1. My first realisation

2. Revelations during dinner out

3. Sex plus pregnancy equals spirituality

4. The expedition: lows, highs and flats on
the path to eternal bliss

5. A dip in the Gorge

The rickety bridge
Large lazy lizards
Nirvana in the North
Back to civilisation

6. Accepting a little truth

7. Descent to hell

8. Flying high

9. Nesting in peace

10. Birthing

11. Agony and ecstasy
Enlightenment

Afterword: Why I wrote this book

I had snuck out of the apartment we had rented for our holiday in the resort-town of Port Douglas, Australia’s own temporal paradise, into the palm-fringed and bougainvillea-graced courtyard overlooking the pool for some time-out from my two energetic young daughters who momentarily had become entranced by the giant Wiggles on the gigantic television screen inside. The deckchair had looked inviting and promised the relaxing experience I had imagined when I planned this trip so, in keeping with the spirit of my fantasy holiday, I attempted to recline gracefully on the chair in the way women do in advertisements for holiday resorts. But because I was seven months pregnant and the chair was so low I couldn’t reach it for support, instead I had plonked onto it like a lump of play dough.

While stuck there, trying to make the most of this time to myself, even though I couldn’t stop thinking about how I would get up in an emergency, I felt 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 it 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, I could reach it, and then I realised it was only an itch – so, naturally, I scratched it out. Aaahhh… peace. That itch, as insignificant as it seemed, revealed to me how immensely present I was on that deckchair, unable to sit forward and scratch my own back, surrendered to a state of seemingly endless nowness, merged with the chair supporting my existence. It was just as so many enlightened people I’d heard about have described their experiences.

As I lay there, relieved, and meditated on the idea that simply because I was heavily pregnant, I might have fallen into quite an advanced spiritual state, and how such a revelation might inspire more women to procreate (thereby simultaneously solving the western world’s zero population growth crisis in an instant yet exacerbating overpopulation of the world as a whole), I was propelled off the deckchair by a sudden and incredible force: the screaming and yelling coming from my daughters inside. The Wiggles had lost their power and now Elektra and Maya were both pulling one strap each of a halter-neck top, fighting for its ownership.

"Put it down!" I joined in the yelling, "There are two tops!"
"There’s only one pink one – and it’s mine!" shouted Elektra.
"Yours is the white one," replied Maya.
"Yours is white, I don’t like white, this one’s mine!" and then both girls toppled backwards onto the floor, in opposite directions, as the top split in two.
"You can have it."
"You can have it!"
 

My daughters were three and five and I had hoped they would have kept themselves entertained in their holiday environment and given me some respite from the relentless job of mothering. But it hadn’t turned out quite like I’d imagined. I’d suggested to my husband, who I’ll call Mars for this story, paying homage to the well-respected Roman god of fertility, that we take a family holiday so we could have time to relax and rest before our third baby arrived and the complexity of our lives would triple. His version of our conversation is that I insisted I needed the trip and then broke down sobbing when he suggested we wait until after the new baby was toilet trained, maybe even until after the kids had left home, if rest was what I wanted. But I was determined, and I needed, even if it was a false hope, some time out. Mars reluctantly agreed to the holiday when he eventually realised nothing else would calm me down.

The idea of Port Douglas, where American ex-presidents, movie stars and other celebrities came to play, seduced me as I frantically researched possible destinations over the internet. It sounded the opposite environment I was familiar with at home, where my life revolved around endless washing, cooking, cleaning and playing kids’ games, and so was perfect for my pre-baby escape. As it turned out, the climate was ideal for my body which was most comfortable barefoot and in a sarong, and the luxury conveniences at my disposal helped too. I was especially impressed with the largely unspoilt and breath-taking scenery. But my fantasies of lying by the pool, engrossed in a novel, sleeping in till past 6.00am and eating out each night ended up in tatters.

I had imagined Elektra and Maya happily playing in the pool and at the beach but hadn’t included myself in those mental pictures. The reality was that both Mars and I ended up spending more time in the water than out, often with one child wrapped around me like a boa constrictor and the other, the one who couldn’t swim, continually escaping our grasp to splash about on her own. And when I was out of the water, I toiled beside the girls in the sand, building endless castles and digging moats, looking, I imagine, much like a labouring sandstone Buddha.

So there I was, on that so-called holiday (we need another word in our language to describe an ‘extended overnight excursion with children’), attempting to console my kids about their halter-less halter-top and bruised bottoms, when I found myself comparing the experiences motherhood had led me to have to the experiences described by the world’s most advanced spiritual beings as higher states of consciousness. I have read quite widely on the various paths to enlightenment and have studied philosophy as part of my quest; I have also meditated when there was such a thing as silence in my household; and I have even met some highly regarded spiritual teachers on my travels and at various workshops where I had hoped for a short cut to, or at least a taste of, transcendental ecstasy. The longer I considered what I had learnt, I couldn’t help but notice that mothers are required, simply by our role, to practice what the gurus preach.

For instance, one of the main consequences of becoming enlightened is to gain the ability to feel unconditional love. Every spiritual teacher I’ve heard of claims that to be unconditionally loving has become their ‘natural state’ since their enlightenment – well it’s certainly become my natural state since having my first baby. Most mothers feel such love for their children, most of the time. I’ve never heard of a non-parent claiming they feel unconditionally loving of anyone, except maybe a pet – but that’s another book. Even the precursor to unconditional love – devotion – which is a spiritual practice ‘devotees’ partake in, comes naturally and effortlessly to mothers.

Another practice I share with enlightened people is giving selfless service to others. Spiritual teachers and seekers from most traditions practice this type of service as part of their training. Teachers serve their seekers and some even give to the wider community, while one of the practices recommended to seekers to promote their own enlightenment is to give selfless service to their guru and his or her ashram, either by cleaning, cooking, gardening, washing, working in the office, counselling newer seekers as they need help, and other duties as required, all unpaid. That’s exactly my job description.

I am also able to perform superhuman feats similar to those some gurus have demonstrated in public appearances such as bending spoons using their mental powers, lifting objects too heavy for most people to handle, walking on water and suddenly knowing about an occurrence in another place. I know I could lift or bend any object if doing so would save my child, and there are documented cases of other mothers summoning physical and emotional strength far greater than they would normally be capable of in order to save their child’s life or health. I’ve also experienced suddenly knowing something is wrong with my baby, who is in another room, such as the sudden need to check on her and discovering she’s wrapped herself up (head included) in her blanket while getting to sleep and has needed my urgent help. I have yet to walk on water but have managed with astounding grace what I imagine would be the first step to such a feat, which is to aquaplane across the kitchen floor on spilled apple juice.

Being absolutely aware is how enlightened people describe their enlightened state of mind. When my children were curious crawlers and toddlers who could at any moment put something in their mouths which shouldn’t be there, I was also absolutely aware, as I am now that they are older and when we’re out at the park or any other public place. My awareness can also encompass many things at once, just as an enlightened person’s awareness is able to. A typical example is when I’m simultaneously aware of what Maya is watching on TV, where Elektra is climbing, where Elektra’s favourite teddy bear is in case she falls, at what stage of being cooked the pasta on the stove is, and how many more days I can go without doing the washing before the girls will run out of clean underwear.

My awareness also extends far and wide and includes myriad things I had absolutely no idea about before having children. Some of those include: the various types of viruses people can catch (some of which I’m certain have evolved recently in child care centres because I had never come across them in my own childhood); the huge amount of resources used by creating and marketing kids toys, most of which are obsolete within a month of their release; and that the saying ‘sleeps like a baby’ actually means the opposite to what I had always assumed.

Living in the present moment, each moment, with no attention to the past nor future, is also a characteristic of the enlightened state. I too live for most of my time in the present moment – how can anyone switch off from the present with constant demands for food, drinks, refereeing, help with ______? I’d love to daydream about the future or reflect on the past but because I’m a mother I have no time! I am always in the now.

And if being enlightened means you no longer identify with the little individual ego you once did, but have a greater sense of self, then I too am greater since having children (and not just physically). Not only do I feel my daughters’ pain and their joy as intimately as my own, but my material possessions are no longer only mine but belong to my expanded self which now incorporates my children: the car is now our car, the house is now our house, and even my personal belongings are our things. And I can no longer simply go anywhere, do anything or buy anything with just my individual self to consider. The physical evidence for this is in the greater number of clothes, shoes and toys the kids have than I do.

And all this time I had thought that since becoming a mother and leaving my thriving career and reasonable social life, I had taken a step back, or at least time out, from any serious self-development, let alone spiritual development, to perform the more mundane and low-status role of mothering.

So as I rummaged through the girls’ bags, attempting to find tops that would satisfy both, I became excited about the possibilities, and possible implications for the world’s spiritual traditions, resulting from my condition and that of billions of women worldwide.

But I also had concerns. My first, and I must admit superficial and also, interestingly, traditionally feminine, concern was about my appearance. I certainly don’t look like a typical self-realised being, at least not like those who’s books on enlightenment I had read or those I had met – loin cloths don’t suit my body type, my hair looks better as a bob and not shaved or hanging down to my bottom, I can’t get a beard to grow and I prefer to live in a house in Sydney than an ashram in India. And the other mothers I know, whether they dress in tracksuit pants or business suits, also don’t fit my preconceptions about what an advanced spiritual person might look like. But then I realised this concern was just a manifestation of cultural prejudices influencing my assumptions, and which surely any other enlightened person – once they realised they were in fact enlightened – would also see if they saw me in my Milo-stained t-shirt chiselling rock-hard spaghetti off the table and chairs and from inside the DVD player.

My second worry was that if mothers had been so spiritually advanced all this time, we had been keeping this extraordinary secret, not only from ourselves, but from our childless sisters and the men in our lives too – even from our children. And to keep a secret so huge, so profound, from so many people, seemed irresponsible, even unmotherly. So I became afflicted with guilt – the condition many mothers suffer from, even without these new concerns and no matter what type of mother we are – whether that’s stay-at-home, working outside the home, or some kind of mix. My guilt led to self-doubt and inner criticism, which most mothers also are familiar with, especially when we compare how we yell at our children when they refuse to eat dinner because all they want is ice-cream, when Aunty Molly (who doesn’t have children) never yells but allows them to have ice-cream for each meal whenever they stay over with her.

But then I felt better as I remembered that not only is guilt familiar also to many seekers following any of the recognised paths to enlightenment (particularly Catholic seekers) but so too is inner criticism and doubt. Before I had children and enjoyed such a thing as spare time which allowed me to participate in spiritual practice, when I would sit down to meditate, all manner of self-doubting feelings would arise, ranging from those with the power to knock my self-esteem down a few rungs on the ladder to higher consciousness, to those niggly ones which would make me desert my lotus pose to check whether I had turned off the stove. ‘Doubt’ is a feeling many spiritual texts cover at some point – I assume because enough seekers must experience it and there must be a need to re-assure them.

As I toyed with these ideas, I felt Elektra’s hand on mine. "Mama I dancing!" she exclaimed and showed me a move that would have propelled me into hysterical (and not very kind) laughter if an adult had performed it, but because it was my child, made me feel warm and gooey inside, and I let out the kind of "aaahhh" sound that only cute creatures can induce from adults. I felt very enlightened indeed.
 

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Since early adulthood I have been fascinated by the concept of spiritual enlightenment, specifically as promoted in Eastern mystical traditions. The Christian idea of a man-like being in the sky, caring for ‘his flock’ and dictating that flock’s future, has never appealed nor made much sense to me. What attracted me to the Eastern spiritual systems is that enlightenment was described as an experience resulting from a person’s (male or female) effort to become more aware, or more conscious, of both their inner states and of their fundamental connection to the external world. It was something anyone could strive for, and you could obtain it during your lifetime. It was a process which involved developing greater self-awareness and understanding, and much questioning of spiritual teachers in order to find ‘truth’.

This was so unlike the Christian tradition I had grown up with, which to me offered only incontestable rules to live by, an authority to answer to and any rewards for ‘good’ behaviour attainable only after you had passed away, and which made me feel very much like a daughter, sometimes good and at other times naughty or even rebellious, in relation to an authoritarian father figure. And the last thing I wanted to feel, as a young woman embarking on my adult life independently of my parents, was just as I had as a young child! I wanted to explore what life had to offer: to develop my skills, to see the world, to become more aware, to engage in meaningful and equal relationships, to feel confident in my body and about my sexuality.

Eastern spiritual systems seemed to validate all those aspects of a person. However, as I discovered through my experiences, they too contained prejudices. They weren’t as blatantly patriarchal as Western religions which were dominated by the father image of god and had eradicated any notion of god having a motherly, or any feminine, aspect. In contrast, Eastern spiritual traditions seemed to value both the masculine and feminine dimensions of human nature, which is clearly illustrated in their art which often depicts the absolute, such as Shiva in Hinduism, as having a feminine side and a masculine side and then both those sides united together in sublime union. Yet even with such acknowledgment of femininity, and also the (almost) equal valuing of seekers and their teachers or gurus (the absolute is accepted as being in everyone and the only difference between a seeker and teacher is that the seeker just doesn’t realise it yet), I still found the way the spiritual practices were promoted had a distinct masculine bias. And the daily lives of the people of the cultures those traditions were a part of were also governed by rules as patriarchal, if not more so, as in the West, a contradiction which didn’t rest comfortably with me.

But I continued to read books by various spiritual leaders on their theories and experiences of enlightenment, I studied philosophy and religious studies at University in search of answers, I attended workshops and I met some gurus. I practiced the recommended techniques to promote enlightenment, such as meditation, chanting mantras and yoga, and I had some amazing experiences as a result of those practices. All seemed well and good, except for my growing irritation at always reading and hearing ‘god’ or ‘the absolute’ described using the word ‘he’. Logic told me (and I am reasonably qualified in using logic, having earned the highest grade attainable in Logic at University, even though I am female and women are not supposed to be able to use that ability!) that if god is absolute (that which is independent of all relations, perfect and complete, free from any restriction - paraphrased from The Macquarie Dictionary, Third Edition, 1997, p 8), then god is beyond gender.

I also had some prickly experiences such as when I met a well-known guru from India who refused to touch me when giving his blessing because I was a woman. He said that my femaleness would taint his pure state and/or ignite feelings of desire, which he had ‘decided’ not to experience any more. I found it difficult to believe that someone who had such prejudices about gender, to the point where he feared contact with women, and was so terrified of his own sexuality, could be enlightened, as he and his many followers claimed. I had always imagined that an enlightened person would be free of prejudices, especially as such people are meant to experience everything, including women and men, as part of the same unity, as ‘one’. My discontent grew as I found myself in other similar situations that made me feel uncomfortable, and even humiliated, simply because I was female.

And then I became a mother. As I was consumed by this new role and went about doing the various tasks mothers do in our day-to-day lives, I couldn’t help notice there were many similarities between the things I was doing naturally just by playing my mothering role and the spiritual techniques I had been practicing and learning about previously. Yet I had never come across any mention of motherhood as a path to enlightenment. This seemed an astounding oversight, considering the number of women who have journeyed along the road of motherhood.

It all begins with pregnancy, which can initiate some profound energetic shifts in women as the life force (or prana or chi) in our bodies is intensified as the process of creation takes place, leading to an enhanced sensitivity to sounds, tastes, smells and sensations, as well as to emotions and thoughts, and sometimes even to a super-charged sex drive which is intimately linked with the energy some spiritual traditions hold responsible for leading to enlightenment, and which I’ve examined in this book.

And then there’s the process of childbirth, which is such an amazing and awe-inspiring experience, even for those just attending a birth, that it is a wonder there is such silence about it in our culture. It is as though we have all been put under a spell which makes childbirth invisible to us, except during the relatively short time we participate in it. Before and after that, I can see how easy it is for children to believe in storks delivering babies, for adults behave as though such a myth were true too.

And then the life-long task of mothering. Mothering is such a huge, all-encompassing and time-consuming mission, with far more serious consequences for our actions than for any other type of work, and also far greater rewards than any other work could possibly give, and it provides continuous and constant prompting towards growth in consciousness, awareness and the capacity to love – essentially the requirements for enlightenment. Yet motherhood is given such little recognition in most cultures, and certainly doesn’t have any status as a spiritual path. Even mothers feel as though we are not doing all that much, rationalising away the significance of the countless challenges we deal with daily and the fact that we have reasonably healthy, developing, achieving, well-rounded children happily asleep in their beds at the end of each day.

For centuries, most of the world’s cultures have elevated people who participate in spiritual practices, particularly those who have achieved a state of apparent ‘spiritual mastery’. And because the practices defined as spiritual have been performed in such a way (completely separated from family life) as to make them difficult for women shouldering the responsibilities of child-raising to participate in, mothers have been unable to take part fully in spiritual endeavours – or so it has always been assumed. For, as I’ve shown in my story, I believe that not only have mothers been performing spiritual practices all along, but that spirituality itself has been defined far too narrowly, so that only certain kinds of experiences, when experienced in a certain kind of way, are considered to be spiritual. For if you look closely at the major texts from all the world’s spiritual traditions, they say something along the line of: god is everywhere, in everything; we are all god; god is within all of us. It is even spelt out in those texts that the meaning of such statements is that all of life is infused with god, and so all kinds of experience are spiritual in essence.
 

You don’t have to sit alone in a cave and meditate to experience spirit – you can certainly do so, but you can also experience spirit by sitting in a park with your children and watching the delight on their faces when they slide down the slippery dip or find an earthworm on the ground. You can give service to your god – whoever or whatever that is for you – by helping to feed the homeless, but you can also give service to your god by feeding your own children. That is no less a spiritual service than the other.

So motherhood is just as valid a vehicle for enlightenment as any other. The beauty and gift of motherhood is that once you attain it, it is with you always. You can still explore other facets of life and you can still follow other paths, but your state of being a mother can not be taken away. So even if you feel like giving up and running away, which we all do sometimes, most of us find a way to continue with our task. We are so powerfully and instinctually drawn to do so. No other path to enlightenment is so prevailing, with a lifetime hold on us. (Fatherhood can be attained without a man even being aware of it.)

After I had my third child, I felt compelled to write this book. I felt it a huge injustice that my job of raising children received such little recognition in our society. I felt it was crazy that the world’s spiritual leaders, of all faiths, received so much status and reward, and who could sometimes behave atrociously and be forgiven so easily, yet mothers were on the bottom of the ladder of worthiness, and were largely excluded from spiritual life. I thought it ludicrous that an employee of a company could be paid a large bonus, sometimes to the value of millions, for adding value to a company in some way, but that all I received for bringing a person into the world who would some day become a company asset, and who had been prepared for that role by me, at my expense and through my efforts, was a bunch of flowers.

I knew with such certainty that I was amazing because I was a mother and had been through childbirth, so I have felt exasperated watching other mothers devalue what they do, because I know that most mothers do such an incredible job, a very spiritual job (whether they realise it or not), and the only reason we disregard that is because of cultural conditioning. So I felt I had to do something to help re-dress the balance, to bring some equilibrium to the world in regard to the valuing of mothering – before even more women in Western countries decide to not become mothers or do so only half-heartedly, which I believe would be a tragedy, on both personal and wider levels. For women are not stupid – we can see that motherhood is not a high status role to take on and, with our current cultural attitudes, once you become a mother you miss out on the levels of success you could have had in other areas, you suffer financially, and if you give up other types of work to focus exclusively on mothering, you become invisible, or at least insignificant, in other people’s eyes. For so many women to already have made the decision to not have children, even against the instinct to procreate, suggests things must be pretty bad indeed.

I believe there is an urgent need to begin valuing mothering once again – not only for individual benefit but for our world as a whole. Not only has the devaluing of mothering led to damage to our individual and collective psychic health, but it has led to the use of a disproportionate amount of resources on masculine-based interests such as military acquisition and competitive sport and the parallel underfunding for feminine aspects of community life such as work that nurtures families, teaches our children and connects people within communities, not to mention global pollution and unchecked competition and endless growth in industry, and the dismissing and downright neglect of the earth’s cycles and rhythms. My hope is that my story has raised the status of motherhood, and of mothering, in your eyes – that would be a good start.

© Copyright 2008 Astra Niedra and QA Publishing