than men in the nineteen million who suffer from anxiety disorders (Narrow, 1998). Pinkola-Estes (1992) attributes this malaise to a disconnection from the “wildish forces of the psyche,” and says,
What are some of the feeling-toned symptoms of a disrupted relationship with the wildish force in the psyche? To chronically feel… powerless… doubtful… shaky, blocked, unable to follow through… to be self-conscious, to be away from one’s God or Gods, to be drawn far into… domesticity, intellectualism, work, or inertia because that is the safest place for one who has lost her instincts… loss of energy… wincing, humiliation, angst, numbness, anxiety. (p. 9)
Add to this malaise and angst such statistics such as:
…four times as many girls worldwide die of malnutrition as boys because boys are preferred and given more food. Or the fact that women do two-thirds of the work in the world and receive one-tenth of the world’s wages. Or that American women earn 75 percent of what similarly employed men do and compromise only 2 percent of top management. (Kidd, 1996, p.25 )
It becomes evident that women are carrying a heavy load of mixed messages and deep unspoken hurts. Perhaps a personal spiritual empowerment, accessible within the body rather than the heavens or the churches, would assist women in negotiating the dual roles and double standards that culture asks of them.
This is not a study about Goddess Worship. To deny the Sacred Masculine would be as damaging as it has been to deny the Sacred Feminine. This research is interested in how women reunite spirit and body. For most, the missing pieces are gynecentric, as the idea of Divine Feminine has been suppressed, oppressed, and removed from most of our religious teachings. What remains is often derogatory and misogynistic. Pinkola-Estes (1992) likens this missing piece to a wolf; primal, confident, intuitive and embodied:
We are all filled with a longing for the wild. There are few culturally sanctioned antidotes for this yearning. We grew our hair long and used it to hide our feelings. Nevertheless, the shadow of Wild Woman still lurks behind us during our days and in our nights. No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four footed. (p. xvii)
There are no shortage of people and instructions about how to find and keep God. What this research is interested in is the journey into an embodied spiritual empowerment that has united body with spirit.
Definition of Terms
To clarify my research question “What is a woman’s experience of embodied spiritual empowerment”, I define the main terms: woman, experience, embodied and spiritual empowerment.
Woman
While most dictionaries define a woman as “an adult female human”, it is worth noting that a latter definition is “a female servant or subordinate” (Merriam Webster, 2000). Whether placing “wo” in front of man, or “fe” in front of male, the unspoken but very obvious implication is positively Biblical – woman comes from man. The old English “wifman” is a pairing of wif, or wife, with man, again suggesting that a woman is a “man-wife”. Priestess derives from Priest, and Goddess from God. So where is the word that captures the essence of the women of this research? For purposes of my study, woman is defined as “an expression of the Divine Feminine”, captured beautifully by the Jewish Shekhinah, a feminine facet of the Divine. Rabbi Jill Hammer (2004) says of the Shekhinah:
She is a mystical embodiment of the feminine, earth-centered presence of God, and was also called the bride of God, the Sabbath, the Torah, the moon, the earth, and the apple orchard… The Shekhinah rests on those who study, pray, visit the sick, welcome the new moon, welcome guests, give charity to the poor… or perform other sacred activities…. To discover the Shekhinah as the full embodiment of the feminine Divine, we must transform her from a stereotype into a living divinity who speaks to us in many different kinds of voices: mother and daughter, old and young, light and dark, compassion and anger, revelation and mystery.
Experience
The (Penguin Dictionary of Psychology, 1985) describes experience as anything, “through which an individual has lived” (p. 54). This speaks to my interest in the progression of embodied spiritual empowerment; the women have lived physical and spiritual lives, and now combine the two.
Rogers’ (1961) definition of experience is very congruent with the idea of embodiment, “Experience is, for me, the highest authority… It is to experience that I must return again and again to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me” (pp.26-27). He goes on to place his own experience above all others, as women must come to do in claiming and embodying their own spiritual empowerment, “Neither the Bible nor the prophets…neither Freud nor research… neither the revelations of God nor man can take precedence over my own direct experience” (p. ). If this is true, then women have only to pay attention to what is happening in the present moment, as their experiences of life are:
…an exact reflection of who we are within. Wherever our lives are constricted and unfulfilling, we need to go deeper into our inner territory, to uncover where we have frozen our potential for a richer experience of life.
Every time we expand our inner territory, our outer lives will expand. Our best spiritual teacher is always the life that is right in front of us; our most important spiritual lessons always come in the form of our life experience.” (Thesenga, 1994, p. 13)
May (1972) believes that these life experiences offer up two paths of pursuit, one of them “…to remain innocent, blocking out what does not appeal…” and the other “…to strive toward spirituality…” (p. 210). Women new to the idea of embodied spiritual empowerment have logged many miles on the first path, blocking out the pain of inequality and the impossibility of societal standards. This research seeks to understand how these women come to choose the second path, how they make, and then execute the decision to strive toward spirituality. May (1972) links experience and decision-making when he says:
By experiencing something, we let its meaning permeate through us on all levels: feeling, acting, thinking, and, ultimately, deciding, since decision is the act of putting one’s total self on the line. The passion for experience is an endeavor to include more of the self in the picture…” (p. 76)
The women of this study have put their total selves on the line, out of a deep hunger to include more of themselves in the pictures of their own lives. Experience thus defined becomes a life story, the highest authority, a spiritual lesson, and a conscious decision making process.
Embodied
“Embodied” is a multi-faceted term. As a verb, it can mean “to represent in bodily form”; a woman can represent her spiritual empowerment through her body, or to “express something abstract”; a woman can express spiritual empowerment through her being. As an adjective, embodied can mean “to exist in bodily form,” so that spiritual empowerment lives within a woman’s body. It can also mean “to express” a woman’s spiritual empowerment (Miller, 2005).
Embodied spirituality speaks to the reunion of body and spirit, split apart long ago by religious declarations that the body was evil and the spirit holy. This division resulted in the placement of spiritual energies in the heavenly sphere, while the sinful energies were abandoned in the worldly sphere. Beverly Wildung Harrison states that, “A moral theology must not only be rooted in a worldly spirituality but must aim at overcoming the body/mind split in our intellectual and social life at every level” (in Plaskow & Christ, 1989, p. 218). This research seeks to reposition the body as the means of spiritual empowerment, rather than a distraction of it. Michael Washburn champions this cause when he states:
I agree with Nietzsche that much of religion, regrettably, is hostile to the body and to the earth. And so I defend the view that spirituality leads ultimately not to some otherworldly, disembodied realm, but rather to this very earth and to our embodied lives on earth. The sacred is sensuously embodied, I believe. It is here and now. (Bernstein, 1998)
Women with embodied spirituality recognize and embrace the sacred present within the ordinary. They do not look for it, because they live it, it is everywhere. Rita Nakashima Brock speaks to the interconnectedness of spirit, flesh and earth:
The physical embodiment of spirit is crucial to understanding spirituality. The natural world is the root of our lives: the rivers, seas, trees, flowers, birds, animals, the very earth itself in its exuberant and sometimes terrifying power, the human body in all its sensuality, tactile pleasure and joy. The earth is the conduit through which we are touched by the spirit. (Plaskow & Christ, 1989, p. 241)
Cope (1999), a Western trained psychotherapist and leading scholar of yoga psychology, suggests the belief that transcendence is necessary for enlightenment is not true, “…we have to begin our knowing of reality with the body… there is no way around it… We cannot prematurely transcend the body. We must turn toward it, not away from it” (p. 106). While other paths of enlightenment encourage followers to believe that the here and now is simply not good enough, not a noble enough destination, Cope disagrees:
…the goal… is not to disengage from the phenomenal world, but to turn to embrace it more and more deeply – to discover its hidden depths. And in order to do that, paradoxically, we do not reject the vicissitudes of the embodied life. We do not reject suffering… We turn to embrace our neuroses, our conflicts, our difficult bodies and minds, and we let them be the bridge to a fuller life. Our task is not to free ourselves from the world, but to fully embrace the world – to embrace the real. (p. 113)
Spiritual Empowerment
Spirituality is a broad term, and means many different things to different people. Ryan (1998) honors the broadness of the term when she states:
Broadly speaking, we define spirituality as seeking and/or connecting with a force in the universe that is bigger than humankind. This may involve awareness of realities, states of consciousness, or dimensions outside of those experienced in everyday life. Spirituality may or may not include any organized religious activity. (p. 41)
Religion and spirituality are terms that are often used interchangeably, as if there were no difference between the two. Ryan, above, suggests but does not clarify this difference. Wuthnow’s (1998) differentiation between religious dwellers and spiritual seekers is useful comparing and contrasting religion and spirituality . The main distinction between the two is their relation to religious authority and tradition.
Religious dwellers participate in traditional forms of religion and religious authority, which are created for them by religious institutions. They relate to their sacred source through prayer and communal worship. Spiritual seekers place a greater importance on individual autonomy, and create their own space of worship by borrowing elements from various religious and mythical traditions. They also blend Eastern practices with Western religion. Seekers are concerned with self-awareness, self-growth, emotional fulfillment and the creation of the sacred within the ordinary.
Borysenko (1999) likens religion to a train, which can assist or detract from the spiritual journey:
Religions have words to describe themselves, but spirituality has none that do it justice. It is an experience of deep belonging in which all traces of fear, judgment, guilt, separation, and doubt disappear just as darkness is dispelled by the sunrise. Religion has forms, precepts, rituals, rules and stories that can sometimes deliver us to this place of unspeakably sweet wholeness and belonging. But it is only the vehicle that gets us there. We have to jump off at the destination while the train continues to make its rounds.
If we mistake the train for the destination, we are liable to keep riding around in circles. And if we are angry that the train has run over people in the past, burned them at the stake, cut off their eyelids, demeaned woman, or even failed to inspire, we will waste energy that could itself be a vehicle for spiritual experience. For while we don’t necessarily need religion to be spiritual, religion can block spiritual experience if we find ourselves hanging onto the train, hijacking the train, or trying to blow up the tracks. (p. 46)
Borysenko continues to describe how “the deep seated anger so many women have about religious patriarchy” can actually fuel the spiritual quest, as “The process of anger and reconciliation makes room for the spiritual” (p. 63). Anger, directed both outward at patriarchal precepts that do not serve women, men, or the planet itself, creates a great force. Reconciliation of internal and external polarities allows boundaries to contain that force. And that nameless, individualized force that moves within and without is spirituality
Spirituality by these definitions is indescribable, a personal and autonomous matter congruent with Ryan’s 1998 expectation that, “each woman will have her own specific definition of spirituality within this broad definition, and we respect each woman’s definition as valid and accurate for her” (p.23). The women of this study might disagree in their formulations and definitions, yet in their differences they will be joined together in the inclusive folds of spirituality.
For purposes of this research, “spiritual empowerment” is defined as a phrase, rather than two separate words, and speaks to a woman’s actualization of her embodied spirituality. It would be tempting at this juncture to look for evidence of this embodied spirituality in the actions of women, to find the places and ways they are doing it. Nevertheless, there is a paradox here, for we are not of service to humanity by virtue of what we do, but rather by who we are. Spiritual empowerment does not require great deeds or sermons. It requires one to walk through the world balancing certainty that one’s truth is true, with open receptivity to change. The spiritually empowered woman is using her body, its words, feelings, abilities, thoughts and activities in service of healing self and others. It is her way of being that is healing. This healing influence may or may not be vocational in basis; it is always present, therefore it can always help, regardless of situation or location. When one recognizes the Divine Light within, that light is best used in the service of others. Knowledge without service is avarice, a hoarding designed to feed the never satiated ego. Only by giving away spiritual empowerment may one keep it, and even then it is not kept as in ownership, but rather borrowed, or experienced, as it passes through. “Not of me, but through me” is one of my most common prayers, and this willingness to be a channel, without controlling or holding on, this getting out of the way, is spiritual empowerment.
Women of embodied spiritual empowerment have been present throughout history, and are becoming far more common in what Peay (2005) is calling the “fourth wave of feminism” (pp. 59-60). Fourth wave feminism has, at its heart, “a new kind of political activism that’s guided and sustained by spirituality…a fusion of spirituality and social justice reminiscent of the American civil rights movement and Gandhi’s call for nonviolent change” (p.59).
In today’s global village, spiritual and religious women are holding conferences and founding organizations. They are rallying to reunite what Hunt (2005) calls “faith and feminism”:
The feminist movement has not been able to stay in relationship with religion. We couldn’t have separated faith from feminism more completely if we had been agents of the patriarchal system separating the concept of love from the concept of power. Will such separation continue to serve the larger purposes of the feminist cause? This is an important question for each of us to consider personally. (p. 15)
Women of embodied spiritual empowerment are uniting with a common goal of transcending the many false dualisms evident in our racial, political, gender-based and religious divisions. Having experienced exclusion for so long throughout history, they seek inclusiveness. Hunt (2005) asks, “What would such a relational and inclusive feminism look like? For feminism to move towards wholeness, we will need to shift from configuring in polar opposites and move toward convergence across vast differences of thought and method” (p. 128). The women of this study utilize bodyhood, intuition, nature, ancestors, corporate visions, mission statements, personal and profession relationships, and emerging technologies in service of reconnecting not only the bridge between inner and outer, but the bridge between self and other, a false separation that must be transformed if the earth and her inhabitants are to ever find peace.
When these terms are combined, the Divine Feminine lives a process of recognizing and embracing the sacredness of self and others, which connects her to the deep internal, and transcendental external mysteries of self and others
Conclusion
This chapter explains personal and professional aspects of my research question. It explores the historical and social relevance of the research topic, and defines the terms of the research question. Chapter Two reviews the literature related to embodied spiritual empowerment.
CHAPTER II
Review of Literature
This chapter demonstrates extensive knowledge of women’s embodied spiritual empowerment through a review of current and classic literature pertaining to the subject and presented thematically. Commentary reviews the writings of WESE experts, peer reviewed journal articles, dissertations and theses. The purpose of this chapter is not to evaluate or criticize the literature, but rather to review the scope of it, and to position this study within it through comparison and contrast.
Themes in the Literature
According to Christensen (2004) a qualitative literature review has several functions:
It can be used to explain the theoretical underpinnings of the research study, to assist in formulation of the research question and selection of the study population, or to stimulate new insights and concepts through the study. (p. 62)
The broad focus of this literature review explores historical considerations that set in motion the need for an embodied spiritual empowerment, through a review of the original expressions of embodied spiritual empowerment, the disempowerment of women and the separation of body and spirit. A narrower review of contemporary literature and research regarding the the re-empowerment of women, the reunion of body and spirit, and expressions of embodied spirituality will follow. The theoretical underpinnings of this study are presented, as well as its rationale and positioning within the current field of study.
Historical considerations
Original expressions of embodied spiritual empowerment
In prehistoric and early historic periods of human development, religions existed in which people revered their supreme creator as female. (Stone, xii)
Women with embodied spiritual empowerment date back to the Stone Age. Archeologists have “traced the worship of the Goddess back to the Neolithic communities of about 7000 BC, [and] some to the Upper Paleolithic cultures of about 25,000BC (Stone, p. 10). Paleolithic cultures depicted cave pictures and figurines of the Great Goddess which suggested the dominance Goddess worship and matriarchal cultures. “Of the Stone Age sculptures known to us, there are fifty-five female figures and only five male figures” (Newman, 1955, p. 95). Often portrayed with rounded belly and breasts:
The unshapely figures of the Great Mother are representations of the pregnant goddess of fertility, who was looked upon throughout the world as the goddess of pregnancy and childbearing, and who, as a cult object of not only women, but also men, represents the archetypal symbol of fertility and of the sheltering, protecting and nourishing elementary character. (Neuman, p. 96)
This concept of a fertility Goddess is perhaps the first expression of embodied spirituality know to humanity, and has continued since then into modern times. Although hidden at times throughout history, it is none the less a continuous thread of embodied spiritual empowerment over the ages.
Medieval scholars believe the largest collection of women’s voices in the history of Christianity to belong to the Beguines, who, in the thirteenth century, sought a mystical relationship with God, and did not wish to align themselves with any organized religion, thus birthing Christian Mysticism. Writing and teaching about the application of the Gospels during a time when there was no religious education of women, “succeeded in avoiding the control of both husband and church (Bowie, 2000, p. 83), living together communities of service until their fourteenth century condemnation as heretics (Hunt, 2004, p. 173).
The Beguines are important to this study because they embraced both a Divine feminine, and a direct and embodied knowing of God:
The greatest exponents of Beguine spirituality in its mystical form are Mechthild of Magdeburg (1212?-1282?), Beatrice of Nazareth (1200?-1268), Hadewijch of Brabant, and Marguerite Porete (d. 1310). Like all mystics, they believed that the individual human soul could be directly united to God. As in most genuine Christian mysticism, they stressed love as the way to divine union. What gives Beguine mysticism its special flavor is the sort of love mysticism it is: ...Mechthild and Marguerite employ the Augustinian style of autobiography, that is, a dialogue between the soul and God--or sometimes between the soul and Minne (Love). Love is feminine in both Dutch and German, and "Lady Love is also Divine Love" (Brunn 99-100). Thus under the name of Minne the Beguine mystics had a powerful feminine metaphor for God. (Knuth, 1992).
The nineteenth century must also recognize the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest who believed in the divinity of matter. Abandoning the polarized view of the times, which held that matter and spirit were dualistic opposites, De Chardin (1960) felt that the two were synthesized so completely that that could not be separated:
In their struggle towards the mystical life, men have often succumbed to the illusion of crudely contrasting soul and body, spirit and flesh, as good and evil. But despite certain current expressions, this Manichean tendency has never had the Church’s approval. And, in order to prepare the way for our final view of the divine milieu, perhaps we may be allowed to vindicate and exalt that aspect of it which the Lord came to put on, save and consecrate: holy matter. (p.75)
For De Chardin, there was an indwelling presense of divinity in all things, not visible all, but, for those with eyes to see, capable of making the Christ consciousness apparent at the center of all things. This included the body, and consequently Pierre Teilhard De Chardin becomes an early champion of embodied spiritual empowerment.
With the Goddess, and the Divine Feminine under scrutiny and attack, consequently, so were women. Having no face in Heaven, and fewer and fewer champions on Earth, they increasingly lost equality, status and power.
The disempowerment of women
I need not allude to the misogynism of the church Fathers – for example, Tertullian, who informed women in general: “You are the devils’ gateway,” or Augustine, who opined that women are not made to the image of God. I can omit reference to Thomas Aquinas and his numerous commentators and disciples who defined women as misbegotten makes. I can overlook Martin Luther’s remark that God created Adam lord over all living creatures but Eve spoiled it all. I can pass over the fact that John Knox composed a “First blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.” All of this, after all, is past history. (Daly, 1973, p. 3)
While many religious and political factors have been credited with the devaluing of the Divine Feminine, Shlain (1998) hypothesizes that it was actually the alphabet that killed the Goddess. Prior to the arrival of the alphabet, cultures communicated through pictures and images. Shlain hypothesizes that with the introduction of the written word, dualistic philosophy flourished. Citing the Old Testament, Shlain states:
The words on its pages anchor three powerful religions: Judiasm, Christianity, and Islam. Each is an exemplar of patriarchy. Each monotheistic religion features an imageless Father deity whose authority shines through His revealed Word, sanctified in its written form. Conceiving of a diety who has no concrete image prepares the way for the kind of abstract thinking that inevitably leads to law codes, dualistic philosophy and objective science, the signature train of Western culture. (p.7)
Judiasm, Christianity and Islam continue to influence the multitudes, and their moral and political codes, three thousand years later. The assimilation of alphabetical literacy, Shlain suspects, led to an enhanced more evolved left hemisphere of the brain, which he equates with masculine linear processes, at expense of the right hemisphere functions that are feminine, holistic and visual. He suggests spiritual, political, social, educational and sociocultural implications of this shift, the greatest of which is the loss of the Goddess religions. “Whenever a culture elevates the written word at the expense of the image, patriarchy dominates. When the importance of the image supersedes the written word, feminine values and egalitarianism flourish" (p. 7). Prior to written language, cultures made use of images (paintings, carvings, statuary) to express thoughts. "Images are primarily mental reproductions of the sensual world of vision... images approximate reality; they are concrete” (p. 4). The brain perceives images as whole, simultaneously, and holistically. - typically traits attributed to the feminine. Written words must be broken down, (reductionism) sequentially, by abstraction and analysis -typically traits attributed to the masculine. The invention of the written word resulted in the ability to spread those words, in most cases the holy words, to the masses, and wars and crusades began to be fought based on conflicting belief systems. Politics and religion continued their eradication of Goddess worship “until the closing of the last Goddess temples, about AD 500” (Stone, p. xii).
The original separation of body and spirit was a natural consequence of the replacement of Goddess religions which held the body to be sacred, with the concept of a single male God who lived in heaven. Politics influenced by religion, and religions influenced by politics converted the masses to Christianity, while the old religions, and the books, libraries, rituals and people who upheld them, were silenced, often time through violence and destruction. In 1257, Pope Innocent IV sanctioned the torture and execution of witches, who were discovered, tortured and exterminated according to guidelines set forth in the classic “how-to” text known as The Malleus Maleficarum:
The Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), first published in 1486, is arguably one of the most infamous books ever written, due primarily to its position and regard during the Middle Ages. It served as a guidebook for Inquisitors during the Inquisition, and was designed to aid them in the identification, prosecution, and dispatching of Witches. It set forth, as well, many of the modern misconceptions and fears concerning witches and the influence of witchcraft. The questions, definitions, and accusations it set forth in regard to witches, which were reinforced by its use during the Inquisition, came to be widely regarded as irrefutable truth. Those beliefs are held even today by a majority of Christians in regard to practitioners of the modern “revived” religion of Witchcraft, or Wicca. And while the Malleus itself is largely unknown in modern times, its effects have proved long lasting. (Lovelace, 1998)
Christopher S. Mackay (2002), Associate Professor in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta, is translating the 1496 Latin original of which he says, "The Malleus Maleficarum is a work of benighted ignorance, warped logic and execrable inhumanity”( 2). Inhumane though it might have been, many were put to death over the next 500 years, often for crimes having to do with the sickness, health and healing of bodies in their communities. Estimates range from the distorted urban legend of nine million women, to the widely accepted approximation of 50,000, still a significant number of executions.
Eakins (1996, inside cover) offers a concise timeline of women in western religion, which shows how the division of body and spirit and the devaluing of women and the Divine Feminine progressed over time:
• Circa 25000 – cave paintings of female figures
• Stone Age – Over 3000 sites of worship for the Great Mother
• Copper Age – Circa 2200 – Ireland and France – Goddess Worship
• Copper Age – Circa 3500-2500 – Malta - Goddess Worship
• Circa 3500 – 500 – Ancient Near East - Goddess worship
• Circa 600 – Crete – Goddess Worship
• Circa 1000 – 600 – Hebrew Mysteries – Canaan
• Goddess Ashera (She who issues from the womb) worshipped.
• King David suggests ultimate power is Jehovah
• Circa 639 – 609 – Goddess Temples destroyed by King Josiah
• Circa 509-27 – Roman Republic dictates that women must marry before 18, and bear children for the Republic.
• ? – 67 C.E. – Apostle Paul admonishes students of the Eleusian Mysteries
• Late 200s – Library and Temple at Alexandria stormed under edict of Emperor Aurelian.
• 161 C.E. – Cabalism takes hold
• 312: Roman Emperor Constantine is converted to Christianity
• 4th Century – Genesis becomes the official creation story, woman is subjected to man and stereotyped as evil, cunning and easily led into idolatry.
• 415 – Hypatia, an Alexandrian mathematician and speaker on the Christianization of the pagan mysteries is torn from her chariot and killed.
• 634 – Stones at Avebury desecrated
• 1000 – Crusades begin
• 1225-1274 – Thomas Aquinas derides the female gender
• 1257 – Torture of witches is officially sanctioned by Pope Innocent IV and remained legal until 1816.
• 1300-1736 – 9,000,000 “witches” executed
Authors note: 9,000,000 is a commonly cited number, but is believed to be exaggerated. 6,000 – 50,000 is now thought to be a more accurate count.
When the Divine became masculine, and God was firmly established as “our father which art in heaven” (Matthew 6:9, King James Version), disempowering religious messages prevailed: women was responsible for the Fall, Mary was the only woman without sin, the menstrual cycle was reason for shame and ostracization, and there would be no Priestesses next to the officiating Priests of the Church. This labeling of man as superior and woman as inferior was only one of many dualistic expressions that divided people, places and things into categories of good and bad, including the body (bad) and the spirit (good).
The separation of body and spirit.
The wounds of our culture that continue to perpetuate this chasm between intellect and body are multi-faceted. They include institutionalized and puritanical religions which denigrate the body and sexuality, sexual violation of women and children, prostitution and pornography, fragmentation of the body through medical science, and gender stereotyping with a favoring of rationality over feeling responses. (Anstiss, 2005, pp. 210-211)
The separation of matter and spirit was a common topic of early philosophical speculation, and is one of the earliest expressions of a disembodied spirituality. Consider Plato, who conceived of a three part soul, made up of reason, spirit and desire. This soul, immaterial and consequently immortal, had its permanent home in the world of perfect Ideals or Forms. Platonism found the world to be an imperfect reflection of these ideals, and blamed the body and its lusts for hindering reunion with perfection. This idea is present in the Biblical creation myth of Eden, and the Greek story of Sophia and Logos.
The Biblical story of the Fall describes humankind’s expulsion from Eden as a result of Eve’s desire for knowledge. It demonstrates both the separation of spirit and matter (God in Eden while humanity is cast out into the world) and the separation of the Divine Feminine from her rightful place at the side of God (Eve as an equal partner to Adam). The Greek and Gnostic myth of Sophia is yet another version of this disembodiment of body and spirit.
In this myth, Sophia (wisdom) and Logos (word) existed in harmony until Sophia desired to know God. Because she was so powerful, her desire, imbalanced because it did include her consort, created the Cosmos, a product of error and ignorance. The religious and philosophical contemplation of this separation of humankind from divinity was the birth of Gnosticism, from the Greek word gnosis meaning knowledge (not scientific knowledge, but rather intuitive knowledge.)
The Gnostics were a group of mystically minded seekers in the first and second centuries who sought to answer the existential givens of existence - who human beings are, where we came from and where we are going – through mystical contemplation of Christian, Judeaic, Platonic and Hebrew scriptures. Much of Gnosticism is concerned with the soul’s preoccupation with itself, its consequent descent into human personality, and the path of return to oneness. This idea was likely borrowed from the mystical Qabalistic teaching that: “The universe is really a thought-form projected from the mind of God” (Fortune, 1935, p. 17) which “began to manifest through stages…from the Nothingness, densifying through stages… The physical universe was the…final stage” (Andrews, 1993, p. 19).
Gnosticism traveled beyond philosophical speculation, and into the realm of religious doctrine and mysticism to explain this dis-embodied spirituality. The amalgamation of philosophical, religious and mystical doctrines was continued by the Greek philosopher Plotinus, who was a student of Plato’s.
Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatoism, successfully synthesized the paths of Christianity, Gnosticism and Platonism. He taught that all objective existence was simply a physical expression of the One, or the God-head. Plotinus suggested that the Soul, much like Sophia, desired to experience itself. That desire created the Cosmos, making the Cosmos more of a mistake than a grand plan by a wise deity. He felt that the soul had forgotten its true identity, and upon remembering would be instantly reunited with the Good. (And so it is with women and embodied spiritual empowerment, they have forgotten the time when the body was sacred, and when they remember, they will be reunited and empowered).
Descartes is another philosopher who contemplates disembodiment – this time the division of mind and body - in his work De homine which “…provided the first articulation of the mind/body interactionism that was to elicit such pronounced reaction from later thinkers” (Wozniak, 1992, 4). His first principle of philosophy, the oft-quoted “I think therefore I am” was born from his belief that the mind was nonmaterial:
I then examined closely what I was, and saw that I could imagine that I had no body, and that there was no world nor any place that I occupied, but that I could not imagine for a moment that I did not exist. On the contrary, from the very fact that I doubted the truth of other things, it followed very evidently and very certainly that I existed. …Thus it follows that this ego, this soul, by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body and is easier to know than the latter, and that even if the body were not, the soul would not cease to be all that it now is. (quoted in Hergenhahn, 1997, p. 101).
Early scientists, whether philosophical, psychological, religious or medical, laid a theoretical foundation in which body and spirit were separate, and that belief remains common to this day. Also remaining is inequality between the sexes, and the lack of a Divine Feminine in many organized religions.
With this broad, and by no means comprehensive overview of history, the stage is set for a review of contemporary literature and research.
Contemporary considerations
This section reviews contemporary literature pertaining to the re-empowerment of women, followed by literature specific to the reunion of body and spirit and expressions of embodied spirituality.
The re-empowerment of women
The first step in the elevation of women under all systems of religion is to convince them that the great Spirit of the Universe is in no way responsible for any of these absurdities. (Elizabeth Cady Stanton as quoted in Daly, M. (1973), p.X )
The re-empowerment of women in current literature will be presented in a thematic review of the ways in which women are: Negotiating the Tension of a Feminist Spirituality Within a Patriarchal Culture, Reclaiming the Divine Feminine, Reuniting with Women who Affirm the Divine Feminine, and are using Tools for Empowerment. This section also includes Theories Relevant to the Re-empowerment of Women.
Eakins (1996, inside cover) completes the previously reviewed time-line regarding the treatment of women with historical events suggesting the re-empowerment of women:
• 1792 – Vindication of the rights of women is written by Mary Wollstonecraft, and published in England.
• Late 1800’s – Feminist movement, women enter colleges and universities and practice openly as spiritualists.
• 1877 – Madam Blavatsky publishes Isis Unveiled.
• 20th Century – Women return to roots as wise women, ministers and priestesses
• 1920 – American women granted right to vote
• [1974 – Three bishops of the Episcopal Church ordain eleven women as priests. Note- this date has been added by this researcher to provide further historical accuracy].
• 1993 – Anglican Church ordains women as priests.
While it is tempting to feel, at the end of this list, a sense of relief that women have reached a place of inclusion in society, it must be noted that the concept of a Divine Feminine did not return to Her original place of open worship, largely due to the world’s preponderance of Patriarchal influence and the many ways in which it devalues the Feminine.
Negotiating The Tension Of A Feminist Spirituality Within A Patriarchal Culture
The fundamentalist impulse… is, along with nuclear war, the most dangerous peril facing the human race… Like corporations that reduce Latin American countries to poverty by turning all acreage to sugar, the belief that there is one word, one truth, one path to the light, makes it easy to destroy ideas, institutions, and human beings. (Adler, 1979, p. viii)
Winter (1995) captures the voices of 4,000 Catholic and Protestant women who wrestle to keep what is good in their religion and allow for truths that they feel but cannot find:
I find my current ideas about God at best paradoxical, at worst contradictory and full of tension. Brought up in a firmly patriarchal tradition, my habits of prayers, meditation, and study are all shadowed by patriarchal imagery, deeply ingrained. But my experiences as a female person…are continually transforming not only my sense of who or what I am, but my sense of the nature and identity of God. I often experience a profound longing for an immanent, nurturing ‘maternal’ force in my life, but have difficulty catching more than a glimpse of a parental, rather than a paternal God. (p. 9)
Nelsen, Cheek & Au’s (1985) findings also explore the nature and identity of God by exploring the gender differences in images of God. By performing a factor analysis on the three images of God identified by the 1983 General Social Survey – God as king, as healer and as relational, women are found to score highest on God as healer, and results also suggest that the concept of God as “father” is becoming more maternal:
…while Americans are far more likely to use “father” than “mother” as an adjective for God, this traditional term for God means something different from what it meant for our ancestors. It captures the view that God is supportive, and no longer refers to the image of a punishing or even powerful figure. (p. 402)
Kidd (1996) adds, of her own spiritual journey from Patriarchal Christianity to the Divine Feminine:
Despite the growing disenchantment women experience in the early stages of awakening, the idea of existing beyond the patriarchal institution of faith, of withdrawing our external projection of God unto the church, is almost always unfathomable. It’s that old the-world-is-flat conviction, where we believe that if we sail out on the spiritual ocean beyond a certain point we will fall off the edge of the known world into a void. (p. 48)
Planter (2003) writes about five women who feel called to be priestesses, and explores the impact of living in a patriarchal paradigm that fails to recognize a Divine Feminine. She finds that despite the fact that women have been “indoctrinated into a consciousness steeped in a patriarchal paradigm… western women possess an innate ability to vanquish their own internalized oppression and reinstate a consciousness that … holds all life as sacred.” (p. 691)
Starhawk is a pioneer and leader in the resurrection of earth based spirituality and Goddess Religion. She is a prolific author, activist, consultant and filmmaker who uses words, music and film to teach magic, ritual and activism. She devotes an entire chapter (1997) to the necessity of both unlearning patriarchal concepts and reclaiming personal power within patriarchal structures, if anything is to change:
Reclaiming our personal power is a healing journey, but not an easy one. For the human psyche forms itself from the relationships one has with other people, things, and institutions. It is a mirror of culture. The relationship we have mostly known and the institutions of our culture are based on power-over. So our inner landscapes are those of the stories of estrangement, and they are peopled by creatures that dominate or must be dominated. To free ourselves, to recover our power-from-within, the power to feel, to heal, to love, to create, to shape our futures, to changer our social structures, we may have to do battle 2ith our won thought-forms. We may have to change the inner territory as well as the outer, confront the forms of authority that we carry within. (pp. 46-47)
The heroic journey or quest is a popular metaphor to describe the stages of spiritual development, one that has been used in both secular and religious literature throughout the ages. But this metaphor does not recognize the communal and relational nature of women. According to Ray & McFadden (2001), “The problem with the classic hero’s take is that it is based on a concept of growth that requires separation and individuation prior to one’s integration within the community” (p. 202). They offer a feminist challenge to this model by offering the alternative feminist metaphors of “the web” and “the quilt.” The web, both Internet, and spider created, embraces the interconnectedness and relational nature of women, assisting them in creating a collective voice. The quilt expresses diversity and interconnectedness:
A quilt has multiple layers and is crafted over time. Like the individual differences found in ways of being spiritual, some people’s quilts have an organizing structure immediately apparent to all; others are of the “crazy quilt” variety that, when viewed partially may make little sense, but can be quite beautiful when seen as a whole. (p.205)
The authors take the metaphor further by suggesting that:
Quilts, like spirituality, may have different functions at different points in the life span. Sometimes, they are folded up and put away, with only a part of their pattern showing; at other times, they are used daily for warmth and security (p. 205)
Both metaphors honor the “alternative, relational model of development based on the concept of growth through connection and relationship” put forth by feminist psychologists, in response to their observations that women value group identity over individualism, “finding power and agency in collectivity” (p. 202).
Haywood (1983) conducts a participant observation study of four Spiritualist groups, to explore the exercise of authority and empowerment by women. She presents ways in which Spiritualist women differ from mainstream patriarchal religions.
Rather than the usual model of clerical authority, the spiritualists have mediums, comparable to the shaman or magus of religious history. They “initiate others into exoteric and sacred reality and also serve as an interpreter of that reality” (p. 160). These mediums are more approachable and interactive than traditional clerical authority, “Loyalty emerges between leader and follower as mediums develop a ‘following” by giving useful, meaningful advice” (p. 161).
Spiritualists also prefer non-professional assistance in dealing with their personal problems. Healing prayers, interventions by the medium and healing rituals in which the medium and three healers from the community use prayer and energy work are common tools for healing.
Spiritualists divide their fellowship into two categories, sufferers (not in the traditional victim sense of the word, but rather a designation of those whose primary involvement in the movement is for comfort or relief) and seekers, who have more dynamic motivations. “This seekership involves a disciplined gathering of information, skills, and experiences on a quest for personal truth and salvation” (p. 163).
Altered states are common to Spiritualism. The medium often uses trance to channel messages, conduct readings, and perform healings. Rather than adhering to the precepts of secular authority that separate humanity from God, Spiritualists borrow the occult tenet that “…the mystical path is believed to be a process of realizing that the self is divine (not that the self is in union with the divine)” (p. 165).
Spiritualists conceive of Divinity as a three part trinity of Light (knowledge), Power (effectiveness) and Love (relationship). They believe that humans and spirits can interact in ways that increase human access to this trinity, and believe that there is a spark of God each person.
The author concludes her study with the opinion that:
The theology of Spiritualism is consistent with a program of human empowerment; and the participatory intensity of shared altered psychological states reinforces the occult reality – where women as a group are affirmed, over conventional social reality where they are not.” (p.166)
Flinders (1998) finds it necessary to reconcile the split between faith and feminism, a split born out of feminists’ longstanding distrust of religion’s misogynist dogma and treatment of women, and the spiritual woman’s fear that feminism would somehow be a betrayal of God. She presents four points at which feminism and spirituality collide: Silence, self-naughting, desire and enclosure. While silence is valued in spiritual practices; feminism asks women to find and use their voices to protest oppression. Humbly putting oneself last and transcending ego is valued in spiritual practices; feminists value finding, owning and expressing the authentic self. Desire and identification with the body and senses is valued in spiritual practices; feminism asks women to reclaim their bodies and desires from objectification and degradation. Disengaging from worldly preoccupations and turning inward is valued in spiritual practices; feminists work towards societal involvement and engagement, especially in areas traditionally denied to women.
Exploring both the historical and societal sources of these conflicts, and ways in which to reconcile them, Flinders offers a way for the spiritual woman and the feminist to find similarities rather than differences, by suggesting that feminism is, and has been throughout history, “a resistance movement based in spirituality” and will “catch fire when it draws upon its inherent spirituality” (pp.324-25).
Hunt (2004) also struggles to “…reconcile apparent opposites” (p. 4). She explores both feminist and religious revolutions, and the goals common to each, lamenting that the separation of the two groups does not serve either of their very similar agendas. Hunt conducts an intimate examination of the lives of five historically great women of faith and feminism (Emily Dickinson, Teresa of Avila, Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Mott and Dorothy Day). Each of them exemplifies one of Hunt’s five phases on the journey towards wholeness; pain, shadow, voice, action and communion. This is the heroine’s journey towards a relational and inclusive feminism, which Hunt feels must value: Listening as much as Speaking, The Local as much as the Global, Money as much as Mission, and The Collective as much as the Individual. The book ends optimistically with Hunt’s observation that “we are in the company of a multitude of spirited women, and once we realize this, there isn’t anything we can’t do” (p. 142).
Lesser (1999) directs spiritual seekers through four landscapes of the spiritual journey; mind, heart, body and soul. Defining spirituality as “..an attitude of fearlessness, a sense of adventure. …a way of looking boldly at the life we have been given, here, now, on earth… Spirituality is nothing more than a brave search for the truth about existence” (p. 31), she gives numerous suggestions on how to develop a form of religion not specific to any particular dogma, but rather deeply personal, powerful and fulfilling.
Daly’s (1973) classic Beyond God the Father calls for nothing short of the overthrow of the patriarchy. Suggesting that current ideological structures do not adequately reflect women’s interpretations of the Universe, Daly demands of women “a firm and deep refusal to limit our perspectives, questioning and creativity to any of the preconceived patterns of male dominated culture”. She calls for a new philosophy and theology that will point “beyond the God of patriarchal philosophy and religion,” born when “our emerging awareness and creativity express dimensions of the search for ultimate meaning” (p. 7).
Reclaiming the Divine Feminine
I believe that the greatest need of the church is to be mothered. Until the creeds are humanized, which were formulated by the early “church fathers” and by our Puritan forefathers; until the lost balance of religion is restored by the restoration of the woman element to the mutilated human and the mutilated divine; until the motherhood as well as the father good of God is recognized by the is world of self-made half-orphans; until these things be, the supreme call o the ministry that vibrates through the world to-day is to womanhood to give herself to the service of unifying and uplifting humanity, and bringing it up to the true knowledge and glad service of our Father and Mother God. (Bartlett, in Sewell, 1991, p. 248)
One way that women commonly reclaim the Divine Feminine is by connecting to images inside of a current established religion.
Mantin (2001) interviewed nine women who considered themselves to be on feminist or thealogical spiritual journeys. (The use of the “a” in thealogical differentiates it from theological, which has traditionally belonged to patriarchal theologies). She found that an understanding of “Goddess-talk” “could convey post-realist understandings of performative sacrality which are grounded in a sense of relation with all forms of life. It could also relate to post-metaphysical expressions of embodied spirituality which reflect an acceptance of the plurality of subjectivity as process” (p. 542).
Reich (2003) explores American women who, although not a part of a Christian religious institution, nonetheless have elevated the Virgin Mary to the status of a Goddess, and their main deity of worship. The women describe the ways in which they interact with Mary through their embodied experiences of her teachings, healing and miracles in their lives. She suggests a return to a Marian Mythology can empower contemporary women.
Mary is also worshipped by The Marian Movement of Priests, a Pope supported movement that promotes the teaching and healing of Mary, called Fatima.
The epic feminist version of the legend of King Arthur, The Mists of Avalon suggests that when the Christian Crusades successfully conquered the Old Religions, the Goddess assumed the identity of the newly emerging Mary, and has “hidden” there ever since, for those with eyes to see.
Starhawk believes that women must embrace some form of the Goddess:
The importance of the Goddess symbol for women cannot be overstressed. The image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create, but also to limit and destroy when necessary, as the very force that sustains all life. Through the Goddess, we can discover our strength, enlighten our minds, own our bodies, and celebrate our emotions. (Starhawk, in Sewell, 1991, p. 244)
There are also numerous female saints within Catholicism, many good “role models” in the Bible, and the Divine Feminine of Judaism known as the Shekhinah.
The Divine Feminine can also be contacted by accessing mythological and cross cultural figures. The vast realms of mythology and Eastern religions opens up a new level of Divine Feminine. Shinoda-Bolen’s (1984) work with the archetypal Goddesses “within” has received much acclaim, and has allowed generations of women to contemplate the Goddess energies present within themselves. “…there are many “goddesses” in an individual women. The more complicated the woman, the more likely that many are active within her” (p. 2).
Patricia Monaghan has spent over 20 years researching and writing about alternative spiritualities. She has penned countless books, stories, poems and songs about Goddesses world-wide, including The Goddess Companion – a daily meditation book featuring prayers, poems and songs to the Goddess in Her many forms, and The Goddess Path, a comprehensive overview of the myths, symbols, rituals and feasts belonging to Goddess of many names and faces worldwide. These Goddesses are being worshipped today, says Monaghan (1999) assuring us that:
Somewhere in the town where you live, a woman today will enact a ritual that honors the goddess. Perhaps she will do son unconsciously: decorating a tablecloth with an ethnic design showing the plant goddess… or baking a special holiday pancake that keeps the winter goddess at bay. Or perhaps she does so consciously, meditating as she watches as candle flicker, calling out the name of the goddess whose power she wishes to bring forth (p. 4)
Kidd (1996) devotes an entire book to:
…the quest for the female soul; the missing Feminine Divine, and the wholeness women have lost within patriarchy. It’s about the fear, anger, pain, questions, healing, transformation, bliss, power and freedom that come with such journeys. (p. 1)
as she shares her own journey from her native Christian tradition to the Sacred Feminine that was never offered or acknowledged there. An important part of her transformation was in the discovery of, and connection with, women who would see the Sacred Feminine within her, and model it for her themselves. Reclaiming the Divine Feminine has within it, inherently, a reunion with women who are doing the same, as the search for the Goddess within and without bring together women who affirm the Divine Feminine within one another.
In 1978, Carol P. Christ was the keynote speaker at the “Great Goddess Re-emerging” conference hosted by University of Santa Cruz. Her keynote address, “Why Women Need the Goddess” was an instant classic. It has since been included in other works of feminist spirituality, and is credited with introducing thousands of women to the Goddess. Holding a Ph.D from Yale University, Dr. Christ is a major voice in the women’s spirituality and feminist theology movements. She is the director of Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual, author of numerous books, adjunct faculty at many major universities, and now teaches in feminist educational settings in Greece. When introducing a newcomer to the idea of the Divine Feminine, Christ offers a simple yet passionate definition:
The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power. …This meaning of the symbol of Goddess is simple and obvious, and yet it is difficult for many to comprehend. It stands in sharp contrast to the paradigms of female dependence on males that have been predominant in Western religion and culture. (pp. 8-13)
Along with renowned feminist theologian Judith Plaskow, Christ co-edited Womanspirit Rising, and Weaving the Vision. Both titles are considered essential works of feminist spirituality.
Christ describes the power of the Goddess as “the intelligent embodied love that is the ground of all being” and embodied love as being “grounded in senses, in seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling, and in the emotions and passions that arise from the senses” (pp. 108-109). She explores the relationship between her personal struggle with and recovery from depression and her relationship with this ground of all being - the Goddess, in another important work, Odyssey with the Goddess: A spiritual quest in Crete (1995). In Laughter of Aphrodite, Christ shares autobiographical narratives on her experiences of the Divine Feminine in midlife; from sensuality to anger at the Goddess, her experiences give the reader permission to develop a personal relationship with the Goddess.
Christ (1997) is important to this literature review because she rejects dualistic categories of thought in favor of “embodied thinking”, different from intellectual thinking because “When we think through the body, we reflect upon the standpoints embedded in our life experiences…”(p. 35).
Reuniting With Women Who Affirm The Divine Feminine
I know myself linked by chains of fires
to every woman who has ever kept a hearth.
In the resinous smoke
I smell hut, castle, cave,
Mansion and hovel,
See in the shifting flame my mother
and grandmothers out over the world.
(Gidlow, in Sewell, 1991, p. 230)
Huber (1998) interviews some of the first graduates of the Women’s Spirituality Program at The California Institute of Integral Studies, a program created 20 plus years after the women’s grassroots spirituality movement of the early 1970s. She finds that "women, whose experience of the sacred has been excluded from traditional religions as well as from cultural history, are personally and collectively recovering their voices, creating an outpouring of theory and practice" (p. 1471). Embodying their experiences through the telling of their stories, the women discuss their attempts to synthesize spirituality and patriarchal academia across the domains of healing, community, self-empowerment, creativity work and spiritual practices.
According to Ozarac (1996), traditional church attendees, while still aware of the gender inequalities of their faith, are banding together for support:
Most of the women in this study recognized that by hierarchical social standards, organized religion does not treat them as well as it might. Many described working hard for their churches and receiving precious little glory (as a Presbyterian student complained, "Why do we have to have a tougher row to hoe to get where we are going?). But in absolute terms, they do not see themselves as disenfranchised. The power of connection and relationship, most essential to their own views of the faith experience, is available to them in abundance. (p. 17).
Shinoda-Bolen (1999) hypothesizes that the world will be changed one women’s circle at a time. Using the “hundredth monkey” hypothesis suggesting that change occurs in a species when a critical mass is reached, Shinoda-Bolen reframes the women’s circle as a “revolutionary-evolutionary movement that is hidden in plain sight” (p. 4). This movement is necessary for “patriarchy to become balanced by the discerning wisdom and compassion that are associated with the feminine aspects of humanity” (p. 14). For patriarchy to change, Shinoda-Bolen calls for a millionth circle of women, optimistic that the:
Circles of women supporting each other, healing circles, wisdom circles, soul-sister circles, circles of wise women, of clan mothers, of grandmothers… Circles of crones, circles of pre-crones, lifetime circles and ad-hoc circles, even circles of women in cyber space and the business place…(p.14)
will create an archetypal morphic field ( a developmental biology concept suggesting that group influences can travel through time and space without a lapse of time), instantly joining all women in all circles, and accelerating humanity into a post patriarchal era.
Joining all women in all circles includes the joining of women across faiths. Peay (2005) describes the “fourth wave” of feminism (p. 59), visible in conventions chaired by feminist and religious leaders. “These gatherings share a commitment to a universal spirituality that affirms women’s bonds across ethnic and religious boundaries… [and] …a new feminine paradigm of power that’s based on tolerance, mutuality, and reverence for nature…” (p. 59).
If this new paradigm is to survive, women will need as many tools of empowerment as they can collect.
Tools for Empowerment
To adjoin the instinctual nature…means to establish territory, to find one’s pack, to be in one’s body with certainty and pride regardless of the body’s gifts and limitations, to speak and at in one’s behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one’s cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible. (Estes, 1992, p.10)
When measuring religiousness, Ozorak (1996) cites Benson’s 1991 findings that women typically outscore men on measures of religiousness. Yet most religious systems are Patriarchal in belief, and consequently could be demeaning to women. She seeks to discover how women cope with this seeming paradox, and finds that “Purely cognitive coping” is the most common response. Using selective attention to avoid cognitive dissonance, women are able to reconcile “the idea that religion is good with a tradition of discrimination that is clearly not good” (p. 23).
Thus, although these women are aware of the inequalities, they see them as tangential to their faith experience, as annoying consequences of human wrongheadedness that need either to be worked on or overlooked in the context of an experience that is predominately satisfying (p.27).
Connectedness, interrelatedness and service to humanity, concepts congruent with Gilligan’s (1982) “voice of relationship” are essential to women’s faith experiences, and when available assists them in their cognitive reframing, allowing them to serve and celebrate together.
Mattis (2002) examines the ways in which African American women used religion and spirituality to cope with, and create meaning during, times of adversity. Seventy percent (70%) of the women of her study find that religion and spirituality help them in their confrontations with reality, and also with their acceptance of it, which included the concept of spiritual surrender, common to 57% of the participants (p.313). Paradoxically, by acknowledging and accepting reality, women are better able to transcend it, and 48% of participants agree that spirituality “permitted the transcendence of those boundaries” (p. 313). Finding answers to existential questions, recognizing purpose and destiny, and trusting in the viability of transcendent sources of knowledge and modes of communication all require increased use of intuition and faith. Religion and spirituality is also credited with helping women to act within their own principles, and 30% report that both positive and negative events offer a “set of opportunities for growth or self-transformation’, which provide “fertile ground for personal growth” (p. 316).
Willey (1997) finds that women who have been disempowered through childhood sexual trauma are able to re-empower themselves by using ceremony, symbolism and ritual. By participating in a three day intensive workshop combining traditional experiential psychotherapy and NLP anchoring techniques, women create a healing ritual, and then perform it at home for at least 30 days, women show improvement across the study’s dependent variables of: self-actualization, internal locus of control, self critical statements, identity, self-satisfaction, behavior, moral-ethical self, personal self, and family and social self. These are areas that psychotherapy and religion often target as goals, which suggests that the addition of concrete physical rituals involving the five senses could be a very effective tools for traditional talk-therapy and religious teachings.
Umrigar (1997) also supports ritual as a tool of empowerment through a review of contemporary black women writers who make use of magic, voodoo and the supernatural in their novels, where the protagonist is “empowered in his or her quest for a new cultural identity and a richer sense off community by either a supernatural event or by an older ancestral figure who possesses supernatural powers” (p. 4275).
There is an absence of rituals for women in modern society. The Jewish bat mitzvah and Catholic confirmation rituals allegedly issue young girls into womanhood, although very little attention is given to their bodies. The bridal and baby showers are watered down rituals, again, with very little emphasis on a women’s embodied experience of the passage she is entering. For many women, the promotion from Brownies to Girl Scouts is the only ritual they have had. Where are the rituals for first menstruation, child-birth, miscarriage, menopause, divorce or sexual healing? Sears (1989) asks:
How do women express this women’s spirituality in most of today’s Christian churches where one is constantly bombarded by hierarchical structures, exclusion from ministry, sexist language, mistrust of the body, emphasis on past tradition, and meaningless symbols? Many women do not find what they are looking for there. (p.1)
In response, she compiles nineteen rituals covering the entire feminine life cycle. The rituals are divided into three sections. The cycles of the body rituals cover pregnancy, birth, miscarriage, start of menses, onset of menopause, and impending death. Celebrations around the life cycle include celebration of the mother/daughter bond, reconciliation between mother and teen, entry into adulthood, divorce/empty nest/new job/moving, nourishing self, and wise women croning rituals. Celebration circles of relationship teaches how to cast a circle of support, and provided rituals for the celebration of empowerment and friends, and for connecting with the past, Mother Earth, and globally. Women enjoy rituals partially because they are inclusive and relational, traits found to be very important in the psyche of women. The next section explores various theories regarding the ways in which women can re-claim their embodied spiritual empowerment.
Theories relevant to the Empowerment of Women
The elusive mystery of women’s development lies in its recognition of the continuing importance of attachment in the human life cycle. (Gilligan, 1982, p. 23)
Prior to the introduction of empowering feminist based theories, it is useful to re-visit classic developmental models and theories, in review of their positions regarding women. A brief overview of these theories follow by developmental and spiritual theories relevant to the re-empowerment of women.
The fathers of psychology were men, and their models and theories were constructed with the male as the norm (Levinson, 1978). Developmental psychologists Freud, Erikson, Piaget and Kohlberg each penned theories in which the feminine was found to be inferior.
Sigmund Freud, often considered to be the father of Psychology, expressed a great deal of disregard for the feminine in his early doctrine. His psychosexual developmental model, based on the premise of the desire of the male child to possess his mother by dispelling his father – the Oedipus complex, did not consider the experiences of girls. When his theory of penis envy failed to encompass the totality of the feminine development, Freud explained the differences in male and female development as a result of feminine failure. Positing that the super-ego was created by the resolution of castration anxiety, Freud felt that the feminine, not possessing this anxiety, developed a compromised superego (Gilligan, 1982). Of this difference between the sexes, Freud (1925) concluded that “for women the level of what is ethically normal is different from what it is in men,” and consequently, women “show less sense of justice than men, that they are less ready to submit to the great exigencies of life, that they are more often influenced in their judgments by feelings of affection or hostility” (pp. 257-258). One of Freud’s earliest diagnoses was hysteria, “from Greek hysterikos, from hystera womb” (Merriam Webster, 2000). Early Greek physicians believed that hysteria was a neurotic condition specific to women, caused by disturbances of the uterus:
According to many writers, from the Hippocratics in the Classical age of Greece to the physician Aretaios during the Roman empire, a woman's womb was liable to detach itself from its regular home, and wander off at will through her body. Such vagrancy naturally created a host of unpleasant symptoms for the woman, the commonest of which was "hysterical suffocation", as the displaced womb deprived the body of breath (Ager, 2006).
It was later discovered that many of the women Freud diagnosed with hysteria were also victims of incest. Patricia Monaghan points out that “surviving that experience often means becoming out of touch with the body, and surviving Patriarchy in general often means the same” (personal communication March 7, 2006). As a first map into the undiscovered territories of the psyche, many developmental theorists continued the devaluing of the feminine in their research. It was some time before Freud’s theories had serious competition.
Diegel (2002) offers a concise overview of how the early developmental theorists explained the developmental differences between boys and girls in her study of dating violence among female adolescents.
Erikson conceptualized an eight-stage model of development, with each stage requiring the resolution of a psychosocial crisis. Boys developed their identities by traveling linearly through each stage and resolving its crisis. But Erikson felt that girls required relationships with others to form their identities, and would not have accesses to enough identity-forming relationships when young. He hypothesized that girls would need to combine stages 5 (identity vs. identity diffusion) and 6 (intimacy vs. isolation) later in life to adequately develop their full identities (p.x).
Piaget, known for his model of cognitive development, was interested in the development of morals. Through an examination of how boys and girls differed in their interpretation of the rules of games (the girls were more flexible, and the boys more rule-bound) he concluded that girls have an underdeveloped sense of moral development when compared to boys (p.X).
Kohlberg, another developmental psychologist, also conducted work on the gender differences in moral development and found girls to have inferior reasoning, and deficient problem solving skills (p.X).
These early ideas dominated developmental theory for many years. It would not be until the late 1970s that feminist based developmental models would rise to challenge these disempowering psychological beliefs about the feminine.
Carol Gilligan (1982), one of the fore-mothers of feminist-based developmental psychology, published an empirical and interpretive analysis of how girls and young women make decisions regarding hypothetical and actual moral dilemmas as a challenge against her former teacher, Lawrence Kohlberg, who had previously proclaimed girls to be deficient in these realms. Gilligan’s results suggest that women speak “in a different voice” than men, a voice that values relationality and interconnectedness, a voice that is not adequately represented in developmental models. What motivates women, how they prioritize their moral commitments, how they grow and what they deem important, when compared to male dominated models, looks very different, and Gilligan reframes these differences as strengths rather than deficiencies.
Gilligan was one of the few women developing theories specific to women when Mary Pipher(1995)began her career-spanning work with adolescent girls. “ I had been educated by male psychologists in the 1970’s. With the exception of Carol Gilligan’s work, almost all theory about teenagers had been authored by men such as Lawrence Kohlberg and E.H. Ericson, who had mainly studied boys” (p.35). Pipher went on to pen Reviving Ophelia: Saving the selves of adolescent girls, now considered a definitive look at societal impact on the development of adolescent girls in American culture. She warns that “the way girls handle the problems of adolescence can have implications for their adult lives. Without some help, the loss of wholeness, self-confidence and self-direction can last well into adulthood” (p.25).
Chodorow’s (1974) work attributes developmental differences between the sexes to the fact that women are most often responsible for child care, causing mothers to be experienced differently by sons and daughters, and causing mothers to experience their daughters differently than their sons. She suggests that these differences result in the development of empathy in girls.
Surrey (1991) also views the mother-daughter relationship as foundational to the development of empathy, which she considers a “central organizing concept in women’s relational experiences” (p. 53). Surrey proposes the idea of “the self-in-relationship” in which “the direction of growth is not toward greater degrees of autonomy or individuation and the breaking of early emotional ties, but towards a process of growth within relationship” (p. 60).
Borysenko (1996) presents feminine development in an empowered light by offering a proactive view of women’s bodies, minds and spirits throughout the feminine life cycle. Dividing the cycles into 12 seven-year cycles, she examines each stage from biological, psychological and spiritual perspectives. She also honors the three “blood mysteries” present in a woman’s life cycle, “menarche, childbirth, and menopause… physiological events [that] mark the transitions between the three phases of life that have been recognized since ancient times – maiden, mother and crone” (p. 5). Naming the spiritual or psychological gift present in the completion of each stage, Borysenko reframes the feminine body, psyche, and the process of aging, through an exploration of the mystery and wisdom present within.
Borysenko (1999) mirrors Gilligan’s concepts of relationality in her exploration of how women can find a feminine path to God. She posits that a relationship with a transcendent God is a patriarchal idea, and that women are more likely to experience the divine in relationship, “very similar to relating to a friend. We need faith and trust in that friend, for a relationship to grow we have to take it seriously and give it time and attention” (p. 133). Houses of worship, whether Christian, Jewish or Islamic, are largely male-dominated with male deities, and are often derogatory in their views of women. It is difficult for women to find their religious home within such marginalizing philosophies, largely because women’s preferred method of worship tends to be “natural, earthy, relational, mystical, embodied, intuitive, sensuous and compassionate” (p. xv). Women, highly intuitive in nature, are more inclined to mystical expressions and experiences of the divine, often not present in traditional church services. Borysenko suggests that women come to know God not through a transcendent experience of Him somewhere in the heavens, but rather by traveling inward, honoring intuition and using relationships in service of greater self knowledge.
The search for community, sexuality and spiritual power as expressed women in New Religious Movements (NRM’s) is summarized in Putnick’s 1997 overview of social and spiritual issues and movements ranging from the 1960s counter-culture to the 1990s Goddess spirituality. Putnick acknowledges and describes the abuse of power within some of the NRM’s, but concludes that over all, women are fulfilled and empowered by their membership in such groups.
Howell (2001) conducts a qualitative exploration of spirituality and women’s midlife development. She finds that the women of her study begin to withdraw from outside stimuli, which leads them to mourn that shift, and turn inward for personal awareness. Community support, whether through church, 12-step groups or family and friends, helps the women to normalize their midlife experiences. Mid-life is when these women first recognize that their time, emotional energy, physical energy, money and creativity are limited, and they began a conscious allocation of these precious resources. As withdrawal from activities increases, so does self-focus and spiritual development, resulting in the transformation of years of change and loss into “a period of relative emotional satisfaction” (p. 58).
A large part of developing spiritual empowerment depends on finding the right balance between independence and interdependence. Ozarac (1996) found that women valued community over individuation, yet Borysenko (1996) suggests that individuation is as necessary a step to spiritual empowerment as it is to psychological development. Morgan (1990) studied women in crisis, and how their faith developed as a result, and found them to struggle with silence in interpersonal relationships. She suggests that the development of individuality and autonomy are crucial to the development of faith, and the transformation of crisis into healing.
Halkes (1988) recognizes the tension between feminism and spirituality, citing spirituality as a bridge to both Christianity and feminism. She identifies the three main elements of feminist spirituality as “the goddess movement, the witch movement and a current based more on esoteric, psychoanalytic, and therapeutic processes” (p. 220). Each is touched on briefly below.
The Goddess Movement - Halkes divides the Goddess movement into two aspects: the connection with pre-patriarchal Goddess religions, and women’s search for their own empowerment. The former addresses the Goddess as the symbol of the life force, birth, death and rebirth. The latter explores ways in which women experience the Goddess within themselves, in Her three life phases of maiden, mother and crone.
The Witch Movement - Suggesting that there is a witch in every woman, Halkes examines both the negative historical witchcraft persecutions, and the positive way in which women interact with nature, healing abilities and herb lore.
Esoteric, psychoanalytic and therapeutic processes - Shifting women’s ideas about reality, the cosmos and human nature requires change. Jungian psychology invites women to develop their animus, the dark side of the unconscious. Mystics talk of the transformation necessary to awaken to enlightenment. When this transformation occurs, Halkes suggests that women, by connecting with a larger vision of themselves, experience love and strength that can fuel social justice. This larger vision must include the reunion of the body and spirit, so that love and strength can be fueled from both within, and from something greater.
The reunion of body and spirit
There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning…
So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning
lest it go unspoken.
(Sexton, in Sewell, 1991, pp. 201-202)
Ettling (1994) states: “The notion of embodiment suggests a relationship between spirit and matter that intersects at the level of the body” (p.8).
When women are successful in reuniting the body and spirit, they experience: Coming home to the body, and A Felt Connection to the Divine Feminine.
Coming Home to the Body
Blessed be my brain
that I may conceive of my own power.
Blessed be my breast
that I may give sustenance to those I love.
Blessed be my womb
that I may create what I choose to create.
Blessed be my knees
that I may bend so as not to break.
Blessed be my feet
that I may walk in the path of my highest will.
(Morgan, in Sewell, 1991, p.169)
Anstiss (2005), in her study of women’s journey to embodiment, states that embodiment begins with a decision to “accept, love and enter the body” (p.188) and to celebrate it despite signs of aging or negative cultural messages. Shame regarding the body is a common theme among the women, who also find connection to the Earth to be an important facet of embodiment. Relationships with parents, God and partners also help, or hinder reunion with the body, as do creative expressions and sacred sexuality with trusted lovers.
However, the Catholic women of Kanis’ (2002) qualitative study identify many religious teachings that “left no doubt as to the potential negative impact of female embodiment on women’s spiritual self identity” (p. 308), regarding body image, menses, sexuality and sexual morality. They are able to transcend these negative messages through complex psychological processes such as building an experiential, rather than theoretical relationship with God; defining a life purpose or calling that honored their participation as women rather than casting them in support roles; defining a moral code that allowed them to feel both good and holy when negotiating difficult decisions regarding sexual expression and pro-choice beliefs, and personalizing a nourishing spiritual practice.
Esbjorn-Hargens (2004) writes of the ways in which women mystics, who devote most of their lives to prayer, meditation and service, make sense of their bodies. She finds that meaning making and understanding are constantly evolving. The women of her study “tend to go through a process of disidentification and reidentification with the body” which takes place “over and over again, deepening throughout one’s lifetime” (p. 413). Similar to Anstiss (2005), the women of her study choose embodiment, bringing spirit into their bodies purposefully, then describing how that embodied spirituality results in an energetic awakening of the body.
Cooey, Farmer & Ross (1978, pp. vii-viii) collect essays addressing feminist religious and ethical theories that converge around the centrality of embodied sensuality and relationship as feminist values. It is easiest to describe the collection by listing the chapter titles and authors:
Embodiment, Identity, and Value
1. The Word Become Flesh: Woman's Body, Language, and Value: Paula M. Cooey
2. The "Quilting" of Women's History: Phoebe of Cenchreae: Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza
3. Reverence for Life: The Need for a Sense of Finitude: Carol Christ
4. Spirit and Matter, Public and Private: The Challenge of Feminism to Traditional Dualisms: Rosemary Radford Ruether
Embodiment, Communication, and Ethics
5. Problems with Feminist Theory: Historicity and the Search for Sure Foundations: Sheila Greeve Davaney
6. Female Voice, Written Word: Women and Authority in Hebrew Scripture: Claudia V. Camp
7. Softening the Hearts of Men: Women, Embodiment, and Persuasion in the Thirteenth Century: Sharon A. Farmer
8. Relational Love: A Feminist Christian Vision: Linell E. Cady
9. The Ethical Limitations of Autonomy: A Critique of the Moral Vision of Psychological Man: Mary Ellen Ross
Embodiment, Relationship, and Religious Experience
10. Negotiation Autonomy: African Women and Christianity: Terri A. Castaneda
11. Piety, Persuasion, and Friendship: Female Jewish Leadership in Modern Times: Ellen M. Umansky
12. Madonnas for a New World: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Iconography of Faith: Patricia R. Hill
13. Aesthetic Vision, Prophetic Voice: Intimacy and Social Justice in Kaethe Kollqitz and Dorothea Lange: Gregor Goethals
The editors believe that an increased value of embodiment and relationality “has the revolutionary potential of transforming not only our religious and ethical visions, but also our individual and collective identities” (p. 12). In dis-identifying with disempowered concepts of body, and re-identifying with chosen beliefs, embodiment becomes a choice to inhabit the Divine feminine within.
Felt Connection to the Divine Feminine
“I found god in myself/and I loved her/I loved her fiercely” (Shange, 1976, p. 63).
Neuger (1994) a theological anthropologist, has identified three areas of significance for women’s understanding of the self and the divine: “The nature of women’s embodiment; the nature of women’s relationality; and the nature of identity distortions through the culture’s false mirroring of who women are” (p. 236).
The women of Shillington’s (2004) study have to overcome many negative messages from the culture before they can conceive of menstruation as a “moon in my womb” whose sacred cycle connects women to the Divine Feminine, and to one another. Expressing the ideals of the feminine research method through the use of Organic Inquiry, she interviews women about their experiences of menstruation. Christ (1987a) states that feminist research is grounded in “embodied thinking”, a fitting description for this topic, as Shillington asks her participants to describe “the profound moments of connection with their menstruation,” how those moments are “connected to their spirituality,” how they experienced “the sacred in these moments” and how “these experiences have affected them” (p. 125). Participants describe their menstrual blood as sacred; crediting it with benefiting their health, increasing their intuition and enhancing their appreciation of their own bodies. Rather than adhering to the Patriarchal concept of PMS, these women describe the ability to use their time of bleeding to enhance inner knowing, and to bring awareness to emotional issues unresolved from the previous cycle. Sex during menstruation is viewed as a profoundly powerful experience:
an extremely pleasurable way of accelerating spiritual growth… releasing the emotional toxins that hinder that process, of experiencing ecstasy and healing, of forging deep and lasting bonds, of coming to new awareness’s, or entering other reams of existence, of heightening creatively, and of celebrating the Divine. (p. 408)
The women of the study also use their menstrual blood in various rituals and rites, with the intention of creating greater awareness of themselves as sacred reflections of the Divine Feminine.
Pitarre (2001) uses Gendlin’s felt sense theory combined with imagery of the Divine Feminine to create a felt connection to the Divine Feminine in her participants. She finds that when women have feminine images of God to connect with, they experience a nourishing connection to both the Divine and their own femininity, and that these images of God offer a strong resource for empowerment and healing.
Carpeneto (1996) conducts a hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry of how women embody their spirituality during midlife. Rather than either-or thinking, her co-researchers embrace both-and thinking, embracing such paradoxes as feeling stronger in mind, and weaker in body.
Ziolkowski (2003) describes a direct experience of the dark Goddess Kali, and uses Moustakas’ (1990) heuristic methodology to research the phenomena (p. 29). She identifies a series of altered states of consciousness in which she has personal interactions with Kali.
Patricia Monaghan is one of the early leaders of both the contemporary earth based spirituality, and Goddess movements. She is a poet, author, lecturer and teacher, and has authored many books and articles regarding Goddess spirituality and feminine spiritual empowerment. She suggests that reclaiming the Divine Feminine can be done by acknowledging both the inner and outer Goddess:
To the question “Where is she? In here or out there? this book answers “Both”. She is universal nature, eternally creating and changing, unknowable and vast, a force beyond our limited comprehension. But she is just as much within our hearts and our bodies, she is the force of sexual attraction and of motherly affection , or righteous fury and steely intelligence. (1999, p. 11)
In McClellan’s (2001) hermeneutical study, the psychological and feminist effects of reclaiming images of the Divine Feminine are explored. The Divine Feminine is expressed in the form of Great Mother images present in nature and transitional rites of passage. Rituals are a way to give concrete form to abstract concepts, and are one of the ways women can express their embodied spirituality.
Expressions of embodied spirituality
Female empowerment is not only about emerging to voice our souls… It is also about something far more simple – embodying our Sacred Feminine experience. (Kidd, 1996, p. 217)
Once spirituality has returned to its rightful place within the body, women can use Nature as access to the Divine Feminine, participate in Body-based Spiritual practices and experiences, and participate in a wide variety of Pagan and Neo-Pagan spiritual traditions.
Nature as Access to the Divine Feminine
It is essential for us to remember the many connections between the Earth, the Cosmos, and our own female bodies: how we bleed in rhythm with the Moon; how our vulvas are reflected in the most beautiful parts of the natural world… flowers, shells, fruits… how our capacity to give birth to new life and to bond with our children reflects the creativity and gravitational pull of the Cosmos; how each child that grows within the womb is nurtured in amniotic fluid that has the same salinity as the ocean… [and] …that we don’t merely inhabit the Earth, the Earth inhabits us! (Shillington, 2004, p. 268).
Both the sun and the moon have been linked to the Divine Feminine. Hatha yoga practitioners often consider the moon salutation pose as an expression of the feminine. But Monaghan (1994) challenges attributing the feminine to the moon and the masculine to the sun, devoting an entire book to the Sun Goddesses:
Women are said to be connected to the dark, to the moon goddess; to anything that broods and grows in darkness; to dreams, fantasies, emotions, illusions. Our sphere is a fragile one; the mortal body, that resilient source of joy that ultimately dooms us to die. Women are “the flesh” aligned always with “world” and “devil”. Women are the passive power of sex, a power we share with bitches and mares and cows… Implausible as it seems, this is the message our culture conveys. The alleged inferiority of women is mythically based in our presumed connection to that realm of world, flesh, and devil, while men’s alleged superiority is based on their supposed freedom from such connection. The solar hero is hailed as the savior of the race; the moon-woman is a lunatic, a witch, a sexual temptress, a danger. (p. 1)…Text book after text book, reference work after reference work, tell us the Sun is always male, the Moon female. They are brother and sister, we are told; Sometimes they are husband and wife. This is true. But we are also told that the brother, the husband, is always the sun; the sister, the wife, always the moon. This is a lie. (p. 2)
Kidd (1996) describes a “spirituality of naturalness” in which:
the Sacred Feminine consciousness seizes us by the shoulders, looks in our eyes, and tells us with passion and simplicity: If you don’t get anything else, get this. This is your life, right now, on this changing earth, in the semi permanent body, among these excruciatingly ordinary things (p. 219).
She suggests that women “incorporate three very organic, basic, but overlooked things into our sacred experience: the earthly, the now and the ordinary” (p. 219).
Mary Oliver (1992) is a prominent and acclaimed poet who frequently writes of the spiritual aspects of nature, like when she reminds us “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves” (p. 110). In a later poem (2002), she speaks to the difficulty of transcending doing in favor of being:
Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I? Can’t fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk. Well, I think, I can read books. “What’s that you’re doing?” the green-headed fly shouts as it buzzes past. I close the book. Well, I can write down words, like these, softly. “What’s that you’re doing?” whispers the wind, pausing in a heap just outside the window. Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silvevr face. It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, you know. “Doesn’t it?” says the wind, and breaks open, releasing distillation of blue iris. And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be, the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle. (p. 53)
One of the easiest ways of turning doing into being is through the use of a body based spiritual practice that requires one to stay in the moment while transcending ordinary consciousness. The next section reviews some of the practices and experiences that women participate as expressions of their embodied spirituality.
Body Based Spiritual Practices and Experience
As it was in the beginning,
I say:
Here is your sacrament –
Take. Eat. This is my body,
this real milk, thin, sweet, bluish,
which I give for the life of the world.
Like sap to spring it rises
even before the first faint cry is heard,
an honest nourishment
alone able to sustain you.
(Clifton, in Sewell, 1991, p. 212)
Once body and spirit are reunited, women are able to combine the two in spiritual practices, and to find spirituality within experiences not usually designated as such. One body practice that is receiving a great deal of attention as a spiritual practice is yoga. “Unlike many spiritual and religious traditions, which further disenfranchise us from the support of our embodied self, Yoga stands apart as a tradition that has always recognized the importance of the body and mind living in harmonious relationship to each other” (Farhi, 2004, p. 82).
But Ray (2006) cautions against spiritual materialism, the use of spiritual practices to “reinforce existing, neurotic ego strategies” not in service of greater awareness, but rather to become more spiritual, “to attempt to control the other… [but] in this case, the other is ourselves… it is our own somatic experience of reality we are trying to override in the attempt to fulfill our ego aim” (pp. 40-41).
He suggest developing a somatic awareness of the body, which is greater than body acceptance, itself a difficult goal. “In fact, we are entering into a process that lies right at the heart of the spiritual life itself, something the Buddha saw a very long time ago” (p. 42).
Thomas (2001) suggests that while many women experience pregnancy, childbirth and infant care as disorienting and problematic, it is also a time of great spiritual potential, as it offers new ways of thinking about the Divine. She uses the word matrescence to describe pregnancy, birth, lactation, infant care and social reintegration in the first year of a new mother’s life, and believes that “great growth in compassion, understanding, and ethical insight can occur as a result of matrescence” (p. 90). She describes motherhood as a breaking open that calls
to mind the New Testament parable of the seed falling into the fertile earth and slitting open in order to bring forth a new life. In the act of birth (and throughout matrescence) a woman is issuing forth a new life in the form of a child, but also in the form of her own new identity. (p. 94)
Connected to her child, a woman begins to see the world through two sets of eyes, a type of “double vision” that increases compassion for, and wisdom regarding, her own child, and most likely all marginalized populations. Embracing the union of spirituality and embodiment, Thomas compares “my amazing breast milk (ripe with healing and nourishing powers) and the miraculous white manna that God sent each morning to nourish the hungry Israelites” (p. 98). She credits breastfeeding with healing her inner sense of body shame as she contemplated this “child created and fed literally out of my own flesh and blood” (p. 98). Thomas implies that church clergy are missing spiritual opportunities with the mothers of their congregations. She suggests that faith communities can help a mother experience matrescense as a spiritual formation in the following ways: by providing opportunities for honest faith-sharing by matrescent women, [by] finding ways to incorporate the experiences of matrescence in ritual, preaching, music and doctrine, articulate[ing] a model of spiritual growth that takes into realistic account the experiences of mothers, speak[ing prophetically about the need for our larger culture to value and support mothers nurturing work, and prepare[ing] young people realistically for the demands of parenting.
Pregnancy, childbirth and infant care are all preceded by sex, an often controversial topic when combined with spiritual or religious speculation. Can you love God and sex? Eight Black women, among the country’s most distinguished thinkers, discuss and debate this controversial topic in Dyson’s 1999 roundtable discussion. She synthesizes the women’s “.truth telling about our spiritual and sexual health” (p. 100) and after much enlightening debate, concludes that “Praise the Lord, yes!”, it is possible to love both God and sex (p. 100).
MacKnee (2000) conducts a phenomenological analysis of profound sexual and spiritual encounters among Christians, and his finding agree with the compatibility of God and sex. Descriptive themes of the sexual encounter include: sense of wonder and amazement, God’s presence was evident, intense union, euphoria, intense physical arousal, holistic involvement, transcendence, ineffable mystery, sense of blessing and giftedness, and sense of sacredness and worship (pp. 237-239). After-effects included themes of: transformation and healing, empowerment and purpose, passionate awareness and connection, affirmation of Godly beliefs, great gratefulness, and sense of gender equality (pp.239-240). “The body, soul, and spirit joined to celebrate ecstatic bonding at new and wondrous heights” says MacKnee, concluding that “Elevated levels of self-discovery and intimacy portrayed in these holistic encounters are desirable and worthy goals for all humans” (p. 241).
Pagan and Neo-Pagan Spiritual Practices
In general, Neo-Pagans embrace the values of spontaneity, nonauthoritarianism, anarchism, pluralism, polytheism, animism, sensuality, passion, a belief in the goodness of pleasure, in religious ecstasy, and in the goodness of this world, as well as the possibility of many others (Adler, 1979, pp.179-180).
On All Hallow’s Eve of 1979, two books critical to the introduction of Neo-Paganism, Wicca and Goddess spirituality were published on opposite coasts.
On the east coast, Margot Adler published Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess Worshippers and other Pagans in America Today. A journalist for National Public Radio, Adler combined her investigative research skills and personal belief system to compile a detailed history of the Pagan and Neo-Pagan subcultures. DDTM became an instant classic by bringing scholarly credibility to movements often misunderstood to include devil worship, black witchcraft, or evil intentions. Explaining the differences between various traditions and movements, Adler also offers a synthesis of the basic beliefs held by most Pagans:
The world is holy. Nature is holy. The body is holy. Sexuality is holy. The mind is holy. The imagination is holy. You are holy. A spiritual path is not stagnant ultimately leads one to the understanding of one’s own divine nature. Thou art Goddess. Thou art God. Divinity is imminent in all Nature. It is as much within you as without.
In our culture which has for so long denied and denigrated the feminine as negative, evil or, at best, small and unimportant, women (and men too) will never understand their own creative strength and divine nature until they embrace the creative feminine, the source of inspiration, the Goddess within.
While one can at times be cut off from experiencing the deep and ever-present connection between oneself and the universe, there is no such things as sin (unless it is simply defined as that estrangement) and guilt is never very useful.
The energy you put into the world comes back (p. ix).
A revised version of DDTM, published in 1986, included the findings of a questionnaire given to 450 people within the Neo-Pagan subculture. The fascinating results suggested the top three religious backgrounds within the Pagan community to be Catholic (23.5%), Anglican or Episcopalian (9.0%) and other Protestant (39.2%). The largest majority found their way to Paganism via feminism, followed by an interest in occultism, and the reading of books. The majority were employed in information technologies, followed by students, clerical workers, and psychotherapists, suggesting that Pagans are by and large white-collar and middle class. Adler asked her respondents to identify “the most important thing you want to tell the public about Paganism and the Craft,” and summarized the majority response:
We are not evil. We do not worship the Devil. We don’t harm or seduce people. We are not dangerous. We are ordinary people like you…. We are not a cult…. This religion is not a joke. We are not what you think we are from looking at T.V…. We don’t want to convert you. And please don’t try to convert us. (pp. 444-453)
The granddaughter of Alfred Alder, president and co-founder of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society with Sigmund Freud, Adler continues to address matters of social justice and relevance in her work as an NPR correspondent.
On the same day, across the nation, The Spiral Dance was published by a Witch known simply as Starhawk. Heralded as a comprehensive overview of the emergence, suppression and reemergence of Wicca, a Goddess worshipping religion also known as Witchcraft or the Craft, it brought much needed scholarly credibility to the movement. In similar vein to Adler, Starhawk seeks to deconstruct the many misconceptions regarding Witches:
Witchcraft is a word that frightens many people and confuses many others. In the popular imagination, Witches are ugly, old hags riding broomsticks, or evil Satanists performing obscene rites. Modern Witches are thought to be members of a kooky cult, primarily concerned with cursing enemies by jabbing wax images with pins… But Witchcraft is a religion, perhaps the oldest religion extant in the West. Its origins go back before Christianity, Judaism, Islam – before Buddhism and Hinduism, as well, and it is very different from all the so-called great religions. The Old Religion, as we call it, is closer in spirit to Native American tradition… It is not based on dogma or a set of beliefs, nor on scriptures or a sacred book revealed by a great man. Witchcraft takes its teachings from nature, and reads inspiration in the movements of the sun, moon and stars… (1979, pp. 26-27).
Starhawk is a prominent activist in movements concerning women, the environment and anti-globalization, and works to unify spirit and politics thorough her books, lectures and workshops.
This review of literature reveals a great deal of material relevant to embodied spirituality. History best tells the story of the Goddess, Her demise, and the consequent effects on women and the body-spirit connection. The many ways in which women negotiate their day to day existence within Patriarchal society have been studied, as have ways in which women come together to reclaim and celebrate the Divine Feminine. Psychology and spirituality, separately and combined, have many theories regarding the ways in which women can re-empower themselves. Some of these theories include the long-needed reunion of body and spirit. Once embodied, the literature shows how women can express their embodied spirituality in nature, and through body based practices.
This study differs from the historical and current literature in that it seeks to understand how women who have an embodied spiritual empowerment experience themselves, their relationships, and their walk in the world. It is positioned in the now, rather than in metaphysical to-do list, with the hope that a heuristic exploration of, and understanding of, women with embodied spiritual empowerment will be the result.
This chapter presented a review both historical and contemporary literature pertaining to embodied spiritual empowerment. The next chapter will present the heuristic research model.
CHAPTER III
Research Model
Whoever is searching for the human being
must first find the lamp. (Buytendijk, 1947, p. 22)
This chapter will provide the theoretical foundation for my study. It will discuss the qualitative research paradigm, and explain why it is the best model for this study. Then it will introduce and review the chosen model of qualitative research, the heuristic research model, by reviewing its historical roots and the steps of the model.
Qualitative Research
One of the reasons I chose the Center for Humanistic Studies Graduate School for both my masters and doctoral degrees is that it values qualitative research, and was founded by the creator of a qualitative research model known as heuristic research. Before exploring the qualitative heuristic research model, it will be useful to compare and contrast qualitative research with its precursor - quantitative research.
Many graduate programs of psychology conduct research using quantitative methodologies. Historically, it was the only methodology taught. Quantitative research is concerned with cause, correlation, measurement and statistics. Research is hoped to be universal and repeatable, and is conducted in isolation. The researcher’s goal is to be unaffected by the research, and the research is ideally unaffected by the researcher. There are control groups created through random selection, and there is a static end point to the research, with a goal of “statistically significant” or “statistically insignificant.” Seen through the lens of cause and effect (Heist, 1999), quantitative research believes that A causes B, and hopes that A will cause B every single time.
Qualitative research views cause and the effect as the same thing. A and B are in relationship with each other, a unique non-reproducible relationship, and the truth of the relationship is the focus of the research. “The discipline and dedication of the investigator is to discover the truth” says Moustakas (1990), “rather than external rules and methods of control for objectivity espoused by the scientific method.” (Douglass and Moustakas 1985, p. 472)
Both qualitative and quantitative researchers share the:
…belief that any group of persons- prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients- develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable, and normal once you get close to it, and that a good way to learn about any of these worlds is to submit oneself in the company of the members to the daily round of petty contingencies to which they are subject. (Goffman, as quoted in Lofland, 1961)
In their desire to submit themselves to “the company of the members”, both qualitative and quantitative researchers are in agreement. From this point on, they diverge from one another, applying very different methods to research the “ meaningful, reasonable, and normal” lives of their subjects.
Lofland (1971) has identified 3 questions essential to research:
1. What are the characteristics of a social phenomenon, the forms it assumes, the variations it displays?
2. What are the causes of a social phenomena, the forms it assumes, the variations it displays?
3. What are the consequences of a social phenomena, the forms it assumes, the variations it displays? (p. 13)
In the utilization of these questions, Lofland suggests that quantitative researchers, concerned with the second and third questions above, explore the causes and consequences of a social phenomenon within the framework of categories defined before the process of research begins. Show a child a violent video, give that child a punching doll to play with, and record the acts of aggression against the doll. If this child is more aggressive than another who did not watch a violent video, a hypothesis will develop, suggesting that the video caused the aggression (A causes B). The aggression will be the consequence of the video (B is a result of A).
Qualitative researchers concern themselves with Loftland’s first question above, defining the characteristics of a social phenomenon during the process of research. The child’s frame of reference during play, his or her internal experience while watching the video or hitting the doll, and the nature and essence of the social phenomenon of aggression are of interest to the qualitative researcher (A and B are in relationship).
As research moves to the interviewing process, it is again evident that the two paradigms are approaching their respondents very differently. These differences can be looked at relative to the methods of research employed, the types of questions asked, the replies of the respondents, and the researchers’ view of the individual and of reality.
Qualitative research, as the name suggests, seeks to measure quality, which is often illusive, that is to say “real, rich and deep, ungeneralizable and valid” (Cook & Reichardt, 1979, p. 10). Quantitative research seeks to measure consistency with numbers, which it hopes are “hard, replicable, generalizable and valid” (Cook & Reichardt, 1979, p. 10).
Qualitative questions are intimate and in-depth, allowing for a change in the hypothesis mid-stream. Quantitative questions have been screened to assure that they will support the validity of the hypothesis which is made up front, and will be administered to a large enough sample size to assure statistically significant results.
Respondents replying to qualitative questions will often find it difficult to articulate their replies; the answers will not be simple or easily discovered. Quantitative respondents will answer their close-ended questions without need for specific articulation of their views.
In what context is this interview taking place? Who is the respondent, and in what kind of reality is she or he placed? To the qualitative researcher, the individual is an actor who reads not from script, but executes a singular and unique performance from his/her own frame of reference. This performance takes place within a dynamic and holistic reality. To the quantitative researcher, the respondent is an element or cause of social phenomena, operating in a stable and particularistic reality.
In exploring these differences, it is not suggested that one method or paradigm is more valid or acceptable than the other. McCracken (1951) summarizes that, “In sum, a keen regard for what each of these methods can, and cannot, do is essential. Only thus can we learn to use them in conjunction and exploit their analytic advantages” (p. 18).
Having explored both the qualitative and quantitative research models, Moustakas (1990) tells why the heuristic research model is the best choice for a research question exploring “a woman’s experience of embodied spiritual empowerment”:
The heuristic process is a way of being informed, a way of knowing. Whatever presents itself in the consciousness of the investigator as perception, sense, intuition, or knowledge represents an invitation for further elucidation. What appears, what shows itself, casts a light that enables one to come to know more fully what something is and means. (pp. 10-11)
Of all the qualitative models available for this research, the heuristic research model allows the “consciousness of the investigator” to be present in the research. Thus the researcher is able to draw upon her own journey to embodied spiritual empowerment as she interviews others. Her internal frame of reference and inner experiences are invited to participate as fully as the co-researchers are. “The self of the researcher is present throughout the process and, while understanding the phenomenon with increasing depth, the research also experiences growing self-awareness and self-knowledge.” (Moustakas, 1990, p. 9). I am trusted to conduct the research as my intuition guides, “Freedom of the researcher... to shift perspectives… at any point in the process recognizes the contribution that subjectivity and immediacy make to knowledge. Subjectivity is an essential condition of the real (Douglas & Moustakas 1985, p. 49).
It is also the logical qualitative model to use in exploration of “a woman’s experience of embodied spiritual empowerment” because the research is about what Van Manen (1990) calls the “lived experience”. Carpeneto (1996, p. 101) attended a lecture by Van Manen (1989), where he described seven essential qualities of the lived experience. For the women of this study, their lived experience:
• Is the world as immediately experienced
Embodied spiritual empowerment does not require a church, synagogue, prayer, meditation, supplication or penance; it takes place in the now.
• Is preverbal, pre-reflective, pre-conceptual, pre-theoretic
The co-researchers lived experience, taking place in the now, is not tainted by efforts to label or communicate. Words are agreed upon symbols for the larger realities they hold, and the lived experience has not yet been contained in these symbols. The art of the heuristic interview is in retrieving these experiences in as pure a state as possible.
• Is an awareness which is unaware of itself (reflexive)
Awareness which is unaware of itself is simple be-ing. It is a reflexive response to each moment, a verb expressing the action of no action. Women of embodied spiritual empowerment do not need to do anything; their lives are both meditation and prayer.
• Cannot be grasped introspectively, only retrospectively
This is a difficult concept for those of trained in introspection. This researcher has spent the last seventeen years learning how to look within, and how to help others do the same. Paradoxically however, the lived experience of embodied spiritual empowerment will not be found in any organized search. Only when looking back over one’s life is it possible to see “the what and the how,” the many ways large and small that expressions and decisions spoke very clearly from the place of embodied spiritual empowerment.
• Is a sensibility (lived space, lived time, lived body, lived other)
These structures of phenomenological research speak to the embodied spiritual empowerment as it presents itself to women’s consciousness.
• Is the breath of meaning (what breath is to the body)
Moustakas (1994a), in his work with existential dream analysis, uses the phrase “Existential A Priori” to describe “the overriding or encompassing frame of reference that colors the dreamer’s relationship to others.” (p. 124) The above “breath of meaning” may be conceptualized the same way; it is the overriding or encompassing frame of meaning that colors each woman’s relationships.
• Cannot be conceptually explained only described and interpreted
Here is perhaps the strongest rationale for choosing the heuristic research model; it is designed for, and concerned with, capturing rich and vivid descriptions, which are then interpreted not in the therapeutic sense, but rather, are interpreted in a purer sense of the word, where meaning is assisted in traveling from one form to another.
By using a heuristic research model, the lived experience of each of the co-researchers can be transformed into a “textual expression of its essence – in such a way that the effect of the text is at once a reflexive re-living and a reflective appropriation of something meaningful”, which can then assist future readers of this study to be “powerfully animated in [their] own lived experience” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 36). The next section of this chapter discusses the roots of the heuristic research model, and provide a description of the model and its steps.
The Heuristic Research Model
Roots of Heuristic Research.
The heuristic research model began around the same time that humanistic psychology emerged, in the 1960s. Its founder, Clark Moustakas (1990), chose the word heuristic “from the Greek word heuriskein, meaning to discover or find” because it referred to “a process of internal search through which one discovers the nature and meaning of experience” while developing “methods and procedures for further investigation and analysis. Thus, he defines heuristic research as “an organized and systematic form for investigating human experience.” (p. 9)
Moustakas had been studying the phenomena of loneliness (1961), and was discontent with conventional research methods. He believed that investigations of human experience began with an internal search which would reveal the nature and meaning of the phenomena being researched, and would help to develop the methods and procedures for further investigation. This was very different from the quantitative scientific research of the time, which was external, and diligently screened out the presence of the researcher.
The 1950s through the 1970s saw much development of qualitative research methodologies, Moustakas’s model included, and today’s heuristic research model includes influences from Maslow’s work on self-actualization (1956, 1966, 1971), Jourard’s work with self disclosure (1968, 1971), Polanyi’s (1962, 1964, 1966, 1969) exploration of the tacit dimensions, indwelling, and personal knowledge, Gendlin’s (1962) analysis of the meaning of experience, and Roger’s (1961) work on human science.
Moustakas continues to work and re-work his model over the years, and if asked, would likely agree that it is an organic and still evolving model. Having studied for 2 years with this great pioneer of human science before his partial retirement, this researcher is grateful to him for the creation of the heuristic research model.
The Model.
The heuristic research model is a dance of inquiry and discovery, both internal and external, affecting both researcher and participant. Moustakas likens this discovery process to the Greek word “eureka;” “The process of discovery [which] leads investigators to new images and meanings regarding human phenomena, but also to realizations relevant to their own experiences and lives” (1990, p. 9). In this sense, heuristic methodology is a tool to be used for greater understanding of both self and others.
The Tarot cards are another such tool of understanding. Tarot cards are a deck of cards with pictures, which represent humanity’s journey from foolishness to enlightenment, and can also be used for divinatory purposes. The ninth card of the deck is called The Hermit, or The Seeker.
The figure carries a staff and a lantern, and is both a seeker of light and a bringer of light…With each step forward we take, with each bit of knowledge, of light we gain, we are adding to the light within the human race” (Reed, 1991, p. 83-84)
Moustakas (1990) is a bit of a Seeker himself, as he states, “I provide the light that guides the explication of something and knowledge of if it. When I illuminate a question, it comes to life. When I understand its constituents, it emerges as something solid and real” (p.12).
The illumination represented by The Seeker card is concerned with honesty rather than kindness, and Moustakas (1990) cautions that “The dawning of awareness may be refreshing and peaceful, or it may be disturbing and even jarring” (p. 13). Heuristic research seeks to portray truthful “qualities, meanings, and essences of universally unique experiences” (Moustakas, 1990, p. 13) and can best be described in terms of concepts, processes and phases. Each of these concepts, processes and phases will be described and elaborated upon.
The Three Core Concepts of Heuristic Research
Heuristic research requires a certain conceptual attitude. This necessary mindset consists of three components: Tacit knowing, in which something in comprehended in its totality, Intuition, an effortless guidance system, and an Internal frame of reference, or direct conversation with the inner self. The next section will explore each of these attitudes, or ways of being during the research process.
Tacit knowing is a knowing or experiencing of something as synergistic, or larger than the sum of its parts. Douglass & Moustakas (1985) address the relevance of tacit knowing to the heuristic process:
The tacit dimension plays an important part in heuristics. Knowing more than can be articulated shrouds discovery in mystery, lending intrigue to immersion in the theme or question…the tacit dimension is the forerunner of inference and intuition…the tacit is visionary. (p. 49)
Polyani (1966) describes the tacit succinctly, “We know more than we can tell” (p. 4). Words are symbols for agreed upon meanings, and sometimes the symbol exists in its totality, but needs something to awaken it.
Tacit knowledge is both subsidiary and focal. Subsidiary knowledge is visible and describable, while focal knowledge is unseen and invisible. Subsidiary knowledge can be gleaned from people, books and rituals, while focal knowledge may present itself in meditations, intuitions, dreams and “ah-ha” moments.
Tacit knowledge requires a leap of faith, a dance between the facts and the mystery behind the facts. Recognition of this dance is tacit knowing, “a tacit capacity that allows one to sense the unity or wholeness of something from an understanding of the individual qualities or parts” (Moustakas, p. 20).
Intuition, the second of the three concepts central to heuristic research, has been defined by Vaughn (1979) as, “the power of knowing or knowledge without recourse to reason” (p. 45). Knowledge can be explicit or implicit. Explicit knowledge, subsidiary in nature, and implicit knowledge, focal in nature, are connected, Moustakas (1990) suggests by a “bridge” of intuition (p. 23). Many researchers have stories of a hunch they followed, for no logical reason, which lead to a great discovery. While practicing rational science, they have learned to trust their intuition too. Moustakas (1990) supports this link between intuition and knowledge with his own perspective, “Intuition is an essential characteristic of seeking knowledge. Without the intuitive capacity to form patterns, relationships and inferences, essential material for scientific knowledge is denied or lost” (p. 23). Intuition, while not cultivatable upon demand, may nonetheless be trusted to be present and participatory. It sometimes speaks softly and sometimes screams to make itself heard, but always it assists in the revelation of the mystery hidden in the mundane.
Having an Internal Frame of Reference is the last of the three heuristic concepts, a key one in heuristic research, for where else does knowledge and intuition come from, and where else will it be stored and treasured? Taylor & Bogdan (1984) acknowledge that, “the important reality is what people perceive it to be” (p. 2). This is the very foundation of qualitative heuristic research.
Moustakas (1990) confirms that:
To know and understand the nature, meanings, and essences of any human experience, one depends on the internal frame of reference of the person who has had, is having, or will have the experience…If one is to know and understand another’s experience, one must converse directly with the person.” (p. 26)
In summary, the three core concepts unfold as follows: a tacit knowing of something it its entirety results in an intuitive searching process. Discoveries are then invited into both heart and head, where, like the philosophers stone they alchemically transform into pure gold.
The four processes of heuristic research explain how this happens. Identifying with the focus of inquiry describes the initial attraction of the researcher to the phenomena. Self-dialogue refers to the inner voices and conversations that take place during the research process. Indwelling is the holding of experiences within the self, and focusing is the removing of clutter, to make space for necessary awareness’s (1990, p. 25). Each process will now be defined in greater depth.
The Four Processes of Heuristic Research
Moustakas (1990) describes the first of the four processes involved in heuristic research, identifying with the focus of inquiry, as taking place “through exploratory open-ended inquiry, self-directed search, and immersion in active experience” (p. 15). Van Manen (1990) speaks to the importance of this process when he says, “It is to the extent that my experiences could be our experiences that the phenomenologist [or heuristic researcher] wants to be reflectively aware of certain experiential meanings,” (p. 57) The researcher bonds with the question, and that question leads to all that comes after. There are no accidents, no trivial occurrences, only synchronicity. In identifying with the focus of inquiry, each day’s activities are viewed with the eyes of an archaeologist, searching for clues to a greater discovery. Moustakas validates this focus when he states, “In heuristics, an unshakable connection exists between what is out there, in its appearance and reality, and what is within me in reflective thought, feeling and awareness” (p. 12). The research question is being lived.
The next process, self-dialog, allows a conversation to take place between the researcher and the phenomenon. A question appears and brutally honest introspection follows, in which the reasons for the appearance of that specific question are considered. This contemplation of the idea in relation to the self is a two-way dialog, between the question that came from oneself and the relevance it has to the self that recognized its arrival. “I am here,” says the question, and the researcher replies, “I acknowledge you, and will listen to the story of your arrival.” The researcher listens objectively however, and not with romantic attachment, but rather as Pearce (1971) describes,
If you hold and serve the question, until all ambiguity is erased and you really believe in your question…the break point will arrive when you will suddenly be “ready”. (p. 108)
Indwelling, the next process to be considered is a conscious and deliberate “being-with”. In this process, any experience brought back to the self and the self-searching, is an experience of indwelling. Moustakas (1995) elaborates:
The thrust of indwelling is to direct myself towards meanings beyond the appearance of things, beyond the presented thoughts and feelings. Through indwelling, phenomena are centered, not as external objects or events but as pointers to meaning that exist inside the phenomenon or event. (pp. 24-25)
Concrete experiences such as literature reviews, conversations and journaling, and abstract experiences such as the interpretation of dreams for possible thesis topics are both forms of indwelling, that is to say, the process of relating the material back to the self, and literally “dwelling in it” (p.12). Were there no efforts to relate the external, be it concrete or abstract, to the inner life of the self, there would be no indwelling.
When I consider an issue, problem, or question, I enter into it fully. I focus on it with unwavering attention and interest. I search introspectively, meditatively, and reflectively into its nature and meaning… With full and unqualified interest, I am determined to extend my understanding and knowledge of an experience. (Moustakas, 1990, p. 12)
The final process of heuristic research, focusing, is one that brings with it some relief, as recognition begins to dawn through a series of narrowing recognitions. The researcher honors his or her own experience, and explores that of co-researchers. By applying the previously described processes, virtually every experience can be interpreted as significant. While at first this palate of relevant material is overwhelming, a natural selection will take place through the acceptance of some as significant, and the discarding of others as Moustakas (1990) draws upon Gendlin’s (1978) work on focusing, and describes this process as:
…an inner attention, a staying with, a sustained process of systematically contacting the more central meanings of an experience. Focusing enables one to see something as it is and to make whatever shifts are necessary to remove the clutter and make contact with necessary awarenesses and insights into one’s experiences. (p. 12)
The processes of identification with the focus of inquiry, self-dialogue, indwelling and focusing, along with the previously described conceptual framework of tacit knowing, intuition and the internal frame of reference, take place in six phases.
The Six Phases of Heuristic Research
Contemplation of the research question progresses naturally through six phases. Initial engagement heeds the call of the research study, and the study is then lived through immersion within it. Incubation protects the privacy of the process until the longed for “a-ha” of illumination is given explication in words, then to be summarized in the creative synthesis. Fleshed out descriptions of these phases will follow.
Initial engagement
Initial engagement is a first spark of sorts. It is here that attention is paid to what captivates. Often this captivation has relevance to one’s personal autobiography. The artist, Edward Hopper, as quoted by James Hillman (1996), speaks to an understanding of this influence:
In every artist’s development the germ of the later work is always found in the earlier. The nucleus around which the artist’s intellect builds his work is himself…and this changes little from birth to death. The only real influence I’ve ever had was myself. (p. X)
These first captivations, even if discarded, blaze the first trails through the contemplative process. There is initial engagement within each step of the research; refining the question, reviewing the literature, writing the chapters, collecting and analyzing the data, each phase begins with an initial engagement which acts as the front door through which curiosity enters.
Immersion
Just as the researcher is interested in the ways the co-researchers have lived their experiences of the research question, so is the researcher living her own experience of both the question and the entire research process. Immersion is a deliberate submersion experience. At this point, absolutely everything is relevant. Immersion could be a very deliberate exploration of chosen materials and experiences, or just as easily, immersion could be window-shopping at the mall, where every manikin, kiosk and waterfountain seem to speak directly to the phenomena being researched. It is all grist for the mill. Everything is significant in that it will ripple or resonate its way back to the experience. Moustakas (1990) concurs, “…the researcher lives the question in waking, sleeping, and even dream states”(p. 28). The researcher might fear that he or she is not doing immersion correctly, and yet there is no way to do it incorrectly.
Incubation
Immersion, if reverently recognized, could lead to obsession, meaning in everything and everything with meaning. Consequently it is necessary to enter willingly and consciously into the next phase of incubation, “the process in which the researcher retreats from the intense, concentrated focus on the question” (Moustakas, 1990, p. 28). Ideas gathered thus far are set on “back-brain” to simmer. Faith is required during incubation, faith that in doing something completely unrelated to the research study, the research is still being served. Whether struggling to define the exact wording of the research question, waiting in between interviews, or leaving the data behind in favor of other pursuits, incubation allows previously unrelated words, ideas, concepts and experiences to ferment into a new whole, greater than the sum of its parts. It is tempting to mislabel incubation as procrastination, and this distinction has tortured many a researcher. But procrastination is a deliberate avoidance of the research process, while incubation is an honoring of the creative process, in which the seed has been planted, and fertilized with all of the material encountered. Tugging on the new growth does not hasten its development; rather it prevents the creation of roots and the transfer of nutrients. Gestation of the seed idea in this fertile soil is essential, and will inevitably lead to growth and the subsequent birth of the next phase of heuristic research, illumination.
Illumination
When illumination occurs, all of the fragments and seemingly unrelated pieces re-combined to form a new and complete picture, and there is a sense of the proverbial light bulb alighting, the primal “ah-ha”. Polanyi (1962) assures that at this moment all changes, never to be the same:
Having made a discovery, I shall never see the world again as before. My eyes have become different; I have made myself into a person seeing and thinking differently. I have crossed a gap, the heuristic gap, which lies between problem and discovery. (p. 142)
Illumination solidifies the research question. It clarifies the manner in which the literature review is organized. From the sea of data, it floats themes to the top like cream rising, causing a perceptual shift that makes visible things which were previously hidden. It is a welcome “ah-ha” after the previous phases; the destination longed for thus far, and tangible proof of the validity of each of the previous phases.
Explication
Explication is a second journey through the previously described concepts, processes and phases, which reveals the complexity and multi-facetedness of the thing just illuminated. It is what Freud would call making the latent manifest. The “ah-ha” has delivered a package of awareness, and explication is the process by which the package is opened, and its contents inventoried. According to Moustakas (1990):
The purpose of the explication phase is to fully examine what has awakened in consciousness, in order to understand its various layers of meaning…The entire process of explication requires that researchers attend to their own awarenesses, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and judgments as a prelude to the understanding that is derived from conversations and dialogues with others. (p. 31)
Moustakas cautions that the researcher should be clear about what has been awakened before offering it up to others because it presents itself most purely to the first eyes that see it. For ever after, the illumination will be viewed, dissected and debated through the lenses of others, but in the privacy of the first vision, pure essence is alive for but a moment. Explication describes the period necessary to perfect the research question, organize the literature review, or make the acquaintance of the data, to “meet” it on all the levels that it presented itself. It is a listening for the themes to reveal themselves through an attending to each word, and a holding of each word as sacred. A process similar to wine making, explication extracts the juice from the previously discovered grapes of insight, reducing them to pure essence and draining from them every drop of wisdom.
Creative Synthesis
Creative synthesis is the final destination of the heuristic research process. Various processes and phases of heuristic research will have been entered into and emerged from as many times as necessary. The results of the research now clear, the painstaking individual phases prior now blur together into a synergy that is greater than the sum of their parts. While synthesis is the last chapter of a study, it is also the last chapter of the researcher’s inner process, allowing the researcher to feel done, and to let go. Creative synthesis is an assimilation and personalization of the entire journey. It can be said at this phase that “these are my results” and each of the four words is pregnant with meaning and relevance. “These” means these themes and conclusions, not the many others sifted through and discarded. “Are” means affirmation, birth, arrival, after countless “are not’s.” “My” means entitlement, the research has been created from scratch and stands complete, earned through the sweat of the entire process. “Results” means the conclusions of inquiry, defined not casually or haphazardly, but deliberately and with disciplined intention. These are my results.
This chapter has discussed quantitative and qualitative research paradigms and has shown why the heuristic research model is the best model for this study. It then reviewed the historical roots and the steps of the model. The next chapter details the methods and procedures used to implement this model.
CHAPTER IV
Methods and Procedures
This chapter details the methods and procedures used to prepare for and collect data. It outlines the selection process for co-researchers, describes the interview process, and provides demographic information about participants.
The heuristic research process is grounded in relationship, the researcher's relationship to herself, and her relationship to the other participants in the study. I used the term “co-researcher” to capture this relationship between researcher and participant because it is more alive than the sterile researcher/subject relationship of the quantitative studies. Prior to obtaining any material from my co-researcher, I began my research with a clear understanding of what it was that I was asking of my co-researchers, which necessitated a preparatory self study.
Methods and Procedures Used in Preparation for Collection of Data
Since I used the heuristic model of research, I took myself through some of the stages of the heuristic research process by undertaking a self-study of my own experience of embodied spiritual empowerment.
As described in the previous chapter, I developed my research attitude by applying the three processes of heuristic research to myself. I accessed my tacit knowing, intuition and internal focus of reference to honor, clarify and hone the question that most captured the essence of what I hoped to research. These processes were facilitated through class discussions, meetings with my committee, and brainstorming with my own spiritual community, work colleagues, family, and friends. I also accessed old journals to discover how my question had been present with me in the past, and then brought that presence forward into clarification of my question. I listened carefully to my own thoughts and self-talk, and paid special attention to my dreams, and to the half-awake half-asleep musings that so often solve my problems when my waking self cannot.
I identified with the focus of inquiry, by swimming in my research topic, and the rich worlds revealed by the literature review. The vast realms of feminism, spirituality and women’s studies became both hobby and obsession. As Moustakas (1990) suggests, I entered into an open-ended dialogue with my question, and allowed the wording to change several times. The lack of embodied, spiritually empowered women was painfully evident everywhere I looked, as were magazine articles, radio interviews and best selling fiction relating to my topic. What was “out there” and what was within me seemed identical for the better part of year before the actual research began.
In an attempt to identify with the concept of embodiment, I gave a great deal of attention to my body, becoming very aware of when my heart felt open or closed, and when I was holding in my stomach and constricting my womb-center. I also began to notice women who did not have perfect bodies, but seemed perfectly comfortable with themselves. I went to a wedding where the bride’s belly was rounded, and she did not hold it in, nor did she wear make-up, or silly shoes. I admired women in tank tops and mini-skirts, curious to know how they had come to the place of self acceptance in a culture that surely told them they were too large for such outfits.
Already acutely aware of the damaging media images of women and femininity, I found myself unable to watch television or read the common waiting room magazines because I would be flooded with a mixture of rage, powerlessness and profound sadness. I took these feelings back to the computer and let them fuel my research process.
I also expressed identification with my research topic by giving greater awareness to the use of my body in ritual, whether carrying the sacramental wine, opening a sacred circle, or simply breathing the ceremonial incense, I consciously attended to all five senses, and held an attitude of gratitude to my body for its assistance in my spiritual expressions.
Perhaps as a result of such a lengthy immersion in my topic, I began to see evidence that my question was valid with some of my therapy clients. I have run women’s empowerment groups since 1999, and women get better faster when they have a Divine Feminine to access, and are comfortable in their own skin. The DaVinci Code, allegedly a fictional account of the hidden Divine Feminine being re-discovered, is on the bestseller list even as I write this. Yoga, the uniting of spirit and body, has never been more popular in this country. My world narrowed down to women with embodied spirituality, and women without.
I engaged in much self-dialogue. It was, and has always been, my chosen and preferred method of introspective work, taking place largely through late night writing, and talking to myself while driving. In self-dialogue, I challenged my own body biases, encouraged myself to breath deeper, reminded myself to hold hugs just a few seconds longer, and focused on the feeling of two stomachs pressed together when hugging another woman.
Glasgow, in his 1999 study of “Talking to one’s self”, discovered three conversational types of self-talk, Rehearsal, Re-enactment, and Quest for Meaning. The Quest for Meaning can “take the form of a simple, everyday decision making process or a complex exploration of a deep meaning.” (p. 49) It was this latter style of self-dialogue that I most often engaged in during the self study phase of research.
I immersed in research through continued dialogue with friends, peers, and professions, as well as continued meditation and journaling. My literature review enhanced this immersion enormously.
Once immersed, I participated in further indwelling within the world of embodied spiritual empowerment. This took place through spiritual body disciplines such as yoga, and continuing rituals involving my body, and the earth. Eventually, I illuminated the certainty that it was time for my work to begin with my co-researchers.
When my committee and I felt that my responsibility for preparing myself for the research was complete, I was ready to obtain research materials from my co-researchers.
Acquisition of co-researchers
Defining co-researcher criteria
Prior to interviewing co-researchers it was necessary to define exactly what I was looking for in a co-researcher, and how I hoped to go about finding respondents who would meet my criteria.
I felt that qualified co-researchers would meet the following criteria:
1. The co-researcher would be a woman.
2. The co-researcher would self-report a resonance with this topic.
3. The co-researcher would have a spiritual practice that she could clearly articulate, which may include the following parts:
a. A pervasive feeling of inner peace evident in behavior and self-report.
b. Mastery of spiritual tools such as sacred texts, symbol systems, psychic or intuitive abilities, music, movement, sacred theatre, evidenced by described spiritual practices and experiences.
c. Regular worship or devotional practices.
d. An accessible reliable connection to something definable, which provides comfort, strength, and ontological meaning, evidenced by articulate self-report.
e. An absence of exclusive membership in any one organized religion or group.
4. The co-researcher will be aware of, and able to articulate the process by which she came to recognize her embodied spiritual empowerment.
It was my hope that by establishing the above criteria, I would identify co-researchers who had traveled from a place of spiritual insecurity to a place of embodied spiritual empowerment.
Keeping in mind that a potential area of new learning could be found in the exploration of embodied spirituality outside of traditional areas of religion or vocation, I sought a varied range of co-researchers by utilizing the following methods:
1. Approached women traditionally believed to have embodied spiritual empowerment and approached individuals in these populations.
2. Approached women whom I believed to be living lives of embodied spiritual empowerment outside of strictly denominational parameters.
Four co-researchers were recommended to me, and the others I invited after sharing my question with them, because they were living and or working in ways that were congruent with embodied spiritual empowerment.
Initial preparation of co-researchers
Each co-researcher received a letter (see Appendix A- Letter to Co-Researchers) stating the intention of my research and the requirements expected of them as co-researchers. I included a pared down copy of my dissertation chapter one. It briefly positioned my study and included the definition of the question, so they would know what I was asking them, and why I was asking it. I also included some questions that could be thought over prior to the interview (see Appendix B- Guiding Questions for Participants). Lastly, I included an informed consent contract (see Appendix C- Informed Consent Agreement) the signing of which indicated each participant’s agreement to participate in the audiotaped interview, and willingness to have her results published in my dissertation.
I contacted each participant approximately a week after she had received the materials, to ascertain that she did indeed meet the co-researcher criteria, and to answer any questions she had. While all of the women resonated with the topic, and felt they met the criteria, there was a great deal of diversity in women’s relationship to the word “embodied.” Some used the word literally, placing spirituality in, and expressing it through, their bodies. Others used the word metaphorically, believing the body to be an illusion, and embodiment to be a philosophical view or attitude. In all instances, after clarifying conversation, the women were found to be appropriate co-researchers. An interview time was scheduled in a way that allowed her the time to explore and incubate with the materials.
This was the first of two processes used to prepare the co-researchers for their interview; the second process took place during the actual interview itself.
Having prepared myself, defined the criteria, secured a large enough sample of co-researchers to complete my study and provided them with preparatory materials to review, all that remained was to conduct the actual interviews themselves.
Collection of Data
Interview Preparation
Prior to the interviews themselves, I secured the necessary interview materials. I designated a canvas tote bag with a spiral goddess on the front as the “interview tote.” Into it went the new digital recorder I had purchased, two extra sets of batteries, an extra set of co-researcher materials, a note pad and several pens. I came to associate the bag with feelings of excitement similar to seeing a present and knowing that what is inside is going to be really good.
Summary of Co-Researchers
Thirteen co-researchers were chosen out of fondness for the symbolism of the number thirteen; a perfect coven in the Wicca Tradition, the number of attendees at the Last Supper, and the number on the door of my office. They ranged in age from 28 to 68. Five are published authors on topics congruent with embodied spiritual empowerment. Three work as psychotherapists; one of them is also a minister, and performs spiritual ceremonies of wedding, baptism and consecration. Two are yoga teachers. Two women are sisters, and while their day jobs are not closely related to this topic, they host regular rituals for the Pagan community. One woman is a very active advocate in Pagan, peace & justice, and women’s communities, while also home-schooling her children. Nine of the women also hold secondary roles as teachers of some sort, either in classrooms or through lectures, writing and workshops.
Spiritually, seven women have blended belief systems that combine more than one faith or tradition. One woman is a vocal feminist, and combines the Baptist orientation of her childhood with some of the Catholic traditions. The second woman was raised as a Christian Scientist but has shifted to The Course in Miracles as her primary path. The third woman remains true to her native Catholicism but has found a parish where feminist liturgy is welcome and the Divine Feminine both acknowledged and celebrated. The fourth is very active both the local Pagan community, and her family’s Catholic Parish. One woman is supplementing her longstanding participation with various Women’s Mystery traditions with more recent Christian church attendance, and one is doing just the opposite – supplementing longstanding participation in her Christian church with more recent involvement in the Women’s Mystery tradition. The seventh woman is blending earth-centered Paganism and Druidism with the Western Mystery Tradition. Two women attend church with their families, but have also created a community of women who gather regularly in ritual work, and find their rituals to be more meaningful than the church services. Three follow paths of Eastern spirituality; one of them as a Zen Buddhist. The last co-researcher belongs to the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS).
Interview Settings
Interviews were conducted at locations of the co-researcher’s choice. Several chose the comfort of their own homes, and were consequently able to draw upon personal possessions during the interview, which lent another layer of rich data to the experience. Others chose the protected privacy of my office. Two interviews took place in the hotels where the women were staying. One interview took place in the privacy of the co-researcher’s yoga studio, between classes, and one was conducted and recorded over the telephone.
Interview Process
When the actual interviews occurred, the second phase of participant preparation began, in which I tried to establish a comforting rapport. I did this by ascertaining that the meeting place was free of distractions, and allowed enough time for casual “getting to know you” conversation, during which I confirmed demographic information. If the woman was of a tradition that valued prayer, or the setting of an intention, or simply a few deep breaths, we would start there as a centering, and then proceed.
During the interview itself, I introduced the same questions that the co-researcher had received in the mail, and remained sensitive and open to any direction in which the co-researcher wished to move. I used reflective listening techniques to ensure that I understood what was being said, and probes to take the participant “deeper” into the personal, rather than “broader” out into ancillary or tangential topics. I ended each interview by asking the participant to choose a famous or favored woman of embodied spiritual empowerment as her pseudonym.
Immediately after each interview, I wrote down my impressions and identified any themes present, in both the material from the participant, and in my own experience of the interview. I became obsessed with finding safe storage for my digital audio files, keeping them on my computer, on a memory key, on a CD, and up in cyber-sky on my web-site server. I thought about my co-researchers often, and frequently felt a physical heart swelling gratitude to them for sharing so generously of themselves. Completed interviews were then transcribed.
Transcription of Interviews
While the majority of the interviews were sent out for transcription, I did transcribe several of them myself, using a computer program called “Thera-Scribe,” which allowed easy manipulation of digital audio data. All transcripts were stored electronically. Co-researchers’ confidentiality was further protected in two ways. First, the women chose aliases by taking the names of women they considered to have embodied spiritual empowerment. Second, the use of a qualitative data analysis program negated the necessity of printing personal interviews, as all data was manipulated electronically.
When all interviews were transcribed and stored in several protected locations, I metaphorically tucked them their cyber-beds, and imagined them sleeping there. The data analysis process would soon awaken them, search of the heuristic mysteries of women and their quest for embodied spiritual empowerment.
This chapter describes the methods and procedures used to prepare for and collect data. It outlines the selection process for co-researchers, provids their demographic information and describes the interviewing, data storage, and data transcription processes.
The next chapter discusses the organization and analysis of the data, and presents the research findings.
CHAPTER V
Presentation of Findings
This chapter describes the methods and procedures used in the organization and analysis of the data. The themes and sub-themes identified are briefly described. Women’s experiences of embodied spiritual empowerment are then presented in greater depth through first-person depictions and detailed portraits describing the interplay of themes and lived-experiences. A narrative synthesis closes the chapter with an “aesthetic rendition” of the themes and essences of women’s experiences of embodied spiritual (Moustakas, 1990, p. 52).
Methods and Procedures Used for the Organization and Analysis of Data
Organization of the data actually began during the interview process, with the jotting down of initial thoughts and themes as the transcribed interviews were read over for the first time. When all interviews were transcribed, further data organization took place as the transcribed interviews, personal notations, and personal materials shared by the co-researchers were brought together. Moustakas’s (1990) six phases of heuristic research methodology were then used to analyze the collected materials.
Initial engagement with the materials occurred in several ways. Moustakas suggests that initial engagement is “a self-dialogue” combining the self of the researcher, and the “passionate concern” of the research question (p. 27). Loading the interviews into the data analysis program allowed a second reading of each one, and the self-dialogue process began with self-talk while marking potential themes or quotations. Materials given to me by co-researchers were sifted through and loosely organized into intuitive groupings. Several co-researchers suggested a reading or mentioned literature important to them in their interviews. I found and reviewed those books and articles where possible, then added them to the intuitive groups of ancillary material. While this handing of the material was brief and rather superficial, it was enough to re-ignite my passionate concerns regarding the separation of women’s bodies from their spirituality, and I looked forward to the next phase of the data analysis process.
Moustakas (1990) accurately describes the next phase of immersion in the data as the phase in which “the researcher lives the question in waking, sleeping and even dream states.” Everything in my life became “crystallized around the question.” I came to be “on intimate terms” with it, and was able to “live it and grow in knowledge and understanding of it (p. 28). During this process, there were many synchronicities in my personal life, as I began to see similar themes in classes, with clients, and in mainstream media. Family, friends, teachers and colleagues also shared information they thought might be relevant to the study. Further immersion was facilitated by the use of a qualitative data analysis program which allowed for both the creation of themes, and the storage of meaningful quotes under each theme. It was possible to view the themes as a constantly open window at the top of the working screen, and to view the data by person, or by theme. Eventually, all the data had been entered and loosely marked with initial themes, and it was necessary to retreat “from the intense, concentrated focus on the question” (Moustakas, 1990, p. 28) by entering into a period of incubation.
As an ex-chef, I have always thought the incubation process has much in common with making a good pot of soup. It takes some time to gather ingredients, make stock, chop vegetables and measure seasonings, and one has a pretty good idea of where that pot of soup is heading in terms of its flavor and consistency. But until the soup has been allowed to simmer for a while, it tastes like a gathering of unrelated ingredients. Time is necessary for those ingredients to get to know each other, and to synthesize themselves into something greater than the sum of their parts. So it is with heuristic incubation. Having loaded the data into both the program and my head, I put it on a back-brain simmer, trusting Moustakas’s (1990) assurance that “the inner workings of the tacit dimension and intuition” would “continue to clarify and extend knowledge on levels outside” of my “immediate awareness” (p. 29). I would like to report that my incubation process involved both soulful and playful activities, but in actuality, my private practice choose that time to explode with new referrals. I had a waiting list for the first time in my professional career, and outside of working, spent my precious down-time in simple family activities and yoga classes.
As the qualifying meeting drew closer, and my client load lessened a bit, I opened up the data analysis program and pulled out those initial themes, seeing them with fresh eyes. In just one evening, as Moustakas (1990) suggested, I experienced both a “clustering of data” and “corrections of distorted understandings” (p. 29). Faster than I had imagined possible, clusters of themes emerged. At first there were quite a few, but further patience and curiosity resulted in some of the themes merging with others. Eventually all of the data collapsed into one solid set of themes, and felt complete.
Explication of the identified themes was by far the most difficult, time consuming and rewarding process. The end goal of the explication process is the development of “a comprehensive depiction of the essences of the experience” (Moustakas, 1990, p. 31). I created these depictions by reviewing all of the materials specific to one co-researcher and describing the interplay of the their experience and the previously identified themes. Retaining the co-researcher’s language via use of quotes, and using their examples throughout, the resultant depiction was both a first-person account of the co-researcher’s lived experience, and a personalizing of the research themes. I then sent the three depictions that most vividly expressed the essence of women’s experiences of Embodied spiritual empowerment back to their owners for proofing and commentary. Their corrections and suggestions were minor, and easily completed.
Next, I gathered all of the depictions and put them through the same process that the individual interviews had gone through. This time, the experiences of the group as a whole were described in a third person composite depiction, described by Moustakas as a “vivid, accurate, alive and clear” description which illustrates “the core qualities and themes inherent in the experience” (p. 52).
Choosing the best narratives and quotes to use for the composite depiction naturally resulted in the identification of three women whose experiences of embodied spiritual empowerment clearly represented the group as a whole. Their stories, called portraits, were “presented in such a way that both the phenomena investigated and the individual persons” emerged “in a vital and unified manner” (Moustakas, 1990, p. 52).
The data is expressed one last time through a narrative synthesis of the experience. As the primary researcher, I was given a great deal of freedom in representing the experience of embodied spiritual empowerment. Referred to by Moustakas as a “scientist-artist,” I struggled to create an “aesthetic rendition of the themes and essential meanings of the phenomenon.” Eventually I combined “knowledge, passion and presence” into a narrative description that was creative, while retaining “personal, professional and literary value” (1990, p. 52).
Major Themes and Sub-Themes
A woman's experience of embodied spiritual empowerment is somatic, relational and sacred. These aspects of experience are represented by three themes: Bodyhood, Being-With and Omniscience and nine sub-themes: Using ritual as a form of embodied prayer, Using the body to connect spirit and earth, Trusting corporeal wisdom, Awareness of the hallowed here and now, Recognition of sacred connections, Synthesizing polarities, Personalizing God/dess, Negotiating Patriarchal influences, and Recognizing the Sacred-Self.
The major themes of Bodyhood, Being-With and Omniscience naturally align under the main terms of the question – Embodied, Spiritual and Empowerment, as shown below:
|What is a woman’s experience of |
|Embodied |Spiritual |Empowerment |
|Bodyhood |Omniscience |Being-With |
Theme 1: Bodyhood
Bodyhood illuminates the ways in which women perceive and express their somatic spirituality. One way that women experience Bodyhood is by using ritual as a form of embodied prayer.
I understood the power of ritual to connect one to everything in the cosmos and I just felt powerfully free and connected… I think that moment was probably the beginning of my own sort of spiritual journey...
Some churches use ritual on a regular basis, like the one that gave girls a chalice in celebration of first menses. “There was a priest presiding, so that would’ve made it a Catholic ritual right? I thought if they did it as part of a liturgy, it was a Catholic ritual!” Other women participate in more Pagan rituals, often outside.
I'll never forget all these women huddled in these little groups trying to keep their candles lit so that the Sun would come back and the earth wouldn't freeze. It just makes me laugh because we were novices, just getting our feet wet in the power of ritual and the power of women being together, sharing our spirituality, giving it a name and a place and a way to act on it, or act it out.
Rituals give meaning to important changes. Through ritual, bodily changes, seasonal changes and lifestyle changes are honored and celebrated.
A woman can also experience Bodyhood while using her body to connect spirit and earth:
Spiritual means to me a dimension of experience and capacities that are not a product of the ego type… The body is the container and it's energetic, it's alive and it produces life force for these more subtle experience which cannot really be attributed to thoughts, feelings or sensations.”
There are times, usually in nature or ritual, when I can feel my spirit embodied. I call myself the “Judy who Knows” in those states, to differentiate from my every day self. It feels like a holy-woman has borrowed my body and is looking out my eyes. I feel so incredibly grounded in my body, in my womb center, so ancient and at the same time so transcendent.
The breath is also a commonly cited tool for connecting body and spirit, “…the more I focus on the teaching of the breath, it leads me to my inner wisdom, and my soul.”
Trusting corporeal wisdom, or body intelligence, is another way that women experience Bodyhood. “I trust my body more than I trust my mind,” “I followed the signals in my body…”
The body is the container. It produces life force for these more subtle experiences which cannot really be attributed to thoughts, feelings or sensations. The origin of them is other than my personal self, yet they are received by my personal self.
Pain sometimes directs attention back to the body and its wisdom:
I was so ill I felt like I needed something huge to happen to me so that everything in my body would be so rearranged so that I would come out this different person… So I drove my sisters crazy chasing lightning. Literally chasing lightning. And thinking if I got struck by lightning, metabolically, physically, spiritually, I'd be so different I'd walk away and I would be okay again.
The feeling of rightness is a common phenomenon, described as “something resonating in my body,” “my intuition and inner voice” and “the difference between a head-knowing and a womb-knowing:”
I think there is a process of coming into an embodied spirituality. There is a certain substance that layers up inside of you as you come into an awareness of that innate calling of your own life, your own moment, your own body, the ground you're standing on, that is very empowering.
Theme 2: Being-With
The next theme of the three themes, Being-With is a concept used by the existential philosopher Heidegger, to describe qualities of being and relating. Moustakas (1995) gives a definition of Being-With that perfectly describes how the women of this study experience their relationships with themselves, the Divine, and daily life:
To be with oneself is a way of facing the polarities of one’s world, a process of realizing that each contrasting component represents a legitimate voice and that the challenge is to find a place of harmony and balance among the diversity of possibilities and actualities, opposing views, inner tensions, and contrary ideas. To Be-With is a way of talking to oneself, of facing the fears and doubts of existence as well as the enticements and attractions of life, listening to the inner silences and words, and daring to cope with the strains of freedom and imprisonment. To Be-With is to accept and let be the forces of darkness and light, discovery and mystery, joy and sorrow, life and death. (p. xx)
Being-With refers to the ways in which women honor the spiritually holy moments of their daily life while negotiating the polarities of their existence. Having an awareness of the hallowed-here-and-now is one way of Being-With. “It's not about going to a sacred space, and having an experience with God.” “I am already home and it’s already holy.” Nature is often perceived as divine. “The woods are like my church.” “I think of myself as most spiritually empowered when I am in touch with the source from which I came, as well as the rest of creation around me.”
Being-With also entails a recognition of sacred connections. “There's something… about female friendships and bonds and cohesions that strengthens women.” Upon entering a woman’s consciousness raising group, one co-researcher realized “oh my God, every other woman is having very similar experiences as mine and I am not alone!” Sacred connections are not specific to woman-woman relationships:
All relationships are sacred, if we let them be. Some stand out as particularly important to my evolution. Each of my spiritual awakenings, and each of the therapeutic epiphanies that have allowed me to change self-defeating patterns have come in relationship to someone else. A teacher, a mentor, a lover or friend… I don’t learn much in the vacuum of my own ego.
Being-With also necessitates synthesizing polarities, like the idea that Earth is sinful while heaven is holy, or that the body is sinful while the soul is spiritual.
I see all the divisions that have been created between what is sacred and what is secular, and for me they are very bogus. It’s all sacred. It’s not about going to a sacred space and having an experience with God. All places are holy.
I was in therapy, working on how polarities and either/or thinking were at the root of most of my suffering. I realized I could add a third option, called “and”. It was the beginning of self-compassion. It felt like an escape-hatch from Hell.
Theme 3: Omniscience
Omniscience describes women’s need to contemplate their definitions of, and relationship to, the Organizing Intelligence of the Universe. This requires women to enter into a process of Personalizing God/dess:
When my clients don’t like the God of their childhood, I give them permission to find a new one. Those that find something that works for them seem to progress faster than those who remain disconnected from their family ontology, but don’t bother to find another way.
Women with Embodied spiritual empowerment have given themselves permission to change their ideas about God/dess. “I no longer think of the Divine Feminine as some huge earth goddess waiting on a rock for my ritual and prayers.” They honor the Divine in forms that speak to them. “I can't conceive of anything but one God, wearing the face of the Goddess or wearing the face of the God.” Each woman conceptualizes God/dess in her own way. “When I think of the black Madonna, an image of the Divine Feminine, I think so much of that symbol is about the holiness of matter. That it is actually Divine.”
Making peace with God-the-Father is a necessary step in both personalizing God/dess and experiencing Omniscience. “Because God was a man, for me to be who I was,”
…I had to reject God. Because God was part of the patriarchy and the patriarchy was oppressing me and suppressing me and harming me, in very deep ways. When I was able to move beyond that… I began to be a little more open to the concept of God.
For me, that meant working backwards from good men to a good God. I couldn’t get to an ok place with God-the-Father until I had some really good, loving men in my life. Men who recognized and honored the Divine Feminine in women – not in a sappy spineless way - but in a powerful, sexy, chivalrous way, and who knew the Patriarchy was as damaging to them as it was to women. Men with spiritual direction and emotional intelligence were my doorway into the Divine Masculine. The sacred marriage of the Pagan Lord and Lady helped too, it made God part of a sexy loving partnership.
Realizing that their suffering is caused by Patriarchal structures claiming to speak for God-the-Father, and not God himself, women are then able to embrace the idea of a Divine Masculine:
I had to learn to specify my anger, towards Patriarchal fundamentalist propaganda, and away from the energy known as masculine…you know, keep the male baby, throw out the patriarchal bathwater.
…and then it struck me… if we followed the thread all the way back, it really went back to how we saw our picture of God. What if how we see God has everything to do with how we relate to each other and what we value and what we don't value? So that picture of God is male, and white, and suddenly I realized that that's what we value in our culture!
When women use their bodies to house and express their spirituality, live fully in the sacred moment with a personalized God/dess, and have made peace with Patriarchal influences, they reach the final stage of Omniscience, Recognizing the Sacred-Self.
“I didn't know that I could call myself God. That I could say, I am divine, I am a spiritual embodiment. Embodied spirituality and the women who practice it are empowered by the recognition that “we all have God-seeds inside that we’re growing.”
What I learned, going from just the most scared, wimpy, insecure, low self-esteem, milk-toast, sorry-assed girl you ever could imagine, was that through doing a series of things I thought I never could do, they became part of me...
“Thankfully, I had the Divine presence inside of me, and my spiritual being kept pushing me forward”. When women connect with their inner holiness, some also embrace the idea of a Divine Feminine.
Until we can image the Divine as feminine, our society will not be whole… if we're going to have God-talk or conversation, we must do it in an egalitarian way so that we can speak in language, image, symbol about the Divine as both feminine and masculine.
These themes tell the story of embodied spiritual empowerment. Women reclaim their bodies as wise spiritual tools. Then they plant themselves firmly in the holiness of the here and now, where they honor sacred connections, and restore to false divisions. Lastly, in their bodies and on the earth, women personalize God/dess, heal Patriarchal wounds, and come to know themselves as sacred expressions of the Divine, and Divine Feminine. This process is described more fully in the next section.
Presentation of the Data
The themes and sub-themes inherent in women’s experiences of embodied spiritual empowerment are next presented in four ways, each one capturing a essential perspective not available to the others. Three individual depictions introduce the themes, and three portraits then show those themes as they are lived out in the lives of three co-researchers. The group’s experiences as a whole, combined with the phenomena of embodied spiritual empowerment, are then presented as a composite depiction. Lastly, a narrative synthesis closes the chapter with a creative expression of a woman’s experience of embodied spiritual empowerment.
Individual Depictions
The following three individual depictions present the qualities and universal themes that women with embodied spiritual empowerment experience. Verbatim dialogue is used whenever possible. If changes or deletions were necessary, they were made in ways that protected the original integrity of the experience.
Depiction of Mama’s Experience.
It took me a long time, over 20 years, to break through the illusion that I was my body, that I was ugly, or pretty, too fat, too thin, not tall enough, needed to look a certain way to be accepted, and to avoid abandonment. Now part of my spiritual embodiment is about taking those labels off and just allowing myself to be present. I can be so attached to how I think, or feel, I can find countless ways to run away. But when I detach from my desires, and from thinking that I am my body, or my mind, then I’m really present.
So, my experience of spiritual embodiment is really about practicing non-attachment, about recognizing my personality and having a sense of humor around it. I believe the whole idea of the human being part of my journey here is to remember who I am. And because I have been given the gift, or tool, or maybe curse, of desire and pleasure through my physical body, I have to remember that pleasure won’t fix me, or fill me up. I don’t own my body, my head, my hair, I’m not those things. My body is a gift, I can use it as a vehicle, to experience lessons, but I am much more than that. So I spend a lot of time giving myself the tools of self-introspection, like the breath. The breath is a gift, it’s my life force, it gives me the opportunity to be here. If I listen to my head, it will tell me to drink, eat, do drugs, react. It’s volatile most of the time.
So I’ve learned that my body is not my soul, and neither is my mind. My soul comes forward when I get out of the way, and allow myself to be natural, in nature, accepting of my emotions and personality, then my soul has the ability to shine through me. It helps me be of service by guiding my body and thoughts. My soul has a wisdom that helps me elevate my thoughts, most of my thoughts are so pathetic, I spend a lot of time working on elevating my thoughts and getting my soul to a place that’s healthy and good. Sometimes people talk about, “Oh she’s really spiritual” or “that was spiritual” or “I’m not a spiritual person,” but I don’t believe any human being isn’t spiritual. It’s not like someone is soulless. There are too many clichés and too much crap around spirituality. It’s a very simple thing. It’s just who I really am. My personality is not who I am. My personality is usually just reacting to not connecting with my spirit. I’ve never had a lot of compassion for myself until this year. I learned that when I don’t have compassion for myself, that energy becomes misdirected and destructive towards myself, or somebody else. Nobody could teach me how to have compassion for myself. I had to teach myself. And the only way to teach myself was to heal things in my past, and raise myself up. To raise myself.
I don’t think anyone has their spirituality outside of them. I think people just don’t remember it’s there. I didn’t. There’s no such thing as non-spiritual embodiment, there’s just forgetting and lack of awareness. And fear. Fear is a huge one for me. False evidence appearing real, that’s pretty much our whole society. But my fears will keep me separate from others, while my spiritual-physical embodiment reminds me that we are not separate. It reminds me that we are all connected.
I saw a Woman's Health magazine and I was excited because it talked about healing on the cover. I opened up to the first page and there was a beautiful letter by the editor talking about breath and healing the body. But as I proceeded through the magazine every page had an ad about one-minute ab workouts, losing weight in 24 hours by taking this pill, cellulite removal… Nothing about how the lines on your face are your wisdom, the dimples on your ass are your texture and the road map of your life. No instructions about how to walk across the poolside without that wrap, showing your beautiful body. One article talked about self-esteem, and on the page next to it was an ad I interpreted as “you're ugly so you'd better take these pills because you'd better shrink or no one's going to think you're good enough.”
Women have forgotten their spiritual embodiment. It’s easy to do. I was raised in a world where my looks are who I am. Who I am is going to get your permission because you are a man. Who I am is fearful of you, because you are physically stronger than me. Who I am is going to annihilate you in my head, because I can’t be you. I don’t feel that way anymore. It’s not a woman-man problem. I feel like it’s a problem of women. Men are in the same spiritual dilemma that we are, and they need our teachings. Part of the reason for religion so long ago was because men felt inferior. If you really look at cultures from hundreds and thousands of years ago, women were considered to be great, and sought after. So men are not my enemy. And yes, it’s a male dominated society, but only by illusion. It’s not a patriarchal society; it’s a fear dominated society. If everyone remembered and believed that we were one, there couldn’t be any violence because hurting you would be hurting me.
So once again it goes back to, it always goes back to just one thing – remembering. And if I remember, and men remember, society won’t be dominated by either gender, because there will be compassion and love, instead of fear.
Depiction of Sheila’s Experience.
As a woman, I am attentive to my inner voice. It speaks to me through reflection, imagery, symbol, imagination, movement, and ritual. As I continue to use these holistic processes, I am increasingly freed from the dualistic thinking taught by patriarchal institutions, especially the Catholic Church. I am constantly learning that I can experience a wholeness that integrates body, affect and intellect. In most of today’s Christian churches, women are constantly bombarded by aspects of hierarchical structure, excluded from priestly ministry, and exposed to sexist language and mistrust of the body. But I know that women, our bodies, minds and spirits, are such expressions of holiness!
My experience of the life cycle as a woman is a profound way for me to experience my embodied spirituality. I have experienced great mysteries through the vehicle of my body. I have bled in synch with the moon. With amazement, I have carried life within myself, giving birth to children who now give birth to their own children. Through my body, I have touched and been touched by many people, and through these relationships I am able to experience so many connections – to my children, my husband, my friends, my church and the larger community. Through my body, I experience rites of passage, from girl to woman, from single to married, from woman to mother. Holding my grandchildren, I pass into Grandmother-hood. Menopause calls me deeper into my inner wisdom. Deeply sharing personal stories with a friend over a cup of warm tea is embodied spirituality. I think that there is little about spirituality that is not embodied.
A profound experience of my body delivered me into this broader sense of embodied spirituality. Prior to surgery to address a tubal pregnancy, I had been told that the diagnostic test would have to be performed that would be painful beyond the already intense pain I was enduring. A nurse’s aide, whom I did not know, accompanied me into the surgery room. As the test was to be performed, she offered me her hand and pointed to the crucifix on the wall. I did not know what her religion was, but she said that she and Jesus would get me through this. As the pain intensified, I gripped her hand so hard! She tightly squeezed my hand, smiled and focused on the crucifix, and I got through it. I never saw her again to thank her but I will never forget what she did for me, a stranger. That whole experience of suffering, the compassion of a stranger and the loss of a child was the beginning of my quest into embodied spirituality. There were no rituals in my church to honor my loss. In the hospital and in the days, months, and years that followed, I journaled prolifically, integrating scripture with what was happening in my every day life. I also started writing women's poetry, became interested in women's spirituality, became active in women’s issues within my church, and incorporated the need for women to include their bodies as part of their spiritual life in my writing. Eventually, I wrote a book of rituals to celebrate the life cycle of women.
My embodied spiritual empowerment naturally flowed to ritual. I wanted to share the experience with other women. I wanted them to think bigger of themselves and their Creator. I have been writing liturgies for women for years. As a woman, I value inclusive language. The Divine must be Mother as well as Father and beyond gender. I value inclusive experiences and shared leadership. Clergy do not have a copyright on the Divine we all know The Way, and men are certainly no more gifted than women in expressing it. I value universal images and symbols that bring peace and that are accessible to the many and not just the few. I believe in expressions of prayer that appreciate the whole person. Prayer need not be whispered, or contained strictly in thought. Prayer should be felt. One of the ways I embody my spirituality in prayer and ritual is by using embodied prayers, like gestures, yoga, praying with arms open, or the Namaste bow. Ritual is grounding. It brings prayer into the body and grounds it in experience. Being grounded in my experience is very important to me. It’s also the key to community. I can’t have community unless I’m grounded in my body.
Community, personal and global, is a very important part of my spiritual empowerment. It is very hard for me to stay spirituality active, alive and challenged without a community. Women’s communities have been a very important part of my spiritual development. When I share my personal stories, my struggles and triumphs, whether in small groups or at national conferences, I come to know my own creativity, wisdom, bondedness and power. Community challenges me to grow in ways and directions that I might not choose on my own.
Now that my children are raised, and my time is more my own, I have been drawn more to the larger global community. As I get older, I question what my legacy will be, what my impact on the world will be. My job now is to coordinate a human rights organization, MCHR. So much of the oppression, exclusion, de-valuing and violence that women have experienced is similar to that experienced by other minorities, and by Mother Earth as well. My embodied spiritual empowerment demands that I give voice to the voiceless. So I do social justice work and create social justice rituals. I believe in diversity and consensus, and sometimes it’s a hard balance to strike. But somebody sitting on top saying “this is how it’s going to be” doesn’t work for me, it hasn’t for a long time. I try to encourage, in whatever group I’m working with, a collaborative model of inclusion. My influence often depends on how ingrained the patriarchy is. Over the years, I’ve tried to fight the patriarchy and I’ve tried to avoid it. Now, I try not to get into situations where I have to deal with it, but it’s just as alive in social justice organizations as anywhere else.
I have found that it is difficult to synthesize feminist and spiritual experiences, and even more difficult to bring them into religious institutions. Many women do not find what they are looking for in church institutions. In so many churches, it feels like the sermon is tossed out onto the congregation. I believe a sermon is more effective if it begin with a experience from the congregation, and then makes a connection to something broader. When I do prayer services now, social justice or not, I usually don't start with a scripture or reading or poetry. I start from an experience everyone can relate to (often embodied), so that the connection between self and the scripture or reading or poetry, is accessible. Then, like a bridge from the body, the felt experience becomes an entry into the spiritual experience, and empowerment follows. I hope my legacy will be that I helped people, especially women, make the connection between the sacredness of who they are – body, mind and spirit - and a spirituality that connects and empowers them to meet the needs of the larger world.
Jeanette’s Depiction.
My experience of embodied spiritual empowerment has been a process of moving toward the ability to validate my own experiences, to have authority in my voice and creative life, and to know what I’m about and how I’m connected to the world.
It has been a process of finding my place in the world, where I am who I am, and can relax and relate to the world rather than going around searching for the missing thing. I thought there was a secret I could discover that would unlock my spiritual self. That spiritual seeking, there was angst in it, for a long time. I was in transition from the identity given to me by the patriarchy, to my own feminine wisdom. With this feminist beginner’s mind, I began looking at old structures with new eyes, and realized that my entire world, my religious life in a protestant church, my family and upbringing, the culture, it was absolutely immersed with division. Between spirit and matter, masculine and feminine, sacred and secular, head and heart. I saw the valuing of one over the other, as all the things that we associate with the feminine were relegated to the shadow, to the “less-than.”
I believe the Divine is genderless, but I also think it’s extremely important to be able to envision the Divine as feminine. I’m not sure we can find wholeness until we can do that. I believe our God-talk must be spoken in an egalitarian way, so that language, image and symbols of the Divine are both masculine and feminine. I see how our current picture of God is male, and white, and that is what we value in our culture. I am afraid that what we leave out of our picture of the Divine, we leave out of our culture. So, we have left out women, matter, the earth, the body, mothers, intuitive knowing, those things that are so feminine. And because the feminine is so connected to the body, and to the earth, and to the ordinary moments, it all seems to be part of one devalued package. These intrinsically feminine things, if society could value them, love them, and respect them, I believe our spiritual orientation would change drastically. I don’t see how we could relate to the planet in the same way. I am thrilled to see images of the Divine Feminine becoming more prevalent in the mainstream. I hear more people saying things like Mother-Father God. These images of the Divine Feminine have always represented justice to me. Social justice and the inclusion of those who are disenfranchised and left out, who have no voice. This justice and inclusion is one of the missions of my spirituality.
I was very influenced by the writer Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was one of the first people to write significantly about the divinity within matter, and when I think of embodied spirituality, what I immediately think about is having a conscious relationship to matter. M-a-t-t-e-r. Which is both my body and the earth itself. That's a very important part of it for me. I want to live purposefully, in a place where I can be surrounded by the natural world. That is where it is easiest for me to feel the Divine. I call it feminine because that's one way I relate to the earth, by seeing it through a feminine imagery. I also experience the Divine Feminine in symbols like the Black Madonna; I think so much of that symbol is about the holiness of matter. I believe it is actually Divine. Not a reflection of the Divine, but actually Divine. Divinity permeates my life on this earth. I see the earth as Divine. It’s like a Eucharistic globe, permeated with innate Divinity. My relationship with this Divinity matter is one way that I express my embodied spirituality.
Another way I think of embodied spiritual empowerment has to do with valuing intuitive knowledge, knowing something in the body. I sometimes know things in my body before I know them in my head, usually in my chest, my heart, I just feel something there and I know something. I think the heart knows, there's an intuitive knowing there. Valuing what grows out of my heart as much as I value what grows out of my head, and honoring my feelings and my body are important parts of my embodied spirituality.
Female friendships are another important part of my embodied spiritual life. When I can bond with women, and experience the wonderful cohesion that women have, I am strengthened. They give me permission to be in my body, to say “this is my body, this is my life, and I accept it and embrace it.” And in that embracing of my body and my life, I realize that it is shot through with Divinity. Women validate that Divinity in one another. When I am with my women’s group, I see how we all recognize the truth in one another’s lives and stories. And in telling our stories, this “yes” rises up and our consciousness expands. We are empowered in our truth.
Now my embodied spiritual empowerment is both experienced, and expressed, in simple words, like matter, earth, body, heart, inclusion, women…
Individual Portraits
The following portraits were created through a combination of biographical information, verbatim interviews, written materials shared by the co-researchers, and individual depictions. Individual and universal qualities, textures and themes common to women’s experiences of embodied spiritual empowerment are exemplified through the telling of three women’s stories.
Portrait of Hildegard
Hildegard, in her mid-sixties, considers herself a crone, or wise woman. She has been a practicing therapist for 25 years, having worked with almost every conceivable population over the years. Her specialties include women’s empowerment, and the integration of spirituality and therapeutic techniques. Hildegard is a small woman, and for quite a few years had worn her silver hair in a bob to her chin, as a conscious expression of the beauty of natural aging. Now she finds that aging is a “non-issue,” and her hair is blond and very short. She dresses in colorful natural fibers, and wears wonderfully eclectic pieces of jewelry, each one the heroine of a great story tracking its arrival into her jewelry box. Silver bangle bracelets cover both wrists and jingle as she moves, and the small oval glasses worn low on her nose make her look just like the grandmother that she is. Hildegard chooses her words carefully, with intentionality, and she listens to others with the same grace. There is patience, and a presence, in her demeanor, she is still when listening, one feels truly seen and heard when with her. Her language is one of a wise woman, even the most banal of conversations sounds important, feels grounded, as if well thought out before hand.
Hildegard credits her body awakening her spirituality during the natural childbirth of her first child. At that time, the Lamaze method was new and still quite controversial, and it was an effort to convince the doctor to allow her to forgo medicinal interventions. She recalls ordering her husband to kick the doctor out of the labor room when he wanted to give her a pain-shot, and believes that the unnecessary episiotomy she received afterwards was punishment for her independence. Just 21 years old, Hildegard did not have the language to describe her bold insistence on delivering her child naturally, but in retrospect believes “it was the first time I consciously chose to trust my body to lead me though an experience.” She bore three more children naturally, and has assisted in the births of five of her six grandchildren, many whom were born at home with midwives, an option not available in her time.
Hildegard was sexually abused as a child. As the pain of that violation remained unresolved, her body again became a teacher as it both expressed, and protected her through physical dependency on alcohol. Her body was an even greater teacher when she entered into sobriety and recovery. Attending 12-step meetings, Hildegard was faced with the realization that she did not have a “higher power.” The program assured her that she could choose anything she wanted. Not knowing what to choose, “I decided to assume that there was a benign, loving and guiding energy that would carry me through the hell of early recovery.” That loving energy was Hildegard’s first intentionally created “God,” and has since gone through many evolutions over the years.
Those early travels from body to spirit set the course for Hildegard’s professional and personal development. In her work as a therapist, Hildegard has used the body as a spiritual tool consistently over the years. She has led women’s rituals, locally, and in remote tropics where nudity can facilitate greater body acceptance and awareness. A student of holotropic breathwork, Hildegard facilitated both individual and group breathwork journeys in which the body became the gateway to transcendent experiences. She also facilitated many years of women’s groups, in which dance, breath, music and movement were regularly used to access inner knowing, and to transform defendedness into receptivity.
Personally, Hildegard took advantage of the cornucopia of alternative body therapies in the 60s and 70s by participating in primal scream work, gestalt therapy and feminist consciousness raising groups. She went on to use swimming with dolphins as a tool for spiritual development, became a certified breath-worker, and stopped eating meat and processed foods. Once she found a local holistic doctor, Hildegard rarely used western medicine to address physical ailments, preferring herbs, vitamins, Bach flower remedies and homeopathy. She detoxified her body of stored memories through Rolfing (a deep tissue massage technique), colonics and periodic fasts, and aligned the energies of her spine and mind through cranial sacral adjustments. Hildegard took a course in spiritual healing, and became proficient in working with the energy centers of her body. Eventually she became ordained as a minister, able to offer rituals and ceremonies that were legally binding.
Hildegard also places her intuition in her body. She takes sensory information into her heart, “What I take as my own is what resonates in my body, in my heart and soul. I’ve been doing this long enough to know what is true.” Often, this intuitive process is accompanied by tears, which she has learned to trust as further proof that she is correct in her assessment.
Hildegard cites a book, Blessed Ordinary, as summarizing her current understanding of embodied spiritual empowerment. Gone are the days of attending workshops, following gurus, and traveling to other lands in search of enlightenment, “There’s not any place I need to go, there’s not any doctrine I need to adhere to, and there are not any words I need to learn. The way I choose to live my life has become my embodied spirituality. My life is my message.”
An important part of the blessed ordinary in her life are her relationships with her husband, children and grandchildren. She recalls catching her own reflection in a mirror years ago “and I really saw my face, and thought, How can I hate women when I’m a woman? So are my daughters. How can I hate men, I have sons. I remember this so clearly, it probably happened thirty-five years ago, for a minute I got the whole thing, like, oh, I don’t… I cant… I can’t protect my wounds through hating anymore because it’s everyone I love!”
Forgiveness of her parents, her abuser, and others who had hurt her over the years is another way in which relationships have facilitated spiritual development. With fewer defenses, Hildegard was able to see people’s actions towards her not as intentionally abusive or malicious, but rather as expression of their own fear and woundedness. She was also able to acknowledge and own those same energies within herself, again coming to the realization that everyone is connected, and to not forgive another is to not forgive oneself.
Nature has also been a great instructional force in Hildegard’s life. Fortunate enough to take a four-month sabbatical in her forties, she rented a small hut in a Mexican Mayan village, and spent hours and hours walking the Caribbean beaches completely naked. Unencumbered by clothing, thoughts, or her many roles in life, she describes this as a pagan spiritual embodiment, “I was inhaling the green of the jungle, feeling the hot sun and taking in the beautiful turquoise of the ocean. I was completely free.” When she returned to the states, her daughter picked her up at the airport and proclaimed, “Mom, you’re walking differently!” Hildegard believes this embodied freedom changed her entire life from that moment on, as it allowed her to birth a part of herself that could never have arisen in her metropolitan home.
The power of that communion with nature stayed with her over the years, and Hildegard longed to return to the teachings of the land. Eventually the trips and sabbaticals were no longer enough to feed her soul. Six years ago, in her late fifties, Hildegard sold her house and flourishing private practice, and moved out west. There, she and her husband lived in tent while they built their own solar-powered straw bale home. This move was a conscious and intentional expression of her passage into “cronehood,” traditionally a time when women release their attachments to the material world, focusing instead on the cultivation and sharing of inner wisdom.
“I had gone through all these experiences in Michigan, and they coalesced into this desire to go back to nature as much as possible. So we built our house out of straw bales, and our energy is provided by the sun. I live with rattle snakes and tarantulas and huge huge blue skies with massive clouds and big winds and thunderstorms. Everything is very extreme – the days are burning hot, the nights are freezing cold, it is not gentle. It’s demanding. And I love it because it will not compromise. If I come home from work, and the house is cold because the sun hasn’t been out, I have to go out to the wood pile and get wood. I had to learn to build a fire, and whenever I find myself complaining about how much work it is, I realize it’s all part of my current spiritual growth.”
Many of Hildegard’s current spiritual teachers are animals. She listens to the coyotes calling to one another at night, and has dogs for the first time. “They have taught me a great deal about how I embody my spiritual beliefs… they teach me how to walk because they are not self-conscious. The ravens out here are very powerful. When I hear their wings flapping, I am reminded to stop and pay attention to the particular moment I am in.”
Although the move to the desert has been physically and emotionally challenging, Hildegard has no doubt that it has been spiritually empowering. “I think my current embodiment feels like I have come full circle and I am back where I began as a child, when I sat in trees and would not come down.”
With age comes wisdom, and Hildegard feels blessed to have finally transcended the false dualism of her younger years. She no longer believes that she is her body, “I am spirit,” but uses her body to express that spirit, “I look within for strength, compassion, love.” Nor does she believe that she is separated from the land she lives so closely with, “It’s my own psychology in concert with the natural world which creates the healing of deep wounds.” Living so close to nature has given Hildegard new skill sets traditionally belonging to men, and that is another division she seeks to integrate. “Slowly I am beginning to integrate the masculine with the feminine.” With the majority of her core wounds finally healed, she has transcended the idea that spirituality requires action. “The embodiment of my spirituality has changed from needing something, to getting something. For the first time in my life, I don’t have any hungry ghosts; I don’t need or want anything. I’m just sitting here waiting to see what I’m suppose to do next.”
Apparently, one thing that Hildegard is supposed to do next is to make peace with the Christianity of her childhood. “I’m even uncomfortable saying that, because I have spurned the Christian thing for so long, but I can’t deny what’s happening, and it’s happening in my body.” She is speaking to a recent pull towards a local church she attended to support her daughter-in-law. Finding herself crying through the entire service without knowing why, she returned the next week, only to have the same experience. Having learned to trust her tears as an expression of embodied truth, she continues to attend these services. “The expression that comes to me is that I am becoming Christed.” Having explored Buddhism and Judaism and Wicca and Goddess related groups, Hildegard believes she has come full circle, “Jesus was a man, and I’ve always thought the guy was very cool, and I liked his teachings, I do believe he was a spiritually enlightened being. Now there’s a sort of coming home for me, in that the energy of Christ has entered my heart. It’s like my heart is breaking open.”
Being “Christed” provides the final healing of old wounds around the idea of a male God. “Because God was a man, for me to be who I was I had to reject God.” Having spent many years expressing her spirituality in relationship to the Divine Feminine, Hildegard knows how to feel the “Goddess within,” and has taught others the same for many years. These days, she synthesizes yet another polarity by accepting God and Goddess as labels used to conceive the unconceivable, believing the true Organizing Intelligence to be far beyond the idea of gender. Hildegard has grave ecological and political fears for the earth and her inhabitants. She is saddened by the way the environment is being destroyed, and by the way religion is being used to fuel wars. She cites her greatest life lesson as “learning that carrying resentment and lack of forgiveness creates personal and planetary suffering.” She believes love must be the guiding light no matter how much the situation seems to call for revenge, and prays that the world leaders will quickly learn the same. She understands that much, if not all of the destruction occurring in the world is due to patriarchal influences, and recalls her own peace-making with those forces.
“God was part of the patriarchy, and the patriarchy was oppressing and suppressing and harming me, in very deep ways. I think my original rejection of God and spirituality was part of the patriarchy informing me. I was able to move beyond that by reading Betty Freidan’s first book. I began to be a little more open to the concept of God.”
That book, The Feminine Mystique, guided much of Hildegard’s early work. She ran women’s empowerment groups, lasting sometimes for years, and took women on sabbaticals much like her own, where they could experience their bodies in nature, and do women-centered rituals. She has seen first hand the changes that occur when women gather together in safety and truth.
A profound example of that power was her “croning ritual,” facilitated by one of her best friends, and attended only by women. Four altars were set up in a circle, each one representing a phase of Hildegard’s life. The Maiden altar was covered in pictures of her as a child and young woman, and the women who stood behind it were all of Maiden age, pledged to none save themselves. The Mother altar was covered in pictures of Hildegard with her four children in various phases of their lives, and in that quarter stood all women who were committed to the nurturance of life in some way. The Queen altar held more recent pictures, of Hildegard with her grown children and grandchildren, friends and various career accomplishments. Many of the women supporting her in this quarter were her friends and colleagues. They too were done raising their children, and were presiding over their jobs and homes in an authoritative manner. Hildegard spoke from the first three quarters, sharing the lessons she had learned in that phase of her life, and each quarter gave her a ribbon to symbolize and honor that phase. Finally, she approached the altar of the Crone. It was draped in black, and held only a mirror. It was here that Hildegard was asked to release “all that no longer serves you” in preparation for her Crone-hood. After a moment of silence, she gave back the ribbons, signifying a letting go of attachments to the past, and a readiness to greet the next and final phase of her life. With her granddaughter at the Maiden alter, her daughters at the Mother alter, many of her dearest friends at the Queen altar, and her 85 year old mother at the Crone altar, Hildegard beheld her own reflection for what seemed like an eternity. She did not share what occurred for her with the others, they would have their experience in their own time. After the High Priestess acknowledged her new role as Crone, the ritual ended and the women gathered over a meal. Hildegard recalls wondering if her mother regretted not having such a ritual, and was very grateful that her daughter and granddaughter would now consider it an option for themselves.
Hildegard has always walked boldly into whatever she has felt called to do. And she has always shared the truth of her experiences with her family, friends and clients. As happens for many people in later life, Hildegard is now very interested in sharing her truth with young people, especially her grandchildren. She also works part-time with a very disenfranchised group of young people, many of them in gangs, and has won them over in spite of being a “gringa-woman.” It has taken her a lifetime to learn these truths, but she simplifies them and shares them freely “Spend enough time with yourself so you can begin to know who you are. Pay attention to who you really are and develop the courage to show that self to the world you live in. Be mindful of your habits and how they affect you and your relationships. Trust the process of life, be true to what you honestly believe. Develop a strong body and a strong mind. Don't be afraid to love.”
Portrait of Teresa
Teresa is a 36-year-old advocate of personal, political and spiritual freedom. Married, with four children that she home-schools herself, Teresa is always dressed casually and comfortably, in clothes that afford easy access for breastfeeding her youngest. Forgoing make-up and jewelry on most days, and wearing her hair short, she is almost always smiling, and looks a bit elfish as a result. Exuding apparently limitless patience with her extremely clever and precocious children, she appears to have more hours in the day than other people, and there is no doubt that she accomplishes more within those hours.
Teresa is the oldest of five children, and describes her parents as political activists and hippies. She recalls marching in protest of President Richard Nixon’s inauguration in 1973 at the age of 4. Her last two siblings were born at home, and she attended her first home birth when she was 8 years old, helping her mother until the midwife, stuck in a snow-storm traffic jam, arrived. Her parents were also active in a local food co-op. Young children and older women were given the task of carrying things. One of the older women was Rosa Parks, and Teresa recalls, “It gave me a sense of empowerment to be doing the same thing as Rosa Parks, if I had the same job as her, I thought it must have been an important job!” Teresa grew up in a culture that valued peace and freedom, and encouraged independent thought. Those traits are still very much with her today.
Teresa’s family belonged to a very liberal Catholic parish. “The parish I was involved with didn’t meet in a church, we met in people’s homes, or basements. I think it was called a floating community. It was kind of like a school of choice. I think it started as a protest against Viet Nam, and some were there in reaction to a priest who was really an issue. I thought I was raised Catholic.” Teresa’s parish made common use of ritual, including the children whenever possible. “I didn’t know that other Catholic children didn’t distribute communion. We would pass communion down the aisle and it would be our job to take the cup and bread from one aisle to the next.”
Teresa recalls one ritual in particular, performed at school, which clearly celebrated the holiness of the female body. “When you got your period, they gave you a chalice, and everyone sang ‘I am Woman’ by Helen Ready. She believes this was one of her earliest expressions of embodied spiritual empowerment. “My body was becoming a sexual body, a reproductive body, an adult body, and they celebrated it in a religious context.”
The ceremony of the Chalice and the Womb taught Teresa to value her body as a spiritual tool to be treated as sacred, rather than judged as so many women judge their bodies. “If you're not accepting of your body, its uniqueness and universalness, then you're not really loving yourself. Embodied spirituality has to involve a level of self-love where you see parts of your body deified and holy.”
Teresa’s body was also responsible for a severe crisis of faith, which eventually led her to a stronger sense of spirituality. Three months pregnant, and having realized that the baby’s father was abusive, she had decided to bear and raise her child alone. A close friend’s sister was receiving her confirmation at the family parish, and while it should have been a joyous event, it was not. The Pope had just decreed that girls could not be alter servers, and the young girl spent the Mass as a Cross Bearer, while the alter server “kept messing up. But she wasn’t allowed to do it, no matter how well she knew how, because she was a girl.” Kneeling in prayer, and feeling the unfairness of the young girls situation, “I started smelling blood, and realized I was losing the baby.” Teresa both pleaded with, and threatened God, but lost the child, and did not return to church for a very long time. “To know that there was no ritual to honor the loss of my child, no way the Catholic Church had to celebrate the fact that I had been pregnant, not to mention all the judgments against me for not being married, there was no place to deal with any of that in the church.”
Teresa thought she had lost the baby that day in church, but she began cramping again a few days later. Her mother assured her this was a natural post partum process, but Teresa knew it was serious. She realized she had gone into labor to dispel the fetus, was losing a great deal of blood, and was slipping in and out of consciousness. “I really felt I was going to die, and I remember reaching out to someone. I was very clearly aware that a goddess had answered me, a Venus of Willendorf type of goddess, NOT some blonde virgin; very big and very black and very heavy; a full-bodied woman. I've always kind of wondered who it was, but names weren’t really critical at that point. I reached out and I really felt like She was what kept me in my body. I'm not sure I would have survived if I hadn't reached out to Her. She was very understanding, and kind of like ‘lots of women go through this, you can survive this too, but there is certainly a sense of choice. Hundreds of women have died in childbirth, you can do that as well.’ She helped me be not alone, but She certainly wasn’t helping me make the choice to live or die.”
Throughout this ordeal, the man who would eventually become Teresa’s husband was with her. “I thought at the time that it was both the Goddess and Jim holding my hand that helped me stay in my body. It was a man’s hand.” However, four years later, as she told the story of how the Black Goddess and Jim had helped her though the miscarriage, Jim informed her that he had been behind her, holding her convulsing body, not her hand, for the entire night. “So, 4 years after the fact, I realized that I had also had an experience with God, but hadn’t known it, or hadn’t been able to distinguish what I’d call an embodied experience of the male Deity from Jim. Which I suppose is how I think marriages are supposed to work. I couldn’t tell the difference between God and Jim.”
These experiences left Teresa with no doubt that her body has a wisdom of its own, and that she can trust that wisdom. “I think one of the gifts of having an embodied spirituality is you finally get a clue about how things are going. Sometimes they are really vague clues and sometimes they are real specific clues.” She teaches women how to trust their bodies in her work as president of a local breast-feeding organization. As a lactation consultant, Teresa helps women take ownership of their bodies, and encourages fathers to support mothers as they nurse.
Three of Teresa’s children have been born at home, two with a midwife, and the last one unattended. “I didn’t want to have to fight for what was best for my baby,” she states, “Doctors take away women’s right to labor in their own way and time, and I didn’t want that to happen to us.” The home birthed children are as healthy and happy as the first hospital born one is. The experience of home births, and the ongoing education of breastfeeding mothers help Teresa teach women that they can trust themselves, and their bodies, to know what they need, and what is best.
Teresa also uses her body to access the sacred-now, frequently with her children. Home-schooling leaves room for spontaneous hugs and snuggle-piles, moments of pure contentment and love throughout the day. Teresa also experiences nursing as a perfect spiritual moment, “Just putting a baby to a breast in the middle of the night, there’s a peace that ascends like nothing else. I know it has helped keep me sane during many difficult times.” She has been nursing for over 10 years.
Much of Teresa’s embodied spiritual empowerment is experienced and expressed in her relationships with family, parish and spiritual groups. She recalls the first liturgy she attended after marrying Jim, a group ritual designed to honor and strengthen community. Each family was given a container of water. “I felt so proud that Jim and I had our own container, like, wow, we must really be grown-ups.” The families poured their water into one large bowl, and discussed how individuals come together to form the body of the Church. “They blessed the water, and then sprinkled it.” Teresa has modified and used that ritual many times over the years, and still finds it a powerful way to acknowledge and honor the sanctity of relationships.
Other lessons learned through relationship have not been so pleasant. Teresa was sexually abused as a child, and repressed the memories until just before her marriage to Jim. During college, where she majored in engineering, she drank alcohol heavily and daily, and her weight plummeted to anorexic status. “I was disembodied, trying very hard to leave my body, but I didn’t know why.” Shortly after marrying Jim, her childhood abuser came over to see their new home, and she began recovering memories of the abuse. “I must have known I was safe with Jim, in my own home, and so it was okay to remember.” She found an experiential process group that specialized in trauma recovery, and the group members, along with her husband, helped her to heal. She continues to volunteer as a group facilitator.
Teresa’s relationship with her father is currently her greatest spiritual teaching tool. Diagnosed with lung cancer almost 2 years ago, Teresa became a strong source of support for him, and they became closer than they had been in her childhood, when he was an active alcoholic. “I think dealing with my Dad brought me closer to surrendering to the Divine, while at the same time, maintaining a sense of strength and will, embodying my spirituality, because we were dealing with life and death.” Her father died shortly after our interview, and she continues to learn about herself and the embodiment of her spirituality in her grief process.
Teresa’s father had retired to the woods. Rather than having flowers at his funeral, the family requested money to purchase and plant trees. Her father taught her that nature is holy, and she now teaches her children the same. She also expresses this belief through her work with the local Pagan community. She is the president and conference chair of the Magical Education Council, an organization dedicated to promoting the sharing of knowledge, experience and fellowship among people who follow mystical and esoteric traditions. As such, she is largely responsible for the creation and execution of the annual convention, called Convocation. Hosting both local and national speakers and workshops on numerous esoteric topics, as well as many formal rituals for both novice and advanced attendees, Convocation is the largest conference of Pagans and Neo-Pagans in the state. She had held offices in Web-KORE and the Great Lakes Pagan Council as well, actively participates in the Catholic parish of her youth, and belongs to a small esoteric Western Mystery Lodge. Each of these groups shares and celebrates her belief that everything is holy. “If there is only one God then it’s everywhere, and there is no rock or tree or material that doesn’t have God in it.”
Arriving at the belief that there is only one God took some time for Teresa, especially given her life saving experience with the Goddess. Now she believes that human beings unnecessarily divide things into polarities, and sees her decision to study esoteric mysticism as an attempt to reunite the poles. “I think that is what’s so powerful about magic, that in ritual we reunite what has been divided. When we combine both parts of a polarity, we have a union that is greater than the sum of its parts. Sort of like magnets or battery terminals.” This philosophy allows Teresa to view the surrender necessary during her miscarriage as an important part of her empowerment, and the grief over her fathers death as an inroad to her own deeper spirituality. She generalizes this belief to the synthesis of masculine and feminine, body and spirit, head and heart and God and Goddess.
Teresa did not always believe that the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine were simply expressions of divinity that she carries within herself. She recalls her long ago anger at the Church. “I understood that they didn't think I was living by all of God's rules and they were welcome to think that. I wasn’t going to let them define God for me, and I’d be damned if I was going to let them define God's rules, or tell me that I don't belong in the Catholic church because I don't follow the rules that they want me to follow!” Teresa explored other spiritual paths for a time, became ordained as a minister, and later as a Reiki master. “I thought I’d fully embodied my spirituality, but the biggest surprise towards the end was the realization that Catholicism is a part of my experience of God. But I don’t have to accept the Church’s definition of Catholic.”
For Teresa, the Church doctrine that states that Priests are necessary intermediaries to God is not true. She places that ability firmly and without doubt within herself. “I think that an important part of embodied spiritual empowerment means ‘owning your power,’ as well as knowing what you don’t have power over, again, there is power in surrender.” Recognizing the Divinity within all things helps Teresa tread compassionately on her path of Service to others.
Theresa is well versed in mythology and religions around the world. She participates in Catholic liturgies, Wiccan covens and Qabalistic rituals. She can recite Hebrew God-names, invoke the Great Goddess and create sacred space. These experiences have led her to the realization that “deep in my heart, I’m a monotheist, because I don’t experience the God and the Goddess as separate. I can’t conceive of them being anything but one God, whether wearing the face of the God or of the Goddess. I thought Jim was God. If Jim can wear the face of God, anyone can. That gives me a tremendous acceptance for whatever anyone wants to call his or her God.”
The Goddess that came to Teresa during her miscarriage was a very large black woman, “Part Venus of Willendorf, part Black Madonna, part Binah.” This expression of the Divine Feminine seemed to represent maternal energies. Teresa advocates for women to own and express those energies in themselves while educating them about breast-feeding. Many of her students have never contemplated the idea of taking ownership of their bodies, trusting their bodies, celebrating their bodies or banishing body shame before meeting her. Teresa believes breast-feeding is as healing for the mother as it is for the child, because it teaches her to have an embodied spirituality, and introduces her to the Divine within herself. “There’s not a more blatant image of the Divine Feminine than a nursing mother,” she laughs.
Teresa was raised by a counter-culture family, in a liberal and alternative Catholic parish, and has now created a life for herself and her family that is very much outside the realm of mainstream society. In an average week, Teresa will counsel women on breast-feeding, attend a meeting for one of the local Pagan organizations, home-school her children, perform ritual with her Mystery Lodge companions, accompany her husband to Mass and maintain her membership in several other organizations seeking to include the excluded. A member of Women in Black, she marches in silence once a month, dressed in black, to protest violence against women and children, especially in response to the war. She is also passionate about creating a culture of appreciation for the Vietnam Veterans, and veterans of more recent wars. “My Dad was a Vietnam Vet, and he got a horrible homecoming.” In the past, she worked with an organization called The Bamboo Bridge, helping to create and maintain support groups in which Vets can experience appreciation and gratitude from non-Vets, as well as support one another in a safe and therapeutic environment. Taking time off to be with her children, Teresa plans on returning to that group in the future.
Adults Molested As Children (AMAC) are another alienated group that Teresa advocates for, helping adults synthesize their childhood sexual abuse recovery. Much of this work is done in experiential group formats. Utilizing a great deal of body movements and expressions, the survivors are afforded the opportunity to re-enact situations while choosing empowered outcomes.
In these many roles, Teresa seeks to include not only excluded people, but excluded ideas as well. Religiously, politically and ethically, she advocates tirelessly for Lincoln’s unalienable rights: life, liberty, the right to abolish destructive governments, to be safe, and to be happy.
When Teresa was a teenager, she told her Mother, “I don’t know if I can be a feminist and confirmed in the Catholic Church,” because although her parish was better than most in their treatment of women, she had seen, heard and felt enough to know it was a problem for her. When she reached high school, she was surprised to discover that the Dominican Nuns were feminists! Teresa was comforted to see them teaching about birth control and STDs along side of their religious teachings. “These women were very much in their power, very much feminists and very proud of being female. They were my primary experience as a teenager. So I said, ‘well, if the Nuns can do it, then I guess I will be confirmed. I can be a feminist and a Catholic.’” But when she graduated and entered a private Jesuit college, she was overwhelmed by the differences between her liberal Catholic beliefs and the more common Catholicism of the mainstream, where “woman, and the mysteries of their bodies, their sexual and spiritual experiences, they were bad.” She gives credit to the Jesuits for being open to debate and discourse, and has spent many hours challenging these tenants, with limited success.
Another area of patriarchal influence that Teresa seeks to heal is the area of pregnancy, labor and delivery. Through The Birth Network, she educates women about the benefits and availability of healthy, normal pregnancy and their rights during the labor-process. The network also provides information disputing the non-evidence-based outcome studies that doctors cite to encourage C-sections and labor induction when neither is necessary. Teresa makes a clear distinction between men and patriarchy, and feels that western medicine has been almost entirely taken over by patriarchal ideas of “power-over,” whether it is medicinal power over symptoms, or the use of fear to control scared mothers who don’t know any other way. Having borne her last child at home, unattended except for her family, she is a comforting and reassuring advocate for women, encouraging them to become more proactive in their pregnancy, labor, delivery, and also in post-delivery decisions regarding vaccinations, circumcision, breast-feeding, and enhancing the mother-child bond.
Teresa takes a historical perspective on the power of women’s groups. “When we industrialized and women went to work, we created a culture of isolation. Women’s organizations are slowly bringing back the culture of community.” She participates in many of these communities in her advocacy work with, and for, women and children, and has repeatedly seen the healing that occurs when women gather in safety and tell the truth.
Telling the truth as a way to be of Service is the thread that runs through all the tapestries of Teresa’s life. The vast majority of her time is spent educating people in how to find the truth, both in a world of propaganda, and within their own bodies. Teresa has taken vows as Priestess, Minister, Reiki Master and Witch, and common to all of these covenants is a commitment to be of Service to humanity. Teresa takes this responsibility very seriously, as evidenced by her life. She is raising her children to be the same way.
Recalling a period of missionary work she did with the Lakota Indians as a young woman, she summarizes their philosophy, taken now as her own. “The Lakota have a very embodied spirituality. Their message is clear. If you’re not using your body in service to God’s people, then you are not doing God’s work.”
Portrait of Susanna
It is easy to imagine Susanna as a U.C. Berkley student. Her long brown hair, center-parted of course, would have lent itself nicely to the Joni Mitchell-esque style so popular in that infamous summer of love. Now that same long hair is pulled back, but her deep brown eyes and lazy smile still express the earthy and sensual self-confidence common to so many feminists of the era. Susanna appears to have made friends with her body. There is no particular evidence to support this, just an aura of comfort and at-home-ness in her movements and mannerisms. That comfort and at-home-ness extends to others; Susanna possesses that wonderful ability to put people almost instantly at ease. With over 40 years of experience as a reporter, journalist, author and public speaker, Susanna is able to describe the progression of her own spiritual empowerment against the backdrop of four decades of social, political and spiritual evolution. As a well-known radio correspondent and a Unitarian Universalist Pagan, she is a modern-day Persephone, and she walks comfortably in both of her worlds.
It was a 10 year-old Susanna who first discovered the power and delight of ritual. Her class was taking a May-day field trip to the country. They rose before the sun, and journeyed out to the hinterlands beyond their city homes. The morning sun arrived just as they did, illuminating a series of gardens filled with spring flowers. Susanna recalls filling her arms with blossoms and blooms of all kinds and colors, and carrying them all the way back to the classroom. There, everyone sang medieval May Day carols, and wove ribbons around a May Pole. “That was the moment I became a ritual junkie, the moment when I understood the power of ritual to connect one to everything in the cosmos, and to oneself as well. I felt powerfully free and connected and I think that moment was probably the beginning of my spiritual journey to ritual.”
Susanna grew up in a family comfortable with nudity, but this did not result in feeling comfortable with her own body. Plagued by many of the insecurities common to young women, she could not have conceived of her body as spiritual. She credits two groups of people with helping her make peace with her body, and to recognize its potential as a vehicle of spiritual experience. The first was participation in a women’s conscious raising group, which did much to allay her fears that she was somehow different, broken or odd. The second was her participation in a group that worshipped nature where “it was basically just ordinary to be nude, you felt all your prejudices against your body sort of slip away.” Discovering her preferred method of spiritual communion in the earth-centered traditions, Susanna has spent decades in Pagan rituals of embodied spiritual empowerment. Her body continues to be her preferred method of accessing her spirituality, through dance, drumming, chanting and song.
Unlike other women of this study, Susanna did not experience physical bodily pain as a precursor to her spiritual awakening. It was her emotional body that took the blow, posterior to the cruelties of her childhood peers.
A poor yet unusually independent young classmate had been assigned the role of class scapegoat, and was ridiculed regularly. One day a group of boys surrounded her on the playground. Susanna stood by mutely as the boys attacked her classmate, kicking and trying to undress her. Although only 7 years old, “I knew that I should come to her aid, and I knew I was afraid that if I did, the boys might turn on me.” Susanna began to conform, as most of the children did, to the norms of the dominate peer group. They defined what was acceptable in looks, fashion and interest, and what children were all right to associate with. Pleasing others as a strategy for gaining acceptance and avoiding humiliation dealt a major blow to Susanna’s acceptance of herself, body and mind alike.
But while externally conforming, an internal spark of knowing was ignited within her that day, a righteous knowing that individualism should not result in persecution. Susanna’s fledgling passion for self-sovereignty grew, and fueled much of what followed in her life of political activism. From that painful playground assault was created an advocate for peace and freedom. She continues to champion matters of social justice to this day.
Susanna now contacts her body wisdom with techniques that came naturally to her as a child – singing, dancing, drumming and chanting. A modern (and Pagan) Hildegard von Bingen who leads others in ecstatic song, she calls sacred chanting a “pathway to the stars,” which allows people to “come into their own voice,” and consequently the wise and benevolent brain that is stored deep within the body.
Ritual work is a divine expression of the every-day-sacred. Ordinary space is made sacred. Humanity invokes Divinity. Intentions, energized by dance or drumming or song, are sent off on the spiritual winds, and the Earth holds it all, in the moment.
Drawn to nature and the Goddesses of Greek mythology for as long as she could remember, Susanna recalls, “As I grew up, I forced myself to deny these experiences of childhood…. Such daydreams did not fit into the society I lived in, and even to talk about them was impossible.” When Susanna discovered the Pagan traditions, her seemingly impossible dreams came true, and she arrived in the hallowed here and now where “all is holy, the body, the mind, the imagination, birth, sex, death…”
More recently, Susanna resides in a “surprisingly wonderful present” with her husband and her son.
Susanna, like many other women, came into her embodied spiritual empowerment through relationships. Some were important to her formation and others to her transformation.
Susanna’s mother taught her many important life lessons: meaningful work is more important than money, good conversation more exciting than sex, friends are sacred. She also introduced her daughter to the “extraordinary moments waiting on every street corner” while on a vacation before Susanna left for college. Her mother had a way with people, and a voice that could not be ignored. She describes her Mother’s voice as the “sort of voice that used to drive me running to the next store in the shopping mall so I wouldn't in any way be associated with her.” Disappointed in the tour she was taking with her daughter, Susanna’s mother used her “loudest, most vulgar, and most theatrical New York voice” to attract the attention of a complete stranger. The stranger turned out to be a woman of some importance, and rescued them from their drab vacation by inviting them on a grand, unplanned adventure. “I learned this unbelievable lesson that day. The extraordinary happens on every street corner, but you sometimes have to be loud and vulgar and outrageous to actually access it. I really believe at some level we are living in a sort of gated community where we never experience the world. If we want to experience the world, we think that we have to go to Europe or on a safari, but that the actual extraordinary is right here, it's next to us all the time.”
Transformational relationships developed out of Susanna’s early consciousness raising group, and also from her first Pagan coven. Women gathering together in truth, and humans gathering together in celebration of the Divine have always lent themselves well to spiritual empowerment. Susanna also had a “pen-pal” who was serving in the Vietnam war. Their correspondence was a backdrop to her own social activism, as they shared their very different experiences of 1967. Susanna credits his “cries from the abyss” with motivating her to publish her memoirs, in which their letter writing and her mother’s influence, both figure prominently.
Susanna believes that “the stuff of the sacred is all around us, right here, right now, in the material world.” Paganism is a good fit for her because “consistent with the lack of separation between the sacred and profane is the earth-centered tradition’s understanding of deity as immanent, in everything. This means that not only is the mind holy, but the body is holy, sexuality is holy, everything is a piece, and it’s all part of the sacred reality.”
Embracing the lack of separation between the sacred and profane, Susanna is certain that “the mysteries are everywhere.” She has grown to trust her own gray wisdom over the black and white “obsessive world [where] people go from one totalistic belief to another.” Rather than being a skeptic or a believer, she enjoys “having spiritual faith but being at home with constant doubt.” Successful now in very mainstream and corporate realms of journalism while retaining an eclectic belief system and lifestyle, she knows “that one can dance around a bonfire until dawn and still make one’s living as a scientist or computer programmer…”
Susanna retained her secret love of ritual and the Greek Goddesses, particularly Artemis, throughout school. A somewhat lonely child with a vivid imagination, Susanna was captivated by the idea of a woman enjoying a solitary relationship with nature, a woman who was also a strong warrior. As she matured, so did her love of nature, and she became interested in ecology. Searching for an ecological spirituality led Susanna to readings about Druids in England. Her quest naturally progressed from Druids to Pagans, but she was not sure what any of it meant, beyond the fact that these Druids and Pagans appeared to have what she was searching for - an ecological spirituality.
Then a letter arrived from an unknown coven of Witches in Essex, saluting Susanna as a Pagan and offering her access to an ancient Pagan ritual. She dropped the letter in shock, having never considered herself a Pagan, but accepted the offer. The mail next delivered a cassette tape, and on it was a ritual known as “The Drawing Down of the Moon.” Susanna listened with rapt attention as a woman with an English accent, the High Priestess, invoked the Great Goddess. “Listen to the words of the Great Mother, She who was called Artemis, Astarte, Melusine, Aphrodite….” Susanna recalls how the tape gave her permission to “accept a part of my own psyche I had denied for years.” The recognition was instant. Paths beginning in elementary school converged as Susanna found her spiritual home.
Beliefs change with years and wisdom, and Susanna’s beliefs have matured from singular Gods or Goddesses into an appreciation for cultural polytheism.
The notion of polytheism naturally invites the synthesizing of male and female expressions of Divinity. “I don’t like the idea of a single Goddess altogether, I just don’t think that’s any more appropriate than the notion of a single God.” Susanna recalls her childhood captivation with the Greek pantheon, “One of the things I loved about the ancient Greeks was the multiple Goddesses that came from multiple cultures.”
Susanna’s beliefs have naturally progressed over time from the individual to the collective. Her vision has risen above specifically gendered, or individual expressions of Divinity. Now it is the idea of a personalized ontology that feels important to her, where each is free to worship as is true for them. “The feminist movement was extremely important to me, but I am beginning to realize it was not the most important thing. I am beginning to realize, and this is a very hard truth, that the God or Goddess of spirituality is not the most important thing.”
Susanna now believes that a local polytheism, the antithesis of fundamentalism, would do much to heal the world. “If we could live in harmony with a tribal understanding, there would never be religious wars.” Citing examples of tribal spirituality in which different regions recognize different Deities who are often tied to the mountains, rivers or lakes of the land, she now advocates for a cultural polytheism. “The notion of polytheism means to me that my own personal embodied truth and my spiritual reality is not necessarily yours, and that’s good. My Gods would not be exactly like your Gods because we live in different lands, we have different rivers, we have different ways of looking at the world. That means our spiritual truth would be much richer than a spirituality that is based on a book, or the written word, or the religions that have claimed to have the one truth. This polytheism would essentially say that God is imminent and transcendent, that God/Goddess is in everything, and that my reality is not necessarily yours.
Having transcended the concept of singular Gods or Goddesses, Susanna now also questions the concept of a singular planetary Divinity. “Maybe the earth is only a part of it, maybe the cosmic spirituality is more gem-like, more multi-faceted.”
As the Pagan counter culture becomes assimilated into the mainstream, Susanna wonders “how do you maintain the best quality of being an outsider, of critiquing the patriarchy and the problems of institutionalized religion and yet become a larger religion that can reclaim the world stage?” She recalls that many of the alternative spiritual movements started out in the protest oriented 60s and 70s when “we didn’t think of questions like should we have old age homes, should we have our own cemeteries, we didn’t think of dying because we were young.” Now Susanna and her friends are in their 50s and 60s and there is a need for structures that do not yet exist. But she is not alone in her hope that polytheism, despite its need for an institutional framework, is staking its claim in the larger world. “ A couple of years ago there was a Pagan contingent of 60 people at the Parliament of World Religion. Earth spirituality is beginning to surface, to become a world religion. I just got an email yesterday from a woman whose son was killed in Afghanistan in the Army. She is fighting to have the pentacle on his graveside. It's happening in all these little things, there is all this inner faith work.”
When Christians think of the Divine Covenant, they think of God’s pledge of allegiance to them. For the Pagans, a Divine Covenant can describe the union of God and Goddess, or of spirit and nature.
Susanna believes that patriarchal influences will only be overcome through transcendence of the Divine Covenant, regardless of whose definition is used. “Polytheism has a way of looking at religious freedom that is more important for creating peace and overcoming the fundamentalism we have raging around the world. Yes, the Divine Covenant is a part of both polytheism and peacemaking, but this notion of male and female and God is of lesser importance than overcoming the scary dark fundamentalisms that are part of our world right now.”
Susanna belonged to a women’s consciousness-raising group, and describes the experience as very transformative. CR groups were part of the 70s feminist movement. Their goal was to help women reframe their “neuroses” as normal, and as social issues rather than personal flaws. “I walked into that CR group in 1972 feeling like I was not like any other person. I really believed there was something wrong with me because I couldn't get tampons in the right way. I really felt like a freak of nature sometimes.” Through group discussion on a variety of topics not usually discussed in polite society, women discovered commonalities. “It was very structured, you dealt with your mother, your father, menstruation, sexuality, all that stuff and you suddenly realized that ‘oh my God, every other woman is having the very similar experiences as mine and I am not alone!’” Both personal and political, CR group members believed that if they changed their minds, they could then change their behaviors, and finally change the patriarchal roles that were so damaging to men, women and children alike. For Susanna, the discovery of her sameness with other women was life-changing, and she laments the lack of CR groups today. “Women today don’t have the chance to experience themselves just like every other woman. It’s a very powerful experience that I don’t think women are having anymore.”
Susanna has been telling the truth all of her adult life. From being jailed in the 1960s for participating in a Free Speech Movement sit-in, to her daily work as a political journalist, she has consistently sought to bring reliable facts to the people, so that they can define their own truths. She finds her mother’s advice to “be outrageous” very good advice indeed, but like Alice in Wonderland, who “generally gave herself very good advice, though she very seldom followed it” admits “I am most definitely pretty un-outrageous.”
While Susanna may perceive herself as “un-outrageous,” her operating philosophy is anything but ordinary. “What can I do,” she asks herself regularly, “to turn the world upside down? To question assumptions, to undermine the received wisdom?” As she searches for her own answers, she is certain of one thing. “We're not all supposed to arrive at one answer.” Susanna believes there are as many answers as there are questioners. “Only if we each seek out our own answers will we be able to chart a path through the dark days that seem to lie ahead.”
Composite Depiction
A composite depiction allows the heuristic researcher to describe the experiences of the co-researchers as a group, by combining the best examples from their stories into a seamless description of the phenomena. (Moustakas, 1990, p. 52)
The following composite depiction is written in the voice of the collective “I.” Verbatim statements been integrated into a collage of the many voices of the co-researchers. While not every phenomena is true for every co-researcher, this composite depiction combines the experiences of all the co-researchers into a global expression of embodied spiritual empowerment.
Embodied spiritual empowerment is about making peace with my body, making peace with God/dess, and bringing God/dess into my body so that I can be of service to humanity.
When I express my spirituality through my body, I call those expressions rituals. Rituals are tools for uniting the body and spirit. They allow my spiritual intentions, like prayer or praise, to be represented through the movements and felt experiences of my body. Sitting still and whispering prayers never felt effective to me. Likewise, talk-therapy is not the most effective modality for me to work with. In either situation, I need to DO something. Ritual lets me touch ideas and give motion to feelings, it lets me kinesthetically experience what would otherwise be an intellectual exercise.
Ritual brings prayer into my body. I pray everyday for the people I care about, in a mind/body/spirit way through rosary-walks. I say the rosary and walk aerobically. Rituals help me give voice to, or validate, rites of passage. The women I know have experienced so many rites of passage that are not acknowledged in mainstream culture, so we create and use rituals to honor these passages.
I have heard it said that there are only three prayers to God – “help,” “wow” and “thanks.” I embody these prayers with rituals. Rituals help me to negotiate troubled transitions, celebrate joyful transitions, create communion with the Divine, and express gratitude for my many blessings.
Ritual can also be a form of psycho-spiritual therapy, where my conscious and shadow parts can interact. I call these rituals “initiations.” Initiations help me pass from one spiritual stage to the next; they mark a formal commitment to a specific path. It is not uncommon for my life to get a bit chaotic after an initiation. Having chosen a higher watt bulb for my Inner-Light, it is both good to see things more clearly, and challenging to become aware of all the dirt in the proverbial corners of my psyche.
I used to believe that spirituality was best experienced through leaving my body. Good old OBE [out of body experiences] and things of that nature. Now I want my body and spirit to be in partnership. When I am able to offer my body as a vessel for spiritual filling, I am no longer a human being having a spiritual experience, but rather a spiritual being, guided in my human experiences. I feel like my spiritual self has been waiting for my physical self to cooperate. Kind of like On-Star, like a guidance system. My spiritual directives have a will of their own, they know what is best, so my body becomes a tool that my spirit can use. That’s why I love yoga. It’s not about bending your body like a pretzel, it’s how you are going about bending it. When I am compassionate to myself on the yoga mat, I am more likely to be compassionate with myself out in the world. When I am full of pride and envy, forcefully stretching muscles that are not ready to stretch, that same willfulness gets in the way of everyday life. I really do believe that the body is the temple of the spirit, and I have to take good care of it. It’s kind of like fine tuning an instrument so that the Divine presence can shine out.
I was never taught or encouraged to use my body as a source of inner-wisdom, none of my women-friends were. We're really trained against that kind of felt experience. The west teaches us to think in a separate knowing way. Now I recognize another kind of knowing, connected knowing, where you just swing into an experience, with the relaxed self, and go into the intuitive in a different way. I used to try and make that happen; over time I’ve learned that received experiences never come under the direction of my will, they come when they want to, through my participation in events and my willingness to go along with things. Only afterwards will I understand the meaning. Answers emerge when I am receptive. The knowing, the information, the data comes to me when I am receptive to it.
When I ignore my body wisdom, it will try harder and harder to get my attention. Sometimes I do have to have my butt kicked a little, my wake-up call, my a-ha moment. If I’m lucky I come up with an enlargement of myself instead of a diminishing of myself. I believe that the spiritual dimension will enlarge the self, but pain is often the doorway. Pain forces me to put myself first, to think about what I need. Pain seems to give me permission to set boundaries, tell the truth, disagree, change, grow, and say ‘no.” When the existential hounds of death are close behind and you're not really expected to live, you've got to look at your own mortality, you have to look at your spirituality, you have to look at your life here on earth and ask "what was I really here for, what have I done?" I’ve made some of the biggest changes in my life as a result of listening to a body crisis, changes I never would’ve made if things had been going along as usual. In retrospect, I can’t complain because the lessons were profound. Now I know how to handle challenges, they stretch me, and help me grow into my larger soul.
My body also anchors me in the here and now. It’s taken me 35 years to realize that this is where it’s at, to embrace Ram Dass’s sage advice to ‘be here now.’ It is a place of great spiritual power and comfort. Now I believe strongly in ordinary spirituality that is not cut off from taking a bath. My friend wrote a book titled “The blessed ordinary” and I didn't understand the title for many years, but that's really what embodied spiritual empowerment means to me today - the blessed ordinary. It's basically the way I choose to live my life. It's not any place I need to go and it's not any doctrine I need to adhere to. Sometimes, I am suddenly visited by the holiness of my everyday life, I see it through mindful eyes, and am overcome by gratitude.
When I see nature through mindful eyes, the holiness of matter is so obvious to me! It’s like in the grass and trees and rocks and earth, and down in the actual molecules themselves, there is an in-dwelling of the sacred. Give me a deep forest, or a large body of water, and I can solve any problem I’m having. I don’t know exactly how it works, but if I can just get to a fairly large piece of un-manned nature (no feminist pun intended), I can effortlessly find my inner knowing. It’s harder in the city. I feel like the cement and power lines and all the wireless communication flying around somehow jams my frequency. I understand why the Druids preferred to worship outside, I’ve never felt as spiritual inside a church as I do in nature. In the older Pagan animistic traditions you were not higher than the rest of nature, it was all connected and tied together in this completely different ethic. I can palpably feel that spiritual richness when I broaden my awareness and remain mindful – of my connections, of who I am, and of moving beyond being defined by my corporeal.
Staying in the here and now has changed all of my relationships, because I am finally present for them. Since I have learned to bring awareness to my connections with people, my access to mentors and teachers seems to have increased exponentially. Women, and women’s groups, have been a profound part of my path. I can’t imagine what my life would look like if it weren’t for my years in women’s groups. They were one of the things that made me most whole. The women saw the real me, and held that vision until I could see it myself. We would validate one another’s lives, choices, bodies, dreams, hopes and hurts, through the wonderful cohesion that women have when they come together.
I have also had wonderful women mentors and teachers. There seems to be no shortage of women who are willing to share their knowledge. I've never felt that they've put themselves above anybody. I would try to say ‘I'm just here to learn’ and they would not accept that. They didn’t believe there was anything to teach. They would awaken it in you, like it was already there. Sometimes my mentors would disagree, like when I was studying both Zen Buddhism and psychology. My psychology mentor was a wonderful man who is saying transcending the ego is dangerous and not to try it, and my Zen priest is telling me that the university is the work of the devil, and that it's driving me crazy, don't go there, practice more Zen, that's the obvious answer. At that time, there was no integration, you had an intellectual embodiment, great, or you had a spiritual embodiment, great, but you didn’t have both and that was a real teaching for me. Now that I’m older, I wouldn’t fall for that division between spiritual and intellectual.
I don’t split the world into pairs anymore. I don’t think my body is sinful and my soul is holy, or that sex is bad and prayer is good. I don’t perceive my mind as separate from my spirit. There is an interconnectedness among all of these things. Consequently, there is no “us and them,” no “me and you,” and what I do to another human being I ultimately do to myself. That’s another part of embodied spiritual empowerment. It is empowering ourselves, and one another, to then include those who are disenfranchised and left out, diminished, disempowered, who have no voice. I have always been an advocate for peace and justice. I was in college in the late 60's and I was active in the civil rights movement. I was swept along in the resistance movement because I loved the spirit of it, and the sense of participation with people who were willing to stand up for what they believed instead of bowing down to it. I had very clear cut ideas of right and wrong back then, and still do, but now I also have a real appreciation for the gray areas.
So much of my pain when I was younger came from trying to make things fit into categories of good and bad. Letting life out of the boxes I kept it in has taught me the power of paradox. If I let go, I get more that I can imagine. If I look inside myself, I can understand everything outside myself. If I am vulnerable and surrendered, I have enormous power. I just can’t do the either/or thing anymore.
I can’t put God in a box anymore either. I believe God is beyond gender, and probably beyond comprehension. If so, then all that matters is that I use a symbol for God that feels good to me. If everyone found a symbol, or name, for God that felt good to them, we would be a Polytheistic society, in which personalized expressions of Divinity are encouraged and respected. Much badness in the world would end. It has been an incredible relief to finally allow myself NOT to pigeon-hole the Divine. I don’t have to choose God or Goddess or Pagan or Christian. I don’t have to be a card-carrying-anything. I can just let it be.
I wasn’t always this liberal though. I had to work through my feelings about God-the-Father. I knew I couldn’t feel spiritually empowered while holding a grudge against part of the Divine. And more practically, I live in a Patriarchal monotheistic society where the majority-religions have male-Godheads. The customs that trickle down into many facets of my daily life, like holidays, vacations, mainstream rites of passage, the work-week and calendar, they’re almost entirely based on a Judeo-Christian belief system. I encounter God-the-Father everywhere I go; I had to find a way to transform my feelings of anger and exclusion. So I tried to separate the ways I had been hurt by people claiming to speak for God-the-Father, from how I had been harmed by God-the-Father Himself. Of course, I didn’t find any ways in which God-the-Father had ever hurt me. It was the Patriarchy that I was really angry at, not God. When I was able to move beyond that, I began to be a little more open to the concept of God.
Now I try to connect with what is sacred inside of me. I suppose it sounds egotistical to say I am God, or Goddess, but I believe that’s what we have the opportunity to recognize in our lifetime. I don't think it's really possible or healthy for me to have a full spirituality without being in relationship to the holiness of my own body and to the earth itself.
Because the holiness of my own body is feminine, I can also use Goddess language and images to represent the idea of a Divine Feminine. I think of Her often as "The Great Lap," full of nurture and heart and body and flesh… She wants to make sure that everyone gets in the lap. The real embodied spiritual empowerment has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with being of service. First, I have to remember who I really am, and am not. Then maybe I can find ten people, and help them remember, and each of them can find ten people and help them remember. It’s got to benefit real people. I think that’s the bottom line, and that's the mission of embodied spiritual empowerment, to make sure that everyone gets in the lap.
Creative Synthesis
The generous sharing of these co-researchers precious time, hard won wisdom and intimate stories has inspired this creation of depictions and portraits that capture and express the pure essence of their experiences. Consequently, the heuristic research process has revealed a truly felt sense of how women of embodied spiritual empowerment experience themselves, others and the world.
One last expression of this experience remains, the creative synthesis; it hopes to show how the researcher has become “thoroughly familiar with all the data” through her “explication of the meanings and details of the experience as a whole” (Moustakas, 1990, p. 31). The synthesis is the embodiment of the research question. Apropos of embodiment, my body is how, and where, I feel these results. This feeling is best conveyed in a picture, which allows for a more abstract holistic expression, but I will also attempt to give it words.
A woman’s experience of embodied spiritual empowerment begins when she recognizes her body as a spiritual vehicle (Bodyhood). Being-With then connects her to the people and places of the hallowed-here-and-now. Anchored firmly within herself and the sacred moment, she is then able to connect with Divine energies both inside and outside of herself (Omniscience), and naturally seeks to help others realize the same.
Embodied spiritual empowerment brings God/dess into the body, into the earth and into the world.
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This chapter described the methods and procedures used in organizing and analyzing the data. Themes and sub-themes were described briefly, and then presented in greater depth as depictions and portraits. A narrative synthesis ended the chapter. Chapter VI summarizes this study through comparison to other studies, identification of research limitations, illumination of future areas of research, social applications, and personal and professional reflections.
CHAPTER VI
Discussions and Conclusions
This chapter summarizes my study of and personal learning about women and embodied spiritual empowerment. It begins with an overview of the study, followed by a brief comparative analysis of the studies reviewed in Chapter II. Limitations of the study are then reviewed, followed by a discussion of potential future studies. Findings and their application to the field of psychology follow. The chapter ends with a synthesis of my professional and personal reflections.
Overview of Study
As described in Chapter I, happy childhood experiences with ritual and nature, and challenging childhood experiences of fundamentalism, abuse and abandonment combined to send me searching for spirituality as a young adult. Exposure to wide ranging spiritual beliefs, training as a spiritual healer and Priestess, and a powerful womb consecration ritual resulted in the melding of my body, spirit and service to humanity. The comfort I felt upon arriving at this reunion, and the somatic and spiritual difficulties I watched my female clients struggle with caused me to wonder if this synthesis of body, spirit and service was something I could research, and then teach to others. The specific question explored in this research was, “What is a woman’s experience of embodied spiritual empowerment?” The key terms of the question were defined, and the social relevancy of the research was also explored.
Chapter II outlined current and classical literature pertinent to the research topic. It described the review process and the resources used. Classic studies, relevant theorists, historical and religious considerations and major themes regarding the spiritual disempowerment and empowerment of women and their bodies revealed what research has already contributed to the understanding of embodied spiritual empowerment, and this study was positioned within the same context.
Chapter III described the differences between quantitative and qualitative research, the history of the heuristic research model and the model itself, and explained why it was the chosen model for this research.
Procedures for preparation and collection of data were described in Chapter IV. This included methods for obtaining co-researchers, conducting interviews, and analyzing the data according to the heuristic research process.
Chapter V detailed the findings of the research interviews. The heuristic research process revealed three major themes: 1) Bodyhood, 2) Being-With and 3) Omniscience. Nine sub-themes were also identified: 1) Using ritual as a form of embodied prayer, 2) Using the body to connect spirit and earth, 3) Trusting corporeal wisdom, 4) Awareness of the hallowed here and now, 5) Recognition of sacred connections, 6) Synthesizing polarities, 7) Personalizing God/dess, 8) Negotiating Patriarchal influences, and 9) Recognizing the Sacred-Self. The major themes were briefly introduced and supported with descriptive co-researcher quotations. Three individual depictions brought these themes to life in first person narratives, followed by portraits that told detailed stories of how the themes were lived by three of the co-researchers. A composite depiction combined the experiences of all the co-researchers into a collective narrative that described the overall essence of women’s experiences of embodied spiritual empowerment. The chapter ended with a narrative and diagrammatic synthesis.
Comparative Analysis
Chapter II outlined research that had been conducted regarding how women grow their spiritual selves, make peace with their bodies, experience Goddesses, honor callings as Priestesses, balance mind, body and spirit and tolerate religious gender exclusion. This study is similar in its exploration of body, spirituality and Patriarchal influences. It differs by naming a new trinity of body, spirit and world. While other studies have gathered much data regarding women’s relationships with their bodies and spirituality, this study extends the data out from the women and into the world.
Limitations
The main limitation of this study is linguistic; the research terms are leading in some regards, and exclusionary in others.
In asking women about their “experience of ESE,” I believe the use of the present-tense “experience” limited the results in ways not foreseen. While the data did reveal some of the ways women had re-created themselves, it did not reveal a clear step-by-step process. Were such a process identified, it could then be taught.
It is also possible that the world “empowerment” was a leading word, in that it suggested a positive relationship between body and spirituality.
As I conducted my research and interacted with family, friends, colleagues, peers and clients, I discovered many men who would like access to something other than their current Patriarchal monotheism. While the focus of this study was on women’s experiences, the women-only aspect might have limited the results.
Future Studies
By naming the limitations of this study, several areas for future study are instantly illuminated. The same question could be asked of men. Areas where men’s and women’s experiences of ESE agreed could be used to identify areas of possible empowerment for spiritually disembodied and disempowered people of both sexes. Areas where their experiences of ESE differ could be used to create gender-specific teaching.
Identifying and interviewing women who feel disempowered, disembodied, and trapped in dualistic might show which beliefs are ready for change and which are not. This would be useful information in the creation of stage-specific interventions.
Researching women who do not feel a sense of ESE is another potential area of study. The experiences of women who feel separated from a punitive male God, consider their bodies as messy inconveniences in need of medication, alteration, subjugation and emaciation and have no sense of voice or power in the world would provide useful data; disempowerment must be deconstructed before empowerment can be constructed.
I am also curious to learn how women with mental health diagnoses relate to God/dess and their bodies. Researching the relationships between:
• Depression - God/dess - body
• Anxiety - God/dess - body
• Chronic illness - God/dess – body
• Addiction – God/dess – body
could illuminate if, and how, a disembodied spirituality and a distressed bodyhood contribute to mental health issues. Interventions of repair might then be invented and implemented.
Conducting a qualitative exploration of body, spirit and world worded as “How does an American experience body, spirit, and society?” with no leading words suggesting positive or negative relationships, and a greater emphasis on societal context would make an interesting study as well. The realm of religion would likely figure more prominently, as bi-partisan politics continue to divide the nation along somewhat religious lines. Results could inform pastoral interventions, and might reach larger numbers of people than those of the spiritual communities.
Given that many of the women in this study cited physical or emotional pain as the precursor to their spiritual awakening, it seems possible that life-crisis holds an opportunity for reexamining beliefs and creating new and more empowered meaning. Embodying and personalizing a relationship with Divinity is a developmental task, and data regarding it would likely be useful to current developmental models.
Of all the possible studies that could spin off from this one, I am most interested in the “how” of embodied spiritual empowerment. I would like to re-interview these same co-researchers with a question that speaks to their “experience of recognizing the need for, finding, and cultivating an embodied spiritual empowerment.” These results could yield a reproducible process, a “10 steps to embodied spiritual empowerment” that might be transformed into both a book and a workshop.
Implications and Applications
This section examines the thematic implications and applications of these findings to areas of mental health, spirituality and social reform.
Bodyhood: Ritual as embodied prayer, Using the body to connect spirit and earth, Trusting Corporeal Wisdom
Bodyhood encompasses the ways in which women have come to view their bodies as powerful spiritual allies. Using the body as an expression of prayer, a container for spirituality and a source of intuition could assist women in reclaiming spiritual expressions that are accepting of the female body.
Religious and spiritual groups, by offering embodied rituals specific to the needs of women, could dispel religious distortions regarding women and their bodies while offering them a safe place to honor rites of passage specific to their bodies, relationships and transitions. Issues that women and girls frequently struggle with, such as eating disorders, body dysmorphia, body shame, and self-mutilation, might be considered in a new light if the body were removed from constant comparison to impossible advertising standards and instead viewed as a source of mystical empowerment. Teaching women ways to listen to their bodies and work with their intuition could offer a new diagnostic tool in times of illness, as well as increasing self confidence and problem solving. Bodyhood reframes a woman’s body as a psycho-spiritual vehicle of empowerment.
Being-With: Awareness of the hallowed here and now, Recognition of sacred connections, Synthesizing polarities
Being-With speaks to the ways in which women experience themselves in the context of their experiential lives. Teaching women simple mindfulness techniques would be a simple way to help them anchor into the here and now. One reason that cognitive-behavioral therapies are so successful is that they teach clients how to stop “time-traveling” from past to future. Placing women on cognitive, behavioral and spiritual roads to the hallowed-here-and-now would very likely reduce the anxiety born of catastrophizing, and the depression born of regurgitating past traumas.
Feminist developmental theories stress the importance of relationships and connections in a woman’s life. If young girls were raised to value their connections to one another instead of their weight and designer fashions, competition, comparison and jealously could not divide them so quickly. Women’s circles could fulfill needs for mentorship, friendship, witnessing and support. Elders might again be elevated to a place of reverence, where their wisdom is respected, sought after and shared. Rites of passage marking transitions not honored in traditional settings could be celebrated or honored. Perhaps most importantly, the village that it takes to raise a child could be created by women who have been taught of the importance of sacred relationships, and given the tools of communication, negotiation and community building necessary to create those villages.
Dichotomous thinking is enormously damaging, not just to women, but to human beings, and to the earth itself. Witness the battles between science and religion, church and state, wilderness and developers, profits and people, East and West, Christian and non-Christian, masculine and feminine, starving-to-death and obesity, beauty and aging - each polarity resulting in a winner and a loser. Narcissistic, grandiose exploitation of people and lands the world around is only possible when one nation under declares itself superior to all others and is allowed to get away with it. Either-or thinking must be challenged and overcome, not only so that women can experience embodied spiritual empowerment, but so that the world can experience safe well fed bodies, religious freedom, and personal and political freedom.
Omniscience: Personalizing God/dess, Negotiating Patriarchal influences, and Recognizing the Sacred-Self
The recognition and honoring of a personalized God/dess would result in a polytheistic diversity that is consistent with feminist values of inclusion and collaboration. Diversity promotes and protects tolerance. Tolerance makes oppression and war less likely. While Monotheism moves ever closer to the nuclear destruction of both God and man; many God/desses might very well save the world where one God cannot.
Increasing personalized spiritual empowerment outside of dogmatic religious institutions could align and combine previously disenfranchised sectors of Patriarchal society. Zealous, large and well organized membership is the greatest strength of fundamentalism; self-directed spirituality which values the synthesis of all dangerous polarities and the sacred here-and-now could be an effective and much needed counter-point.
Professional and Personal Reflections
This research process has resulted in several professional goals, the first of which is my intention to create a workshop from these findings. The format will include introducing the four areas of ESE, inviting participants to identify areas of strength and weakness, and providing tools for enhancing embodiment, increasing mindfulness, personalizing God/dess and recognizing and honoring the call to Serve. Also, a colleague who is both a psychologist and a yoga instructor is interested in teaching yoga for emotional healing; we intend to collaborate on a bodyhood and spirituality study comparing the recovery rates of therapy clients who use yoga as part of their treatment plan with those who only do therapy. I have also begun transforming this study into an article for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, and am working on a psycho-spiritual narrative for publication in a prominent women’s spirituality magazine. Lastly, I am creating a brochure tailored specifically for obstetricians, gynecologists, nurses and midwives, explaining the relationship between women’s bodies and spirituality, and hope it will result in both a training workshop for health-care providers and another referral source for my private practice.
In these ways, I hope to offer the experience of embodied spiritual empowerment to greater numbers of women. Women are powerful creators. If they are happier and holier in their daily lives, they will influence their families, workplaces and spiritual communities. Children are always the future. They will grow up to take political and spiritual offices. Spiritually empowered children taught to value inclusion, authenticity, freedom and diversity will naturally protect those rights as adults.
When I interviewed for my doctoral program, I was asked why I wanted a doctorate degree. I had rehearsed many answers to imagined questions, but had none ready for that question, and so I told the spontaneous truth, “Because the big dogs have all the power, and I’m gonna need to be a big dog to make any significant changes.” Apparently the spontaneous truth was the right answer, as I am now poised to take my place among the big dogs, there to infiltrate and transform the Patriarchy. But I know what I am up against and that I will need a lot of help. Infusions of fresh, spiritually empowered young people will be a welcome shot in the arm of change; they are perhaps our best hope for survival.
I also have personal goals regarding my own womanhood, bodyhood, spirituality and service. As a woman, I will continue challenging my deep programming around body image, with the goal of self-acceptance regardless of physical appearance. Relative to bodyhood, I look forward to bringing my body into the spiritual here and now by increasing my yoga practice, which always increases my ability to hear my own body wisdom, and results in greater conversation between my body and spirit. I am also looking forward to reconnecting with all of the sacred relationships that have been neglected throughout this arduous process. It will be lovely to step out of my intellectual and academic self, and back into the spiritual comfort of my Priestess self. After spending some time recalibrating to my spiritual frequency and integrating this research into my spiritual self, I hope to develop a Priestess-training program which will instruct women in spiritual, magical and ritual applications for modern life. I also hope to discover a new community for ritual work. My longstanding and very intellectual participation in the Western Mystery Tradition has loosened its hold on me, perhaps because of this longstanding and very intellectual, yet spiritual dissertation. This re-kindled desire to combine my body and nature in spiritual celebration will fuel my next spiritual quest; these personal goals will assure my continued journey on the path of Embodied spiritual empowerment.
In closing, I would like to describe my own heuristic process by answering the question “What is a researcher’s experience of exploring women’s embodied spiritual empowerment?”
I have worked harder than I thought I could, with more discipline than I ever imagined I possessed. In addition to the enormous investments of time and money, this work has affected my lower back, weight, friendships, and housekeeping; there is much repairing to be done.
I have experienced gratitude, respect and admiration for women everywhere who live in cultures that disrespect and devalues them, yet still smile, sing, dance, love, learn, share, teach and get the laundry done.
I have experienced great sadness for all those who are – to use one co-researchers words - “left out of the Great Lap” of the nurturing and protective Divine Feminine.
Perhaps most uncomfortable to bear has been my own anger at what patriarchal dogma continues to do to the minds, spirits and bodies of my amazing sisters, teachers, students, clients and friends, often in the name of God. I know I avoided my literature review for a time because I could not tolerate the anger and hopelessness it was engendering in me.
Research studies, books, articles, clients and more recently the live stories of 13 women have run through me in a steady stream for several years. They have all spoken to, and about, how it feels to be a woman, with a woman’s body and spirit, in a culture steeped in dichotomies.
Here, at the end of what feels like a lifetime’s work, I find myself tangled up in an unforeseen dichotomy of my own. The potential destruction of our children, families, villages, governments, forests, oceans and freedom has never been more evident. Yet, the bright and brave souls who stand against this destruction have also never been more visible.
My research findings tell me I should transcend this angst-ridden picture of good and evil by “synthesizing polarities.” Moustakas’s (1990) definition of “Being-With” suggests that the synthesis I am searching for will arrive when I am able to:
• Be-With the polarities of the world, letting them each be legitimate.
• Be-With the search for the place of harmony and balance within these possibilities, actualities, opposing views, inner tensions and contrary ideas.
• Be-With the forces of darkness and light, discovery and mystery, joy and sorrow and life and death, accepting them and letting them be.
• Be-With the fears and doubts of existence as well as the enticements and attractions of life.
• Be-With the inner silences.
• Be-With the strains of freedom and imprisonment.
“Being-With” is a paradox of stillness and action. It employs many verbs: facing, realizing, opposing, talking, listening, daring, coping and accepting. It offers many tools for negotiating dualism. It will help me to live in this dichotomous culture if I stay in the hallowed-here-and-now. The past is maddening and the future frightening, but in this moment, all is well. Being-With the challenges named in this study evokes within me an existentially dreadful optimism.
Women’s experiences of embodied spiritual empowerment have illuminated a sacred thread connecting the realms of spirit, body and world. This reclaiming of body wisdom, Divinity and empowerment offers women - and through them humanity - the opportunity to experience both God/dess and heaven right here and right now. By bringing God/dess into the body, into the earth and into the world, there is no where else to go, and nothing else to do; it is enough to be authentic, honest and present.
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APPENDIX A
Instructions to Research Participants
Insert Date
Dear __________,
Thank you for your interest in my dissertation research on a woman’s experience of becoming her own spiritual authority. I value the unique contribution that you can make to my study, and am excited about the possibility of your participation in it.
The purpose of this letter is to clarify the nature of my research and your role as co-researcher, to provide in-depth definitions of my terminology and inspiring questions for your consideration, and to obtain your signature on the participation-release form.
I am using a qualitative research model, and will be seeking comprehensive descriptions of your experiences in developing your own spiritual authority. Enclosed is the first chapter of my dissertation proposal, in which I define the terms of my question. I invite you to start with this material, and then move on to the enclosed questions for consideration.
Through your participation as a co-researcher, I hope to understand the true essence of the development of spiritual authority as it reveals itself through your personal experience. Between now and the time we meet for the actual interview, I would ask that you immerse yourself with the enclosed materials and begin to relate them to your own spiritual developmental process. I am seeking vivid, accurate, comprehensive descriptions of how this has been for you, including thoughts, feelings, behaviors, dreams, struggles, people, places, and situations connected with your experience. You may choose to include personal journals, art work, poetry, music, or anything else which helps you to capture the essence of your experience.
I would like to allow at least two hours for the interview. I will record it, and transcribe it afterwards. I will then analyze the data and construct a personal, anonymous depiction of your experience as I understand it. I will then return this depiction to you for review and revision, before including it in my dissertation.
I look forward to working with you, and appreciate the time, energy and personal effort you are willing to spend in assisting my research.
Respectfully,
Betz King Psy. S., LLP
APPENDIX B
Participation-Release Agreement
Center for Humanistic Studies Graduate School
26811 Orchard Lake Rd~Farmington Hills MI 48334
INFORMED CONSENT FORM
Betz King Psy. S., LLP Marjorie Scott Ph. D.
Principle Investigator Faculty Supervisor
PLEASE READ THIS DOCUMENT CAREFULLY, SIGN YOUR NAME BELOW ONLY IF YOU AGREE TO PARTICIPATE AND FULLY UNDERSTAND YOUR RIGHTS. YOUR SIGNATURE IS REQUIRED FOR PARTICIPATION. IF YOU DESIRE A COPY OF THIS CONSENT FORM, YOU MAY REQUEST ONE AND WE WILL PROVIDE IT.
All research participation at The Center for Humanistic Studies Graduate School is voluntary, and you have the right to withdraw at any time, without prejudice, should you object to the nature of the research. Your responses are confidential. Any report of the data collected will be in summary form, without identifying individuals. You are entitled to ask questions and to receive an explanation after your participation.
If you have concerns about your participation in this study, you may contact:
Principle Investigator: Betz King,Psy.S.,LLP 248-417-7755
Description of Study
This is a two-session interview in which your experience of embodied spiritual empowerment will be explored and recorded.
Nature of Participation
You will participate in two sessions. In the first session you will share your experience of embodied spiritual empowerment. You may use the enclosed questions to guide you. In the second session, you will review the work that has been done with your interview.
Purpose of the Study
The questions you will be answering address your views on issues related to embodied spiritual empowerment. The primary purpose of this research is to create rich thematic descriptions of embodied spiritual empowerment and to identify processes common to its creation and maintenance.
Possible Risks
Results from this study will be confidentially shared with the members of the investigators dissertation committee. Due to the small number of research participants, there is some risk that you may be identified as a participant of this study, but every precaution will be taken to ensure confidentiality. State law requires psychologists to report abuse, neglect and threats to self, others or property that are revealed during the interview process.
The disclosing process of the interview may result in emotional epiphanies that may be enlightening or uncomfortable. Provisions have been made for you to receive therapeutic assistance should you desire it.
Possible Benefits
You will have the opportunity to contribute to psychological science by participating in this interview.
When your participation is complete, you will be given an opportunity to learn about this research, which may be useful to you in understanding yourself and others.
Confidentiality
Your name will not be used, nor will any identifying information be used. Transcripts and data will be stored in a secure and confidential manner for five years. All data will be kept in secured files, in accord with the standards of CHS, Federal regulations, and the American Psychological Association.
Opportunities to Question
Any technical questions about this research may be addressed to:
Primary Investigator: Betz King Psy.S.,LLP 248-417-7755
Any questions concerning the research process or your rights as a participant may be addressed to the following CHSGS faculty:
Marjorie Scott, Ph.D. 248-476-1122.
These options are available before, during and after the research, or in the event that you withdraw from the research process.
Opportunities to Withdraw at will
If you decide now or at any point to withdraw this consent or stop participating, you are free to do so at no penalty to yourself. You are free to skip specific questions and continue participating at no penalty.
Opportunities to be Informed of Results
In all likelihood, the results will be fully available around March of 2006. Preliminary results will be available earlier. If you wish to be told of this research, please contact the primary investigator listed above. She will either meet with you or direct you to where you can read a copy of the results. In addition, there is a chance that the results from this study will be published, which would be also be available to you. In such an article, participants would be identified in general terms.
Relevant Materials Available
You have the right to review the following documents:
The American Psychological Association Code of Ethics
and The Belmont Report of 1979 – Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research.
If you would like a copy of these articles, please inform the primary investigator.
I HAVE READ THE STATEMENTS ABOVE, UNDERSTAND THE SAME, AND VOLUNTARILY SIGN THIS FORM. I FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I HAVE RECEIVED AN OFFER OF A COPY OF THIS CONSENT FORM.
DATED THIS ____________ DAY OF _____________, 20________
_________________________ ________________________________
SIGNATURE OF PARTICIPANT SIGNATURE OF PERSON
OBTAINING CONSENT
APPENDIX C
Guiding Questions and Concepts for Research Participants
Below are some guidelines for formulating your thoughts concerning the research question. It is not necessary to speak to each one, or to any of them, they are merely “thought starters”.
• What is your experience of embodied spiritual empowerment?
▪ Have there been defining moments, or incidents, which were central to the creation of your embodied spiritual empowerment, and if so, can you describe them?
▪ Has living in a dualistic patriarchal society effected your experience of an embodied spiritual empowerment, and if so, how?
• Related concepts:
Journeying, seeking, growing, changing, building, learning, Divine feminine, justice, inspiration, faith, service, guidance.
• What does “embodied spiritual empowerment” mean to you?
▪ How do you embody your spiritual empowerment?
• Related concepts:
Bodily states, senses, internalization, feelings, thoughts, expressions, internal vs. external locus of spiritual authority.
APPENDIX D
Sample Interview
Teresa’s Interview 8-20-05
BK: OK, I'm good to go.
T: So, I wondered when you talked about empowerment. I kinda, sorta, began to think, “did I ever feel disempowered?” And I did. But I think that if there was a sense of unbalance in my childhood, it was an exaggerated sense of power that I had. Umm, vivid images of saying to my mother, ”give me the baby, I'll make him stop crying.” Which is a pretty typical thing for big sister to do. But I'm not sure I'd give a baby to a six-year-old. But she did and I thought I was comJohnnt and everybody else kind of went along with me, so. And I had a lot of experiences around that spiritually as well. I was still in the enclave that my parents controlled. It wasn't until I got to college that I got enough of the world that I discovered that I wasn't the person in charge, that I had thought I had been. Like, sorta raised Catholic, but when I was in eighth grade, I said I had the opportunity to have a regular baby-sitting job that conflicts, the womans class on baby-sitting conflicts with CCD so, I don't think I'm going to CCD mom, and I'm not sure I want to make my confirmation anyway. She said, “Ohh, if that's what you want”. So, I thought I was making all of these decisions. The school kind of did the rituals for you anyway, when you got your period, when you got a chalice. There was a priest presiding, so that would have made it a Catholic ritual, right? Nobody told me it wasn't. So I thought if they sang “I am women” and I got a chalice because I'd gotten my period, and they had it as part of a liturgy, that it meant it was a Catholic ritual.
BK: In a church this happened?
T: We didn't meet in a church in this group, the Catholic parish I was involved with as a kid. We met in people's homes, or the basements or things. Because they were a ... I think it was called a floating community. It was kind of like a school of choice. Where people from Metro-Detroit... I think it started as a ... some of them were protesting Viet Nam, some of them were in reaction to a priest that was really an issue. Bad enough of an issue that the Catholic Church was acknowledging that maybe he was too conservative. So they created this floating parish in the community called. I thought I was raised Catholic. And it wasn't until... and I didn't think, I didn't know that other children didn't distribute communion. They would pass communion down the aisle and the kids would stand at the end and it would be our job to take the cup and the bread from one aisle to the next.
BK: hmmm like tithing, that's how they do it, except with grown-ups.
T: (laugh) yeah. And so what I thought was a Catholic experience, it wasn't in a church that I had that ritual in, it was at a regular family camp-over that we went with this church group. So it was at our camp, or the camp that we rented every Memorial Day weekend. But we met there every Memorial Day weekend, and it was part of what I experienced was where you go to church on Sunday on Memorial Day weekend. And I choose to go to Dominican and the Dominican nuns are also, perhaps, one of the more liberal parts of the Catholic church. It wasn't a surprise to me when I was out of high school and I saw women behaving like I was used to seeing some of the nuns behave. And figured out that that meant gay. Yeah, I knew that. I knew Sister Karen and Sister Peggy were a couple. I wasn't old enough to have it occur to me to think about the private lives of some adults. But when I was old enough, to go , oh yeah, they were. And partly because of that they weren't upset about the girls who were gay in high school. Which should have been a big clue that they didn't have a traditional thought. But all of these experiences that until I was 18 I thought were really normal, and empowering. I think the biggest one, sometimes I wonder, “Is this just my experience of it?” As I look back on it... I'm sure not every girl in that Catholic High School knew and felt the nuns were positively supportive of their gay friends. Because they can't possibly have all paid attention. They can't all have been as aware when they were 15 of their sexuality to know that some people were struggling with their sexual identity. As I look back at that and I thought, no. Graduation requirement for Dominican for many years was a year of Human Sexuality and a semester, a quarter of it was religious, which was pretty traditional. A quarter of it was sociology, we needed to plan a wedding and price it. And the other half of the year was science. We had to be able to name a form of birth control and how effective it was and what the risks were to pass the class. And they put some bias in it. You had to be able to visually identify every STD by its, like, you know what a staphylococcus looked like and what the dangers were and what diseases it caused, and side effects. So they were there very clearly in their Sex Ed to communicate the risks of sexuality. But they were also requiring us to know about birth control. And so, it wasn't until I got, “You mean everyone doesn't have to know about birth control that graduates from a Catholic School?” And I certainly knew I was a little more advanced than some of the other kinds in the class, but, I didn't realize that I was unique until I got to U of D and met the Jesuits. Perhaps they are not so liberal and aware of how important it is for women to feel like they have a place and position of power.
BK: And you had that sense as a result of your upbringing.
T: Yeah.
BK: You didn't know that it was unusual.
T: Very much.
BK: And you would call it embodied because the chalice and the womb and the bleeding are linked?
T: Yes.
T: And that made sense to you?
T: Exactly. I mean you got your period, they gave you a Chalice, they sang “I am Woman”. Well, that means, but they did that in a religious context. And I think that's what makes me feel it was an embodied spirituality. Because my body was becoming a sexual body, a reproductive body, an adult body. And they celebrated it in a religious context. And the nuns at Dominican did some of the same thing. They didn't send the message that religion had condemning attitudes about sexuality, certainly not about homosexuality. And while there was a subconscious message that, not very subtle message in the human sex class, and sex can be dangerous. There is no form of birth control that's 100%. There are sexually transmitted diseases. But they were so factually based in the transmission of it there wasn't any shame. It was more like Driver's Ed. says “And people are killed in drunk driving accidents every year. Don't drink and drive”. And so, because it came from the Nuns, I thought it came from the Catholic Chuch. They were the experts. There wasn't any Priest in the School. Somebody came by once in a while to do Masses and stuff for us. But we planned, but we sang. We did everything for us except call this guy in to celebrate Eucharist And so my experience up until that point, had been “well, we can do whatever we want to.” And at the point where I questioned it in 8th grade, and said “I'm not sure I want to be, I'm not sure, Mom, I can handle being a woman in the Catholic Church.” My mom said “Ok”.
BK: And was that your awareness?
T: In 8th grade that was partly to get a job and partly “I don't know if I can be a feminist and a Catholic.” And then I went to Dominican and I looked at the Nuns and thought “If they can do it, I can do it.” They're, I mean, they're very positive, empowered women. The people who inspired me tremendously went on to run Focus Hope downtown. So, my experience again was that these women who are very much in their power, very much feminists and very proud of being female and they were all experienced. They were my primary experience as a teenager. So I said, “well, if the Nuns can do it, then I guess I will be confirmed. I can be a feminist and a Catholic. And then I went to U of D. And I started to meet the Jesuits, and I thought, “that's not the church I'm used to, that's not the church I'm used to.” And somewhere at U of D I thought, “I'm not sure I'm Catholic. Wait a minute...” and increasingly I started to question. And the good thing about Jesuits is that questioning's okay. Any fight you want to have, the Jesuits will have it with you. Hours of arguments because that's what Jesuits, as an order, tend to do. They tend to have these long drawn-out intellectual arguments. So, when I was going to pick a fight it was really easy to do. I just started “Why do you say that's true?” And I had at least a couple of Jesuits willing to argue with me.
BK: They were men?
T: Yeah. And they were certainly not... that's not true, one of them was embodied. I got spend a week on a reservation called La Cona that one of the Jesuits had worked on for a decade. And part of our, as a service project after our first year of college, we went and lived on the reservation for a week or two and did community service work. And very much, got this message that it was okay to portray the Holy Spirit as an eagle because that's how the La Cona interpreted Catholicism. So, very embodied, very much a message that if you are not using your body in service to God's people, then you are not doing God's work.
BK: That was going to be my next question. When you are saying “embodied”, what are you meaning?
T: I would say 2 things. One is an active component that you are physically engaging your spirituality. It is not Francis Bacon's dichotomy that, um, we spent a lot of time talking about, in college, about Francis Bacon having said, “Light, Man, Science.” I'm not even sure all of the things he put there, “Are good.” And women, and dark and religion to some degree, or spirituality rather. The religious institution and that's good. And there's the dark, feminine body, spirituality is bad. But we discussed that as an inaccuracy. With this very cool Jesuit who live with the Native Americans for a decade and had a more embodied sense of spirituality.
And I'd say the Second piece is if you're not accepting of your body and it's uniqueness and it's universalness, then you're not really loving yourself. And I would say that spiritual body, spirituality has to involve a level of self-love where you see parts of your body deified. Like the Chalice and the Womb. Like a belief that getting your feet on the earth is part of being alive on the earth. Or connected to the earth or, as opposed to surviving and stuffing feelings. It was actually that Jesuit who gave me a quote that I found still really powerful. I think it was Ortega's deathbed utterance was “More warmth, not more light. It is the frost that kills, not the night.” And that so has stuck with me as how to redirect that we all get scared of the dark. Nobody wants to be left out in the cold and alone. But it's not the dark that's scary. It's left out in the cold, alone. And that sense that woman, and dark, and mysterious parts of my body, or spiritual experiences were bad. It was the not loving part, it was the isolating part, the judging rejecting parts that were not of the divine.
BK: You had said you had thought about it and you had decided, yes, you were disempowered at one point. Is that what you would call your disempowerment?
T: Yes. Because after that freshman year my life got really rough. My dad's drinking became obvious, because I didn't know my dad was an alcoholic until I went to college and had enough perspective to see what he was doing. I've had people who weren't part of my familiy’s isolated enclave who said, “your dad was slurring words last night.” “Yeah, you saw that, too. It wasn't just me?” And I think there are a lot of family myths that got debunked after my freshman year. And one of them was that my dad had a drinking problem, or that everything was fine in my family and perfect. “No, not really, he's got a drinking problem. He should have been able to remember talking to me.” “He shouldn't have driven home if he couldn't remember talking to me.” And college helped me do that.
The last three years of college I became increasingly dissatisfied with the choices in my family and the Catholic Church. And that culminated for me when I got pregnant. I was engaged and I ended the engagement and a couple of weeks later discovered I was pregnant. And I lost the baby and I was at St. Gerards Church, with John for his sister's confirmation. And it's his youngest sister and the second-youngest in his family is also a sister. The Pope had just said girls couldn't be alter servers. So Jane spent the Mass as a Cross Bearer and the alter server kept messing up. But she wasn't allowed to do it, no matter how right she knew how to do it, because she was a girl. As I'm kneeling there and knowing about this great battle she's going through “You can't do it because you're a girl?” I started smelling blood and realized I was losing the baby. And I was just like, kneeling in church, and it was, just that first scent of blood that said, “Oh my god.” I was about 3 months maybe, I spotted for about a month before I fully lost the baby, before I terminated. So, probably 3 months pregnant, I said “Don't you take this baby. Don't you take my baby! If you take my baby, I will not forgive you. You know. You can't do this.” And I lost the child and I don't think I went back into church for I don't know how long.
To know that there was no ritual to celebrate the loss of my child, to mourn the loss of my child. At least none that I knew of. There was no way that the Catholic Church had to celebrate the fact that I had been pregnant. And all sorts of judgments to the fact that I wasn't married. And getting pregnant seem to have made me much more conscious of spiritual gifts and there was no place to deal with that in the church.
BK: Spiritual gifts like?
T: Barb [a friend] had a deck of Tarot Cards and I picked it up and I knew how to read it. I think she wound up giving me the cards because she said, “You know how to use these. You might as well keep them cuz obviously you know how to use them better than I do.” It was a little bit, you know, snotty, and a little bit honest on her part. “I've had this deck for how long and you pick it up and read it better than I do. You might as well keep them.” And, uh, I started getting past-life memories. I, um, when I miscarried over a couple days, finally. And during that process I got terrified to go to sleep one night and I was certain that if I fell asleep I was going to die. And somewhere in the very insomniac kind of panic night I got these flashes and they were remarkable, like when I got my memories back from my abuse years later. How you get a piece of it. At first all I could see was a bedspread. And it was yellow. And there's this wooden bed. And then more pieces would come. And as I paid attention the pieces eventually became full-blown. The pictures got bigger and I realized I had died in child-birth. Sometime, I don't know, in the last 200 years. And I'm like, “ok”. I think what happened was miscarrying brought it up close enough that I made a jump. I think, I don't know. And you can't prove it's real. But it felt real. And up until that point I would say that I don't believe in reincarnation. Except I remember dying. I remember the bedspread. I mean, I know I died in child-birth. And so I was having all these experiences. And there was no where in the Church to go for answers, to look for it. And nowhere that they had any sense that any of it was even going on. I think the final straw was I thought I'd lost the baby Wednesday night. And Friday I started cramping again. My mom's like, “yeah, you know, it's a natural part of post-partum stuff. Your body’s just coming back.” I'm like, “No mom, really, this is ... this is serious, this is real.” And I don't know if my mom was minimizing again, or if it just wasn't clear. but, I didn't wind up going to the hospital, I stayed home. And I labored until she finally got that I was in labor. John was there, it was my mom and John all through the night. I started bleeding at 5 minute intervals. I was having contractions, I was bleeding and I was bleeding and I was bleeding. And, um, at one point I passed out and went into convulsions. And I think what had happened was the fetus was smaller than my vaginal canal. So, when I thought lost the baby on Wednesday night, it was actually the placenta. And 2 days later my body was trying to push the baby out, but it was already out of my uterus. But it wasn't until I started shaking that the fetus came out. It was about that big, 16 weeks along. And I really felt I was going to die. I probably was pretty close to dying. I mean I passed out from blood loss. And I remember reaching out to someone and the woman who answered was very clearly not a virgin. And I was left at the time very clearly aware that a goddess had answered me. Venus of Willendorf type of goddess. NOT some blonde virgin. Very clearly not some blonde virgin. Very big and very black and very heavy, a full-bodied.
BK: Sounds a bit like Binah?
T: Yeah, yeah. Could've been. She didn't, kind of introduce herself, Hi my name is.. So, I've always, kind of like, wondered who was it? But I don't know that names were really critical at that point. And I reached out and I really felt like She was really what kept me in my body. And I'm not sure I would have survived if I hadn't reached out to Her. It was Her. She was very understanding, and kind of like “ lots of people go through this, you can survive this too.” But it wasn't so much of a choice. There is certainly a sense of choice there, “hundreds of women have died in child birth, too. You can do that as well.” Very much not alone, but very much a choice. And I thought at the time that it was John holding my hand that helped me stay in my body. She helped me not be alone, and be okay with what was going on. But She certainly wasn't helping me make the choice of whether I was going to live or die. I have another very vivid memory of holding on to John's hand. And it was that hand. I couldn't even see his face. Just my hand in his. And it was so big and solid and alive that I felt that's what kept me alive that's what helped me come back to my body after I passed out.
And I believed that for years that it was John who'd done that. There's a bunch of people I was working at creating a coven with. We're sitting around and talking, debating whether initiation was an educationally earned graduation or a confirmation of an ecstatic experience that was, I don't want to say random, but divinely given... Whether you earned initiation or whether you were chosen, or it happened. I think, at that point, I never had an initiation by their definition. I mean, I almost died in childbirth and I certainly feel like I had an ecstatic experience if you talk about, if you define that as seeing the divine face-to-face. In my conversation I said something like, “And it was Her and your hand, John, She kept me from panicking, that it was all going to be ok, and you kept me alive and if you hadn't been holding my hand.” And John said, “I wasn't”. I said, “Oh, really. What do you mean you weren't? Yes you were.” It was vivid, I could still clearly see his hand in mine. And he said, “well, when you were in labor, I was behind you, supporting you. I couldn't have been kneeling in front of you holding your hand.” I was perplexed and “are you sure?” He's like, “Teresa, what do you mean 'are you sure?' I know where I was, I didn't pass out. And when you passed out, I was sitting behind you, supporting you while you were in labor.” “Who's hand was I holding that helped me stay in my body?” There wasn't a person it could have been. Because my mom and John were the only people awake in the house. And it was a man's hand. So, I don't know, 3, 4, 5 years after the fact, I realized that I has also had an experience with God. But not known it. Or wasn't able to distinguish between what I'd called an embodied experience of the male deity and John. Which I suppose is kind of part of how it works. At least how I think marriages are supposed to work. That the sense of the divine marriage of Male and Female coming together. You're here to talk about the Great Rite, then you're choosing a couple to be the God and the Goddess. And I couldn't even tell the difference between God and John.
So, I figure there was a pretty clear confirmation for me. That embodiment happens whether you know it, choose it, or earn it. But it's there and it's more of an accepting it. I don't even know that I accepted it. It was just there. And it took five years to figure out it was. And I think that I was really lucky that as I was experiencing so totally beaten down by my life circumstances, what have you, that I was able to find an answer that gave me meaning. And sometimes I'm still amazed that I made that turn. The baby’s father was probably the worst guy I had ever dated. He was violent and very addictive. My mother couldn't stand him. And she at one point, I was spending all my time with him, I was supposed to be living at home for the summer, and she's like “you're always with him” we'd been engaged for 6 months or something. My mother kicked me out of the house. Afterwards she said, “I thought maybe if you lived with him before you got married, you would realize what a disaster living with him was and get out.” And she was right. By the end of the semester I had realized that that was not what I wanted. It would have been really easy living with him and finding out I was pregnant to have made some very different choices. And to continue on a downward spiral. To decide that I deserve to be hit, and the violence could have escalated worse than it was. I don't think I ever ... Clinically I had whiplash once, but there was never any broken bones, or life threatening violence. And I am fairly certain, had I lived with him for more than the semester I lived with him, that there would have been. That the violence would have continued, and so, being hit, feeling like I was having questions and being isolated from all the things I had thought I was when I was younger, and that discovery that I was pregnant, it would have been very easy for me to have been totally disempowered. But somehow in the pregnancy, a sense of spirituality arose that, rather than continue on a downward spiral, I started to make choices that were the ... I started to make... yes I did. I broke up with him, but I became very ... I decided that I was going to reclaim my power, that it was important, that I was just not going to do the choices the way that I was, very quickly falling along. And I got out. And I lost the baby. And I didn't die. Which I think would have been another choice at that point. I think I could have been discouraged and I don't know what words to say. But it could have been bad enough that I think I could have stayed and been beaten or died and the fact that I did neither was very much a spiritual choice. And one I'm not 100% sure it was all mine.
BK: Wow.
T: It's hard for me to take credit for psychic gifts that I don't think I've earned. I picked up a deck of cards and I could read them. It wasn't something I deserved, it wasn't something i knew how to do. It was just there. And, I certainly reached out to the Divine when I was in labor and losing it. But the fact that they answered, and.. that 2 of them answered... I think I reached out to the Mother to help me not be alone. Particular when my mother was perhaps less aware or less willing to admit was wrong. She had been really bad at admitting unpleasantries. So, “no no no your dad's not an alcoholic. No no no your uncle's not inappropriate, no no no you're not in labor.” “No really mom, there's the baby, see really, I was in labor.” So, I can certainly take credit for reaching out. But I can't take credit for being answered, and it left me with a feeling of very luckiness. Like very grateful there is a God there to answer, because I don't think I could have done it on my own. I don't think, I don't know how to explain it. Does it make sense about that there was something else there? And I think that part of that embodied spirituality means “owning your power” and not owning, and owning what you don't have power unto. Maybe owning one's as well as owning your power.
BK: Like you had the power to ask?
T: Yeah.
BK: And then you had a received experience?
T: Yes.
BK: And all you can take credit for is the asking?
T: Yes.
BK: But not for what comes, or how it comes, or what it looks like, or what it does for you?
T: Yes. I asked not to lose the baby and I didn't get it. So there's certainly a sense of not all of the asking... You can ask, and I believe there's always going to be an answer. It’s just not necessarily the answer you want. And in retrospect, I don't have to deal with that man anymore. And if I was raising his child, I would at least have to worry whether or not he was around. And so, I would rather have had the baby and had the problems with it, but it is undeniable that my life has been tremendously easier because I lost it. So, I certainly got an answer and perhaps an answer that some people would argue was better for me. It wasn't the answer I wanted. I think that's the owning what I can do and not thinking that I can controlled it all. Because I think what goes hand-in-hand with all that is that I'm not to blame for all the bad things. What people think they have a direct link to God, they get whatever they pray for. It's sort of implied that if you don't get what you pray for, you did something wrong. Like, why didn't... other people would say, “well, God is punishing you for having premarital sex, and that's why you lost your baby.” But I don't think it's my credit or my blame. I think that there are some things like miscarriages that we can't control. I found out later that the doctor had thought there was a 60% chance I'd miscarry, but hadn't told me because there wasn't any point. It was either going to happen or it wasn't. But I found out I was pregnant because I'd gone in for bronchitis and I got treated, but I was throwing up and no one else who had that bug was puking. Throwing up is not usually a part of bronchitis. And I found out I had bronchitis and morning sickness. And so, that's what the doctor said. “If you're that sick that early in the pregnancy, there's a good chance you're not going to carry the pregnancy full term. But I'm not going to tell this young girl. 'You might lose this baby because there's nothing you can really do about it.' ” And so, because I don't feel like I can control or get whatever I wanted just because I asked God.
And I think that that was as important awareness for me as my empowerment. Because before that I thought that good people had good things happen to them. And afterwards I started to see that sometimes things happen. There's no sense that God's special people are the ones who are rich, and happy, and nobody who they loved ever died until they were 90 in their sleep. And I think I might have been tested as a child to believe that. Because I didn't know that anything bad had ever happened to me. My grandmothers both died when I was in my 20s and I wasn't around for anyone else's death who was close or important. Or, wasn't supposed to die, that maybe is a better way to say it. I didn't ever have to go to a funeral. But there was always a sense that the people who died were supposed to die. They were old, or they were sick, or they were expected. And so I could easily, I couldn't admit my dad was an alcoholic because that would've been admitting that something was wrong and that would've meant that I was bad or was somehow to blame. And I think that miscarriage and that experience with the Divine also helped me realize that sometimes bad things happen to good people. And it went hand-in-hand with admitting my dad was an alcoholic and seeing the world didn't end just because I was saying out loud that there was something wrong.
BK: It got rid of black and white and gave you gray?
T: Yeah. It did. That's a good way to say that. It also got rid of blame, and I think that was real important. The sense that you're in control of everything means that if anything goes wrong, it's your fault. And that was real critical...
BK: To surrender to? Is that what you're saying?
T: Yeah. That was a good one.
BK: It's gotta be a powerful action.
T: Yeah. Thank you. That's what I ... I'm not sure quite how to phrase that, but, because I did feel like that was a part of my empowerment. Was that sense of surrender. Surrendering to the fact that I was losing the baby. Surrendering to the fact that I wasn't always going to get what I wanted. And that I could go on and that the world would not ... and I think that was also very important when I started getting my memories back of my childhood abuse. That I had already had a couple of experiences where the way I thought the world was supposed to be hadn't happened. And life had gone on. I kind of thought, probably, if I remember this abuse, the world won't be the way it should be and I'll still go on. And I think the more that I became aware of my abuse, the more powerful I became. Because before there was a feeling like some of the choices happening in my head weren't making a whole lot of sense. And yet I was still doing it. And as I started to remember the abuse, although it was very frightening and I spent a lot of time feeling very, um, when I wasn't, when I was in myself, it was my real age, I felt a lot stronger for being aware that there was some younger age needing to get acknowledged. And I used some, at least, alternative techniques, I'd say. I used, did some holotropic breathwork. And it started out with me dealing with my abuse. But in reenacting it, I got a chance to fight back. And that felt, I can't explain it. Like I had changed how it had happened. And, that moved into memories of past-lives, that maybe I had decided that I deserved to be abused. At least that's what it seemed like in the memory. That I had another memory and that one was around, I had an unpleasant life situation. And I don't know if it's a sister or a co-wife or what, but at some point I got tired of the man in charge and I just stopped caring, I stopped bathing, I stopped cooperating. And he started to just ignore me or avoid me or whatever. And that sister, co-wife, whatever started taking the brunt of the abuse and I think he killed her. And I think at that point I kind of made a decision that I deserved to be abused, or I said “if not me, then who?” And I was strong enough to have taken it, and it killed her. And I don't know if I 100% believe it. Because it's not ... certainly don't think it, that judgment of myself it true, but if there's such a thing as reincarnation, how are the chances you make judgments about yourself and you get another try to discover the ones that aren't right. And so I think that in some ways being in a environment that acknowledged that reincarnation is possible let me work out how I could've made some choices in this life and not be to blame for the choices. It's really hard to say, “you're a free spirit and you've chosen to be born into this life for a reason”, and then to get born into a family that's alcoholic. That can sound a lot like you deserved it, or you picked it, or you wanted it.
BK: Like blaming the victim?
T: Yes.
BK: If you have cancer, you must be a pessimist.
T: Yes Yes Yes. And all the diabetics have trouble handling the sweetness of life.
BK: Right.
T: Yep Yep. And I think that in the healing. Because of the past-life memories that I have. I kinda, um... Yes and no. Yeah you make some choices but the implication that you're that you're right when you make those choices. Like choosing this life to learn a lesson means you already knew what the answer was and you're just, no. I think I probably chose this life and I have to believe that it happened pre-birth. Because I didn't choose my dad. And some of these happened so young, that I couldn't not .... that there was no sense of responsibility involved in it. I know for some people, their abuse carries a piece of, “why did I let this happen to me.” And it was so ingrained in my family that by being born I was pretty setup for being abused. There wasn't a whole lot of other way that it was going to work. So I struggled a little bit with that sense of guilt. “You know, I may have chosen this, but I chose this, if I did, out of the same sense of woundedness that I chose to drink when I was younger, or not eat.” It was the only was I knew at the time to cope with what was going on. But not something I wanted. And I think that in order to have a choice, you have to have ... if you have to choose between 2 evils you aren't really making a choice, that you don't have the power of choice then. That unless you can say, “how about this or that”, or come up with a 3rd option, or combine,... unless you have a free range of responses, then you're not really choosing. In the sense that, somebody who has cancer can choose how to deal with it, they can deny it sometimes, and they can live with it sometimes and they can fight it, and they have a whole range of choices but if you're told “well, you can die by drowning or by something else”, well, that's not really a choice. And that's where I think, in someways, I was at when I didn't eat. I didn't have any other choices, I didn't have enough tools to cope with myself. And if I was going to stay in my body in college I was going to remember my abuse. And I wasn't ready to. And so part of that disempowerment that I experienced in college was probably technically Anorexia, but, not, I kind of argue with that, I weighed 125. 125 is not skin and bones, unless, maybe it was 120. It was not a healthy weight. And I still argue with myself in my head because the scales, the doctors and the charts on the wall said there wasn't anything wrong with what I weighed. And I have to accept my own definition of what was an appropriate weight is where to go. So...
BK: So you left your body on purpose, is what you're saying?
T: Yes.
BK: And became disembodied?
T: Yes. Literally. I probably spent most of my college years disassociated. I didn't eat. I was pretty skinny when I graduated high school and I lost 20 pounds in college. And I drank almost enough to kill myself at times. There was one time that my roommate who was pre-med was pretty sure I was going into a coma. I could drink a half-fifth of Seagram and still do calculus. So I was really, really working on staying out of my body.
BK: And then would you say it was the miscarriage that brought you back?
T: Yeah, it was the start. Um. And .....
BK: recovering memories?
T: Yes. I was just going to say. I miscarried Thanksgiving of 89 and it was February of 92 that I had my first dreams. That I thought, hmm. And that process in between was increasingly difficult. As I was confronting things that I think were preparation for getting the memories back. A lot of those years was a big battle. And when you talk about therapists disempowering people by painting them as victims I think that was some of what happened to me. I, um, I guess I had a lot of rules in my head. And so, I woke, the first time my uncle came to my house, John and I had bought a house. The first time I saw my uncle he came to a house warming party. The first time I saw my uncle, I woke up the next morning and I had nightmares about my uncle and I couldn't remember them. And in my head there's a little rule that says “if a woman can't remember her dream, but has nightmares about older family members, then she has to go to therapy because that's a sign” as if I could pick the page off the textbook and said “unable to remember nightmares about older male relatives means”, you know, “is a symptom of incest.” And so I went to therapy. I picked her name out of a phonebook and made an appointment. And I think that I started getting the memories back then. Partly because John and I owned a home and it was safe. I was, ... what a concrete measure of, “I'm not dependant on my family anymore. I'm separate.” And she urged me not to get married. She thought it was a mistake to make that important of a decision at that time in my life. And I started seeing her in March of 92 and we got married June 20th of 92. So, like, I'm 3 months from a wedding and it was just so like “what do you mean? This is my life.” And I felt that perhaps she had missed a real big piece. Because I felt like it was because John and I had gotten a house together that I was safe enough now to have my memories back. And she was suggesting that I shouldn't marry John, that I shouldn't be part of, or that I was not making good choices, and I wasn't capable of making good choices. And that, I don't know. She certainly didn't have an image of me as somebody who was capable. Ok, I was getting flashbacks on a regular basis. Having suppressed memories come up and physical reactions. Certainly I was a bit of a mess at the time, but, it didn't mean that I wasn't a competent adult. As well as, having, becoming aware of these large pieces of this wounded child inside me. And so I think not listening to her, and eventually ending that relationship was part of, “no one is ever going to take that much power away from me again. I know this is right.” And I certainly couldn't say, I didn't even know, well see, actually, I can't tell the difference between John and God so, probably this is a good choice since he is my image of what is safe and strong and, I don't know.
BK: Something to surrender into...
T: Yeah.
BK: The physical manifestation that you can surrender into...
T: Yes, definitely. Certainly, probably the only time, the first time I felt like I didn't have to be in charge. That I wasn't, that if I wasn't in control that it would be okay, everything would survive. Him, and labor. I don't know that anyone gets through labor without surrendering. I suppose there's enough drugs that you can surrender chemically rather than consciously. Yeah, a lot of surrender there, a lot of changes there, that embodiment happened.
I don't know how many of those questions I've addressed, and if I was on topic.
BK: I think everything you've said has been on topic. I'm curious about now.
T: Yeah.
BK: This is how you got here.
T: Right
BK: So, how is here? What's here really like?
T: Um. Well, I discovered somewhere along this line, deep in my heart, I'm a monotheist, because I didn't experience the God and the Goddess as separate. That I can't conceive of them as being anything but one God. And wearing the face of the Goddess or wearing the face of the God, I really don't think John's God. So, if John can wear the face of God, then anyone can wear the face of God. It doesn't stop there from being one God. And so I think for me that gives me now a tremendous amount of acceptance for whatever anyone wants to call their God. Because, I really believe there is just one God. Whatever name you use for it is just as good and any other. Though some seem to work a lot better for me than others. But that's me and if that God's name works for you, go ahead.
BK: What do you mean “works for you”?
T: Um. There are some Gods, some ways of reaching out to God that I get answers from and other ways that I don't. And so I think what works for me is do I get a sense of the presence of the divine.
BK: So it's a two-way channel?
T: Yeah. I think some people surrender to God and it certainly looks to me like nobody is answering. Or nobody is catching it.
BK: They're sending but they're not receiving?
T: Yeah. Perhaps they're surrendering more of themselves than they ought, than God wants. God says, “I'll catch you. I'm not taking everything.” There's an old joke about somebody and the water's rising and climbs to the roof and prays to God to save him. And a boat comes by, “no no, God will save me.” Someone else comes by, a helicopter comes by, “no no, God will save me.” And he drowns and goes up to heaven and says “God, Why didn't you save me?” “What do you mean? I sent a boat and a helicopter?” you know, whatever “What do you mean didn't I save you?” So I think there are some people who do that - they surrender more than God wants to catch. If God wanted control of all our lives, to every intimate detail, then we wouldn't have free will. But because we do, it's a dance between surrendering and being in charge of your life. And maybe I'm wrong in my assessment of those other people. I would think they would have a greater peace if it was really working.
BK: Do you have greater peace when you use the methods that work for you?
T: Yeah. I'm not necessarily happier. Like I said, it does not mean I get what I want, unfortunately. But I can be profoundly sad and wounded and still be at peace. And I think that's how I know that it's working. I would love, I think as an adult that sense of peace is separate from happiness. As a more complex delineation than I had as a child. And I think that, than a lot of adults do. And I've been teetering on that a lot lately. I would really like God to answer my desires. And I would very much like some laboratory to return the biopsy on Tuesday that does not say “Small Cell Cancer”.
BK: That's something that you're really waiting for?
T: They did a biopsy [on my Father] on Wednesday. They found a spot on the film. And it's stupid for me to say “it's okay if it's large cell cancer, I just don't want it to be small cell”. But small cell metastasizes so they won't operate and they'll have to use chemo. And I think that's just a harder road to go.
Hmm. I might have nurse somebody and finish this conversation with a child. [family conversation] I would love to have the power to make him not have cancer and I don't. What I do have is this increasing sense of right actions. Like I'm making good choices and I'm being conscious and grieving through the steps that either will or won't turn into him dying and I think that's really hard to do. And I think dealing with my dad in the last 18 month, 19 months, has in some ways brought myself closer in my practice in surrendering to the divine. And yet having that sense of strength of will, embodying my spirituality because we've been struggling with life and death.
BK: Well, that's the theme throughout your talking, it seems the moments of life or death is when you get your greatest confirmation.
T: Yes.
BK: Your spiritual embodiment.
T: Yes. When Charlie was born, my dad wouldn't hold him because [family conversation, child enters room to be nursed] When Charlie was born my dad said he had a real bad case of laryngitis and didn't hold him because he didn't want him to get it. Not a big deal. My dad's a real baby guy. And my brother wound up holding Charlie for most of the night after he was born. And any other time in my life my dad wouldn't let go of 'em, let my brother have that much of a turn. Since then we discovered that my dad had cancer on his voice box and they did radiation and that didn't work and they did surgery and now he's got a trach. So, as far as I know, he hasn't smoked since he's got the trach. But he didn't quite quit all the way during radiation. So, I think the fact that my dad's alive and not smoking seems pretty life changing. And I feel real grateful that he got to meet all my kids. And he could have 10 more years, he could have 20 more years. Right now all he's got is a spot on his lungs and a laryngectomy. But, I think one of the gifts of having an embodied spirituality is you finally get a clue about how things are going. Sometimes they are really vague clues and sometimes they are real specific clues. And I think that my dad is going to spend the next couple of years going in and out of hospitals getting sicker, sicker, and sicker. And I felt that since he started radiation. I don't know how it's going to be. And I certainly never expected him to develop a heart problem. He's got atrial afibrulation. It's something they call it, they abbreviate it all the time. He's probably now going to have to get something like a de-fibulator which is like a pace maker.
BK: You're talking about enhanced intuition?
T: Yeah. And I could be wrong and the spot might be nothing and he might never go back to a hospital again. But part of my moving to the east side is that I want to be closer to him and he works in Grosse Point. So, if I go to Grosse Point, if I live in Grosse Point, I will live within mile or two of where he works while he's feeling good. And a mile or two from the hospital he choses most often when he doesn't. And I think that my dad's either going to be in the hospital, or working in the village until he goes into hospice. And I don’t want to add energy to the fact that he's going to get cancer and die. But at the same time, it's not a real big leap to say his dad died at 60 to lung cancer. My dad doesn't have a voice box because of throat cancer, will be 60 in February and has a spot on his lung. So, I'm just hoping that he gets more years and that we get this time because every, I mean I didn't have Charlie when this started. And I have at least pictures for Charlie to have of his Grandfather.
BK: Another part of embodied, spiritual empowerment is, like you said, is being peaceful, not necessarily happy.
T: Yeah.
BK: And I also hear you really staying in the moment with what's coming.
T: Yeah.
BK: And really making each moment count.
T: Yeah.
BK: And trying to set up things so that each moment is as good as it can be.
T: And I like that “as good as it can be”, because there's certainly, that's very much a part of the surrender. And not the blame. It's been hard at times with 1 or 2 people that would say “Don't put energy into your dad having cancer and dying.” And I'm thinking, where's the line between what's intuition and what's putting energy into achieving an outcome?
BK: Well, I know you believe in the power of intention, believe it's in your intention. Your intention would not be to harm your father.
T: Yes. And my only hope for his death is that he gets what he chooses. The he gets it the way he wants, which may not be how I want it.
BK: So I asked you how today is, and I'm just aware, well look at you… you're nursing your son, talking about your father dying. I know you're going somewhere tonight to do a ritual?
T: Yeah.
BK: You just had an initiation?
T: Yes.
BK: So you're just living it.
T: Yes, very much.
BK: You're living it.
T: I wasn't surprised that I had intuitions at the initiation that were accurate. Because at this point in this many years into alternative spirituality I expect there to be not unmeasurable knowings. 5 senses are measurable, that there would be knowings that are not measurable sources. I dont' expect that in other environments as much.
BK: And yet you got one around a piece of medical information…
T: Yeah.
BK; From your dad.
T: Sunday, the initiation's started. Sunday I'm sitting in church with my family, which is an irony to be at St. Gerard’s as a regular parishioner where I felt like I had first said “damnit, no!” and really left the church, and now I'm a regular member there. As I was sitting there and I don't know where my thoughts started at, but I remember thinking very clearly, “You know, you just can't keep track of all of it.” God can and there's some Bible quote about no sparrow falls. I don't usually have Bible quotes come into my head. And that one did and that sense of God can keep track of everything and I can't quite. And that was the reading on Sunday. I guess increased intuition also applies to readings at Mass. And that was more juxtaposition than I expected.
BK: It's everywhere?
T: Yeah. And that took a lot of courage to be willing to see it in the Catholic church again. And I understand that they don't think I'm living by all of God's rules and they're welcome to think that. Because, if I'm not going to let them define God for me, be damned if I'm going to let them define God's rules, and tell me that I don't belong in the Catholic church, because I don't follow the rules that they want me to follow. And that was probably one of the bigger surprises towards the end. Of being, after I thought I'd fully embodied my spirituality and was very active and I'd done all sorts of things that, “yeah, I've done that and I've done that.” Was ordained after studying for a couple of years through a non-denominational church and I got my Reiki Master’s and I did a bunch of things… realizing that Catholicism is part of my experience of God. but that I didn't have to accept their definition of Catholic.
BK: You could personalize it?
T: Yeah. Exactly. And St. Gerards is a wonderful parish. One of the few interracial worship experiences around. Even in Paganism I see very much a racial divide. And I think there's quote somebody said about worship is the most racist experience an American can have. And so, St. Gerards offers me an interracial active-based experience of the Divine. They used to go to that same camp, ironically, that I had my Chalice presentation at. St. Gerard’s rented it at a different time of the year. And the camp stopped being available. Just as John and I were getting together, we must have already been married and I went to the camp with him once. The reason I remember we were married is that we got to participate in this really powerful ritual. One of the women that's close friends with John's mother wrote a book on spirituality and she shared this ritual with the group. The reason I can remember so vividly is that I felt so proud that John and I got our own container. They went around and gave each family, one, to each family, some container. And then filled them with water. And there was such a sense of pride that John and I had our own container. Like, “Wow, we must really be grownups. John's parent's have one and his siblings are sharing it. But John and I get our own. We're married, we're grownups.” Then everybody in the community poured there water into one big bowl and they talked about how they had, just like the waters intermingled to form a community, so the individuals all come together to form the body of the Church. And then they bless the water and then they sprinkled it. And I thought, “That's a really cool ritual, I gotta use it sometime.” And knowing that it's used in several places, a very similar ritual, it adds a universalness, adds validity to it, and I've been really lucky that St. Gerards has a universalness.
BK: I’m thinking of the story of how before Buddha was Buddha, he left the compound of his family and he went out in the world, and after he became enlightened, he came back. What's that story? I'm totally blanking on it?
T: Siddhartha?
BK: Yeah. And you had to leave the Catholic church and go out into the world and then come back and see it a whole different way.
T: The first Catholic church I went into after my miscarriage was originally the Temple of Minerva, it's in the town of Assisi. I wound up having to drop out of all of my courses and was too sick and stopped being an engineer. I was about 27 credits short of my engineering degree. And I chose Italy as my study abroad program and therefore became a history major cuz they have the best study abroad program and I had to have a degree in 9 months and you can get a history degree in 9 months even if you've never taken a history class. 27 credits short of an engineering degree. I have to have 30 history credits and I graduate? I can do that in 9 months. And go to Italy? Oh yeah, history, I think I wanna be a history major. And so I was in Assisi in my study abroad and the Temple of Minerva was converted into a church and I couldn't resist going in. And I think it was that blend, it was a Holy spot and whether that was because it was a Catholic Church or because it was first the Temple of Minerva, or it was because it was the place that St. Francis of Assisi had prayed in, I could sense that there was a transcendence there. That helped me not reject the Catholic Church and also when I talk about that other part, that 2-way street, there's a transcendence in some places and in some acts that is greater than I am. And there's that sense of awe that I experience when I encounter it. That helps me do some of the things that you talked about in the questions. The growing, the learning, the change. When I had my first initiation in a Pagan environment they challenged me at the door and said: “Do you know what's going to be inside?” And I said : “No.” “Well, why are you doing this.” I said: “Because I can get everywhere I can go, everywhere I know, I can get. But there's something inside that door that I don't know and I can't get there without it.” And that's I think is the other piece, the transcendence. The mystery, the awe.
[plays with baby] When you talk here about other material I don't know how much of it you want, or are interested in or the other things. It says something about artwork and poetry and music... can you get clearer with me?
BK: It's not a want. It's just a invitation to communicate in ways other than verbal if that is useful or helpful for you. It's a further invitation to think outside the box. It's not a quantitative interview, so it can have a poem, it can have a song. But it's not necessary.
T: I have experienced some levels of transcendence in art and I couldn't imagine listing them all, but I have one in the room, so I thought I'd share it. Last year my friend and I went to a retreat called Women's Gate. It was called, it was the Rising of the Phoenix. We did this ritual, and for me, we were all invited to paint and I worked really hard to create this artwork. And I looked at it and in some ways I realized it would never be perfect. And so after creating it, we all shared our, it was part of our experience. [talks to baby] We all created it and shared it with everyone. And then I took mine and burned it. Because I felt like I wanted that moment to last forever, and the invitation to criticize and to go back and forth with it after the fact was too much. And I like some of the other traditions that they have about not, like breaking the glass after you toast. There's some sense about being truly in the moment that if it continues it doesn't, it's not in the moment anymore.
BK: It's captured.
T: Yes, exactly. So I burned it. This picture, [shows painting of phoenix] my friend's son did and gave to me for my birthday. And I don't think that he was as clear that I had burned my picture of the phoenix and offered me his. But I felt like that was a real perfect congruence. And so I kept this, it also has so much emotion in it. He did such a wonderful job and it's not at all what I created. And, in some ways, I like it all the more for that. And I guess that would be one of the things that empowers me, [talks to children] how much children are a part of that spiritual transcendence.
BK: I have to mention you have 2 on your lap as you're talking…
T: I think that I was predisposed to that. I almost died in childbirth a couple of times. So that's one of the reasons my brother held Charlie all night is that I'd lost enough blood that I had to go to the hospital, which I don't do unless I have to go. Having a baby is not a good enough reason. And um, I thought that at that point I had transcended to the point that I was really powerful and I was going to do this and I had an unattended home birth by choice. And I was driving home at 3:30, stopped to pickup sushi and went to the library and I had a baby at 6:30. [baby cries, Teresa nurses him] I didn't think I could have a baby, I was worried about having a baby over 12 pounds. And I was real determined. It was actually one of my goals, I wanted to have Charlie, and I wanted him to be under 12 pounds and I wanted to have him before 35. I wanted to be done with children by the time I was 35. And we don't always have control of what we get. And I didn't get everything I want, but it's hard to complain. He was 12 lbs 2 oz and I was driving a car at 3:30 and he was born at 6:30. It was pretty great. And then I had a complication afterwards and lost too much blood. I had to go to the hospital. And I spent my first night there, his first night there. I left for the hospital not knowing how much he weighed. I knew he was a boy, but I hadn't picked a name yet. I hadn't weighed him yet. And it was so hard to stay in that moment. And be separate from him. And I would love to think that mom's are this incredible element, that you bond after birth and there's this whole ... there is certainly a mythos about the importance of mothers and how mothers are irreplaceable and you're not bonded if you're separated from mom, there’s critical bonding times, blah blah blah…
BK: He's looks pretty bonded, doesn't he? [Charlie is nursing]
T: Yeah. And perhaps it was because he was held all night. My parent's came, my brother came. My girlfriends came. One of my friends had a couple month old, she came and nursed him. My mom was real upset about that, she kept saying “take him to the hospital so she can hold her baby.” And they kept saying, “but she keeps passing out, really, she shouldn't hold him.” Like “she's lost to much blood to be confident of consciousness and that kind of means she doesn't get to hold the baby.” No matter how good it would be for the baby and her to nurse, it's more important for her to be conscious. So, it wasn't like it was all easy, but...
[Charlie and his older sister become too fussy to continue interview]
T: Did we cover everything?
BK: Do you feel like you shared everything you wanted to about your embodied spiritual empowerment? You’re certainly looking the part, nursing your baby…
T: I do, I feel like I said everything I wanted to say…
BK: Well then lets get these babies to a more comfortable place….
[interview ends]
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