Do men and women have different types of “spiritual realizations”?

Last night at dinner my wife, my father and myself were all talking about our different experiences, or lack of experiences, with spirituality.

Mine in particular is pretty evident. My father, like previously mentioned in another post, was quite sick last year. After hearing news that he may not make it (which he did) he said he had a moment of realization. While not quite a spiritual realization, he did say it put him on a different path than he had already been on. For whatever reason he was drawn to Deepak Chopra’s books and was particularly inspired by his book SynchroDestiny. He was blown away about the idea of interdependence and has been thinking about it quite a bit.

My wife than chimed in about how she didn’t necessarily need a religion or spiritual practice, that she was happy leading the life she is. Which to me is great, she’s really centered, caring and knows what she wants.

This was where the profound words came out of my fathers mouth. He said something like…

“I think women may not seek a spiritual practice as much as men. Women have them without searching. The love a woman feels when a child is born could be compared to a moment of awakening. The love that flows from a woman the first time she sees the child she has bore for 9 months is an awakening in itself. So I think women have a one up on guys.”

These of course were not his exact words, but they are close enough for government work. I wrote this up because I really want to get reader’s reactions to his “theory” about women maybe not feeling the need to have a spiritual awakening of sorts because they seem to have them without even looking. What do you think?

by Precious Metal