(145 pp., Viking Penguin, England, 1990)

Woman Awake is a welcome volume that belongs equally on two shelves of our book collections: the women’s section and books on spirituality. Few other books bridge the distance between the culturally-conditioned psychological issues of women and basic spiritual practice, and few people are as qualified to span that distance as Christina Feldman.

Christina is pointing toward a feminist spirituality; her vehicle for achieving it is through body, mind and emotions, not around them or in spite of their demands. She strongly encourages the “mystic voyage” for women, believing that its challenging path culminates in a woman’s experiencing and accepting herself for who she is. Christina’s spirituality is earthy and practical rather than lofty and abstract; of the world rather than removed from worldly matters; inviting rather than intimidating. There is reassurance here: the tasks of self-knowing and self-direction are both worthwhile and attainable.

Woman Awake is a book on connections: mental and emotional, personal and political, body and mind, inner and outer, self and other. No aspect of one’s feelings and personality is outside of spiritual practice, estranged or unworthy of investigation and incorporation. This is a wide and embracing spirituality needed by women longing to find an authentic self without losing that self in the expectations or demands of any psychological or spiritual system.

Christina enumerates the stages of a woman’s journey toward claiming a full self. For this endeavor, Christina shows that it is crucial to work with the now familiar women’s issues of separation and fusion, self-esteem, power and learned helplessness, relationship, and authority. That the stages she describes are not traditionally named as one’s “spiritual” work is exactly the point: in claiming a woman’s spirituality, Christina brings a fresh view and new options to defining spirituality.

Christina sets her book in the lives of contemporary women, including herself, who are committed to “discover what it means to be a spiritually awake woman.” Her women are motivated by “the voice within us that reaches for wholeness,” the inner mystic who “sings the songs of wholeness and freedom.”

Certainly there are struggles and difficulties on the road to awakening, and Christina does not minimize them. The mood throughout the book, however, is optimistic: as a reader I never felt discouraged or disempowered by the depth and breadth of the task. The positive tone of the book is a reflection of Christina’s own journey, as well as her love for women and her faith in this process of psycho-spiritual homecoming.

With such support, what a pleasure the self-investigation becomes. Here is the love and the unconditional positive regard that holds, guides and encourages the seeker to embrace her shadows (“To move from darkness to light, we need to be able to embrace the twilight . . .”), change her patterns and overcome her conditioned beliefs and behaviors. (“Our vision of our own potential and fulfillment will not be obscured.”) Christina’s gentle nurturance and committed perseverance are a model of her own authenticity; she gives herself as a dharma teacher from her own clear and original woman’s voice.

Woman Awake is an especially fine primer for women embarking upon the quest for psychological and spiritual self-discovery. Although this volume was expressly written for women, I recommend it to students of both genders on the path of awareness. For everyone, Woman Awake affirms that the personal is spiritual and that the sacred exists in love of self, others and planet Earth.

∞

From the Fall 1990 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 7, No. 1)

Text © 1990–2022 by Paula Green