Women in Love with the Divine with Erica Bassani

PodcastInterviewsWomen and CultureLeadership
Written By Geneva Tolentino

Show Notes

What if allowing yourself to soften is the bravest thing you could do for your soul?

In this episode, we sit down with Erica Bassani, the author of Women in Love with the Divine (Shambhala) and the Founder of Women Awakening Project, a space devoted to gathering and honoring the wisdom of women across spiritual traditions. Erica interviews women from diverse spiritual lineages to explore devotion, embodiment, and the feminine path.


Her signature program, Awakening Softness, is a guided journey inspired by the themes of her book. Through group and one-to-one sessions, the program invites participants to rediscover softness as a source of inner power and spiritual depth — remembering the strength that lives within tenderness


If you’ve ever felt the quiet tug of devotion, longed for a spirituality that honors the body, or wondered what it looks like to put the Divine at the center of an ordinary life, you’ll want to listen to this conversation.


In this episode, we cover so many topics, including:

  • Ecstatic Women Through History and Their Role in Institutions

  • Sovereignty and Ecstasy

  • Erica’s Spiritual Journey and the Divine Mother as her support

  • The Women Awakening Project

  • Contemporary Women in Love with the Divine

  • Renunciates, Mystics, and Modern Integrators

  • The Power of Softness

  • Erica's Vision for the Women Awakening Project

  • Erica's Personal Journey and Practice 

  • The Importance of Spirituality in Modern Life 

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Transcript

Erica Bassani  0:02  

The more you choose you know to nourish this inner authority that knows, the less you're gonna be touched by this external belief, from the society, from the culture, from fears.


Christine Mason  0:20  

Hello, everybody. It's Christine Marie Mason, your host for The Rose Woman Podcast on love and liberation. Today, I am so pleased to be welcoming Erica Uma Bassani, who's just written a book called Women in love with the divine.


Christine Mason  0:37  

It's on contemporary women whose lives have been reorganized by love of the sacred. But before we begin, I want to open a door into the longer history, because her book is emergent from something that appears across centuries, traditions and cultures, a thread through religious history of women who are not merely devout but seized, women whose primary attachment bond has shifted from the social order to something interior and immense at the same time. When we look at this thread, we sort of tend to think of monastics, nuns, possibly bridal mystics, as if they were career paths. But there's another group of women, the ecstatics. The ecstatic doesn't choose to become a nun. She is overtaken. Across traditions, Christian bhakti, Sufi, keep going before the language of devotion or institutions of devotion, there is something so interior, Teresa of Avila describes it as a wound of love that left her undone, aka Mahadevi, a 12th century South Indian poet Saint which my friend Rosalind introduced me to just this past January in India, speaks of Shiva as her only husband, not as theology, but as fact, my lord. Why does Jasmine is my husband? Take these husbands who die and decay? She says she is reporting internal allegiance that predates any social construct the institutions, the monasteries, convents, lineages they follow after the burning that comes inside. So in medieval Europe, a woman who entered convent life might be veiled as a bride of Christ. In some ceremonies, she even received a ring. And that ritual did real social work. It publicly declared that she was no longer available for marriage or available for the reproductive economy. Her legions had been relocated. There's a lot of great scholarship on the sociology of who ended up in a convent, but I'm not going to cover that here. However, that being said, the bridal metaphor was not a tactic. It was the closest available language to describe a totalizing attachment. Marriage was the strongest covenant that culture knew. So when the soul was claimed by divine Eros, marriage language emerged because it was the most absolute language they had. Only afterward Did it have social consequences. It's not like you could. You could use monastery life to get you away from the obligations of marital duty, because the monastery provided structures of its own safety and legitimacy, but it also contained so you didn't really get sovereignty there. These institutions have always had a complicated relationship with ecstasy, as all institutions do, even now. They need it because ecstasy proves the Divine is real at some level, and they fear it because it bypasses mediation. If God is meeting a woman directly in visions, in Rapture, in consuming love, what happens to their chain of command, and this is why ecstatic women were often treated as special. Special as a word carries tension. They were investigated, they were authenticated, they were disciplined, canonized, sometimes, but they were rarely simply equal, because ecstasy destabilizes hierarchy from the inside. I write a lot about this in Mantra, Tantra, Ayahuasca, my book that just came out. In fact, the subtitle is ecstasy devotion and the return of the holy body. You can get that on Spotify. I hope you do by the way, nowhere is this direct relationship and its sort of regulation clearer than the trial of Joan of Arc. Joan heard voices. She followed them. She led armies, but then she was captured, and the church put her on trial, not once, not quickly, but over many months, dozens of interrogations, theologians, Canon lawyers, assessors. They tried to trap her. They demanded she submit her voices to the judgment of the church. Why so much effort? Because they were not sure if she were simply a fraud or madwoman dispatcher, but they couldn't be certain she wasn't what she claimed to be, and if she was what she claimed to be, condemning her would be condemning themselves. So this is the bind that ecstatics create for institutions. Many years ago, I took a writing class and we read Anne Carson's wonderful collection of essays, float, and she writes about Joan beautifully. In her essay, variations on the right to remain silent, she describes how Joan's judges wanted her to name, embody and describe her voices in ways that they could understand, with recognizable religious imagery, conventional narrative, something susceptible to conventional disproof. So Joan refused, and Carson says she despised the line of inquiry and blocked it as long as she could. So when they asked her, in what language do your voices speak to you, Joan answered better language than yours. When they asked whether she was in a state of grace, a trap, because to say yes is presumption and to say no is confession, she said, If I am not, may God put me there, and if I am, may God keep me there. That answer silenced the room. Carson calls this refusal to translate oneself into institutional language, catastrophizing, not catastrophe in the sense of disaster, but in the Greek sense. Rather an overturning Joan would not give them a version of her experience that could be contained. The light came in the name of the voice that was all she could say. The light came in the name of the voice that was all she would say, and they burned her for it a teenager. It was only 500 years later that the church canonized her, and that gap between the burning and the canonization is the institution catching up to what it was too afraid to recognize in real time. And this is why ecstatics are treated special, not because institutions are generous, but because they're afraid the ecstatic might be nothing, or she might be a direct line to the source the institution claims to represent. And if she is, the hierarchy inverts. She doesn't answer to them. They answer to what moves through her. And now here is the distinction that matters most. We might look at this woman, this ecstatic woman, and call her sovereign. And in a sense, they were, but not in the modern way, not I belong to myself. Their sovereignty was allegiance. Sovereignty. I belong elsewhere. I am already claimed. My primary bond is not available to the social contract because it is held by the infinite that is different from independence and deeper than independence, it relocates the center of gravity so completely that earthly structures lose their absolute grip, husband, father, bishop, king. They don't disappear, but they become secondary, because the deepest bond of the nervous system has turned to what is universal, unity, possibly vertical. And here's where it gets. A little bit funny. Ecstasy does not begin with self assertion, in the way a modern sovereignty or independence movement might think, Independence begins. It begins actually with undoing the ego dissolution that happens before authority happens. Sovereignty comes through surrender, which is why this path has always been both powerful and dangerous. A woman claiming authority directly could be punished, a woman overtaken by divine love could be interpreted as holy rapture became both genuine spiritual combustion and sometimes the only cultural permissible language large enough to how is that combustion? Were these women conscious of this? Did they see what we see when we look back? Probably not, at least not in our terms. They did not frame it as an escape from patriarchy, but as obedience to a deeper claim they belong to God, and that belonging rearranged everything else. This thread has never disappeared. It has run through the anchoresses and a wonderful sect called the beguines, through the bhakti poet saints of India, through the Sufi women whose wards survive only in fragments, and through the mystical marriage language of Carmelite nuns and the fire poetry of Mirabai. Stay tuned at the end for some reading from those poems through a teenage girl who could not translate her voices into language her judges could contain. And it runs through now, which is why, when I was in India and I saw a message that Erica would be there speaking about her book. Women in love with the divine. I knew I wanted to talk to her because contemporary women are still being seized by that love, still finding that their deepest allegiance has shifted and navigating what it means when the primary bond of the heart has turned towards something that the social order can't name or contain in the best way,


Christine Mason  10:21  

some of these women that she has interviewed for her book and for her project, women awakening project, are in lineages. They are in monasteries. They are running orders. Forms are very different, and we don't always use bridal language like was very common in prior eras. We don't always enter monasteries, but the current that is running is the same. There's also some observation that comes when we see that most of the spiritual leaders that get most of the attention still are men. The leaders of most churches are still men. So it also felt important to me to become familiar with our counterparts in female bodies who are utterly devoted to God, across every tradition you can imagine and some tradition free. The conversation matters to me also, because I'm not outside of it. I'm inside. And if you want to follow that thread with me and my personal journey, the path through mantra and Tantra and psychedelics through the body as a threshold. I really do hope you have a look at the mantra, tantra, Ayahuasca book. And I also hope you have a look at my book, The Mystic heart of Easter, tantric look at love, birth, judgment, rebirth, ambiguity, all the things that are contained in the archetypal story of Easter that go far, far beyond religion. So I am very excited now to introduce you to Erika. Erika Uma Bassani. Welcome to the Rose woman. Let's start by talking about your state of spiritual awareness and development when you first began writing this book and collecting the stories of these incredible modern women in love with the divine,


Erica Bassani  12:16  

I was drawn to the Buddhist tradition in my early 20s, and I spent one year in a Theravada Buddhist monastery, and actually wanted to become a nun. So let's say my spiritual thirst was very, very intense, and I really wanted to dedicate my life to the spiritual journey. But then the monastery experience taught me that I was actually not ready to renounce the world, and maybe a part of me wanted to escape from it and pursue, you know, the abiding, the pleasant, abiding, of spiritual life, instead of struggling in the world somehow. So once I got back into the world, I started studying writing more seriously and trying really to bring my practice into the daily life, trying to really integrate it. And I have to say it worked for me to bring the Buddhist teachings in my daily life, my life was, you know, naturally falling apart, as sometimes life does when we need to change, change frame. And so I felt that everything I knew was taken away from me. All what was nourishing me was not nourishing me anymore. So I found myself in Rishikesh India in a state of really feeling lost within myself, also feeling that what helped me spiritually till that point was not any more available. So it was really a point of very fresh, actually, if I think back at it, but it's also very painful point of not knowing, not knowing what's the way to go forward, inwardly, and how to be with the pain that was arising, which was A very strong, I could say really Omni Comprehensive Pain, because I was in pain psychologically, mentally, also physically. I had an injury during that time. And so what helped me in that moment was connecting to the divine mother for the first time, this archetype that I never knew. I never connected with before, from from starting to relate with the Divine Mother as I could in the time going to pray at the Ganga and connecting with a with a water energy and with a cosmic mother really asking. To help me, to support me. As I started doing this, I realized that my my spiritual language, has always been determined by, let's say, a male patriarchal systems, which still I'm very grateful to everything that I went through in the in the monastery and in those years, and all the teachings I received are incredibly precious. At the same time as the Divine Mother arose, I realized that I had been blind, half blind, let's say so I have been seeing only one side of the Divine, let's say the Divine Father and then the Divine Mother. Was also like, I'm here also, you know, I'm also here, ever present, and you need me now. Kind of this? What I felt,


Christine Mason  15:58  

how did you find her? Was it? Was it accidental, or did someone introduce you to her?


Erica Bassani  16:02  

I would say, is just the type of longing I was feeling within myself. Was really a longing for a Divine Mother. Was a longing to feel held by life. Was a longing to feel it's okay. We can go through anything in life. We can fall apart. We will recreate ourselves. We will, we will start again in a new way. So this creative force that is really, I reconnect it a lot with the female principle, which is, we can change as many dresses as we want, and we will always find a new form.


Christine Mason  16:37  

So it's so resonant with me. I, you know I was, I think I have told others that I had to go to India to find the female face of the Goddess. And once I did, then you can find it in other traditions, but it certainly wasn't on offer. And and also something you said right in the beginning about the monastery itself, while it was could be a pleasant resting. It took you out of life. And I've always felt that there are so many deeply enlightened women who are raising children and making homes and tending their garden that you wouldn't see elevated as an enlightened mystic, because the way of their spirituality is completely integrated in the daily service and care of life. And so, you know, I'm really, I was really encouraged to hear you start start out with that, because I do see a lot of women spiritual leaders who have stepped right into sort of the female equivalent of a masculine role in a religious hierarchy. More to come on that though. So when did you move from the personal experience into approaching the women awakening project?


Erica Bassani  17:52  

It was actually right in the beginning that quest that arose in me towards not only connecting with a divine mother. But then it became a need to meet women, as you were saying, who dedicate their life to the Divine women, who went through all kinds of thing, and, you know, always stick to developing wisdom out of the experiences of life and abiding more and more in love and wisdom. So I really felt I want to meet these women since that moment, which was really the beginning of this transformation. I felt it was not only a personal journey. I felt it's really a collective This is a collective movement. I felt this is needed, because it's not only for me that I look for female spiritual role models, and I don't find many, or I don't find as many as I would like. I don't I struggle. I have to search to find how many women today, young women, less, young women that are, you know, in their spiritual life, needing, maybe without knowing, without naming, needing the same to see the same reflection you know and be nourished by by each other's wisdom, by really the female wisdom, which we haven't historically been exposed to. So it was really personal and collective intertwining since the beginning, because I really felt this, I want to share with this, you know, with with the sisters, all the sisters that are on a spiritual journey, I'm sure they, they can benefit from this in a way or in another and also all the brothers, I mean, also men, I discovered resonate a lot with With this and can benefit from this. So it became a thread to follow, and it became a book, and then it became the YouTube channel and the project,


Christine Mason  19:51  

yeah, this feeling of having a flashlight turned on to women spiritual leaders who are contemporaries is very exciting. You. I we've seen a whole wave of looking historically, oh, here's Mirabai, or here's this great bhakta from the 16th century or the ninth century. Great. That's great. Where is she today? Now I know I can find you, and you'll tell me. So how did you find the individual women? What were your criteria?


Erica Bassani  20:17  

So I have to say, the journey unfolded in a pretty magical way, despite, you know, my condition, which I was like a bit, you know, struggling, you know, but it the journey unfolded pretty magically in the sense that I was as if led to meet these women like I never searched on Google for anyone. I just felt, you know, this is so compelling for me. And I believe in the power of, you know, the mind and the heart when they are aligned towards, you know, something they really want to discover, like this desire. I really believe the reality is going to, you know, to unfold accordingly if it's meant to happen that way, you know. And so the first interview, I remember, just a friend of mine told me, why don't you go to to see jatsumate and zimpalmo, this Tibetan Buddhist nun who is at the feet of Himalaya. And so I went. And from there, the journey started. And then it was, you know, as if meeting them wherever I was going. It was like a bit of a magnet, you know, by talking to people, and sometimes the women themselves, they would then recommend me someone to talk to the next so I actually have now a long list of women that I don't know when I will interview them, but I hope I will have the possibility to interview him, because there are so many, as you were saying, not only nuns, but also mothers women, that are doing incredible sadhana, incredible, beautiful spiritual life in the midst of the daily mess.


Christine Mason  21:57  

Yeah, that's, I'm a tantric God. That is what I'm drawn to do. It in the middle of the mess, as I was looking at the women that you interviewed, I found myself seeing certain groupings or streams, like like the renunciates, like Palmo, who are you mentioning, or the mystics, or the contemplatives, or the scholars. And then one category that I would call is sort of the modern integrators, who are doing what you're saying, you know, who are working, working in industry, but being a spiritualist. So maybe, maybe we could talk a little bit about those streams, like the disciplined renunciates, where they have a lot of vows and structures, like, what did their rhythms reveal to you about feminine authority that is coming from restraint or discipline or something like that. I would put in that category, like, I think you had Sister Chen Kong, yeah, and about Annabel laity, yeah, there's a few others more in the renunciate.


Erica Bassani  22:54  

Yes, of course. First of all, I believe this is the beauty of a spiritual life, is that there is a form for everyone. So some women find their fullest expression in the renouncient life. And I really love that. Actually, I love spending time with nuns of all traditions, and I really respect that choice. I think the renouncing life, from what I can see is when the women, you know, they feel really ready to dedicate completely to the practice, in a way, by letting go their attachment to the body. Because most of them, they shave, for example, and they wear one robe forever of like one color you know, that's can be also a bigger part of renouncing for a woman, you know, the link to the body identity. So they let go of that body identity. They let go to the possibility of of being in a love affair, in a romantic relationship. They let go of that. And they feel ready, because, in a way, what they feel from the practice itself is already fulfilling them completely. So from what I hear from them, the renunciation never comes as a sacrifice, you know, as a painful sacrifice, but most of the times it comes from joy. It comes from the joy of having found whatever is their divine form, and they are happy to join a tradition in which they find their place. Sometimes it's easier in certain traditions for women to become nuns and to be respected and to have the same opportunities as the monks. In most tradition, it is actually a challenge itself. Sometimes being a nun, it's, it's really then up to the each each person, each individual, to take these challenges within the tradition. Because it's also not easy to be a nun. Because we might think it's, it's easier to be a nun than a lay woman, but of course, not actually. To devote yourself completely with the practice is really, really challenging, and you are giving yourself fully to the fire, to the purifying fire.


Christine Mason  25:10  

No, I think many people wouldn't even know what is the life like of a nun. I went to a French monastery maybe a year ago and stayed for a few days. And you know, they're doing seven times a day gathering in prayer at very specific times of the day. Some mass is longer, some shorter, but you know, just that sort of daily discipline, very intense life. Yeah, the discipline is a big


Erica Bassani  25:34  

component there, the structure. So it's this is what they are also renouncing, is to the possibility of organizing their time as they want, you know, which is something we don't realize as lay people, because it's so obvious. You know, I want to eat an apple in the afternoon. I eat an apple in the afternoon in the monastery. Some monastery, you can't, of course, because you know you you cannot eat after 12 or you know there are rules, and you have to to to be able to, to let it go, let your preferences go. So this is a big one. Most announced they they surrender to the form of the tradition they are in. And this is, I think, is a really powerful surrendering,


Christine Mason  26:17  

and that's different than those women in the book and your in your interviews who are more in the custodians of silence. Yeah, it's, it's like not equating the life in a monastery or a convent with the life of the silent mystic in a cave. You know, it's a it's a different experience. And you have some of those also in the in your interviews, yeah?


Erica Bassani  26:43  

So in the book, I have, for example, interviewed, yeah, just summat and in balmo, who was in a cave for 12 years, so in retreat on the malayas, but then she came out and she founded a nunnery. So this is also interesting, how these apparent contrast can take place. And then I have also an Italian woman, Antonella Lumini, who is really called the custodian of silence. And she cultivated her own spiritual journey on her on her own in the heart of Florence while working, but she never had a family. So in a way, she was a renouncient, but not officially. She made it. She made it, you know, for herself, her own sadhana, her own spiritual journey. So her experience with silence was so profound. When she was 18 years old, she had a deep experience with silence. And she understood all her life is going to be dedicated to that, because that silence is everything is greatest love, the fullest Purna, the fullest silence, exactly. And so she made her life in a way that she could cultivate and be in that


Christine Mason  27:59  

what an incredible testament to the power of interiority. Indeed, you know, like you just you don't actually need it all that much. Many people, I feel like in the current era are leaning out an awful lot, leaning out for symbols and signs and feedback. And what do others think? And what am I to do when looking for signs outside of themselves and to come deeply inward into that quiet opens up a whole new sense of wonder and belonging to the reality I feel like it's a deep invitation. People talk about going on a 10 day Vipassana as life changing. I can't imagine spending years doing


Erica Bassani  28:39  

Yeah, but you know, for example, she Antonella Mini, she said it was challenging. You know, it was not easy anyway, like to follow that silence, to be led only by that authority within because, of course, the world and the projections they they have a force on us. But I guess the more you choose you know to nourish this inner authority that knows, the less you're gonna be touched by this external belief, from the society, from the culture, from fears. So the strength of it is also about time and being being perseverant in time.


Christine Mason  29:25  

Yeah, I love the stories, by the way. As you're like, dropping little snippets, there's such a tease. I can't wait to read all of them. But there's amazing here that many people who our listeners probably already know, like, like Elena Brower, for example. You know, she was a really fantastic yogi, and then she became a Buddhist, and now she's, I think, a death doula or something, right? She's really working at the edges of, like, our understanding of who we are as the body. So tell us, tell us a little bit about Elena and her work.


Erica Bassani  29:57  

Yeah, I really appreciate Elena. And brower's work and her way, also of sharing the journey, because for some of the women I met, that would be impossible. It's just not their way, because they leave it in this hiding modality, which is perfect for them. But I love to see that for someone like Elena, it's possible to do your spiritual life and at the same time inspire 1000s of people like doing doing in open air, as if you know it means she can be very vulnerable. That's a big strength. I think she can do it because of this trend of being vulnerable. And I guess it's not, it's not easy to to be, so, you know, on the spotlight and at the same time so inwardly connected, like that's a unique position not to to be. So I really respect her from that, and I love the way she does it, because she's an example of a spirituality that many women can relate to. Because she's a mother, she's an artist, she's in the world. She's showing up, she's she's there, she's there, you know, with with everybody else.


Christine Mason  31:18  

And she is absolutely radiant. She is like glowing from the inside every time that I see her. And so, you know, you can also see how, if you've got sort of God in your heart or goddess in your heart, and that's living at the center, it's like an unending solar battery. It comes through in your face. Yeah. Pradnia. Pradnia Hallstrom, that's another person who's around a lot in the West, and the kirtan world in particular, and I think she is leading the scholarship on Anandamayi. Ma, yeah. So a very different approach scholarly, you know, and there are a whole bunch of scholars in the book, Lydia Cohn, maybe,


Erica Bassani  31:58  

yeah, prajna is not in the book. She's a very dear friend of mine, okay, but I interviewed her for the women awakening project, oh, for the show the women awakening, right? Yes, she's also, you know, amazing in doing her work on Ananda mai Ma. And she translate. She, sorry, not translated. She transcribed the recording of the satsang of anandama. Like for so many years, she was into the voice of Ananda, Mai ma sitting as Divinity School in Harvard. I love these many different ways in which this spirituality can unfold, in in women, to say, in


Christine Mason  32:38  

everybody, yeah. I mean, even as we're comparing, or like showing a little bit about. Here's a person who lives in silence and holds her interior life. Here's a person who has the experience then goes out and tells 1000s of others so that they can be touched through her mode of presentation and heart centered and color centered. And then you have someone in prajna who's bringing real scholarship, like there's no argument between the mind and her devotion. So many traditions are like, oh, you know bhakti, or whatever, you're just coming from the heart, but your mind should be left aside. And he or she's saying, No, you can have the mind also fully online.


Erica Bassani  33:18  

Yeah, I think when you look at it, when you research into it, you discovered that you know, just as God is in everything, no, the Divine is in everything and in every form. So there can it can be found every form of divine worship. So that the divine can be met, literally, in infinite ways, and it can be super personal, the way that we connect with the divine. So each one of us according to our personality, our background, our belief, our unique being, we can tune in with the divine in our own unique way. And this is also what I, you know, really wanted to evoke by sharing 12 different women, 12 different paths, 12 different spiritual alterations, to encourage each one of us to say every every way you can find is great, is going to be your way, and it can be in any way you feel it's it resonates with you


Christine Mason  34:18  

like a one woman Ecumenical Council. You can make it your own. What's the saying about India? There's how many gods are there in India? 1.6 billion. Because that's how many people there are. Yeah, and each one has their one echo. So as you were going through these interviews, were there connecting lines that were common among them, common currents beneath these forms, were there threads that united them?


Erica Bassani  34:44  

Yeah, I would say the thread, like the main thread, I would say, is really the aspiration. So all of them found themselves in a big turning point in life, and whether this. Turning Point was sudden, or it took maybe years, but they found themselves in a turning point from which who they thought they were, and who they, how they, how they thought the world was and not any more sustainable. Something else started to really take the ground. The Divine started to to manifest in their life again in very different ways. But I would say for all of them, there has been something that has spoke profoundly to their heart, an awakening call, let's say, a call to the divine. You know, I really like the story of Krishna. I won't go too long into it, but the when Krishna was playing the flute, and all the women of the village stopped doing what they were doing, as they heard this beautiful music, which was what they were longing since ever without even knowing. And when they hear the music, they go and they where is this music coming from? And then they need Krishna. And I really feel, and they have a beautiful night with Krishna of ecstasy and and so on. So and I feel for the spiritual life is the same. We can receive a call, we can have a call. And sometimes is pain. Sometimes is for joy. Sometimes it's maybe we go to see someone dancing. Maybe we have an experience while meditating, something opens us up and we realize that there is so much more about us.


Christine Mason  36:39  

So the aspirational line is there you get this. Someone said, you if you hear the bell, it's only a matter of how long you resist.


Erica Bassani  36:47  

It exactly, beautiful, yeah. And it's like this unresistible call. It's an unresistible call that then makes really its way through. We all have walls inside of us. We all have resistance, actually, to the infinite, to the unbounded. We all resist it in some way, so but I believe when we hear the call and then it's just about time, because it's gonna work in us, we we find a way out, somehow, out of these resistances. Because we really want to be happy. We really want to unite with that source. How, after


Christine Mason  37:25  

meeting all of these women, how has your own practice changed? How has your own understanding of what your particular flavor of devotion is becoming?


Erica Bassani  37:35  

Yeah, I have to say my own practice has changed so much I am still, you know, in the process of integrating, actually, all of this wisdom that I received, because I felt like as if I went to many sources, the one source, but many sources. And I took this truth and, you know, I drank these potions. And now I got shaken. I got personally shaken at a certain point, I think, after, like, one year and a half, I started feeling, after one year and a half of constantly being on this, constantly interviewing, I started feeling shaking, and it was really about my identity, and I could say how I was holding myself. I realized that there was some hardness in my system. You know, I was being a bit hard on myself without realizing and so I started taking some of, you know, the teachings from these women about softness, the importance of softness, and what does it mean to be soft with yourself. This has been really working on me, so I feel it's gonna take, I don't know how long, but I mean a softening process, I can say. And this means I also meet sometimes big walls within myself, and then, you know, somehow the softness manages to melt and but it's a gradual process in my case, and I do resonate with many approaches, so it's actually difficult for me to say what exactly is my practice. I feel my practice has no name. The Divine for me is the Divine is the mother is the father, is both of them at the same time. I think I resonate a lot with the non dual traditions, actually, of Buddhism, but also Advaita and Buddhism. Also, I really, I really resonate with Buddhism. So, yeah,


Christine Mason  39:36  

well, just, just to mention on softening. So that's a very brave thing to do in a world that requires a lot of hard to keep moving. And I would say even in most of the religious traditions, even in traditional Buddhism, there's a lot of hardness in a lot of structure methodologies of teaching and passing on the tradition that aren't. All that receptive, right? So, so here you are, and you're saying, I am softening. I'm encountering places in my self that the divine previously wouldn't have been able to access, and I can feel them opening, and it's beautiful, and it's a process, and to come out with that message at this time, because you're working with others on that too, right? Yeah, like that, softness has a gift for us as a culture, as well as us individually. Yeah, I'd love to just talk a little bit more about


Erica Bassani  40:33  

softness, yeah. So actually, because it has been so impactful for me, this this this teaching of softness. I then again, wanted to really open it, like open the gift properly, you know, not just the sensation, but really going into it. I actually created a program called awakening softness as is and is, a journey that I do, one to one with people, but also with groups, and is exactly to meet the power of softness within. Because sometimes we feel softness is weakness. You know, sometimes softness. What does it mean to be soft? I mean, but actually softness is really an incredible power that we are not used to to bring about, but it's in all of us, all of us, women, men, whatever gender we identify, we have this power of softness and it express with these feminine qualities that we could say, feminine qualities of a heart that are the kindness, gentleness, patience, tolerance, openness, resilience, tenderness, maybe I said it already, gratitude, nourishing, which is all of this universe of really gentle potentiality that is inside of us that we can bring about and we can discover that it can transform our life. It can completely transform our life without us losing anything, you know, because the fear is of losing control, losing status, losing power, losing No it's actually in most cases, as I've seen so far, it's really a precious gift most of us need, because We have been under this culture of violence, culture of struggling, forcing and we need, we need a different modality to go on, because it's not sustainable.


Christine Mason  42:53  

I feel when, as you're saying that it's hard to soften when there's fear in the system. For me, the connection to a greater power, to connection to the imminence, is the only thing that can address that fear. And as the fear is met, and sometimes you need your handheld, because the fear is there for a reason, it's protecting something ancient in you. So rather than try to figure it out in the brain, like therapeutically, like to sit with your own discomfort and your own I'm just a scared baby right now, and breathe into that and invite the Divine Mother to kiss it. You know, that's a very different therapeutic process, yeah, because


Erica Bassani  43:41  

exactly, softness is actually it allows you to sit with everything, to be with everything, because it is soft. You know, in the moment, it's always about the reaction, not the thing itself. So fear itself is fine. The problem is that we don't like it, so we become rigid, and we resist it, and we we start to be all kinds of other emotions comes up, and it becomes very difficult to deal with it because we are so reactive. But if we learn, if we educate our system to actually be more open, slowly, okay with with kindness, of course, with kindness, with gentleness, that it's okay to be with fear. We can take actually, the hand of fear. We can take it by hand. You know, we can even talk with it. We can discover why it is there. What is it protecting us from? We can really do that, and it it transforms our experience, and it allows us to be okay. It's okay to be scared and it's okay not to know how to also proceed. You know, sometimes we feel lost and confused, that's totally fine. All of our experience is actually totally fine. It's not. Is we decide it is so. So that's a big softness is allowing things to be


Christine Mason  45:08  

that's very stoic of you. More fatty, everybody love what is all right? So I have a question for you about your most audacious vision for the women awakening project. You know, I know the book is coming somewhat out of that, but do you see it as a ongoing, developing archive, a sangha, a physical space like if it were having its most potent impact, how would the world look differently in 20 years? Answer that in any of those directions that you want, it's really to invite some musing on it.


Erica Bassani  45:43  

So I actually, at the moment, I'm I have a vision. At the same time, there is a lot of space to change because I don't know how it has to develop. I have a vision. Maybe it's going to be something completely different. My vision is that somehow it can, it could grow into maybe even our organization. I see Asanga. I see it as a collective endeavor. Like so far, I've been doing it mainly on my own. I have to say, I received a lot of help from many people, in many ways, you know, from doing the videos to, you know, editing the book, in many ways, I've been helped so much. I see the women awakening project, if it, if it has to blossom, it's gonna be a collective endeavor. Because this is, for me, the feminine is really, is really a collective, a collective force. So I cannot see myself on my own, you know, bringing up this and and what I see in my vision is somehow, yeah, as I was saying, an organization or a foundation, a place where these female role models, these women, are reachable. You know, it's possible to get in contact with them, to make courses retreats with them. It's possible to do to go deeper in one's own spiritual life through the ways of a feminine so I myself, I feel I have a lot of creativity around this, and I would love to to co create with our women different programs to help sisters and brothers to really unfold the feminine power within so I see it like that, and also I would love it to be somehow of benefit to nuns all over the world or to women who take up a spiritual Path. And sometimes it's really hard. Like, we don't even know, because in most cases, we don't know how hard sometimes it is for nuns to be supported. And I see that something I would like to bring about in the world, more easiness for them. When a woman choose to go forward, I would love her to be supported, like


Christine Mason  48:01  

a beautiful vision. I find myself curious also, just about like your personal life surrounding this journey, because it does have a little bit of a sound of like you're your own kind of Nun, in a way, you know what you're like on this pilgrimage, doing this sauna of interviewing all these people, and, yes, collecting boons and blessings along the way. But how do you experience the actual writing of the book as sadhana or the project? Yeah, so for me,


Erica Bassani  48:34  

well, I want to share that I do have a partner, so I wanted to be a nun, but now I'm very happy in a relationship, and I want to share that, because I'm really supported by my partner, and he totally understands the Divine Feminine need and everything. So it's beautiful to share this, this journey, actually, with him. Of course, I feel this, this project and writing the book, they have been really my sadhana, and I felt really grateful that I had the chance to do it, you know, because I see it's not obvious to have the possibility to do that, but I really put everything else aside. I always felt that I couldn't do something normal, to be honest, like a normal job in office, I think I would not survive like the second day. So I always felt I need to create something of my own, but I never knew what. And then when this call came, I really felt, Oh, my God. I would have never imagined that this was what I was gonna do, actually interviewing women. Wow. Okay, so now this is my this is my practice also, and it's my call and and it's becoming more and more something also professional, something that is helping in growing, and I am very grateful for it all.


Christine Mason  49:55  

I noticed, even in you pointing out that you had a partner by the way, that I. To have a bias that I think, like 90% of the women on the list, don't. I don't know that to be true, but I was kind of thinking that, that there is a part of me, even with all the exposure to people who are deeply spiritual and longing and in love with the divine, that still imagines it as an unmated process, like, if you're married to Jesus, you're married to Jesus, you know, and that. And even throughout, like, like all the bhakti poets and stuff, and in every and in Christianity, like Julian of Norwich, until this sort of marital theme, like the devoted feminine is married to God, you know, that's not true, but it's still a trope in my mind. You know, I think it would be beautiful to have a partner who also puts the divine at the center of their life, and then to do regular practical things, but all having that reference point together, that sounds amazing.


Erica Bassani  50:59  

Yeah, it is very beautiful. And I have to say, I also didn't thought it was possible. I to be honest, I thought I would have been I saw myself kind of happily single, kind of, you know, for the rest of my life, doing a lot of spiritual work and so on. And instead, you see, life is always surprising, and is teaching me that, of course, because the Divine is in everything you can be in a person coming into your life to live love


Christine Mason  51:33  

on Earth with you. Well, it's funny, because one of the questions I had around the close was, after all of these journeys, are you more in love now? And apparently the answer is yes. When you were picking the title, what was the story about choosing that title? Was that one you picked? Or did you do that with your publisher? Or how did that come about?


Erica Bassani  51:55  

There was a bit of going back and forth with my editor, but I really wanted, again, a softer title, a soft, stronger title, because I wrote before this. I wrote it in Italian, and it was published in Italian, but it has a different title. It was women who explore the divine, which I felt to be better. It was missing the loving component of it. So it's like because exploring, you can explore lands you can explore. Yeah, it's amazing to explore, but it doesn't give the full spectrum of it. While women in love with the divine, I really felt this is it, because it's true, they are in love with the divine. So, and by calling it the divine, we can, you know, include all the names that each one of them refer to it. So I thought it was a fitting title for the book.


Christine Mason  52:52  

Much better than explore, yeah, yeah, I get it. There's a mood to this title that is very attractive, because, like I as the tantric, I experience the divine inside of everything. So being in love with the divine means that I'm in love with scent and taste and color and people and relationship, and I'm even in love with the pain at some level, you know, and it speaks to a quality of being alive that has a, yeah, it's a completely different invitation. In the title, it's a different invitation. So I'm really happy you wrote it. It's coming out next week, and that's got to be exciting in English. I guess it was out in Italian, which, sorry, I didn't, I didn't speak Italian, and apparently I missed that in the press kit. So you're, you're going around the country now. You're doing podcasts. You're talking to people about the book. Yeah, is your publisher supporting you? How are you getting it out?


Erica Bassani  53:54  

Yeah, the publisher is supporting for now, right now, I'm in India, but maybe I will come to the US later on during the year. Let's see. It's still not, not very clear, but I do have many podcast invitations that I'm very grateful for, and I would love to be able to do some in person presentations in the US. Definitely looking forward to see if that happens.


Christine Mason  54:29  

I have an invitation that I want to put out for the women who are the people who are listening like, like, 60% of our listeners are women. It started out as 85% and we just keep getting more men. But I want to say something around the loss of religion because of the abuses of religion and the dominance of religion and how it made many people turn away. And the churches are really empty in the West, and they're of. Except the evangelical churches, which have a different kind of energetic draw, and that many people went to atheism or agnosticism or to secular ways of getting their need for ecstasy met, you know, and that there's an invitation in this work to inquire again and take back spirituality from religion and make it your own, and to really trust that spark that's inside of us, to find that again if you've walked away from it.


Erica Bassani  55:37  

Yeah, that's a very beautiful invitation. In fact, I want to say that the first chapter of the book, there are three chapters. The first one is called spark, and it's really about following your own spark. Beautiful.


Christine Mason  55:54  

Would you like to tell people about your programs? Yeah, so


Erica Bassani  55:57  

if anyone listening, whether men or women are drawn to discover really the power of softness within themselves. Maybe you feel a bit tired of the way you have been struggling forth, and you feel you want some you want to allow yourself some peace. Allow yourself softening. So awakening, softness is available as a program is one month program, there is meditation, journaling and contemplation together. So that's a possibility, now available. And then you can find, well, you can find the book online, on shambhala's website or on Amazon and in other libraries online.


Christine Mason  56:48  

Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Erica, that conversation and that it inspired you to investigate your own journey to spirit. Please have a look in the show notes for all of her great offerings and her book, women in love with the divine. So as promised, here's something from Mirabai, the 16th century, princess who walked away from royalty for Krishna, something has reached out and taken in the beams of my eyes. There is a longing, it is for his body, for every hair of that dark body. All I was doing was being and the dancing energy came by my house. My family says, don't ever see him again, and they imply things in a low voice. But my eyes have their own life. They laugh at rules and know whose they are. They called her mad. Her in laws tried to poison her. She drank the poison and laughed and sang. My friend, I went to the market and bought the dark one. You claim by night, I claim by day. Actually, I was beating a drum all the time. I was buying him. You say I gave too much, I say too little. What I paid was my social body, my town body, my family body, and all my inherited jewels, the Dark One is my husband, now without the energy that lifts mountains, how am I to live? Or Teresa of Avila, the Carmelite nun who rewrote the interior map of spiritual marriage, described her transfiguration the moment an angel pierced her heart with a golden spear tipped with fire, he appeared to be thrusting it, at times, into my heart and to pierce my very entrails. And when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God, I am yours. You made me. I am yours. You called me, I am yours. You saved me, I am yours. You loved me. I will never leave your presence. Give me death. Give me life, give me sickness, give me health, give me honor, give me shame, give me weakness, give me strength. I will have whatever you give and she left this scribbled as a bookmark in her prayer book. Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things are passing away. God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing. God alone suffices. And the last one I'll leave you with is Hildegard from Bingen, the 12th century, abbess, visionary composer, scientist who saw the Living Light pour through her brain from the open vault of heaven, and could suddenly understand the meaning of Scripture she spoke in the voice of Divine Love Itself. Writing, I am the fiery life of divine substance. I Blaze above the beauty of the fields I shine in the waters I burn in sun. Moon and stars and I awaken all to life with every wind of the air, as with invisible life that sustains everything. Every creature is a glistening, glittering mirror of divinity. All living creatures are sparks from the radiation of God's brilliance, and these sparks emerge from God like the rays of the sun, if God didn't give off these sparks, how would the divine flame become fully visible? And she described herself this way. There was once a king sitting on his throne, and then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground, and he commanded it to fly. The Feather flew, not because of anything in itself, but because the air bore it along. Thus Am I a feather on the breath of God. These ladies, they did not claim power. They were claimed by it. They didn't assert authority. They were used by something that moved through them. Mirabai bought with her social body, town, body, family, body, given away. Teresa pierced until nothing remained but fire. Hildegard, the feather, lifted and carried by a breath on her own. And that is why they still burn in us, because the current they surrender to is still running. It has never stopped. It is still looking for women who are willing to be seized, to be undone, and willing to let the primary bond of their lives turn towards something, a social order. Okay, that's women in love with the divine. I'd love to hear from you about your times of ecstasy and devotion and the experience of the holy running in the veins of your very own flesh. Thank you. Thank you. Go check out Rosebud Woman at rosewoman.com beautiful offerings, including a very special International Woman's Day, Rose charm, a gold jewelry piece that I think you'll love. It comes with a free chain and proceeds from that support our reverence fund to support women's charities, particularly in the education and prevention and remediation from sexual violence. So come and find us. Rosewoman.com, and of course, you can come and train with me in classical Tantra and in many, many bhakti Tantra immersions around the world. christinemariemason.com, all love, all the time. You you.



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