Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

In the highly popular and deeply communal The Making of 'The Song of the Nile' thread the conversation became increasingly focused on discussing primarily the Feminine voice, but also the Masculine.

Here is a space to continue this dialog.
In the next post I will repost several texts from that thread.


Pelle (mod)

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Lauren said Today, 5:46 AM:

Pelle,

Thank you you r thoughts about the difference between absolute and relative emancipation. I found it enlightening.

and to everyone,

I wonder… absolute emancipation.. why should we think much about it? I mean, we don't need to, do we? It IS. You ARE. How can we conceptualize it without getting trapped, I think, in a dogma-drugged masquerade of spiritual materialism and posturing? Having a concept of it is important, but I am skeptical about teaching it or even talking about it much, or ever taking the concept too literally. It is essential and foundational. In the same way we don't need to think/talk much about air and breath, we don't even need be conscious of them really, but to be conscious and fully present to them so that we can fully experience and appreciate this delicious breath, and this delicious breath, and this… that is a blessing. Concepts should not be equated with presence; though one can be fully present in a conceptual mode, it's relatively rare. Far more often concepts are used to distance oneself from raw presence.

I am attracted to mentors and teachers who are deeply committed to the “psychological healing and growth (that) make(s) our ego structure more authentic and functional.” (from Pelle.) And who simply rest in authentic presence. Attending to the horizontal and becoming more integrated, and serving that process in others, and letting evolution take care of itself. But holding to the center of the cross, never mistaking the horizontal healings and integrations for an arrival at perfection, rather, celebrating that (as Douglas Brooks says) “in an infinitely expanding universe enlightenment never ends, there is nothing to acheive; perfect always gets more perfect.”

I notice how easy it is (for myself) to substitute the compensatory delights of conceptual play for real presence to the full experience of now, and in that way to create a buffer between myself and bare experience. To escape a vulnerability that is actually the purest condition of being, but that seems, to the ego, unbearable. I have been aware of this tendency, to use the pleasures of thought and conversation to create a false sense of security, of self, and have been actively questioning the habit for almost as long, with the intention to increase self-awareness and accountability, to remember that feeling a sense of (false) security and solidity of self are not my deepest intentions, and to shift my behaviors accordingly. And yet, what a tenacious pattern it is! How seductive is the world of thought and concepts! And in truth, such beauty and inspiration do curl and pulse in the dna of the pure concept, that when a concept emerges from this place of order and clarity, it can bear a kind of transmission of the absolute, and catalyze transformation. I celebrate the realm of concepts, but I am cautious when I notice myself lost in their thrall. And when I am aware enough, I discern whether I am playing in thought to move into Union, or whether I am indulging mental calisthenics to avoid it.

I believe practice is of the deepest benefit. Practicing with absolute sincerity, but with a humorous skepticism towards your ambitions and attachments, and an awareness that your motives will get corrupted time and time again. Practice at its heart is stepping into vulnerability, unbelievable vulnerability. Sincere practice is an act of great courage. In fact, I think sincere practice is any moment in which we surrender completely to the vulnerability of our essential being.

I bring this all up here because what I've witnessed and been moved by on this thread is people really showing up in that exquisite vulnerability. Perhaps with some tentativeness, and not everyone to the same extent at all, but each, by their presence here, is acting courageously. This thread is a crucible, and by your presence here you announce your longings, own your strength, and reveal your shadows.

And here I am still dancing towards the heart of what I want to say.
The feminine voice is essential.
It is not a small problem in this community that the Feminine is dismissed.
I feel it is an essential problem, in that everything integral has the power to do is undermined by the community’s failure to fully honor the Feminine.

All the wisdom that integral has to offer, all the cognitive illumination, the healing and integration, the evolution of thought and the promise of inter-perspective fertility and collaboration, it is all compromised on a fundamental level by the failure of the larger integral community to embrace and live communion as wholeheartedly as it does agency. And the persistence of indifference towards or disinterest in what women have to say and what women are feeling and what men have to say when they are in a more feminine mode (for it is really this ultimately, what the Feminine has to say, regardless of who it speaks through) displayed by many (dare I say most? I’m not sure that that is accurate, but it may be…) of the men of integral, is damning. I think this disinterest can manifest in very subtle ways (as well as the usual obvious ways). It feels to me like a disengagement of attention, a subtle shift into “I don’t really have to pay as much attention to what She is saying” attitude. Or simply ”that does not interest me so I’m not going to contemplate it that deeply,” clearly a necessary act of discrimination which much be employed by all of us many times during our time spent here (on zaadz), but unconsciously and disproportionately employed by some whenever it is the Feminine speaking.

I know that the exceptions to these patterns abound, especially in interactions among those who’ve stuck with this thread so far, and that no matter how I say this defensiveness will be aroused, and fault found with my argument because it is clearly not that simple, not exclusively true, and possibly, not very often true with you. But do not discredit my thoughts because I haven’t bent over backwards here to acknowledge (and bow down in gratitude) to those of you who have grown or are growing beyond this tendency. Or because I am angry. (This anger is Love. Maybe that’s really hard to believe, but can you try?) Or because you can find fault with my argument, or my delivery. I’m sure you can. I’m sure some of the it is legitimate. Regardless, there is something being said here, that the women and some of the men of these forums have been saying and asking to be heard saying for a long, long time. Are you interested? If you aren’t, why not?
If I speak to a quality of scorn or dismissiveness that I have experienced or observed, and you know you are not like that, then don’t take it personally; in that case, it’s not about you. (Unless you feel really defensive, and then it probably is …)

It is deeper even than the relationships between men and women, or the Masculine and the Feminine as they play out in the polarities between people. It is deeper than the fact that our relationships which seek to engage and delight in the glorious polarity so often, so dismally, fail to engage those energies with joy and true, abiding, mutual respect. It plays out in the dynamics between people here often, most commonly between those who identify as primarily Masculine and those who identify as primarily Feminine in their deepest character. But it is deeper than all of this. The longing for realization of healthy Masculine presence and Feminine expression speaks to a deeper imbalance than that evidenced in our human relations. It is reflected in our primary relationships to Self, culture, and nature. And in each of these primary relationships we are a people in distress, out of balance.

The forces that sustain us, forces of nature and forces of consciousness – our way of being and our way of interacting with each other express such disharmony with these deepest forces. Our collective relationship to the Feminine is on egregious display in our profoundly arrogant and misguided indifference to the beauty, subtlety, grace, and inescapability of Nature. Earth contains us, as human organisms, not we it. As Thomas Berry says in Evening Thoughts (the book Jane recently recommended somewhere here and which I am devouring): “Hope for a renewal of the creative forces of the planet lies in a reali zation that the Earth is primary and that humans are derivative. That this dependence of the human on the integral functioning of the planet should be so obvious and yet so consistently denied and so extensively violated is beyond comprehension.”

I believe that this deNile of our own inherent Nature would not be possible were we living in a way, in a consciousness, that honors the Feminine and the Masculine equally. Yet this fear of the Feminine, of Nature, body, emotion, intuition, and life is so deeply and unconsciously conditioned, I can only see us transforming this disease through full and conscious acknowledgement that it exists. Through owning the countless ways it manifests. Through being accountable to how it is manifesting in you, in your habits and relations and biases…

That is why, when the Feminine here in our IIzaadz community sometimes rages or cuts or speaks plain truth or demands attention, She is acting in love. She is standing for truth. She is embodying courage. And She is calling us all forth, asking us to be who we really are, to drop the fear and defensiveness and to step into our true strength.

If you care about Integral, then you must fight to bring the Feminine true respect – the respect embodied in acts of attention and interest. You must learn to truly SEE her.
Otherwise, you are not integrated, and your actions indicate that you don't care enough to be integrated. What’s integral about that?

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Should this be a new thread?

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I want to share something Chogyam Trungpa said that I love, hopefully its relevance is evident:

“If you search for awakened heart, if you put your hand through your rib cage and feel for it, there is nothing there except for tenderness. You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness. This kind of sadness doesn’t come from being mistreated. You don’t feel sad because someone has insulted you or because you feel impoverished. Rather, this experience of sadness is unconditioned. It occurs because your heart is completely exposed. There is no skin or tissue covering it; it is pure raw meat. Even if a tiny mosquito lands on it, you feel so touched. Your experience is raw and tender and so personal.

The genuine heart of sadness comes from feeling that your nonexistent heart is full. You would like to spill your heart’s blood, give your heart to others. For the warrior, this experience of sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness. Conventionally, being fearless means that you are not afraid or that, if someone hits you, you will hit him back. However, we are not talking about that street-fighter level of fearlessness. Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.”

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Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Balder said: ” I formed an idealized image of the Feminine, and of the male in relationship to the Feminine. An image that was compensatory, not rooted in healthy, authentic versions of either.”

Colin said:  “This is also HUGE! I see this happening all around me. Men often take the pointing out of the agentic trampling of the feminine voice as an attack, or, at minimum, a shaming. And, in some feminist circles, this DOES happen! It seems we're seeing the effects of the pendulum swinging. Return to somewhere in the center is what is needed, and it seems that the process has indeed begun (we're bringing it forward right here!)”

I've heard some people talk about how male behaviour has actually been pathologized, starting in the 70s with the feminist movement, in some cases quite severely. Isn't this so? I think it was partly a positive thing (and I guess I'm speaking about the U.S. here, though it may be true for other places as well): the American male archetype needed to move away a bit from the John Wayne, Rambo type and at the same time room needed to be made for the feminine energy to move in, as the John Wayne/Rambo type tended to crowd them out. But of course the baby was often thrown out with the bathwater, and I can say that I too was left with an idealized version of the feminine, that there was a lot of social pressure to go in that direction, and that certain aspects of male behavior were often discouraged. But as Colin said, it does seem like things are coming back into balance now. Has anybody looked into David Deida's work? Is this what he means by “sick boy” and “sick girl”?

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hey all –

I noticed this post by Gina, written a couple of days ago, in the Today Is International Women's Day thread (which, interestingly, had been kind of “abandoned”) and I wanted to include her musings here too:

Liz started this thread with:

Does integral theory fully embrace feminism? In what ways has it excluded when it should have included?

Is the Divine Feminine fully included? Or is the very notion of maps and lattices and altitudes just antithetical to really including the feminine aspects and their inherent unruliness? Or is it just that masculine energy has been directing things (as is necessary of course) and women just need to get their hands a bit more dirty?

At the time it was posted I wanted so much to jump in and start a dialog in what I expected to be a very feminine exploration of our path in integral.  Maybe it would have been via personal experience or also in theory form yet with a softer gentler voice.  What happened IMO is the thread became very masculine very quickly.  This is not to say we couldn't have brought it back to feminine but it is a good example of how we didn't.

We are Feminine, We are Integral.  Do we have to label it feminism or can we say Feminine Integral?   It is through ourselves where the Integral Feminine will be defined.  IT IS US.

My personal experience has been that I can be very masculine and pointed when in inquiry mode and feminine and rounded when in midst of the flow of interaction.  Yet my masculine is very much present most of the time here in this forum.  Maybe it is because I ask and inquire as a way of deflecting my opinion (or my perceived lack of Informed opinion) and that is my shadow to overcome or maybe it is because this forum is Masculine and in order to be here I adapt.

The question for me is How am I going to dirty my hands and still keep my feminine flowing?

Starting to dig,

Gina 

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Ok Mary, I'll bite. 

I have been thinking about this for  a long time… maybe since I read of all things, Boomeritis.  It brought me to a real understanding of my separation of my feminine through feminism itself.  I have been asked many times to try and rename my interest in and desire to discuss spiritual feminism.  The word feminism often evokes an idea of separatism and anger maybe because of the founding energy of the 'fight' for equal rights.

These days I am consistently focused on wanting to be FOR my feminine nature and not in opposition of my or any masculine nature.  I can honestly say it has been a rough road.  The question that continually rises is:  How can I be fully feminine?  My separation of m/f has brought me to (much of the time) a much stronger masculine.

In my approach (so far) to the Integral Feminine has been to continually feed the part of me that Feels my integral views and practice.  I sometimes get caught up in wanting to say something 'right' (by using correct theory terms) and then get stuck in my mind and forget to feel my way through it.

Maybe this would be better placed in the Nile thread, but I am not currently feeling captured in the shadow as much as I am desiring a digging in the potential of what is emerging in the real feeling of my Integral Feminine. 

Thanks for calling me out….. and I hope to hear from others too about their process and ILP as it is defined by their feminine.

Gina

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hey Gina,

Gina: Boomeritis…brought me to a real understanding of my separation of my feminine through feminism itself.  I have been asked many times to try and rename my interest in and desire to discuss spiritual feminism.  The word feminism often evokes an idea of separatism and anger maybe because of the founding energy of the 'fight' for equal rights.

Yep, that is my understanding as well. We don't have to ‘fight' even though the Suffragettes are our heavyweight heroes.


These days I am consistently focused on wanting to be FOR my feminine nature and not in opposition of my or any masculine nature.  I can honestly say it has been a rough road.  The question that continually rises is:  How can I be fully feminine?  My separation of m/f has brought me to (much of the time) a much stronger masculine.

Right, you hold onto the pendulum at one end…blink…and find yourself at the other end wondering how the hell that happened.


In my approach (so far) to the Integral Feminine has been to continually feed the part of me that Feels my integral views and practice.  I sometimes get caught up in wanting to say something 'right' (by using correct theory terms) and then get stuck in my mind and forget to feel my way through it.

This still seems to be being caught at the wrong end of the pendulum. So, the vantage point must be differentiated from the polar movement by the still point at the top of the pendulum BEFORE any integration can be achieved. Only then can you look down and ‘objectify' the movement which was previously only felt subjectively.


I hope to hear from others too about their process and ILP as it is defined by their feminine.

My ego says my sister, mother, grandmother, aunts, etc are in me.

Trans-ego I see that those qualities associated with the feminine have always been there latent in mind. The feminine role models were reflections of the nature the mind always possessed. The role models helped me to re-cognize that nature.

Years ago a friend of mine was into the Native American Church. I went to a peyote healing ceremony offered by a Sioux medicine man. The afternoon before the ceremony, we had to purify our bodies in a sweat lodge. I unknowingly sat in a place of honor directly across from the medicine man with the red glowing rocks between us. My friend had warned me that the sweat would be intense. As they closed the canvas over the entrance to the lodge, I thought the heat was not too intense. Then the chanting started and the medicine man threw water onto the rocks. The steam went directly at me first and I lasted for only 2 songs. I had to leave before the start of the third chant. As I sat outside during the third chant, I could not believe that only 2 people had left the heat and smoke of the lodge. Most were in fact still SINGING inside! I decided to go back in for the final song. As I went in, ALL the men (except the medicine man) had their heads down by the edges of the canvas trying to get some fresh air. And ALL the women were sitting straight up and proud. The tent flap closed and the singing began again. It was the women that could tolerate the heat and were joyously engaged in the chant. Some things came to my mind afterwards, you know the jokes about the weaker/stronger sex, etc. Years later when I started a path of meditation, I was surprised to find out how physically hard day long and multi day retreats were. I tried everything i.e. begging, pleading, overpowering, etc. and nothing would assuage the pain in the legs. It was only when I remembered the women of the sweat lodge  (the way they tolerated, embraced and joyously surrendered to the heat) that a way opened up for me in my sitting. With this approach concentration formed effortlessly, the pain disappeared and my sitting practice progressed rapidly.

If we are attempting wholeness, my understanding tells me it is more prudent to divorce the dualistic qualities of mind from the apparent first tier ‘sources' we first encountered them in. KW has used agency and communion. Buddhism uses wisdom and compassion. The spiritual path is flown on these two wings. The problem I see in typecasting these two innate qualities of mind which we all possess regardless of gender, is if you are not that type you may devalue the other and not admit the other quality in yourself in the first place. And you will never achieve wholeness if you do.

Where is this all heading? Like Icarus, we must know the limits of even wisdom and compassion. The problem he faced was a lack of momentum and not letting go of his set of wings at the appropriate time in his attempt at self immolation.

peacelove,

e

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

e,

That was a very interesting deconstruction of my post.  Thank you for sharing your story about the sweat lodge and the connection to the women who were present.  I felt a kinship in those words as I have sat in a sweat or two and can attest to the demands of the heat.

e:  If we are attempting wholeness, my understanding tells me it is more prudent to divorce the dualistic qualities of mind from the apparent first tier ‘sources' we first encountered them in. KW has used agency and communion. Buddhism uses wisdom and compassion. The spiritual path is flown on these two wings. The problem I see in typecasting these two innate qualities of mind which we all possess regardless of gender, is if you are not that type you may devalue the other and not admit the other quality in yourself in the first place. And you will never achieve wholeness if you do.

Where is this all heading? Like Icarus, we must know the limits of even wisdom and compassion. The problem he faced was a lack of momentum and not letting go of his set of wings at the appropriate time in his attempt at self immolation.

Sweat lodges, Icarus, immolation…. is there a specific reason for the fire?

In flames,

Gina

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gina: That was a very interesting deconstruction of my post. 


Construction/deconstruction cannot be separated. That which is constructed inevitably falls apart. You are the second person to say I am doing this. I am really just responding inline with your text.


———

e:  If we are attempting wholeness, my understanding tells me it is more prudent to divorce the dualistic qualities of mind from the apparent first tier ‘sources' we first encountered them in. KW has used agency and communion. Buddhism uses wisdom and compassion. The spiritual path is flown on these two wings. The problem I see in typecasting these two innate qualities of mind which we all possess regardless of gender, is if you are not that type you may devalue the other and not admit the other quality in yourself in the first place. And you will never achieve wholeness if you do.

e:Where is this all heading? Like Icarus, we must know the limits of even wisdom and compassion. The problem he faced was a lack of momentum and not letting go of his set of wings at the appropriate time in his attempt at self immolation.


G: Sweat lodges, Icarus, immolation…. is there a specific reason for the fire?


Fire renders all dualistic notions of ontology ridiculously superfluous. It even consumes itself!


G: In flames,

:-)
Here let me help, hold this gallon of gas, and let me…blow…blow…blow.


peace & love,

e

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

e. You are the second person to say I am doing this
Maybe it is because the wording and approach is received by the original poster as critical and observational.  And by critical I mean mental.

e. But that is the thing Gina, you cannot transcend/include that which remains subjective. You must differentiate first, transcend and then include. So, you must first disidentify with your partialness before there can ever be a chance at wholeness. For most this is rather scary as it leads one open and vulnerable because they do not know what they are transcending into. But that is part of the fun of it, yes?

My feelings toward your posts are a bit dualistic.  My highest self understands what you are saying and identifies with aspects as possible truths for me.  My not so highest self is living here in this body and sees your posts as preachy, distant and impersonal.  Disidentifying for me, means losing my humanity.  I choose a lesser self over a disconnected distant highest self.

Would that then make me wood?

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

e. You are the second person to say I am doing this

G:Maybe it is because the wording and approach is received by the original poster as critical and observational. And by critical I mean mental.

Pale attempts at brevity.



e. But that is the thing Gina, you cannot transcend/include that which remains subjective. You must differentiate first, transcend and then include. So, you must first disidentify with your partialness before there can ever be a chance at wholeness. For most this is rather scary as it leads one open and vulnerable because they do not know what they are transcending into. But that is part of the fun of it, yes?

G: My feelings toward your posts are a bit dualistic. My highest self understands what you are saying and identifies with aspects as possible truths for me. My not so highest self is living here in this body and sees your posts as preachy, distant and impersonal.

The way seems clear then. Relate to the highest in the other and allow/tolerate/forgive any real or imagined idiosyncratic shortcomings. Namaste.



G: Disidentifying for me, means losing my humanity. I choose a lesser self over a disconnected distant highest self.

The transcendent self is also immanent but quiet so not readily noticed.

Besides…“You possess that which cannot be lost in a ship wreck.”

What good is waiting till everything is forcefully taken away from you (e.g. humanity) to realize that?



G: Would that then make me wood?

Beautifully honest.



Take good care Gina!

Love

eric

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

While driving to work I starting to think about how I show up in the world in both healthy and unhealthy ways and how women around me show me different levels of development.

Below is pulled from the Introduction to Integral Theory and Practice and using the healthy and unhealthy feminine as stated below, I would love to start a dialog on what developmental lines look like in both forms.  OR…. maybe in color spectrum.  Healthy / Unhealthy female in Amber, Orange…… is that even a distinction that can be created?  Has that distinction been created?
 

If the healthy feminine principle tends toward flowing, relationship, care, and compassion, the unhealthy feminine flounders in each of those. Instead of being in relationship, she becomes lost in relationship. Instead of a healthy self in communion with others, she loses her self altogether and is dominated by the relationships she is in. Not a connection, but a fusion; not a flow state, but a panic state; not a communion, but a melt-down. The unhealthy feminine principle does not find fullness in connection, but chaos in fusion. Using IOS, you will find ways to identify both the healthy and unhealthy masculine and feminine dimensions operating in yourself and in others. 
Pointing to an unhealthy type is not a way to judge people but a way to understand and communicate with them more clearly and effectively.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hi Gina

I'm certainly interested in learning more about my feminine, healthy and unhealthy …. and any light that can be shone on different expressions of the feminine type at different levels would be helpful too.

In the piece from Ken that you quote, the unhealthy feminine principle is typified as ” ...lost in relationship … (losing) her self altogether  and … dominated by the relationships she is in …  fusion … panic state … melt-down … (the) unhealthy feminine principle (finds)  chaos in fusion.” I can imagine such a hypothetical she as typified above as being ” .. very agressive, reactive and absolute ..” at the same time – yet, it still sounds to me like your colleague's “unhealthy outbursts” are coming from her masculine rather than her feminine.

I might be looking at it too simplistically, so it would be great if you could enlarge a little on what your assessment of your colleague's unhealthy feminine principle is based on.

And I'd love to hear more about how you ” .. connected with several lines in both healthy and unhealthy while trying to figure out what to DO” about your car!

All best,

Lol

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Lol,

It's interesting you mentioned my coworker as coming from her masculine, I thought that too at first but then after sitting with it a bit, I would say she first comes from not being heard, then goes into chaos, which then may present more masculine in its end result.  I questioned that too because then is all anger masculine?  Kali was mentioned in previous postings and although she gets a bad rap, she might be the way to see how a feminine energy can be agressive and not fall into 'typical'  passive agressive anger.

As far as my 'incident' goes…. hmmm….. Well cars and I have a very interesting relationship.  For me they act as a living metaphor for my life.  When my car is dirty, I am not 'keeping house', when I am driving agressively, I know it is time to check in and find out what is going on inside of me.  So, when I went out to my car after spending the day lazying in front of a friend's TV (because I don't own one) and it wouldn't start I sat in amazement to it's teachings.  First I attempted to figure out what was wrong then I tried to jump start via my stick shift which led to me sticking out in the middle of the street needing REAL help, which I received and ended up pushing the car back into the driveway.  After my helpers left, I was left alone with my thoughts and feelings.  Abandoned, alone, stranded.  I wanted to cry, I felt frustrated and worried about the hows and the details of what life would be like in the next 24 -48 hours without the car, then I sat some more….. eventually getting out of the car, going back into my friend's house and deciding that I wouldn't be taking any action until the next day.
For me, the unhealthy feminine in me would have spun way out into the helplessness creating chaos and emotional reactivity.  Instead, I sat let it start to spin, and then chose to allow for something new to present itself tomorrow.
Lines?  emotional, cognitive, inter personal (helpers), needs?, even self identity and spiritual developmental lines were accessed

whew…… I am tired even retyping the experience.  I can't say for all women (because I have friends who are car savvy) but car brakedowns can really spin me into a shadow of victim and helplessness really quickly.

Thanks for the quesitons Lol, 

Gina

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Thanks Gina, that was helpful. In thinking of your co-worker I had limited imagination, (only) relating to her as having (and expressing) a strong animus; for all I know she may well have a strong animus, but relating to her as not feeling heard, maybe not feeling respected/ appreciated – this for me is cause enough for angry feelings to arise, particularly if self-esteem in some area is low. Yet reflecting again on her as being “aggressive, reactive, and absolute” does seem to support the idea that red and amber are more “masculine”.

Dharma teachings talk of anger coming from “unhappy mind”. It's clear now thinking about it that how we express our anger must also largely be down to our conditioning. I don't witness many men able or wanting to keep in touch with their hearts when speaking out in an energised way about a wrong-doing, whether it's been done to them or whether they've witnessed it and so felt outraged — but I have witnessed women, with tears in their eyes, expressing anger and outrage at something, yet clearly keeping in touch with their hearts, and their dignity. I feel humbled when I see this, and relate to it as a precious teaching.

Lol

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I am having a hard time keeping up with so much interesting discussion. Gina, I love what you are writing about here…..and will look forward to having some time to post more later. I agree that as women, we really need to look carefully and deeply at the ways in which we become sloppy and ‘hysterical’, and how we get a payoff on some level for this behaviour. I love it when men stop and help me to fix a tire, or whatever, but being competent, and stopping to help others is easy enough to do too. Being competent and capable at mechanical aspects is not unfeminine, it is really just part of being a functional human…..there is no need to think that being breathless and helpless serves anybody, indeed, it does us ALL a great disservice…..I have read the John Gray literature, or at least some of it. And it triggers me like nothing else….I actually ripped up one book (Men are from Mars…Women are From VEnus.) and burned it in the fire place as I read it, I was so pissed off. It promotes some belief in a steriotypically incompetent female, in which ‘the man’ must continually rescue her from her own predicatment…and John Gray seems to pretend that this rescuing/being saved behaviour is ‘sexy’…well, in my opinion, this is utter bullshit. Men and women stuck in this ridiculous patterning are pathetic…and it is no wonder that these relationships are an utter and dysfunctional yawn after a while.
What we must do, regardless of gender, is show up with all of our shining glory, competence, fearless, talents and be authentic and real in our desire to love and share and care for each other….
I have more thoughts…but I must get off the computer and live the outside life for a bit.
thank you
Jane

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Jane! I knew you'd be here girl! Its an endlessly adventurous discussion this one…

It brings in our earlier discussion about the “anima” and “animus” - the inner images that men and women have of the other sex. And i have some new thoughts on that.

What I'm hearing you object to in the marilyn monroe style breathlessness and helplessness is the falsity of it, and the fixity of it. Is that right?(I can just hear some guru telling this woman to breath into her belly and for ever end the “alluring” breathlessness). I would agree that these “shells” are a bit see through and the bullshit of it can be a bit sickmaking…I suppose the ever competent, feelingless man is the equivalent on the male side.

Anyway I'm shooting the breeze here, cos its early early in themorning. I hope you had a grrreat weekend.

Love Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I want to reproduce Pelle's tango post here, if thats OK Pelle? because I feel its relevant to this thread. Here it is:

****

Enough of that. Let's return to the subject of feminine and masculine faces. Like I said earlier tango is an important metaphor to me in this arena, since body language shows us so powerfully what's really going on, under the surface.

In tango the woman follows, this is what is taught. At the same time following is a complete disaster. Now that seems to be very paradoxical and even confused, very unlike me to write something like that :) But this is what happens when we enter feminine territory. Paradox becomes the norm, at least on the surface.

Women cannot only follow in tango, they need to dance! Even if you don't get a single initiative from the man during the whole song you still dance. Yes you have to stay on one and the same foot throughout, but interiorly and maybe even with you deeper musculature you dance. Following the man doesn't make any sense if you're not already dancing.

You cannot take over the lead when you're “following”, that will make the dance as dynamic and interesting as two MGM lovers, if you know what I'm saying. However you can suggest a movement. Subtly moving your body in one direction (without leaving the foot you are standing on) suggests that you want to take a step in the other direction. Stand up and try it yourself, this is how the human body moves. A large movement to one direction is preceded by a tiny movement in the opposite direction. In other words women can affect the dance in lots of ways (I have described but one of these), without having to become the predominantly agentic part. But it only works if the man both knows how to dance and wants the woman to co-create the dance. So while co-creation between a man and a woman can involve switching agentic poles, I am of the strong opinion that this is not necessary to have a flowing feminine-masculine dance that co-creates in the moment.
****

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

And I want to say this.

Pelle it's a great metaphor you present here about the masculine and feminine. And its got me thinking' there are real paradoxes in the principle that the “masculine leads, the feminine follows”. Actually, I'm sure that Deida looked sly when he used these terms in his workshop J My own sense of things at the moment…

When a man has integrated his feminine and masculine parts to a good degree so that he is in touch with his values and feelings and can act upon them, then he becomes the ideal dance partner. For only then does he know the ‘how' and feel deeply the ‘want' in this line of yours Pelle

If he wants to, he can in the dance, feel her subtly, and do what it takes for her to flower. She cannot shine unless she feels him feeling her heart and doing his best for it. So he adjusts his lead in order to allow the greatest radiance to shine forth from her. In this sense, he takes his lead from the pulsating feminine energy or as some writers put it he serves the Feminine.

But as you make clear, the key point is “only if he wants to”. For the real feminine that he is serving is the inner one, not the outer one. The inner feminine who is the lens to his Heart, and to what he deeply wants.

If he were to make the mistake of projecting the goddess, instead of owning it, onto the outer partner, then the universe will let him know its not sustainable. To begin with, if he should follow her desire at the expense of his deeper knowing, while his partner may look as pleased as a cat with cream, she will wilt deep inside. That's the nature of the Feminine - she loves presence more than cream.

But here's where I feel it gets even more interesting. In serving his heart while feeling her heart he serves the One Heart. Soo….in a moment of deep play between the feminine and masculine, where there is profound trust, he can allow the outer woman to carry the inner feminine for him, and she can allow him to carry the masculine for her.

And in this the man as the Masculine “leads” but takes his lead from the woman as the Feminine. But as they are in communion,  it doesn't really make sense to even say that.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Beautifully put, Gitanjali.

“For the real feminine that he is serving is the inner one, not the
outer one. The inner feminine who is the lens to his Heart, and to what
he deeply wants.”

Mmmmmm

And …. in the dance where we're not cheek to cheek, I can feel for her heart sometimes as if I were feeling for something blindfolded …. uncertainly, tentatively …. and maybe all I'm feeling at this point, or all that's being reflected back, is my uncertainty.

But I will still be keeping as present as I can. It's heartening to hear you saying:  ”That's the nature of the Feminine - she loves presence more than cream.”


“But how is that different from mutual projections?….now there's a question…:)”

Maybe the harmomious resonance draws it from the other rarher than it being projected by the other?

Lol

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali: But here's where I feel it gets even more interesting. In serving his heart while feeling her heart he serves the One Heart. Soo….in a moment of deep play between the feminine and masculine, where there is profound trust, he can allow the outer woman to carry the inner feminine for him, and she can allow him to carry the masculine for her.

This is where I begin to ask, are we in trust within ourselves?  If we the feminine do not fully trust ourselves, our hearts, our beings, how is it we could possibly surrender and allow ourselves to trust fully in the masculine.  The profound trust you mention is only allowed to the degree the feminine is able to surrender.

If we want to dance and have the freedom to express ourselves fully, isn't it our responsiblity to know our beings, trust ourselves and dance like we Know Shiva is present?

Thank you for playing!  this is yummy

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali wrote (quoting me in bold):

In other words women can affect the dance in lots of ways (I have described but one of these), without having to become the predominantly agentic part. But it only works if the man both knows how to dance and wants the woman to co-create the dance.

If he wants to, he can in the dance, feel her subtly, and do what it takes for her to flower. She cannot shine unless she feels him feeling her heart and doing his best for it. So he adjusts his lead in order to allow the greatest radiance to shine forth from her. In this sense, he takes his lead from the pulsating feminine energy or as some writers put it he serves the Feminine.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Lol,

There are two parts to your response that jumped out at me

Yet reflecting again on her as being “aggressive, reactive, and absolute” does seem to support the idea that red and amber are more “masculine”.

It feels that way to me.  It also seems (and this me speaking without facts) that Red/Amber development is the foundation of the lost feminine as a whole.  It was in Purple.. mystical, unknown that we (fem) had more presence and to me our “voice” did not present again until green.  Now we are in what feels like a struggle against the masses to be heard, I think this where the anger and the frustration comes into play.  Maybe we haveve seemingly trancended our Amber/Orange masculinity yet I still believe our biggest challenge in the feminine is to actively go looking for our shadow male as it resides not just within our personal experience but also in our societal constructs on the whole

I don't witness many men able or wanting to keep in touch with their hearts when speaking out

Sadly, I don't witness this much either both in Anger and in Being.  I know I am over generalizing and can get into trouble here, but this goes back to trust for me.  If the masculine were to trust his emotions more would it then be safer to trust himself in being with the feminine?  This seems basic but for me, this is where the disconnect for relationship generally begins.

Gina

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Dear Ones,

I just caught up with this thread and am blown away by the sincerity of investigation and the tenderness of respect.  I hope to find a way soon to contribute.

Yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Oh this is great! there's some much here I want to receive and respond to…and I have to get ready for work….(sigh)
Michael! its great to hear you again…come in to the hearth and warm yourself by the fire….

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Lol

It struck me when you said it was heartening to hear that the Feminine prefers presence to cream. It opened a door for me into the pain or struggle men feel about this….I recall Michael saying something similar to me once (if I may mention here, Michael).

But it doesn't leave men with an easy task :) Presence is harder to embody than making money…

I would love to hear more about what you mean about the difference between mutual projections and mutual “drawing” from each other…

Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Lol and everyone

What is masculine presence to you? What do you do to allow it in?

Love
Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gina

Yes! trust of what is within. Trust of the Heart which unites the inner feminine and masculine – I feel women are needing to learn to trust their inner agency as well as their femininity. Just as the masculine learns to access both his Masculine and his inner Feminine, she learns to access both her inner Feminine and Masculine- the shiva within. Then as within, so without.

Pelle,

The “how to” is indeed for both. It is not an easy task but the woman would have to know how to access her core energy.

Of course, she could fake it. And that fakeness would resonate with a man faking presence and so there would be something to dance with. Shells dancing with shells.

This is beautifullly put.

If both the man and the woman have this kind of basic connection to their core energies, then there is no limit to how they can inspire each other and get the energy flowing. The man focuses on agentically initiating, but paradoxically he instantly finds himself in communion with the vibrating feminine and thereby accesses his inner feminine. With the help of the woman the man can dive deep into communion and beingness, however, he still retains a “lifeline” to his agentic side at all times - such is his responsibility. The woman on the other hand focuses on connecting using her communal feminine energy, but as soon as the dance starts she paradoxically finds herself needing to present herself clearly (agentically) for the dance to function. Just as she helps the man find deep communion and beingness, he challenges her to find her agency and inner masculine - and she does.

Can you say more about: what is it for women that is equivalent to the man going into communion and beingness in a woman's presence…this “needing to present herself more clearly”? What do you feel happens\ing  to a woman when you are present and dancing with her?

Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali,

If the following is an open question to both men and women

What is masculine presence to you? What do you do to allow it in?

Willingness to participate and serve with dignity might be one way to characterize an ideal state of masculine presence.  It may be brought forth by listening, considering, requesting clarification if necessary, and not assuming there is always an appeal for a “fix.”  I have the utmost trouble with that fixer part - my personal frontier.   I am beginning to wonder if it has to do with a sense of my shadowed fear and powerlessness in the face of what has been previously unexpressed by women (or so it seemed to me.)  I don't mean to say that women have not been raising the issue, its just that the language never addressed my (men's) blindness in a way that I HAD to consider it with such urgency.

yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hi Gitanjali

Does your name mean “Gita of the Angels” : )

I don't know if you're 11 or 12 hours ahead of me, but here it's turned 1 a.m. and I've got to get to bed!

Will give attention to your questions 2moro.

Lol

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I don't know why Gitanjali chose her name or if there are other meanings, but Gitanjali is a famous poem by Rabindranath Tagore; I believe the title means, “song offering.”  (Holding the hands together when you say “namaste” is called anjali mudra and may refer to shiva-shakti polarity).

Quickly tossing professor pipe back in my drawer, I retire,

Balder

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Just wanted to pop in and say that I'm in absolute de-light, awe, and gratitude to be able to participate in such exquisite unfoldings of authenticities…. (thru lurking). 

It's nearly 1am and I have two girls to ready for school in the wee hours…. and I simply *wanted* to say that I am savoring each morsel of this delicious thread. 

Honoring the voices,
~ Stacy

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali:
Can you say more about: what is it for women that is equivalent to the man going into communion and beingness in a woman's presence…this “needing to present herself more clearly”? What do you feel happens\ing  to a woman when you are present and dancing with her?

Yes, “needing to present herself more clearly”. If a woman only has her vibrating feminine energy but lacks all agency, then it's like dancing with a blob of jelly (pardon the metaphor). When the man starts initiating/leading, whether it's dancing or in everyday life, a woman who is only looking for communion becomes weak and in a way follows/walks three feet behind him (like women sometimes do in the Middle East, this is typical of amber male-female interactions). However, in reality the man starting to initiate/lead means that the woman is challenged to wake up to her agency, unless she wants to lose her autonomy. Waking up to her autonomy/agency is like saying to the man:

“I'm here now, I'm present, I'm my own person. I don't have to let you be the predominant initiator, but I will choose to let it be so, since I have deep trust in you and know that you will initiate in a way that's good for both of us. I also know that you will leave space for me to initiate should I want to, and listen to me if I feel you are going astray. As long as I trust you I will embrace you and do everything I can to give you the gift of deep communion.”

To me this pattern explains why trust seems to be the master switch for a woman in a relationship.

This is how I see things but I'm open to listening to what the women on this thread think.



Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hi Lol! Gita of the Angels sounds like a great golden Klimt cloak to put on when I want! Just don't ask me the rest of my name…for that brings in the other side ;)

Professor Balder, you are the first person I have met who told me before I told them about the anjali mudra. In fact you know more than me about my name. I just show people the mudra. I had no idea it could be the shiva-shakti polarity. That —explains—-everything!!!! I shall beat my parents soundly for naming me and thus choosing destiny…

Pelle this is revelation for me. Both the man and woman hold the tension within between two poles - communion and agency. A man's presence challenges her to, and also “transmits”, a deeper ability to access agency , just as in being with her he “instantly finds himself in communion with the vibrating feminine and thereby accesses his inner feminine. With the help of the woman the man can dive deep into communion and beingness”.

And the mirroring continues…it is her “responsibility” to hold on to her feminine heart even as she is agentic, just as it is his, to have a lifeline to his agency.

Michael, the tension between intimacy and autonomy, or communion and agency is right here in your sentence…

“Willingness to participate and serve with dignity might be one way to characterize an ideal state of masculine presence.”

In my view, dignity is inextricably linked to boundary making, separation and agency (bring to mind someone you know of with great dignity and poise), and participation to communion.

Here's another thought. The desire to “fix” when it is not the need of the situation may be a desire to collapse the tension that must be held within yourself between agency and communion.

Perhaps holding the tension is a principle that emerges not only in each dancer but in the space between them. I read a really interesting piece on Eros by JR Haule (which i cant find the link for anymore) And which echos this principle. This time its talking about the we-space” itself. Sustained eros between two requires us to accept both the chalice of love (communion) and the sword of separation (autonomy).

That question I was asking: what is the difference between mutual projections (unsustainable) and communion/exchange of energies? My feeling is that part of the answer is in this:

“I don't have to let you be the predominant initiator, but I will choose to let it be so,”

In the latter we have choice. We can only make a conscious choice to access or not access a part of us when we have owned that part of us, when we have taken it out of the Shadow. Projections are unconscious, it is shadow material we project. This means we need well-developed egos - ones that are strong and large enough to embrace much previous shadow, to let them go in love.

Stacy what is it about this subject and these people willing to open up… I love it too…an its good to have you here.

Time for cooking a steak, I've just got a very sharp new cook's knife…

XX Gita of the Angels

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Great post Gitanjali.

For now just a brief comment:

Sustained eros between two requires us to accept both the chalice of love (communion) and the sword of separation (autonomy).


So true. No matter how connected you are to your core energy you need time alone to repolarize and recharge.


Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gita of the Angels   

( …. or maybe I should check first what you're wearing today? :))

I'm lovin' your new golden cloak    ….  takes me to Angels' Song    ….  which takes me to Angelus

Anreelygelus now!!

Gitanjali: ”I would love to hear more about what you mean about the difference between mutual projections and mutual “drawing” from each other…”

You'd already given the context: ”….in a moment of deep play between the feminine and masculine, where there is profound trust, he can allow the outer woman to carry the inner feminine for him, and she can allow him to carry the masculine for her.”

And I think Pelle's way ahead of me, and has articulated beautifully part of what was taking shape for me, in what you've already quoted (of him):

” … he instantly finds himself in communion with the vibrating feminine [oooooh … ed.] and thereby accesses his inner feminine.  With the help of the woman the man can dive deep into communion and beingness.”

What I had forming was the image …. in the harmonious resonance of the relational field …. of the woman's masculine being em-powered, lit up like the Aurora Australis, by the man's masculine-charged field …. and likewise the man's feminine being em-powered by the woman's feminine-charged field …. and in this sense these inner m/f being 'drawn out' from where they're residing deeper within.

And you've alluded to another part with ”And the mirroring continues…”

I'd been musing about the way oppositions can be illustrated in astrology. One common (and limited!) way to look at planets in opposition is that they are adversarial. And … if you have two planets facing each other across the circle, there is an axis between them, linking them …. this axis is also a continuum …. where does one end and the other begin? Again if we think of two planets, say Mercury and Pluto, across from each other, each symbolising an aspect of the psyche …. Mercury can see hermeself reflected in the mirror of Pluto …. with this mirror imbued as it is with Pluto's qualities, so in this way imbuing Mercury with Pluto's qualities …. and vice versa.

As for your other question: ”What is masculine presence to you? What do you do to allow it in?”

For most of my life much of my agentic masculine has been in the shadow. I feel it's only relatively recently begun to emerge, to be re-claimed and owned. Many different things have contributed to this, but one stands out for me …. the ongoing cultivation of embodied presence. As this has deepened, as self and identity have become more integrated into it, it has lost its earlier fragility and is so much less likely to be weakened, dispersed or even (temporarily) lost in the intensity of a relational field, whether that be with someone I have the hots for, or the patrolman with his blue flashing light.

And of course there are incentives …. as you said:  “… the Feminine … loves presence more than cream.“  …. well, alright ….  8)

I feel I've been discovering and owning more of both my Masculine and my Feminine in this deepening of embodied presence …. so this is what I've been *doing* to allow both in (more).

…. but you're also asking ”What is masculine presence to you?”

Now that it's coming out of the shadow more I can better relate to masculine agency.

I would second the qualities you've already mentioned: autonomy, boundary making, separation.

I would echo Michael's dignity …. and add forebearance, courage.

But foremost, possibly, is Spirit. Two verses from a Santo Daime 'hymn' express this for me:

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Didn't mean to be rude by not signing off …. something happened at the end that wouldn't let me add anything further.

“He of the town of laurels” xx

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Beautiful stuff Lol. Thanks for painting a picture of the masculine.


BTW, I didn't know that there was an Aurora Australis, I thought we had something special in this part of the world 

But since I'm feeling awefully grand today, here it is, the Aurora Australis:








Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

That's a far out picture, Pelle! I guess that must make woolfie a dingo.

Lol

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Jaysus people!

Maybe we ought to get back to fightin' a little.  My mush factor is through the roof. 

My impression is that of a Phoenix arising In the field of seaching disclosure.  The effect on me is disarming.  Gitanjali's sword of separation hangs limp in my hand. 

I am concerned about dignity and communion - how effortlessly I might misuse these words.  My dignity, if a shadow's mask, is but a defensive lie.  If false, it is vulnerable to insult, and must be protected with reaction - no time for response.  If true, it is not just a sense of self-regard but, more, a sense of regard for other that springs from my own well of self-trust. 

Communion is at the very edge of the event horizon of absorption and loss of autonymy.  To foster and en-joy communion, is to dance, like Pelle says on the edge of initiation, surrender, acceptance and allowance.  In this dance we can choose, in communion, to exchange these actions between each other's animus and anima and thereby transcend gender.

Initiation may be a masculine expression, but that does not limit initiation to the province of men just as receptivity, nurturance, and fecundity are not the exclusive property of women.  It seems that this dialogue is benefitting from women speaking from their animus as well as men from their anima.  Most amazing dear ones, most amazing.

yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Wow, this is great…. I will stick with my current favorite topic ;P

Pele: As long as I trust you I will embrace you and do everything I can to give you the gift of deep communion.”

To me this pattern explains why trust seems to be the master switch for a woman in a relationship.

This is how I see things but I'm open to listening to what the women on this thread think.

The longing for the deepest levels of trust is so strong for me it brings tears to my eyes.  I know my trust is defined by own capcity to … trust.. ha.   It is the longing that pulls me to deeper and deeper knowings of Feeling and of Being and yet each moment is faced with the fear of once again finding there is not a space being held for me where I can dance.  I fear there is not a masculine balancing my feminine.  AND because I have not seen it, experienced it,  my rational mind interjects with “well then, it is not possible”

Diving into my capcity to trust is my key to feeling the delicate balance of the wholeness with in me.  Having my feminine freed from my own masculine constructs is where my perfection lies.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Lol:  For most of my life much of my agentic masculine has been in the shadow. I feel it's only relatively recently begun to emerge, to be re-claimed and owned. Many different things have contributed to this, but one stands out for me …. the ongoing cultivation of embodied presence. As this has deepened, as self and identity have become more integrated into it, it has lost its earlier fragility and is so much less likely to be weakened, dispersed or even (temporarily) lost in the intensity of a relational field, whether that be with someone I have the hots for, or the patrolman with his blue flashing light.

I feel this way about my feminine at times.  Feeling the balance of m/f has come from directly claiming my feminine and exploring my shadow feminine while seeing my masculine more clearly for its role within me.  I once said to a friend that I believed I had been acting in masculine to hide from my feminine shadow… uncovering that was a clarifying day which created an opening to balance and a pathway to chose healthy aspects of both.

Thank you all for this amazing exchange…… it is opening all new pathways to being.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

From Gitanjali's post above:

That question I was asking: what is the difference between mutual projections (unsustainable) and communion/exchange of energies? My feeling is that part of the answer is in this:

“I don't have to let you be the predominant initiator, but I will choose to let it be so,”

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Pelle,

These lines completely caught my attention:

This last step (ie transcending green) is a very hard one to take. We can feel inside like we're actually sliding downwards instead of growing, and some people will certainly think that that's what we're doing. It is also scary to open oneself up to the flow of power that comes from connecting to our own polarity.

What comes to mind for me is that it is not a “downward” slide per se, but an inward “drop” to the floor of ourselves where such things as devotion to the masculine and its agenic issues comes face-to-face with our own femininty.  Even the beginnings of such a consideration touch the fear associated with loss of life-long attachment to pure (I mean false-pure here) masculine identity.  Allowing the “slide” as you put it, to proceed, more fear will be encountered as we progress inward.  I think that we must choose to witness/experience that fear as magnificent before it has a chance to adrenalize us into a resistant, reactionary state.

This, I think, is reflective of what Gitanjali said,

“I don't have to let you be the predominant initiator, but I will choose to let it be so,”

in that we do not have to be the initiator of this inward look, but let the offered consideration serve as the initiator, and observe from our anima while on the way in.  This may provide some perspective on the devotion-to-“pure”-masculine identity thing AND give us the courage to face a masculine fear with a feminine face.

Generally, I feel that I have subverted what may be, on balance, more feminine energies within myself to this parade of ballsy masculinity.  That cannot be a “good” thing in the long run.  I am coming to learn that I feel “better” when I am softer and less “certain” in a male agenic sense.  Kindness arises.

yer pal,

Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Can I just say what a wonderful chain of posts to read as I sip my morning tea (Chinese red dates).

It feels good to feel the living and pulsating consciousnesses behind the posts. To know you are all..somewhere…right now…and you all have such crazeee thoughts and feelings.

Lol of the laurels I loved reading your post. And was amazed by the astrological metaphor. In my own chart I have Aquarius and Leo in direct opposition, and you've just given me a new way of looking at it…Growl says the Aquarian, and the Lion lies down with the lambs.

And talk about synchronicities – embodiment…I was feeling exactly the same about my femininity yesterday - embodiment is allowing it to emerge organically and every day has become an adventure. Vague undefined states that I have been yearning for now come up as part of that embodiment. I find I breathe more habitually from my belly, and I feel that has been a two way thing. As I accepted my core energy, it became easier to breathe from there, and as I breathe from there, I feel the energy emerging…

You've also brought up Shiva (spirit) and Shakti (soul) and I want to speak to that but I feel later…

Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Just to add Michael wot I am sure you would know…if you have subverted your feminine it will come up as addictions. She wont be denied.

I was just reading about the addiction to perfectionism this morning…thats Medusa, the shadow feminine, who turned verything into perfect dead stone…

i need a scary emoticon here!
Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Pelle of the Northern Lattitudes…

Are you SURE thats the Australis?

As self appointed representative of Oz on this thread, I need to speak up on such important symbolic issues.

My main argument is.

If it is the A.A.

why isnt the “dingo” upside down?

Ambassador G, she of the gum tree guild

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali,

Thanks for that piece about addiction and the shadowed feminine.  It had never occured to me before - evidence of blindness - a good one for the “slide” within.

And might I say that I am cheered to hear us talking astrology to one another.  I thought there might be a ban on it in the I-I.

best,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hi Michael, so what's your sign and what does it mean to ya?
:)
G

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali,

Libra sun, Aries moon in opposition, Sag rising  - fiery, airy, conflicted, determined, intuitive, not about balance and harmony so much as seeking it.

yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I was listening to these dialogs and found this dialog on II from Terry Patten.  I had not seen these before and was drawn to the Wedge in the Heart of Being video where he talks about how embedded we are in the masculine.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Terry Patten is great isnt he Gina? I love those deep eyes.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hey Michael,

You said: ”And might I say that I am cheered to hear us talking astrology to one another.  I thought there might be a ban on it in the I-I.”

Astrology did get tarred with the PTF brush here when that particular axe was being ground …

An Integral Astrology thread was started over on the IN forums, and there has been a call for one to be started here at I-I …. but for me, trying to relate it to, or fit it into, AQAL theory is too much of a head-fuck. I actually like it as it is. I do think, if one knows the basic rudiments of astrology, that the natal chart offers a wonderful glimpse, and possible insight, into a person's soul potential …. but not in any intrusive or 'revealing' way.

I'm all for everyone swapping birth details …. however, would advocate PMs for this …. although having said that I feel this thread is robust enough to incorporate all sorts of aspects, and the chart can teach us a lot about our m/f or f/m balance.

You also said: ”Generally, I feel that I have subverted what may be, on balance, more feminine energies within myself to this parade of ballsy masculinity.  That cannot be a “good” thing in the long run.  I am coming to learn that I feel “better” when I am softer and less “certain” in a male agenic sense.  Kindness arises.”

I was a little non-plussed at the opening lines of your “Jaysus people!” post …. what was speaking out there?

And … I loved, and resonated well with

”I am concerned about dignity and communion - how effortlessly I might misuse these words.  My dignity, if a shadow's mask, is but a defensive lie.  If false, it is vulnerable to insult, and must be protected with reaction - no time for response.  If true, it is not just a sense of self-regard but, more, a sense of regard for other that springs from my own well of self-trust.”

And … ”Communion is at the very edge of the event horizon of absorption and loss of autonymy.” …. what a fantastic line!

Love to you, brother,

Lol

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali:
If it is the A.A.
why isnt the “dingo” upside down?
Ambassador G, she of the gum tree guild

The dingo isn't upside down because cameras in Australia are programmed to automatically turn the picture around (smart, eh?)

Or it could be that you don't even have auroras, instead stealing pictures of real Swedish ones and then inventing the term Aurora Australis. Hard to tell really.

You do have your gum trees though, so here's to your guild:






Ok, to get back on track

Gina:
It is the longing that pulls me to deeper and deeper knowings of Feeling and of Being and yet each moment is faced with the fear of once again finding there is not a space being held for me where I can dance.  I fear there is not a masculine balancing my feminine.  AND because I have not seen it, experienced it,  my rational mind interjects with “well then, it is not possible

Thanks for sharing this. It deepens my understanding of the feminine and its fears on the path.



Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Lol, Dear Ones,

First, let me clear up any confusion about the crack I made up-thread about “gettin' back to a little fightin' … “  What I was saying was that I was so deeply moved (“mush” factor) by the change in overall dynamics from the “debrief thread” to this “faces” exploration, that I could hardly focus on what, if anything I had to say.  As I think about it now, I realize that use of the word “mush” totally trivializes my experience.  Trouble is, I am having a hard time finding the voice which yearns to speak through the emotional vastness that I trivialized with the word “mush.”

It must be the feminine, repressed for lifetimes it seems, calling me to open to it.  I have been able, in the past, to allude to it allegorically, metaphorically, and symbolically - owning it is a different matter.  I know I must have lived there for a while as a child, yet consistent feedback did not support it, and I bowed to the false masculine ideal as a means of defensing a precious “something” about myself that seemed unwelcome in the world.  Thus I became ballsy, uber-masculine, confrontational, combative, arrogant and judgmental.  I learned about debate, logic, semantics, symbolism, linguistics, word origins, philosophy, psychology, the history of science, anthropology, cosmogyny and a smattering of other 'ologies, 'isms, and 'ographies.  I came to never know what I was going to say when I opened my mouth - it just poured out, energized by adrenaline, as I was largely in a state of shadowed fear whenever I “took the stage.”  I was almost exclusively in a state of projection and impervious to any thought that I might fundamentally be trespassing.  People needed to hear what I had to say whether they wanted to or not.  Really, in the end, I now have to admit that I would have been happy if they “understood” me, but I was satisfied if they were just afraid of me.

I have only just begun to accept this rather humiliating picture of my self.  I have the rigors of the I-I exchange to thank for this as many people here have had the courage to stand up to me and share, in the “response” mode, the impact of my “declarations” on their state of being.  For years I “thrived” on the perception of myself as a warrior/shaman/mystic/tribal chieftan all the while beneath nursing the woeful archetype of the victim martyr.  I knew how to handle men.  Men were vexacious but “easy” to manipulate or discard, while women remained ever elusive, did not “get” me, could not stand up to me and resorted to what I considered “destructive” language when confrontation arose.  A sense of deep separation from community had persisted all my life until just 3 months ago when I was swept into the vortex of the Integral.  More has “happened” to me in the past 3 months than in my previous 60 years put together, and more has happened to me in the past 2 weeks than in the previous 3 months combined.  I am reeling in the blast of my earlier “self”-concept as its bits fly off into space.  Part of me is trying to snatch them back and another is waving them good riddance.  This new voice, timid, but “undeniable” as Gitanjali put it, pays attention to neither, calling instead for me to turn within.

Ah, what a grand life it is if I will but turn to it.

Yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

There are so many beautiful threads within threads here all weaving into the one tapestry.

Gina said

“Feeling the balance of m/f has come from directly claiming my feminine and exploring my shadow feminine while seeing my masculine more clearly for its role within me.”

I feel the shadow feminine has a lot to answer for. I want to relate this concept to the green man post by Pelle and to suggest that this work of integrating the feminine is so much part of what men will have to do.

Pelle's post:

It is confusing to be a man in this day and age, and that is an understatement. Large groups of men have been and are being brought up with green and mean green ideas. Even if one's family isn't green, green ideas and feminism are a very real presence in most parts of the western world. The ideas that consciously or unconsciously are imprinted in boys/men are that men are oppressors, men are violent, men dominate women, men get paid more, men are insensitive, men are egotistical, men start wars, men are out of touch with mother Earth, etc etc etc. The general message to boys/men about women is that these are gentle and noble creatures and if men would just stop being so nasty and oppressive most of the problems in the world would disappear.

And voilá, we have just created The Sensitive Man. This man goes out of his way not to be a stereotypical man; instead trying hard to be nice, be polite, treat women well, respect women, let the woman decide what to do, accept equal pay but still buy women flowers and dinner, never assert yourself, never hurt the feelings of a woman, etc etc. It is quite possible to socialize men into this very sensitive but also very weak role. But don't think for a minute that this is something that comes naturally or easily to a man. The Green Man spends huge amounts of energy to be who he is. It takes active restraining to maintain that kind of facade. Sometimes The Green Man appears to be the true identity of a man, and in some cases it is, but most of the time this is only a sign that huge chunk of biological instincts have been deeply repressed and buried as shadow.

The green modifications of the UL and LL simply go against male biology (UR) in a large majority of men. Trying to uphold a green identity for a man is equivalent to holding two magnetic plus poles against each other: it takes continuous work. This is not to say that we don't need green, because we do. The trouble arises when men become stuck in green and think that this is the ultimate truth and hence they need to spend their lives going against their natural impulses and even being ashamed of having a strong masculine energy inside of them. This is destructive for men and society as a whole.

There is a very specific insight that usually awakens men from their green slumber. The Green Man starts seeing patterns in society and in life that are not at all compatible with what he has been taught. Bad Boys get high-paying jobs and are generally respected for their masculine vibe. The very women who spend hours lecturing their male friends how to be more sensitive and green regularly choose Bad Boys for casual sex. When the Green Man starts to notice what really going on he realizes that neither women nor society reward him for being a Green Man. He realizes that in fact he has been socialized into a spineless wimp. Now if this is only a partial insight and mostly unconscious, which is often the case, then rage starts to brew and can stay with him indefinitely. I'm certain that everybody reading knows men who obviously carry a lot of unresolved anger around.

So what's the answer to all this, should all green men regress and become Bad Boys themselves? This is obviously one option but I don't believe it's the best one. Bad Boys generally have their own set of problems that can only be solved by moving up the spiral. Instead we men need to find a role that is compatible with our biology and with a masculine polarity, we need a new role that will let the totally of who we are thrive. It's OK to be a man. You don't have to be half woman or ashamed of yourself. It is OK be direct, assertive and confident. All these masculine traits are a blessing and you will do yourself and the world a huge disservice by repressing who you really are. Connect your masculinity to your heart and you will be a force to be reckoned with, a force that actually does a lot of good for the world. What the world has at the moment is prerational Bad Boys, wimpy Green men and subtly raging Green men. Masculine men with a higher purpose are in desperately short supply. And masculine heart-centered men who are confident around women and not afraid of flirting and initiating the human mating game, are in equally short supply - ask any woman you know :)

Paradoxically enough the way out of rage and male dysfunction is not to dig deeper into green (if you've already done five years hard time there), it is to reclaim your masculinity and integrate it with your heart

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Michael, your post is so moving, I just want to sit with it.

With much love
Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali,

Thanks for reproducing Pelle's post here.  It is a an unflagging testament to the dilemma of modern “man.”  I deeply get the pull to return to the self-assertive green chieftan vibe and just rest in all my skills and “knowledge.”  Too bad, though, that I want more than mere security.  Adventuring on the frontiers of my own m/f expression presents a challenge I cannot resist.  How wonderful it might be to be able to really synthesize these forces and blend them to circumstance?  How healing it might be to take the disclosure risk?  I know, that for me, this spilling of guts must precede any more theorizing on my part.  The “theoretical” has been a safe place for me as, previously, I could avoid the doubt and uncertainty of conflicting emotions by relying upon my intellect and its framing capabilities.  It just has not led to where I “belong” and only to where I don't.  I don't intend to toss this capability, just set it aside for a while, explore the feminine within, reconcile as possible with the masculine and observe the effect on my theorizing skills and intellectual perspectives.

What Pelle says here, ”Paradoxically enough the way out of rage and male dysfunction is not to dig deeper into green (if you've already done five years hard time there), it is to reclaim your masculinity and integrate it with your heart.”

is fundamentally true for men generally.  My own experience is more towards an acceptance of masculinity as my libidinous lower-level orientation, a reclamation of my anima at the heart level (the province of the divine feminine which holds the temple space for Christ/Krishna Consciousness) and a free, gender-blind environment for the brain-centered intellect.  As Pelle is perhaps suggesting, it must begin at the beginning, not the mind, not the heart, but the libido, progressing “upwards” no stones unturned.

Yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Ay yay yay, all – So much is happening in this thread and I'm loving it – and have been meaning to get back to it (especially since I kind of pulled Gina in over from another thread and all) – feeling a little guilty about taking so long …

Anyway, I'm wanting to respond to some things Gina pointed out earlier when I dragged her into the thread (hehe):

Gina wrote: My personal experience has been that I can be very masculine and pointed when in inquiry mode and feminine and rounded when in midst of the flow of interaction.  Yet my masculine is very much present most of the time here in this forum.  Maybe it is because I ask and inquire as a way of deflecting my opinion (or my perceived lack of Informed opinion) and that is my shadow to overcome or maybe it is because this forum is Masculine and in order to be here I adapt.

I too notice that the masculinity of these forums pushes me toward a more “analytical” mode in terms of my postings here, because that's the general zeitgeist – but I know that what brought me here in the first place (and what keeps me coming here) is a feminine and communal urge for interaction with like-minded people. So sometimes there's an odd tension that I feel between this analytical zeitgeist and the urge to commune. I read the analyses here, and I generally appreciate them and get a lot out of them, but I'm left with a thirst for more personal sharings, stories, specific examples that illustrate abstract assertions (like Pelle's use of his tango experience to illuminate the dance of masculine and feminine), tastes and textures, weathers, grits and catfish, whimsical wanderings, etc. Sometimes there will be posts that contain sharp analysis as well as lyrical memoir-like musings, the abstract and the embodied, and I'll leap for joy. (Jane is good at those kinds of posts!)

Gina: I have a woman I work with who is strong Amber with Red tendencies.   She has strong christian values, works in the Oil refinery business in sales and is on a roller derby team on the weekends.

Her unhealthy outbursts are very agressive, reactive and absolute.  It appears to be masculine in its energy but really it is a feminine version of red/amber gone wrong.

These observations are based on the base structure of her developmental lines as I see them. 

OR…… and  we could use specific hot points and experiences where healthy and unhealthy show up.

An example from my own past (more than 20 years ago) of unhealthy feminine communion: getting into and sustaining a bad relationship, believing that any connection with a lover was better than none at all. I fused with someone who was emotionally abusive (and pathologically jealous) and who may have escalated to physical abuse if circumstances had kept us together longer. Luckily for me, circumstances changed. But while I was in this relationship, I had to suppress all agentic and autonomous strivings in myself just to keep the peace. My connections with other friends and family were a threat to him, so I found myself withdrawing from them. I had to keep most of my anger at bay, and it simply went into my body: I began to clamp my teeth at night (sometimes fists too) and on occasion I'd wake myself up after biting my tongue bloody. 

It dawned on me one day that I might actually die if I continued on in this relationship. Maybe not physically (although that was within the range of possibilities), but definitely spiritually. He had to spend some weeks in jail because of some old outstanding warrants that came back to haunt him. We were corresponding by letter, and one day he'd gotten so upset about me not writing him often enough that he threatened to kill himself. (He had done this several times before in hopes that it would keep me from leaving him). Perhaps being away from him had allowed me to regain some strength – whatever it was, I decided, “well, it's either him or me.” Of course, I didn't really think he was serious about the suicide threat (and it turned out that he wasn't). But I went into some kind of survival mode, thinking, “if someone is going to die here, it's not going to be me.” And with that, I pulled out of the fusion. Some little thread of agency re-asserting itself? Or maybe just the desire to live and breathe …

All for now,
Mary

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gina, Michael, Mary

I hear your longing and it is mine too. and OK I admit  its also the catfish thats got me, I really wanna here about when you ate the catfish was it a sultry night somewhere in America? a bbq where one you loved was present?

I have been wondering whether a more private thread (not too private, just one restricted to all IIzaadz members, would help create the safety that some of us need to express our more personal experiences?). I certainly feel i need a bot more privacy. Right now i have a vague sense that the whole world can read it. I guess the story threads were also another way of reaching to that need.

I felt the longing of many for this on the deNile thread… there people were starting to really unpeel their layers and speak from their immediate personal experiences. For a number of reasons that thread exploded but I feel we could learn from that and find a space where we can speak very intimately…

I guess people also use private emails to do this too, but the sharing in a deep group around the fire-altar is also part of my yearning.

Love
Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Michael:
As Pelle is perhaps suggesting, it must begin at the beginning, not the mind, not the heart, but the libido, progressing “upwards” no stones unturned.

This is exactly what I mean Michael, you're very perceptive.
If we don't start from the bottom, from the beginning, we will have ourselves a very disembodied and  less than grounded masculinity.
It's fairly easy to be masculine within the intellectual realm, but truly embodying the masculine is a whole other matter.

I also want to thank you Michael for your sharing, I can sense how your reaching new levels of honesty and clarity. Amazing that this community has helped you catalyze such a change, or at least kicked you over the edge (in a loving way I would hope).


Mary, thank you for sharing that personal story from the past. You took a deep dive into the unhealthy feminine but in the moment of truth your survival instincts emerged and you reconnected to your agency. It was both a beautiful and terrible read. Thanks for sharing.

This also illustrates how the healthy feminine by definition needs to be connected to an element of inner agency, just like the healthy masculine must stay connected to an inner drive for communion. Only the unhealthy masculine has no interest in communion.


Gitanjali, I doubt that we could make a specific thread invisible to the rest of the world. If there is or were to emerge a technology that enables us to make one board of the pod invisible to the rest of the world, then that would be perfect. I can send a PM and ask.


Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

While groups can never be as intimate as the one on one space, one thing I love about them is how one person reflects another and then I look again at both, seeing them both anew.

:))

Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Dear Ones,

Generally, I think more, better work might be done in a environment that was more private than this currently “hottest” thread on Zaadz.  Carelessness is one of my persistent character defects and, though I am relatively fearless about revealing myself as it becomes apparent to me, I often do not consider what this might mean to my family, for instance, or my friends on Zaadz who may be encouraged by my “sharing” style, but reluctant because of the challenge to anonymity.  This is not an outcome I feel comfortable with as well as a responsibility to exercise restraint in all matters of “pen and tongue.”  I personally resist being obscure (though some of my posting must seem that way) or circuitous.  If ever there was a subject that needs the most tender and direct approach, the m/f paradigm is it.

What else do we have BUT our personal experiences and feelings about them to communicate our yearnings and reluctances?  I would love to hear what my dear friends' lives have been like in this regard.  To bring light to the deep, the deep must first be brought forward.  Everything possible must be done to make this safe as possible.  I know that the I-I is not the place for “therapy” per se, yet there is something about this process of sharing, reflection, and mutual support happening across time and the planet that cannot be duplicated even in the most private and facilitated of real time settings.  I, for one have found this thing we are “doing” to be personally revolutionary - a “need.”

Yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I mentioned something to Pelle that I think impacted what we were doing on the Song of the Nile “debriefing” thread which is related to this concern for privacy, particularly when we are going deep into territory which could prove psychodynamically challenging and transformational.  Several people have mentioned to me that it would have been better to “go private” with that discussion at an earlier stage, to avoid disrupting or negatively impacting I-I Zaadz overall, and also to protect all involved in the discussion.  I think there is wisdom in this.  But there is something else to consider too:  when venturing into a space of deep sharing, where we are entering an autonomous “group therapeutic” space, I think we should consider also adopting a “rule” used in group therapy.  In group therapeutic contexts, members of the group are advised not to meet or speak outside of the group; and if they do, to fully disclose what was discussed to the group once it convenes again, to avoid disruptive undercurrents which could undermine the overall sense of trust and coherence in the group.  I think the exchange of private messages which we engaged in, some of which contained material which was the source for tension which erupted into the group itself (but was never clarified to all participating in the group), undermined our efforts and contributed (but did not exclusively account for)  the derailing we experienced.

I don't mean to detract from this wonderful thread with these thoughts; I just wanted to add this brief interjection as people consider going private.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Ah, Balder – 

This is so true – what you're saying about the “group therapy” rule! It's something that now seems so obvious that I'm surprised no one brought it up previously. Maybe that's because the debriefing thread had never been explicitly defined as a group therapeutic space, even though some participants had described it (and the Story thread itself) that way.

Thank you for the reminding,

Mary

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I've now PM'd ~C4Chaos and at the moment it's not possible to have private boards within a pod that is not in itself private. However, this is on the to-do list for the Zaadz team, so it might very well become available further down the line.

In other words, let's continue this fascinating conversation as well as we can, knowing that what we write is visible to the world.

Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

This is such a great, great thread. I feel such deep appreciation for those contributing … Gina, Gitanjali, Mary, Michael, Pelle ….  I deeply honour and respect your sharing, it brings me closer to you all and I’m learning so much from it.

And to the others who’ve popped in briefly … come on back in, the water’s great!

Thanks, Gitanjali, for copying that post of Pelle’s and weaving it in.

Pelle had earlier written: “This last step (ie transcending green) is a very hard one to take. We can feel inside like we're actually sliding downwards instead of growing ..”

and then: “Paradoxically enough the way out of rage and male dysfunction is not to dig deeper into green (if you've already done five years hard time there), it is to reclaim your masculinity and integrate it with your heart.”

I have, mostly unconsciously and for much of my life, resisted allowing real free expression of my Mars energy, my lower chakra energy. Largely, I think, out of fear – of being seen, by myself as well as others, as not being good enough …. the extreme of this being not having enough sexual prowess. Also fear of rejection, and in terms of physical confrontation, fear of being beaten / beaten up. I just haven’t been involved in many fights in my life, only one since my early twenties, and this was a stupid scuffle at work in my mid-thirties, when I was a stone mason and physically as well as mentally conditioned by the culture I was working in. I find it helpful to observe that astrologically my natal Mars is in Scorpio, which doesn’t feel a healthy place for it to be … in a deep dark water sign, to some degree dampened down by this, but also smouldering, hidden, images of Mauian lava flows hissing, roiling and bubbling under the ocean surface. Ok, I’m not really like that, I’m a sweet sensitive soul really :)

So I can totally relate to the idea, and for me the necessity, of descending downward and inward to reconnect with and integrate that disowned, shadowed Red aspect.

Pelle had also asked: “What are everyone's experiences of opening up to your predominant polarity, even if it is just in certain moments? How does it feel? What happens?”

Three different little vignettes come to mind. The first took place 25 years ago. I was in a village in a valley off the Kulu valley in north India. I was there with a German chillum-baba to buy some charas of quality similar to that of the fabled Parvati charas, Parvati valley being just a little further north. The man who owned the pharmacy invited us in one evening to try something different. He filled a chillum with the normal amount of charas, but also mixed in some granules of pure musk. I took a few pulls, and this absolutely extraordinary feeling spread through the whole of my body, from the top of my head to the tips of my fingers and toes. I felt euphoric, exhilarated, and so powerful, like I could have fought an army, and yet in no way did I feel aggressive.

The second took place the year before last at the Santo Daime summer camp here in England. I was there for the first half of the camp, participating in three days of daime “works” – structured ayahuasca ceremonies involving standing in rows/lines dancing simple steps, like the walz and mazurka, to “hymns” that are being sung, the men lined up on one side of the marquee, the women on the other. A couple of times during those sessions, which lasted hours each and involved several rounds of (small glasses of) the delicious (!) brew, dancing barefoot on the earth I deeply connected with male power … or more to the point it deeply connected with me, infusing through me, my centre of gravity lowering, back and legs feeling so much stronger, feet pounding the earth with the steps, my heart feeling full and strong, breathing deep into my belly and singing my head off to the beautiful melody … because I had no idea of the words, and wouldn’t have been able to read them even if I’d had a hinario (book)! In my feeling into this afterwards what came was I’d felt like a man like a jaguar feels like a jaguar.

The third is a recent dream. I was driving a car through a housing estate near to my childhood home, it was the route I sometimes took walking home from primary school. I was speeding through these streets, quickly turning from one into another, trying to escape from “him”. Eventually I thought I must have got away, and stopped in an open area, like a square. Suddenly his image was everywhere I looked, I was completely surrounded. I got out of the car and he walked straight toward me. I no longer felt afraid, and as he approached he didn’t look scary, but attractively tall, dark, powerful. He came up to me, and at the same time another male figure appeared, from the left side of my field of vision. He had a golden, gentle, benign quality. Mr. Shadow put his right arm around the back of this other character’s head, his left arm around the back of my head, drew the three of us together and said, conspiratorially, …. “We are the story tellers.”

Lol

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Lol,

He came up to me, and at the same time another male figure appeared, from the left side of my field of vision. He had a golden, gentle, benign quality. Mr. Shadow put his right arm around the back of this other character’s head, his left arm around the back of my head, drew the three of us together and said, conspiratorially, …. “We are the story tellers.”

Amen to this my brother.  It must have been fun to wake up from that dream.

love,
yer pal,
Michael

Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine

Basicly, what I gotten to understand about the long, long texts, which are basicly so long I would need to spend half a day to catch up, and Ironically there are better things to do in life then sit behind such a square pieces of 'Start' thingies, grey beams, favourites and other glowing things in fron of me. Is that this is a discussion about some amout of Feminine sides, And Masculine sides. Or anything.

I didn't spend half a day (I don't have the time vacant :P) so, don't blame me for repetition, triviality, or anything of the alike.

Why bother? Yes, there are men and women, yes they have fundemental genetical differences, Yes we are all different. And yes, those genetic differences are not shared so keenly between either just men, or just women. The get mixed up frequently.
But why bother?
Everyone has a bit of man, and a bit of woman inside them. It is what makes us who we are. So why bother, and put it in two rows? So that you know what was repressed?
In this age, people let themselves become repressed. And if you are forced to do something, you wouldn't even know the irony how large your own share was in that force.
Anyhows,

What I am trying to say is;
There must be better things to do to spend your time more socialy? (as in, this thing is so long, it annoys me. ;) )

So everyone goodnight ;)
I am going to bed.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine

Domus Ulixes –

Please do not change the subject title of the thread. (I've just changed it back to its original title). It makes it hard to keep track of what your post is in response to.

If you find long threads like this annoying and that there are better things to do than to spend time reading them, then I can't help but wonder why you are spending time writing a post complaining about them.

Surely you have better things to do.

Mary (mod)

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine

Hi everyone

I just read Lol's candid experiences, and they were beautiful to read. Lol I have to say I do sense in you..

smouldering, hidden, images of Mauian lava flows hissing, roiling and bubbling under the ocean surface

Mr Shadow. There is the juice….:)

I'm feeling guilty.

I get sustenance and depth from those who are willing to go deeper right here and right now. I want to reciprocate but I suspect there will be a bit of a limit.  I feel uncomfortable about this thread being so public and I suspect that I am going to tend to generalities and surface more than the stuff I want to get in to. And I regret that.

I hope you will understand…And I look forward to a more cosy club as well and this thread continues to pull me in just as it is now too.

Love to all

Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine

Gitanjali,

You may be feeling guilty, but all I see from what you have said and intimated is that you are just protecting your state - surely one of our most important responsibilities.

yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine

Michael,

You know I didnt get that until i was walking in the mellow sunshine today. Then I realised that my saying “I'm feeling guilty” reflected a weak boundary. And yes, it is right and good for me to respect that I feel uncomfortable about getting too personal myself in a freely accesible thread, and there is no need for me to apologise, and I can still celebrate the wonderful self -disclosure of my friends here on the thread.
Weak boundaries start heading towards manipulation…I can see that that is where I was heading. So thank you for picking up the shadow in my email.

X Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine

Thank you Mary….wonderful moderation.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I've been following this thread, enjoying its meanderings, its soaring and diving, and have wanted to contribute more substantially on a number of levels.  In the previous discussion that was the inspiration for this thread, I briefly described the lack of ideal male role models in my life, which has impacted my perspective on both masculine and feminine ways of being.  In my current practice, how this has shown up is in a new willingness to question the patterns I adopted in my youth, a recognition of old beliefs and structures (which I no longer exclusively or even primarily inhabit, but which may still show up and color my perception in subtle ways), a revaluation of certain classically male characteristics – assertiveness, drive, agency, etc. –, and an increased attention to the ways that my healthy/adaptive denial of the “pathological male” has nevertheless impacted my access to my essential energy and vitality.

One of the ways I've been exploring this has been through the Diamond Approach, where these developments are understood as recontacting and reconnecting with Red (Strength) Essence.  Importantly, Red Essence is not an exclusively masculine property – it is part of the essential nature available equally to men and women – but my socialization and psychological wounding as a youth led me to identify certain essential qualities with particular gender-specific expressions…expressions which, at one point in time, I believed were important to suppress or deny. 

In the Diamond Approach, Red Essence does not actually show up, in its essential form, as aggressiveness – rather, it expresses itself as discrimination, courage, (non-aggressive/non-dominating) confrontation, and a bold openness in inquiry and relationship.  This isn't the place to give a detailed explanation of Red Essence in the Diamond Approach, but I'll point out that some of these traits are actually the traits that I described in my opening paragraph:  clear, powerful, discriminating insight; willingness to confront the superego and old entrenched patterns; providing a safe container in which other (subtler, more playful) essential qualities can manifest without obstruction; boldly facing what unfolds through depth processing, etc.

Just thinking aloud here, it seems to me that the gender roles we learn (as part of our cultural conditioning) can help us to more or less healthily express essential qualities, if we are fortunate enough to have role models (mirrors) who embody these qualities in themselves.  If they do not embody them, then what we usually end up with are “holes” in the place of essential connection, and then certain compensatory behaviors which stem from this lack of connection.  It would be interesting to consider the vMemes in relation to essential qualities – whether the forms that get entrenched as Kosmic grooves actually serve to foster or inhibit connection to certain certain essential qualities.

From an Integral postmetaphysical perspective, of course, I think we can rightfully question whether “essential qualities” exist in the way that the Diamond Approach asserts they do.  That would be another discussion.  But we can also question whether “masculine” and “feminine” types exist as universal “givens,” or whether they are also perspective-dependent constructs, manifesting differently at different Kosmic addresses.  In Wilber's model, he describes several stages of gender identity – morphological/genetic givens, nondifferentiated, differentiated basic-gender identity, gender conventionality, gender consistency, gender androgyny (transdifferentiated), archetypal gender union (tantra), and beyond gender.  Arguably, even more differentiations could be drawn.  So the faces of masculine and feminine are not two, but many.

How do you feel?  How “deep” do gender differences go in the Kosmos?  How constant are they?  What is the relationship between gender types/roles and basic (essential) qualities, capacities, and energetic movements?

On one level, I think it is important not to take basic categories such as masculine/feminine as universal (metaphysical) givens.  The higher stages of development in Wilber's model point to this need, as gender identities are transcended.  But at the same time, I hesitate to bring this up, for this reason:  currently, in our culture, the feminine voice (whether “essential” or relative/constructed) clearly exists as a “way” of expression, being, and behavior; but it is not often given equal “air time.”  If we move from our current position, which privileges masculine forms of expression, to a denial of the “reality” of gender as a category, that could in effect serve as another means of silencing women.   Leaving the presuppositions which inform masculine forms of discourse unexposed and unchallenged – perhaps still firmly in place.  And that's not a direction any of us here want to go, I don't expect.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

“How do you feel?  How “deep” do gender differences go in the Kosmos?  How constant are they?  What is the relationship between gender types/roles and basic (essential) qualities, capacities, and energetic movements?”
These are wonderful questions for focusing this discussion.

These gender energies are what was birthed in the schism of the big bang, when time and space erupted out of apparent nothingness. I don’t mean this as only metaphor….I think the sexually polarity birthed our entire cosmos, and all of the differentiations and variations of energy flow have been caught in ever-expanding nuances of this dance. The center and the circumference, spirit and matter, heaven and earth, the seemingly endless and desparate search for the Beloved, the fire and the rose, the Open Secret….all of these expression are the paradox of this schismed energy.

I am reminded again of two things my mother always had pasted over the sink for us as children to read when we were doing dishes: 

Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity we shall harness the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.(Teilhard)

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.(TS Eliot)

This is the very exploration we are on right here…..looking at each other in this tender we-space, as for the first time. I breathe this in like the warm gentle spring air, both filled with promise, and seemingly having just arrived in the nick of time. Perhaps it always feel like this– the poignancy, the pregnancy, this ever-renewing miracle and mystery. Falling and catching our Selves from falling, add music: Dancing.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

So much to respond to here..

Lol, thank you so much for sharing those experiences. They really seemed to be experiences of the masculine embodied; experiental and deep.
Thank you also for daring to give voice to these primal male/masculine fears:

Largely, I think, out of fear – of being seen, by myself as well as others, as not being good enough …. the extreme of this being not having enough sexual prowess. Also fear of rejection, and in terms of physical confrontation, fear of being beaten / beaten up.

When the masculine is suppressed, these are the fears we live with.


Balder, your line of inquiry is very interesting and it can certainly inform this discussion in many ways. The faces of the masculine and feminine indeed show up in different clothes at different levels, and in some situations they can be united or even transcended. What I feel though is that as integral, intelligent and spiritual people it is all too easy to focus on the higher levels and refinement of energies. There's nothing wrong with that, but let's remember that without reconnecting to the sheer power and messiness of the lower chakras we don't have the energy needed to embody our polarity nor integrate it with out mind and emotions. We cannot transcend something until we have experienced it fully, and have access to it at will. I know that you are well aware of this Balder, I just wanted to emphasize this point alongside the interesting points you are raising.


Jane, as always it is a pleasure to read your your mixture of poetry and insights. The universe is indeed a dance filled with polarities. Without the polarities there would be absolute stillness, no life, no movement, no dance.


with love,

Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hi everyone, I want to explore the sensitive man vs. the bad boy a bit more. Balder, Pelle and Lol have all talked about aspects of the sensitive/green man. And Michael, has alluded to a version of the “bad boy”.

When I’m having an interaction with a sensitive man, it is true that I long for him to…reach down deep and come from his masculine soul (from all the way down). In the past I would get frustrated about this, somehow thinking he was deliberately holding something from me.  :) Now I’m learning more about his story and his struggle.

As many have suggested, the “sensitive man” carries many negative images of masculinity suffering as he does from a lack of healthy masculine models. His mission should he choose to accept it, would be to re-evaluate “masculinity” and create a wholesome connection with masculine energies.

But although the sensitive man has grown up with the message that all things feminine are good and noble and although he seems quite able to access his feminine energies to relate to women as friends or create art, I want to suggest that he also has an unhealthy relation to the Feminine, and yes, also with the women in his life. I know this might sound controversial but hear me out and I’d love to hear any reactions.

I feel that I can often pick that dynamic up in my “sensitive man” friends. And I realise now it is not only that I long for such a man to be comfortable in his masculinity, I also long to feel his ability to truly embrace the feminine.

Here’s one story, not the only story by any means.

All babies experience infant fusion with Mum. In order to develop their full masculine identities, young boys have the task of breaking away from that fusion (Mum being the other gender) and bonding in a healthy masculine way with Dad. They need to do this in a way that involves healthy boundaries with Mum, not disassociation. But Dad is often not been around to offer healthy masculine love to his son. If a father is that insensitive he affects the way the women in that family relate to each other and to other men in that family. Such an insensitive man is often coupled with a wife who doesn’t get the need for healthy boundaries with her son. The unhealthy feminine as Gina pointed out earlier.

The young boy with little support for this vital task in his confusion, usually falls in to one of two paths. He stays fused with Mum or he builds an impenetrable wall, that denies her all together.

If he stays fused with her, he becomes the sensitive man. He will feels his psychic space is being chronically invaded by her and other women. A fused mother cant help but see her son as an extension of her narcissistic needs. As she is not masculine, she negates her son’s masculinity. She may be actively hostile to his growing and untutored masculinity. Even statements like - clean the bathroom, you boys are so dirty! Or don’t be rough, that’s wrong! express an unconscious hostility, a “not quite getting the differences between her experience and her son’s. She and other women in the family may be nicer than that and not say these things, but the fact is they simply cannot reflect back to the little boy many elements of his experience that he needs reflected back to him. Even just that, is a negation to a young child, though unintended.

This invasion, and lack of recognition of his masculinity leads to unconscious rage and fear. But because his ego is fused with her, it is too threatening to experience these emotions. So he suppresses them all the while losing vitality, his power. Thus his loss of potency is not just because he denies his core masculine energies, its because he denies the accompanying rage and fear of the “other “ with which he is fused.

The inner reflects the outer. So sensitive men often end up with women who reflect the negative invading feminine back to them. Even friends who lecture them to be “more like women” are dissing them So maybe he does he look over his shoulder at the bad boy who seems to be getting some chicks in bed at least. The funny thing is that the bad boy may be just as fragile as his sensitive brother…though he looks like he isn’t. With such weak structures, neither can access feminine energy in a powerful and healthy way or ever have a rewarding relationship with a woman.


Maybe the bad boy is the young boy who created a hard wall against mother in order to experience his budding masculinity. He achieves a sense of masculine self. But he has walled off both his inner and outer femininity. He cant help but long for his suppressed feminine energies. He turns to the outer feminine but he can only fuck her, he cant reach out genuinely to her with love and concern because he cant hold his boundaries when a relationship starts heating up. All he knows is the hard wall or fusion. Like his brother he never had healthy male role models and never saw men relating healthily to women.

When the relation heats up, he either leaves her to maintain his independence or he surrenders his sense of self to her, you know the woman who seems to turn the wolf into a lamb. Often he surrenders not to a woman but to the feminine in the form of drinks or drugs or porn addictions. You see he cant ultimately fight that longing.

Women sense that longing in the bad boy. I know I did and I dated some men who were some version of a “bad boy” (something I would like to explore more in the not yet born enneagram thread). Some of the old moviestars were aimed at exemplifying it with usual hollywood subtlety- Bogart, Brando, McQueen. Women then say to each other, old movie lines like: “he looked misunderstood and I wanted to be the one to understand him”.

His relation to them is sadist to masochist, until it flips. If it’s the first, if she has the strength she uses her agency to leave him. And if it’s flipped, she either takes him for all he’s got or she disdains him for not being able to hold his boundaries any more. If she uses him he may leave her and go back to his walls (re: the new James Bond - “the bitch is dead” and the Bond we know and love has been born) or he may retire a broken man to a bar in toledo where the tumbleweeds rolls in the wind and he cradles the whiskey in his hand almost like a gun.

xxGitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

This morning as I sit here with my inventory of stories, I can appreciate why a sorta private space would be good. I am suddenly feeling a pressure to splat out all relative information I have collected through personal experience….Indeed, during my most painful processing times, I have written a collection of short stories, not yet edited or published, (needing retrieval from another computer) that were mostly my attempt to look closely at the dynamic of the ‘blocks’ in m/f exchange; an attempt to single-handedly process my side of the equation……most written at least 10 years ago. It hasn’t been until my boys have become adolescents and even more recently since I have been working with Robert Masters, that I have really begun to love and trust that there really is a deeper, true, masculine energy. It falls on me like mana from heaven.

I feel an immense compassion for all of the ‘nice boys’ who have tried to do right by their wounded mothers. In the past, I have always intuited that within that ‘nice boy’ presentation, there is a seething rage. I have experienced the brunt of this rage too, lots of times. To be honest, haplessly at first, and even with some precison later, I have even gone mining for it. It has never been hard to find. In truth, I have always felt an inner irritation around these nice boys. In its repression, this repressed rage is like the medussa someone alluded to, turning everything to cold perfect stone, disallowing the juiciness, the play and the paradox. It is a victim/martyr motif, and it requires partnered collusion to hold its form for very long….it is an unstable isotope.
I am suddenly reminded of Bonnie Raitt’s song
Love Me Like a Man:

“The men that I’ve been seeing, baby
Got their soul up on a shelf
you know they could never love me
When they can’t even love themselves

But I need someone to love me
Someone to really understand
Who won’t put himself above me
Who’ll just love me like a man

I never seen such losers darlin’
even though I try…
…to find a mind who can take me home
’stead of taking me for a ride

And I need someone to love me
I know you can
Believe me when I tell you
you can love me like a man

Oh they want me to rock them
like my back ain’t got no bone
I want a man to rock me
like my… backbone was his own

baby, I know you can
Believe me when I tell you
You can love me like a man

I Come home sad and lonely
Feel like I wanna cry
I need someone to hold me
Not some fool to ask me why

And I need someone to love me
Darlin’ I know you can

Don’t you put yourself above me
You just love me like a man.”

****
I have tried to dance with ‘nice boys’, round and round in boring circles, careful not to ‘tell anyone what to do’, waiting for them to ‘take the lead’, and waiting and waiting….oh brother, where art thou?…swirling in a huge morass of tepid, lifeless ocean. Men with heart and no balls I have stayed long enough in this stew to really begin to look at myself, and what I am doing, and have done, until I could find my own center, and begin to dance, mostly alone….most of the nice boys angry at me for not being able to tolerate, let alone treasure what they offered.

Oh, and I have the other stories too…..life with the “bad boys”….like getting this huge beautiful present on Christmas morning, ribbons and fabulous wrapping, some fabulous hope and longing for what is inside. But, alas, it is impossible to get the wrapping off, painful, torturous, with every attempt. This sort of relationship is filled with passion at first, and then this passion has turned inward like acid rain. “What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me that I am not being loved? What is wrong with my love? If only I could love better, be more perfect, well, more something, Oh sister, where am I?” The final message for women is: Put the present that will not be opened by the curb for someone else to pick up. These men are toxic, we are toxic in relationship to them. Men with balls and no heart; women at war with their deepest essence.

In all of this, as a woman, I have had to do a very strict accounting of my own behaviour: Grinding patterns of despair that have been handed down to me from my mother, the church, my father, all of the women who have come before me, trying in their way to survive in a man’s world, subverting power, and brilliance and beauty, as the risk of doing otherwise was to be burned at the stake. I remember once being at my father’s farm shortly around the time when my parents separated. My uncle Angus, the presbyterian minister was there with his wife Kathleen…my younger sisters, Jocelyn and Alison all of us aged 13-17 or so…
Angus at his pulpit speaking to my sisters and me: “you all need to know that the man is the head of the household. He is to be obeyed. Your mother has been very bad. This is how God ordained things. The man is the one who is in charge, who is responsible.” My sisters and I exchanging the silent look of disgust and disbelief. And then to make matters hilariously worse, my Aunt Kathleen piping up, “Well, the man may be the head of the household, but I am the neck that turns the head.” More silent looks exchanged between the sisters, soon to be followed by a hasty retreat to the loft in the barn to smoke forbidden cigarettes, and laugh, “Hey, sister Neck, howzit goin’?” It was a joke. I get tears in my eyes remembering that night, all of us so beautiful, so filled with a budding sexual energy, so about to be consumed and taken apart by our experience. It is amazing how we survive, more than survive. Jocelyn actually died in some service to this truth. Life in this wonderful, alchemical crucible holds a fiery, terrible beauty. Halleluja.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Beautiful Jane, you are a joy to read, as you dive into the holy passionate muck of it all.  I feel your immense longing. Amen to that…

Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Here is one of Jocelyn’s songs, singing as she is from some heavenly perch, to all of the Beloveds growing dusty, thirsty, and weary on this journey:

HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE

Moonlight fills the room like water
River of light it flows
And in a trance I falter
I can’t see the door
Distances run together
This traveller has come so far
to see how beautiful you are
how beautiful you are
how beautiful you are

At first you know it killed me
finding myself still alive
Feet pushing the pavement
on the lonely march of time
This planet a desert, living a lie
I had to die to survive,
I had to die to survive

And so people can tell me
They can try to tell me no
tell me to stop believing
the only thing I know
That distances run together
this traveler has come so far
To see
how beautiful you are
how beautiful you are
how beautiful you are
how beautiful you are….

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali,

Your “story” was very good.  You are right that it's not the only story (behind the “creation” of sensitive/insensitive males), but it's a common one, I think, and I saw myself in parts of it.  I'm going to write some general comments first, in response to several posts, before I speak more personally – and more directly in relation to your story.

Wilber argues that all of the lines of development that he maps are universal in human beings and therefore gender-neutral.  These lines of development find expression in different “voices,” with masculine and feminine voices being two of the basic ones.  Are these two “voices” Kosmically determined, biologically determined, culturally determined, developmentally determined, or all of the above?

For me, I feel it's important to ask these questions and make these distinctions.  I feel a need to differentiate certain cultural messages I have received (about what men and women are, how we should be, etc) from what feel like more basic energies and patterns.  These energies and patterns include biological ones, but go deeper as well.  I agree with Pelle that we need to reclaim and reintegrate those deep biological aspects of our energy and passion which we may have repressed in the interest of being the Green Man.  But I also feel it is important not to then attempt to just plug this in to cultural scripts or idealized versions of “the perfect man” or “the perfect woman.”

Here is one reason I say this, which connects to deep issues for me (and which relates to the “story” that Gitanjali told).  I am in the midst of this inquiry now in my own life, and may not be clear about everything yet.  While I recognize myself in the “sensitive man” portrait that has been painted by several of us here (including myself), I think it is important to stress that being a sensitive male is not necessarily pathological.  I don't think anyone is suggesting that, but the portraits of the sensitive male so far have all been of injured “boys” and men compromised by confused cultural messages.  I think it is important (for me) to stress this, because part of my own original injuries stemmed from my apparently innate (or at least very early emergent) sensitivity.  There wasn't a “place” for my way of being in the Texas schools in which I was raised, or even in parts of my extended family.  My parents report that even at two and three years of age, I was generally thoughtful and quiet, offering comfort to injured or crying children on the playground, etc.  While my family was accepting of me – and I certainly liked boy things like heroes, lasers, bikes, “war games,” etc – I nevertheless had an overall way of being that did not slot easily into general cultural demands and expectations, and I think this is one reason I ended up building up rage and resentment, eventually becoming a more distorted version of the “sensitive male” as I came to resent and pathologize those aspects of “masculine energy” which, in fact, characterized those males who rejected me.

This rage sometimes erupted, and I usually won the fights I was eventually forced into (perhaps because the force of it surprised the bullies who pushed me to that point), but it simmered for many years, until I began to try to work with it and process it through spiritual and psychological work.  And that work is still ongoing. 

I'm just wanting to put this out there because I feel a need to protect and stand up for the sensitive being who was rejected for not being aggressive and competitive enough, for not fitting the scripts my culture (and some of my relatives) expected me to fill.  There is more than one way to be a man, to embody “masculine” and “feminine” energies and to balance them. 

An interesting thing in my Diamond Approach work has been having aspects of myself “seen” by another, when I haven't been seeing them myself.  Not only having the “sensitivity” appreciated, but also the strength that is there (but which I am often blind to, not recognizing these traits as expressions of Red Essence.)  Having these things pointed out has allowed me to differentiate them from the pathological images and beliefs (about masculinity and the “typical male”) that infected the Green Man I had become.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Balder that is a very honest and humble/open way of putting you perspective on this discussion out there, and for me very interesting, as i have been looking at the same elements of myself in my life in relation to the world and the masculine/feminine debate.

I know from experience what it is to BE a sensitive male. In one sense my context for unravelling my truths has been very different - I grew up in an environment that actively nurtured  sensitivity and being in touch with the feminine, having two older sisters, a very strong and close mum and going to a steiner school.

In recent years, and especially months I have both come to more fully accept and value those aspects of my self, and actively work on developing more masculine ways of being, but not at all in conflict with my sensitivity.

Reading works like Deida's way of the superior man also help me to understand myself better and accept the masculine elements that were in fact allways there, but perhaps a little hidden in the confusion of growing up where and how i did.

And voilá, we have just created The Sensitive Man. This man goes out of his way not to be a stereotypical man; instead trying hard to be nice, be polite, treat women well, respect women, let the woman decide what to do, accept equal pay but still buy women flowers and dinner, never assert yourself, never hurt the feelings of a woman, etc etc. It is quite possible to socialize men into this very sensitive but also very weak role. But don't think for a minute that this is something that comes naturally or easily to a man. The Green Man spends huge amounts of energy to be who he is. It takes active restraining to maintain that kind of facade. Sometimes The Green Man appears to be the true identity of a man, and in some cases it is, but most of the time this is only a sign that huge chunk of biological instincts have been deeply repressed and buried as shadow.

Paradoxically enough the way out of rage and male dysfunction is not to dig deeper into green (if you've already done five years hard time there), it is to reclaim your masculinity and integrate it with your heart.

These two paragraphs from Gitanjali almost sum up who I was and who I'm becoming, but a bit like Balder i feel more that I was somewhat naturally sensitive/effeminate, and although my family may well have accentuated that, i dont feel the 'green man' was imposed on me at all.

I have come accross examples of absolutely stereotypical green men who are actually as egotistical in a masculine sense as they come, and who merely talk the sensitive talk while walking something very different.

Yes there is a definite case for questioning the sensitive way of being a man if he is also a walkover and aiming purely to please, but there are more manifestations than a man who is largely masculine in essence being squeezed into a feminine mold, and a way of being a sensitive man who retains and works on all of his inherrent masculinity while not changing the (larger than average) 'amount' (for want of a better word) of femininity, which is an equally rare gem to find. Masculine men with a higher purpose are in desperately short supply. And masculine heart-centered men who are confident around women and not afraid of flirting and initiating the human mating game, are in equally short supply - ask any woman you know :)

Neither are wrong at all, but there are at least two polarised ways to becoming such a man and as many paths in between as there are men.

This has been a truly amazing thread to read, and I thank everyone who's contributed!

Melv

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Balder,

This is a very vital point and your offering really brings it home. I'll note that this was on the back of my mind when I once or twice remembered to put the words “sensitive” man in brackets to indicate that this was not the same as a man who has a genuine gift of sensitivity. But this point truly needed to be brought out explicitly. So many men here do have that gift and cosnequently that sense of being an outsider from an early age.

And youve made me see their rage against the traditional and narrowing masculine roles for that very reason.

Thank you and there is much much to explore here.
Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali, thank you for adding the psychodynamic perspective to this discussion. It is very much needed in addition to stages and types that are already actively being mentioned. The family structure with an emotionally distant and passive father, and an over-involved 'invasive' mother, is so common that British psychiatrist Robin Skynner has even called it The Human Family. There are lots of different kinds of dysfunctional families but this is the one issue that most of them have in common. It's not that strange if you think about it: the father is allowed to act out his 'sick boy' type by being emotionally shut down, and the trade-off for the mother is have the children “all to herself” emotionally and become over-involved and invasive, ie 'sick girl' type. If either of the parents holds the other one to a higher standard they would immediately be forced to change themselves, therefore the status quo remains.

I think you're spot on that the two modes of functioning for the psychologically underdeveloped man/masculine is either fusion to a woman or stonewalling her. What I'd like to add is that it is very possible to oscillate between these two modes.

One can also tell the psychodynamic story of women/girls of course, but it is widely recognized that the path of the boy is usually a bit harder in that he actively has to move away from the mother and if he doesn't get help doing that nor manages to do it on his own, he is much worse off than the girl who doesn't move away from her mother.

The public sphere has long been unreasonably dominated by men and the masculine value sphere, this has been made crystal clear by gender studies. But equally established and well known from gender studies is that the private/domestic sphere is unreasonably dominated by women, and in my view this is a problem of equal magnitude. Male presence and the masculine value sphere are desperately needed in many homes; we will never get healthy men in their absence.


Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Balder and Melv,

There is absolutely nothing wrong with authentically being a sensitive man. All men have at least a feminine subcurrent, some are more or less balanced and a minority actually have a predominantly feminine polarity.

I'm not speculating or insinuating where you two or anybody else in this thread fall along that spectrum. The main idea to remember for me is that accessing or integrating the masculine in no way means denying or suppressing feminine parts of oneself. The only reason 'bad boys' display no feminine traits is that they are desperatly clinging to a stereotypical, non-authenic masculinity.


Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I understand, Pelle, and wasn't feeling “pegged” by you into one box or another.  I have never been “effeminate,” but I've always been generally sensitive and non-competitive.  I just wanted to point out the obvious:  that there is not a singular “sensitive male” type, and that sensitivity in a male is not necessarily an indication of pathology or wounding.  Though our culture sometimes reacts that way, which then often results in wounding. 

I do not personally resonate with Deida's claim (if that's what he said) that it takes great effort to be a sensitive male, as if it's a total facade.  When it IS a total facade, or if we've become convinced that we need to distance ourselves from aspects of ourselves because of wounding which compounds a more natural or innate sensitivity (or male/female balance), then of course there IS a loss of contact with essential vitality and effort must then be expended on compensatory behaviors.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Balder, I suspect Deida was talking about the “pathologised” version only, where the sensitivity is an armour or a shell, but he does put things roughly and that has been the source of frustration for many. I also feel he speaks from his own perspective, it seems to me his ow core is very “masculine” (using that word to indicate traditional traits), so from his place in the spectrum, most of that kind of sensitive behaviour was a shell.

I could be doing the poor fellow a deep injustice here :P

Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Balder:
I do not personally resonate with Deida's claim (if that's what he said) that it takes great effort to be a sensitive male, as if it's a total facade.

I don't know exactly what Deida has said but what I wrote about were my own observations and nobody else has to answer for it.

Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Pelle, I'm sensing something defensive in your last two posts to me, and I wasn't intending to criticize anything you'd said – just to add some distinctions that feel important to me to make, as I am working with and processing these things. 

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Dear Ones,

So much above deserves affirmation and admiration that I feel powerless to adequetly honor it.  Please allow me to express with an image, the summation of my current state of being.

It is as if Kali has manifest herself among us.  I feel Her in her destroying form, hunting the heads of my disparate, inauthentic selves:  the sensitive man, the bad boy, the agenic male, the pretender, the mysoginist/hater of women.  I see in the atmosphere of yearning above us, the mixing of dry, cool air with the moist and warm.  The latent power of this blending reaches tornadically downwards past outstretched arms into the pith of being.  I am torn asunder by the force of it.  All of my little scripts and methodologies, my copings and images of self have been dashed to insensibility.

So much truth in declaration has been offered to this space over the past few days, by such high-risk-taking lovers, that I can choose to rest in trust and just let Kali's storm unfold, let Her take away what will not hold in this blast of savage love.  I do know that we strive for tenderness, respect, and communion.  Its just that thousands of years of repression, misunderstanding and solitude have left men and women divided in time and space.  We hardly know the extent and I hear us, see us, feel us groping without and within.  I love this path of sharing, showing from whence we came.  I think that Kali too loves this and knows what to do as we turn to one another.

What a delicious confusion!

Love to all,
yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Michael, once again, the words you offer touch my heart.

“All of my little scripts and methodologies, my copings and images of self have been dashed to insensibility.
So much truth in declaration has been offered to this space over the past few days, by such high-risk-taking lovers, that I can choose to rest in trust and just let Kali's storm unfold, let Her take away what will not hold in this blast of savage love.”

This is exactly what my own process has involved. Smashing preconceived ideas about what is “right” or “wrong” and throwing myself into the Abyss. Remarkably, (and we're told this by prophets and such, but often don't know what this really means), it is only by jumping into the Abyss and allowing Kali's storm to unfold, that all the brambles can be cleared away. And then the Phoenix rises, renewed by the act of burning.

We are, collectively, in the storm, and it holds much promise for integration, healing and living and loving in Truth. Resistance is futile!  8)

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I've been lurking in this thread, and there's tons of great sharing! I am de-lurking to offer my perspective on a few issues:

“There's nothing wrong with that, but let's remember that without reconnecting to the sheer power and messiness of the lower chakras we don't have the energy needed to embody our polarity nor integrate it with out mind and emotions. We cannot transcend something until we have experienced it fully, and have access to it at will.”

THIS reminds me of my process of transitioning from “female” to “male” in terms of the way I am perceived by others. My perspective is one that is foreign to the majority, yet it speaks to this issue. I could not integrate both masculine and feminine energies without moving towards male externally. I have always ID'd as male internally, and I think there's enough research at this point to suggest that in utero hormones actually masculinized my brain. That's another story, though. I have worked very hard to “reconnect to the sheer power and messiness of the lower chakras,” and I couldn't do it until I began my transition. I certainly tried to BE female, it just came off as awkward to me and everyone around me, and it took an enormous amount of energy to “act as if” in a world that didn't believe the mask I was trying to wear (as female). So, what you said, Balder, was completely in synch with my experience in this regard:
“I do not personally resonate with Deida's claim (if that's what he said) that it takes great effort to be a sensitive male, as if it's a total facade.  When it IS a total facade, or if we've become convinced that we need to distance ourselves from aspects of ourselves because of wounding which compounds a more natural or innate sensitivity (or male/female balance), then of course there IS a loss of contact with essential vitality and effort must then be expended on compensatory behaviors.”

If one puts on a mask that belies that person's internal subjective reality, that DOES in fact take a great amount of energy away from consciousness.

And Balder asked: Wilber argues that all of the lines of development that he maps are universal in human beings and therefore gender-neutral.  These lines of development find expression in different “voices,” with masculine and feminine voices being two of the basic ones.  Are these two “voices” Kosmically determined, biologically determined, culturally determined, developmentally determined, or all of the above?

Based on my experiences, these voices tetra-arise. They are, to different degrees in each person, determined by interacting factors from all four quadrants. Don't know if I'm conveying what I mean very well here. Essentially, my culture and the structures of society tend to offer me a variety of masks that I can wear if I am to be seen by people in that culture as “one of us” instead of Other. These forces are significant (they were to me, anyway, because I chose to repress what I knew from my earliest memories at the age of 11 so that I would be accepted and loved due to how I experienced these forces). In most cases, people are able to pick up a culturally-derived mask that fits their interior and exterior selves enough that they don't endure extreme emotional stress. We have, then, the interior “voices” (UL) that are an amalgam of cultural messages based on societal structures and the hormones and brain structures of the UR quad.

Does that make sense to anyone other than me?  8)

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Colin

I think i get it…and what I think I get seems like a huge point. We move away from our depths (be they essential or not) and then we imitate the very qualities that are in our depths, expending huge energy doing so.

Case in point. A woman puts on very feminine clothes and habits to express a femininity she already has in her depths but  is not in touch with.

Or i'm reminded of some of those hollywood filmstars from the past who had to express histrionic emotional behaviour which seemed fake, and yet somewhere in their depths lost to them was real emotion…

So taking Balder's point. Men faking sensitive behaviour, when actually there is true, unrecognised sensitivity in them.

this beautifully ties in with the unborn enneagram thread. For each personality pose that we have, there is an “essential” or authentic energy that we are trying to compensate for.

Good to hear your voice here.
X Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Colin:  “Based on my experiences, these voices tetra-arise. They are, to different degrees in each person, determined by interacting factors from all four quadrants. Don't know if I'm conveying what I mean very well here. Essentially, my culture and the structures of society tend to offer me a variety of masks that I can wear if I am to be seen by people in that culture as “one of us” instead of Other. These forces are significant (they were to me, anyway, because I chose to repress what I knew from my earliest memories at the age of 11 so that I would be accepted and loved due to how I experienced these forces). In most cases, people are able to pick up a culturally-derived mask that fits their interior and exterior selves enough that they don't endure extreme emotional stress. We have, then, the interior “voices” (UL) that are an amalgam of cultural messages (LL) based on societal structures (LR) and the hormones and brain structures of the UR quad.

Does that make sense to anyone other than me?  8)”

Yes, that makes sense to me.  But it does suggest that male and female voices are not universal givens – things must be discovered in their naked authenticity.  What do you think?

Best wishes,

B.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

You all are wonderful – and  I can't keep up!

On the subject of how much to share on these threads, Gitanjali earlier wrote: I certainly feel i need a bot more privacy. Right now i have a vague sense that the whole world can read it. Michael and Jane mentioned similar sentiments.

Gitanjali, I know what you mean – and I've watched myself wanting to share more personal stories, then stepping back from that, and even “feeling guilty” about stepping back, and wanting to say that I'm feeling guilty, yadda, yadda, yadda. And sometimes I've shared something and afterwards was a little sorry I'd done so. Now, even though I err more on the side of caution in public forums, there are some stories I feel perfectly fine sharing, especially if they're about events from many years ago. But there are edgier events that I would only be able to share in a private environment.

Even if Zaadz cannot (currently, at least) create private threads within a pod, keep in mind that anyone here can create their own private pod and invite whomever they like to join in. I've mused about doing that for the purpose of this particular conversation, but I'm feeling a little overextended at the moment – I wouldn't want to be the facilitator or a moderator in another pod right now. But I would likely join such a discussion from time to time (if invited).

Lol – Thank you for those vignettes about connecting with your predominant polarity. Those sound like powerful experiences! Fascinating how in your shadow dream you were racing near your childhood home, as if returning to the root, the origin, of these elements in your psyche, in order to consciously include them.

Looking at all these reflections on the sensitive man – I'm learning a lot; thanks y'all! I share Balder's opinion that the sensitive man is not necessarily pathological; and in fact I really do think we could use more truly sensitive men in the world. Somehow  “kindness: and “niceness” are often associated with not having a backbone, but that need not be the case. 

During my college years (we're talking around 20 years ago, again), the beef with sensitive straight men had more to do with faux-sensitive men: guys feigning gentility and compassion and interest in “higher” things (I recall guys writing poetry to get laid) as a means to attract women. These weren't the naturally gentle men – they were “bad boys” in nice guy's clothing. Thus the “sensitive man” started getting a bad name. In the mean time, the guys who were temperamentally sensitive were often too shy to approach women as other than friends. Sometimes they seemed to pine away for some woman they had projected all their ideals and fantasies on – a woman who generally would not give them the time of day (or who was herself too wrapped up with bad boys and faux-sensitive men). And ironically, these men were often surrounded by women, some of whom would have gladly taken their hand, if only the guy had taken the chance. Or if only the women had had the gumption to approach him! But that would have been against the male/female rules of the day, right?  (And hasn't it become such a cliche? – it's a common story line in many romantic comedies).

Later,
Mary

p.s. – I'm seeing now that several people have posted since I began writing this so who knows how much sense this is making …

Also wanted to expand on something Michael alluded to earlier: There is a way in which sharing these kinds of personal insights on an online forum can allow us to go deeper than we may ordinarily go in “real time” and in “meet-space.” Sharing through writing enables people to take the time to express themselves, and those who may be shyer or more reticent while talking within groups (I know I am) get to “come out and play.” I know I've said on previous threads that I didn't think forums were the best place for therapy, however I do think they can be great places for in-depth discussions – we get stories and sharings and insights here that may have never come to light otherwise.

–M

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hi Mary, good to hear you…

After this discussion I think I want to make a very rational, falsely concise categorisation of a mysterious Reality :P. So to be taken with a pinch of holy salt…

I think we have the

1. Sensitive man who is the wolf in disguise and just putting it on as a courting ploy

2. The sensitive man who is genuinely so but has suppressed his other core masculine energies

3. the sensitive man who does not have other core masculine energies.

I reckon with men who are nearer number 2, one risk is that even though they have genuine sensitivity, because they have not developed the masculine energies that will help them protect that energy, they may substitute the genuine sensitivity for a mask of sensitivity (after reading Colin's post). Such is the price of our fragmentation. We can lose expression of it all.

Or they may not, they may stay in their sensitive depths and be fairly defenceless around it.

Mary, thats a really good point about the women who do want to go out with man no 2 but he's fixated on a woman he cant get but maybe the bad boy can get. Thats definitely a dynamic. So what's going on there? Perhaps the anima has come into play…

XX Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali, that is very well summed up - i couldnt agree more…

pelle said Yesterday, 8:04 PM:

Balder and Melv,

There is absolutely nothing wrong with authentically being a sensitive man. All men have at least a feminine subcurrent, some are more or less balanced and a minority actually have a predominantly feminine polarity.

I'm not speculating or insinuating where you two or anybody else in this thread fall along that spectrum. The main idea to remember for me is that accessing or integrating the masculine in no way means denying or suppressing feminine parts of oneself. The only reason 'bad boys' display no feminine traits is that they are desperatly clinging to a stereotypical, non-authenic masculinity

I couldnt agree more - i only wish i had more of these moments of zaadz creatively evolving grace, to read, digest and contribute to totally amazing and cutting edge dialogues and sharings. In particular Michaels words cause a resonance of ahhh/om apreciation!:

it is as if Kali has manifest herself among us.  I feel Her in her destroying form, hunting the heads of my disparate, inauthentic selves:  the sensitive man, the bad boy, the agenic male, the pretender, the mysoginist/hater of women.  I see in the atmosphere of yearning above us, the mixing of dry, cool air with the moist and warm.  The latent power of this blending reaches tornadically downwards past outstretched arms into the pith of being.  I am torn asunder by the force of it.  All of my little scripts and methodologies, my copings and images of self have been dashed to insensibility.

So much truth in declaration has been offered to this space over the past few days, by such high-risk-taking lovers, that I can choose to rest in trust and just let Kali's storm unfold, let Her take away what will not hold in this blast of savage love.  I do know that we strive for tenderness, respect, and communion.  Its just that thousands of years of repression, misunderstanding and solitude have left men and women divided in time and space.  We hardly know the extent and I hear us, see us, feel us groping without and within.  I love this path of sharing, showing from whence we came.  I think that Kali too loves this and knows what to do as we turn to one another.

What a delicious confusion!

You all make me bow in humility and joy at the eloquence of putting into words that you acheive in transmitting your hearts and higher selves' truths.

Am pleased to be lurking…

Thanks

Melv

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Melv its good to hear you here! X Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali,

I would hope that we also have:

4. The sensitive man who has integrated his masculine core energy.


I don't believe that a predominantly masculine man has to be insensitive.

What we really have to do to clarify this is to distinguish between two kinds of sensitivity:
a) being intuitive, picking up on subtleties in communication, etc (input)
b) not liking or not being able to be direct and assertive in one's own communication (output)


I believe that a) is compatible with being predominantly masculine and having integrated this polarity, while b) would suggest a man who is either predominantly feminine or else hiding from his masculinity.


Now who's gonna make distinctions using the Greek alphabet?  :P


Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Colin,  Dear Ones,

You rascal!  How possibly better to say it than “Resistance is futile.”?  For so much of my life I have resisted, fought, denied, belittled, and condescended to the “opposition.”  Lately, this incessant mirroring has led me to see that the struggle is within, that my entire makeup has been a constant reaction to this struggle and that, indeed, now, this is all I really know about myself - that I know nothing except that I seem to have been born with a soul that is in deep conflict with women.

Just the other day, I had taken a long list of candidate nutritional supplements from a highly evolved male professional and called a woman (at his suggestion) in Tucson for her psychic opinion on the relative value of each.  I called for an appt. and in a few days she returned the call saying that she had waited because she had been momentarily to disturbed to focus.  We made the necessary financial arrangements and I read to her the brand names only.  To these she assigned relative % values claiming that she would only support those brands that achieved over 95% certainty.  Out of the 50 or so candidates, she would only reccomend a dozen.

That done, she asked me if I wanted a soul “reading.”  I had been so impressed by the authority she brought to the product specs., that I said ” … . sure.” as I felt as if in safe hands.  She then began an extraordinary dialogue between her higher source, my higher source, herself, me, and a series of charts that she moved back and forth between with lightning speed and continuity.  Always the subject was the soul I incarnated with and its series of recent incarnations - about ten deep, she let me know.  She never said a word about the life situation of the previous incarnations except as it referred to my relationships with the women (or men in the case of a female incarnation) and the “qualities” of them.  It always boiled down to one simple issue - who betrayed whom?  Who harmed whom?  Nothing else seemed to matter to her.  She stated very (oh my god! how verily!) clearly that my soul upon entrance into this life carried a consuming hatred for women.

Some months ago, I could have spoken directly to my experiences vis women as a series of heartbreaking betrayals.  Lovingly, adoringly, libidinously besotted upon first encounter, I tended (habitually) to see each new lover as feminine perfection - an antidote to my sense of separation and loneliness.  Weeks or months of bliss would routinely unfold.  Imperceptibly, I would find myself contemplating behavior that seemed subtly controlling - a sense that, after all, I was going to have to do-things-a-little-better, to earn the belonging I craved beneath all.  I always fell into the pattern of “sensitive” man, knowing that I had been such a hopeless predator for years before these latest encounters, and knowing that I would have to make “amends” by accepting the criticism and trying to do better.  It would proceed apace with more subtle corrections and I would strive to accomodate.  Any attempt on my part to address the sense of growing “annoyance” would be met by green debate and a dissolution to demi-violent language, inventory taking and debasement of my “best intentions.”

I am now beginning to realize that despite my “best Intentions” I was still acting out of my Don Juan, Homme Fatale, predator persona though masking it behind the Green Sensitive Man charade.  Trouble was, I believed in myself as a sensitive man, that I had done the work and was willing to back it up with “action” (really more pretending as I see it now.)

Living like this was just as difficult as before when the Don Juan/predator part of me was more open in expression.  Part of me would die when I would discard a lover in those days, just the same as would happen when I came to feel “betrayed” by the Femme Fatale manifesting women I would attract in my later days with my own shadowed Homme Fatale.  Whenever the combination of beauty, sexuality, charm and spark focused on me, I fell for it like a stone and, married or not, I would carry on an affair with these others in my heart and mind.  Though deeply committed to monagamy, I would still harbor these affairs as if they were truly “live” but never came forward either to my wives or the “other” about what was stirring within me.  What I am saying here is that neither state produced anything but a further sense of betrayal - always women betraying me - mother, sisters, nuns, aunts, cousins, every girlfriend I ever yearned for and did not have the courage to approach - all I processed in my covert desperation as betrayal.

After talking to this woman about the incarnation specifics, I have come to realize what I had heard some years ago, that this betrayal I have so long experienced is but a mirror of my own self-betrayal - the disavowal of my own feminine predominance of essential character.  I mean that sincerely.  Down deep, I have a sense of true “knowing” that I am fundamentally more feminine in essence than masculine.  That my masculine aspects are of a purely (not false) libidinous nature and are overwhelmed, above, by a powerful inclination to live out of my feminine.  I need to be shown how to do this, not taught, or told.  I believe that other men can show this too me by struggling to express from their feminine, and that women can show me by reaching to touch me at such times when I find it difficult to touch myself.

Generally, I think that it is time for women to show men what it is to love without restraint, how to be nurturing and supportive when the going is really rough, to take the failure risk no matter what is at stake.  This, I believe will give eyes to our blindness.  I know that it seems excruciating to take such a risk with the potentially lethal aspects of the male agenic, yet this approach seems so simple and elegant as to stand strongly up to the depth of the problem - a solution outside of the context in which the problem rose.

Outdated, pernicious, and tenacious paradigms never seem to yeild to debate or “reason” or scientific reduction, but always to simplicity and elegance, however difficult.

Yer Pal,
Michael

PS - The woman I was speaking with made something clear at the end of her ministrations on my behalf,  “Michael,” she said, “I hope you can feel this clearing that you surrendered to.  My sources say that your willingness to let go of this primordial hate is strong and pure.  Own it and it is yours.”

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hi Melv just caught your earlier post. this is a bit of  a tricky thing because sometime posts get lost if they are in reply to an offering a few posts back. I just want to note quickly that the quotes you have taken are from Pelle, not me, I just posted it again from another thread.

Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Lurking, learning, crying, laughing.  Resonating so deeply with the transparent, heartfelt expressions and insights shared here.  My inclination to compartmentalize (and also trivialize) my feelings in this area is no match for the beautiful “soul friends” who so graciously share their wisdom and hearts in this pod.  Even if the discussion was private though, I'm not sure how much I could share at this point.  Avoidance is a coping skill that I'm trying to replace.  Thank you all so much for sharing your selves.  I really do want to dance (I think!).
Blessings,
Chris

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Have just caught up on this thread, I have refrained from reading up till now because of the length!  But now I have, Chris, like you, I'm lurking in wonderment.

I couldn't possibly mention, let alone respond to the all the wonderfullness expressed here.  Therefore I will rest in my feminine - embrace the spirit, wisdom and authenticity of this thread, and refrain from asserting any of my own agentic analysis! :)

Beautiful people, this is the feminine in action is it not?  Interspersed with some gorgeous masculine clarity…integration indeed.

Ewan

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hello everyone,

I went dancing this weekend…….. :)    Every so often a friend and I rent a yoga studio, mix some cd's and dance like nobody's watchin!  (oh yeah, and we invite others to come dance with us)   In those moments of wild abandon I thought of this thread and how my divine feminine was showing up in the world.  The music and the freedom of those moments that night awakened something within me….. something good, something strong.
Thank you to all the masculine for your vunerability and willingness to share yourself here.

Here's a request,  I would like to hear more from women about the feminine aspects of themselves.  How did your connection with yourself, men, the world effect who you are and how you show up as the divine feminine…….  to help balance the sharing here.  I promise I will add more cents (maybe more than two)

I have more I want to post but I am at work and busy this week….. 

In wild abandon,

gina

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Balder:
Pelle, I'm sensing something defensive in your last two posts to me, and I wasn't intending to criticize anything you'd said – just to add some distinctions that feel important to me to make, as I am working with and processing these things.

No offense taken, really.

I was just trying to make clear that I too am fine with these distinctions and the richness of combinations available.

peace bro,

Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Michael, I just want to say that I feel your pain. As men we have different experiences on the surface but many common themes exist underneath. I don't think you are predominantly feminine, not the way you come across here,  but I do feel a sincere commitment in you to connect more to your own feminine parts. This is a very honorable commitment and this thread has made it more clear to me than ever that reconnecting to the masculine and feminine for a man, in no way have to be mutually exclusive. The more alive, spontaneous and open we become the more both parts can blossom.

As men we struggle with things that are hard to understand for women (just as we men can never quite get child-birth, being valued less in society, etc etc). We don't even have to talk about masculine energies to understand how some recurring themes in males' lives come about. Just take testosterone and its two drives “fuck it or kill it”. This the biology we have to manage, and find a role in life that neither suppresses nor lets this part of us run amok. This in itself is a monumentous task in many ways. How the fuck do you form a healthy relationship to “fuck it or kill it”? This is the task of men and in no way do we support each other in doing this, the discussion here being a brilliant exception of course. Only by men connecting to men in an honest way can we find a role that makes us vitally alive but still safe for people to be around.

You mention betrayal and this of course causes a huge reaction in a man. “Fuck it or kill it” is in us whether we like it or not but this is not a practical solution in this day and age. Our stress hormones as well as our anger takes much longer to ebb out physiologically than in women. This is one reason why men turn away from all kinds of drama and arguments while women thrive on it, or at the very least  come out of it much less harmed. This is just another example of how desperately we need a new role for men in this day and age that is neither amber, green or red.

As men we have to tear down our stonewalls in the company of other men, before we can connect to women honestly.

We need to be confident, not arrogant. Leading, not coercing. Accepting, not rejecting. Just, not punitive. Constructive, not destructive. Nurturing, not draining. Powerful, not forceful.


Brothers unite :)


Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Melv, Gitanjali, Colin, Pelle, Mary ~

I've been wanting to respond to you and go a little deeper into these issues around “sensitive males” and the formation of the “integrated male,” but I've just been swamped at work (and at home!) starting yesterday afternoon.  Lots going on.  I expect breathing room in the next day or two and will try to write more then –

But anyway – I also second Gina's call for more feminine reflection on feminine experience….

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gina's call is a great one. I have to catch up with work after being sick and off for two days, but I promise to give it attention…

Love G

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Sweet friends all dear,

Echoing Bruce's post above, I've been wanting to respond to lots of things but just haven't had the time …. last night I could have kind of dutifully stayed in …. but I went out dancing instead … just so needed some of that 5 rhythms movement medicine.

But I do deeply honour you all and want to speak at least briefly to each of you.

Michael, you're really great. I so love your honesty, integrity and determination! I  celebrate what your psychic said: ”I hope you can feel this clearing that you surrendered to.  My sources say that your willingness to let go of this primordial hate is strong and pure.  Own it and it is yours.” Yay, bro!

Gitanjali, Jane, your two posts one after the other initially made me go “ouch!” …. then I re-read them a day later and got what you were really saying :) Thank you, sweet sisters.

Bruce, man I've so appreciated your posts. Thanks for so eloquently and cogently speaking out for the richly complex middle ground between those extremes of 'new' man and 'bad boy'. And for reminding us of our need to show ourselves self-compassion.

Pelle, I take my hat off to you. You've contributed so much, and made so many pertinent distinctions. Respect.

Colin, I get so much from your contributions and look forward to more. Great you're here, man.

Mary, thanks for being such a great mod. And for your sharing. You just rock!

Melv, Ewan, Chris, great you're joining in, showing up!

Gina …. you set the ball rolling and have made so many insightful offerings along the way. I applaud your

“I would like to hear more from women about the feminine aspects of themselves.  How did your connection with yourself, men, the world effect who you are and how you show up as the divine feminine…….  to help balance the sharing here.”

Love to all,

Lol

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Dear Ones,

Pelle:  I'm not sure how much actual pain that I am experiencing right now - more a dip into my fears.  The whole bit about drowning in the pools of the Osirion in the Nile story was about that contemplation.  I see a layered structure of the personality that has, as its outward face, the “look good” personna.  Underneath is the character defect structure and the drivers of mixed motivations.  Beneath that are the derivative emotions of fear and joy such as compassion, forgivenance, “love”, gratitude, loneliness, abandonment, shame, guilt, less than, and powerlessness and pain.

I need to say that I know the pain is there shielded powerfully by fear.  This fear shield protects me from experiencing the pain.  When stimulation activates the “doubts-about-myself” structure, fear arises and my scripts, lies, and response/reaction technologies leap into action to secure, with the aid of my defect structure,  that none of this reaches the surface, or, if it does, that it does so in a way that supports my “look good.”

Mostly, beneath my “surface,” I experience the “negative” emotions as a fairly steady state when I encounter the difficult, “stimulations” arising about me.  Stimulated by beauty, I experience the positive side of the emotional field.  This rise of emotion within via stimulation is played through my mixed motivations towards the surface “look good.”  When I need to hide the negative emotions, I resort to the tricks and scripts, the body language, postures, and gestures of “sensitive” man, asshole, mystic or whatever other “character” might be needed to fit the situationl.  By “fit”, I mean, control the situation so my “look good” is not perturbed.  This can appear “together” to the under-initiated, but I know that it is largely a facade and hides the turmoil within.  I have been called “the most honest man I ever met” and the most “authentic” despite the fact that I am mostly “faking” it.  The most honest thing I ever heard said in open forum was:  “Honest folks, I'm a liar.”  I take comfort only in the effort to do the best I can in any given moment while knowing that most of the time, I am faking most of what appears on the surface.

To get to the pain, I think that I must first truly (in a safe, facilitated environment) drown in the fear, allow the pain of a thousand shadowed wounds to rise in its exquisite fullness and drown there too.  To breath deeply in the presence of such pain is to permit the source of Joy to expand and alchemically disperse the pain, then the fear and the doubt structure in a rush of Truth of who I really am.

Then, just then, I might have some claim to honesty and authenticity.  I propose that this is a non-gendered aspect of “self” and not just the province of men.

Balder:  I realize that it must seem as if I am trashing the “sensitive” man archetype.  I want to assure you personally that this is not the case.  For myself, I know that I have adopted it as a means of securing myself in the world of relationships with women as well as a certain kind of look-good status in my relationships with men.  I believe that “sensitive” man is a legitimate expression of male identity trying to make its way in the world.  As far as I am concerned you “wear” it beautifully and, from what I know of your story, it is a brave act on your part to examine and adopt it.  Its just that for me, and only me, I know that with this history of ever-so-deeply shadowed fear of, I guess, the fem. agenic, I have been prone to an equally shadowed reaction to this fear.  In my life and apparently, many past lives, when I react to deep primordial fear, I have a tendency to hate.  For me, this “hate” is not about anger, rather, it is about ritual experience of deep fear, fear that I have not owned, fear so profound, that, to date, I have not accepted it as mine, and must defense with resentment - holding the “other” responsible because of their “behaviors.”  I now know that there is no rational, moral, or ethical foundation for this derferral of responsibility for my own fears.  I feel deeply that the basis for my reactionary hate is crumbling.  I have no scripts for this, no protocols, no nothing to help but surrender - as Colin says, “Resistance is futile.”

I suspect that women know this about men and ahve become more or less deeply frustrated with us that we cannot, or have not, taken this under consideration.  God, how deeply it goes - alt the way back to Adam and Eve.  Something happened back there in the murk of time that estranged us.  I believe that, right here, right now, within this sangha of fem. and masc. voices, searching within and reporting with as much honesty as we can muster, that the “break” will reveal itself in due time.  Rianne Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade changed my life.  It was years ago that I read it for the first time.  Now, finally, her message and the lessons of long ago are beginning to surface as a willingness to change, a need to change, an imperative to change. 

Yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hello everyone:  I promise to engage in dialog already here soon but I thought I would toss this out  in the feminine arena.

As a way of working with my feminine shadow, I began digging into my trust issues a while back.  I created a thread in the hopes of bringing even more insight to the possible conscious and unconscious beliefs surrounding trust, which it did.

I keep coming back to trust because it is (to me) a paramount issue.  Why Trust?  Because to enable my divine feminine to express herself fully with no barriers, no blocks, she requires space, freedom and safety.  Vulnerability is born from trust and it is in our daily lives, our upbringing and in our dedication we are able to expand our trust.  How can we be vulnerable, open, safe, if we do not trust? 

How this has affected me and my expression of my divine feminine?  I chose to be self sufficient.  I thought I was becoming ‘balanced' wanting equality, wanting an understanding of roles and growth but the end result has been I have become increasingly less willing to surrender to another fully.  The more I trust my own divinity, my own true self, the less it seems I am in need of another and when that ‘need' presents itself, I see it a weakness.  I am a ‘strong' woman.  Really, I am a woman with a strong masculine self who plays at being a strong woman.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

“How this has affected me and my expression of my divine feminine? I chose to be self sufficient. I thought I was becoming ‘balanced’ wanting equality, wanting an understanding of roles and growth but the end result has been I have become increasingly less willing to surrender to another fully. The more I trust my own divinity, my own true self, the less it seems I am in need of another and when that ‘need’ presents itself, I see it a weakness. I am a ‘strong’ woman. Really, I am a woman with a strong masculine self who plays at being a strong woman.”

Gina,….I truly resonate with what you are writing about above. At various stages in my life and even quite recently, I have been so competent and autonomous, so ‘strong’, so willing to give voice to my truth/the truth, so capable of providing, being generous, exuding abundance, that most of the people who declared a strong attraction for me, have been women. (well, and the few men have not been my peers.) In some ways, I have been the wonderful man, I have been seeking, (be the change you want…) All of these declarations of love for me have initially left me with a cold sweat on the back of my neck, and the challenge of being true to myself without trying to shut down or minimize the offering of the “other”.

In the work, that I have been doing with Robert Masters last summer, in the murky zone of an early love relationship, Robert asked me, “Is he your peer?” I had to stumble and bumble around in some effort of humility and ‘we are all equal under the eyes of god’ and so one, but in my heart, ‘he’ was not my peer, and as much as I might wish it to be otherwise, there was nothing that I could do to ‘fix’ that…..and pretending to myself is just a version of prolonging the agony….I don’t want to do this anymore. I am okay being alone…. I am not okay living a lie.

Some relationships are really simply, largely inadequate for the intimate exploration that we seek with the Beloved….not only some, but probably most, maybe all….. And yet I love how Stephine and Ondrea Levine have talked about ‘triangulating’ towards God, using the energy and perception and perspective of the ‘other’ to see more clearly, to feel my edges more acutely, to braille my rough spots, to extend and touch and expand the world as embodied in one beloved person, or in my community , or in my world.
This ‘triangulation’ is really a dance of resonance and dissonance. And it requires a conscious and willing and mutual choice between two people. It must be a profound and willing decision on a person’s part to diligently, and completely own and process his/her own shadow work, and bring it to the relationship. There is no compromise or bargaining about this…..because every time I refuse to do my work, I am muddying the waters of our mutual perception, and likewise is the other. Owning, clarifying, turning towards the other, brings light….denying, rejecting, abandoning brings dullness and turbidity and denseness and confusion.

And it is interesting too, we all know what it is like to be in increasing states of confusion(muddiness) rather than increasing states of clarity. And this to me, is where the profound trust comes in, where the internal radar is never wrong…. and where it is really easy to be intoxicated by visions of a life-everafter with the Beloved, instead of staying present and turning towards the discomfort. I am only very recently learning this trust, and it is a trust in myself, to take honesty over a pale and false comfort, to take reality over longing. I think this is what Rumi meant when he wrote: “There are lovers content with longing. I am not one of those.” I have been “one of those” for most of my life, willing and patient enough to see the oak trees in every acorn, the hope in every green sprout…..but I am not any more. I need to be fully met. I am complelled to meet my Self.

The greatest impediment in this meeting is my fear. My fear of rejection, or unworthiness, of abandonment….What if I love somebody so much, and it is not returned…what then? What if I trust someone to meet me fully in the field, and they don’t? What if I return to some version of ‘Delta Dawn, What’s that flower you’ve got on, could it be a faded rose from days gone by…” Well, I have done all that…I have wallowed, and cried and left snotty Kleenexes around the house, broken-hearted and surely not able to bear the pain this time…..and actually, I am thankful for every one of those dramas, I am thankful for my innocent attachment to those roles, for the repetition of the wallowing part enough times to be able to see it as something I am choosing, some pathos that is satisfying me, some delusion I can let go of. I love the words by William Wordsworth, ‘Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.’ That is all I am compelled to trust. Beyond all of this drama, there is the deepest compassion.

When I am not being fully met, then I have to settle for more. My sister, Siobhan, actually gave me a sterling silver badge with “settle for more” inscribed on it. I actually think we all need to ‘settle for more’, and wear the badge too, all of us, men and women…..and I don’t mean more stuff, more junk, more drama…I mean more truth, more presence, more love…..

On this love path, there are some basic truths….Some of them are: anyone always has the right to reject me. The only pain that I can avoid is the pain of avoiding pain. Pain is inevitable, suffering is a choice. I can only love another to the extent that I can love myself. I have no control over the other person. Abandonment by the other is painful, but abandoment by my self is death. When the heart cries for what it has lost, the spirit dances for what it has gained….and what did Martin Buber write, something like, ‘we are all powerful, and we are compelled to love. So may we love powerfully.”

As a woman(particularly), I am also responsible for staying with my feelings, even if they are negative, and bringing light to them….even when, and most importantly when, I fear that putting them out on the table will risk the loss of the relationship with the other. Doing otherwise, is to lose my relationship with my Self….and this is when I am left spinning and groundless, and in deep peril….. There is a place for therapy in learning how to do this, how to own responsibility for what is mine, how to learn to stop blaming the ‘other’, how to learn to take control of my part of the equation and letting go of the outcome….. One book that I loved, and that I never see on the self help shelf, is by Bonnie Krepps, “loving without losing yourself.” Yesterday, I began reading Riane Eisler’s Sacred Pleasure…. a brilliant wonderful discussion….same thing.

Anyway, I must post this and then see how much further I can get through this amazing thread before it is time to get my gorgeous David out of his sleepy head and out the door for school….We have another ‘large day in the big land’. I wish all of you were here….perhaps I will convene a gathering next April…..we won’t have to talk at all, just lean on the various trees in various poses, and let the sun and the earth work their magic. It is impossible not to burst with love on days like these….
Jane

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Balder, Pelle, Gitanjali, Michael and all of you…

This is really touching some chords of threads of enquiry that have been difficult to entangle in previous times, and like Balder i so wish to respond to all the unique points and sharings that are going on here, but am fully involved with work and social endeavours that i only have time to read these posts for 10-20 mins in the morning.

Just wanting to express more appreciation and deep-felt joy that there is such a discussion going on, which like Ewan said, seems such a healthy fusion of masculine clarity and feminine truth.

The points where Michael talked of having a more feminine core and where i spoke of being effeminate, and Balder (i think) spoke of seeing it differently in himself and perceiving Michael in these posts as seeming more masculine (im sorry if im not doing justice to the actual words - i dont have time to go back and sift out quotes - please correct me where needed).

Is this a matter of degree? Also, It would be great to more fully explore first what is meant by having more feminine energy as a man - and whether this is traits such as shyness or artistic creativity or (please add), or whether it is a much deeper understanding of the feminine that informs in an inutitive and heartfelt way ,and allows a recognition and cherishing of one's own feminine while working to enhance the positive masculine, and that tehse are not fundamentally in conflict with eachother.
Just scratching the surface…

I am looking forward to more from Gina and what you presented there.

Many thanks to you all

Melv

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I come from a background of mistrusting the masculine and condescending to the feminine. Men, or masculinised women had overt power in that world. I experienced it as a deeply chauvinistic culture. Women cooked in the back room and gossiped and men sat in the front room and discussed the affairs of the day. I sat in the front room and attempted to hold my own in that conversation, be it politics, art, or science, and I thought people were charmed because I was a kid. Perhaps, they really thought WTF?

I chose to fortify myself through playing the “unhealthy masculine’s” game - I got the degrees required in a very masculine discipline, joined the rational/transcendent conversations, ignored my body’s needs, suppressed my emotional temperament and my compassion. My filters never let me see another kind of masculinity could exist. My filters could not imagine the feminine as powerful.

My persona was capable, strong, and forthright and ready to defend myself. And my soul was grieving . I ate chocolate without really tasting it. I felt restless without knowing why.
After a relationship that ended badly I fell into a search for something and finally it led me to my yearning. A lot of unshed tears finally fell. It felt so good to cry and cry!

I recognised that I had a feminine essence that I had suppressed because I had not felt safe at all.  I saw that my masculine energies were actually poorly developed - a thin and brittle shell, perhaps like the image of a man who was not connected to his heart and balls.
 
I recognised I held my breath around men, not daring dive into the truth of the moment with them. I finally saw that while I had a feminist sisterhood with women, I did not share my body’s expression with them. I had forgotten what it meant to just giggle or to cry when I was moved by her story or to just hold a woman.

So this is a story I’m telling you and life is never as defined as such astory but this story does resonate with me.

And now, expressing the feminine in the world? one way I do it is to feel my love for people in the workplace. That doesn’t sit with the theory of a rational orange workplace, but I’m not willing to bow to that paradigm any more. These are people with whom I spend 8 hours a day , five days a week. If I don’t feel love for them then what…what? They can have their structures and I’ll go with mine. I’m not saying I always feel the love btw (hehe).

I find that just breathing, sitting deeper in my body, right down to my belly and pussy. Not resorting to the refuge of words unless I really want to say something. This is a huge feminine practice for me. Whatever is deeper emerges and expresses itself if need be, often without words. Sometimes its compassion, sometimes an erotic attraction that feels fuller…than any fantasy my head spins, and there are the feelings that vibrate like a tuning forks to whatever comes into my field. It makes the moment more “dangerous” and more pleasurable. Sometimes it helps me, if the other is willing to take my hand to open the space between us. And we share a moment that feels more real.

And another is creating the space to long. To long for the ineffable presence of a masculine soul. This is so far away from my self-sufficient days. This longing aches me and it draws me… Sometimes I can see how fucking beautiful a man is. 

I feel deeply drawn to nurturing the soul like earth and mulch. Going into all of it rather than transcending. Wilber’s emphasis on this impulse is so feminine strangely enough,  embodying the divine, bringing it back to earth, to the psyche and the market place.

Writing posts on zaadz, this medium doesnt work for me, I long for your smells, voices, gestures, touch. I often feel like getting up and dancing to music, or cooking or something. i know when my fingers tap on this board I habitually put some “art” into what I write and i lose something in doing that.  But the community here satisfies a need in me, so its worth it, tap-dancing on the keyboard.

Love Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Yes, yes, yes Gitanjali. Raw, compassionate and authentic. Whoever said the Feminine is weak? How can inhaling and embracing the world be weak?

Keep on doing your thing at work, holding people in your heart and connecting to your essence. I remember some older female collegues from working as a doctor. Having worked in a masculine values sphere for years, and not doing it on their own terms, had made their bodies and cheeks shrink, almost a withering away. Other female doctors were obviously doing the work more on their own terms, staying truer to who they were, and staying much more alive as a result.

I hear you on the medium that the internet is. It's such a gift to connect in this space and I love doing it but I can't help thinking about what it would be like to have an integral group of friends in my 3D life as well.


love to all,


Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

After basking in the flow of this trhread yesterday, I just can' help but dip my toes in today.

Melv - Holy brother, The best glimses I can give are my own feelings on feminine masculinity after going through what someone so succinctly called the 'green sensitive man phase'.  I think I did this mainly through following the LL currents from my parents.  Because of my dads involvement in the whole 80s mens movement I soaked up their stuff like a sponge.  I was definitley a bit of a wet man (no balls as Jane calls it!), loads of heart, no slice and dice agency, or not in the right situations anyway.  I think I probably side-stepped into some agressive red energy at times, just to vent, though I didn't understand it as that at the time of course.  And from the other side I had my feminist mum, who used to try and take all my toy guns away as a child, and be very 'concerned' at my teenage aggression.

Reading 'Way of the superior man' totally blew me apart.  I had been thinking and feeling most of that stuff for so long, it was totally liberating to have it validated - that I'm not only allowed to think, feel and act like this, I'm supposed to!  Awesome…

I think I probably need to process my own feminie/masculine a lot more, and integrate the healthy aspects of both more consciously.  What I think I can say though, is that denying a natural masculine drive toward agency, in favour of some form of psuedo sensitivity because of green pressures in the LL - was not good for me!  Catagorically.  And I don't think, in my own case, that it made me any more empathic about the feminie essense of people around me, or how to nurture it.

What I did gain, particularly from my dad, is a very high empathic sense generally, and highly developed emotional inteligence.  A lot of the mens movement was about men getting in touch with their emotions - which I don't think is neccassarilly feminine as opposed to masculine - although it was all mixed up together - i think at the time they would have said it was about getting in touch with their 'feminie side' - and they probably did it in a more feminine way.

I'm reminded of the way Deida frames it - we all have a certain make up and balance of masculine/feminie at our core - the authetic principles that are already in us - but because of environmental conditions, a shell builds up, which can be very different.  Channelling the  type of energy that is opposite to your authentic drive; though your core - for example a truley feminie woman having to channel masculine energy through her core, because of her job / upbringing - can cause a lot of damage if done for sustained periods.  I can definitely attest to that one. Most of the feminie energy I experience now, is trying to assist my partner in allowing hers to flow freely.  That is the essense of it for me.

Gitanjali - Brutal and moving, your femininity dances through your words as well as your keyboard!  Was the relationship you mention the main catalyst?  What were the other things that have helped you along the way - were they cognitive insights, or emotional ones, or social ones?

I really resonate with what you say about the unsatisfactory nature of this medium!  I want the smells and smiles too.  I find it so much less 'full', I wanna feel and read your energies, and see your embodyment.  But if this is the only way I can connect with all you beautiful people, I wholeheartedly commit.

Ewan

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Ewan:
And from the other side I had my feminist mum, who used to try and take all my toy guns away as a child, and be very 'concerned' at my teenage aggression.

He. I wonder how many boys/men grow up nowadays with mothers thinking they are “doing the right thing” by stifling masculine aggression. God knows that the green zeitgeist supports them in doing this. Instead we need involved fathers (and mothers) who can act as containers and boundary setters without labelling their sons' aggressions as wrong or bad.


What I think I can say though, is that denying a natural masculine drive toward agency, in favour of some form of psuedo sensitivity because of green pressures in the LL - was not good for me!  Catagorically.  And I don't think, in my own case, that it made me any more empathic about the feminie essense of people around me, or how to nurture it.

My experience exactly. The more I reconnect to my masculine essence the more I can sense, appreciate and let thrive the Feminine in others and myself.
A pseudo-feminine shell is almost kind of creepy to me nowadays.


Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Gitanjali! Woman, the words that flow through you come outta my screen and grab me!

SHE said: I find that just breathing, sitting deeper in my body, right down to my belly and pussy. Not resorting to the refuge of words unless I really want to say something. This is a huge feminine practice for me. Whatever is deeper emerges and expresses itself if need be, often without words. Sometimes its compassion, sometimes an erotic attraction that feels fuller…than any fantasy my head spins, and there are the feelings that vibrate like a tuning forks to whatever comes into my field. It makes the moment more “dangerous” and more pleasurable. Sometimes it helps me, if the other is willing to take my hand to open the space between us. And we share a moment that feels more real.

Yes!! Embracing the feminine definitely seems to me to involve fulling coming into the body, resonating with the vibrations of Mother in Earth that express in everything around us and through us. In the last year, I have taken up the practice (when it's warm outside) of lying on Her, grass cushioning me from below, feeling Her breathe through me. Literally!

And allowing ourselves to tap into all of the energies around us, in the people that we come into contact with, is profoundly enticing, satisfying and, sometimes, dangerous-feeling. For me, the dangerous part is about the unfamiliarity of descending into Her, the Womb from whence we came and from whence we ARE…this tiny bubble of air surrounding this blue-green pearl in the ocean of space.

Last week, I had taken a walk up to Mount Tabor here in Portland and was consumed by Her. There's the greatest view looking West of downtown Portland, and at that time, it was dusk, and the city was all lit up. Behind me was a wall of greenery. The most intense experience unfolded. Suddenly, a young man jogged by after having run up this staircase of 100+ stairs. As he passed behind me, I literally felt his subtle energy wash over me. It was warm, intense and full of blood (Mother). It was the first time I ever had that type of energy encounter with a man (as opposed to a sense of overbearing agentic/defensive masculine energy attempting to steamroll), and it blew my mind! So, given all the above, I totally relate to what you say here:

I feel deeply drawn to nurturing the soul like earth and mulch. Going into all of it rather than transcending. Wilber's emphasis on this impulse is so feminine strangely enough,  embodying the divine, bringing it back to earth, to the psyche and the market place.

And I absolutely resonate with this sentiment:

Writing posts on zaadz, this medium doesnt work for me, I long for your smells, voices, gestures, touch. I often feel like getting up and dancing to music, or cooking or something. i know when my fingers tap on this board I habitually put some “art” into what I write and i lose something in doing that.  But the community here satisfies a need in me, so its worth it, tap-dancing on the keyboard.

This community is the ground of a new way of being in the world. I trust that it will blossom into face-to-face relationships at some point, whether among members here now, or among new people, as the energy moves outward in concentric circles. Weeee!!

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Colin:
Suddenly, a young man jogged by after having run up this staircase of 100+ stairs. As he passed behind me, I literally felt his subtle energy wash over me. It was warm, intense and full of blood (Mother). It was the first time I ever had that type of energy encounter with a man (as opposed to a sense of overbearing agentic/defensive masculine energy attempting to steamroll), and it blew my mind!

Cool experience man.

Do you mean that you have always experienced masculine energy as defensive and/or overbearing when you've encountered it?

My own experience of coming close to people who have an integrated masculine energy is that it feels very safe and not at all defensive.


Pelle

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Friends, thank you for all the rich sharing going on here.  I love the sense that we are all open here to something new … knowing there is a deeper integration, a deeper embodiment of strength and sensitivity, agency and communion, available to us, without knowing exactly how to get there, or exactly how it will show up when it dawns.  I can tell some of you have been exploring and diving in to this longer than I have, and I am listening to you, learning from you.

Wilber sometimes talks about carving new grooves in the Kosmos, and this is such an exercise, it seems to me.  Not to be grandiose about this particular conversation – but just this movement in general, this yearning for a deeper connection and integration, this desire to honor feminine and masculine equally (beyond the “dance of devaluation” we've done in the past, as we've tried in modern times to make room for new expressions).

Having traveled to a number of different countries, I have encountered cultures where there appears to be a different expression and integration of masculine and feminine energy.  In Indonesia, for instance, I found men appeared to more naturally and readily express themselves in feminine ways as well as masculine ways.  A number of the women there that I met also struck me as powerful, agentic, and surprisingly bold (without appearing to lose touch with their femininity in the process).  I do not think Indonesian culture is “integral,” but in places like Bali and Java, I found that there was more fluidity between these poles in both men and women.

Speaking of exemplars of different (for me, non-Western) ways of embodying the masculine and feminine, can any of you think of individuals who represent, for you, powerful examples of gender strength and integration?

Gitanjali, I loved your last letter and really appreciated the honest way you captured the early compensations you engaged in as you sought to navigate (and push through) the boundaries dictated by culture, and the deep ways you are now challenging that – really, challenging both the traditional “lines” that are drawn and the particular “persona” you had become (which, I think, finds “echoes” in all of us who have probably adopted similar compensatory ways of acting and being as we've grown up in cultures disconnected from Essence).

Melv, you asked about a question of “degrees.”  I think that's true.  When I said I didn't think I was ever effeminate, I was actually thinking of boys and men I've known who have a distinctly feminine way of speaking and acting – sometimes subtle, sometimes conscious and exaggerated.  I never adopted “feminine” mannerisms as these boys did, though I think I did have at least some degree of feminine sensibility.

In looking at the sort of distortions and compensations I engaged in, similar to what Gitanjali described, I see that I associated my own capacity for anger and rage with the male authority figures (and male classmates) who did not accept me as I was.  In wanting to protect and defend the “sensitive boy,” I had to make a vow (subconsciously) not to be like THEM – not to be like those men who stepped on people, who dominated them, who would crush or simply disregard people like me because they did not understand them.  In taking a stand against this type of pathological expression of masculinity, I recognize now that I also cut myself off in important ways from aspects of my masculine core (or from Red Essence or my lower chakras, however you want to put it).  I came to see it as dangerous and destructive (and blind and insensitive).  This created a powerful feedback loop, really, because repression of basic aggressive impulses actually makes them more unpredictable and dangerous; thus, when they erupt, as they inevitably do, their violent appearance cements the perception that they are bad and untrustworthy and reinforce the belief that these things need to be repressed.  Putting on an “appeasing” face, wanting to keep others happy, then becomes tied into my own distrust of myself and my potential to harm others. 

This was an overlay, it seems to me, on the original sensitive core – the dimensions of me which resonated in emotional connection with others and in aesthetic connection with nature and beauty – which was undervalued and threatened by individuals in my environment.

In the past fifteen years, after living largely from this defended place – in which I was habitually identified most strongly with aesthetic, feeling-based spirituality and forms of expression – I began to cultivate more “masculine” forms of thinking, beginning to develop an appreciation for intellectual rigor, analysis, and so on.  Looking back, I can see now that my “feeling-based” way of being nevertheless had a hard “bottom” to it, beyond which I had not been able to penetrate (except on occasion), because of the defenses I had established against basic aspects of my masculinity – my capacity for agency, assertiveness, etc.  (Wilber called me “brave” the other day, after I described to him my travels and adventures, but I never felt in touch with my strength or bravery, even in the midst of those journeys). 

I have been cut off from Red Essence, sometimes not experiencing it, sometimes just not being able to appreciate it or recognize it when it arose.  Now, in the past couple years of my Diamond Approach work, I've begun to dip into this and value this.  And the expressions of everyone here on this board has been a great aid to me in helping to see further and to gain more “heart” for this exploration.

Warm wishes,

Balder

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

So much in this thread reminds me of a thread started up in zLounge in Feb….. The problem with spiritual femininity…

So I'll at last ad my 2 cents: cross posted:

I recall in the early 70s, in college, when we started introducing discussions in the classes & dorms on:  What is Femininity? What is Masculinity?  Wow? you should have been at those simple beginnings of this now common, expanded topic…. 

From my experience, If you recall my artzy bulldozer example in another thread here, I felt from a very young age that a lot was expected of me, eldest of seven girls & a mother ill most of her life….  I stepped into the role of (manly qualities, if you will) organizing, planning, ordering my siblings to do this & that….. 

Many decades later, finally discovering my gentler side (feminine, if you will) I also discovered that one of the Hindu Goddesses (archetype) MaHaSaraswati (sp?) the amazing Goddess with all those beautiful arms… was considered to embody: organizational skills, musical skills, communication skills, she represented all the positive sides of both feminine & masculine qualities…. until the list of male & female qualities & attributes would make a head spin!

Well that was it…. I understood…. we all have access to all of the qualities & attributes of all the archetypes you can name… whatever our gender, we just draw more upon this one or that one for whatever reason at any given time…   gradually, as we grow in deeper understanding of ourselves & others we become witness to a whole flowering of possibilities, w/out naming them male or female.

A quality, an attribute just is. It might be named male or female in order to take the system apart mentally to examine how & why etc it functions… But essentially there is no separation of one from the other….. Yin & Yang. One.

So my understanding came out of studying Hindu archetypes with Sufi Inayat Khan's teaching of the qualities of human potential: not male, not female. Human.

Peace to all,
PJ

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Pelle, to clarify: I am often so “in my head” that, historically, I have not been able to experience others' energy, unless it was “negative.” I grew up in a house where the primary male (father) was either shut-down emotionally or flying into a rage. As a result, I am able to pick up on defensive and/or aggressive energy pretty reliably. What is new for me is sensing the subtle energy of others, male or female, that feels more healthy and full. So that's what I meant.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Would you be interested in looking at the faces of the masculine and the feminine in the context of the theory of evolution? There is a school of spirituality in which a central part of the work involves aligning oneself with the evolutionary impulse, the God impulse as it is sometimes called, the creative impulse that started the whole thing 14 billion years ago, but usually, it seems to me, the interpretation of that evolutionary impulse is masculine. It usually focuses on a certain kind of development and material progress, in other words, the agentic side of evolution. But what about the feminine side of evolution? Does it have to do with linking or compassion? What does communion look like in an evolutionary context? For the evolutionary impulse to be healthy as expressed through a human being it would seem to be necessary for both the feminine and the masculine to be integrated, but what would that look like? It's the masculine side of evolution that usually gets expressed, but, at the same time, I would think that communion in a deep-time context–turqoise or higher– would look a little different than communion as we usually know it. 

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Dear Ones,

Well, I have been wiping tears off my face all day in an attempt to reassemble myself in some communicable form.  I have been shocked before and deeply moved but never quite so pervasively as now.  I'm not sure what more I might have to say, but as I think about it, I recall the moment I flew over the Arabian Sea to land at the Mumbai airport for the first time.  All was blackness as the plane descended to a couple of hundred feet over the ocean.  Suddenly the lights of the city appeared below and my senses exploded to the complex perfume of India instantly filling the plane.  For those of you who haven't yet experienced it, I offer my own irreducible memory.  I don't know how it could have been so, but it smelled like home to me.

Later, after taking a cab through the raucous Ramadan evening of what must be the most stimulating city on earth, I arrived at the ashram just north of Mumbai.  I was to be there for 3 months serving as a facilities engineer for the bi-annual “eye camp” run by the ashram.  Eye diseases plague rural India and every two years, Siddha Yoga has run a clinic that provides artificial lenses for people who haven't seen their own hands or relatives for years.

The job fit me like a glove.  I dropped into the dharma of ashram life and soon was surrounded by friends.  Many people were there from all over the world, eye surgeons, nurses, OR techs, and other facilitators gathered to assist over 3,000 patients through the process.  Of course, this being India, the 3,000 did not travel alone but came with family members and livestock.  A carnival atmosphere surrounded the field while the encampment was underway.  Given my obsessive “medical” tendencies, I was in a heaven of sorts.  It must have showed because I was constantly approached by Indians who were part of the support force. 

One young man in particular became very dear to me.  He was many years younger, a materials engineer from Delhi and together, we talked spirituality, life, and materials for hours on end.  He was married with two children and displayed his pictures as if they were shrined icons.  Ganesh, was his name and he was beautiful beyond description.  One day, after being there for a couple of weeks, he asked me to walk the dusty mile or so into the village of Ganeshpuri.  I had been there once before, alone, in the first few days and had been blown away by its primal essence.  Frankly, I was pretty intimidated by the earthy, mysterious, depth of its bazaars, temples and hot spring baths. 

So we walked out of the ashram gates and on down the road towards the village.  As soon as we got around a bend and out of sight of the guards at the gate, he reached for and took my hand.  He was quite a bit shorter than I, but you know, great differences in height do not seem to affect the hand as they all seem to meet in the same place.  I remember being totally overwhelmed by this simple gesture and recall that walk in the afternoon heat of India as the most sublime experience of my life.  His grip was soft, unassuming, and without the faintest sign of uncertainty.  As we walked, he spoke animatedly of his yearning to visit America.  He would raise our clasped hands to gesture his interest but never once let go of it.  I asked him why I was such a magnet for Indians in the camp and especially the children.  He said, “They see you as a young sahhu, home from journeys abroad.  By being here, you honor them and their love of home.” 

We toured the village, ate in a small restaurant, and, as dusk came to the place, we started to head for home.  We had been separated during the shopping and eating, but as we left the village, I reached for his hand and he turned to me with a look I will never forget and am only now beginning to appreciate.  I have a picture of the two of us, arms over each other's shoulders while kneeling before a fresh colored sand mandala in the morning light the day I left India.  I have never felt such pertect ease with another human being.  There was nothing libidinous about it at all, yet it seemed to encompass all love, all joy that one man can hold in the presence of another.

Yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Hi Michael!

I feel so much heart in your story…. so much realness. It triggered memories of my stay India. I lived in two ashrams while there, one, an ashram that was also a home for unwed mothers, as well as a young male they had taken in, about 13 years old.

What I could not hope noticing was the gentleness of both the young boy and the Swami, the head of the ashram. Their essence was no different than the women of the ashram, the teachers and their students.  Such sweeping kindness, genuine smiles, yes the hand holding, genuine closeness when in conversation. I too felt at home. At home at last. This was a Yoga teaching center.

In the second ashram… much more westernized, the energy was a huge mix of gentle feminine, and 'busy minded' masculine…..  quite a contrast with the totally Hindu ashram I'd just been to. Clearly, in my eyes anyway, there was a different flavor, energetic flavor in the two groups.  I kept pondering it, still do…..  are our well developed western energies, male,  less malleable to bridge the gap between M-F  and find their center…. is that true I wonder….

The second ashram was the Rajneesh/Osho center.

Peace
PJ

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Michael, thank you for that beautiful, moving story.  I've had similar experiences in Asia – in Korea, Indonesia, and India.  I recall the first time a Korean man took my hand in the street, I was surprised by it, but realized quickly it was a spontaneous gesture of friendship and not a sexual “advance,” and I was okay with it.  A good Korean friend even said to me once that he hoped (after we had traveled up a mountain and shared a lot of stories about our lives) that he would have an opportunity to sleep next to me some day.  I admit that took me aback, and I wondered what he meant, but in talking with other friends there (not directly about that incident), I realized that this too was said innocently, as one brother to another.  (If it had not been, that's okay too; I'm just trying to give an example here of a kind of physicality and affection that is present even among friends of the same sex that is not so often present in the West.) 

In Indonesia, I recall an incident that was quite simple and seemingly insignificant, but which greatly impressed a Balinese friend of mine and which changed our relationship.  I had befriended him – a school teacher and painter from the city of Ubud – a few weeks back, and I had traveled with him all around the island to extraordinary places, but even though we had shared a lot during our travels, we didn't really become “brothers” till I spent a day at his home and took a nap by his side on a bamboo mat in the courtyard under the jungle canopy.  Sleeping by his side that day seemed to “seal” me in the family, and I was treated differently – by him and his wife and children – ever since.  After that day, he would also sometimes spontaneously grab my hand, and every now and then would remind me of that wonderful afternoon when we had slept side by side like two brothers in the sun.

Telling these stories, I recall now how lonely I felt when I first returned to the United States.  The city of Austin felt like an empty ghost town to me, and I suffered for awhile from a kind of body hunger – having been cut off from the close, physical, intimate connection I had with people while living abroad…

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Balder,

Back up this thread aways or maybe in another, someone told the story of group of devotees in darshan with their guru.  A rich somebody was mourning the fact that they could not be together for all time and volunteered to buy an island and set up a retreat where they could all bask in nothing but love.  The Guru said something to the effect of, “That shall not be for us.  Criminals gather together while we are destined to live at some distance from one another.  How else might we spread the Truth?”

For the time being at least, this sharing of our experiences and explorations has to be good enough for us.  I hope somehow that you and all the others in this divine exercise, can feel my hand in yours, my eyes upon your eyes, and the certainty of my love in your hearts. 

Jane has said we are but dots of intention splattered about the globe, that our intention to honor our yearnings with the comfort and ease of “presence” is but derivative of our yearnings for the Source.  Though I know this to be true, I must remind myself of it daily or I slip to wondering what it might be like to see you all face-to-face, hand-to-hand, breast-to-breast.

Yer pal,
Michael

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Michael,
Thanks for sharing that wondeful experience. It has added another element to this whole enquiry, one which i find to intellectualise but which i understand deeply.
I too have experienced the warmth of people in Africa who have never known the divisive elements of our culture that determine physical contact (between males or females, but i guess especially males) as somewhat taboo, or at least as not the done thing, but it goes much deeper than that, as Peggy's words illuminate:

What I could not hope noticing was the gentleness of both the young boy and the Swami, the head of the ashram. Their essence was no different than the women of the ashram, the teachers and their students.  Such sweeping kindness, genuine smiles, yes the hand holding, genuine closeness when in conversation. I too felt at home. At home at last. This was a Yoga teaching center.

There is an integration accross ages and genders in society that is rare to find
here in the busy west, that also encompasses the stranger - this love of the stranger from far away lands, a stranger that at the very least makes an effort to 'be' with and understand from the heart the life people are living and who is rewarded with such unconditional warmth, is something that touched me and will allways be with me, and is a gift that can be nurtured and shared in all times to come.

Is this the divine Feminine? or is it an integration and love which goes beyond the polarities of masculine and feminine and is pure love? i think probably the latter, but i am glad to be reminded!

For the time being at least, this sharing of our experiences and explorations has to be good enough for us.  I hope somehow that you and all the others in this divine exercise, can feel my hand in yours, my eyes upon your eyes, and the certainty of my love in your hearts.

Yes yes yes. there is something in the true contact of eye to eye, hand to hand and a warm hug (and sleeping with someone in a non-sexual manner) that enlivens and nourishes in a way not possible without that contact.
One way these sort of integrations do happen here in the west is in celebrations and festivals, all the richer when not drink-fuelled (though this doesnt necessarily prevent), when people can come together with more trust and a degree of openess of a higher octave than typical day to day interaction.

I am feeling inspired every time i read this post! Many thanks to you all!

Love

Melv

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Dear all,

Thank you Gina for calling the women which pushed me to write. The process was cleansing and holy for me, and thank you so much to Pelle, Ewan, Michael, Colin, Bruce, Lol for your support as I learn to “undress” and flower. I am here for your self-revelation, what an honour that is.

Just a few things…

Pelle you said *Having worked in a masculine values sphere for years, and not doing it on their own terms, had made their bodies and cheeks shrink, almost a withering away.*

This reminded me of Gollum and the ring. Once a happy river creature he became attached to the ring as we do to our ego-defences, because we do not feel safe. We identify with our personas, just as he wore the ring and over the years it marked itself on every layer of his being. Yet we do not see this happening. We cling to our precious thinking it is the source of life, rather than seeing its true id as the source of death. Its a thought….

Ewan you asked *Was the relationship you mention the main catalyst? What were the other things that have helped you along the way - were they cognitive insights, or emotional ones, or social ones?*

I would say it was a “marker” more than a catalyst. I was ready to drop and it was there at the time, anything else could have done it. There are so many other things that have helped me along the way. One thing that comes to mind, is entering a “woman's group”. Sitting around the altar of such beautiful wise women. Feeling like a baby in their arms and feeling like an ancient holding each precious heart. 

Colin

*I literally felt his subtle energy wash over me. It was warm, intense and full of blood (Mother). It was the first time I ever had that type of energy encounter with a man (as opposed to a sense of overbearing agentic/defensive masculine energy attempting to steamroll), and it blew my mind!*

That was a gorgeous moment, as I read it I felt I was there with you :).

Balder

And *Wilber called me “brave” the other day, after I described to him my travels and adventures, but I never felt in touch with my strength or bravery, even in the midst of those journeys.*

I know what you mean. Perhaps if we are not in touch with our essence, the essence in the outer movement has nothing to resonate with, in us. So you went on brave journeys but did not feel it was brave. The outer movement becomes to us an extension of the mask we wear.

Sometimes that is why we so need each other. Someone watching you sees in you what you cannot see, sees in you the essence that you do not connecting with. When they name it for you, and name it truly, feeling it in you as they say it, they offer you a portal to that essence. Take it if you dare.

Michael such a beautiful story about the man in India. And yours and others speculation about different cultural tendencies in relating is my experience too. The men tend to be a bit more fluid between the masculine and feminine. Perhaps this ability can be characterised in terms of an ability to go deeper into subtle states of energy? It sits alongside structures that are very amber and rigid gender roles.

Peggy

*A quality, an attribute just is. It might be named male or female in order to take the system apart mentally to examine how & why etc it functions… But essentially there is no separation of one from the other….. Yin & Yang. One. *

Yes, essentially there is no separation. My feeling is it is one and whether you see the Yin of the Yang of this oneness, just depends on your perspective. So when you are sitting on a cloud, a green field seems a more yang, and when you are sitting on a mountain a green field seems more yin. I add that beyond the need to analyse them, we may name them yang and yin, we take on male and female perspectives to play. :)

Gitanjali

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

“Jane has said we are but dots of intention splattered about the globe, that our intention to honor our yearnings with the comfort and ease of “presence” is but derivative of our yearnings for the Source. Though I know this to be true, I must remind myself of it daily or I slip to wondering what it might be like to see you all face-to-face, hand-to-hand, breast-to-breast.”
Michael, Your reference to me makes me smile….This yearning for the Source IS our yearning for each other….NO wonder we all wonder! “God is the newest thing there is”…and right now, that is US…..
as Jocelyn wrote(I keep repeating this):
“Strangely born,
We birth each other
Strangely torn we teach each other
And what we know of one another,
Is the only thing to know.”

My god, this festival in the land of boundless bounty, it is peeking and nudging through. Gina has the music and Pelle is holding form, and Gita has the curry bubbling, and Bruce is arranging the banquet hall….and the all rest, Ewan, Melv….I love the freshness on all of your faces…. In a few weeks, we will have the Water and Ice Dance at our homely community center….the Flummies or someone will play….there are toes tapping all over the world. I can feel this, even among the dark pull and sadness……. yearning burning we are on fire.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Several persons have mentioned how differently men can behave towards each other in non-western cultures. I lived in the United Arab Emirates for several years as a kid/teenager, and I remember seeing Far Eastern men walking hand in hand down the street. In my school, even though it was a private one, my non-western friends (Arabs, Pakistanis) had a very different relationship to touch than I was used to. It never bothered me though, and it never felt sexual either. It was simply old-fashioned camaraderie expressing itself within a different cultural context. Part of the reason that these cultures can retain such openness is of course that officially noone is gay. Once the society truly moves into orange values and some men come out as gay, then we will see how resilient this behavior really is.

I actually believe that the culturally (western) and/or stage imposed barriers to men being physically and spiritually close are very harmful to men and to society in general. Touch is a basic human need and touch-deprived men are hardly what we need. It simply increases the chance of men becoming needy and weak when interacting with women, or much worse the experience of alienation can tip the scales the wrong way for somebody already predisposed to sexual crimes.

As a tango dancer and teacher I occasionally dance with a man for the fun of it, and I regularly dance with men in private or group lessons. So far I've yet to meet a man that has huge issues with this. Besides a brief initial discomfort/adjusting everyone's fine with it. When the official 'rule' is that it's OK to touch another man in this situation, then it's not a problem. This tells me that what keeps men tense and distant from each other in everyday interactions is that the official 'rule' there is to keep one's distance and under no circumstances appear to be gay, feminine or what have you.

If the core of the male identity rests on being not-gay and not-feminine then we have some deep work to do. What do we find when we look inside? Can we increase the comfort zone for men, becoming softer when that's needed and more confident (as opposed to arrogant) when that's needed?
Why the universal western fear of exploring the masculine beyond stereotypes? What are we afraid of finding?

———————————————


I also want to point to Jane's longer post above, that can easily be missed because of the threaded discussion.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I came into work early and caught up on this thread; I was literally stunned and amazed by the sharing about your experiences in non-Western cultures, Michael, Balder, Peggy and Pelle. I was deeply touched by those stories, and it gave me hope that this type of physical, non-sexual intimacy is indeed possible! Yay!!!! I am in the process of manifesting this in my life as we speak…

Pelle said: Touch is a basic human need and touch-deprived men are hardly what we need. It simply increases the chance of men becoming needy and weak when interacting with women, or much worse the experience of alienation can tip the scales the wrong way for somebody already predisposed to sexual crimes.

This is one of the fundamental pathologies of Western cultures, I think. We tend to be so detached from our bodies and from human touch in non-sexual contexts. As one who grew up in a house with very little touching, I was shocked when I was with a previous partner and her family gave each other back and foot rubs. It initially made me uncomfortable just to watch: first, because it was so unfamilar, then, because I knew that I desired that and never had the experience.

Back to Pelle's comment: Men here are taught that the only acceptable touching is sexual or rough play. And I think that what you hit on, Pelle, with the idea that this sets up a terrible scenario in which men are unable to get the human touch they need, is right on: some of them act that out in violent ways against women as a result. And most men, in my experience, are unable to be physically intimate with women without becoming instantly sexually aroused. Thus the feminine plea: would you just hold me please?!

I am reminded of those terrible experiments in psychology with monkeys who withered and practically died when deprived of touch. Ugh. We are so wounded by this lack of touch!

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

There are pockets of men trying to heal through exploring non-sexual touch in groups. The one I know of, but have not yet personally looked into (though I've just set an intention to go to an event), is MenSpirit. Check it out. There's likely a mix of green to turquoise vMEME waves there; I'm quite curious.

Re: Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

Jane i only just read your post. It got lost for me in this winding and mossy thread. I lreally enjoyed reading it (as usual) and really resonated to this:

“And it is interesting too, we all know what it is like to be in increasing states of confusion(muddiness) rather than increasing states of clarity. And this to me, is where the profound trust comes in, where the internal radar is never wrong…. and where it is really easy to be intoxicated by visions of a life-everafter with the Beloved, instead of staying present and turning towards the discomfort. I am only very recently learning this trust, and it is a trust in myself, to take honesty over a pale and false comfort, to take reality over longing. I think this is what Rumi meant when he wrote: “There are lovers content with longing. I am not one of those.” I have been “one of those” for most of my life, willing and patient enough to see the oak trees in every acorn, the hope in every green sprout…..but I am not any more. I need to be fully met. I am complelled to meet my Self.

I too have done this many times and I love the power in your simple statement,

I need to be fully met.

This feels like the statement of a woman who has gone through trials of fire and swamps of despondency.

I sense that in every lover, there is a gaze… Bolen calls it the  “Aphrodite’s gaze”. This is the gaze that takes place