Hilary Hart lives in Taos, New Mexico, where she writes and teaches, focusing on women’s spiritual power and the role it can play in our global evolution. Born in Boston, Hilary went to Yale University and received a Masters Degree in Philosophy from CU Boulder. She has extensive experience in Sufism and Tibetan Buddhism. We discuss her third book, Body of Wisdom: Women’s Spiritual Power and How it Serves Them, which discusses how feminism and mysticism come together to create women’s spiritual empowerment.
She begins by discussing the Women’s Power Wheel, which is a network of women who come together to explore and offer their power in service to life. Her book zeros in on how women can use their power to build community and to halt the destruction of the earth. She distinguishes between women’s and men’s spiritual powers. Her book includes nine powers which help convey the relationship between feminism and mysticism. We are in a third wave of feminism, which is more than just achieving equality in the workplace. She links women’s spirituality to divine immanence, with God dwelling within us rather than projected elsewhere as a distant transcendent God. The sacred feminine is about the indwelling presence of God. We are now coming to see a return of the sacred in life, which causes us to feel unsettled and a yearning for meaning and more love in our lives, including of the earth itself.
One of the powers she discusses is longing. These powers aren’t to about achievement or projecting something outside ourselves but are living energies within us. In Sufism, which she practices, there is a great reverence for longing, including to be known and to know God. We long to find meaning and greater participation in life. Our heart gives us this longing to move us forward and discover what gives us meaning and compels us to move through life with integrity.
Hilary also focuses on the connection between women’s spirituality and ecology. Women have a unique relationship with the world. Beauty is another power that has a divine quality of closeness with the material world. Real beauty is an expression of love and openness. Hilary concludes by describing two practices for women to connect to their power: trusting and connecting with other women. For more information, please visit www.hilaryhart.org.