For decades, I studied spirituality and yoga under male teachers. I absorbed their teachings, practiced their techniques, and followed the paths they laid out. I believe, as many of us are taught that wisdom is wisdom—that truth is truth, no matter who delivers it.
But over time, I began to see the cracks in their wisdom—not in its depth or sincerity, but in its applicability to me as a woman.
All of my teachers were men. And now, all of them are dead. Their deaths have left me with an undeniable clarity: Their path was never mine, no matter how hard I tried to make it fit. Their wisdom ended where my reclamation began.
Table of Contents
The Different Roads to Enlightenment (or whatever you want to call it)
Men and women come to spirituality from different places.
Men often approach enlightenment through compassion and empathy, the softening of the ego, and surrendering to something greater than themselves. They seek to dissolve, to transcend, to merge.
But for women, the path is not about dissolving, but reclaiming. We come to enlightenment through svādhyāya—self-study—taking up space, piecing together what the world has tried to erase. Our spiritual path is not about disappearing into the cosmos but about becoming fully embodied in our existence.
My teachers could teach me about discipline. They could teach me about devotion. But they could never teach me how to reclaim myself because they never had to.
I explore more here
The Limits of Male Teachers
Men can never teach me what it means to be a woman rebuilding herself through spirituality. They can never show me how to navigate a world that has always told me to shrink. They can never guide me through the work of reclaiming my authority in traditions that were never built for me.
Male teachers might offer universal truths, but their perspectives are shaped by a world that was made for them and made room for them. They don’t carry the ancestral grief, the generational trauma, or the weight of being spiritually exiled for simply existing in a female body.
Spirituality as Reclamation, Not Erasure
For centuries, women’s spiritual journeys have been dictated by male teachers—men who shaped traditions, wrote the texts and decided what enlightenment should look like. These traditions tell women to be quiet, soft, and in service. But our enlightenment is not about submission. It’s about sovereignty.
Spirituality, for women, is a return to self. It is standing in our authority, rewriting the narratives telling us we needed men to lead us toward the divine. It is refusing to be a disciple of systems never built for us.
When Reclamation Is Misread as Surrender
And this, too, is why so many women have been harmed spiritually, emotionally, and physically in these traditions. When we are taught that enlightenment means surrender and that wisdom comes through a dissolution of the self, we are left vulnerable in systems designed by men who were never asked to disappear in the same way.
In male-led spiritual spaces and lineages, women are often encouraged to “let go,” to “trust,” to “be receptive.” But receptivity without power is not spirituality; it’s submission. And submission in a patriarchal system becomes dangerous. What is presented as transcendence is, in practice, erasure. And what is framed as trust is often a demand for obedience.
Women’s spirituality is not about dissolving. It is about becoming whole. It is not about handing over our sovereignty. It is about reclaiming.
Breaking Away & Reclaiming
For years, I searched for a version of spirituality that fit me. But every teaching, every lineage, every path led back to the same voices: men explaining the universe from their vantage point.
Now that those voices have fallen silent, I can breathe. I can think clearly.
I no longer seek spiritual wisdom from men who cannot understand what it means to be a woman. Instead, I turn to the wisdom of my body, intuition, and the women who have walked this path before me.
My spirituality is not about erasure. It is about presence. It is not about transcendence. It is about embodiment. It is not about submission. It is about reclamation.
And no man, living or dead, can teach me how to do that.
Additional Sources: The Secret Spiritual History of Western Feminism and Feminism and Spiritual Citizenship
3 responses to “Breaking Free from Male Teachers: My Spiritual Path is Not Theirs”
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Thank you so much for this, dear Magnolia.