Confession. I once used my media connections to jump the line to get a hug from Amma. Okay twice, actually. Both times, I did not have to endure the average eight-hour wait for an audience with the woman they call the Hugging Saint. What can I say? PR guru Kelly Cutrone, a longtime mentor and supporter of The Numinous, also reps Amma the guru—a little pro bono work for the woman she says saved her life (in a spiritual sense). And even in matters of holy pilgrimage, it would appear that guest list privileges apply.
For the uninitiated, Amma is an Indian spiritual leader who mainly spends her time traveling the world dishing out, yes, hugs. All-enveloping, all-loving hugs that people literally line up for days to receive. To her devotees, this is an act of darshan—the opportunity to visit with a holy person, or deity. The ultimate, and very personal, puja, or expression of ceremonial worship.
Born Mātā Amrtānandamayī Devī in Kerala, India, in the early 1950s, the story goes that even as a very young child Mātā was compelled to do everything she could to ease the suffering of others. She would take food and clothing from her own home to people in her village who were living in poverty, often spontaneously embracing them to ease their sorrows. Before long, little Mātā had earned herself the nickname Amma, Hindi for “Mother.”
Of course word got out, and soon spiritual seekers were traveling from all over India to get a hug, often in the hope of becoming Amma’s devotees. Meanwhile, her parents weren’t at all sure about the whole guru jam and repeatedly tried to marry their daughter off. But Amma was having none of it. The way she saw it, “the duty of a doctor is to treat patients. In the same way, my duty is to console those who are suffering.” Or, rather, her dharma.
The rest is a similarly mixed bag of fantastical folklore and factual history. Amma broadened her reach by establishing an international humanitarian charity; she performed miracles, such as diverting storms and feeding multitudes from a single tiny pot of rice; and in 1987 she began traveling the world dishing out hugs, millions and millions to date, as a means of spreading her message that what the world needs is LOVE. And that we’d better all be loving one another, since “all of our children are all of our children.”
Of course, there’s one major element missing from the story of a woman named Amma: children of her own. Not that “saints” are traditionally expected to produce mini-me saints (most of them are men after all), and anyway, when is she supposed to have found the time? Amma hugs and she hugs, often around the clock, forsaking food, sleep, and bathroom breaks (which will no doubt sound familiar to any actual mothers out there).
But children or no children, to me Amma represents a Universal mother energy. Her life is one of utter selflessness (see hugging and hugging around the clock, forsaking food, sleep, and bathroom breaks), and she sees it as her Goddess-given duty to deliver comfort to those in need. Not to mention the fact she’s also the mother of all multitaskers.
I know this because I also got to interview Amma once, and it took place during darshan (the hugging). Since darshan can often go on for twenty-three, twenty-four, or even twenty-eight hours straight, “all my meetings happen during darshan,” she said, laughing. Let me paint a picture of what this looks like. We’re at the Javits Center in NYC (an expo hall the size of an aircraft hangar), where Amma is set up on a stage to do the hugging. At least half the floor space is filled with rows of chairs, where people sit and patiently wait their turn, while the rest of the center has been transformed into a sort of mini bazaar, with people selling clothes and devotional trinkets, and some of the best curry you’ve ever eaten for about $2 a dish.
As your turn for a hug draws nearer, you are moved to a chair closer to the stage, then a chair on the stage, and then a chair closer to Amma on the stage. There’s music playing and people singing, incense and garlands everywhere, and by now it’s all getting pretty intense. When the hug finally happens, it smells of roses and everything else disappears, with Amma herself whispering “my daughter, my daughter, my daughter,” in your ear. While simultaneously taking phone calls, making decisions to do with the running of her foundation, instructing an army of helpers, and doing interviews, via translator, with the likes of me.
So here are my questions to you. Does not being a mother to any biological children make Amma any less of a woman? Does it make her, since she hasn’t experienced the mortal intensity of growing and giving birth to a new life, any less of a spiritual person? And does it suggest that she’s emotionally stunted or has in any way shied away from the full burden of adult responsibility?
As somebody who has chosen to remain “childless by choice” myself, I really would like to know, since I’ve asked these questions, and more, of myself on a fairly regular basis since around age twenty-five. Then there was the therapist who only wanted to talk about the fact that I didn’t want kids; the (male) shaman who told me I’d only be taken seriously as a voice in the spiritual community once I became a mother; and, of course, the multiple magazine editors who have asked me to write about my “unconventional” decision. Editors, and by extension their readers I guess, who simply could not get their heads around the fact that an apparently healthy and happily married woman could quite so resolutely declare that being a mom was just not for her. Of course I have my reasons, which fall into two categories:
A. There are too many people in the world already; I’m petrified of childbirth; I’m too much of a career woman; I feel like I would love my baby so much I would end up sacrificing my career; I am a very private person and need lots of alone time to stay sane; my marriage would suffer; the planet is dying, and the situation does not look particularly forgiving for future generations.
B. I’ve just always known I never wanted to be a mom.
Obviously reason B is the only one worth focusing on, since all the reasons in category A are basically fear-based future-tripping and therefore not real. So let’s focus on B.
I have a very distinct memory of me at age five asking my mum why people were so obsessed with babies. And since we were on the subject, how come baby animals were so cute, when most human babies I had encountered were wrinkly little worms who screamed all the time? Granted, this maybe had something to do with my baby brother arriving on the scene and taking all the attention off me. But there’s also a picture of me aged about nine holding our neighbor’s baby. The look on my face (fear, confusion, please-somebody-take-this-away-NOW) pretty much tells the whole story.
Wow, even writing that makes me feel like there must be something wrong with me. Like, did I miss something about what it means to be a woman? Or “womb-man,” as Dori Varga, founder of Now Age female empowerment movement Tribe de Mama, likes to call it? So ingrained is the societal message that women and babies are like chips ’n’ dips, you can’t have one without the other. And sticking to my guns—or rather my gut—on this one has been a practice of tuning in, again and again, to my intuition.
Because periodically, I’ll decide that actually of course I want kids. It’s an integral, if not THE integral, part of being human, the ultimate life and death adventure. And because when you strip it all away, family is the only thing that really matters. Right? But when it comes to the crunch, a.k.a. actual unprotected, baby-making sex, the message from my gut is always Hold up, wait a minute, WTF. And in the words of business impresario Marie Forleo, “If it’s not a HELL yes, it’s a hell no.”
None of which, by the way, is meant to come across as bitter or defensive. And neither am I comparing myself to Amma, who—I think we’ve already established—has led quite an exceptional life when it comes to being of service in the world.
But I’ve used her as an example here, because for me Amma and what she stands for are an invitation to investigate all the ways women (and men, why not!) can embody a Universal mother energy in their lives, whether they choose to become “parents” or not. A Universal mother energy, it feels to me, that is the underpinning of all Now Age thinking, feeling, and being.
Even if actual babies are a “hell no” for me, I’m still very much aware that I am currently in the prime of my mothering years. But besides the fact that I have a womb and have not yet entered menopause, what does that even mean? And without any kids in the frame, what is “mother energy” anyway? The way I’ve come to see it, there are three key pillars to Universal mother energy.
PRINCIPLE NO. 1: CREATION AND BIRTHING
In Hinduism, the energy of Mother Earth flows through all beings as the primordial creative energy of the Universe and is referred to as Shakti, which translates as “power” or “empowerment.” Also “the great divine mother,” as Shakti is understood as the embodiment of love and as the seed of all creation. And creativity is the first piece of the mother puzzle for me—because a mother, by her very definition, gives birth to something, right?
When I met the founders of theSkimm, the crazy popular current affairs newsletter, they told me how during their first year in business they basically didn’t sleep. They lived together and would do shifts, getting up at all hours to check the newswires before pressing send on the most up-to-date version of their newsletter at 6 a.m.
THE THREE PILLARS OF UNIVERSAL MOTHER ENERGY
Creation and Birthing: meaning the willingness to acknowledge whatever manifestation of spirit wants to come into being through you (actual children, businesses, charitable initiatives, works of art, etc.), and then dedicating the necessary time and energy to bringing it to fruition.
Nurturing and Protection: which speaks to both the tender care and attention, as well as the fiercely uncompromising “I know what’s best for you” stance our “babies” need in order to thrive.
Unconditional Love: simply choosing to see your creations, your community, and your own life through the eyes of love. Meaning without judgment or expectation, and with due respect and appreciation for all the frustrating, annoying quirks that make us uniquely and beautifully human.
“So kind of like having a newborn?” I suggested. At which they’d smirked and replied they’d had to stop using that analogy since several mothers of actual newborns had expressed their displeasure at the comparison. But their tired eyes (they were three years in) told a different story: basically like a newborn, yes. Just without the crying, the cuddles, or the dirty diapers.
A woman’s business being her baby is a bit of a cliché, but for good reason—especially when it’s a business or creative project that’s “born” of her “passionate desire” to bring “something of herself” into the world. You’ll lose sleep over a business like that, sacrifice friendships for it, and give it money you haven’t got when it’s hungry. You’ll also fight for what you believe is best for it, turning away suitors you don’t like the look of no matter how fat their checkbook is.
I’m speaking from experience, obviously, since The Numinous is my business baby. If I thought I loved my magazine career, then conceiving, birthing, and nurturing a creative venture of my own has opened up my being to a whole other level of fulfillment. Not to mention anguish, financial worries, and sleepless nights. Since bringing my idea for The Numinous into the world, I have experienced some of my highest highs, and my most heart-wrenching lows. And like any loving parent will tell you, the highs are worth the lows and then some.
In Big Magic, her book on creativity, Liz Gilbert describes inspiration thus: “Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. . . . Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner.” So basically, when a brilliant idea just shows up and won’t leave you alone—it’s the Universe trying to have sex with/impregnate you.
She goes on to describe how these idea spirits are constantly swirling around us in the ether, searching for available and willing human partners. Which also sounds to me a lot like popular beliefs about human spirits; astrologers believing we choose our parents, for example. The Numinous came to me as a name first, which planted itself in my consciousness and simply refused to be ignored. But I’m too busy with my career, I told it. And: I’m afraid I won’t be any good at it and I don’t want to do this on my own. But evidently The Numinous wanted to collaborate with me and only me, wanted me to be its mother, since this back-and-forth went on for about two years before I finally succumbed. Although it knows and I know that it was a “hell yes” from the get-go.
And this book, which was conceived two more years down the line, feels like baby number two. Writing/birthing it has been a period of intense soul-searching (I joked to a friend the other day that it would definitely go down as “one of those agonizing seventy-two-hour childbirth stories”). It has also meant abstaining from alcohol for the health of my child, pretty much kissing my social life good-bye, and recruiting professional childcare for baby number one in the form of some brilliant interns (cue major separation anxiety!).
Which reminds me of one of my favorite Amma quotes: “Where there is love, there is no effort.” Because has any of this felt like work? Hell no! It feels like life.
It’s interesting, actually, how many of my favorite female writers don’t have children: Lionel Shriver, Candace Bushnell, and, yes, Liz Gilbert. I know this, by the way, because my ego likes nothing better than to go on a Wikipedia spree comparing my life and “achievements” to famous women of a similar age. (I know, I know, SO low vibe and generally to be avoided, but also completely addictive.)
Of the above, Liz has commented the most extensively about her kid-free status, describing it as reflecting “my own choice, my own desires, my own destiny.” In another one of her books, Committed, she also describes how her grandmother (a mother to seven) once told her how she’d prayed Liz wouldn’t have any children of her own and would instead dedicate her life to writing books and traveling.
And if the future really is going to be female, or more feminine in attitude at least (just wait for the next chapter for plenty more on this!), then the way I see it we’re going to need more women to dedicate their lives to shaping thoughts, opinions, and events outside the family unit. To dedicate their lives to our wider human family.
But I do also appreciate that book babies and business babies are not flesh and blood. Nobody will die or become orphaned if I just decide to stop writing tomorrow (you should have seen my mum’s face when I tried to make the comparison), and I could totally sell The Numinous to another family (like some big media conglomerate) and nobody would bat an eyelid. Actual motherhood IS life and death, and my decision not to participate is still something I’ll always question (along with my therapists). In the meantime though, I continue to focus on ways to express my own nurturing mother energy in other ways.
PRINCIPLE NO. 2: NURTURING AND PROTECTION
One woman who absolutely embodies this idea for me is Lisa Levine, a former jewelry designer turned Reiki master and acupuncturist, who now runs my very favorite place to get healed, Brooklyn’s Maha Rose Center for the Healing Arts. She’s also an actual devotee of Amma, meaning that in 2010 she officially renounced all other gurus and spiritual teachers and was given an Amma mantra to use in her meditation practice. Subsequently, she once felt moved to ask Amma to “let me do your work” during darshan.
The result is Maha Rose, which Lisa set up in her home a couple of years later, and which is one of the most nurturing spaces I’ve come across on my numinous travels. You just feel held (yes, hugged!) by the energy there. There’s no other way to describe it, and discovering the center and meeting Lisa, just a couple of years after leaving my own mother behind in the UK, was incredibly comforting to me.
There’s also an altar to Amma at Maha Rose, and when I last met Lisa for lunch (with her actual, human, newborn bouncing on her hip), she described her guru as “the overarching protectress, the matriarch, and the mother of it all.” She also told me there are two main aspects to how she herself sees Universal mother energy.
First “there’s the loving, nurturing mother that holds you and loves you and gives her breasts to you, gives her everything to you; everything, everything, everything. Utter selflessness.”
On the flip side, meanwhile, “is the fierce mother, the mother who’s like, ‘you are NOT going out dressed like that.’ She’s being protective, but can be quite severe.”
And Amma embodies both, says Lisa. One the one hand, “there’s not one moment of her day that she’s not involved in doing something to help us.” But also, “when I first began to follow Amma, all the messages from my higher Self that came through as a result of the light her work shone on the way I’d been living my life were about letting go of stuff that wasn’t really doing me any good. It was a very scary and painful process.”
If there’s a celebrity who embodies mother energy for me, it’s Angelina Jolie Pitt. Everything about her suggests this same fierce-yet-loving vibe: from the way the entire Jolie-Pitt tribe traveled together to be on location whenever she and Brad made a movie (Brangelina, RIP), to her preventative operations to remove both breasts along with her ovaries and fallopian tubes, resulting in her entering menopause at age forty. Shown to have a high risk of both breast and ovarian cancer, as a mother it was an easy decision, she has said. She needs to stick around, because she needs to be here for them.
And lucky for you, the Universe conveniently arranged for me to interview Angie for a glossy Sunday supplement just as I was beginning to work on this chapter! So I got to ask her about mother energy too.
Considering she has adopted three kids and also has three biological children with Brad Pitt, my head spun when she told me she actually never thought she’d be a mom. As in she never babysat or played with dolls growing up and never thought of herself as a “maternal” person.
She adopted her oldest son, Pax, after she began to experience overwhelming compassion for all the kids in the world who don’t have a mother of their own. And then she met Brad, and I guess you can understand her wanting to make the most of those genes.
Since her character in the movie I was interviewing her for (a movie she also wrote) suffers a nervous breakdown following a miscarriage that has left her barren, I also had to ask: Having unearthed her own maternal instincts after all, did she believe that any woman who didn’t become a mother, for whatever reason, was destined for a bitter and lonely old age? (Read: Please, Angie, tell me, am I destined for a bitter and lonely old age?!)
Oh NO, she assured me. By no means. (Phew). “But I do think it’s important for a woman to be able to nurture something. To nurture—that’s a woman’s nature.”
Which to me speaks to both aspects of Lisa’s Universal mother: the idea of “mothering” as lovingly tending to something that is very dear to us, because it feels like our duty to nourish and protect it so that it can thrive. Like, you know, our planet maybe?
Which brings me to Mother Earth, a.k.a. Gaia, or Pachamama, as I have heard her referred to in Now Age circles. When I first launched The Numinous, the fit between all things mystical and the environmental movement wasn’t immediately evident to me. If anything, I wanted to distance my platform from the crusty connotations of the Greenpeace crew. But, oh MAN, has my perspective shifted on this one. Getting connected to the cosmos is all about accepting nature as the ultimate creator, the strict yet life-sustaining mother of our everything. And I think it’s pretty evident to most of us that Mama Earth could kind of use some loving back.
There comes a time in every human’s personal evolution when we become aware that our own mother, despite the fact that she gave us life, is not in fact immortal, and that actually it’s our turn to mother her. (You may not be there yet, but trust me it will happen.)
And the way I see it, in the face of what even very sensible scientists have got to say these days about impending environmental Armageddon, it could be argued that perhaps we’ve also reached this point as a human race. All the more reason for us all—women and men, maybe especially the men who mainly get to make the big decisions about this kind of stuff—to channel some mother energy when it comes to taking care of our planet.
PRINCIPLE NO. 3: UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
Besides my rapidly developing awareness about environmental issues, one of the most surprising things to happen after I finally said yes and accepted my role as mother to The Numinous was the e-mails I began to get about the site. Usually from young women, most said something like: “Thank you for creating this; I feel like I’ve finally found my tribe.” And that’s a word I use a lot—tribe—to describe what feels like The Numinous family I’ve created.
Now would I die for my Numi tribe? Probably not. But do I feel unconditional love for them? Yes, because in my book (this book) unconditional love—the mother’s love that doesn’t require anything in return, and only wants what is best for her child’s ultimate happiness and fulfillment—is simply a choice. This for me is the final piece of the Universal mother energy puzzle, and I challenge you to watch your world transform any time you take a step back and choose to see your situation (any situation) through the eyes of a loving yet protective mother.
10 COMMANDMENTS FOR EMBODYING THE UNIVERSAL MOTHER
1. Thou shall open yourself to the Shakti flow, allowing life to happen through you.
2. Thou shall investigate what planets are in Cancer in your birth chart (for clues to your personal Universal mothering style).
3. Thou shall practice the art of selflessness.
4. But thou shall channel the growling mama bear when it comes to protecting yourself, your “family,” and your entrepreneurial/creative interests.
5. Thou shall be willing to give all you can when you encounter a soul in need.
6. But thou shall also create healthy boundaries, so as to conserve your own energy.
7. Thou shall remember that even your boss from hell was a helpless baby once, and that his or her temper tantrums are actually a cry for help/love.
8. Thou shall remember the nurturing and protection your own mother showed you, that felt so annoying when you were fourteen, and remember to thank her for it.
9. Thou shall show due respect to the Universal great-great-great-great-grandmother Earth.
10. Thou shall give freely and deeply of your hugs.
Like, how would you respond differently to the megabitch boss you’re convinced is out to get you if you choose to see her through the lens of unconditional, Universal, mother love? How would your food choices differ, viewing yourself and your body this way, not to mention each and every one of the beings involved in producing what you’re about to eat? Would you still be holding out for that guy or girl who only texts you back when they’re drunk and horny?
After I got my second hug from Amma, I wrote about how “the effect of the hug can last all day, all night. The whole of the next week. You’ve been embraced by a real life saint, by the Universal mother herself. You want to pass the feeling on, and you’ll be a nicer person until it wears off.”
And so I invite you to make it your mission, in everything you do, to make people feel that way, too. Whether they’re your kids, your nieces and nephews, your coworkers, your employees, your customers, your parents, your friends, or even complete strangers. Whether it’s yourself. If Amma is here to remind us that “all of our children are all of our children,” then in the Now Age, let’s all be each other’s mother, too.