“Don’t dance around the perimeter of the person you want to be. Dive deeply and fully into it.”
Gabby Bernstein
In the past, practices containing the use of tarot cards, crystals, manifestation, and meditation were mainly dismissed as mystical. Now, they are becoming the modern-day woman’s guide to finding inner truth, success, self-love, healing, and empowerment.
With 2020 categorized as a year of complete pandemonium for all, it comes without a doubt that more people would look towards religious and spiritual doctrines to find modes of inspiration and enlightenment. However, in an era of constant transformation and modernization, traditional principles within dominant universal religions are being replaced or supplemented by New Age belief systems.
One of the alternatives that many individuals have begun to turn towards is spirituality to make sense of the world’s complexities. Spirituality–in broad definition –is used as an umbrella term to describe new age philosophies that contain various discourses and practices to help aid personal transformation and healing. Such beliefs include astrology, reincarnation, manifestation, holistic healing, psychics, and recognition of spiritual energy.
Feminist spirituality
As the world evolves towards a more inclusive direction, patriarchal and exclusive beliefs from these religious doctrines have been placed under significant scrutiny by social and equal rights campaigns such as the Feminist Movement. Thus, illuminating the path for many women and other new age thinkers to seek out ways they can reclaim power, value, and dignity within their belief systems.
“Feminist spirituality is a commitment to bringing about in oneself and in the world an alternative vision of justice and equality for all. It focuses on women’s heritages, women’s body as the locus of the divine, and women’s work of replacing patriarchal, kyriarchal societies with equality for all. It is Earth-centered and embodied and oriented toward global justice. Feminist spirituality stands at the heart of human transformation, challenging accepted ways of knowing and being. “
Christ, Carol P., and Judith Plaskow, eds. Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion. 1979
With feminist spirituality paving the way for more women to discover their inner power, a variety of female-run businesses, organizations, and programs such as the Omega Women’s Leadership Program have been created.
The Omega women’s leadership program is a part of the largest adult education center in the United States. It focuses on health, wellness, spirituality, and creativity. With over 600,000 women participating in the program’s holistic offerings and innovative opportunities, the website states that:
“The Omega Women’s Leadership Center aspires to promote women’s leadership by convening, inspiring, and training women to lead from their own authentic voice, values, and vision.”
The Omega Women’s Leadership Center
The modern-day spiritual woman
One of the most prominent female leaders who turned her passion for spirituality into a multimedia empire is spiritual entrepreneur Gabby Bernstein. Named as the “next-generation thought leader,” her work uses the spiritual principles of love, light, and universal guidance as a basis for manifesting abundance, opportunity, power, and authenticity. As a four-time New York Times best-selling author, speaker, and podcast host, her modernized approach to spirituality has worked to build the bridge between resources initially seen as mystic into practical tools for self-betterment.
One of Bernstein and many other modern spiritual leaders’ practices tend to emphasize is the use of manifestation to attract personal goals, wishes, and desires. Manifestation revolves around the theory that through meditation and affirming thoughts, individuals can have the power to shift their dreams and desires into reality. This concept is backed by the law of attraction, which states that if you think and act positively, good things will happen to you, and if you think and act negatively, bad things will happen to you. The theory is based on the belief that people and their thoughts are built out of energy and that a process of like-energy attracting like-energy exists through which a person can improve their health, wealth, and relationships.
Overall, organizations such as Omega, and motivational figures like Bernstein not only embody the goals and principles of feminist spirituality. But, they have managed to incorporate sacred and ancient derived practices and beliefs into corporate-capitalist driven society. With love, light, and divinity being at the center of their practice, spirituality is helping manifest an authentically feminine, yet powerful community of women.
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