Women’s Spirituality: A personal view on women’s liberation

It is evident to me that development of women must happen at two levels I.e. within the family and in the society as well. Let us first consider how we can bring about development within the family. With the family, her world is her relationships. She creates her hell or she creates her heaven through her relationships, because “life is relationships”. Most often we see women reacting from a very narrow perspective of life arising basically from insecurity. Owing to the erratic change suffered by women as a species in the past, we have a physical and emotional insecurity ingrained in our psyche.

Fear of losing something that we possess can drive a woman so mad and crazy that she can create havoc around her. We must understand and try to become conscious about her insecurities because the consequences of these can be very far reaching in ones personal and family life. Women can become more secure only when she starts realizing a sense of freedom within her. External freedom with regards to career or socializing cannot transform her much unless she starts experiencing freedom within herself.

Hence, women, as a community must know that women’s liberation cannot happen through a declaration or a treaty, neither is it a degree to be passed nor a gift or a reward to be given. But just the sheer understanding and knowledge where she declares to herself that she is free. This freedom is a “happening” that she is free.

The journey begins with the first step, which is to see how we are throwing tantrums causing pain to others in our family by our unfounded fears and insecurities. Basically all fears are unfounded as it is only in our imaginations. When you mistake a rope for a snake and you fear. It is natural that you even see its eyes, moments, its slithering away, finally to know that it was only a rope and not a snake. So fear can create lot of imaginations and only in these imaginations can fear sustain. Hence begin your journey form WHERE YOU ARE, and not from where you want to be.

An Experience - Born to be Free !
The experience of being a “free women” came to me when I attended the spiritual sessions conducted by the Golden Age Foundation. Freedom, I was under the impression, was to dress up lavishly and do precisely what I wanted and expecting exactly what I felt was right to happen in “MY WAY”, not being answerable to anybody for my thoughts, my words or action. That I called Freedom.

Then I had an absolute change of heart and mind. It was then that I realized that this mind was not mine and the thoughts were a group of ideas I had formed over a period of time, my very own perceptions! I had several insights about ego, which always refused to be dominated and played the indifferent game all the time. Once I became aware of these conflicts and conditions of my mind, grace and love flooded miraculously in, and gave me a kind of freedom that I had not thought possible. This freedom helped me to become kind, compassionate, loving, yet strong and resourceful.

This freedom has made me a better mother, wife and child, and all my relationship have been set right as if by magic…..Because I could, for once, listen to people and accept my own shortcomings and also appreciate others the way I started appreciating myself.

With my mind free of expectations and conflicts and experiencing a sweet divine silence, it has made me totally creative, and awakened in me a confidence that is not based on anything but itself and the divine source. The years of suppression are over for me! I have stopped proving my point anymore (because I don’t feel inferior or suppressed any longer). The freedom has flowered from “Within”. Even in a conversation, I speak and let all energies flow, to come to a right and divine end point merely as an observer of my own strong participation. Confidence in the “Self” had given way to the emergence of a new subtler yet forceful “strength”. The strength of being a loved one, the strength of being spiritually awakened, the strength of being a women, the strength of being “what is”…….The strength of BEING.


UMA MOHAN
Managing Director, RAMS
Email : umamohanr@hotmail.com