Integration - What kind of spirituality do we need right now?

Thoughts on healing the 'mother wound' and finding our embodied personal power

12th February 2017

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There's a lot going on in the world right now that can easily make us feel overwhelmed, hopeless and angry. Watching the women's marches happen across the globe was really beautiful and moving and it also made me reflect on myself as a woman and how I've struggled with my femininity growing up in a generation whose mothers were very pro women's rights and yet were still somehow caught up in the patriarchal systems and institutions that still dominate to this day. I notice when I find myself in those very institutions how women are still adapting, repressing and conforming to be the kind of women that are somehow acceptable by the collective. We've come a long way but we're still somehow caught up in the system.

I was raised to always have my independence, to value education, to be financially able to support myself and to choose if, when and how I wanted to raise a family and for that I am very grateful. However I still inherited what all women have inherited from their mothers and that is referred to in therapeutic circles as the 'mother wound'. This is the ancestral inheritance passed down through generations of feelings of unworthiness, shame, guilt and self-loathing that seems to have been passed down from our grandmothers who went through the war and pushed through difficult times to our mothers who were perhaps influenced to rebel and push back. Many women can relate to this and if you look back in history you will see evidence of burning witches, making women wear corsets and images of women as second class citizens who experienced powerlessness one way or another.

In an attempt to find their power in the 60's many women looked towards meditation in the East as a way to re-connect with their spiritual selves. Unfortunately many of those spiritual practices were created and practiced only by men and so whilst there is value in them they do not provide everything that women need at this time in the world because they are designed for the male spiritual process which is often entirely different. Many of them encourage a denial of the feminine altogether. I don't want to make too many gender specific comments because I also believe that the inner masculine and feminine exist within each one of us and that this isn't just about what body you happen to inhabit.

We are living in times of global and environmental crisis and the Earth itself is showing major signs of 'Mother wounding'. Maybe now as well as all doing our bit for the environment we can consider learning from the Indigenous tribes about Earth-based spirituality so that we can build a bridge between our planet and the transpersonal. There is a spiritual drought in the West and I also sense that true feminine power is where the creative Earth energies integrate with Spirit. This was cleverly depicted in the movie 'Avatar' which really speaks to our deep connection as a human family to the planet and how we are somehow living in a 'split' self-centred reality disconnected from ourselves, each other and Gaia (Mother Earth).

I don't claim to have all the answers however I feel Meditators from all disciplines could include the Earth in their daily practice and they could also learn about grounding so that they can embody and make full use of their spiritual energy. Body psychotherapy is a fantastic way to learn to re-connect with your innate power and express it safely through the body. This can be a gentle process of exploring your own energy and where it may be blocked in the body, learning grounding techniques and using visualisation and movement to awaken and re-connect with yourself in an embodied way. This is in contrast to a lot of Eastern practices that take you away from and out of your body into another dimension. My feeling is that if we were to integrate the wisdom of Eastern transcendent techniques with Indigenous wisdom then we could truly reach our potential and gain the power we need to put right the damage we've done. At the end of the day we all need spiritual power and we all need to take action and I think this might be a winning formula!

Part of this process for women is to feel really comfortable in our bodies, with our sexuality and connected to ourselves and our natural spirituality which is all about intuition, creativity and acceptance. An integrated spirituality would be one with relationship at the heart, not about separating oneself and sitting on a mountain top but living in relationship to body, Spirit and community. We may not see this in our lifetime but we can plant the seeds for generations to come. Many people come to me for therapy carrying these questions and together we explore what their unique formula for growth, healing and integration might be. It's a fantastic adventure.......let me know if you are interested. :)

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