Integral Men

Gina, with her Integral Women thread, has started some rich, powerful currents around gender issues flowing in this pod again.  Several of us have been talking about doing something similar for men, so I'm opening this space for that purpose.  I am just creating this space and do not have any fixed ideas about how this thread should develop. 

As one possibility:  I've been thinking about workshops on gender relationships that I'm familiar with that might offer some interesting guidelines for exploring these issues.   In one of the workshops I'm familiar with, people work with three questions:

~ What positive qualities or characteristics does the other gender bring to relationships?

~ What would you most like to know about the other gender?

~ What do you want the other gender to know about you?

The way this is done is the men and women split into different groups and answer these questions separately in these groups.  This may take some time.  Then they get back together again and discuss their answers.  Often the answers generate a lot of heat, but if groups persevere, a lot of light too.

My idea is that, with this thread and Gina's, we already have the two groups.  So, whoever is interested in each group can explore these questions with other members of the same gender, and then later we can meet together to talk, across genders, about what comes up.  Tim has just created a thread that might serve as the space for this.

Best wishes,

Bruce

Re: Integral Men

In talking with Frans, he suggested another set of questions that could be answered by men and women together, exploring the internal masculine and feminine, perhaps also on Tim's thread.  Here is Frans' letter (from his Integral Feminine thread):

“So what we will need is participants to form the groups. For the first set of questions:

~ What positive qualities or characteristics does the other gender bring to relationships?

~ What would you most like to know about the other gender?

~ What do you want the other gender to know about you?

we would divide between women and men.

For the second set of questions:

~ What positive qualities or characteristics do both the masculine and the feminine bring to you as whole being?

~ How can the other gender help you in integrating those qualities that are most subdued in you?

~ How can you help the other gender integrate those qualities that oare most subdued in them?

I would see us use the same participants as for the first set of questions, but without any division being necessary.”

Re: Integral Men

Not yet sure if this is the best direction to go with this thread (it's certainly not the only one), I'll start by responding to the first question and listing some of the positive qualities I, as a man, have appreciated in the women with whom I have been closest:

Love, tenderness, devotion to family, a healing touch, ability to listen, supportiveness, practicality, attention to detail, embodied presence, engagement, fortitude, long vision, inspiration, encouragement (to grow, to succeed, to thrive, to open), a no-nonsense drive and commitment to do what needs to be done in the moment (which may show up through expressions of cleansing anger), heart.

Re: Integral Men

I think your questions are great Balder, but I think they must come at a later stage. First we need to talk about our own pain as well, how we have been socialized into performing objects that are disconnected from our hearts and souls.

We would be fooling ourselves if we think it's just women who feel  righteous anger welling up when they get a space of their own. We men are treated just as badly by society and by women, as women are treated by society and men.

I will try to post some key points from Warren Farrell later to get the ball rolling. But like I said, I think your questions are great Balder as soon as we have gone through this first stage of bonding, venting emotions and seeing how cultural norms enslave men.


Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Greetings, my Integral brothers

How weird, I already feel different posting to a thread that is men only - more solid, more masculine.

Bruce, thanks so much for starting this off, your presence gives it such a great stability and openess -perfect.

I was chatting to a friend of mine about relationships at the weekend - he was asking about my relationship to my partner.  At first we were discussing the dynamics of a cross-tier relationship (1st and 2nd), but then we got onto emotional stuff.  And I described some difficulty recently where my girlfriends lack of emotional awareness/development was starting to really impact on out relationship, and how I was able to help her connect with her emotional reactions, and get more in touch with them.  He thought this was totally hillarious - the fact that I - the man - had to help the woman with her emotional retardedness…haha!

Growing up as part of a very healthy mens group, I'm more intouch with emotional stuff than most women I meet.  The healthy green space that a good mens group creates - the safe and affectionate space to share, without judgement, any and all of your deepest emotional shit and gifts is quite wonderful.  I feel totally blessed to ahve been given that education.

I'm well up for it boys, lets hug and share shit…though I may have to draw the line at nakedness and antlers… ;)


Ewan

Re: Integral Men

Here are some key points from “The Myth of Male Power” by Warren Farrell:

- Men are expected to fight and die for their country, women are not. Even democracies only have the draft for men, not for women. Such a blatant inequality before the law would never remain if it was women who were expected to die for their country.
- There is a huge funding gap between breast cancer and prostate cancer. The myth says that male health gets more funding, but female health gets much more - including breast cancer.
- The only reason that more medical research has been done on men is that it was never considered an option to submit women to dangerous experiments
- Boys do much worse in school than girls, but there seems to be no uproar about this
- Male-bashing humor is OK, female-bashing humor is not
- Feminists claim that women do two jobs and men do one, whereas in reality all research shows that men work longer hours even when you combine household work with work outside the home
- There is overwhelming academic evidence that women perpetrate just as much domestic violence as men, but women get hurt more because men are stronger. Women are ten times more likely than men to report domestic violence.
- It is good to support the part of the feminist movement which empowers women to support themselves, but to withdraw from the part that blames and plays victim
- Men only get love and support when we perform, otherwise we get nothing and will be considered a nobody
- Feminism suggested that God might be a “She” but never suggested that the devil might also be a “She” (this is kind of a low blow, I know, but it is still telling of how unbalanced feminism has always been, contrary to the claims of wanting equality for men as well).
- Men don't get women's fears of harassment that stem from the passive role, but women don't get men's fears of sexual rejection that stem from the initiating role. Nowadays women can sue men for sexual harassment, whereas men know that if they initiate badly they can go to jail for doing so!
- Every time a man rapes it is reported clearly that it was a man, but the fact that men are saviors that give their lives as firefighters, police officers, etc is not specifically stated as being men who gave their lives for women and children
- Men are ten times more likely than women to commit suicied after a divorce
- We are outraged that women have to sell their body to earn money, but we are not outraged that men have to sell their body to the army to support their family and to even be chosen by a woman in the first place
- Feminism claims that men are powerful, and they do this by looking at the few men who have power in society. But most men don't have any real power, they work because they have to support their families, they answer to their boss, and they put off their own hopes and dreams indefinitely. A lot of men will even take dangerous jobs to support their famillies, jobs that most women would never even consider, such as mining, garbage collector, firefighter, police officer, soldier, the steel and oil industry, etc etc
- Men are 24hr bodyguards for their women, since men are expected to protect women
- In 1920 women in the US lived one year longer than men, today women live seven years longer. We acknowledge that blacks dying six years earlier than whites reflects the powerlessness of blacks in American society, yet we rarely see the early death of men as a reflection of men's powerlessness.
- Men are twice as likely as women to be victims of violent crimes, even when rape is included.
- When adjusted for education, experience and hours worked per week, women earn the same or often more than men
- Among the wealthiest 1.6 percent in  the US, women's net worth is more than men's.
- Almost every woman traditionally had a primary role in the female-dominated family structure, whereas only a small percentage of men had a primary role in the male-dominated public structure
- Men get much much harsher sentences in courts than women, even if the crimes are exactly the same.
- Men are socialized not to ask for help, which is the reason that women report depression and mental health problems much more often. Men's stress instead turns in ulcers, heart disease and alcoholism - which is one explanation for men dying seven years earlier than women.
- 85% of the homeless are men

The emerging picture is that men are the disposable sex, who are loved only as long as they perform and risk their own life and health for their family and their country.

Here is a link to Warren Farrell's page on Integral Naked.


Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Cool - a men’s only thread. I have the same reservations as I had for the women’s only thread…

Bruce, all -

how about we take Pelle’s lead here and start this off as a sharing. I personally think we should keep the workshop questions on the “Integral Feminine” thread to avoid too much confusion and dilution. It could be a good idea to rename that thread “Integral Feminine and Masculine” - Pelle, can you do that as a Mod?

Frans

Re: Integral Men

Well, technically I can do it but I don't feel I should. It's not my thread and we mods try not overmoderate. Additionally, Tim has started a thread named Integral Gender Issues that can also be used for that purpose. What I've done for now is linked to this thread from the Integral Feminine thread and the Wounded Boys thread.

I'm hoping that the conversations will focus on the Integral Men/Women threads for now, and at a later stage we can move on to the Integral Gender thread and have men and women share what came up.

Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Hi brothers and sisters all

I've just spent the last three and a half hours reading the Integral Women thread from start to now, then the Integral Feminine thread, then Integral Gender Issues …. and last but not least this Integral Men thread. I've been feeling a quickening as I've been catching up on these threads – a quickening and stirring of the blood, also of heart, excitement, interest, need – this is a frontier that I am called .. demanded .. to bring myself to, to give to.

And right now I need to take a break and sit for a bit. But afore I go I want to say COUNT ME IN CHAPS!! to Bruce (and Frans) …. and,  that I endorse what Pelle's saying in his (first) post on this thread (I just went back to the thread to check on what he did say and discovered fresh posts from Ewan and Pelle – will have to catch up on them later).

One possibility is that a separate thread is started for the “men's group” questions, rather than waiting til “… we have gone through this first stage of bonding, venting emotions and seeing how cultural norms enslave men ” …. in other words the two could run contemporaneously. What do you guys think?

With much love to all,

Lol

Re: Integral Men

Cross-posted from the Integral Gender thread:


Ewan said 22 minutes ago:

Just wanted to post a quick observation…

The integral womens thread is about being 'more feminine' - a space for the women here to float and bubble along in communion.  The Integral Men's thread is also about being 'more feminine' - a virtual men's group where we can get emotional with each other. 

Interesting no?

I don't want the men's thread to be about being more feminine at all. I want men to use their agency to be able to see and deconstruct the limitations of the male gender role, and stop believing in everything that feminists have forcefed us for the last decades. Being more emotional and even more feminine is nothing but a tool to create even more space inside of ourselves to access even deeper and more authentic parts of our masculinity.

Deida did a great thing when he busted us out of green, but I take issue with the monological approach of men only needing to be more masculine. Even if we are, let's say 80% masculine and 20% feminine, we still need to go very deep in our (smaller) feminine part, otherwise trying to go deep within our masculine part will only lead to a disembodied masculinity. The same dynamic goes for women, they need to go deep into their (smaller) masculine part, otherwise they will not be able to protect the softness and depth of the feminine from the forces of the outside world.

(BTW our posts belong in the Men's thread as well Ewan, so I'm cross-posting them there).


Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Yo Pelle

Fucking A - yes, much clearer, I totally agree, well said bud.

Being more emotional and even more feminine is nothing but a tool to create even more space inside of ourselves to access even deeper and more authentic parts of our masculinity.

Beautifully said.


Ewan

Re: Integral Men

Thanks Ewan.


This is how I tend to think of the evolution of gender issues:


Green

Feminism - explores how cultural norms have severely restricted women. This movement has been present for quite some time, and is very strong in some countries (eg Sweden)
Masculinism - explores how cultural norms have severly restricted men. This movement is barely present anywhere, and most men and women are not even aware that it is needed.


Teal

Men and women use Deida's (or similar) writings to bust out of green and reaccess their primary energies (usually but not always masculine for men and usually but not always feminine for women)


Turquoise

Men and women finally realize that they also need the opposite energy to be able to go deep within their primary energy. Both sexes can take a more mature and less blame-based approach to feminism, while simultaneously realizing that masculinism has been severely neglected and needs a lot of attention.


Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Hi Pelle

Interesting, how did you come to the distiction between teal and turquiose?  Could it also be that the turquiose dynamic you mention is actually what needs to happen at Teal, but people have to bust out of green first? 

Ewan

Re: Integral Men

Sure, we could call it early and mature integral as well, the labels aren't that important but there is a definite tendency to reject green upon entering teal and then slowly but surely one can integrate all the healthy green aspects.

Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Hi Pele,

The reason why I started the Integral Feminine thread is to try and get men and women together express a healthy femininity, which doesn’t exist without a healthy masculinity as well - that’s why the new name seems a good one to me. It’s irrelevant in the long run - all issues will be addressed anyway, with no fewer than 4 threads dedicated to the issue.

You posted a long list full of statistics proving that men are really the worse-off gender. Statistically you can prove anything of course, but especially the last line goes to the heart of the matter:

“The emerging picture is that men are the disposable sex, who are loved only as long as they perform and risk their own life and health for their family and their country.”

Don’t you agree - all of you, men and women alike - that we can find ample reason for either gender to feel like and act the victim role? It seems that that is what’s happening a lot - men blaming women (we say we’re not and pointing at society’s and culture’s influence but who are we kidding?) and women blaming men for “poor us”, whether we’re men and women as groups or individual men and women. In the end it doesn;t matter what happened in the past, unless you want to be stuck there forever, it matters what we do differently now

Integral would mean to go beyond the past hurt and make a better society, one in which men can relate to women and women can relate to men because we can both access either aspect. Blaming is always self-defeating because it gets you stuck in the past - and I for one would like to live now…

Frans

Re: Integral Men

Not entirely, Frans. Whatever is going to happen will be build on top of what's already there, so it's good to have a look at it. But without all the blaming, indeed. There's a difference between looking at the past and being stuck in it.

We all have difficulties in dealing with the opposite sex, and some of these difficulties come from our own individual shadow, some from our society's shadow, and some from the shadow of the other sex. It's all true. They all need to be looked at.

Some problems may even originate from living in a society with a first-tier center of gravity. Even some of their healthy modes may not work for us any longer.

Peter

Re: Integral Men

Hi guys. I don't have anything to say yet–so many posts to read! Haven't gotten into this one yet–but I thought I'd furnish the soundtrack. :) Listen to this as you post.

Re: Integral Men

I welcome Pelle's suggestion to hold off on the questions and spend time just connecting here first.  If we do the questions, I would like to do them here first, in the spirit of the workshop from which I drew them – since in the workshop, each gender discusses them separately before coming together.  But it may be that the sharing in this thread, and on the Integral Women thread, goes so far beyond what might be raised by these simple questions, that we won't even need them when (and if) both groups come together to talk on a single thread.  We'll see… 

I'm looking forward to this discussion and I'm warmed by the faces that have gathered around this fire.  I wish we actually could have this sort of meeting in a live setting, with a sweat lodge maybe, a river for swimming, a night full of stars as our amphitheater.  It's been years since I've done anything like that, and I miss it.

I do not want to get stuck in blaming here, but I also do not want to “forbid” any emotion that may want to arise in this space.  Even blame can show its face, if that's what we feel in the moment – if that is truly coloring our perceptions at that time.  Letting it stand forth to be named.

Robert Bly talks often about men's unacknowledged grief and shame as foundational in our dysfunction.  I wrote a poem about 20 years ago that reflected my own wrestling with these issues – the longing to come to terms with these things, to have “blood bear my blood,” to know the cleansing light of the sun.  Because this is old, and was written in response to a different set of concerns than I face now, I have tended to look at it as commentary on an “old self.”  But looking at it this morning, I can see that this work really is not done.  Shadow is still there, and grief, and shame.  So, I'll share it here, in front of this sacred fire:

Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza,
  shake your feet of my dust.
I feel the world's dead
  crouched in my step.
I trudge at the hewn
  edge of your stone
Like all pilgrims,
  leaving.

I bear my grief    unoffered
in my circled arms,
On the cut    stone    tongue
of my repentance,
In the great    shame
roaring in my face.

The holy sun
  burned you of your blood.
It burns the altar
  wells of Itza,
White as the high
  stone of the king's
Ragged step
  to heaven.

You leap like priests    on the plain
for the Mayan sky,
For the wash    of rain    rushing
from the white sun,
In the forgiveness    burned
down on your stone.

I came to the bones
of your city by darkness.
I bore my grief red
beast to your stone.
I came to bid
blood bear my blood,
But you stood    white as kings,
Rebuking.

You are the white    undoing of things,
The feathers    of a death    I have not worn,
The holystoning    of a sun   

I have not known.

Re: Integral Men

Peter,

Yes, that’s what I meant to say; of course we take our learning from the past, but there seems to be a lot of blame and comparing of who is worse off - and that is not helping any.

It makes me think of new parents, who start to fight because they both feel they are more tired than the other, and aren’t getting the proper “respect” for that…. Why not just acknowledge that they’re both tired, and yes, life is demanding so let’s help each other deal with things as best we can…and really, we can use this metaphor all over, can’t we? Growing up seems like a hard thing to do…

Frans

Re: Integral Men

Frans,

I now see that you started the Integral Feminine thread. Didn't see that before, sorry. I'm still very much against changing its name though, since people get confused and can't find the thread after the name's been changed.


Let me also clarify why I posted stuff  from “The Myth of Male Power”. The point is definitely not to play the blame game. Instead its about seeing how constricted the male gender role has been and still is in many ways. This is a blindspot in society! Feminists have time and again shown how women are constricted and treated badly due to their gender role, making many women (and a lot of men too) believe that men have gotten the better deal. This is simply not true! Both gender roles are horribly oppressive, and in the past this was actually very much necessary to survive. To move past these ingrained cultural norms we need to take a very close look at the gender roles, not once, but ten times or more. Women have so far done a much better job at speaking up about their side of discrimination, whereas men have done virtually nothing at all. So it is my belief that we can never meet women as equals until we do our own job of deconstructing our gender role, and also teach women the pain and discrimination men come across on a daily basis.

Just have a look at the Integral Women thread. If we wrote some of the stuff that's going on there, we would be crucified and called misogynists. But women can get away with saying that, since the common perception is that only women have been discriminated against (let me just say that there is also a lot of high quality material in that thread).

We men need to find our balls and say: “Yes, I understand feminism and I'm trying very hard to understand the plight of women from a second person perspective, but I demand that you as women do exactly the same and try very hard to understand the plight of men”.
Only then can we move behind the blame game that feminism has played for so long, and with true compassion talk about Integral Gender issues. As far as I'm concerned, Integral Feminism is an oxymoron, because neither feminism nor masculinism is Integral.


Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Pelle,

Yes, indeed: “Both gender roles are horribly oppressive…” that’s the key phrase and that’s what we have to work from - that’s the baseline.

Feminism has been playing the blame game, but men have too, and both have been loving the victim position - just look here. Now is the time to leave that behind and move beyond, you couldn’t be more right, and the only way to do that is to do that right now - we don’t need more time to look at stuff that was done to men - we all know better.

I agree on the name of the thread - it’s a misnomer but you’re probably right when you say it’s difficult to change halfway in the game.

Frans

Re: Integral Men

Frans:
Feminism has been playing the blame game, but men have too, and both have been loving the victim position - just look here.

No, actually men have not played the blame game nearly as much, at least not in orange/green societies such as Sweden - and I seriously doubt that they have in other societies either.

Men have not looked at their own gender roles in an honest way, and men doing this is an unavoidable step to be able to transform feminism into Integral Gender Studies.
Please let us not make some kind of spiritual, emotional or intellectual bypass in this thread, and pretend that we men do not need to look at the constrictedness of the male sex role. It is only through doing this that we can liberate ourselves and be free men with a mission, not puppets of an outdated gender role.

If we integral men don't step up to the task, who will?


Pelle

Re: Integral Men

I've really loved and agree with all the various viewpoints that have been expressed here. None of them are really contrary to what's going on in the world, but just realistic parts of a grander social and psychological puzzle.
I really like what Pelle has been saying so I'll start my comments with that:

”Women have so far done a much better job at speaking up about their side of discrimination, whereas men have done virtually nothing at all. So it is my belief that we can never meet women as equals until we do our own job of deconstructing our gender role, and also teach women the pain and discrimination men come across on a daily basis.”

I have to be honest, I had a negative knee-jerk emotional reaction to Bruce starting this thread. It seemed to me a kind of one-ups-man-ship in the sense that, they have one, so we should have one too. I'm glad that we haven't replicated the integral women thread, and I see that this was a good idea.
I think the main problem with this issue is that, I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I feel a very deeply conditioned aversion towards whining. I know it isn't really whining, but it kind of feels like that. There's this automatic feeling I get when I read some of the women's posts that makes me feel like there's a cry baby, whining to them, and I feel uncomfortable replicating that. A whining in the sense that there's an expectation of their environment to bend to there wants and needs, while I feel that it is us that should bend. So let us say that it one of our strengths as strong men. The definition of delusion is the need for one's reality to be what one wants, instead of being what reality dictates one be at any given moment.
As I've gotten married and started my adult life, I slowly feel that my volition of my life is slipping away and being replaced by what other people want and need, mainly my wife and family. I think it is a good teacher to remain calm and comfortable and in the moment regardless of what life brings.

I know that these are issues that we need to deal with as a society, but how do we even talk about something that automatically places us in a “one down” position of weakness? I can just hear my dad in the back of my head yelling at me to, “Shut up, stop whining, put one foot in front of the other, and move on.”
How do we over come the automatic positioning as a pussy, by saying and doing things that make us… well… pussies?

I just don't know. The different experiences in my life have made it really hard to feel sorry for myself.  I don't know if it is necessary either as Frans has said. What's wrong with strong, gentle silence in a man? 

So Pelle is right in saying that we haven't yet followed the path of feminism, but should we and can we? This is a much different situation, so I think that we have to adapt to this set of conditions and not just replicate a male-femininst movement if you will. I'm just not comfortable with that, and I know most men aren't either.
So the question is not should we, but how.

”As far as I'm concerned, Integral Feminism is an oxymoron, because neither feminism nor masculinism is Integral.”

Exactly! I've been trying to express that since all this gender talk started. Where do the lines of these conceptual “masculine” and “feminine” begin and end? Isn't this just a deeper and more subtle delusion wrapped up in New Age spirituality?
The strongest and most masculine male role models in my life have been equally strong and gentle, with deep waters of emotion and caring, but with control over their behavior.
And strong women, like my mother, also don't get lost in their personal needs and desires. She worked a full-time job, raised two kids and went to school full-time when I was growing up. That's a strong woman, but she has complete access to her feminine energy as well.
I don't see a duality here.

Re: Integral Men

I'm not sure if these comments belong here or on the “wounded boy” thread, but I'll place them here for now.  I agree that, particularly in recent years, we have been confronted in green-influenced cultures with negative and, really, weak and disempowering images of males.  Although it doesn't seem to be as prevalent now as it was a few years ago, I remember noticing as a young man that the men in most commercials and popular sitcoms seemed clueless, bumbling, pitiable, and weak.  They were incompetent, incapable of doing anything without the help of their wives.  When I first started noticing this trend, my reaction was, “Well, we had this coming.  It's our turn now.”  But after a couple years, I wearied of it. 

Experiencing that, as I experienced racism and discrimination for two years in Korea, I could better understand the pernicious and damaging influence of similarly distorted images of women and minorities that have also been fed to our culture.  Even when you have a fairly strong sense of your own value, as I did by the time I began to notice these anti-male trends in the media, these images still manage to slip in underneath one's conscious beliefs and defenses and work their influence nevertheless, perhaps in subtle ways (say, influencing you to disparage or apologize for your clueless masculinity when you enter into conversations with women).

A lot of powerful insight into social and cultural dynamics has been generated by the feminist movement, so I do think it has great value – not all of which has been realized or digested by society at large.  But the swinging of the pendulum in the direction of a collective, popular disparagment of masculinity, and even a pathologizing of masculine traits in Green-influenced schools, is an example of the endemic misuse of Green insight:  a critical excavation of disempowering sociocultural norms is turned, on the popular level, not into a tool for collective insight, but into another weapon … another way to marginalize and pathologize and oppress.  It is fragmentary, not Integral.

When I have listened to and participated in male/female or masculine/feminine discussions on this pod in the past, I have sometimes felt a resistance to the ways the lines were being drawn – as if the characteristics we were identifying as male or female were universal, even timelessly given (part of the very fabric of the Kosmos).  In critically examining, deconstructing, and reconfiguring or coming to terms with the roles which we have come to inhabit, I think we have to be willing to challenge some of the basic myths of our culture about what masculinity and femininity “truly” are.  To realize that, to some extent, these things are “grooves” that have been laid down over time.  Not timeless truths, but dynamic patterns that have gathered a certain momentum. 

Some postmodern and feminist theorists have suggested that gender roles are purely constructed, and they have set about trying to rearrange the patterns.  I think where they are going wrong is not in arguing that gender roles and traits are constructed, but in not recognizing the fully AQAL nature of the grooves that are in place.  Some are, indeed, biologically determined and thus much more deeply entrenched.  Not eternal truths, but deeply engrained habits … which will not easily be challenged or “fixed” by social engineering.

How deep can change go?  I don't know.  I am resistant, at this point, to making easy connections between certain cultural conventions and biologically determined impulses and tendencies.  There is some flexibility, some plasticity.  For myself, I see the integral challenge before me to be coming more fully to inhabit a perspective that both honors and strives to understand what has unfolded in time up to this point, but which does not assume that anything is merely “given” and beyond question or transformation or creative revitalization and transfiguration.

As a parent, raising a boy in this culture, watching how my relationship develops with him (how I struggle to live up to my ideals for myself and my desires to help him develop a self-esteem that I lacked as a child), I know this isn't easy.  I know we carry a great deal of weight.  I know that most adults walk around with long, shadow-filled bags behind them, and that our culture has formed around the dance we must engage in not to notice these burdens, or the ways they influence our behavior.  I know I have more work to do in this area.  I did not have men in my life, growing up, who were up to this task.  But we must create this.  We must bring this forth.

Re: Integral Men

Here are the lyrics of the song “Men” by Martin Mull and Steve Martin:

(Group of men singing in the background)
Men, men, men, men
Men, men, men, men…

It's great to be on a ship with men
and sail across the sea, oh,
We don't know where we'll land or when,
but it's great to be with men.

'Cause men can sweat and men can stink
and no one seems to care, oh,
We'll throw the dishes in the sink
and clog the drain with hair, oh!
(And clog the drain with hair, oh!)

Men, men, men,
We're a ship all filled with men,
So batten down the ladies' room,
there's no one here but men!

Men, men, men, men
Men, men, men, men…

There's men above and men below
and men down in the galley,
There's Butch and Spike and Buzz and Biff
and one guy we call Sally!
(And one guy we call Sally!)

Men, men, men,
We're a ship all filled with men,
You'll never have to lift the seat,
there's no one here but men!

Men, men, men, men
Men, men, men, men…

We're men and friends until the end
and none of us are sissies,
At night we sleep in separate beds
and blow each other kissies!
(And blow each other kissies!)

Men, men, men,
we're a ship all filled with men,
So throw your rubbers overboard,
there's no one here but men!

Amen (pronounced “Ahhhhh, men!”)

Re: Integral Men

Um…thanks, The Urge. 

A little too much “men” for my taste!

Re: Integral Men

This is so tough. Tough to face, tough to hold in focus, tough to get into perspective.  I find myself being swayed by the various calls – not to get into the blaming game, not to whinge or whine …. and also to allow any true feeling to express itself if it's really there.

So I find myself mutely nodding acknowledgement of all three …. then sitting up and saying yes! to Pelle's call that we men speak out about how we too have been oppressed by and within our gender role as a result of family and cultural conditioning, and yes! to his call that we deconstreuct our gender role …. except this is what I find tough to face, tough to hold in focus, tough to get into perspective.

One (lesser) reason it's tough to face is because I've experienced women raging at men for daring to think that we've had it bad in a way that even remotely compares to what women have had to endure for millenia, and I draw back at the thought of such a hornet's nest being stirred up in this pod. And like, fuck, what have I got to complain about, what big deal injustices have I suffered, in what ways have I been suppressed, trodden on, put down, marginalised, belittled, patronised, humoured, ridiculed as women routinely have been, still are. And if I can come out with some minor examples, or if I try to feel into expressing how I'd come to consider myself a second-class man in a man's world, I'd be reminded that even a second-class man is still privileged, still has easy access by birthright to all sorts of things that women just don't.

So the first thing that comes to me here and now is that it's not about comparing who's had it worst. I honestly do believe that while most men may have heard and experienced a woman's rage, they have barely heard but the distant murmuring of the roaring of rage, grief and pain that's in the hearts of women …. and we do need to hear this and feel this as much as we can allow ourselves to …. and open up more to let more in, to feel more …. and let it impact us, move us …. and pass on through us.

And …. as Pelle says, we men “… need to find our balls and say: “Yes, I understand feminism and I'm trying very hard to understand the plight of women from a second person perspective, but I demand that you as women do exactly the same and try very hard to understand the plight of men””

I gave a lesser reason why I find this tough to face. The main reason, I find, is not so easy to articulate because it's not so easy to identify and define in the first place …. and that's, I think, because we're conditioned not to see how we're conditioned. But I want to find a way to see through and beyond this conditioned vision I inhabit, and am looking for help and guidance from men and women both in this, those that can offer it that is.

I have long felt that as a kid, as a teenager, as a young adult and as a pre-middlessence man I was, mostly unconsciously, rebelling against what I was being called to step up to and into, the inheritance and mantle I'd received by birthright, being born male in a man's world. I didn't want this, but was barely aware that I didn't want it, and had nothing to offer in it's place. So I effectively became a second-class male, a second-class man …. and lost access to a lot of my agency in the process. I can see this intellectually, but that's not enough, I want to explore and unpack this with the help of other men, good true and beautiful .

I don't want to add any more on this just now …. but do want to finish by sharing myself kind of indirectly and a bit nekkid, by offering a picture of me as seen through the eyes of the person I was last in a relationship with – we were together for almost six years, and separated just over eighteen months ago. The context for this is that the men's group I was in (we disbanded nearly a year ago) came up with the idea of each man asking their partner or ex-partner, a question concerning a certain something we felt we needed to hear from them. The idea was that when each man had a reply we would in turn read these out to the whole group, as an exercise in getting to hear different women's voices concerning men.

The question we came up with was (yes, I know, a tad naive and pretensious :)): “In relationship to you / the feminine, what are the most important truths for me to know about myself and for others to know about me, as a man? Please tell me this for my own healing and for the healing of all men.”

My partner's reply was (and I'd told her someone else might be reading it out):

“To whoever reads this out:  You can skip the first bit if you want and pick it up after the asterisks.  Your call.

Any other women betray a touch of being freaked out by this question?  Having an ‘is it me??’ moment…..move on…..ahem

Oh God.  I just don’t know how to respond.  How would I know the most important truths if you lot don’t?  Whose most important truths?  If they’re MINE about you, how does that automatically or necessarily stand for The Feminine?  Maybe it’s just some mad bitch banging on about her stupid crap….Ha! Smile, you’re on candid damn-ya..

Right.  Before I say anything more, I’m keen to know, if they’re really the most important truths about you, why you & others aren’t already acquainted with them.  Makes it sound like this in an exercise in skeleton wrangling, or that women somehow know all the essential stuff that men have no idea about.  Hang on!….

Still stalling.  OK then.  Good news or bad news first?

*************************************************************************

You don’t do what you say you’re going to.  No, of course I don’t mean always - just often enough to sow doubt.  You forget what you have promised - not always, just consistently enough for corrosion to creep in.  You don’t pay close enough attention.  You’re so often elsewhere, somehow - uninvolved, unbothered or unwilling to respond.  I don’t, and perhaps most women don’t, like feeling not thought about, not cherished - and though I’m pretty sure that’s not your intention, that’s how it comes over.  We don’t like the feeling that it’s an effort or a drag or somehow unnatural just to love & care about us.  And finally, you don’t take enough action or initiative.  You don’t take on the world.  I suppose that’s all hero shit and who cares.  But we do.  I do.  I want to take on the world  but I don’t want to do it for two - unless my man is doing it for two right there with me. 

Re: Integral Men

Thank you so much Rick, Bruce and Lol for laying down the grooves this thread needed to settle into some sort of rhythm.

It's late here so I won't write very much, but I do want to comment on something Lol wrote:

The main reason, I find, is not so easy to articulate because it's not so easy to identify and define in the first place …. and that's, I think, because we're conditioned not to see how we're conditioned.

I truly believe this is a core truth for men. We have been conditioned not to see how we're conditioned. We still believe that we are the powerful sex, even though we are a choiceless sex  in many ways.

It's painful to start teasing this apart, because we mistakenly think that our masculinity is tied to our gender role, but in reality it is not. There is a huge difference between amber and integral.


Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Pelle,

“Frans:
Feminism has been playing the blame game, but men have too, and both have been loving the victim position - just look here.

No, actually men have not played the blame game nearly as much…”

Did you miss the “just look here”? ending of my sentence? - even just look at yourself: you get very defensive whenever I make the suggestion we should leave the complaining and bitching behind…Women may have done this in the form of movements, men do it more on an individual basis - we don’t need groups to feel strong enough for that apparently.

You say:

“Men have not looked at their own gender roles in an honest way, and men doing this is an unavoidable step to be able to transform feminism into Integral Gender Studies.
Please let us not make some kind of spiritual, emotional or intellectual bypass in this thread, and pretend that we men do not need to look at the constrictedness of the male sex role. It is only through doing this that we can liberate ourselves and be free men with a mission, not puppets of an outdated gender role.”

I never said we shouldn’t; all I say time and time again is that we don’t need to do this in a blaming and complaining way, holding on the role of “I am just as much a victim as you” - we can and should start leaving all of that behind right now without any more whining (Rick - we agree!) - learn why we are who we are and realize that women are in the same boat - the only boat we have and it’s called Life. In the end this will most definitely be a very spiritual excercise.

“If we integral men don’t step up to the task, who will?”

Indeed - so let’s!

Frans

Re: Integral Men

This is strange, I've never read so many posts in a row that I've agreed with, point for point.
So let's take what lol, Pelle, Bruce and Frans have said and put them together into what I am feeling and was trying to say in my post.

How do we even start a real duologue about this, when we've been so conditioned to not even talk about it. I mean, I feel really uncomfortable even discussing this issue. I think that this is something that women have over on us. They are free and uninhibited to discuss whatever comes to them, but we aren't. I know all this is bullshit delusion and past social, cultural and evolutionary conditioning, but it's still kind of there.
If we've been so conditioned to not even feel comfortable enough to even discuss these things honestly, then how do we get anywhere? Self pity just doesn't suite a solution.

I remember talking to my Zen teacher once about how I sometimes get depressed sometimes for no real reason, and have for almost as long as I can remember. I was on the verge of tears when I was talking to him about this, and he didn't want to hear any detail, or discuss my feelings or anything. He kind of stopped me mid-sentence and reminded me that there is always a cause, always a condition of everything, even our emotions.
So he told me to meditate and seek out the underlying causes of my depression and to just shine a light on them, and not be taken in by them. As he said this, I began to feel a joy spring up from despair, and I actually felt a lot better. I took his advice and the problem has almost completely dissolved, and when I still sometimes feel a deep feeling of depression, it is just another emotion, a very amazing emotion that helps to keep me grounded and not take my concepts seriously.

This seems to me a very masculine and very effective way of dealing with these issues. This way we don't really have to get into the details, and still deal with the issues.
I think the more feminine way of bringing out feelings and reifying them and making them more significant is just deepening and reifying the delusion that we are trying to overcome in the first place. We have to understand that these feelings and thoughts are nothing more than mental and conditional constructs.

Re: Integral Men

Hi, Lol,

It's fairly late and I'm feeling wiped out after a long day, but I wanted, first, to say thank you for stepping out here so nekkidly and movingly; and second, to respond briefly to one of your remarks that really rang home for me.

You wrote:  I have long felt that as a kid, as a teenager, as a young adult and as a pre-middlessence man I was, mostly unconsciously, rebelling against what I was being called to step up to and into, the inheritance and mantle I'd received by birthright, being born male in a man's world. I didn't want this, but was barely aware that I didn't want it, and had nothing to offer in it's place. So I effectively became a second-class male, a second-class man …. and lost access to a lot of my agency in the process. I can see this intellectually, but that's not enough, I want to explore and unpack this with the help of other men, good true and beautiful.

This was exactly my experience, but I wasn't clearly in touch with it, and had not found a way to articulate it, until I began doing Diamond Approach work and I kept finding myself facing certain patterns in myself.  I found that, in deep inquiry, when I came face to face with core memories, patterns, and scripts, I often would have a sense of losing ground, literally – things became diffuse, focus was lost, direction disappeared.  I would dissociate, in a word, and move into a formless sort of fog.  In exploring this pattern, watching how and when it arose, I have come to see that it often would arise in response to feelings around moving forward actively into the world, which I found to be in direct conflict with images of “worldly men” in my life who had profoundly disappointed me – men, angry and dangerous men who had failed as models, and who stood, primitively and simply, as emblems of what I did NOT want to become.  But in cutting myself off from them, and from the dangerous currents they represented, I did two things:  I cut myself off from a connection to source energy, and I also effectively said “no” to paths that would lead me to don that “mantle of my birthright.”  I did not want to be what it seemed society had laid out for me, what I imagined it “meant” to be a man in the world, and not having any other models or guides, I became marginal by default.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Integral Men

Yes Sir,

It's late, I'm tired, and I too remember navigating/drifting clear of mainstream.

jiki

Re: Integral Men

Wow … I'm just catching up on all this … this is powerful stuff brotha's.

Re: Integral Men

Frans:
I never said we shouldn’t; all I say time and time again is that we don’t need to do this in a blaming and complaining way, holding on the role of “I am just as much a victim as you” - we can and should start leaving all of that behind right now without any more whining (Rick - we agree!) - learn why we are who we are and realize that women are in the same boat - the only boat we have and it’s called Life.


I think we're reaching some kind of agreement Frans. What I'm simply saying is this:

For years and years men were responsible for protecting women and children, and prepared to give their own life to do so. Men were also responsible for providing the financial womb for women and children, and this often included doing work that was dangerous and shortened the lifespan of men (it still does). Faced with having to deal with this role, male culture developed into a culture that repressed emotions and that was prone to violence. This was a natural development under the circumstances, it was men's way of dealing with their obligations and responsibilities. It was not because men were inherently evil!

Therefore, all I'm saying now is that I will not go along with the branch of feminism that blames men for every kind of problem in the world (wars, violence, environmental issues). In fact, I will stand up and oppose that kind of discourse. But this does not mean that I will start playing the blame game myself! There is a huge difference between refusing to accept false blame, and starting to blame others.

I'm simply saying that both men and women have done the best they could with the roles they were dealt from evolutionary and survival factors. Now we have a very different LR, and we have the opportunity to redefine our roles in a way that will allow both men and women to thrive in a way that was never possible previously.

Nowadays I feel a lot of compassion for both women and men, not only one of the genders. What I'm interested in is having a dialogue with those who also have reached a point where they feel compassion for both genders, and have moved beyond the need to play the blame game.


Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Bruce:
I found that, in deep inquiry, when I came face to face with core memories, patterns, and scripts, I often would have a sense of losing ground, literally – things became diffuse, focus was lost, direction disappeared.  I would dissociate, in a word, and move into a formless sort of fog.  In exploring this pattern, watching how and when it arose, I have come to see that it often would arise in response to feelings around moving forward actively into the world, which I found to be in direct conflict with images of “worldly men” in my life who had profoundly disappointed me – men, angry and dangerous men who had failed as models, and who stood, primitively and simply, as emblems of what I did NOT want to become.  But in cutting myself off from them, and from the dangerous currents they represented, I did two things:  I cut myself off from a connection to source energy, and I also effectively said “no” to paths that would lead me to don that “mantle of my birthright.”  I did not want to be what it seemed society had laid out for me, what I imagined it “meant” to be a man in the world, and not having any other models or guides, I became marginal by default.


I think this is a pattern shared my many of us Bruce, and thank you for bringing it up with such a personal example.
When we reject the amber role of men, we often throw out at least one baby with the bathwater. Like you say, we lose touch with agency, drive and direction in our lives.

I've actually found that by getting to a place where I feel compassion for the angry, emotionally repressed amber man - and seeing how he got to be how he was - it has been easier for me to start reintegrating some of the core energies that we desperately need even at higher stages. I've very much had to do this on my own. since the default attitude in green/feminist Sweden is that the amber/orange man is inherently evil and the cause of everything from wars to cancer (I'm not blaming here, simply reporting the state of my country).


Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Pelle,

Do you feel too that if we were face-to-face we’d need about 2 minutes to understand each other - where now we need 10 posts back and forth?

“What I’m interested in is having a dialogue with those who also have reached a point where they feel compassion for both genders, and have moved beyond the need to play the blame game.”

Yes, yes,yes - let’s please do that. All the hurt is real, all the abuse is real, men and women acted very disfunctionally, but it was the best they could do at the time in the circumstances they were in - we as a group can go beyond that, and if we don’t I think we’re missing the boat.

You say: “‘I’ve very much had to do this on my own. since the default attitude in green/feminist Sweden is that the amber/orange man is inherently evil and the cause of everything from wars to cancer (I’m not blaming here, simply reporting the state of my country).”

That’s somewhat typical of Holland too, so I know what you mean. I had to uproot myself and leave the country before I got to do any serious self work (not that I believe Holland really had anything to do with it per se)

Frans

Re: Integral Men

He Rick,

Glad to hear we’re making some sense!

You say: “f we’ve been so conditioned to not even feel comfortable enough to even discuss these things honestly, then how do we get anywhere? Self pity just doesn’t suite a solution.”

Would it be possible to apply the Zen teachings you mentioned helped you in dealing with that deep feeling of sadness (my words - what I had to work through, but I think it’s at least a relative of your feelings of depression) to this situation too? The feelings of discomfort have a much deeper root too and may be very similar…

The way I word it is to try and feel the emotion, the pain, the discomfort whithout attaching them to the story that we think is connected to these feelings. Once we can look at just the feeling, it all of a sudden loses it’s power. At least that’s what works for me.

Frans

Re: Integral Men

“Would it be possible to apply the Zen teachings you mentioned helped you in dealing with that deep feeling of sadness (my words - what I had to work through, but I think it’s at least a relative of your feelings of depression) to this situation too? The feelings of discomfort have a much deeper root too and may be very similar…”

Yes, exactly! That was my point exactly. There is nothing inherent in our psychic or social situations, any more than anything else.
There's a lifetime of conditioning there you know, so in a way I think the depression is integrally linked to these other feelings. I know that I've had a hard time feeling compassion for people that I considered weak, because deep down I knew that I had been through what they had or worse and I sucked it up, no one felt sorry for me and I moved one; “so why can't they,” I thought.
I remember laying in bed when I was in 6th grade, I think, and I had to get up to go to school. I remember thinking to myself what the point of it all was, and if there was a reason to even get out of bed. My dad came in and told me to get out of bed and get dressed for school. When I told him what I was thinking he got really upset and said something like, “So what! You get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other and you work it out. Life doesn't stop for you. Deal with it.”
So I did. And I've always been able to suppress any kind of pain. There were many other turning points in my life before and after that taught me not to feel sorry for myself, and to be hard. I was even able to hide a drug addiction from my family and others for about 3 years, and I quit all on my own, with the help of boot camp.
So I can see that it's all tied together, and I that this is something that is holding me back from a more direct and authentic seeing on a more full time basis.
So how do I access all this pain and not reify it, and feel “poor me?”
Perhaps, I can just see the emotions and thoughts for the smoke that they are when they arise. It's just something I've been avoiding.

Bruce,
I know what you mean about the male role models that fell short. I remember when I was about 17, and… let's just say I joined the import/export business on the border in Texas. My boss was this New Yorker, we'll call him Vito, cause that's what we called him (nickname). Anyway, he was from Eastern Europe originally, and had been in the business his whole life, was tough as nails, a snake that you couldn't trust, and smart.
As the years went by and I got closer to him and got to know him better, I began to see him as he really was, a broken little boy really. I felt sorry for him, but also knew he deserved most of his personal hell. Once I saw him after getting really drunk, after a bad meeting in Atlanta, and he broke down and started to cry like a baby. He started to speak in different languages, and just cry.
I saw that his toughness was an illusion, and that even he couldn't escape all the bad shit he'd done in his life. In the end, it catches up to us all.

Re: Integral Men

Pelle : I've actually found that by getting to a place where I feel compassion for the angry, emotionally repressed amber man - and seeing how he got to be how he was - it has been easier for me to start reintegrating some of the core energies that we desperately need even at higher stages.


Bingo! My father was a alcoholic who beat my 2 siblings and I. They got it worse than I did growing up because I was the youngest and my mother finally put her foot down. I love/hated my father until I was about 16. The beatings had stopped many years prior but I kind of wanted him to try as I thought I could whip his ass by that time. Then one of my Aunts told me that all her siblings were beat in their childhood with a cat of 9 tails. Each would get beat on their birthday and receive a whip for each year old they were. Their parents (my grandparents) said that even though they did not see them do anything wrong, they knew they did and this was their punishment. At that very moment the anger I had for my father evaporated. I saw him as a young boy in a grown mans body. He had not emotionaly grown from a beaten little child and was acting out the only way he knew how. It did not make what happened to me & my siblings right but it gave me the key to understand him and have compassion for him. We had a great relationship from then on until he died a few years ago. It never got super close, he just did not know how, but I love him dearly.


love


e

Re: Integral Men

Wow, some awesome sharing e.

And I also wanted to say, yes, yes, yes - exploration back in to preceding generations is so important in all of this.

I've noticed these things come up as a father. I truly feel that no matter how far we might have come individually, when we become parents we are forced back into the ways that we were raised and the values and so on that our parents embodied. And it is almost as if we “start” right there no matter what -in what I would consider and call the familial line. (Something which, when living independently, leaves off from the moment when we started living independently). Now I don't remember my point. :-/

Oh yes, the past generations ARE so many parts of us. This how as holons we have a LL, even as individuals. And in finding that compassion and understanding for those past contexts, individuals and situation, I truly beleive we are Kosmically moving these grooves forward, now and into the future.

Okay, Peace, Tim

Re: Integral Men

Rick, Pelle, Frans, everyone, thank you for what you're bringing here.

I want to say something about how I read the issues Pelle and Frans have been debating (particularly around blame).  I really liked what Pelle said in his last letter.  I do not think we need to get into a discussion of “who has suffered more” or “who is the primary cause of our suffering,” in terms of trying to lay blame somewhere, but neither do I think we should forget about where we've come from and just focus on “solutions” and the future.  For me, it is helpful to look at and open up the personal, familial, cultural, and historical dynamics of our present condition – those things that have caused us to suffer or rebel or feel alienated or withdraw or get depressed and angry, but also those things that have inspired us to look past the models our society offers (patriarchal/Amber, Orange, feminist, etc.) and to consider, and strive to embody, new ways of being.  Although we probably have all done our own work in this area, I do not want to just assume we're all at the same place, or that we don't need to discuss the dysfunctional stuff that we all agree needs to be left behind, for a number of reasons – one, we may not all be at the same place (I regard Lol as my elder brother in this area, for instance); two, the way forward lies through really understanding our conditioning, not trying to push it behind us; and three, even as we strive to embody new ways of being, we are doing so in a context which will likely be resisting us, on various levels, and among both men and women.

Rick, I hear you about feeling uncomfortable about discussing these things.  It feels like I'm exposing myself here, opening myself up to evaluation and dismissal, devaluation, etc.  In some circles, I might even let this stop me from speaking in this way.  But not here.

About the advice you received for dealing with depression:  I agree that that is a powerful, typically masculine way of dealing with it.  I have also taken this approach, and often it has really had an amazing impact – releasing and sometimes powerfully transforming emotion, demonstrating clearly and directly how mechanical and really ephemeral many of the “verbal loops” are that keep energy circulating in a particular way.

However, I think there are feminine ways of approaching emotion that are important also – ways which don't focus on getting rid of negative or troubling emotion by cutting the roots, but which draw close to it, move into it, and allow for more of a transformation from within which somehow feels more embodied, closer to the bone and blood.  In my experience, the Diamond Approach is really powerful in this regard – because it seems to skillfully balance masculine and feminine approaches, through encouraging both an incisive inquiry and an ability to move into and feelingly inhabit what is, at any moment, arising.  Feminine “story” and masculine “space” are not-two.

Pelle, I also want to briefly respond to your comment about allowing ourselves to return to and have compassion for the Amber or Orange males that have disappointed us.  For the past ten years or so, a very steady part of my ILP has actually been consciously listening to individuals in these spaces – on the radio, primarily, but also on certain forums on the internet.  It was an exercise, first, in just listening to the reactions these individuals brought up in me, as I connected them to various figures in my life.  But later it became an exercise of moving past the reactions and actually into their value- and meaning-space, so that I could better understand them.  I found compassion naturally arising – a compassion which did not obscure, for me, the partiality of their views or the harm they still might be causing, but which nevertheless has helped me to return, in myself and my own work, to those parts of me that I cut off and to honor them again, appreciating the strengths they also bear; and to return and relate to some of my relatives with more compassion, at least in my mind if it's not possible in real life (some of these Amber relatives have died or disappeared),

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Integral Men

Rick,

We had the same father! I had the good fortune of cracking my skull when I was 13 which allowed me to forget pretty much everything that went before, but they sound like two peas in a pod. Mine did change significantly - more about that later. Like you, i was very much alone in all that happened to me and had to initiate the work on my own. Thank God for 2 people that came into my life then - I wouldn’t have made it here without them.

When you’re working with your pain, is there any way that you can isolate what you feel from the story that - for you - is connected to the feeling; trying to realize that the pain is universal, a pain that a great many others tap into as well - through their own stories? If you can do that, try to emphasize it, make it as big as you can - and look at it - see what happens. I believe this is an approach hat Almaas also uses in his Diamond Approach - Bruce is the expert on that.

e,

That must have been a powerful experience, being able to detach from the story and see your father for what he really was - and it happened while he was still alive, so you could still have a relationship with him that you felt good about - wow!

In our house it never came to physical abuse, but i remember tons of mental abuse. Things changed when my dad had a massive heart attack and had to stop working. His entire sense of self evaporated and he became an empty shell for a few years - I’m not sure how long. Then, he began doing volunteer work for the elderly, helping them fill out the hundreds of government forms that are there to “assist” the elderly, but you have to be a rocket scientist to figure them all out…Last year he took a buddy course and he is now assisting people in their last months of life, helping them cope with dying. My dad, the most miserable person I remember - i still have a hard time relating to him, but it’s getting better ( we only see each other once a year now that I live in Canada).

Bruce:

” ..think there are feminine ways of approaching emotion that are important also – ways which don’t focus on getting rid of negative or troubling emotion by cutting the roots, but which draw close to it, move into it, and allow for more of a transformation from within which somehow feels more embodied, closer to the bone and blood. In my experience, the Diamond Approach is really powerful in this regard – because it seems to skillfully balance masculine and feminine approaches, through encouraging both an incisive inquiry and an ability to move into and feelingly inhabit what is, at any moment, arising. Feminine “story” and masculine “space” are not-two.”

I sometimes feel that feminine approaches are the more powerful ones, but that is for me, probably depends on our hardwiring (if there really is such a thing). The point is to have access to both and use both freely together.

This thread is getting better and better - Frans

Re: Integral Men

Hello, men. I posted a relevant reflection in the integral gender thread and a subsequent insight. I'd love to here thoughts in response either here or there. So far, I am speaking mainly in the integral gender thread: it fits me best.

Re: Integral Men

Hey Colin, I just wanted to say, so it's been said, you are more than welcome on this thread. (In fact, I expect you on this thread!)

Heart,
Tim

Re: Integral Men

Tim: You are a very loving and inclusive man.

In fact, this is true for so many of the men in this pod. Thank you all.

Re: Integral Men

Colin, I also want you on this thread.
(I know I said it before but I intend to nag you until you show up :P)

Re: Integral Men

Frans: yes, it would be great to meet face2face. We would go so much deeper so much faster…

Rick: you tell some amazing stories, and it seems you've tried several “hardcore male destinations” (drugs, the army, “import/export”). You pose a very interesting question as well, namely how do we achieve emotional healing as men without breaking down completely and losing touch with our agency? Intuitively I feel that men cannot process and release in exactly the same way as women do, for example by talking, crying, talking and feeling completely weak and relaxed. My feeling is that we need to intersperse episodes of emotional release and support from partner/friend/therapist, with periods of time alone to rebuild ourselves.

e: Your story touches me, and also resonates in some ways with my own background.

Bruce: that sounds like a powerful ILP, trying to engage amber/orange men without rejecting them and instead even learning important partial truths. Personally I thought I could never feel compassion for my father, but after “grokking” and feeling compassion for the amber/orange man - and also becoming conscious of the familial line that Tim speaks of - I  can now see that my father was simply preprogrammed to become who he was, and he would have needed to be at least green to start breaking free of his destructive patterns (he still pisses me off though, but such is life…).


loving this thread,
Pelle

Re: Integral Men

You know what - I still have a lot to eventually say on this thread - but I wanted to say this now.

I want to tell you something,

I never, ever felt more like a man, then the moment when I encompassed and integrated into my being, my father.

I'm not even going to try at this point to dissect what that means …

But there was a moment, many years ago (1996) when I realized that he embodied to me something about the ideal man. This is very interesting, and again, I am not going to try and dissect it.

But something tells me this is a very important thing … Despite all of the differences -somehow, I finally made his agency, my agency.

And yes, only furher discovered who I was.

(It was right after an intense solitary meditation retreat too.)

(And that was a good retreat. It eventually brought me here.)

(Okay, good for me. Not sure about all of you … )

Peace, Tim

Re: Integral Men

What positive qualities or characteristics does the other gender bring to relationships?

In the context of the ideas that we bat around here, there's a kind of feedback that women give you that you can't normally get from another guy. Sometimes I'm not sure if I like my ideas because they are true, or if I'm just seeing what you might call logical beauty – a kind of abstract internal consistency or coherency. That's the kind of thing that you discuss with another guy, whether the argument has flaws or limitations or inconsistencies. But women don't really care so much about that, they mainly care about whether or not an idea leads to more love. So for me, the real test of an idea is whether I can convince a woman that it is true, because then hopefully it's less likely to have an unconscious masculine bias.

So that's probably the reason that I mainly have female friends – I think I've heard that from men here before too, maybe for different reasons though. Outside of this forum, I have only met one or two other men that I know who I felt had a level of development high enough that I felt comfortable accepting their critiques of my ideas. Thanks guys! :) Green men are impossible, and Orange men have weird status and materialistic obsessions that are kind of disturbing to me. It's always a competition with them! So I think it's worth keeping in mind that even though the masculine might dominate a bit in this forum, it's not like we have anywhere else to go. We can't just head down to the local sangha every night and strike up an integral conversation with someone. There's really not a lot of options if you are interested in spirituality and want to embody authentic masculinity. Women can go hang out with Green spiritual people and include them without too much trouble, but men have to constantly bite their tongue because of the desire to transcend Green. Not that necessarily justifies anything, just something to keep in mind.

What would you most like to know about the other gender?

I've often heard women say that Integral is too theoretical, abstract and intellectual. I don't mind that kind of thing, so if it's not that, what is it about integral theory that attracts you?

~MrTC

Re: Integral Men

Pelle: “Intuitively I feel that men cannot process and release in exactly the same way as women do, for example by talking, crying, talking and feeling completely weak and relaxed. My feeling is that we need to intersperse episodes of emotional release and support from partner/friend/therapist, with periods of time alone to rebuild ourselves.”

Yeah, I think so. Bruce is right also that a mix is needed. Perhaps a little talking and support and a little on our own work together.
I think fathers are just as burdened with making sure their sons can survive in the world as well. I find myself automatically being hard with my nephew, because the world's gonna eat him alive, I feel deep down. Of course he's just a kid and who knows what he'll become, but there's that fear. Its as though the most compassionate thing I can do for him is to make him a little harder. I know that's crazy, but this is the world we live in.  I know that's why my dad was the way he was with me.
The crazy thing is that his dad was a rather cold man. So he actually went out of his way to make sure he said he loved me and that he was proud of me, etc… But, he just couldn't over come so much of his life conditioning. So I think that all of my best and worst qualities I probably got from him.
Now of course, my goal is to deconstruct my automatic conditioning to flow with the moment more authentically. I think that is really what we need to do. I've started with yelling. I'm struggling with it, but I'm getting better and yelling much less.

Re: Integral Men

I think fathers are just as burdened with making sure their sons can survive in the world as well. I find myself automatically being hard with my nephew, because the world's gonna eat him alive, I feel deep down. Of course he's just a kid and who knows what he'll become, but there's that fear. Its as though the most compassionate thing I can do for him is to make him a little harder. I know that's crazy, but this is the world we live in.  I know that's why my dad was the way he was with me.

Rick, you just uprooted some “things” for me - or maybe in me.

My Dad, aside from issues of religion, was pretty much the anti-hard. This is actually one of the things I admire and appreciate about him. His own father was - I really don't know about hard - but in my Dad's own words he was “micro-managed” his entire life, even after marriage, his own kids etc. This included his mother too - he was an only child and they just never “let up” or allowed him to live his own life, make his own decisions. So the thing is, he vowed that he would never do that to his own children. And, he absolutely didn't. We were free to make our own choices, choose who we were and what we wanted to do, never any interference and always love and acceptance and support. Ultimately, sure, to this day religion remains the one disappointment … but he still tries never, ever to say anything about it. (We were Catholic - my brother at one point became a born again Baptist, this caused controversy, but never did he try to say to my brother “you can not do this” in any way. My sister becamea Buddhist, even less attempted interference.)

But so here is the thing. I think by the time I got to about 19, 20 -and it even applies now to some extent - I wish he would have been harder. I wish he would have set down some expectations of performance. Perhaps key and central here - I wish he would have better prepared me for what it was to be a man, or even just a boy, in this world. Because the truth of the matter, is that I did suffer for that. Especially as a kid. Somehow, I found achievement drives and ways to work with this performance expectation, and whatever other male expectations there are, on my own.

In fact, it's true, my theatre mentor became an auxiliary father figure in this regard. He set down expectations that were demanded to be lived up to. And he was “gay!” But the agentic figure I in many ways needed.

Now, here's the thing. When I started teaching myself, I noticed the pattern very early on - I was always WAY harder on the boys and men. If they did something wrong, I gave them no mercy.

Whereas, I also noticed very early on, if the girls or women did something wrong under my stead, there may have been “discipline” but I always ended up leaning toward “mercy” nd I love you and, okay, here's a second chance. I would go much further and to great lengths to help them achieve, etc. But the boys … no.

I always recognized this as an OBVIOUS sexual thing. I guess that wasn't always now that I look at it, but there was definitely an often visited pattern of - to put into words - “I can't be too hard on her or I will spoil my chances of her ever liking me!” Meaning, sexually. (I also noticed then why they say not to mix a teacher student relationship with a sexual one.) That was common, but it was not always the case. And one of the reasons I noticed this was that my mentor, who was gay, would do the same thing with the men. The women received merciless hell. The boys? It was so obvious. In one self I felt myself compensating and balancing the entire situation. Everyone got a little of both.

But aside from that aspect -which again -certainly wasn't always there -it was more basically true that I obviously treated genders differently.

Further, I am facing this same thing now with my son. I suddenly ask myself - Am I treating him differently?

It shouldn't be missed that there does seem to be an obvious dynamic in this because the genders are different. I have to do things to manage the behavior of my son that I absolutely never had to do with my daughters and this applies in reverse. I have to tell my older daughter how easily they can hurt his feelings -because that is what they do. They say things like “I don't like you” or the like and he starts crying because it leaves a very obvious wound, straight in the heart (and we know, I think, affective wounds take much longer to heal than physical ones). He on the other hand, it'a all physical and agentic. Picks up a toy and wields it in the air in a threatening manner. They scream, he enjoys this, and then if something is not done quickly enough -boom! -the toy flies across the room right at some poor females head.

I found myself, just the other day, having what appeared to be absolutely no choice under the sun, telling him that the real purpose and good use of his strength was to care for and protect his sisters, the girls.

It felt like it simply grew out of the reality at hand. It was the only way to begin to manage this polarity. Thus, it struck me as very profound. It seemed like there was something in this about the basic structure of the Kosmos and how it manifests in human beings. Was I telling him the very thing that emerged 100,000 years ago, in order to move us forward in evolution, and more together?

I have to say that it felt like I was. Again, it seemed like there was no choice.

It seemed like, this was the only way to not only manage, but channel, the male energy.

Remember, testosterone say one of two things: fuck it, or kill it. Directed into a caring and embracing performance -is this the better and only way? (And obviously, at these early, early stages.)

We are inclined not to remember, the way it can be observed now, what we were like, what our real behavior and energy was, in the environment, toward others, to females, when we were so young, and even a long time after.

In fact, it struck me so profoundly when in my mid-twenties (and having integrated a great deal, if not most of the feminine) my family played the old Super8 films … and in every single one of them, my brother and I were play fighting. Every single one. If you'd have asked me before hand I would have said, no, we were not very “boyish.” But, we were.

Tim

Re: Integral Men

Tim:
I have to tell my older daughter how easily they can hurt his feelings -because that is what they do. They say things like “I don't like you” or the like and he starts crying because it leaves a very obvious wound, straight in the heart (and we know, I think, affective wounds take much longer to heal than physical ones). He on the other hand, it'a all physical and agentic. Picks up a toy and wields it in the air in a threatening manner. They scream, he enjoys this, and then if something is not done quickly enough -boom! -the toy flies across the room right at some poor females head.


This is such a basic dynamic and thanks for bringing it up Tim. While women are scared of male physical strength and the havoc that can wreak, us men are scared of being emotionally hurt by women. Usually we avoid facing this latter truth (both men and women do this), by claiming that women are more emotional and hence more sensitive to emotional wounds. But that is a totally flawed logic. Women have better emotional skills and can therefore deal with feelings of being hurt etc so much better, while men are often clueless about how to process emotions - and instead end up trying to suppress emotions. Physiopsychological research also shows that it takes twice as long for men as for women to get their stress hormones back to a normal level after a spousal argument.


Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Gentlemen,

I related my tale with my father to show a freedom that is obtainable by relinquishment. I wrote about bondage in the “Patiently…in silence…”I Am Not”…waits” thread. “I Am Not” (bound too) the dysfunctional relationships of my past. In understanding the other half of the parent/child relationship (as a child), I was freed from the compulsion  to have to recreate that relationship as parent in order to fix what was broke. Understanding and compassion for my father and myself completed that relationship. I found out my father had died from my mother. Even though they were estranged, she was hysterical saying she did not want him to die. It was a shock but I did not cry (never have). My first thought was to how he died, if he was alone and scared (he was not alone). I then thought of how lucky he died, that he died as he wanted to live and so there was no reason to feel sorry for him. So, we have learned a few ways in which we relate from our early childhoods. Many of us carry this forward dysfunctionaly into all areas of our life.

parent/child
parent/parent
sibling/sibling

How can we live being freed from the past embracing the present
as the present? Now I am not saying that folks here that are parents
are living out the problems of your past but keep a vigilent eye out
for it!!

love

e

PS Rick, you have to *completely* realize that negative reinforcement does not work!
Our path thru suffering is thru harmony, thru joy, thru love, thru peace.

Re: Integral Men

There’s some fascinating stuff coming up here.

Tim, you say you wished your father had been harder on you to prepare you for “real life” better - but if he had you wouldn’t be the Tim you are now. The lessons you learned because of what he did and didn’t do made you into a compassionate person, able to relate to many different situations from both a masculine and a feminine aspect - I think everyone else on this thread will agree with me that that is one of the things that makes you stand out.

I find the sexual driver, the testosterone factor (book title?) very interesting; no doubt that is a very powerful one; however it is also a dysfuntional one in that it takes over all reason at times. Maybe trying to guide that drive into more “noble” avenues like you’re doing with your son (protecting his sisters) is the way to go, as long as it doesn’t get stuck there; when his development allows you should be there to challenge him to understand that there is more to life than being a protector - that obviously goes without saying, I’m just typing what I think right now…

Mr. TC posted a very interesting piece on the “wounded boys” thread, about the purpose of eduction being the flowering of consciousness, more than us trying to shape our children into what we want them to be - seems very appropriate here. For that to fully happen our children need to become familiar with both the masculine and the feminine aspect. Sounds to me that your dad, Tim did a pretty good job, maybe erring on the side of the feminine a little.

Frans

Re: Integral Men

Hi Frans,

Tim, you say you wished your father had been harder on you to prepare you for “real life” better - but if he had you wouldn’t be the Tim you are now. The lessons you learned because of what he did and didn’t do made you into a compassionate person, able to relate to many different situations from both a masculine and a feminine aspect - I think everyone else on this thread will agree with me that that is one of the things that makes you stand out.

First, thank you for the kind words. (blush)

Yes, I totally agree with you. In the end, we are given whatever we are given and we just do whatever we do with it. There is certainly no such thing as a perfect parent - nor a “perfect” child. (i.e speaking as one.)

Anyhow, upon further reflection I really shouldn't have used that word “hard” because it's not really what I meant, and even if the word does match, I used it with too many different definitions. It's more accurate ultimately to say agency -wither that is agency given or received. And ultimately, again, upon further reflection, all those “wishing he had done this, this and this” is actually the agency of different levels. And it is true that I only ever began to think this when I came to the point where I could see/be the different levels -chiefly, I think here, values. (perhaps the most influential parental line?)

My father ultimately exemplified amber agency. And when I said above I never felt more like a man then when I integrated my father that at least in two parts means 1.) his ultimate example was so contrary to so many other examples of “men” in my life -childhood, adulthood -and in common culture -that I suddenly understood how utterly powerful it was. 2.) I think it's just -that's my dad! And when I say amber agency I don't meant fundamentalist, or “ruler of the house” - I just mean, against all odds, he stayed ultimately committed to his family, his children, his wife and the ones he loved. Two incidents exemplified this. One, his own parents -particularly his father -did at one point eventually drive him to the verge of suicide. The story goes (before I was born) he actually stood on the side of a bridge (don't know if it was over the railing or not) and the world would just have been better if he jumped off; or, he might as well be better if he just jumped off. And at that moment of supreme desperation he suddenly found the strength to say, no. I can't do this. Why? We needed him. The second example is when my mother went through several years of psychosis, ultimately schizophrenia. The thing is that these are not time of great fun, they are not time that exemplify “freedom” and “being yourself” and “doing what you want to do” and anything happy at all - these were times are immense, real, awful, horrible human suffering. And he took them both on  - like a man.  He did not ultimately cower, he did not ultimately run, he did not ultimately say “poor ME” -he turned back from the side of that bridge and stood by in the absolute worst of times to be of service to the one's he loved and that needed and loved him. I can think of a hundred guys I have known in my life who never would have or could have done the same (and in some cases, didn't).

What he did not give me, however, is healthy values from orange and red. Those are mostly what I am talking about. There was no drive to achieve and “make something of your life,” progress -the same fiber glass window panels are on their side porch that he put there in 1973 - no achievement standards to live up to (academic, get into the Ivy League -these are just examples of what that might mean), sports -and I and all of my brothers we not so prepared to deal with the amount of red in the boy and man world. Strangely though, I thought my parents were democrats until only not too many years ago because one way or another our family seemed to be very green -as in gentle, inclusive, so on -and I think this came about because of simply the time periods, the cultural atmosphere, and that great freedom we were offered (outside of religion). But no, again, I said (didn't I?) I appreciated this, it wasn't really green (although my father does have orange cognition) it was just -another example of his agency -this vow never to be like his father was with him. And he did this so well, it was/is actually a shock to understand the reality of how his father was. (he died before I was born, BTW).

I find the sexual driver, the testosterone factor (book title?) very interesting; no doubt that is a very powerful one; however it is also a dysfuntional one in that it takes over all reason at times. Maybe trying to guide that drive into more “noble” avenues like you’re doing with your son (protecting his sisters) is the way to go, as long as it doesn’t get stuck there; when his development allows you should be there to challenge him to understand that there is more to life than being a protector - that obviously goes without saying, I’m just typing what I think right now…

I think you kind of work both with the level and then the next one above it. In many ways, I think parents have been doing this all along. (Or am I wrong about that. Eah, I think it's been a little of both.) So, right now, I'm attempting to lay some seeds of amber, while working with red.

Re: Integral Men

Pelle said: “Women have better emotional skills and can therefore deal with feelings of being hurt etc so much better, while men are often clueless about how to process emotions - and instead end up trying to suppress emotions.”

Yes, I think you're right about this. Women can talk out their emotions and have been doing it all their lives. Boys don't or aren't encouraged to do that and never develop those skills and habits. Have you discussed modalities in this thread? I've read as much as I could, but not all of it.

Re: Integral Men

Mike,

you say: “Outside of this forum, I have only met one or two other men that I know who I felt had a level of development high enough that I felt comfortable accepting their critiques of my ideas. ”

Same here, and I’m thinking for most of us that’s true. I wonder if that is caused mostly because I am at a higher level of development than most men out there, or if it is because I am more open to and sympathetic of the feminine approach. I want it to be the first, of course, but I think it’s the second.

I really got turned off from the masculine by example of the male role models I had - all trying to be sooo macho and good at their jobs, but so clearly (for me anyway, my sisters didn’t feel the same way as strongly as i do) miserable in everything else they did.

If we as a forum can balance ourselves a bit more because of the discussion we’re having we’ll be making a difference in our environments - leading to more love and to more logical and abstract beauty..tangible love and abstract love, feminine and masculine.

Frans

Re: Integral Men

In the wounding of boys thread, I talked about the dismissive attachment style that we normally think of as being typically male. From wikipedia:

People with a dismissive style of avoidant attachment tend to agree with these statements: “I am comfortable without close emotional relationships. It is very important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient, and I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me.” People with this attachment style desire a high level of independence. The desire for independence often appears as an attempt to avoid attachment altogether. They view themselves as self-sufficient and invulnerable to feelings associated with being closely attached to others.

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

Re: Integral Men

I understand how you might want to prepare boys for the big, bad world out there, and teach them how to dissociate so that they can feel more comfortable in society. But by that logic, we should all stop trying to be integral because it makes it harder for us to get along in society. My opinion is that dissociation in men contributes to depression and anxiety disorders, and on balance, it's better to be healthy than to fit in perfectly.

I think there are ways to transcend pain without dissociating from it.

Who or what is this addressed to? Could you clarify?

Re: Integral Men

I'm enjoying the sharing about fathers that's been taking place here – relating your stories with my own life, and looking also at my role now as a father.

I mentioned that I had a number of men in my childhood who provided a bad example of male aggression and disconnectedness.  My father wasn't one of them.  He is a very gentle man, and I am grateful to him for many things.  My parents divorced when I was around 12 years old, though, so I lost a close, daily connection with him at a crucial, formative period in my life.  But while I lived with him, while I wouldn't say he was in touch with his feminine side – he was not very good at expressing his emotions, and got (touchingly, frustratingly) awkward when he was called to do so – he was nevertheless very kind to us kids, and had an idealistic approach to father-son relationships.  He wanted to give me all the things that he had experienced growing up in rural Missouri, or that he wished he'd been able to do (since his father died while he was still a child) – going on camping trips together, going fishing in lakes or oceans, participating in Indian Guides and Cub Scouts, taking me to his “garage workshop” to build me cool things (wooden rayguns, hovercraft, and cars), getting into “model rocketing” with me and then taking me out on weekends to launch our creations into the sky, taking me on helicopter rides, talking to me about the wonders of science and the universe (he loved astronomy), drawing me pictures of robots and heroes, making up long, creative stories for me at bedtime, etc.  Lots of wonderful gifts and experiences that I'm thankful for, and which I also want to offer to my son*.

His gentle, caring, encouraging approach to parenting inspires me (as does my mother's; she was very similar).  But of course parents also have their failings which mark us as well.  My father didn't know how to process or express powerful emotions well, as I said, and he ended up bottling a lot of anger – which would explode mostly when he was alone, working in the garage or out in the yard.  Something would go wrong and we'd hear shouting, slamming, cursing.  He wouldn't come in till he'd calmed down, which could be hours.  And he had a hard time expressing his opinion to people or saying no.  He acquiesced to others' wills too easily, as I came to feel he'd acquiesced also to his career – settling in to something he didn't feel called to do, not being able to really live out his dreams (and sometimes not even being able to contact or articulate them).

I absorbed these things and also had a hard time expressing or processing strong feelings; I also learned to bottle up my anger; I also (still) struggle with accessing and living out my dreams.  It negatively impacted me, losing a regular father figure when I was moving into a period which called for the guidance and example that only a father can give.  I believe I gained from this, too, though, because for several years I was the only male in the house and I naturally began to learn, and to “take on,” more feminine approaches and sentiments from my mother and sisters.  I do not regret this.  But I see, also, that something was missing in those formative years – a positive example of being a man in the world, a positive way to access will and power that did not veer off into the aggression, rigidity, and anger of other important males in my life (which my father, in his own repressed condition, would not have been able to clearly demonstrate, even if he were still there).  I've had to work these things out on my own.  And it's still a work in progress.

As I expect is the case with most of us, I did not know any male, growing up, that could be considered Integral.  Not even healthily Green (not until I was an adult).  The task I have, as a man and father now, is to try to honor and integrate the gifts of the Red, Amber, and Orange men of my childhood (and even the abusive, alcoholic males in my life also had gifts – valuable advice, generous gestures, positive traits – that they gave me) with the gifts of my more distant exemplars (writers, philosophical heroes, religious figures, compassionate healers), male and female; and of course, to simply continue this process of self-inquiry and integration on my own, in the rich soil of ancestral bodymind under the timeless sun of Spirit.

Best wishes,

Balder

* (My list of my father's gifts is mostly a list of concrete things he did, because this was how he expressed himself.  He loved to tell stories, and to do “bonding” sorts of activities, and to encourage me to ask questions and to wonder, but he seldom entered into conversations which involved deep emotions or even self-inquiry.  It just wasn't possible.)

Re: Integral Men

Thanks so much for sharing that Bruce.


I think it can be powerful for us as men to go deeply into our bodies. The “going into the body” itself is primarily a feminine practice, but what we find as men is very different from what women find; we find our own masculinity! Life is full of paradoxes, and it is fitting that this should be another one of them. I also believe we can find all the repressed rage of having dysfunctional fathers and smothering mothers, and direct that anger outwards instead of repressing it inwards. Liberating that anger also liberates our drive, agency, sexuality, etc - so in that sense our anger holds some of our greatest gifts.
My guess is that many integral men do not need anger management, we need to tune into and harness the power of our anger.


Pelle

Re: Integral Men

Pelle: “My guess is that many integral men do not need anger management.”

This brings up something I've wanted to discuss for awhile. Ken talks about “little barbarians” being released at a certain stage, little disassociated parts of ourselves. Do you remember when he hit Treya in Grace and Grit? He was obviously integral and very compassionate and loving and yet, in a certain moment, he lost control. I doubt that he had that problem generally or earlier in his life, but maybe he did. I just wonder if at a certain stage it could get more difficult, as deep, primal, or repressed anger gets released. In my experience, I had to deal with more anger in my 30s than in my 20s as repressed anger–partly because of a very controlling father I'll throw in to keep with the theme–was released, so I wonder if actually it could get more difficult for some men as they progress through certain stages rather than less. I wonder if there could also be something like “soul anger,” anger that can't be explained by childhood stuff. There could also be anger from UR disturbances.

“We need to tune into and harness the power of our anger.”

A. H. Almaas talks about transforming anger here.   He says that “anger can turn into strength by merely staying with the energetic aspect of the emotional state without acting out.”

Re: Integral Men

David,

You wrote:  “A. H. Almaas talks about transforming anger here.   He says that 'anger can turn into strength by merely staying with the energetic aspect of the emotional state without acting out.'”

I was talking about this thread in my Diamond Approach session today and we discussed that teaching exactly – how staying with anger in earlier sessions (almost two years ago) had allowed me to touch Red Essence (strength) in a deeper way.  Today I believe I'm discovering Red Essence at much subtler levels, and sometimes I am still surprised when I realize that a particular (usually subtle, centered, clear) experience is also an expression of the Red latifa.  Essential strength has a very different energetic quality from egocentric strength.

Connecting this to some earlier comments by Pelle, Rick, and others:

When I was a young man, in my twenties, coming out of depression and a period of burning rage in high school, I wrestled for a time with unexpected eruptions of anger.  I had forced myself to suppress many strong emotions during several crises, and then all that energy leaked out whenever it found a crack – often when I was frustrated about something, or when I was physically hurt, or sometimes when someone unexpectedly confronted me.  Anger would leap out in a flash, create a storm, and then it would subside back into the bottle.  I think the suppression I engaged in in high school was helpful, even if ultimately unskillful.  It helped me navigate some very rough waters and not take myself out or someone else out.  But when I set foot on a spiritual path, this bottled anger (the eruptions which would catch me off guard) really emerged for me again as an issue.  For a number of years, I approached it with mindfulness – with Krishnamurti inquiry, vipassana, and even later with certain tantric practices.  It took several years, but I began to reorient towards my anger – not to stuff it in in the same way, and to be more mindful of its arising when it did emerge (so I could be with it, instead of suppressing or unconsciously expressing it).

I believe these practices all helped, and have made life easier, but now the Diamond Approach is allowing me to go deeper.  As I said above, I think this is because of the way it skillfully balances masculine and feminine ways of working with this material.  I believe vipassana and other forms of meditation have prepared me for the work that the Diamond Approach is now calling for.  I am not saying that Diamond Approach is deeper than these other approaches (it is hard for me to imagine more powerful meditation methods than those I've worked with in Dzogchen), but it appears to be quite useful for me at this stage of my work (where I'm returning more to shadow, after working on developing mindfulness and understanding and experiencing emptiness).

I'm not quite at a “stopping point” here, but my son is having a minor crisis downstairs.  Gotta run!

Warm wishes,

Bruce 

Re: Integral Men

Tim: “Remember, testosterone say one of two things: fuck it, or kill it. Directed into a caring and embracing performance -is this the better and only way? (And obviously, at these early, early stages.)”

Yeah, I hear what your saying, and there are some interesting fossil finds of early hominids that bare some of this out, but the testosterone bit is going too far. I know that KW said this, but he was apparently unaware on the latest research on the biochemical reactions that testosterone has upon the nervous system. How it affects behavior, is that it decreases the refractory period and increases re-uptake between the amygdyla, which is an area in the hypothalamus that is responsible for fear, anger, nervousness, and aggression, and the rest of the hypothalamus and brain. This doesn't increase aggression or anger, it just allows men to sustain these feelings longer than a woman. So a woman can get just as angery and be just as aggressive as a man, they just can't be it as long without requiring rest. The same for muscular strength. Even if a woman has the same muscle mass by weight as a man, the man will still be stronger because of this effect by testosterone, but this time on muscle tissue.
Allowing the possibility for something doesn't guarantee it, and this is where socialization and cultural conditioning comes in. There have been so many studies about this, but my favorite is one involving hyena's raised in captivity in California. In the wild, male hyenas have almost double the amount of testosterone in their blood as females and they run things. In captivity, the females were raised to be more aggressive and they doubled their testosterone levels and controlled the male animals.
The human species is one of the most phenotypically plastic animals on earth, so there's a great deal of variability within the very small amount of genetic variation in our species.

Re: Integral Men

Pelle: “Physiopsychological research also shows that it takes twice as long for men as for women to get their stress hormones back to a normal level after a spousal argument.”

This is very interesting. Why is it then that a woman hand hold a grudge for years about something, and have that anger just get set off randomly by external stimuli. After an argument with my wife, I'm past it and over it almost as soon as it's done. Sometimes I even start to laugh when I realize the ridiculousness of some of our arguments, while we're arguing, but she can stay mad for much longer. She's not nearly as bad as most of the women I've dated in my life though, as she gets over most things pretty quick.
So what's going on with that then?

Re: Integral Men

All of these studies, the testosterone, this one, etc. I can't help but wonder about levels and general stages of development. Don't we learn increasingly complex ways to “handle” these types of things? Indeed, don't we even in a general sense speak of maturity and immaturity? Her reaction was immature, etc.

So male or female, it's probably true that a red individual is going to stay mad for much longer than an amber or orange one, or something to that effect. Right? The same with the testosterone.

If I give my toddlers a cup of very strong coffee … I don't know, the physiological effects may be the same (adjusted for weight, etc.) but are the results going to be?

Interesting, Again, must look at all four quads. etc.