The Divine Masculine

One of the most exciting parts of being conscious is those moments – the epiphanies – when something new clicks. When I’m exposed to a perspective I’d never considered before and my brain starts making thousands of connections. It’s almost like I can feel the neurons excitedly firing in my brain.

I had one of those this week. My mind expanded in a very profound and quite unexpected way. It hit me right in my heart; so much so that as soon as I got home, I went straight to my husband and gave him a big hug. I found so much compassion and inner peace, that I wanted to share it with all of you.

The Rebalancing World

Before jumping into the epiphany itself, let’s talk about where we are in the masculine-feminine balance.

I don’t particularly like labels, especially loaded ones, because they carry so much different (and often negative) meaning for each person, but I’ll use one here. I’ve always considered myself a feminist in the most basic sense — I believe that women should be afforded equal rights to men. 

As a person living in the United States in 2020, I live in a patriarchal society. My society is dominated by male leaders, and society as a whole promotes masculine qualities of logic, reason, action, and strength as the dominant “better” qualities. Feminine qualities of intuition, healing, emotion, and expression are often pushed to the wayside as inferior or unuseful. 

But there’s a shift happening. 

If you’re in tune with your energy and the energy around you, you will feel it; if you’re watching the news you will see it in politics and efforts like the “me too” movement; if you’re listening, you will hear its message from leaders like Oprah, Echart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, and many more. 

It’s happening. The world is reawakening to its divine feminine.

The world is rebalancing in its time of greatest need.

With all the buzz around the reawakening divine feminine (which, by the way, I love), what about the flip side – who’s talking about the divine masculine? In my eagerness to free myself of the patriarchy, I think I’ve lost sight of the balance and what men bring to the table.

This Week’s Epiphany

What was this great epiphany I had? My great epiphany, thanks to Bell Hooks’ book, The Will to Change, was that patriarchy is bad for men, too. 

Just as patriarchy subjugates women, it represses men.

I feel almost silly after realizing this. My whole life, I’ve walked around indignantly professing my equality to men – to men who are simply a product of the society they were born to. 

I’ve been carrying around my wounds, so blinded by my own pain that I’ve been unable to see that men carry pain, too. When I step back and reflect on it, I can see the pain everywhere. On every man’s face who has ever struggled to hold back emotion.

These men aren’t to blame for the way things are. Things just are. It’s up to all of us, men and women alike, to change it.

Because this realization was such a game changer for me, I’d like to share a few of Hooks’ main points. 

A patriarchy harms men by depriving them of their emotions, and therefore their emotional wellbeing.

This begins in childhood.

We’re all aware of gender roles – they start young. From the first baby doll and the first toy truck. And everyone knows that big boys don’t cry… right?

Our first mistake as a society though is to associate masculine and feminine qualities to the sex itself. Masculine and feminine qualities exist in both men and women in a beautiful balance. I’m an example of that. I gravitate towards masculine qualities of logic and reason, but am also very in tune with my intuition and feelings. I find them equally important.

Boys are taught that in order to be a man they must be strong. Since feelings are associated with being weak, boys are taught to avoid or suppress them. 

What’s the problem with this? The energy is still there and needs an outlet. For little boys, Hooks states, this often manifests as acting out. Their acceptable emotion is anger and their acceptable action is violence, so that’s what they use. What doesn’t get expressed as anger and violence, gets buried.

Since patriarchal parenting does not teach boys to express their feelings in words, either boys act out or they implode.

Bell Hooks

Accoring to Hooks, as boys get better at suppressing their emotions, they’re left isolated – disconnected from feeling. They’re deprived of love for themselves and others and begin to lose their sense of inherent self worth.

My heart goes out to all these little boys. These boys were my dad and his dad and my husband. I feel so much compassion for them (a feeling I’ve only recently become accustomed to). I can’t imagine growing up feeling so much pressure to not feel. Life is confusing enough without being deprived of feelings.

It continues into adulthood.

Let’s take a step back and assess the state of affairs. In a patriarchy, boys are taught not to feel and to use anger and violence to dominate the world around them. They are taught that their role is to provide for their families, but that it ends there. 

Fathers are not to develop an emotional connection with their sons. Instead they use shame as a form of emotional violence, silently believing that this pain will make their sons stronger. Again, my heart goes out to these men.

Without emotion and an inherent sense of self worth, men turn outside of themselves to find value. How does a patriarchal society assess a man’s worth? By his work; men are taught to define themselves by their wealth and success. 

But wait, things are changing.

Women have entered the workforce in droves. Today, almost 47% of the U.S. workforce is female (love it!). Again, the feminist in me wants to rub this in my male counterpart’s face and say, see we can do it despite your suppression!

Consider this. As we women enter the workforce and assume many of the positions traditionally held by men, men indoctrinated into the patriarchy begin to lose their sense of worth. Remember, work = worth to men of the patriarchy. The spiteful feminist will argue, well that’s their problem. 

I’d like to offer a softer response. One of compassion and love. I’d like to extend men the love and compassion that for so many years under the patriarchy, men and women alike were not afforded.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

What Can We Do?

In order to heal, men must feel. And women must help them do it.

Before I go any further, I just want to say that I’m not advocating for men to start bursting into tears at the slightest sad emotion. Rather, I’m advocating for them to, like women, get to know their feelings so they can learn to understand them and develop into emotionally healthy human beings.

I consider myself an intelligent women, but I was rather dull with this one. It never occurred to me that I have a responsibility to help men out of the patriarchy, too.

I talk so much about how important it is to accept, embrace, and process emotion. That it’s a key part of our well-being. Go figure, men need to do it too, but are discouraged by the shackles of a patriarchal society. 

1. Encourage men to feel, then let them.

Hooks uses an example that is almost identical to one of my personal experiences. I’m always encouraging my husband to express his emotions. One night he opened up to me about something and was upset. But instead of holding the space for him to be upset, I got emotional myself and started crying. He ended up consoling me instead.

If we’re going to encourage our men to express their feelings, we then have to let them do it. Without getting caught up in our own drama. It’s their turn to be emotional.

2. Hold the space for men to process their emotions.

I love the idea of holding space for emotions. This is also called presence, being in the moment, or mindfulness. And it’s so incredibly powerful.

When a man does open up to you, since he’s probably not very well practiced at it, it may be a bit confusing. Learn how to be the space for these emotions. Create a safe, loving, compassionate space for him to feel and process and share. 

Trust me, it’s not about you. 

3. Be prepared.

I’ve often joked with my mom and sister that men have different boxes for everything – meaning they compartmentalize very well. I believe this is in part due to the patriarchy. 

In an impossible effort to live up to the patriarchy’s ideal role of what it means to be a man, they lose who they are in the process. Many men are living a lie – maybe they’re in a job they hate because they need to provide for their families, maybe they’re angry or violent because they haven’t attained the success they believe they should have – so they compartmentalize these separate selves.

My husband offered the idea of “layers of boxes”. He said that boxes can lead to other boxes – say they’re in a job they don’t like, that’s one box; then because they aren’t happy in their work, they have a hobby that creates an outlet for this suppressed unhappiness. It builds and gets buried. 

Like anyone, once you start digging into the emotional pain, it may at points be hard to handle. As women of the patriarchy, we aren’t used to dealing with emotional men. But with a lot of patience, compassion, and love, we can be a partner in life and help him get there. It’s a matter of opening up their boxes, one by one, airing them out, and finding balance and equilibrium.

Let’s give our men permission to redefine what it means to be a man. Where vulnerability is a strength and emotional wellbeing is power. 

Dr. Jean Houston describes it beautifully in a conversation with Deepak Chopra. The “archetypal notions” she refers to are the patriarchal standards society has become accustomed to.

The rise of women releases men to be what they can be… there’s an enormous goodness in manhood that has been compromised by ancient archetypal notions of what men are.

Dr. Jean Houston

With our help, as equal partners on the road to a peaceful world, we can grow into a balanced society – where men and women have equal rights in all endeavors. And where the divine feminine and divine masculine are honored and celebrated in all human beings.