Picture by Eric Francis.
As The World Reflects
Here some additional responses to, "Why Men are Afraid of Women", by Dee, RA, Adrienne, and Tamara.
Dear Eric,
Something resonated when I read your blog, the part at the end with the eight reasons, Why Men Are Afraid of Women. I have a hangover from having played out all 8 in two hours just last night. Here's how it went: (but just to say, somehow mixed in this are My Issues which have surfaced in my life more than thrice. Therefore the tinge of humor is here simply to accompany the pain of not knowing what comes next)
Last night I invited a guy I've been involved with over for dinner. Somehow over dinner we got into a fight about astrology. "It's too simple," he said. I gave him a dirty look to which he responded, "I mean, it's too complex." I suddenly got not horny at all (2. Secret).
After dinner we moved to the living room. I lit a candle, put on Sean Colvin and tried to get horny again (4. Yes No Maybe) while he smoked a cigarette. When he cuddled up to me in a horny appearing way, I got in a non-horny panic (3. Deny sexual desire) and told him I didn't want to have sex. "I noticed," he said. To solidify my point, I brought up the controversial topic about a chair and who could sit on it and if a blanket could be next to the table. Whenever I bring up this thorny, old topic, we are guaranteed not to have sex till the cows come home (7. Rationality ran out). He said, "Do we have to bring this up again?" I told him I wanted to go back to being friends not having sex. "This way, we wouldn't have to fight about the chair and who could sit on it and if the blanket could be next to the table," I explained. So he asked me if we could have sex just like an affair, and I said no (1. Sexual Power).
I can't really explain what happened for the next two hours. I know we didn't have sex. We did fight and I was in a RAGE about the chair and who could sit on it and if the blanket could be next to the table. He put his hand out like a policeman to stop my rage. He said, "If this is going to be our last conversation then we are going to remain calm." But I was really pissed off about the chair and who could sit on it and if the blanket could be near the table. Then we took the taboo nose-dive into how I am spoiling my son, he says. In the valley of snakes and RAGE I explained that I had an abortion of a child I wanted 10 years ago (5. Mattering about being pregnant), (6. I didn't prevent it). I explained I wanted more children but my ex-husband said the house would get too messy. I love loving my son, and I love that I got a child in this life time and I love my son. It was unbearable being in this rage and the guy, with whom I was playing out my rage, hadn't wanted my son in his favorite chair next to the table with a blanket around him.
And now for (8. I was the elevated one) how the evening ended. In our last and calm conversation the guy with whom I was playing out my rage asked me, "On a scale of one to ten, how insecure do you think you are?". And at that point, I sprang off the couch, handed him the couple of his belongings and pointed to the door.
Female Rat Pisces, 46
Single since yesterday
From RA
E,
I don't think the sexes fear each other. I think people fear each other.
Last year, I had an epiphany about why so many women were attracted to bad boys. When I was in second grade I was running out to the baseball field with my class. We had to cross some asphalt to get there. One of the boys in my class came up behind me and shoved me with both hands down onto the pavement. I skinned my hands and both knees. He got a paddleing---back when they were still doing things like that. I was horrified. Every single adult involved, from the gym teacher and coach to my parents and my older sister, ALL told me he did that because he liked me. Everytime I told anyone about a boy doing something mean to me, that was the response I got. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one and I'm know it's still being said.
I spent alot of time trying to date bad boys. I also heard alot of justification from them and from the world at large as to why they weren't really kind, loving people or how whatever abuse they were doling out was some code meaning they loved me. I was guilty of all manner of badness myself, I just contained alot of it. Maybe my abuse was socially acceptable.
In between those times, I have had the pleasure and privilege of spending as much as 2 years at a time (I think this is the 4th time now) without having a partner or even a date. During these periods, I have semi annual cravings for cock, but have learned it is better to satisy myself than to go through the entanglement of having a live one. Have you ever eaten raw honey? I just found some Apitherapy and it has an aftertaste like flowers blooming in your mouth! I can't recall a seminal effect of this caliber, so I am certainly not suffering in any way. I also realize as I appreciate more fully the sacredness of everything, that everything is like a sacred orgasm. People's faces, animals, foods, skies day or night.........
Last Tuesday night, I was late walking my dog. I witnessed a guy in my neighborhood trying to stop a girl walking down the street by running his car in front of her. I yelled did she need help and got no response. When she didn't stop, he got out of his car and made her stop. I yelled Hey-hey-hey-hey! and he checked himself, toned down the violence a bit. I just stood there on the sidewalk on the other side of the street and waited until it sounded and felt like they were okay.
The conversation went in waves, they were both fucked up, you know this always happens when we're fucked up....tomorrow it won't mean a thing. I waited until it sounded and felt like it was okay. When it seemed right, I asked if they needed a ride anywhere. The guy yelled: Why don't you mind your own business?! And I said: You ARE my business.....He said Yeah, I know, but can you just keep walking? and I asked if she was okay and she said yes, so I kept walking. Of course they weren't okay.
Then started moaning repetition: PLEASE DON'T DO THIS TO ME AGAIN! DON'T DO THIS TO ME AGAIN! DON'T DO THIS TO ME AGAIN! DON'T DO THIS TO ME AGAIN! DON'T DO THIS TO ME AGAIN! about a hundred times crescendoeing. I thought it was her until she screamed SHUT UUUUUUUUP! Then slapping started. I stopped the next car that went by and asked them to call the police. I felt guilty and was also scared something worse might happen before they could get there, so I crossed the street.She was in the car and he was kneeling outside it. They were both crying. My dog started crying along with them. He just stood really still looking at them, tail down and cried and cried. I encouraged them to move along in different directions. The guy went home and I took the girl to a safe place down the street so she could call someone to come get her. Then I went back and waited for the police to come.
When it was over, I realized how scared I was. I felt like I had drunk acid and like I was on fire. I cried all the way home, couldn't go to sleep until after 3am and slept with the light on, mostly not sleeping.
In between obligations yesterday, I slept and had some amazingly lucid dreams. In one of them, it was being explained to me that it was okay to be scared. That the world was a scary place right now and that the purges were harder than before, but that it would be okay.
Then this was in my email today:
"We are experiencing the initiation of the human race into a new level of consciousness, and that is a very terrifying experience. It does no good to turn and run from the terror of our darkness into light; we must sit it out: zazen. We must take our counsel from The Tibetan Book of the Dead and realize that these frightening projections of famines, economic disasters, ecological catastrophes, floods, earthquakes, and wars are all only the malevolent aspects of beneficent deities. If we sit and observe them, do not identify with them, but remember our Buddha-nature, we will not be dragged down by them into an incarnation of the hell they prefigure. If we run from them, we validate them; we give the projections the very psychic energy they need to overtake us. Then, as Jung has pointed out, the situation will happen outside as fate."
-William Irwin Thompson, *Evil and World Order*
From Rob Breszny's Free Will Astrology Newsletter....
Maybe these frightening projections we also shine on our partners so we can learn to be fearless and really know and see ourselves.
Much love to you,
RA
From Adrienne
Hi Eric!
I never cease to be amazed by the synchronicity of the universe and your blog! As I read your blog about gender fears, I'd been going through a classic version of my own relationship pain, as a result of a miscommunication with a man. Because, I miscommunicate with myself, or have been unable to decipher the messages of my own psyche and have been actually afraid of it, of myself- like it is out there. Of course, this man I am referring to is a fairly new acquaintance, but the circumstance causing the pain is not new. What is new is my williness to go within and look at the source which has radiated into every male/female relationship I've had. I can also include any relationship wiith authority in this.
In my meditations this week, I ventured into a deep, dark layer of energy that has felt like and appeared to be death (Scorpio Moon). I first became aware of its presence on the horizon of my psyche some four years ago, but had kept my distance from it. I figured it would go away one day of its own accord (Ha!). I couldn't understand what it was trying to tell me. I finally went into it last Friday, because with the way I had been feeling and the adveristy I'd been facing, I figured death would be better welcomed than the emotional pain I'd been having in relationship.
And thus, the AH HA moment: This layer of death I saw was at the source of my life colored with darkness, at my very basic creative force, my sexuality and root of being. It was the pain of my first sexual memory of being molested at three years old!!! I had already dealt with that....right! No wonder why everytime I had been around a man, I felt afraid. In fact, I've attracted men who are just as afraid as I've been, because they can spot the pain like a radar and they match that energy, and recognize it because they have the coded suffering of a similiar wound. In the duality, or continual shadow play of light and dark called Maya, there is a violater and violated, until we awaken and walk out of the theater.
I've also gotten extremely uncomfortable, even when it looks like I am with a nice guy. I've tried to logically talk my body out of the conditioned response my whole life. It all makes sense to me now like never before. I am not afraid of men exactly, but of the pain wrapped around my sexuality. I now know what I was afraid of was the pain that I believed would annihilate me- and it has. It has broken me open to a new self- one no longer stuck in the unconscious state of fight or flight that I know so many people experience in the face or threat of the other. I am no longer stuck in the sympathetic nervous system of a little girl. Of course there are still remanants encrusted in my psyche, but now I can put the past behind me where it belongs.
That brings me to the bigger, and real Ah Ha. I must have compassion for the wounds caused by gender, just as I must lovingly have compassion for myself. I am the Lover and the Beloved. Once we realize we all in the same boat, maybe we can actually row together and extend the restorative hand of friendship with the intention of true communion. The sacred partnership, is one we must cultivate with ourselves, if we are to have it in the world and heal our hearts. The freedom or our real (spiritual body) is the fruit of the consumation.
With Graditude and Thanksgiving,
Adrienne
36, Aquarius female, hetero for now, and single
From Tamara
Dear Eric
I have discovered that being a Napoleon out front, leading the troops to new territory, is a pretty terrifying feeling. I began my own journey to "wholeness" inside a relationship around 3 years ago, starting with informing my "conventional" in-laws that I couldn't play by their "rules", and needed personal space. I was beginning to suffocate. My partner almost fell apart through insecurity - a wife just didn't act in this way, he couldn't face his family for awkwardness. Instead of growing with me, I left him behind. One more unannounced badly timed visit from his family and I would have said things better left unsaid. Instead of trying to change and grow, and to talk to his family, he buried his proverbial head in the sand and hoped things would go away. Needless to say, they didn't, and our relationship was never the same again.
Then last autumn, I made the final irrevocable steps towards my own "wholeness". My own childhood was spent stifled in fear of my father. It was a constant attempt to please him. He wanted me to become his idea of a perfect last child, I almost needed to ask permission to breath. Curiosity was definitely not encouraged - obedience was. I too have now dared to embrace the notion that I have a "right to exist" in my own right. That actually, I prefer to sleep in my own bed at night, not in a marital double bed because "that's how relationships are". If I have a physical need, fine, that's one thing, but a good night's sleep in my own dreamy bed when I'm exhausted is another. And I have made that step. And as I have already mentioned to you in an earlier e-mail, which you may or may not have read, I have taken back my own surname from childhood, and discarded society's need to categorise me as either "available" or not by ditching the "Mrs" bit. And I can tell you, people have found it scary, but I have never felt stronger. I still have many miles to travel before I truly find inner serenity, many discoveries to make and journeys to accomplish, but it's only by being true to yourself and your values that you can accomplish your true mission in life. And people will either respect you for it, or cast you away in their own fear.
Love to you
Tamara
