Experiencing: The Spirituality of Motherhood

In June, my university put on a colloquium (which they do a few times a year). They are always an incredible experience, as it is a gathering of the community – not just students, but also faculty and alumni. I always walk away having learned much, exploring areas that I never even knew existed and my heart open with connection and exchange.

This particular one was extremely resonant as I explore the idea of motherhood myself and have diving deeply into what it means to me and what my own learning journey with interpreting and living this role.

As the summer was also filled with so many other adventures and reflections, I never got around to taking all the notes and tidbits and formulating them into something more digestible. 

However, it’s now December. There are is frost on the window, icicles on the balcony and dusting of snow on the caps of the Coastal mountains. It’s been three months since I was growing another human in my womb and have since lost as my body has purged what I had hoped would be a child. It’s been a roller coaster of excitement, hormone changes, life adjustments then loss, grief and now renewal and hope. 

So now I revisit the spirituality of motherhood again with a different perspective. I don’t

Know that I have it in me to be able to make the notes cohesive and be able to integrate them into something that makes… sense.

However, I still feel like these tidbits and scribblings are like pieces of quilt I haven’t quite figured out how to patchwork together.

But I also don’t want to lose these cherished and tiny pieces of joy or curiosity….

So here goes with just having them remain exactly that this field journal was created for – notes on the journey. It’s not a finished piece and will most likely be woven into the larger tapestry that is the experience of motherhood and the deeper spirituality around it. These are the sentimental or gifted pieces of fabric collected along the way.

Tidbits

• Universality of Motherhood
  • Context of motherhood
• Are You My Mother?
  • By Philip D. Eastman, 
• It is what I call home. It is the spirituality that is found deep within my bones.
• Uterus in spanish is matrice
  • Matrix – birthing
• Motherhood as a requirement for community
• nurturer
• Compassionate action, Love, lifelong learner
• warrior
• Feminine energy
• Giver, teacher
• Love, caring, and compassion
• life giving and sustaining
• Listener and understanding
• Love, care-givers, sacrifice
• mystery, beauty, long-suffering, leader
• constant reminder of being
• strong and resilient
• It’s not an easy job that people do thanklessly
• Bittersweet
• Motherhood is a precondition for community

“The Mother”, Mirra Alfassa 

“The Mother”, Mirra Alfassa, known to her followers as The Mother, was a spiritual guru, occultist and yoga teacher, and a collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, who considered her to be of equal yogic stature to him and called her by the name “The Mother”.

Quotes

“Be like a flower. One must try to become like a flower: open, frank, equal, generous and kind.”

•     “A flower is open to all that surrounds it: Nature, light, the rays of the sun, the wind, etc. It exerts a spontaneous influence on all that is around it. It radiates a joy and a beauty.
•     It is frank: it hides nothing of its beauty, and lets it flow frankly out of itself.  What is within, what is in its depths, it lets it come out so that everyone can see it.
•     It is equal: it has no preference. Everyone can enjoy its beauty and its perfume, without rivalry. It is equal and the same for everybody.  There is no difference, or anything whatsoever.
•     Then generous: without reserve or restriction, how it gives the mysterious beauty and the very own perfume of Nature. It sacrifices itself entirely for our pleasure, even its life it sacrifices to express this beauty and the secret of the things gathered within itself.
•     And then, kind: it has such a tenderness, it is so sweet, so close to us, so loving. Its presence fills us with joy. It is always cheerful and happy.
•     Happy is he who can exchange his qualities with the real qualities of the flowers.  Try to cultivate in yourself their refined qualities.”  (The Mother)

The Mother Archetype

Motherhood

• Natal
  • Biological mothers
  • “Barren” women who can’t go through physical process of giving birth
  • Women can still find their way to find respect and honour 
• Spiritual Mother
  • Adopted
  • Mother figures (aunties, sisters)
  • Godmothers
  • Spiritual leaders, nuns

Nigeria

• Southwestern Nigeria where Yoruba speaking people reside
• There is praise for everything. Lineage, towns, families for marriage. 
• Every experience that people may have

Non-duality and Motherhood

The non-dual perspective—we are nothing other than consciousness. 

The knowing of our being—or rather, awareness’s knowing of its own being in us—is our primary, fundamental and most intimate experience. In this knowledge of self as nothing other than consciousness, adult and child are interconnected.

• the divine is infinite, so it cannot be revealed in this finite world.
• When we focus on finalities, it is hard to understand infinite. Through realizing ourselves can we achieve that plane of knowing.

Inheriting Wounds & Finding Empathy: Acknowledging How Adversity Shaped the Experiences of My Ancestors

This talk really hit home for me. She spoke of Inheriting Wounds & Finding Empathy: Acknowledging How Adversity Shaped the Experiences of My Ancestors. I feel in my body I’ve been carrying ancestral trauma and I am on a journey of healing so as to pass down and calm the stress on a cellular level. Art was critical for this. I’ve been painting, drawing and creating to better understand motherhood and to bring myself closer to the lineage of mothers who have created who I am now.

An incredibly powerful experience was in Spring 2022 when I went through an Antioch class with Sergio Ocampo on 

Generational Trauma: Healing the Ancestors Inside Me (An Experiential Healing Class)

Have you noticed issues in your family that span generations? Have you dedicated yourself to betterment and healing and feel stuck? Is there something emotional inside you that feels almost as if it does not belong to you? Are you a witness to your family’s suffering that seems to bridge generations? Are you affected by current social and political events?

All of us are the product of a long human lineage that not only influences our minds, but also our physical experience.  Our ancestry brings with it the overwhelming emotional experiences that our ancestors pass on to us. 

Blurb for Generational Trauma: Healing the Ancestors Inside Me (An Experiential Healing Class) through Antioch University

This was deeply important for me to go through before S and I even began trying to conceive. There was a yearning in my body to release trauma and be on a healing journey before opening my womb to another life.

Kimberly Fulton Orozco through her art and activism speaks to a similar experience: honoring our ancestors’ experience, and the subsequent impact it has on later generations is powerful.

The way that we learn language, the way that we talk about things – these are all ways we orient ourselves to the world. Taking away language or worldviews is part of the collective trauma of many ancestors. Unweaving the wounds of the past so we can give the freedom to our children to choose their own patterns.