So today we are continuing a series all about the masculine and feminine and of course this is a huge passion for me.
It's been a passion for me for a long time.
The series is loosely based in my book The Divine Union of the Masculine and Feminine.
It's a message or it's a teaching that I think is really timely right now because I think we're finally capable of actually connecting.
It's almost like so often when we connect with other people or we want to connect with other people all of our issues get in the way.
Our pain from the past,
Our inhibitions,
Our fear of being hurt and these things as real as they are they can end up controlling our life and controlling our interactions to the point that all interactions with others become scary or painful or strained.
And this connection that we experience with others is the same connection as we experience inside of us.
And it's the same experience that we have with the world or God or whatever you call that.
That strained connection has been around for probably generations,
Centuries,
Millennia.
So we've normalized it.
We use oh yeah family's crazy,
Oh yeah well you know get into a relationship you know what happens eventually you know the other shoe drops whatever it is.
And it's almost like what even if we're hopeful deep down we're like well you know what a little pain is normal it's normal you know we have we've normalized this.
And the thing is too like historically people would say that if you were born into a certain paradigm you will die in that same paradigm but your children have a chance to shift into a new paradigm.
But I don't believe that's true anymore.
I believe that we now are able to access a certain level of consciousness that allows us to actually hold a very strong and neutral witness mind to be able to observe ourselves.
Viktor Frankl one of my favorite people he was an Austrian Jewish psychologist and the Jewish part is important because he was in the concentration camps during the Second World War.
He wrote a beautiful book called Man's Search for Meaning,
One of my all-time favorite books.
After four years he eventually did get out of the camps and he developed a program or a kind of therapy called Logotherapy.
And in me it's meaning oriented therapy which is a whole other story.
But one of the interesting aspects of it is he considered that every human being as much as we have the parts of us that can be conditioned by the world if we're abused as children we easily we definitely are conditioned to survive and therefore we have these extra programs of protection.
Whether we need it or not we can easily hold them up for the rest of our lives.
Operant conditioning all these kind of condition that we normally talk about in psychology.
But he said he goes there is also another aspect of the human being called the noetic aspect of the human.
And the noetic realm are the aspects of being human that separate us from animals.
It's nothing against animals it's just the humans have a different capacity for consciousness.
And one of those capacities of the noetic realm is our ability to observe ourselves.
And I believe that this aspect of us our ability to observe ourselves with loving eyes is what will help us shift paradigms within a singular lifetime.
So even if up until this point connecting with others was hard,
Finding inner happiness was hard,
Connecting with the world around us or the divine energies if that was hard that we now have the ability to actually sit in our witness mind that we develop through meditation through yoga things like that.
And we can actually watch ourselves reacting and we can say hmm I see this I wonder if there's another option.
Because of course if I react I'm gonna have the same result as before.
But if I can observe it and I can see the reaction I can see the pain that's causing it I can even remember maybe some of the things that cause that pain then maybe I can unpack that back to the source start fresh and have a different experience in life.
Hence this series.
I'm very excited about this.
And so today we're talking about how we actually do connect with each other and how we connect within.
And we do this through understanding the masculine and feminine energies in the world.
So first of all why we want to talk about this?
Because as human beings we are made to connect.
We aren't designed to be in separation.
In the immortal words of my teacher Jim he said Katrina if you were meant to be alone you would have gotten your own planet.
There's bazillions of them.
And there's something beautiful about connecting and oftentimes we choose to not connect with others because it's just been too painful.
Or if it's a pain in the butt.
Or people are just difficult and it's not worth it and I would rather just have the joy of my own solitude.
And there's a time for that.
But there's also a great joy in connecting.
And so this is why we have to redefine what it is or how we even connect with others.
And this is through the masculine and feminine.
And so we have to redefine this.
We have to go right down to basic first principles about what this even means.
Because the masculine and feminine is not male and female.
It's not yin and yang.
This is also a different concept.
The masculine and feminine are universal energies.
If you imagine that there is the oneness.
There's God's space.
This is where you say we are all one.
Omniscience.
Omnipotence.
All this kind of thing.
This is true.
Like everybody that's here right now on some level we do share something.
I don't know exactly what it is.
I don't know how we're connected.
But somehow we're all in this together as some kind of collective.
So there's a oneness that we understand.
When we meditate and we come into that heart center there's a stillness and a oneness that on a very subtle level we feel connected to the whole universe.
So if you imagine that like a dimension of being.
Then that oneness splits into duality and now we get to experience each other.
I get to experience you guys.
I'm talking into a computer.
I get to experience water.
There's me and then there's the water.
Are we all made of the same building blocks of the same refracted energy of the divine?
Sure.
But in this instance this is a glass of water that's going to come into me.
So I am going to receive this water.
It's going to become part of me.
This is duality.
If this is a person I can interact with this person in duality.
Scientifically this is experiencing life in a space-time continuum.
There is the oneness.
There is the singularity.
And if you take that singularity and you spread it out over space.
So imagine there's all these little dots of reality all over a space.
All over a field.
That's a space continuum.
So now we're separate.
We're all in different spaces on the earth.
And then from there we're going to experience our life over time through this chronological thing.
And so now we're experiencing life here on earth in a space-time continuum.
The oneness has been separated into multiple.
And those multiple experience each other through magnetism.
There's a natural magnetism that draws us together or repels us.
And that's how we actually are navigating the world through this magnetism.
And the two sides of this magnetism is masculine and feminine.
And that's what makes this a little bit different than yin and yang.
Yin and yang are two aspects of all reality.
Darkness and lightness.
Hot and cold.
The shadow side of the mountain.
The light side of the mountain.
Passive active.
All these things.
These don't necessarily have a magnetic attraction to each other.
They're almost a continuum in many ways.
The darkness and the light.
In many ways darkness is just the absence of light.
This is not the same in masculine and feminine.
The masculine and feminine dynamics that create the universe that we're going to talk about magnetically are attracted to each other.
Theoretically with the goal of union.
Because this is how we connect.
This is how we actually come back to the oneness that we deeply are.
You know we talk about I want to experience my divine self.
What does that mean?
I want to experience oneness.
That's what we if when we can bring our masculine and feminine within together we will experience oneness.
We will experience the divine within us.
We don't have to experience it out there.
It's all inside of us.
So first we have to look at the ideas we have about masculine and feminine.
A lot of the ideas we have about masculine and feminine are just gender stereotypes.
We were born into male and female bodies in general as mammals.
And so in this sort of patriarchal society that we've lived in,
Masculine has come to mean the greatest of the men.
And so maybe you live in a warrior culture.
So the greatest of the men are strong and angry and tough and stoic.
And this we have come to believe to be masculine.
It's not.
It's just the heightened male figure of a warrior class.
In another world where maybe the ideal person is the philosopher,
Well then maybe the masculine is this stillness,
Stoic,
Intelligent,
Academic.
That is the ideal masculine.
And what's interesting is in all these different cultures or all these different philosophies of living,
The feminine is either completely repressed,
Completely not mentioned,
Or it's simply there to service the masculine.
So a lot of our masculine feminine ideas,
Which are not the real masculine feminine we're going to talk about,
But the ideas that we have are actually just a reflection of the patriarchy we've lived in.
When I say patriarchy,
I don't mean against guys.
I just mean that's the reality.
There's a hierarchy.
There's certain people at the top,
Could be male or female.
There's been some pretty serious tyrant queens and what-have-you.
And then everybody else has to serve that.
And so a lot of these ideas have come into our masculine feminine ideas,
Which again,
Those misconceptions or those misdefinitions of the masculine feminine get in the way of us connecting with each other.
If I believe that masculine is tough and strong and angry and just a big tough guy,
And the feminine is weak and demure and she does whatever everyone wants and she's sort of the doormat and she keeps the peace and all that kind of thing,
This doesn't connect anybody.
This is just playing out these gender stereotypes of the patriarchy where everybody like,
Ah yes,
The man is so great and the woman,
Oh little old me.
It's kind of nonsense when you think of it,
But that's the only way we've known.
Or maybe in a religious setting,
And this could be anything.
We have to really watch this.
It could be a yogic philosophy.
It could be a Christian philosophy.
It could be any religion.
In many ways,
What does the masculine say?
Well the masculine is stillness.
It is connected to God.
It is judgmental.
Like you think of all the ways we've defined God depending on the religion you were raised in.
And the feminine,
What's the feminine?
The snake.
Temptation.
Darkness.
Struggle.
Hardship.
The distracting emotions and the distractions of the physical body's desires and the distraction of the world and money and all these kind of things.
This is deemed as the feminine and it must be oppressed and it must be controlled.
It wasn't just the story of Adam and Eve or Lilith or all these kind of things.
It was the entire feminine.
The desires of the children,
The desires of whoever,
The desires of the workers,
The business situation,
The bosses,
The owners are the masculine.
They are the authority and the workers are all the feminine.
And they were oppressed.
Male or female.
That oppression of the feminine is across the board.
Not a lot of cooperative situations going on over the last millennia in a lot of the societies we're familiar with.
So it's really important that we get those gender stereotypes out of our mind.
Another interesting place where that goes is someone once said to me,
It was actually at a Tantra festival last year,
He said,
I don't know,
I don't understand about this masculine and feminine.
I really want to be in the masculine but I tend to always be in the feminine because I'm always caring for other people.
Now caring for other people is masculine.
So if you imagine,
You know,
We're in this time-space continuum.
All these beings floating around in different times and space and moving around,
Right?
Then all of a sudden we see another person.
Regardless of gender,
We see another person and maybe this person is really hurting.
And you go,
Oh can I do something to help?
I'd like to help you.
Well I'm kind of,
You know,
I just need a lift up because I fell down.
Okay,
Here I'll lift you up.
The person helping is the masculine energy and the person being helped is the feminine energy.
It doesn't mean that the feminine is always weak and falling down and the masculine is always strong.
It just means in this interaction,
The way that these two beings,
These two energies interacted is the masculine acted upon the feminine.
To really understand this energetically.
And in this case,
If you are caring for someone else,
You are in a masculine energy.
The reason we believe that caring for others is feminine is because historically it was mothers who did it in general.
So we believe this to be a feminine job or what we would call a pink job.
Caring for children,
Caring for the elderly,
Caring for others.
This is a feminine thing.
It's not feminine.
Historically it may have been done by women but it is very masculine.
Which is why mothers and fathers,
But just staying with the stereotype,
Mothers suffer from brutal burnout.
The same burnout as they can experience working in corporate America.
This is why one time I was asked to teach at a nurse's retreat because the nurses were burning out and the older nurses,
The older nurses were kind of picking on the younger nurses and it was this massive battle.
It was really brutal.
And one of my yoga students asked me if I would go and talk to them about yoga and life and things.
And when I really thought about it,
I realized this was one of the greatest challenges.
Was they were in such a masculine role.
All they did was care for others,
Give the pills,
Clean,
Do this,
Blah blah blah.
Constantly advocating for the patients but they never refilled the feminine.
They never actually nurtured self.
Their own feelings didn't matter.
They had to finish their shift.
This constant oppression of the feminine within them.
And so we have this idea of pink jobs and blue jobs where well the men folk they go out and they they fix the roof and they cut the lawn and they do the heavy lifting and the women stay in the house and they clean the house and they cook the meals and they do the laundry and all that.
And again,
I mean I've told you guys before,
I understood this when I was a farmer.
I began life in Toronto.
I studied mathematics at university.
I became a computer programmer and fell in love with a dairy farmer.
So I was actually really used to working in the corporate world.
I was an IT person in the late 80s so it's different than it was today.
But I was really used to that.
I was used to being very independent and strong and all of this gender nonsense.
I was just like,
Are you kidding?
Women can do anything a man can do.
And I fought for that hard when I was on the farm.
I can do anything you can do.
Then I had babies.
We were on the farm with heavy machinery and cattle,
Bulls.
There's no way the babies could be out there.
And I had to recover.
I'd just given birth or I was nursing or whatever.
And it was really reasonable that I was actually in the house taking care of the house and making the food,
Doing the work that I could do with children underfoot.
And so in that way the gender split made total sense.
But the problem is,
Is that continued out into the world long after we left the farms.
It happens whether there are children or not.
It just simply is like,
Well that's a woman's job,
That's a man's job.
And again,
I know that theoretically we're beyond that,
But it's amazing how those whispers still continue inside.
Like just recently someone had read my book Tantric Intimacy and in there there's a section about the masculine and feminine.
And she was really struggling in a relationship.
And she's really interesting,
Like she's really spiritual.
And she was struggling with some of the decisions that she was feeling forced into.
And I said,
Well why don't you make a different choice?
And she says,
Well I'm really trying to embrace the masculine and feminine,
So I really want my partner to make the decisions for us.
Because then he's in the masculine and he's making the choices.
And so that way,
You know,
That that keeps our masculine and feminine intact.
And it was really interesting because I kind of backed up and thought,
Wow that's not a healthy masculine and feminine dynamic at all.
And I believe that is when you have the whispers of these pink and blue jobs in our consciousness,
It's almost like they can still color our ideas about the masculine and feminine.
Like the male or the,
Not just the male,
But even in a same-sex couple,
The one that tends toward the masculine,
We're gonna treat them like they're the man of the family.
Well I don't want to argue with them too much because they're gonna feel emasculated and all that,
All this kind of things.
We still have this weird power dynamic that we feel,
If you like being in the feminine,
You still feel like you can't question them or else it's gonna throw the whole world out of whack.
And I kind of think those are leftovers from our history,
From our ancestral world.
So just actually before going forward,
I want to name,
Just in case you're brand new to this,
Some of you guys might have read my book and so this is sort of repeating,
But some of the dynamics that I believe are masculine and feminine,
What we're talking about.
And then we'll go back to this conversation.
Giving and receiving.
Someone needs something and we give it to them.
I'm thirsty so I give myself a glass of water.
And we're gonna talk about giving and receiving next week much deeper and why we struggle with it and the challenges there.
But giving and receiving.
Protector and the vulnerable.
Stillness or structure and chaos.
Doing and being.
Pursuer and pursued.
These are all things that actually flow into each other.
And for example,
Like if any of you guys have seen the cover of my book,
I don't have a copy of my book with me right now,
But Gina,
I don't know if she's here,
She painted so beautifully.
I had asked her if she could somehow represent the yin yang symbol,
But that they were moving,
That they were constantly flowing in to each other and nourishing each other.
And like it was a dynamic experience.
It wasn't just a stable yin yang.
And I don't even know if that's really what a yin yang is,
Whether it is just sort of still or whether it actually is a dynamic movement,
But kind of how we understand it.
Because all of these dynamics feed each other.
Giving and receiving,
When done in union,
Feeds the giver and it feeds the receiver.
It isn't just feeding the feminine.
Both entities are fulfilled.
It's kind of like,
I don't know if you've ever had a garden and you've ever grown zucchini and suddenly you have an abundance of zucchini.
Abundant zucchini.
And there's no way you can eat all this zucchini.
You know the greatest thing you can find that's gonna make you happy?
Somebody who wants zucchini.
Anybody.
A neighbor,
A friend,
A partner,
Children,
Anybody who will take,
Oh I'd love a few zucchini.
Really?
And you give the zucchini and you are so happy.
And that person just got free zucchini and they're so happy.
That's giving and receiving.
That's healthy giving and receiving.
And it is exciting.
And you are,
Everybody's so happy.
And of course there's a million ways that giving and receiving isn't happy,
Which we'll talk about in our next talk.
But there's a magnetism,
There's a draw,
There's a joy.
But they are very different.
Receiving is very different than giving.
They're not two sides of the same coin.
They are different energies completely.
And so I just want to talk about that because sometimes if I talk too much theory about the masculine feminine and I don't actually talk about what I'm talking about,
Then it makes it very confusing.
So I talked about this idea that it's not just that the masculine partner,
And I'm gonna say it like that and I'll explain it in a minute,
That the masculine partner needs to make the decisions and lead.
Lead and following is another masculine feminine dynamic.
That they have to lead all the time.
That's not it.
That again is a gender stereotype.
That's where we have been out of balance because of the patriarchy.
Our goal,
If we truly want to experience union with each other,
Is we first have to be completely in union with ourselves.
We need to have our own masculine and feminine flowing inside of us that makes us feel connected,
Us feel complete,
Us feel happy.
This is the most important thing that I am giving to myself and I am receiving my own gifts.
That I am protecting my vulnerable self.
That I am pursuing my inner mystery.
That I am trusting the unseen within me.
That I am allowing wildness.
I'm creating structure to help fuel my wildness.
These are the things inside.
Once these things are whole inside,
Then we can start polarizing with other people.
Because if we don't,
If we feel out of balance in our own heart,
We're gonna go and we're gonna seek someone else that is equally out of balance in their way.
For me and my family,
I believe that we have quite an unhealthy feminine energy because we are the ones that believe that the role of the woman is to keep the man happy.
We are the people pleasers.
We are the peacekeepers.
This isn't feminine at all.
This is actually false feminine.
It's not real.
Because what we're actually doing is we're being very masculine.
Because we're actually always manipulating everybody to try to make everybody happy.
We're changing ourselves to make other people happy.
This is not feminine at all.
Feminine is receiving.
Feminine is finding someone who loves to give.
Feminine is finding someone who has a pile of zucchini,
Metaphorically,
And wants to give it to you in connection.
So for us,
For my line,
For the women in my family,
The feminine means serving the male.
Serving the partner.
Serving the world.
And never receiving for ourselves.
And if we do receive it,
We have to feel guilty about it.
It's almost like suddenly having a windfall of money.
Well I better spend it.
Or I better give it to someone else who needs it more.
I can't keep it for myself.
And our tank becomes so empty.
So empty.
And what's really difficult is I'm never going to attract anyone who wants to be in the masculine,
The true,
The healthy masculine,
Because my feminine is all messed up.
I'm actually,
The weird thing is,
I end up being very passive aggressive in relationships because I don't want to be a controlled.
I don't want to be a doormat.
So who am I going to attract into my life?
I'm going to attract men who are okay with being controlled or okay with not being in charge or not taking initiative or not giving to me.
Like I'm going to find someone who perfectly matches.
Oh you don't have to give anything to me.
Like I don't.
I don't need anything.
I'm fine.
I am just fine.
Don't you,
Don't you worry.
But as soon as we actually start to embrace this,
We start finding partners.
Doesn't matter,
Heterosexual,
Same-sex,
Doesn't matter.
We actually start finding partners who are just as thrilled to take the opposite polarity.
So here we are in our total wholeness.
And nine times out of ten,
Nine times out of ten,
We aren't going to be in the masculine or the feminine depending on the situation.
Let's say a friend of mine is really having a difficult time and they call me up and they say,
Could you just come over so I can talk?
So I go over and I stay in the masculine.
I stay in the stillness to their chaos,
The structure to their chaos.
I don't dive into their chaos with them.
I don't commiserate and say I know right yeah that happened to me too and you know what else happened to me and try to make them feel better because maybe my life is worse than theirs.
I actually honor the feminine.
I believe that their chaos is important.
I believe that the emotions they are experiencing are important and that there's wisdom in there.
So my desire is to actually help them expand in their feminine.
So I am going to hold a strong center and I'm going to say you go.
Let's talk about it.
Let's go.
You might call it holding space but it's really just I am here for you and I will pull you out if you need.
So dive.
Go into the water.
Let's figure this out.
Let's go into the dark places.
Gender is not relevant there.
That could be a guy.
It could be anyone or it could be reverse and it could be me needing help and this is really really important that it's not gendered because in intimacy in an intimate relationship we often do have a polarity that we do prefer if we want to have a dynamic relationship.
If you don't want to have a dynamic relationship and you really just want a really good friend to live with maybe it's sexual maybe it's not.
Lots of people lots of people live in marriages and relationships where it's not dynamic at all and there's nothing wrong with that.
That's what they want.
This is the desire.
It's like you know what my life is epic and it's true.
So that's not really what we're talking about here.
We're talking about relationships that where we desire this dynamic interaction.
We desire romance.
We desire union.
Like we actually want to hit oneness.
Not the oneness of two people sitting on the couch chillaxing.
That's different.
That's a separate thing.
When we actually have the magnetism that pulls us together and that's a different thing.
So if we desire that in relationship there will be a polarity that we prefer.
In most heterosexual relationships the male partner will be expanded by being in the masculine and the female partner will be expanded by being in the feminine.
And maybe there are there are examples out there that that's not true.
I've never met one.
I've never met a heterosexual couple where it was actually growth oriented for them to be flipped.
For many many people end up living out the opposite polarity.
Just like I was where I was actually in the masculine all the time.
So I just attracted and I'm heterosexual so I was attracting male partners who were happy to be very passive.
It wasn't actually a masculine feminine thing.
It was just I was in control and they were being passive.
But the problem is is why were we being like that?
Well maybe I was afraid to be in the feminine.
Maybe I didn't believe that I would ever anyone would ever really want to give to me.
Or anyone out there was even worth following as a leader.
You know in my world I hadn't met a lot of people I'd want to follow.
Some.
You know I remember when I first met my teacher Jim.
He I wanted to follow.
That was interesting.
Or maybe I never believed a man would ever really pursue me and actually be in the masculine.
So I have to pursue them otherwise I'm gonna be alone.
Or a lot of people who actually deep down would be really strengthened by being in the masculine.
Maybe they were super emasculated growing up.
Maybe they were criticized.
They were judged and they were told that you'd better be this way or else you're a loser.
So it's being absolutely terrified to step into the masculine.
And maybe even in relationships.
You try something and especially sexually.
They say that a lot of men who struggle with sexual issues many times,
Not always,
But many times they can trace it back to a moment in lovemaking where something was said that was very hurtful.
And it might have been quiet.
It could have been a look.
It could have been an action.
But it was something that actually sort of cut through to their heart like a paper cut.
And that just caused them to,
Okay I'm gonna back off.
I'm just gonna.
Because this is very vulnerable.
Like when we are in intimacy we are so vulnerable.
And so it's a very interesting thing when the partner that actually would grow the most being masculine doesn't.
And so this is the same.
And again maybe your relationship is different.
I've just never met anyone yet.
Yet.
Similarly in same-sex couples in a dynamic relationship,
Not just a friendship with benefits or something,
But a dynamic relationship,
One partner will actually love exploring the feminine and one will love exploring the masculine.
Because that is what will create the romance,
The excitement,
The dynamic thing that actually causes each person to constantly grow.
So if we assume that deep down we know which dynamic we would prefer.
Again and it's not gendered.
That's not a thing.
So if I know that I actually kind of prefer to be in the masculine,
For example,
The danger is that we start to identify with that in all of our life.
So let's say you're someone that know,
You know what,
I like to be the masculine in relationships.
So now all of a sudden I want to be in the masculine all the time.
I always want to be the teacher.
I always want to be the leader.
I always want to be the one giving.
I never want to have to receive because that's a sign of weakness.
I always want to be the protector.
I always want to be the shoulder to cry on.
I never want to look at my own emotions.
I never want to dive into that I am always in the masculine.
The problem is,
There's a lot of problems with that.
One problem is every person that they come in contact with will be forced into the feminine.
They're not a healthy feminine in a disconnected feminine,
Disconnected relationship.
And so they will never actually experience real masculine feminine dynamics because they are holding their own and they are saying,
I am going to treat all of you like objects.
I need to be in the masculine.
You have to play this role for me.
So they're not actually connecting with the other.
All are just objects.
Oh I'm the protector?
You must be vulnerable.
Oh you're not vulnerable?
Well you're gonna be soon.
Don't you worry and then I'll be there for you.
Don't worry.
But even worse than that,
That person never becomes whole themselves.
They never find inner happiness.
They are always off balance.
They are always out there searching.
Gotta help.
Gotta do this.
They're gonna burn out for sure.
But they'll just be always unhappy because they're never allowed to be emotional.
And not just emotional.
To understand that there's a negative connotation to being emotional.
That it's somehow weak.
But being emotional means paying attention to how your body and your soul is reacting to the world around you.
That's what an emotion is.
An emotion just tells you whether you're on path or not.
Is this okay?
Is that okay?
It helps guide us.
It helps feed our intuition.
It helps us actually navigate this world.
If we are not listening to our feminine,
We are blind.
We are like a bull in a china shop walking through this world.
So it's really really important that we save the masculine energy for intimacy.
Or for situations where it's needed.
Like I'm a parent.
Or I am caring for my my parents.
You know sometimes there are roles.
Sometimes our job is very masculine.
And that's okay.
You know right now with us I'm in the role of teacher.
On another day I'll be the role of a student.
But in this moment I'm going to embrace the masculine here.
Similarly some people have I have highly identified as always wanting to be in the feminine.
I am always only in touch with my emotions.
I am always in a chaotic state.
I am always wild.
I am always full of mystery.
I don't want all that structure.
It's not.
I'll find it in someone else.
So they will always be in this crazy state.
And so what do they attract?
Structure.
They're the ones like they need someone.
Well they want someone who just has a lot of money so that they can simply make the decisions.
And of course because with the money if that's the power dynamic they believe the decisions will also go that way.
They will never stand up for themselves.
Their vulnerable self will never have a personal protector.
They always need someone else to protect them.
They need someone else to make the decision.
They need someone else to say no.
They need someone else to do all that.
I need someone else to plan that.
I can't plan that.
I'm so stressed out and I'm so there's all this stuff going on and I can't handle it.
So how are they ever gonna find inner balance?
How are they ever going to actually find this beautiful masculine feminine inside?
They in the opposite will spend their whole life out of balance.
Feeling like a victim.
Feeling like everyone's always making all the decisions for them.
They don't have any rights.
They can't do anything.
Nobody's always a victim.
Nobody.
There are times that we are victimized.
That's a thing.
And then we come out of them.
We fight.
We close the circle.
We sort it out.
We become whole again and we move on to the next experience where perhaps we are the one that will lead.
And then the next time maybe we're the one following.
This is the dynamic.
This is how we get to play.
It's very very important that we understand that we are all whole first and then when we find another being we will polarize based on the situation.
If they're just another person in the world we'll polarize based on the situation.
And if we're in intimacy we will generally polarize to our preference.
The preference that expands us.
And even there to understand it's not a hundred percent.
I like to think of it like a continuum.
That maybe I like to be in the feminine 80% of the time but 20% of the time I'm gonna initiate the intimacy.
I'm gonna be the one giving.
I'm gonna be the structure and I'm gonna let my partner go wild.
And I'm gonna let them dive into their depths and into their who knows their unknown and I'm gonna hold the I'm gonna hold the rope.
I'm gonna hold the strength.
And so the best thing I can do or the most the happiest relationship I'll probably find or the easiest one is to find a partner who 80% of the time likes to be in the masculine and 20% of the time likes to be in the feminine.
And I often think that relationships you can tell a lot about a relationship when we look at that we say what percentage of the time do they want to be in the masculine or the feminine?
Does that match up with me?
Is that causing some passive-aggressive angst in our relationship?
You know what's really going on there?
Because I think that can really it can really make a huge difference.
And the last thing I want to mention is the thing that makes all of this possible,
Right?
It's one thing to understand the dynamics.
It's one thing to redefine the masculine and feminine.
That the masculine simply acts upon the feminine in these ways and the giving to the receiving,
The protector to the vulnerable,
The leading to the follow all these sort of things.
But how do we actually connect?
What's necessary for the connection to happen?
And the number one thing,
The only thing that's needed is love.
And the bottom line of that,
And I talked about this a lot in Tantric Intimacy in the book,
Is agape.
Agape is the ancient Greek word for love but it means God's love or how God would see you.
However,
Whatever you understand that to be.
But it's simply love and kindness and respect.
And this brings me to Martin Buber once wrote a book called I and Thou.
Imagine every time you interact with another person that you understand that you are a whole divine being here on planet Earth.
And this person you're interacting with is also a unique refraction of God that you're looking at.
And you are looking at them with the reverence of thou.
And now imagine you're going to interact with them in all of these different dynamics.
Giving,
Receiving,
Structure,
Chaos,
Leading,
Following,
Pursuer,
Chivalry,
All these lovely things.
And we treat each other with this reverence.
We treat ourselves with the reverence of I and thou.
This is the number one thing we have to do.
This is the first step.
It's important to understand all of these dynamics.
But if we suffer without Agape,
If we don't have that with others,
If we don't have it within,
None of this works.
Because without Agape we are always in separation.
We are never connected.
If there is not kindness,
If there's someone in your life and they're just not kind,
There will always be a natural wall between you.
If you don't respect someone else's path and you are trying to control them,
Then you do not have Agape.
And you will never be able to experience any of these connections in their pureness.
And it has to be pure to have union.
It's like alchemy.
You cannot have pollutants.
That's not the word I want,
But pollutants.
In it,
It has to be pure so that it can alchemize into gold.
It's the same here.
If you are trying to interact with another person and there are things in there that are keeping you apart,
You will always act in separation.
And you'll never get to experience this lovely union.
Best way to get there is Agape.
Or the only way.
It's the foundation.
And so Agape allows us to connect with anybody.
It allows us to connect with strangers on the street.
It allows us to connect with everybody.
Even our children,
Our partners,
Everybody.
We must have that foundation of kindness and respect.
And then maybe you make a friend.
And that friend,
You realize,
Well I can tell you stuff and you don't judge me.
And we become confidants.
And then maybe you realize that,
Wow,
You can really count on this person.
Like they really care about you.
And you become,
You kind of have each other's back.
And this is philia.
This is another depth of that love.
But philia will not exist without Agape.
And then going even deeper,
You have Eros.
And in that Eros is this incredible potential for connection.
There's a spark.
There's a something different.
And so these are really,
Really,
Really important.
And so again with the I and thou thing.
Some of the greatest things that stand in the way of all of this interaction is we don't treat the other person as a thou.
We treat them as how Martin Buber would say,
We treat them like an it.
We treat them like an object.
So that person who only always wants to be in the masculine,
Everyone else is just an it.
Everyone else is just an object in their personal drama.
Sometimes we treat children like it.
Sometimes we definitely treat our partner like an it.
Because they have to look a certain way,
Be a certain way,
Blah blah blah.
They have to like,
We have all these expectations of them.
It's very,
Very common.
But sometimes we don't even treat ourselves like an I.
We treat ourselves like an it.
So then we end up often having it-it relationships.
Where,
Well you know what,
I'm kind of a piece of crap and so I'm gonna treat you like that.
And maybe I've never even known anything different.
I personally have,
I don't respect myself so obviously I don't respect you.
And everything's a battle.
Everything's disconnected.
Everything's mean or sarcastic or whatever.
And then sometimes we have it-thou relationships.
And in many ways that's what I would describe how I was raised.
That I don't really matter,
But you do.
You matter.
You are a thou.
My needs are irrelevant.
My feelings are irrelevant.
How much sleep I've had is irrelevant.
I don't really count.
Which is so often why we've talked here about the importance of the I am experience.
That moment where you actually become an I.
You.
We actually recognize that hold on a minute.
My life isn't about everybody else.
It is not about serving the masses.
It is not about serving any other being.
I matter.
I desire.
I love.
I want.
I.
And this isn't being selfish.
I remember,
I think it was Thomas Moore.
I read a book about it,
A couple of books by him.
But I believe he called it being not selfish or self-centered.
That's what it was.
Because oftentimes we're taught that it's self-centered.
And he called it being soul-centered.
That when we can be soul-centered,
That's when we now can start treating other people.
We can now start interacting with others.
If I can't be kind to myself,
Deep down I can't be kind to anyone else either.
We think we are.
But we're not really.
We're actually just trying to keep them happy so we don't get hurt.
It's not really coming from a genuine place.
And so then again,
We will not be able to interact in these dynamics that we're gonna dive deeper into as the weeks go on.
Because I will be afraid,
In the giving-receiving,
I'll be afraid to receive.
I don't deserve it.
And so then all of a sudden that will actually create a disconnect with someone.
Because one,
I'm not listening.
That's a receiving.
I won't actually receive what you.
I won't listen.
I won't actually.
Like let's say for example,
Sexually.
To be received by someone in intimacy,
That's a huge deal.
That's actually receiving someone's soul at the most intimate level.
If I don't think I matter and I consider myself an it,
I'll never receive another person in that way.
They will never feel seen because I'll have all of these self-worth issues flowing around.
So it's a very interesting journey and that's where this whole thing,
The love,
The agape,
The I and Thou,
All that,
It all begins with us.
It all begins with us finding wholeness.
Our own masculine feminine and really loving ourselves.
That our masculine loves our feminine.
Our masculine serves our feminine.
Our masculine is our greatest cheerleader,
Not our greatest judge and jury.
Our masculine creates structure for us to flourish and thrive.
And when we really find that wholeness inside,
Then we can start to really experience it outside.
Thank you so much for being here and I hope you have a wonderful day.
