In the same way as ‘New Cage’ philosophies limit our access to a more inclusive consciousness, so does patriarchal spirituality. In its persistent quest for a notion of enlightenment that excludes many of the elements of the human experience, it ensures that our awakening is (in)conveniently limited in scope. Here is a definition of Patriarchal Spirituality to work from in the following self re-integration exercise:
“Those ungrounded and unintegrated ‘spiritual’ models that have been fostered by emotionally armored, self-avoidant men. These models share some or all of the following beliefs: the ego is the enemy of a spiritual life, the ‘monkey mind’ is the origin of suffering, your feelings are an illusion, your personal identifications and stories are necessarily false, witnessing your pain transforms it, the only real consciousness is an ‘absolute’ and ‘transcendent’ one, stillness and silence are THE path, isolation is the best way to access ‘higher states’, meditation is THE royal road to enlightenment, enlightenment actually exists and is the goal of human existence, the ultimate path is vertical and formless, real spirituality exists independent of our humanness, etc. Now is the time for models that lead us back into our hearts, back into our bodies, into relatedness, into a deep and reverential regard for the self. Those models may invite us to detach in an effort to see ourselves through a different lens, but they will not leave us out there, floating into the eternal emptiness and calling that a life. Detachment is a tool—it’s NOT a life. We don’t need more ‘enlightened’ masters sitting in caves while the women of the village bring them food. If you can’t find your transformation in the village, it’s not the real thing. This new horizontal paradigm will invite us to integrate what we find ‘out there’ with who we are ‘in here’. It will invite us to embody the now, rather than to pretend we have found it in the heart of our dissociation. It’s time to co-create spiritual models that begin, and end, within our wondrous humanness. It’s not ‘out there’. It’s right here, deep inside these aging body temples.”