Can a Woman Become a Pastor?

By George A. Boyd ©2023

Q: I was reading about how the Baptist convention censored Saddleback Church for ordaining a woman as a pastor. Is there some reason that a woman could not perform that role in the Church?

A: This is an instance of “is a penis required for this?” principle. A woman has the exact same chakra system as a man, and can perform exactly the same functions as a man. We refer you to our article in our online Library, “Introducing the Chakra Model” to learn more about this system of chakras of the Subconscious mind. [If you don’t have access to our free online Library of some of our additional articles, you can go here to sign up. Some of our most popular articles, we have placed on our Open Stacks page, and we are adding new articles weekly to our weblog.]

Let’s summarize our chakra model. The eight chakras of the Subconscious mind and their key aspects are listed below:

  1. Base of the spine – survival, health, orientation to the external world
  2. Navel – sexuality and parenting
  3. Solar plexus – education and career
  4. Heart – altruism, service to others, expression of love and compassion in action
  5. Throat – creativity, expression of the Soul’s gifts
  6. Point between the eyebrows – intuitive connection with the Soul, attunement and ministry
  7. Brain – gaining wisdom from experience, learning the lessons of life
  8. Transcerebral – experience of the Soul on its own Plane, mystic union, enlightenment, Gnosis

As a woman or man grows personally and evolves spiritually, she or he progressively activates each of these chakras in turn. As the Soul moves through the Subtle and Planetary bands of the Continuum, its development is mirrored in the chakras of the Subconscious mind—the petals of this system of chakras awaken and she or he gains the ability to utilize powers from selected petals of the chakras that have been opened. [You might not use the abilities of every petal of for each of the chakras; you will only actualize the ones that are germane to your Soul’s expressed purpose—the aspect of your Soul’s purpose that it manifests in your current human life.]

Either a man or woman can:

  • Take care of survival needs
  • Experience sexuality and participate in parenting
  • Become educated and pursue a career
  • Perform service and charity to support his or her chosen community
  • Express creativity and the gifts of the Soul
  • Meditate and commune with the Soul
  • Gain wisdom from experience
  • Know the Soul directly

In patriarchal societies, women are permitted to only operate through the first and second chakras. This effectively stunts a woman’s personal and spiritual growth.

In Mudrashram®, we recognize that a woman’s birthright is to fully actualize her full personal and spiritual potential. In this perspective, there is nothing to preclude a woman from performing a leadership role in her religious organization, from expressing her creativity, from having a rich spiritual life, and from gaining wisdom and enlightenment.

If we examine the ministerial roles that someone—who has evolved to the top of the First Exoteric Initiation—can adopt across the Seven Rays, we find the following types:

First Ray – The Prophet is someone who channels Divine guidance and inspiration.

Second Ray – The Teacher is someone one who elucidates the scriptures and gives guidelines for moral and upright living.

Third Ray – The Apostle is someone who founds churches and spiritual centers, and brings new followers into the church through evangelism.

Fourth Ray – The Healer is someone who uses the Light of the Holy Spirit to promote physical and emotional healing.

Fifth Ray – The Pastor is someone who adopts a leadership role in the church; ensures that there are regular services; that the needs of the faith community are met; that sufficient donations are received to fulfill the church’s mission; and that there is an organizational plan to fulfill the mission of the church— and may deliver prophecy, teach, evangelize, heal, minister, or carry out the priestly role to administer the sacraments, as the pastor has been given these additional gifts.

Sixth Ray – The Minister is someone who prays to God and invokes the Holy Spirit to minister to members attending church services.

Seventh Ray – The Priest is someone who administers the sacraments of the church and performs prayer, rites and rituals on behalf of the congregation, and for the betterment of the community, the nation, and the world.

A woman can do all of these things: a penis is not required for this!

Perspectives on Purpose

By George A. Boyd © 2017

Q: When I try to tune into what is my purpose, I get conflicting voices that each tell me something else. How do I discern my true Soul Purpose?

A: As we have discussed in the Purpose Workshop, there are several orders of purpose. You have to penetrate to the core, where you can ascertain your Soul’s genuine purpose. We recommend that you take this workshop, which you can purchase from our Public Webinars page on our website, to help you tease out what is the Soul’s purpose from the other levels that each play a “purposive role” in the expression and concretization of your Soul’s Great Work.

As an example of some of these perspectives of purpose, let us consider what purpose looks like from several different vantage points.

  1. Ego – From the standpoint of the ego, purpose looks like survival of the body and fulfillment of desires and needs
  2. Self – From the viewpoint of the Self, purpose appears to be the creation and completion of goals that promote career success, personal fulfillment and growth. For individuals who take the Third Planetary Initiation, this purpose changes, and takes the form of carrying out the directives of the Higher Self.
  3. Life (Expressed Soul Purpose) – Life is seen in this view as the expression of the Soul’s gifts, its love, and its wisdom in everyday living—in relationships, in career, and as its active ministry and service to others.
  4. Spiritual Destiny (Intrinsic Soul Purpose) – This is the track of the Soul’s development plan, which comes into view in the higher unconscious behind the Soul. It aims for completion of spiritual evolution, with the actualization of all spiritual and personal potentials.
  5. Mastery – This takes the form of service to other living beings from a universal platform: to uplift their awareness into the state of enlightenment and Realization, initiate them into spiritual practices, empower them to use their abilities and gifts, guide them on the inner Planes, teach them about their spiritual laws and the content of the Path, counsel them, heal them, purify them with the Divine Light, and actively transform their Souls along their track of spiritual evolution.

You discover your expressed Soul Purpose through dialog with your Soul. You discover your spiritual destiny through meditating on the higher unconscious behind your Soul to discern the track your Soul must travel, and the nodes of ministry and mastery that are embedded on that Path—the thrones, stars, crowns, wheels, and forms that become visible as the Soul transmutes and integrates the karmic accretions that veil them.

Those who complete one of our intermediate meditation classes, the in person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program are eligible to take the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation, where we guide you along the track of your Soul’s spiritual destiny, and show you that pathway behind each higher octave of being and point out its stage of culmination—the state of Liberation.

Those who have difficulties visualizing the content of their higher unconscious may opt to obtain a Soul Purpose Reading from us. In this reading, we can give you the details on the discrete stations on the Path ahead of you where the Soul has been given a form of service, and reveal to you where they are on the Path ahead of you.

Awakening Inner Gifts

By George A. Boyd

Q: I was wondering if you would be able to tell me which abilities my Soul has on the Temple of Art Subplane? Also, you mentioned something in a previous talk about past-life abilities coming up. Do you have any idea what these could be, artistic or otherwise?

A: In one of the Mudrashram® Correspondence Course lessons, there is a listing of different art forms that are encountered in this Subplane of the Abstract Mind Plane. Perhaps even better than my doing a reading for you, however, would be for you to interface with your Soul and let it show you.

I would start by encountering each of these art forms. For example, you could go to a local museum to see paintings and sculptures, read a collection of poetry, listen to a variety of different types of music, or watch a show on dancing—or investigate these things through videos on the Internet. See if you experience a desire to express yourself in this way. The objective of this exercise is to trigger your native genius for art.

There are seven major ways you will uncover an artistic gift, or other ability your Soul has developed:

  1. Random or chance discovery – You discover the gift through coincidence or a serendipitous encounter. You stumble upon the gift. For example, I was talking to a friend in 1980, and our conversation turned to past lives. She asked me, “Who do you think I was in my past lives?” I responded, “you were this, you were this, and you were this…” I had this inner exact knowing that I had never realized I possessed. I have since concretized this gift as the ability to do past life readings for others, which I have done since 1983.
  2. Academic or vocational discovery – You take a class in school that lights you up inside, or you take a course at a vocational school or on the job training that makes you feel you were born to do this. I had this feeling when I took my first psychology class.
  3. Inquiry – You actively ask your Soul to show you its gifts and abilities. You establish a question and answer dialog with your Soul.
  4. Internal discovery – You meditate on the levels of your Superconscious mind and you encounter an archetypal form in the Temple of Art that represents your gift.
  5. Interest inventory – You take an interest and aptitude test to discover what interests you and what might be one of your strengths, where you might have existing skills and strengths. These tests are available online and at the counseling office of your local college.
  6. Asking for guidance and revelation – Here you might ask God to reveal your gifts. You could also go to a reader to tell you what these gifts are—someone who has the ability to recognize an archetypal form that represents a budding gift. I use this type of reading when I do my seed thoughts for meditation reading, for example.
  7. Spontaneous expression – Your Soul will just start doing the gift. For example, a visual artist will start obsessively doodling and drawing. A musician will start sounding out tunes on a piano or a guitar. A graphics artist will fool around with a graphics or paint program on their computer.

The sign you’ve kindled your artistic gift is that you’ll start imagining and thinking about what you want to create. You’ll find your unique artistic voice.

Past life abilities do not always have a place in your current life. Let’s say, for example, that you built outrigger canoes in a past life. You would have no place to use that skill in your current life. If you did go to the small island in Indonesia where you used this skill, the impressions of this skill might come back to you—you just wouldn’t have a use for it in modern Detroit, Michigan.

But other skills that you developed in past lives, you might continue to explore. For example, if you played a primitive three stringed instrument in a life you had in Africa, you might be attracted to play a guitar or vina in this life.

The Soul has a native genius. You bring out that genius through practicing the skill until you are proficient, and you develop a habit. Then you can innovate. Then you start gaining insights that enable you to do the skill at an advanced level. Finally, this gift becomes fully integrated into the Soul, and you can use this ability to express your Soul’s intent and vision fully.

There are many other areas that your Soul can express its gifts, in addition to artistic genres. Here are just a few examples:

  • Leadership
  • Military strategy
  • Public service
  • Diplomacy and negotiation
  • Teaching
  • Counseling
  • Therapy
  • Coaching
  • Business management, sales, and entrepreneurship
  • Meditation and stress reduction
  • Martial Arts
  • Yoga
  • Sports
  • Scientific disciplines
  • Research
  • Medical and Healing Arts professions
  • Philosophy
  • Psychic Intuitive Arts and Metaphysical Counseling
  • Ministry

Ask your Soul to show you its gifts and abilities in the area of art and each other area in which it has gained proficiency in this and other lifetimes. Examine the zone it has opened so far—so if your Soul has opened the Biophysical Universe, the Abstract Mind Plane, the Psychic Realm, and the Wisdom Plane in the Planetary Realm, you would inquire as to which of your gifts you have activated so far in each band of the Continuum that your Soul has brought into the sphere of its opened consciousness.

Realize that many of these gifts may be in a rudimentary or incipient stage of development. But once you realize that the gift is there, you can begin to actively develop it.

Gifts do not normally spring into full bloom like Venus rising from the foam, but if you have either started them in your current life or a past life, you may have already developed some proficiency with this ability, and you will develop it from there. But other gifts, once you discover them and become aware that this ability is part of the repertoire of skills your Soul must use to enact its Purpose, you will start from the beginning—and with much study and practice, you will hone this raw talent into an instrument through which your Soul brings forward its clearest vision and deepest passion.