I’ve been harboring a secret. A few weeks ago, I reached a new, almost unspeakable low. I stumbled upon (no, I opened Youtube, searched up, and then watched of my own volition, using 20 minutes of my life) a YouTube video called “Surrender to the Universe.” It was a meditation. No, it didn’t work. Yes, I fell asleep. I couldn’t sit still for two minutes without passing out, much less change my whole world view.
Nonetheless, I somehow carry the belief that I am always on the precipice of a spiritual awakening. This feeling is most likely attributed to the fact that I am a big consumer of content angled towards new-age spirituality, which, is a widely popularized and sometimes polarizing system of beliefs and practices that tend to center around how to achieve a greater sense of self-understanding–now at a time that is more prevalent than ever in part to the commercialization and saturation of many aspects of this concept. Think practices like meditation (of course), tarot, and manifestation; these all fall into the category of what I’m referencing for the intents of this reflection. Though it can be gimmicky, there are a slew of seemingly disjointed reasons I engage with this content, and they are as follows:
- It can be fun. I mean, a deck of cards that’ll tell you your future…how whimsical is that?
- The historical roots of a lot of these new-age practices are quite intriguing, drawing from other cultures.
- I actively enjoy things most men deem to be “girl stuff.”
TLDR: My engagement with new-age spiritual content is a fair balance of indulgence and criticism. I am fascinated by it.
I will let you in on another secret: I recently accepted the sad reality that my romantic connection is no longer… romantic. Hence, the YouTube video.
As I gave up my dignity and typed away into the search bar… I wondered, do men think this way? Do they let themselves go crazy to the point of needing an outside source to alleviate them of even a semblance of this overexhausted care?
Naturally, I went back to YouTube to find the answer to this very serious inquiry. After the meditation-induced nap, of course.
A speech by none other than Elizabeth “Liz” Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, titled “The Divine Feminine” was one of the first videos to pop up. Click! Author turned spiritual guru (my dream job). Excellent. Perfect, even. Tell me this burden of emotional exhaustion has been inexplicably bestowed upon me from the higher-ups and that it is a testament to my mysticality as a woman!
Surprisingly, this speech was rooted in actual history. Most pointedly, Gilbert begins by describing the Code of Hammurabi, which is actually not a list of spiritual practices coined by a reiki healer named Chad, but an ancient Babylonian system of law that revolved around a simple structure of “if, then” that pertained mostly to assigning punishment to treacherous trespasses. More importantly, these laws were imposed by a male ruler. Thus, at this time, there was no true acknowledgement of being guided through life by one’s own inner moral compass. Instead, people obeyed a person of greater masculine power who determined a doctrine that corresponded to this kind of “cut-and-dry” logical punishment system.
Then, the speech turns to the Axial Age: a complete boom in the face of this order-obsessed way of thinking. Think of philosophers and prophets (Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, etc.) all operating on a system of internal morals, ultimately serving to “mainstreamify” the ideals of compassion and empathy for others. The most engaging observation made by Gilbert is how this revolutionary shift was actually, in many ways, predicated on feminine forethought and behavior. Specifically, she states:
“Who do you think, prior to the Axial age, was taking care of the sick and the weak and the vulnerable? Who do you think was feeding the hungry and giving clothing to the poor…and taking care of babies at the beginning of their lives and old people at the end of their lives? Where did these ideas come from? Women.”
Word.
When women are faced with these doctrines today, whether through formal education, direct spiritual teachings, or even self-help oriented media, the issue lies in how these systems operate on a more “masculine” form of giving and taking in order to achieve balance. For the women who’ve been giving all along, this system is innately depleting, asking them to give more than they already have.
Later on, she adds an interesting layer to this conversation that further explores the discrepancy of this dynamic:
“Men move from profane to sacred when they give up the self; women move from profane to sacred when they get one.”
While this statement veers on the side of “you go girl, be the boss you are!” there was a part of me after hearing it that said…you know what…snaps for Liz! You go Liz! Because even though her phrasing can be tethered to a presumptuous and sometimes outlandish use of terminology, resulting in a moment in which I did kind of giggle (because, again, I do feel that Liz Gilbert may have let the audience reception of her novels convince her that she is a white female spiritual prophet of sorts), I do interestingly find the core of her assertions to be reflective of a pointed and provocative insight, both to the broader conversation and my own internal one.
If you ditch the neospiritual gloss of it all, there’s something extremely potent in her words. If women are at their highest state of fulfillment and happiness when they take too, rather than endlessly giving, what happens when they live in a modern world that puts male spiritual and philosophical doctrines on a pedestal?
There comes a point when all the TikTok self-help-dating-coach gurus are preaching the same message: women need to realize their worth. In other words: a world in which women overextending themselves is our default. A point at which I search up a meditation called “Surrender to the Universe” because of a failed attempt to mutually connect with someone of the opposite sex. There’s no spiritual liberation, just depletion.
Maybe it was a good thing I couldn’t focus when listening to that mediation after all. I would have been fueling the very thing I found to be a large shared issue for most women on this Earth! Weird how the universe works…
Wait, am I really on the verge of a spiritual awakening?