From her research into female spiritual role models, writer Erica Bassani joins Raghu to discuss her new book which offers an exploration of faith, practice, and feminine power.
Grab your copy of Women in Love with the Divine or join Erica in Awakening Softness, transformational 1 on 1 sessions for rediscovering the sacredness of daily life.
This week on Mindrolling, Erica and Raghu have a conversation on:
- Honoring femininity and presence through the wisdom of modern female spiritual teachers
- Erica’s inspiration from her father’s spirituality and her year-long monastery stay at 19 years old.
- Gratitude practice towards the divine mother and our own mothers
- Considering how the wisdom of women may differ from the wisdom of men
- The extraordinary warmth and compassion of Garchen Rinpoche
- Moving away from one-dimensional ways of overcoming conflict
- Entering into feminine gentleness and finding our power within ourselves
- How transcending the ego can actually become spiritual bypassing
- Becoming present when we start to doubt the existence of God
- Cultivating inner peace as our individual contribution to the chaos of the world
“I started writing it 3 years ago from a need of meeting living women who dedicate their life to the divine. I really needed in that time of my life, I was going through personal crisis and spiritual crisis, I realized all my teachers had been men. Which, I am very grateful to them, but at that point I started really needing female role models, the examples of women who are today in this world doing the spiritual life.” –Erica Bassani
About Erica Bassani:
Erica Bassani is a writer based in Italy. A graduate of the Academy of Storytelling in Turin, she spent a year living in a Theravadan Buddhist monastery at the age of 23. Since then, she has turned to female spiritual teachers from diverse traditions to help her navigate her inner journey. She created the Women Awakening Project—an initiative that highlights the wisdom of female spiritual role models and explores spiritual practice through the lens of women’s experiences—to share their wisdom and create a bridge between generations of seekers. Bassani is author of Donne che Esplorano il Divino, co-author (with Massimo Bonomelli) of Va Bene Così, and the Italian translator of The Four Noble Truths of Love by Susan Piver.
“Women didn’t follow their own way of coming to power. They followed more the masculine way, the patriarchal way of getting to power. This, of course, creates a very weird shift inside. It creates suffering ultimately because of a disconnection with where actually is the source of power in us, especially as women, and possibly for men as well. The source of power can be in the heart, can be more embodied and exclusive, more aware of the different parts of the situation instead of this focused way which cuts out many other things, it’s a more gentler way.” –Erica Bassani
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