Understanding Spirituality Maggie Tapert, 01.2003

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"Spirit is the life of God within us” Saint Theresa of Avila

I have recently been asking people to talk to me about their spirituality and I discovered that there are many different understandings of this word. For some people spirituality is something they talk, read, theorize, even argue about. For some, it is an expression of the religion they were born into. For others, it is a quiet, inner connection to love, peace, joy or another subtle quality of energy. For millions of people on the planet, spirituality is still something that they experience primarily in a church, a temple or a mosque and is inseparable from a male authority figure known as "God the Father”.

I have searched all my life to understand my own spirituality. Raised in a strict Roman Catholic home, I began a spiritual rebellion early on. I fought the authority of the church most intensively when sex appeared for the first time in my young life. The nuns and priests of my teenage years seemed set on forcing me to choose between loving boys or remaining a member-in-good-standing. Even way back then, it seemed absurd to me that my sexual intimacy with boys would be of any concern in Heaven. Did God the Father really care about what I did in the back seat of my boyfriends ’65 Oldsmobile? To me it didn’t seem likely. Eventually, I left the church and set off on my own to discover what at that time I called TRUE spirituality. If I don’t believe what "they” say, what exactly do I believe? If Catholicism seemed stiff and phony to me, what could I find to take its place?

I made many stops along the way. I studied the Bible and joined the "born-again” Christian movement. Although these folks were kind-hearted and meant well, eventually I understood that the all-too-human judgments and authority conflicts that I had experienced in Catholicism, were present here too.
I moved on and started reading about Buddhism, learned to meditate in a Zen monastery and for several years I regularly led groups in Vipassana mindfulness meditation. Over the years, I found myself joining different esoteric groups led by some pretty far-out exotic spiritual teachers (at this period in my life, it couldn’t be too weird or too unconventional for me!).
I chanted, fire-walked, purified myself in a Native American sweat lodge. I made contact with legions of angels, experienced the Ascended Masters in all their glory and even began to channel an extraterrestrial entity that wanted to bring his message to Earth through me. I sampled many of the recommended mind-expanding drugs. Screaming and hollering,
I successfully processed most of the experiences of my childhood. I did regression therapy and experienced myself in the form of a "star-being” from another solar system. I was open to anything and everything that might bring me closer to an understanding of my own personal spirituality and my connection to the non-material dimensions.

Some of these paths were dead-ends and others were not. Eventually, my journey led me very far away from my childhood roots in the fairytale spirituality of "God the Father” and brought me into close contact with a mystical, experiential path that proved to be profoundly personal. The long winding road helped me to discover that what I sought all my life would not to be found on the outside. All the so-called spiritual authorities, no matter what they taught could not bring me to the place that I was seeking, the place that I needed to go on my own. I discovered that spirituality could not be inherited from my parents and it could not be assimilated through other people’s insights and experiences, no matter how enlightened. For me to experience spirituality, it needed to be intensely personal to be real.

I began to move toward "true” spirituality in the moment that I finally released my addiction to other people’s mind-made concepts about existence and dared to listen to that quiet voice within – my center, my truth, my inner SELF in large capital letters. The voyage became intense when I stopped flapping my wings and making a lot of noise and began to sit quietly and listen. Call it prayer, call it meditation, call it contemplation or inner reflection - as I began to listen in this place of stillness, of deep inner silence, my profound connection to all things and all beings was finally revealed to me, a connection so strong, profound and convincing that all searching came to an end. I still wrestle with the day-to-day misadventures of "personality” but stepping into an independent inner focus ignited the flame of my deep spiritual nature. As
I turned away from the rulebook right/wrong duality that all "God the Father” religions symbolize, I also began to release the separation that had been my traveling companion for so long. I found myself returning to unity. This sense of oneness or wholeness is at the core of the mystical path to the spiritual Self. It feels profoundly female and circular to me, difficult to articulate, more easily felt and experienced than explained in words or concepts.

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In my work with women, I use sexuality to help women find their own individual spiritual path. I have observed over the years, how the shame and guilt that keep women sexually repressed is rooted in the same soil that brought us to search for spirituality outside the reality of our individual self. Many of the repressive mental programs that women unconsciously carry are easily dissolved when the artificial separation between the sexual and the spiritual is removed. Removing this barrier helps women to reconnect to the sacredness at their core and in an easy and joyful way, they remember themselves as gloriously creative beings from whom all life proceeds.

My work is deeply spiritual and at the same time, dangerously threatening to the status quo. As women move their spiritual framework back into the center of female existence, back into their feminine selves, they disconnect from a five thousand year old power structure that has effectively kept them separate, confused and powerless. As women return and remember, they call back and recover many lost aspects of themselves. Women are empowered to live intensively, to be present and conscious of themselves and the world around them, to experience themselves in deep connection to Source. They lose their fascination with suffering and they give up their devotion to victimhood. The spiritual empowerment that they experience cannot be lost or removed because it is rooted in their own female essence, it rests within their own core, it is beyond duality and separation. Individual spirituality in all it’s personal shades and flavors is our expression of the deep longing to finally come home, BE at home, restored and strengthened in the truth of who we are. Blessed be.


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