Commentary on Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber Dialogue in “What is Enlightenment”

What is Enlightenment is a monthly magazine that features themed articles and a dialogue between guru Andrew Cohen and philosopher Ken Wilber. This month’s title was The New Women’s Liberation.

Since my letter to the Editor probably won’t get published anyway, I am posting it here.

See my partner, Gary’s blog on www.garystamper.blogspot.com

Anyaa

golden goddess

Dear Ken and Andrew,

While I very much appreciate you “white guys” taking up the task of examining the higher evolution of women, and presenting some excellent insights and observations, I feel you are missing some huge pieces. As a transpersonal~shamanic psychotherapist for the past 30 years, and a spiritual teacher of women for the past 15 years, I have traveled the journey with women through victimhood to personal empowerment, and now to reclamation of spiritual authority. My overview is that women walk very differently towards spiritual evolution than men do, and that you are attempting to work with women from a male perspective that does not honor the natural wisdom and source of the feminine, which transcends and includes the biological factors and is very much based in her connection to Mother Earth.

Andrew, I am left wondering why your challenge to women would be to transcend (but apparently not include) the emotional body (which you call relational~biological) and sexual power? In my experience, these aspects of the feminine in ALL of us, are what defines the feminine, not what defines women at lower developmental levels as conditioned egos. Yes, the emotional body and sexual power has been repressed, denied, feared and perverted through the ages, but does that necessarily mean they are to be done away with while transcending? What happened to including?

Certainly I agree that we have been conditioned to be fearful and guarded and manipulative, etc. at lower levels of development, but what of a higher development, i.e. emotional, and sexual enlightenment? In my circles, I find that if emotional safety is provided, and women are encouraged to take responsibility for their shadow conditioning, and own their personal and spiritual authority, they will naturally delight and trust and demonstrate impersonal caring with each other. It is not as rare as you apparently think it is. We who have been on the forefront of spiritual feminism, are bright, evolved and conscious creatures who have been doing personal psycho-emotional~spiritual work for an average of 10-15 years longer than men. The key to the level of sisterly trust you are talking about is that we do this work with other women who also resonate with the female experience, rather than with a male guru. In the context of men, women will naturally take longer to self-actualize and differentiate. We have been so male referenced, especially spiritually, that no wonder it took you 12 years to crack the code and see results! Continue reading “Commentary on Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber Dialogue in “What is Enlightenment””