Northern European feminized men (and the effect we have on women)

 

interesting… i don't see men in general as feminized… for example, my partner who is the domestic one, cooks and washes up and does the groceries is very male in his approach to all of that and the rest of life… what i do see is an absence of purpose, a sort of opting out from being fully engaged in one's life, preferring a life dominated by play and avoidance of responsibility rather than taking ownership… and yes, that's hard to respect, hard to deal with, but it's not feminization imo or something women have somehow done to men, it's a choice that is made on an ongoing basis…

i know my partner thinks i'm a controlling bitch, maybe i am. but i can't just drift along in my life (unless i'm ill or demoralized as i was last year),  and i have a lot of people from my children out through my friends and colleagues world wide counting on me to fulfill my potential.

if men are enslaved, who is holding the keys? what payoff is there in being a “self-centred consumer or the victim of life?”

peace,

nicole

 

excellent response, arjan. thank you. i'm not comfortable with being called manipulative, again something my partner likes to accuse me of.

partly i'm sure it's because there is a degree of manipulation in my behaviour, i come by it honestly as they say from my mother and mother's mother and so on, though i have struggled against this and other vicious tendencies.

partly though i think it's a way some men blame women for their own weakness instead of owning the fact that they choose to cave and reinforce the manipulative behaviour.

we can't wait for each other. so true. each one has to do her or his own personal work until we grow up into what we are meant to be.

love,

nicole

 

Northern European men aren't alone.  It's a pretty widespread phenomenon.

Equality controls us, but all relationships have an element of dominance and submission.

I found Gloria Brame's 'Different Loving' quite the eye-opener on the dynamics of power exchange, domination and submission as a natural element of human reality, when we are indoctrinated into the constricted mathematics of equality.

The trouble with this subject is that equality has convinced us that dominance automatically means abusive dominance.  With the decline of the spiritual, dominance with wisdom is almost unknown now, though parents should practice it. 

Dominance and submission is about soul work, going deep into one's locked vaults that your mind says you cannot go into, for all sorts of trained reasons. 

It is no coincidence that dominance and submission are taboo, just like sex is still extremely controlled, despite all the great drugs and concepts out there.  But sex is a door to the soul, the heart, and penetrating the superficiality of marriage.  Women actually want strong men who can put up with their sh*t, but its not politically correct. 

I could write on about it, because I have been unravelling feminist training in myself for quite some years now, with many surprising revelations. 

But if you look at it as a power exchange, and you have given your power to women, then you need to ask why, how, and how do you get it back?  Is there such a thing as a wise, strong, dominant man?  Is there such a thing as a positive male outside of the controls we are indoctinated into?

Blessings,
Sun Warrior

 

Relax in our new being. Be weak(?), be controlled, be whatever, what is wrong with a new structure, women have been seen as weak and controled for ages. A change of rolls will mean a complete new structure, new life. That is what we want anyway, don't we? Relax.

 

Hmm, there is something innocent and childlike in that.  I wonder why it bothers adult males?

 

What would Jesus say?

 

Jesus was a dominant male.  Perhaps that is why He wouldn't fit into modern society too well…

A wise man is naturally dominant.  He doesn't put up with untruths.

 

i am very glad to know a northern european male who is very secure in his masculinity, strong and capable, and who is also not afraid to cry and love deeply.

 

Hmm, yes, women still haven't been able to face the truth of men.  The masculine remains unknown… a caricature of abuse.

Ah, the challenge to the male to be nice…

 

you know sun warrior, maybe some of us understand better than you think. i have many male friends and we can share heart to heart about amazingly deep things

 

Nicole, I'm not talking about 'heart to hearts.'  That's the modern version.

I'm talking about men going in to do battle with the terror of women.  That means a lot more than heart to heart talks.  That means a man doing battles within himself.  The difference between 'mind-men' and 'natural men.'  That is about as lost as natural women, and everyone's connection with Nature, the ultimate feminine.  Life and death, soul work… I think we call it the environment now… everything is under control… and no one is threatened at a fundamental level… that's safe.

I think the divorce statistics explain it all.  Lots of deep connections forged in facing what each does not want to face in each other, and within themselves…

 

Arjan, I would like to see men be men, and women be women, without values of good and evil attached to them… we are each our gender for a reason, attached to our life story.  If we lose that because of politics, and because society doesn't trust men, and wants to make women 'equal,' which means adjusting them as well, it merely shows both genders have completely lost touch with what is natural and true, and needs someone to define them.  For whose purpose?  Most don't have a clue anymore.  They are tied up by all the reasoning, thinking its logical.  Well, a nuclear power plant is logical, or it wouldn't work.  But its not logical in Nature.  We are artificial social creations. 

We are civilized.  There is nothing natural left.  Everything that is 'natural' in our lives is broken down, analyzed, re-arranged and exaggerated to the point where nothing makes sense, outside of our feel-good theories.

Heaven on Earth will come when men realize that they are surrounded by the feminine, in Nature and in their wives.  Deal with it.  Right now we live in a masculine fantasy of business-science, that feminism has got women now so deeply into, through reason, they are lost too. 

If men can't face the power and terror of the feminine, and thus face himself and his deepest fears and truths, then all is lost.  Equality creates a taboo of getting close to scary truths that would make our fantasy fall apart.  We are managed, by business' and women's expectations of behavior, we are to act nice, we are men-lite.  And that passes for 'real men,' while women run around longing for 'soul mates' and wondering why they can't find a 'good man.'

I wonder why…

 

sun warrior, it's hard to communicate adequately here. i have a sense that if we were to talk properly we might discover we are not as far apart as it may seem. but i guess we will never find out

arjan, what if a man can be a man and enjoyed as such by a woman being a woman and enjoyed as such? this is what i live, and love.

 

Yes, we are creatures of our culture.  Unfortunately we are products of our Christian heritage, so much spiritual reality was lost.  We don't raise wise men anymore, just smart boys, which is a big difference.  And we are domesticated beyond belief, the furthest removed from Nature in history, living only in manufactured objects.  So our contact with 'life' is very restricted and controlled, thus limiting our reference points or compass on gender issues.  

We are the latest version of the big control experiment, civilization.  It's nice to live in a pain-relief culture, but it has created a lot of taboos that men are lost in, because they don't have alternate experiences. 

It is a shame, and I think women are searching for men that can see through the ruse…

Thanks, :-)

 

hi arjan, it is very freeing to realize we don't need sex (i remember we have had good discussions in the past about the positive aspects of celibacy) but is it true that we don't need the other gender? I think I need men at least as much as I need women. I am not an island, and embrace the healthy interdependence of life lived to the full.

i would very much like to understand better what you have learned in this regard in the interval since we last talked in depth on the subject.

hi sun warrior, as a Christian, I don't see Christianity itself as a barrier to spiritual reality but perhaps some limited streams of that fiath.

 

Hi Arjan and Nicole,

Yes, celibacy is good for differentiating ourselves, which is one of the reasons why we are here on the civilized path, to see who we are outside of actual reality, and see if we like what we discover.  It is one path, whereas the other is being in relationship with 'other' as differentiated beings, and see what we come up with, up until now in a civilized context.

We are trained by Christianity and modern civilization to break down realtiy into its components and re-arrange it the way we like.  Can we do a better job than actual reality?  We are not very good at accepting reality the way it is, because of the way we are trained to think and the assumptions we take for granted. 

We've been pretty good at identifying abuse and shutting it down, and creating the best facsimile of Jesus' heaven-on-earth, feeding the poor and healing the sick like never before in Western society.  Humans have removed themselves from Nature, and don't really need God, because science and business are much more reliable in solving problems.  We got the primary problem, men, under control.  Civilization is fixed.  Now we just have to maintain the new order and not let anything natural come back and abuse us.  We have re-arranged reality to our liking, and need to keep control.  We love the beauty and idea of Nature, and feel we can domesticate Her like we have men and women, so we're all safe and happy.  Nature 'out there,' humans in ' here,' as 'equals,' separate, and as soon as we get the feminine life of Nature under control using systems-thinking as 'the environment,' then our good intentions for Nature under our management will erase the last threats from Her.

It is how men got women under control, by sucking them into patriarchal business-science culture, with all its equal benefits.  There is not reason why the greater feminine, Nature, won't succumb as well to our benevolence.

Christianity is very good at spirituality, but not spiritual reality.  Spirituality is human-centered, and all Western spiritualities start from this.  But it doesn't know much about spiritual reality.  The religion is about the God-human pipeline, with no other spiritual reality allowed outside of the pipe.  Christian reality consists of only God, humans and inert matter.  Science agrees, just dropping God.  The Christian spiritual cosmology only includes God, Jesus, souls and the devil.  Everything else defaults to the latter.  Not much to go on, and priests and ministers are completely blank on all the other infinite consciousnesses existing in Creation, most of them on God's side.  And Christianity only allows three types of spiritual experiences: coincidences, answers that pop into one's head, answering prayers, and the Bible.  If you have anything else, you're out of luck.

Thanks for the time…  :-)

 

dear sun warrior, sorry you have only experienced such a limited christianity… i assure you there is a lot more for free swimmers… and you make a lot of excellent points about society, and eviscerating both the Feminine and Masculine…

arjan, yes, wanting nothing is bliss, wanting something is suffering. yes, we always want so much from each other… i am just not ready to make that leap to  nothing missing in our aloneness. i guess i'm not enlightened enough.

 

Nicole, you're good!  :-)

I am well aware of Christianity, being a United Church preacher's kid.  And I admire Christians from Jean Vanier, John Paul II, and the Queen.

Christianity is a massive arena, with all kinds of different cars to choose from.  Pick what you want and drive off happy.  What I am concerned about is the exhaust left in the atmosphere, not the great ride and features.

We are a very positive culture, and every woman and man is good.  We are trained to subdue any meaning that comes to us, so that we have it under our control.  We are modern mind-humans after all.  Meaning is our plaything.

 

Sun Warrior, thanks :) You're at least as good as I am. Sincerely meant, I have become more and more impressed by your reasoning through.

I hear you about the exhaust. I am very unhappy, perhaps even more than you because I have been so heavily invested in Christianity my whole life, about the negative streams of the faith and their devastating effects that keep rolling on…

To the issue of subduing meaning, modern mind-humans, meaning our plaything -

Gaia is the best example I know of this personally in my life, because I spend so much time here. Much of what I observe here and admittedly participate in here is mental play, subdued meaning and revelling in being modern mind-humans…

not intrinsically bad, but there are many disturbing aspects. We are addictive and can so readily become addicted to the parry and thrust of verbal wordplay here or anywhere else on the net.  Addicted to the feeling of connecting without the inconvenient trappings of meeting in person. Addicted… in many other ways

i just had a private communication with a friend about how out of hand flirtation can get here or on other sites, how quickly, how badly people can get hurt, and online friendships die… just like high school again, said he. yes… just like high school except much worse, not least because we are supposed to be mature.

arjan that brings me back to you and how we need too much from each other as men and women. as i promised i have been continuing to ponder that, and the more i experience personally of hurt and misunderstandings and such, and observe others, the more i have to say you are totally right.

i am pulling back to observer mode. my imzadi, of course, was not as pleased when i shared with him what you said. but somewhere, somehow, some of us have to say no to these endless foolish games we play as men and women… as it says in the song:

“Well in case you failed to notice,
In case you failed to see,
This is my heart bleeding before you,
This is me down on my knees, and…

[Chorus]
These foolish games are tearing me apart,
And your thoughtless words are breaking my heart.
You're breaking my heart.” (Jewel, Foolish Games)

So much time, emotional energy, productivity, even whole lives are lost through destructive male/female interactions.

So, I have decided to see what I can do from observer mode and a position of balance and strength, with unconditional love. Please pray for me, however you understand that… I know it will be very difficult and a lifelong struggle.

 

That is the journey I'm on too.  I totally relate to Arjan.  I was the perfect modern man in my first marriage.  I grew up with a verbally abusive father and I was not going to be that way, so I conformed to everything a man should be, based on feminist criticism of men.

My marriage fell apart.  My wife thought I was a joke.  How could all those good intentions, following the rules that made so much nice sense have lead to me being destroyed?

Men, from the culture and my experience with my dad, told me men were inherently bad and needed to be re-formed.  I complied, being a good Canadian boy, and it ended in disaster.

So I had to ask myself, as a man, is there anything inherently good about me, if being a feminist man and not being abusive actually created just as much hell as my dad did verbally abusing my mother?

What is a natural man?  Is there anything naturally good in him, that is not abusive, and then what is a natural woman?  What do we have to compare it to?  That meant confronting so many taboos that we are programmed to accept without really understanding why, how they formed, where they came from.

I think the male-female relationships on here is a prime example of how we are both mind-humans, and re-designing our interactions with humans to feel safe, free, and independent.  Our relations become two dimensional, and we don't even realize it.  Then reality gives us a three dimensional human and we don't like it.  They are confusing and complex, and the concepts we live from aren't equipped for the 'whole' human, but breaking them down into parts, comparing them, for the express purpose of creating a pain-free life.  It's easy on the net.  That experience makes us further question our real relationships. 

The net has the power of a love letter, entering into us differently from actual human contact, with the added power of instant communication.  It's addictive.  We are in control, and it is pleasurable and safe.  Then weird things happen to us, because we have further manipulated human mind-reality to suit our pleasure, making us more intolerant of actual reality that doesn't conform to our concepts and expectations of pain-free, easy existence and relationships.

Both men and women, three dimensional, natural, are taboo, because the natural is strange and uncontrolled, and threatening.  We see how much we depend on control through two dimensional concepts in pursuit of happiness.  But we have no experience with the 'natural,' don't even know what it is, outside of men's balls make them violent, needing control, and feel so good about our civilization that Nature seems like going backwards and being subject to its reality, instead of us controlling our own.

 

i am looking forward to hearing from sun warrior about his current marriage. i'm hoping that you have found a way through, far from the emptiness of your first marriage, way beyond the artifice of the internet, to relate truly and deeply as a man who is deeply a man to a woman who is deeply a woman.

arjan, i am intrigued by the reasonably pain free relationship question. it evokes a number of other questions for me. what does reasonably mean for you? what level of pain is acceptable or manageable? is being pain free an important goal in terms of relationship, or is it an avoidance of depth?

you say, understandably, that being in observer mode sounds cold. i came to this out of a sense of survival because of being in this particularly challenging situation.

here is something my imzadi said earlier today, or yesterday for him, that adds something of his perspective:

“I think the turbulence of the last few weeks was necessary
for both of us to throw the cards in the air and see where they fall
anew. Always necessary at transition points. Letting go of old
structures and welcoming the new.”

so, we said goodbye to the old reality, where everything was familiar and safe, and entered this strange new world which we are only barely beginning to get to know. no doubt if we survive we will discover many other aspects of this we-space, but in the meantime we take baby steps… i in my observer mode, he stepping back and thinking things through in his own way and time.

both of us very much looking for a way to be in an engaged relationship while not wanting so much from each other.

maybe it is just not possible under the circumstances of long distance.

it will be very interesting to find out, one way or another.

 

Hi Arjan

I  have arrived late at your blog, thanks to a link in one of Nicole's comments on a separate blog (thanks Nicole).

Arjan, I just read your blog post and I know exactly what you mean. This sounds very close to my own experiences too. I grew up in a household whereby I survived better by sensitising to the moods of others as a way of anticipating and thereby dissipating potential conflicts - real or imagined. So basically I learned to put my own needs secondary to those of others, and focussed on being “nice” to everyone. So the first set of life skills I learned were to be quite feminine and intuitive.

On a cultural, intersubjective level, I was growing up at a time when political feminism was on the rise (and a good thing too, seriously), but the baggage that came with it was that men are stupid pigs and women are the superior sex. That was the cultural message I was given while growing up.  Also, whereas many older cultures used to have a rite of passage for boys and girls, sadly we no longer do. So I, along with everyone else my age, had no initiation from any elders into what society wants or expects of its men, or into what qualities make a good man. Great system for producing strong men, right?

So here we have a weak sensitive boy, clueless about what it means to be a man both in society and in a relationship. He then grows to adulthood but is still a boy inside. And the women he naturally attracts out of his sensitive qualities eventually become exasperated or repulsed by his “lack of purpose”. Hmmm,…

In the meantime I threw myself into mediation practices, from which I have benefited enormously and gained, I feel, genuine spritual isnights and knowledge. But meditation is not therapy and I still had my scared little boy inside me.  Hmmmm…. So entered counselling and dug up all kinds of fears, doubts and rages… yea mostly rage actually,…. I didn't even know I had. Great stuff!

More recently I have also attended men's groups. Interestingly aswell as feeling strengthened in my masculine aspects through these meetings, I also came away with a new found deep appreciation of my feminine side. I mean I really love my feminine qualities!

Probably the deepest progress for me has come through regular and quite intense study the work of David Deida and others over the last 5 years or so. I agree with Deida's simplified sketch of men's development:
Stage 1 = the old fashioned, selfish macho jerk (plenty of them still around).
Stage 2 = spineless sensitive men who have grown beyond the macho jerk, which is great, but still not found a masculine sense of purpose (I still have at least one foot in this camp!)
Stage 3 = open hearted, full bodied, spiritually aligned, imperturbable…. (I'm now getting more and more regular glimpses this mode of being - hopefully I can move into this camp  permanently someday :-)

Anyway, this is my experience. Hope it's  interesting / useful / helpful.

Have you listened to Falling Fruit TV? They have some interesting discussion on similar themes, including some good stuff with Robert Augustus Masters  (If you can ignore the awful opening music and occasional silliness form the host,  there are some hidden gems)
http://fallingfruit.tv/thenewman

More on David Deida can be found here:
http://www.deida.info/

Robert Augustus Masters has a great website too:
http://www.robertmasters.com/home.htm

All The Best

James

 

I've heard this argument before - many times actually - and it always comes from dedicated MEN'S groups…

Am I the only one who sees the irony there?  In order to be balanced, all of us - men and women - need to find a healthy equilibrium between our feminine and our masculine sides and closing yourself off in a men-only or women-only environment sets the the wrong parameters around that - completely wrong IMO…

The disturbing trend that Arjan identifies (and I'm not disputing it's real - I'm from that part of the world; I've seen it) is simply an overreaction to the previous status quo, the pendulum swinging the opposite way without stopping in place of balance.

My two cents…

Frans

 

Hoi Arjan,

I'm not saying it's not a problem; I am saying it's not a problem that can be fixed by men - it can only be fixed by community, and that includes all genders…to start from a men-only perspective would simply maintain the imbalance.  I like what Ken Wilber said about this subject - “it's not about men or women; it's about people who have their feminine and masculine sides balanced” (that's me paraphrasing…)

Frans

 

Nicole,
 
Yes, its been quite the journey.  As you know, you bring all your sh*t with you, to have it all come up again to be dealt with.

It's been a struggle.  But whoever is in your life reflects you, your life, what you are meant to deal with, and how do you take the pain that is within you and turn it like an alchemist into wisdom, beauty and love from the hell that is within you, put there throughout your life, as well as being born with.

Why did this person come into my life?  Why do these issues keep coming up?  What are the patterns?  How does it fit into my life story, and what am I not 'getting?'  So you have to work with it.

It means understanding a woman.  It means getting into her life story, what has f*cked her up, what she brings into it.  It means understanding how you automatically respond to situations, why you have always done it, how it was trained into you, and then risking acting in ways that you were not trained, into that unknown territory, suffering 'not knowing where you are' acting so strangely, letting the dust settle after the storm, and being amazed the wisdom that surfaced that you never expected when you let go of your security and caused the storm.

A woman's love is incredibly strong and resiliant, and ferocious forcing a man, repeatedly, to face his issues.  At first you don't understand what she's saying.  Then, slowly it begins to dawn on you, and the pieces of your life start to become more clear.  But it hurts like hell, and you don't want to face it, but protect yourself.  Take off your breast plate, look into her eyes and let her stab you in the heart, and take it. 

The only way to get to know your broken heart, why you don't trust, how thick the walls are around your heart, and around her's.  And accepting how corrupt you are, facing how ugly it is inside, and yet she still loves you.  The heart starts to soften, until the next piece of the puzzle comes along, to chip away at the walls more, making you stronger, and doing the same to her.

She seems to know my weaknesses, and when I'm weak she will pound on them, as if to point to them, instead of being nice and comforting.  Its tough.  Its enraging at first, unfair, insensitive.  The terror of a woman 'who knows,' and demands her man be strong, to face his weakness… is he going to let a woman slice and dice him so easily?   She knows he's becoming 'a man' when she pounds those weaknesses and all she gets is a depth of strength and wisdom, that then is used to call out her weaknesses… in an endless dance that recognizes that everyone is strong enough to enter into their pain and find the wisdom in it, healing and strengthening, turning the pain into true 'love,' which is wisdom, truth and love, inseparable.

Then you accept yourself, who you are, knowing who you are, warts and all, why it was Given, and what it was meant to teach…  it ain't fun at times, but she certainly gets your attention, whether she wants it or not… every woman wants to feel beautiful, but every woman is turned on by a man who gets an erection from everything she hates about herself, because he wants 'in.'  She is not allowed to get away with her sh*t.  She has the attention of a man…

If couples want in each others' hearts, then they have to be able to stand the truth of themselves when the other gets in there.  The fearful truth of 'real' love…

 

Sun Warrior

This is some great stuff!: “If couples want in each others' hearts, then they have to be able to stand the truth of themselves when the other gets in there.  The fearful truth of 'real' love…”

Holy shit you are talking about the real deal here. Thank You!

 

Hey Frans

I don't see an “argument” being made by anyone here re. men's groups, just stories about what has been helpful.

Most men I know of who are interested in these issues feel a lack of clarity and masculine strength. Being in a men's group is just one way of many that men can be challenged to grow into that more. It's not the only way, but it works for many people. I get challenged to grow in a different way by my wife, and by my son, and my colleagues and by other women. Also none of the attendees, in my experiences at least, are considering cloistering themselves away from the world - these events last no more than a day and then everyone seems to throw themselves back into their daily lives.

So I think you're missing the point and value of sometimes working in single sex groups when dealing with these issues.

And so no I don't see any irony whatsoever. I found it extremely useful and I am planning to attend another in June.

 

Fran,

I get my radar up when anyone brings up men getting their feminine in balance within themselves.  That is the conceptual mind work of the feminist era, trying to 'reason' with men, but richocheted off the minds, and never got to the balls of the matter, or the heart.

Wilber is a modern spiritual professional, so he suffers from all the shortcomings of an academic. 

When I hear about how a woman scorched his soul, what hell he's been through, and what he 'let go' and sacrificed, 'falling' and trusting, even though  all he thought was there was void… then he'll start speaking a man's language.  Facing the terror of one's truth, coming out bloodied and battered, having discovered his warrior heart, not trying to be comforting and nurturing with concepts so no one suffers any pain.  That's concepts.  That's mind work, not soul work.  That's what's wrong with modern society.  The pablum of concepts.

That is modern Christianity.  And our whole society is running in reaction to Christianity, including Christians, but they have nowhere to run.  They want Jesus to love them, but ignore His sword, and that He sent everyone He loved into hell when He insisted on the Cross.  That's not modern love.  But it does take courage and depth, despite modern love theory.  The modern mind just wants to cherry pick the concepts it likes, and re-arrange actual reality to suit its theories.  We have a hard time facing, discovering and accepting the reality underneath the thin concepts.

 

I'm not talking about concepts - I'm talking about real life.  If you want to know what I believe about love, take a look at my blog post on Relationship - that's my life and my lifework - every day, every moment.  Nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with society - everything to do with being…

Frans

 

I think gender differences are biological realities.  Balancing our masculine and feminine sides simply means retracting and integrating our projections, but that doesn't in any way alter the facts of gender.  I think we moderns have many problems in our attempt to deny nature… external nature and internal nature.  This relates to the thread I just started about community.  This also relates to Dr Sax's book Boys Adrift which I started a thread about over at OSI.

I was going to bring up Deida, but someone already has.  I read his book about masculinity.  I must admit it didn't do much for me.  It made me realize I'm not much of a masculine kinda guy.  Deida does admit that what he speaks about applies to anyone who is masuline whether male or female.

I do agree that our society doesn't encourage masculinity and that could be why I don't feel masculine.  I was raised in a church with lots of New Agers and so I was taught to live up to the ideal of sensitive guy.  Also, according to Myers-Briggs, I'm a Feeling type.  Many Feeling type guys feel a bit unmasculine.  The Thinking function is the stereotype our society has for masculinity.  But its also probably biological because most guys statistically do prefer the Thinking function, and Thinking women are less strong in that preference than men.

I do think that our society does teach men to repress their masculinity in the same way that it has taught women to repress their feminity.  This is less extreme in those who don't go to college and become indoctrinated with feminist ideology, and this is less extreme in those who grew up in traditional religions that idealize traditional gender roles.  Dr. Sax talks about all of this.

I don't know if I'd be better off or happier if I were masculine.  I'll say I don't feel much desire to try to be.  I don't know if I'm repressing my masculinity, but if I am I could see how that would be problematic.  I'm not sure why I am the way I am, but I'd guess its a combination of factors.

 

Hey Marmalade,

Of course we all have our biological realities - getting caught in them is a different thing altogether…

I believe we all have full access to feminine and masculine aspect of being - no matter what our bodies “say”.  Society tells us we need to be masculine, and feeling doesn't equate with that - we all know better, so why does it hold us down so much?  simply because we're still unable to let go of the need for security and certainty, for which we look only outside ourselves…

The only answer is to become present, to start living in this moment, which is when all these dyamics stop holding us down and life becomes Reality…

Frans

 

Frans,
 I'm seeing two factors in all of this.  The biological factor is very real and I doubt we can change our biology.  However, there is another factor that relates to biology without it being specifically limited to it.  Archetypally, both gender qualities are equally real for both genders.

Marmalade

 

Well, I went through years of that kind of contemporary language.  It was all I knew, and it seemed very descriptive.

Then the spirit world put me through my paces, and it seemed I needed more balls and heart, and the mind was actually the problem.  They soon became irrelevant.  The spirit world seemed to work on different principles, and the challenges forced me to discover things truths that don't fit in well with either Christianity's contemporary Love God, or the Love Universe of secular spirituality.  The mind had to bow to the heart, instead of direct it. 
I guess what I'm saying is 'being' is not an issue with me.  I know I'm being when the spirits are kicking me in the balls.  Certainly brings out the man in you.  And the one thing Mother Earth is VERY good at in not pulling any punches when you ask Her a question, and She Gives you an answer.  That's doesn't sound like feminine motherhood, and I didn't respond with my feminine side.  I discovered my masculine.

If you notice, the feminine can stand alone in spirituality, and the feminine-masculine is okay, but the masculine can never stand alone.  Why not?  It is odd that we trust the feminine, but not the masculine alone. 

We are out of balance, and its blamed on the masculine.  And we're convinced the masculine must be tied up because it is threatening and out of control.

We simply do not trust the masculine all alone.  Why doesn't anyone trust the masculine?  Is it possible there is anything masculine that can stand alone and be trusted?  Is there anything positive about the masculine?

I mean, I bought all the virtuous stuff about the feminine, as good and wonderful and gentle and love.  Then I observed how teenage girls treated my daughter, my ex's behavior, and on-and-on, and suddenly the madonna complex over the feminine fell off its pedestal.

If neither gender is good, well, what's left?  More interestingly, what is in the bad of both?  Why is it there?  And why is there this Calvinist slavery to modern love, that seems to block the blood and guts of encountering the almost shaman-like struggle with the depths?

It seems there is something missing in modern spirituality's language.  They became irrelevant once the spirit world took me on a tour of actual reality.  It was a struggle to the very depths of hell to get the wisdom and truth.  Love, far from being an entity unto itself, was merely the by-product of the passage to wisdom and truth.

 

Damn it all to hell! Gaia monster ate my last long answer…. arggh save save every response before clicking add comment, repeat as my mantra…

let me try to reconstruct.

First of all, I thanked Marmalade, James and Frans for showing up here as a result of my invitations in sundry places. You have really helped me understand you better through your comments and helped shed light on aspects for me.

Thank you Arjan and Sun Warrior for hanging in there with all the new energy, and continuing to engage and delve deeper for meaning.

Sun Warrior, I am more and more impressed by how much I think we really agree. I see more light and more light in your posts. I really liked what you had to say about a woman's fierce love that pounds away at you and about a man's fierce love that loves a woman where she most needs to be loved… in the aspects of herself she hates and doesn't feel accepted. Yes. That really resonates and that was one of the things I was trying to get at all those months ago in our heavy discussions about unconditional love, Arjan, remember?

Also, Sun Warrior, I agree that this whole tendency to raise the feminine to a pedestal is just as flawed as putting masculinity there. Women have serious problems, just as serious as men run amok. I think that was what Frans meant by the need for community and for women and men to remain engaged together, to complement each other. I also think of Rilke and his vision of new women and new men who were not trapped in stereotypes but courageous and free.

I loved the part about struggling to the depths of hell to get wisdom and truth, while qualifying that Love is more than a mere by product of that passage, but that is more a minor matter of language and perspective.

Calvinist slavery to modern love… not sure I would call it Calvinist… never have been comfortable with that stream and it doesn't seem to fit in with modernity anyway. But there are some serious things wrong with modern love that don't help us meet our needs fully. Yes. I am with you there brother.

We can't trust the masculine all alone. Yes. I think that this is a reaction to so many centuries of the masculine reigning on the throne. Now we need, as you suggest, to find the glories of the gold in the shadow of each, the masculine and the feminine, the negative aspects that teach us so much when we show up fully to learn instead of superficially sliding around on the periphery.

Ok, it all takes a lot of trust and I confess I have not trusted men. Why should I? I have been driven lifelong by my abandonment issues from my dad and so the only men who have really been let deep in my life are men who cannot meet me in that fiercely loving that horrible stuff way that I so need. The only men who can meet me, I ensure because of their relative unavailability can only love me in a distant and controlled way.

I was so glad to hear Robert Masters mentioned too, because I am organising a Robert Masters workshop in montreal and if I am successful will be able to dive to the depths with him and about ten others… Exciting and scary…

So much work to do together. I liked what Frans said about working together in community as men and women. I think that we can be very reactive in these kinds of discussions whereas the more deeply we listen to each other, the more we hear that we are singing the same song.

Namaste!

 

Thanks, Nicole,

Yes, I am very sensitive to language.  I grew up in the United Church, a preacher's kid, where 'love' and 'community' (back then the buzzword was 'fellowship') are all the rage.

But they become meaningless, and to the 'layman' sounds like meaningless concept.  The United Church, and all Christianity today is all about 'love,' but when you challenge them on any difficult issue they seem to freak, and run around like Victorian women who have seen a naked man for the first time! 

It's then that I realized how 'Calvinist' that Church is, despite trying to be contemporary and 'living the love of Jesus.'  Whereas love is actually code for conformity, the status quo, and don't rock the boat but fall in line with the boring academics and all their wonderful theories.

The same goes for 'community.'  No one wants to 'do' community, though they'd like to be 'a part' of a community.  But the way the Church uses the word becomes a 'thing' you do, an object, a descriptive that is handy for academics to banter about in 'high theory,' never getting their hands dirty.

I find parallels in secular culture as well, in the secular spiritual community, where your brain turns off in uncritical bliss at the word 'love,' because our whole culture is based on pain-relief.  Even business, our organizer and primary power, has to sell some sort of pain-relief.  It would go bankrupt selling pain.  So we just eliminate it, or let the psychologist give it a label, which the mind likes, and is soothing, but rife with 'nothing.'

Mind meaning and heart meaing are two different things.  Our culture promotes mind and knowledge as the primary definition of a human, which controls meaning, the heart, and the world.  If we don't understand how our mind-centeredness, pain-relief addiction, and all the different concepts that sound good but go nowhere, then spirituality is no better than any other religion or business or academic.  The spirit world speaks in poetry.  The mind in objective language.  We think we can save Nature by treating Her as an object, a system, called the environment, which we can control.  We have all kinds of good intentions.  But the language belies what's underneath, humans and their minds controlling the Earth, for the Earth's own good.  We'll just adjust our systems.  Now business makes 'green' everything… from their factories.  Who can argue with the feel-good green?  It's soothing, like love.

I think we have to look at what hurts in the gender questions and ask why.  When we do, things start to unravel, bringing more questions, as the coils of the mind system we were born into start to show itself for what it is.  And we get to the heart of the matter.

After all, I love women, because I'm a man.  It's nice to be seduced into finding the truth, instead of being seduced to fall asleep in more two dimensional mind concepts to maintain the status quo, from all those good intentions…

 

Nicole and Sun Warrior

I find your comments, especially those revealing your personal experiences,  gutsy and heartfelt and open. Thank You

 

James, you're welcome. My thanks to you for engaging in the dialogues, asking good questions and staying present and open.

Sun Warrior, I totally agree with you about the church. I got to the point where i felt that if i heard the words love and fellowship abused in those ways one more time, i was going to stand in the middle of the church and scream and scream. instead i just left there long enough to heal in my heart and mind, so that when i returned, recently, i am able to be more truly present and loving, while not taking on or putting up with any falseness.

women can really struggle, too, with the problem men have with too much mind.

i have been trapped in my head for years and am only recently beginning to learn to live truly from the heart.

though it has involved a lot of suffering, especially over the past few weeks of loving intensely and needing to let go of the pleasure and fulfillment of romantic love and love deeper by being only a friend (see my blog entry yesterday on that, expressed poetically as a hymn of love to my imzadi), i have truly known and experienced that the joy and bliss are at least equal to the pain and suffering, and that it was all worth it, especially for the learning and growth. i regret nothing and would not have it any other way.

i, too, have been seduced into finding the truth, as a woman who is learning to love a man in ways i had never dreamed. it's very challenging and at the same time really exhilarating and exciting, because each day is an unexpected turn in the road, more undiscovered country to explore and begin to know.

 

Nicole, thanks for sharing this.

 

 

Hi all, what a great investigation you're having, thank you and thanks to these cool ways to communicate! I got pointed to your dialogue by Arjan, since he knows I'm interested in what it means to be Free, meaning in my case a Free Woman, as well as meaning Surrendering to God.

What I've found in the Christian path that I've been on before I met my teacher Andrew Cohen is a beautiful and deep recognition of our true ground, pure Oneness. Arjan I also see that only since I met Andrew Cohen that this recognition of Oneness has started to gain real ground. I think because then only I started to investigate into the question what it means to live my life from the recognition of oneness.

… and here I think comes in the positive aspect of science and our ability to think things through in deeper ways. Since becoming more an investigator [compared to being basically a spiritual consumer (although innocently, but still) in church and monasteries] the door opened to much more ground and realness. What I'm grateful for on my path is this awakening to what contemplation means, otherwise I would still have equated spiritual insights more with feelings than with action. I mean, what does it mean to be a Free human?

One of the great things I found is that my longing for being with God is not a personal matter or attainment, but that's part of the spiritual impulse in all of us. It doesn't mean something special about me, but it does mean that I know something now that will keep on pulling me to respond to and to investigate, contemplate deeper and deeper. And this Nicole I feel relates to the investigation we can do as women. I did do (sorry Frans…) many women groups and one of the big paradoxes that come to light in our groups is that I'm not  at all prepared to stand alone and be as independent as I show myself to be. Even though that's what I do act like especially when being in relationship with a weaker men (not at this point). Yes, then the b*t*h comes out. But underneath she's weak as well. Isn't that interesting that we all long for Freedom, have our recognitions of that, but unless we unravel the deeper patterns that apparently run our systems, we are very far from that Freedom??? It's really cool to come together with other women and be transparent about both the bitchiness we're capable of and the lack of guts that we have and all the ways how we try to uphold our image as if we're all fully in control… I guess for men it's that same relief to come together and share the impersonality of your patterns?!

And it dawns on me now for the first time since this blog started on the spineless and weak men, that in fact our relationships are so distorted between men and women that in the end we both end up being weak, dependent and needy for affirmation (woman) or sex (man).

Look forward to continue to investigate with you!

Petra

 

Arjan

I fully understand and agree with your last comment to Nicole.

Thanks for putting it so clearly.

James

 

Arjan: rhank you for bringing in my love for God. I would like to hope that it will become  greater, more whole and ultimately fullfilling than romantic love. In practice, it is through love for others, friends and lovers and children and siblings and parents, all the different kinds of love that i have and that i learn, that i learn to love God better.

This love makes me soft as well as strong, because I have both a feminine and a masculine side to me that God is developing. Yes, it is becoming free, inspired and full of potential for an enlighttened future between us all.

I have no problem with this being developed with men to sort this out with men and for women to go into this with women, in part.

yet there is an important place for men and women to learn together to love better, through loving each other, wanting too much and learning to love better than that. Through being friends and learning to do that better. Through familial relationships and all other love ties.

for example, like this conversation where i learned from you and sun warrior and the other men, and perhaps you all heard and learned something from me and Petra…

Petra,

How wonderful that you found in the Christian path that you were on a beautiful and deep recognition of our true ground, pure Oneness. I find a great delight in this too. You say that since meeting Andrew Cohen this recognition of Oneness has started to gain real ground because then only did you look into what it means to live your life from the recognition of oneness.

My experience has been different. I am learning to do this through my Christian path, and more and more deeply as time goes by.

Awakening to what contemplation means, not equating spiritual insights more with feelings than with action, what does it mean to be a Free human - yes, this is very important in my path. Thank you for underlining that.

Longing for being with God is not a personal matter or attainment, but that's part of the spiritual impulse in all of us. Something that will keep on pulling me to respond to and to investigate, contemplate deeper and deeper. Yes, I am totally with you there.

Not being prepared to stand alone and be  independent is not a problem I am struggling with. Being in relationship with a weaker man is no longer what I seek but rather to wrestle in joy and freedom with peers, women and men, who want to go deeper and higher and farther, who are unafraid. We all long for Freedom, and yes, we need to unravel the deeper patterns that apparently run our systems. I am glad that you are getting a lot from coming together with other women to be transparent about both the bitchiness we're capable of and the lack of guts that we have and all the ways how we try to uphold our image as if we're all fully in control.

I don't personally need to do that right now. I am very much ok taking a hard look at the shadow by myself and in the company of whomever God brings my way, women and men, and similarly see men coming together with each other and women, whomever God brings their way, to deal with their shadow stuff. All that gold that is there in the shadow, as Jung says.

In so doing we move away from relationships that are so distorted between men and women, from being weak, dependent and needy for affirmation (woman) or sex (man). Adding too that women can be needy for sex and men needy for affirmation. So moving from that into freedom and joy together. I see it here in this discussion together, I see it in so much of what else goes on here on gaia that is life affirming, and in my relationships with my imzadi and my other male friends as we grow from the basic levels step by step into something that is only beginning to unfold but is very exciting and awesome as it does.

Light and peace,

Nicole

 

I think to really be involved in this discussion you have to be gender aware. I am male–at least the last time I looked I was–but I don't feel particularly male or female, although I apparently have a rather male impact on people. Is there room in this dicussion for the gender-challenged? I mean, I feel like we are a second- or third-class gender or something, and we're not getting any representation in this discussion. I dunno, it just all seems too polarised to me.

 

So I'm non-polarised, and you're going to try to polarise me? OK, I'm up for a challenge :D. Now I just have to find my shadow…. hmm…. where was was it… must have misplaced it…hmmm

 

Hey Arjan… I couldn't have put it better myself. The more contact you have with the non-polarised world, the less polarised your consciousness becomes. I have however noticed the paradox that the sexual urge becomes proportionately greater. And then you have the interesting challenge of trying to express it through the shadow (i.e. your physical consciousness). Fun hey! That's what makes life so interesting.

In ieder geval een leuke manier om een zondag door te brengen niet waar?

Liefs,

David

 

“So now it is starting to dawn on me that I do not need sex, or a woman, to be happy and feel whole. It is quite a discovery to find the kind of fullness, that we usually look for in the area of sexuality and relationship, in our own self! To realize that there is no hole that needs to be filled, that literally nothing is missing, ever. It convinced me that, for relationships between men and women to work out, both parties need to stop looking for fulfilment and completion in the other, and realize the fullness that is already in each of us. And I can see how a radically different culture would be the result of this.…”

TNX for this …”more identified with consciousness or emptiness than with being a man or a wo-man”  after gaining this freedom from ego-driven craving & desire, now we can finally get down to true tantra–egoless creative & liberated EXPERIENCE of sensuality/sexuality, that “which is” arising in the moment, mutually enriching while enhancing the whole, serving the principle of unity, free of  shadows (or at east committed to exploring any deeply hidden ones which may arise) with truely no-strings-attached…phew-w-w-w, 55 posts, man !

(nu wordt mn zondag pas ECHT leuk :-D )

 

Arjan, excellent post on Shadow Work, and cool pic too!

It is interesting the connections people are making with God and Oneness, and the post being on rehabilitating the masculine.

I call God 'Father.'  That's pretty much a taboo these days.  As I said, the masculine cannot stand alone, and the masculine side of God is the same, though the feminine side of God can.

But it is the journey with the masculine side of God that helped me to discover the warrior heart, that is another taboo in our society.  It helped to delineate much of what our society is about.  A natural man being surrounded by the feminine, the overwhelming life force in Nature, and the woman.  But in our society, being now completely artificial, mathematical, and manufactured, it is a masculine creation of  'too much control' over reality.  Without contact with the powerful feminine, the powerful masculine can't come out.  But women are now absorbed in masculine mind culture too, muting them as well, devolving everything into concepts that we piece reality together like an equation.

It is interesting how our gender issues even affect God.  We search for Oneness within an androgynous or feminine or sexless deity, belying our cultural barriers to something that God created naturally in half the population, the masculine.

It seems if we want to resurrect the masculine in God, we need to re-connect to the feminine in Nature in a big way.  That's a tall order when we are so embedded in masculine mind culture, not creating life, but manufacturing mathematically perfect objects.

 

” I think that unless you have a relationship with God, or the creative cosmic priciple, you don't have a relationship with husband, wife, children etc, then it's just your ego relating to theirs…”

This is great because it's completely my experience too. When a romantic relationship is the highest goal in and of itself it's always going to need fixing. My partner is never going to be quite good enough. But what I have noticed is that to have my relationship take second or even fifth place within a life that is lived for a purpose bigger than my own personal needs or desires then things start to fall in place and suddenly I can see that my relationship in it's rightfull context - as supporting something higher instead of being a 'promise of perfection' and as if by magic my relationship needs alot less work.

And to refer back to some of the original points - then my relationship with other men who are interested in this inquiry become much more solid and important.

 

1) Dear Arjan, yes, relationship with God must come first and for the first time in my life, after over 30 years of being a Christian, I am beginning to live what that truly means.It is amazingly liberating for all my relationships - with my children, friends, and those I love and to whom I feel attracted, like my imzadi.

It is becoming easier and easier for me to do what I know is right, even at great emotional cost.

2) Dear David, it is most wonderful that you are so free of this polarising, that though you are male and people respond to you as very male, as you say, you are not tied to being male and female. As Arjan says, this is a harbinger of the New Person. I would add that is was this that Rilke talked about in his Letters to a Young Poet. In addition, though you say that the sexual urge has become much greater for you in the process of de-polarising, you seem to be ok with that, seeing it not as a burden, but “fun”. That's extraordinary. I admire your non-attachment, the way you don't seem to take yourself too seriously (alas, one of my besetting sins.)

3) Sorry, I hope that you Dutch speakers will help me. What do these mean?

In ieder geval een leuke manier om een zondag door te brengen niet waar?

nu wordt mn zondag pas ECHT leuk

4) Dear Victoria: somewhat akin, perhaps, to David, and in contrast to Arjan, you seem to find freedom and joy in
“true tantra–egoless creative & liberated EXPERIENCE of sensuality/sexuality, that “which is” arising in the moment, mutually enriching while enhancing the whole, serving the principle of unity, free of  shadows (or at east committed to exploring any deeply hidden ones which may arise) with truely no-strings-attached…”

I find it fascinating… we have discussed this together so I am starting to get glimpses of what you mean… I have to say this and what David was saying are more attractive than a cold  and detached celibacy which is most comfortable in the presence of others of the same gender. But I know we also have important differences of view on what ways it is appropriate to express sexuality.

5) Dear Sun Warrior, I am so glad you mentioned calling God Father. Most of the time I follow my first theology professor, Douglas John Hall, in using God without he or she, saying things like Godself to express most truly my understand of God in God's isness.

At the same time, my recent silent retreat was on God our Father, and us being the prodigal children who longed to run home and throw ourselves on his breast. I found myself hungering deeply for my Abba God, and delighted that weekend in spending much time cuddled up with my Abba emotionally. Afterward, I found myself softer, more explicitly feminine and much more vulnerable than usual. Since I shared right away with my imzadi
about my abandonment issues that had been awakened by this experience, from growing up without a father, and since my imzadi said he accepted being my Abba, I found myself also spending a lot of time curled up on imzadi's lap having my hair stroked, listening to the warm beats of his heart. and found too that my feminine was responding ever stronger to his masculine, as always between us in a profound and archetypal way.

interesting what you say about reconnecting to the feminine in Nature because imzadi would say to me how he hungered deeply to connect with Nature and was finding that happening through the soul bond with Woman…

6) Dear Justin, you have put your finger on one of the fatal flaws of the romantic myth, and why so many come away from failing relationships shattered and disillusioned. like many women, i spent my adolescence,twenties and thirties dreaming of a knight in shining armour, sad and lonely (for different reasons)in each of the four relationships I lived. when i met my imzadi a few weeks ago, though, it was from a different place of inner freedom and light, and he met me in no need and delighting in the emptiness.

we flew so very high together before deciding to let it go and just be friends. along the way the relationship was not work but such deep delight. every day continues to be a fresh discovery of what God can do in and through my heart wide open and strengthened by what i am learning in the school of love.

 

Hi Arjan,

Clearly this is working really well for you. I'm just wondering what you think about how well the alternate and distinct approaches David, Sun Warrior, Victoria, Justin and I have been discussing are working for us, as we, too, see other people for who they are and where they are going not just a fulfillment of desires. And how there are other viable solutions to the struggles of both men and women to be authentic.

Light and peace,

Nicole

 

I believe this link fits here:

A true measure of a man… How much of a 'She' he can be.

 

Hey Arjan,

I'm so glad you mentioned this because it beautifully illustrates how much of our thinking and perceptions are driven by the experiences we have. Those of us who have experienced a deep and authentic unconditional love see the world through that lens - those who have been in a long marriage full of meaning and beauty and life, joy and sorrow, pain and ecstasy, know the beauty of learning through this bond…

but if you have never known it to work, it's natural to gravitate to explorations with others of your gender, and to enjoy celibacy. I can understand and appreciate that.

light and peace to you

 

Dear all, cool to shed light on relationships. So far every real experience of depth I had points to freedom and whenever I start grasping in any way that experience then I'm hooked again in wanting and desire. It's so absolute. And Nicole I can completely relate to your former relationship experiences (glad for you that you're having a different one now!); there never was that freedom from wanting, so the relationships always ended in a way that frustrated me because it was not my original intention to go there… apparently stronger forces are at play here that I've not been capable of to be in charge of. Not that it was always bad or so, but in the end there was a sense of unfulfillment even with guys that are just good people, so it didn't need to be that way. 

The deeper insights of what Freedom points to show me at the same time more clearly how deeply attached I'm to grasping whenever the violins start playing and butterflies are in my  stomach. I never expected to discover how strong this sexual impulse is and what it creates in my sense of reality. What an audacious position it actually is to not avoid it at all and at the same time be more free from it so 'wanting' does not overtake the game! Since we're seeing this and sharing experiences I'm convinced this will be our next step as humans. Also I know some people really dealing with this in a light, open and free way, so it is possible to attain this ground, that's the inspiring part!
 love to you all, Petra

 

Sex can be like a hippie on drugs.  It's quite the trip, but if you don't know anything about shamanism, the trip is not understood as a journey into another world, another dimension, but just a vacation to a strange land before you come home to America.

Celibacy and sex are about the two states of God.  God maintains His integrity, a 'celibate' state, but also creates life, and extension of His Heart in the independent form He Creates.

Both states can open your heart or close them.  Both are fraught with dangers.  Both challenge the integrity of the soul, one that resists and one that penetrates another life. 

Everyone goes through fertile times and fallow times in life.  Sex should be an avenue into another's soul, but modern life is about two dimensional living, in concepts, in control, trying to create the perfect life, like the mathematically perfect objects we live in.  We like to design our selves, our happiness, our perfection, our enlightenment.  We say the words, but our lives are messy and don't conform to the beautiful perfect concepts to make us 'pure' humans, without blemish. 

But sex is messy, and celibacy can be self-inflicted cruelty if not understood what that journey is all about.  Two dimensional sex is great, but it triggers the heart, the soul, the emotions in the other, that are wild, and then we try to control it all with our minds, with concepts.  The same goes in the celibates efforts to control the natural desires.  Priests and nuns hearts grow cold in the deprivation, the concepts, the rationalisms take over, and they become abusive.  Two dimensional concepts can only go so far, then they collapse from exhaustion in trying to control messy reality.  Concepts too often substitute for wisdom, which is whole other animal.  Concepts can be a drug, a mind drug of control and power, seduced by the beauty of laboratory purity that does not naturally exist in Nature.  So we fight wisdom, truth and love to arrange them in neat controllable ways by our minds. 

We want the train of life to run on-time.  But life is more of a train wreck.  Then we have to decide if we learned anything from it, or are we just searching for blame that made it imperfect.  Sex is an orgasmic train wreck in the tunnel of a mountain.  Celibacy can be a derailment.  If we try to create our own meaning, then we are not asking God for the real meaning.  We manufacture our own meaning as a perfect rational object, instead of letting the wild animal come and tell us something from Creation, our own creation.

If the masculine and feminine are not understood as wild animals with wisdom within them, then they become playthings as concepts that we try to manipulate to create something that is not natural.  It's a control thing, an inability to accept or even know what is 'natural' so it never is allowed to speak.  We are under so much stress to keep our lives under control in our artificial reality, we never do get to relax and accept who we are naturally.  So when the train wreck happens, we really don't ever get what the message was.  We just don't want it to happen again.  The spirit and the natural are split, and the mind wants to go to 'pure' spirit, without realizing it is messy, like Nature and a train wreck.  We think it is the bliss of love, like a drug trip, not the horrendous journey of the shaman into a treacherous wilderness, to be respected as greater life.

If we never connect with the natural, with Nature, then we never connect with God, who is outside of concepts.  It is hard living in our artificial world, where concepts reign, where the masculine and feminine are analyzed instead of understood in their natural form, where we take everything and re-jig our concepts of ourselves and life to create a new equation to make the pain go away, the concept as a drug.  We need to detach the wild cock from the mind and re-attach it to the true heart.  And the same goes for the wild pussy, as women get increasingly sucked into mind culture. 

Men's souls connect in battle, celibate, but going through a train wreck.  Couples join in ecstacy, unleashing the wild soul's conflicts within each.  If we resist the train wreck, we resist the wisdom of life, and it remains an anal retentive concept that tortures us forever because we are trying to control what is natural.

The civilized dilemma.

 

petra and arjan, i hear what you are saying. your journey is something i respect and i am glad that it is working so well for you. kudos to you both for your dedication.

sun warrior, you leave me rather speechless at first with your eloquence and mindfulness. and were my imzadi to be reading this and were he to tell you anything, he would let you know that that is quite an accomplishment! lol

but i do need to respond anyway, and find the words…

the path i have followed as an adult has led me to some very challenging places. there have been long stretches of celibacy which were not my choice, especially during my marriage, when i suffered a lot or was very numb to my feelings or both. there have been times of peace and acceptance. times of fulfilment.

of course, the love that i have shared with my imzadi was not about physical fulfilment, because of the distance, so in a very real sense, i realise as i write this, it was a blending together of both kinds of energies…. the delight and purity of celibacy with the joy of joining spiritually and mentally and emotionally with another. something i had never experienced before, and the depths and heights were breathtaking.

now that he is no longer there, i have time to reflect on it all, to integrate it more fully into my life. i see how each experience i have had has prepared me for something better, deeper and more real. i have learned in practical terms how not to compromise, how not to settle for the convenient, the comfortable in relationship. i believe that i had the opportunities to experience this joy and transcendence in a bond that would be incredibly intense but temporary and without a future so that i would truly believe in it for me, as a possibility to find in a real and completely fulfilling relationship. as i shared with you, i believe that were he and i to be able to give ourselves to each other without impediment, it would have derailed our missions and thus it is the grace of God that there was the distance that helps us stay on track and live our lives to God and in the service of God and loving others.

until a few weeks ago, i thought that all that talk about being with soulmates was for other people. i had had one experience of sharing deeply with someone but it was so hard won, over so many years, and had to remain friendship for it to be right because of circumstances, so i didn't really see that i could in the future ever have more than that. it was so much more with my imzadi, and the suffering that i have experienced because of the inevitable separations is both redemptive and relatively small compared to the incredible joy and vital lessons gained.

because of everything that i now know, i can move confidently forward in my friendships with both men and women, and i can continue to love people without fear or self protection with an open heart, for now without longing, but open to what may emerge in time.

and i am not afraid of longing. it is not a bad thing, IMO, for us to want a lot from each other. it is just human. i want a lot from all my friends and i guess they want a lot from me. i wanted a lot from my imzadi and he from me, too much i guess for him, but now hopefully he can find peace and balance. and i, i am discovering new and unexpected joys and freedoms.

ok, i don't know if any of this makes sense, sun warrior, this long ramble in the middle of the night. thank you for walking alongside me and being my friend. you are here just at the right time and i am profoundly grateful. light and peace to you

 

Not forgetting this blog from a Northern Man:

www.pellebilling.com

I agree with Pelle.

Greetings from the Teutoninan Grounds,

Albert