The Divine Feminine: The Wisdom of Women in Yogic History
Have you ever noticed that the ancient yogis were all men? The Vedic Brahmans, Patanjali. Shri Aurobindo, and many more. Up until the last 100 years, female yoga teachers were not recognized in books, priesthoods, or much of anywhere. That doesn't mean they didn't exist. Their voices, their wisdom, their spiritual findings, were excluded from the standard teachings, but why? And, how did this begin to shift?
To create wholeness, and a holistic approach to what it is to awaken, women's voices must be elevated, especially those voices of our elders who hold the most experience on the path of yoga.
The prominent religions, as in Hinduism and Buddhism which are the bedrock of yogic philosophy, have claimed that everything that was important to know about the world was already known, and could be revealed by priests or scriptures. Is everything already known? The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates is quoted as saying, “The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.”
The shift away from believing everything is already known means going beyond the map of human consciousness that the recognized teachers of the past, who were all male, have given us. That “map” has been our male teachers understanding of the “territory” of the mind and spirit, and we must be careful to remember that the map we have is not the actual territory that exists. In this case, the “map” is the system, in the form of diagrams, lists, and manuals, that has been developed to create a structured path for attaining enlightenment. Our male teachers have explored the part of the map they could understand. But, there is so much more to be explored. The spiritual development systems that currently exist in most of the world are fundamentally flawed due to the omission of the feminine.
Historically, men have believed that Man is normative; the measure of all things. All yoga students, and in fact all people in our society today, have lived within the cultural conditioning that teaches that women are an inferior version of a man. From this we have lost the female voice, her experiences and her teachings to us about how to find contentment, joy and the bliss that is at our center. Only when women are acknowledged for the great wisdom they hold will we have a more complete picture of the answers to our spiritual questions.
This paradigm has slowly started to shift since the scientific revolution began. It re-introduced the idea that we don’t know everything, and that we should be willing to admit ignorance. With the creation and legal codification of contraception and the ability to choose to be pregnant, or not, women gained more freedom to be in control of their destiny and advance the cause to be on equal footing with the male spiritual teachers.
Today, there are plenty of women teachers (perhaps even more than men) in yogic schools and in leadership positions. The divine feminine energy and the wisdom of women teachers can help emphasize finding contentment, joy, and bliss at the center of our being. Only when these aspects of the divine feminine are fully explored will we have a more complete picture of the answers to our spiritual questions.
Some aspects of the divine feminine that may show up in our practice today include
Valuing pleasure over than production
More complex and complete social skills
Elevated ability to hold onto multiple perspectives and be flexible
Attunement to feelings and emotions
Caring for community/family
Collaborative skills
More tolerance
More embodiment
Physically more connected with the rhythm and flow of nature
We are lucky that we live at a time when there are female spiritual teachers we can learn from that embody these quality. Some examples we have of great female teachers today are Amma, or Mother Gurumayi, Sri Darada Devi, and the Holy Mother.