Motherhood as Consciousness
I sit cross legged in silent contemplation and I grit my teeth. I quietly sneak a look at the other adults in the room, each engaged in a similar activity. Surely I’m not the only one frustrated at the interminable process of enlightenment? Surely there are other people struggling as much as I am? I try to bring myself back to the present moment.
Am I sitting on the side of a mountain meditating quietly on life’s mysteries?
No.
I am watching my preschool daughter attempt to tie her own shoes.
***
Motherhood is a spiritual path, however it is often dismissed as the invisible work of women. But it is within the very everyday acts of compassion and love that make up motherhood that we find innumerable opportunities for spiritual enlightenment.
I was reminded recently of an essay that circulated around various motherhood social media accounts a few years ago. It was a monologue by Nicole Johnson, titled “The Invisible Mother,” which was based on excerpts by her book of the same name. She tells the story of a meaningful gift from a friend while she was feeling sorry for herself as the “invisible mother” of young children:
One night, some girlfriends and I were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. She had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and was telling wonderful stories. I sat there, looking around at the others all so put-together, so visible and vibrant. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself. I was feeling pretty pathetic when my friend turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package and said, “I brought you this.” It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I wasn’t exactly sure why she’d given it to me until I read her inscription: “With admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.”
Toward the end of the essay, she writes this paragraph:
As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we’re doing it right—which is why we may feel invisible some days. But one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible mothers.
Mothers are the cathedral builders of today. We are the master craftsmen (craftswomen? craftspeople?) who are tasked with raising not a stone edifice, but the next generation of human beings. Not unlike the cathedral builders, we do so without reward, without acknowledgement or praise. We know that the results of our hard work may not be fulfilled in our lifetime, or even our children’s lifetime. The builders performed their life’s work for the glory of God; mothers perform their life’s work for the glory of the human experience. When a mother consciously raises a compassionate human being who recognizes their own spirit, it may very well be the most radical gesture of community activism possible.
But modern mothers are painfully lacking the support and resources they need to mother intentionally, to raise the next generation of empathetic and enlightened human beings. The craftsman and master builders of cathedrals had the tools they needed to showcase their craft and build something of value that would outlast them. Mothers today need a similar toolkit, one that is full of resources that allow them to elevate the craft of motherhood. These aren’t tangible tools, like a hammer or a chisel. Modern, conscious motherhood requires more subtle tools, and this is where the intersection of spirit, compassion and community activism meets motherhood. In order to elevate motherhood today, we need to equip mothers with the awareness that motherhood is a path to spiritual enlightenment, and that spiritual motherhood itself is a form of activism.
Motherhood as Spiritual Enlightenment
The craftsmen who built the original cathedrals believed deeply that what they were building was an homage to the glory of God. While they wouldn’t see the result of their hard work in their lifetime, they were fueled by the passion that God saw everything they did. It could be argued that their hard work was a path of spirituality, work they performed daily on the journey to enlightenment. Of course, builders in Europe in the Middle Ages would not have seen it that way; enlightenment was not something that humans strove for in their lifetime. The ideal was to perform the work humbly in hopes of an eternal reward in the afterlife.
Spirituality, and a spiritual path, today may take on many different meanings. But this requires a bit of clarification. What does spirituality mean? What exactly IS a spiritual path? How is spirituality different from religion? This is undoubtedly a highly personal answer, and will vary widely by culture, demographic, and time period.
For the purposes of this essay, we’ll assume that spirituality is a way of addressing the experiences of human existence while connecting with something greater than the material world. It can mean attributing this world to a greater conscious or unconscious power, or it can mean honoring the power of life that animates our physical human forms. A spiritual path is where we find specific religions as something that may define forms of ritual, ceremony, and other activities as ways humans can connect to spirituality. Religions may also include systems of hierarchy and leaders who guide followers in these activities, but these are not required for a spiritual path in general. Prayer, meditation, expressions of love and gratitude are ways to commune with a greater power or life force, sometimes known as Spirit, God, Source, Shakti, among others.
While there are innumerable considerations for a spiritual path, I believe that there are several common points found in many paths to enlightenment, and it is within these points we will be able to explore not only what it means to take a spiritual path, but the intersection of motherhood and spirituality. Most notably, both motherhood and spiritual enlightenment can be found within: feeling unconditional love for other humans, offering acts of selfless service to the good of humanity, and being completely present in the moment as a witness to the human experience.
Unconditional Love
“Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.” - Robert A. Heinlein
In the New Testament, John 4:7-9 describes the relationship between love and God:
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
This introduces us to the connection between unconditional love and spirituality. According to the Bible, everyone who loves has been born of God. And yet, as Adrienne Rich reminds us in her book, Of Woman Born, “All human life on the planet is born of woman.” If everyone who loves has been born of God and also of woman, then the love of a mother shares the same ubiquitousness as the love of the God of the New Testament. This is certainly my personal experience. Loving my children is effortless and unconditional. Though, of course, I still get frustrated or angry with them, my default state is one of love. The love of a mother has been the subject of countless works of literature, poetry, movies, songs, and art. The ability to love another human unconditionally is both a noble form of spirituality, and a hallmark of motherhood.
Of course, there are many who will cringe at this statement, fearing the implication of biological essentialism or gendered stereotypes. It’s worth noting a distinction between being a woman and being a mother. Since Of Woman Born was originally published in 1976, countless feminist scholars and gender activists have made incredible strides in promoting gender equality. Not all mothers are women. Not all women want to become mothers. The two can no longer be deemed interchangeable. When I use the term mother, I am referring to anyone who performs mother-work, which I define as raising and/or caring for a child. The spirituality of motherhood is open to all who wish to consciously participate in this role as a path to enlightenment.
Selfless Service
"Nothing liberates our greatness like the desire to help, the desire to serve." - Marianne Williamson
There is a branch of Yoga called Karma Yoga, in which one achieves enlightenment through the actions of selfless service. It is mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita as one of the paths of Yoga. “The path of karma yoga is a path of selfless action and of compassion toward the suffering of others. Karma yoga is apparent in acts of seva, selfless service.” It is these acts of selfless service that demonstrate devotion to God, or a higher power. Of course, when the Gita was written, anywhere from 2,200 to 2,500 years ago, the access to this path of devotion was limited to men. Even as recently as 1896, when Swami Vivekananda published the book Karma Yoga: The Yoga of Action, he assumed the readership to be male. Swami Vivekananda writes about the challenges of doing work without selfish motivation:
But we have to begin from the beginning, to take up the work as they come to us and slowly make ourselves more unselfish every day. We must do the work and find out the motive power that prompts us; and, almost without exception, in the first years, we shall find that our motives are always selfish; but gradually this selfishness will melt by persistence, till at last will come the time when we shall be able to do really unselfish work. We may all hope that some day or other, as we struggle through the paths of life, there will come a time when we shall become perfectly unselfish; and the moment we attain that, all our powers will be concentrated, and the knowledge which is ours will be manifest. (emphasis mine)
Swami Vivekananda explains that it takes years of struggle before we can even hope to perform work completely unselfishly, and that as soon as we do, we will have reached enlightenment. This is where motherhood gives us an express ticket to enlightenment. It did not take me years of motherhood to begin performing acts of selfless service, it took me mere hours after birthing my firstborn. Breastfeeding was the first of countless selfless acts I completed in the service of another human being. Every day my life is filled with innumerable moments where I do work that bears no selfish motive; in fact, I often spend much of my time doing work that I’d really rather not be doing, setting aside any “selfish” acts until the work of mothering is complete.
Being Present
“Wherever you go, there you are.” - Jon Kabat-Zinn
Living in the present moment is one of the cornerstones of a spiritual practice. If you’re always thinking about the past or worrying about the future, life just passes you by. The idea of “being present” is found in many of the world’s largest religions. Zen Buddhism promotes mindful presence in everyday life. Matthew 6:34 says, Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof - meaning, “each day has enough trouble, no need to worry about tomorrow.” Contemporary spiritual leaders such as Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Ram Dass, and others all speak of the importance of mindful presence. One of the key takeaways from Ekhart Tolle’s popular book, The Power of Now, is the idea that focusing on the present moment will allow peace and enlightenment into your life.
In the delightful book Enlightenment Through Motherhood, Astra Niedra writes a light and humorous book about a vacation with her young family, her husband, two daughters and pregnant with a third child, and her realizations that motherhood and enlightenment share similar paths. She tells the following story about attempting to recline gracefully in a deck chair while seven months pregnant, and getting stuck instead:
While stuck there, making the most of this time to myself, I sensed something creeping up my back, causing a slightly unpleasant tingling sensation. I tried to obliterate it by shuffling against the back of the chair but the sensation kept moving. Up and up it crept, until it reached the top of my head, where I felt it would overcome me somehow. But, once there, with nowhere further to go, I could reach it, and then I realized it was only an itch - so, naturally, I scratched it out...aaahhh...peace. That itch revealed to me just how immensely present I was on that deckchair, unable to sit forward and scratch my own back, with no choice but to surrender to a state of seemingly endless nowness, completely merged with the chair supporting my existence. It was just as so many enlightened people had described their experiences.
As I lay there, relieved, I meditated on the idea that simply because I was heavily pregnant I might have fallen into quite an advanced spiritual state.
Here, again, we find a quick trip to the present through motherhood. Anyone who has lived with young children understands that nothing brings you to the current moment quite like a child’s crisis. In fact, as a mother, I often cannot help but live in the present. No matter how much I’d like to daydream or get lost in a story, I’m often pulled right back into the present by demands of snacks, complaints about siblings, requests for help.
In addition to the act of mothering, being around young children is an exercise in living in the present moment. Because every experience is new to a child, they are constantly present to learn. Watch a child the next time they try to master a new skill; they are completely focused on the task and nothing else exists except the present moment. I related earlier the tortuous task of watching my daughter as she learned how to tie her shoes. It was an often painful reminder of how to sit and be present without trying to change anything or attach any emotion or expectation to the outcome. Watching her attempt to tie them over and over and OVER again was just as valid a spiritual activity as attempting to sit silently in meditation for hours.
Spiritual Motherhood
For too long we have been told that spirituality is a practice that transcends the human experience. Religions based on hierarchy and power have spent hundreds or even thousands of years creating a false separation between the human body and spiritual enlightenment; they have taught that the physical human body is somehow shameful, and that a spiritual practice is dependent on following the rules and doctrines of that religion in order to forego the sins of the flesh.
But what if reveling in the full human experience IS a path to enlightenment? What if the joys and passions of human existence are the most gloriously divine form of spirituality, and a celebration of the miraculousness that is life on this planet? As a mother, I have been given three beautiful opportunities to watch little humans grow into fully conscious beings, and to help shape their life. Is there any clearer path to reveling in the fullness of human experience than motherhood? What is spiritual enlightenment if not delighting in a child’s laughter, or comforting them when they are sad?
We have, readily available in the form of our children, a clear path to enlightenment, and it’s something I am constantly practicing. I choose to parent consciously, using every interaction with my three children as a chance to reveal my true Self and shed the Ego. This is my path to enlightenment, my daily opportunity to practice unconditional love, selfless service and being present.