The Loss of Love in Wildly Spiritual Times

The word “spirituality” speaks of concerns both lofty and other worldly. It has to do with a higher power that is above the mundane concerns of Mortals who speak of the spiritual in hushed tones, if at all. Spirituality has to do with thrones celestial, ecclesiastical, and regal, and is essentially masculine in nature even though the thrones may be occupied by Mortal women as well as men. In the so-called “developed” countries where the primary currency for living life is financial rather than powered by the loving soul and spirit, these same hushed tones are reserved for banks and stock markets where all the shouting and fighting and chaos and greed is behind the scenes.

In these days when suicide bombers are all the rage, and it is every man (and many women) for themselves, some call for more spirituality, but in fact we need less. We need less of the wild masculine financial warriors who make killings and relish take-overs. We need less of the fundamentalist dictator spirit in religions, politics, and business who are the self-styled experts, and much more of the feminine soul. The feminine soul is down to earth, non-judgmental, and lovingly compassionate, and this “soulfulness” in both men and women is endangered, having been eclipsed by the wild masculine warrior spirit. This cry for soulfulness is not a matter of equal rights nor is it a gender issue, for we desperately need the loving and caring masculine and the loving and caring feminine to be in balance in both sexes if we are to survive.

Loss of Love, soulfulness, and the feminine within us need to become the primary subjects of a Spiritual Literacy that we treasure more than gold. The Gaze is the manifestation of love, soulfulness, and the feminine, and the gaze is what the mother and the father give to the infant who reflects it back to them and everyone else. The gaze is the pure manifestation of unconditional love and provides the foundation for loving trust in self and others. We need the gaze in infancy, and we need the gaze from infancy until death if we are to develop lasting self-esteem and be a lover in more than sex. Since our parents are Mortals and may not have practiced loving themselves very much and they may not have acquired a lasting supply of self-esteem, we will need to re-learn how to gaze with loving compassion at ourselves if we are to live loving lives and not be overwhelmed by wild masculine attacks on our hearts and souls.

-N. Michael Murphy