The Wounded Masculine

                                                  The Wounded Masculine

                             “Dudes," He said, "Do not follow other dudes to the bathroom."

                                     Isabelle sighed. "Latent homosexual panic will do you in every time”

                                                                  Cassandra Clair, City of Fallen Angels

 

                               

 

So, we have to give equal time, as we did to the Feminine, and honor the Masculine. Again, Masculine energy has little to do with gender, but we have to dip into gender to launch the boat. It is easy to see how wounded and pathological men can get, because there's always been (with possibly a few stark exceptions), a patriarchy in charge and running the show in human culture. History is basically about men killing each other, and exploiting everything and everyone in their path. That doesn't bode well for a group hug at the end of the rainbow! Of course there were other things going on throughout human history, but in large part, it's a chronology of men killing and exploiting. Today we have dentists paying big money to get a lion trophy, and we have Trumps, contending for the most powerful position of leadership in the world, all the while demeaning women, being racist, without any compassion or humanity.

What much of Feminism failed to recognize, is how hurt, and oppressed men are even though we've been “in charge.” But again, the Masculine wound includes women, and the issues women face to integrate a healthy masculinity within themselves. A poster woman for the wounded masculine would be someone like Ann Coulter or Sarah Palin. Women that raise boys to be dominant, aggressive, exploitative, and not feel, are contributing as much to patriarchy as any man.

The Puer archetype of the eternal child (like Peter Pan), is a quintessential wounded male. A lot of women raise momma's boys to stay in an infantile state of dependency, and continual compensation for their insecurity, even if they have accrued enormous wealth and power. Bush was a Puer, but compared to Trump, he looks like Gandhi!

Masculine energy has to do with agency, power, consciousness, justice, rationality, vision, and the manifestation of vision into physical reality. This is Yang energy, it is hard and direct, cuts through the bullshit, makes things happen, doesn't get caught up in drama or emotion. There is also a very strong protective and territorial aspect to masculine energy, a momma bear with her cubs is a kind of masculine protection.

Balanced and integrated masculinity incorporates four main masculine archetypes which are; The King- who provides vision, blessings, and stewards the realm, The Warrior- who is loyal to The King and follows the leadership of the King's vision and guidance, and is focused and extremely disciplined, The Magician (Merlin In King Arthur's court), who has secret knowledge and is intuitive, and savvy in his advice to the King (Dick Cheney was a shadow Merlin to Bush), and The Lover – who is very much in touch with the Feminine, appreciates and expresses beauty, is sensual, connected, feeling, and embodied.

There are shadow aspects to each of these archetypes, and therein lay the Wounded Masculine. Hitler was a shadow King, Oliver North a shadow Warrior, Hannibal Lector a shadow Magician, and Casanova a shadow Lover. We could just as easily use women as examples with shadow masculine aspects, for example Marilyn Monroe had a very strong and wounded Lover in which she carried the projections of the world, which eventually led to her suicide. It's always a recipe for disaster when someone becomes an archetype, vs just accessing that energy. Consider Elvis, who was known as The King.

We live in a world that is pathologically out of balance in healthy Masculine energy, the collective world values worship at the alter of rationality, extroversion, doing, frenetic, driven, distracted, exploitative, competitive, aggressive, violent, and angry. Not someone you'd like to have lunch with!

We stand at a precipice, fork in the road, and a bridge that could cross over into a no man's land from which we could not recover. Or we could bring more conscious balance of being, feeling, compassion, introversion/introspection, gentle strength, humor that sees the folly of ego, and softer focus that allows for time, space, and cooperative understanding, that leads to collaborative work, play and sustainability. It's no coincidence that we've had a Black president, and now we will have the potential and opportunity to elect a woman for the first time, makes you wonder?!

 

 

                                               

Wounded Feminine

                                      The Wounded Feminine - for Erica

 

                                    

                                     

 

 

          "We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it's a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.”  

 

                                                                            Marilyn Monroe

 

 

I would say one of the biggest sources of suffering in our world is the wounded Feminine archetype. It is a difficult thing to write about in the West because we are so conditioned to equate feminine energy to women, and tend to reference everything feminine to gender issues, feminism, and women in general. In the East, with philosophies and traditions such as Taoism and Chinese healing, Feminine energy is Yin energy, the soft, cooling, receptive, flowing, feeling energy. They recognize Yin and Yang energies in both men and women, and don't make these polarities about gender.

Although the wounded Feminine archetype is clearly played out in oppression of women, I want to expand the archetype to go beyond gender issues. But in order to get there, we have to first recognize some obvious facts that do very much have to do with women. I'll just mention a few of countless examples of oppression of women, but I really want to emphasize that women play a key role in the perpetuation of these examples. Let's mention mythology first of all; we have historic myths from Greek culture such as the rape of Persephone, Leda and the Swan (another rape story), and my favorite Pandora, who was literally seen as bringing all suffering and pain to humanity. The upside of this myth, is that Pandora models for humanity the ability to face evil with optimism. 

We also have the Christian myth of Eve as temptress, and the curse that the male God blesses her with, which is that she shall suffer in child birth, as well as all the stuff about being obedient and subservient to her husband. Not a good start for women in the genesis of creation! Throughout the world, the degradation, devaluing, and continuous wounding of Feminine energy is prevalent. Whether it's female circumcision, human trafficking, or Muslim women literally having to wear a bag over their heads, there is a world wide disregard and disdain for Feminine values, it is much more than just a patriarchal conspiracy.

Human experience requires polarity, we have to have contrast to be able to feel what we feel, see what we see, etc. We have to know hate to experience love, oppression to experience freedom. In sexual experience, there has to be a spark of difference to ignite passion. This is true whether it's hetero, homo, or as Freud wrote “ploymorphously perverse.” This is why couples will play out some form of male/female dance in their relationship, the roles can and do shift, but there's always polarity, it is a friction that ignites passion, and not just sexual passion, it can be emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.

The pathology in the world is an imbalance in Masculine/Yang energy and values, which are; active, conscious, rational, territorial, protective and stewarding, courageous and loyal, goal oriented, having to do with agency, contrasted with Feminine/Yin energy and values which are; receptive, unconscious, caring, nurturing, feeling based, relational, process oriented, and communal. The biggest threat in this pathology is the threat to Mother Nature Herself. The Masculine is disregarding the value and relationship we have to Nature Herself, this is terrorism against humanity and we are the only species in Nature that has been able to come up with this level of self-destruction. The Masculine in the extreme is willing to kill every thing to make it's point, we see this in groups like Nazi's and ISIS.

An example of how oblivious we are, in the West, to the Wounded Feminine, is in the mental health bible of practice which is the Diagnostic Manual of Statistics (DSM), throughout this entire manual there is not one mention of any kind of “condition” or pathology that references man's disconnection and destruction of Nature (the only possible exception to this would be 'bestiality'). We again see some of the seeds of this sown in the Christian tradition of “having dominion” over Nature, and ideas the Puritan's had about “Manifest Destiny,” which meant you had the right and responsibility to rape, pillage, and exploit whatever land, people, and culture because God wants you to “spread his word.”

So we must examine the Wounded Feminine in all Her permutations and expressions, both within ourselves, and our environment. Try to find the ways that your Feminine energy could be better honored, understood, and expressed, see the softer, more relational process happening in each moment, allow yourself to feel your feelings fully, and try to commune with Nature as an active embedded participant vs. a disconnected outsider. 

 

 

                                       

Enjoy Your Life-for Norque

                                                         Enjoy Your Life-for Norque


                                      

       "I enjoy life when things are happening. I don't care if it's good things or bad things. That means you're alive."                                                                                                                Joan Rivers

 

My friend and brother Norque, is from West Africa, he stuck me as a very unique individual when I first met him, and this feeling has only deepened over the years. His hallmark expression, which he embodies and transmits to everyone he interacts with, is to; “Enjoy Your Life!” He even started a meet-up group with this name and this philosophy, and it is this idea that I want to point to as a hallmark of mystical experience.

So I'm going to my first Enjoy Your Life meet-up, and I'm at an outdoor club waiting for others, a little nervous, a little irritated that people are late, feeling some of my usual social phobia, when out of the blue, I realize that I am alive! It is a profound feeling of mystery and awe that I'm actually alive, a living being, conscious of myself and the environment. I connect this to the idea of enjoying this living experience and instantly, the bliss of pure sentient awareness is there in all it's splendor!

I turn my face toward the setting sun, and feel the warm and energy of life giving particles soaking into my living skin, I am a plant photosynthesizing all the nutrients that sustain and enliven my being. I see several dogs walking past, and I acknowledge them as living beings sharing the same sun, the same life, and the same enjoyment of their life as I am, they do this so easily and naturally. There are beautiful women, that fuels my maleness of life seeking, life sustaining sensuality, and I feel my batteries fully charging as if I've been plugged into an electrical circuit. I feel my connection with children, and see they are pure, innocent, and unencumbered. I feel my connection with all the people I see, and all the beings everywhere, as part of one living family.

I am breathing all this in, drinking my beer, watching the scene, entering deeply into the moment, and delighting in the experience of being alive and feeling the enjoyment of it all. A great sense of gratitude is present, that I am blessed with this life, with friends, and with an awareness that can observe and delight in the experience.

This experience is the unbearable lightness of being, which is to realize the delicate fragility of life and the challenge and responsibility to be present to it and live it fully. As well as joyous, light, and loving experience, it includes all that is tragic, painful, dark and ugly about life, this too can and should be 'enjoyed,' which is to say experienced fully and embraced. In Buddhism, Buddha is often depicted with a smile of unbearable compassion, that is to say, he sees, knows, and feels, the amount of suffering that is part of life, and yet he is detached yet infinitely compassionate toward all of life, this is an ultimate type of enjoyment of life, and a hallmark of enlightened consciousness. Mother Teresa used the phrase “Christ in all His distressing disguises,” when she was working with lepers to denote how she saw each and every person as Christ consciousness, and treated them as if she was tending to Jesus.

So we are challenged to practice and embrace this idea of enjoying our lives as fully as we can. It helps to be around people who understand and are practicing this with intention, integrity, humor and love.

 

 

          

Barrenness

                                            

                                                        “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”

                                                                              Socrates

Socrates was considered, in his time, to be the wisest among men, in part, because he “knew” that he knew nothing. He lived the life of a Greek philosopher, which depended on having slaves so you could sit around and philosophize all day. But Socrates really did leave a significant legacy in the Western tradition. In this quote, he is pointing to something very deep about the superficiality of a life lived that is frenetic and deluded. This advice and warning about how to live is particularly relevant to our modern times, so the fact that he spoke this quote approximately three thousand years ago, should get our attention as to how profound, timeless, and relevant it is!

We could say that modern life is characterized by busyness. By busyness, Socrates would mean several things; 1) a life unexamined, is not worth living (also one of his quotes), 2) Unless one 'knows oneself,' they are subject to empty and meaningless activity, as well as susceptible to being controlled and manipulated, and 3) the ultimate authority and power resides in oneself, and one has a moral obligation to be true to that self.

So, the busyness that leads to barrenness, is activity, habits, thoughts, attitudes, etc. that is disconnected to self-awareness and self-reflection. Our modern ways of driven, fragmented, compartmentalized, endless consuming and doing, is part of our contemporary pathology. We are addicted and compulsively consuming people, places, things, communication, information, experiences, and entertainment at a rate and ratio in which the more we have, the more we want.

 

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that 80-90% of our texts, face book posts, emails, phone calls, tweets, and internet surfs are unneeded and contribute nothing other than distraction to the greater Cosmos. If this is remotely true, it means that we are only allotting 10-20% of depth and meaning in our communications and expressions, which means that we certainly aren't allotting time to reflect and examine whether or not our journey is on track and consistent with who we feel we are. This creates a malaise in the human psyche that T.S. Elliot termed "The Wasteland." If we are being this superficial, than we are also not really taking the necessary time to get to know who we are, and who we are becoming. We are on default, and who we are, is literally being manipulated and determined by those who are very good at that sort of thing!

 

This trajectory leads to a false sense of authority, or a projection of one's authority onto others, we literally are being consumed and fed on, as we mindlessly consume. If we consumed 80-90% too much food, what would that look like? This baroness plays out in our relationship with the Earth, which is rapidly becoming more and more barren.

 

The Zen tradition is a tradition of profound simplicity and emptiness. This practice seeks to become centered in the most spacious part of the mind that is beyond thought, it is boundless awareness that just observes, delights, and is unattached to attachment. A traditional Japanese garden is an external form of this inner state of mind, and one will feel pulled into a quietness that is rich and fertile with the emptiness and space in which the soul feels it's own beauty reflected.

 

So, let's challenge ourselves and each other to be less busy, and look for ways to take time to fertilize

our souls with depth and meaning. Examine where you are on your map and how your journey is going, see what you can jettison to make you lighter and more buoyant. See if you can experience and actualize the principle less is more, and simplify your overly serious and complex complexities. We all know how good it feels to get rid of what we don't need, or want, this is the feeling of freedom! 

                

Owning Your Shadow

                                                       Owning Your Shadow

                                      

 

                           “How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole”   C.G. Jung

 

                          "He who's closest to the light, casts the biggest shadow."

                                                                                         Sufi

 

Two of the countless contributions that C.G. Jung made to modernity are his ideas of the Shadow and Mother Complex. Although Jung, like Freud, was a product of his times, and therefore had what we in hind site, can call limitations and bias, he, like Freud, was a giant in a direction of psychology that he pioneered.

The shadow is the psychic repository of everything we don't like and are not conscious of about ourselves. We see our shadow, if we are willing to look, when we are inordinately annoyed, disproportionately reactive to a situation (i.e. killing a mosquito with a machine gun), or idealizing (seeing no flaws in a person, place or thing). Our persona is the personality we've been socialized to have in a way that makes us “fit in,” and generally avoid being ostracized. Our ego adapts to, what in our own mind, and perception, is a fairly cool, likable, good looking, smart, and interesting person. This is what we “show, present, and lead” with in most all our interactions.

But just as one casts a long shadow when facing into the sun, we too have 180 degree oppositional forces, moods, perceptions, and all around nasty sort of energies that we generally don't acknowledge or don't want to deal with.

Groups of people, tribes, and nations have a collective shadow they project most viciously onto other groups, tribes and nations. European's colonial images of Native people as savages, Nazi views of Jews, White supremacy, etc are all pernicious mass projections of what groups and nations cannot own and integrate about themselves, so they readily see and justify in others and create propaganda to condition others to see it also.

The projected shadow is the basis for all wars and general discord among people as well as man's disconnection with nature. But we are able, as conscious human beings, to face, integrate, and own our shadow natures, and paradoxically, the shadow is a great storehouse of gold as well as a lot of manure, but even the manure can be used as fertile fertilizer that bears much fruit!

 

One way to recognize the shadow is through the Mother Complex. Jung wrote about this as a heterosexual man projecting his Anima (feminine nature) onto a woman, but I would extend this idea to include any gender or sexual orientation. The Mother Complex is any regressive tendency or a feeling of being swallowed, smothered, or a need to be taken care of. The Mother Complex shows up as a moody, whimpering, infantile energy, it can also show up as rage. However it shows up, it is bad news, and can result in adults throwing tantrums in any number of ways. When a woman says to a man; "I'm not your mother!" rest assured, you're in Mother Complex land!

There are many ways to approach shadow work, I will mention a few. One of the things to include in your life, if you don't already, are ways of getting down and dirty. This is open to interpretation, but the idea is to engage in things that you might ordinarily find distasteful and you tend to avoid. For me it would be things like; house cleaning, getting organized, assembling, or disassembling things with my hands, and socializing. These are all things I avoid and have very clever ways of avoiding. So, when I consciously do these things, I'm paying attention to what has become old and crusty (literally), within and around me.

Another practice is to make a list of all your best qualities that you and others really like about yourself, and then try to see that you also have an equal and opposite aspect of yourself that sits on the other side of your see saw. For example, if you see yourself generally as a likable, agreeable, nice person, try to find the part of you that comes out at times that is a genuine bastard. That guy is just as much a part of your psyche as Mr. Nice Guy! See if you can learn more about your shadow parts and give them some form of expression, however you can't just unleash them! They do need boundaries and containment (which they will not like), so they don't overpower your ego.

Unless we pay attention, and do some kind of shadow work, our shadow remains concealed, denied, repressed, and comes out in ways that can really do damage when it is projected. Have people that you know and trust give you feedback about the parts of yourself that are fairly unpleasant, don't get defensive, see it as a gift of wholeness for your humanity. When you think of how your love and friendship with others is not solely based on how fun and likable your partners, kids, friends, pets, or co-workers are, but also on how ornery, lazy, moody, nasty, and inappropriate they are at times, this makes for whole and healthy human relationships.