Archive for transformation

Healing Archetypal Gender Wounds

Posted in Feelings, Men, Motion Picture Lessons, Relations with tags , , , , , , , , on March 9, 2011 by matthewstruth

 

 

It is time.

These three simple little words have been calling out to me for well over a decade. Who would’ve thought that watching a child’s movie on the vcr with my tiny stepdaughter back then would lead me toward deep contemplation—or that this “cartoon” would continue to do so today?

It is time.

These words emerged again a few weeks ago at the end of my post “A Man’s Peace of Mind”. Since then this mantra has been running through my mind pretty much non-stop, which led me to get the cd soundtrack from this movie out and now, it too, has been cranking incessantly throughout this home.

Sometimes, I just know—that second when insight occurs, don‘t you? Great personal power derives from these illuminating moments. Even if it’s from the most unlikely of sources—such as within an animated movie.

The archetypal, mystical, magical realm of The Lion King is one of these sources. It contains potent teaching’s that are of complete relevance today—recognizing the oneness of all life–healing familial wounding, abuse, jealousy, ostracizing attitudes and betrayals–recognizing the ramifications of environmental destruction and greed–remembering and awakening to ones true self, and taking one’s rightful place within society——and healing, with love the rift between the genders. The characters in this movie, our archetypes, show the absolute power of what can transpire from within these domains.

It is the medicine person Rafiki’s incredulous babbling of “it is time” that has captivated, and set the stage for me……to remember. So many of these motifs have played pivotal roles in my maturing journey of being human. And boy oh boy, can I relate to Simba, the happy, inquisitive, cocky, son-of-a-king. This potential future king watches his father die and is then sold a bunch of bunk by his murdering, jealous uncle, who embodies the shadow side of the un-evolved castrating masculine. Because of this, the very young Simba banishes himself, not only from his society, but from his deeper nature as well.

While our hero is physically growing up, he’s essentially hiding out with his shame, marginalizing and down-sizing his life to entail a happy-go-lucky smallness. During this time his family and society are being overrun by ineptitude and greed, and their land-base is being destroyed. When we don’t, or can’t show up in our power, bad stuff happens.

How many of us can resonate with this tale of familial and cultural abuse? What were the stories that we told ourselves? Some of mine were to strive to succeed without knowing who I really was or what I wanted. Becoming “the good boy” was my way of dealing with familial mental illness and the destructive elements of this. But it seemed as though I was on autopilot. Certainly many of my inherent aptitudes blessed me with a fledgling sense of self, but these didn’t appease my inner angst-filled, yet otherwise emotionless life and definitely did not lead to a love that I could feel.

As the emerging “masculine” is downsized and relegated to mediocrity, the “feminine” is left alone to deal with the tragedies of the other pole—an abusive, un-evolved masculine. Seems an awful lot like our culture, doesn’t it? We are witnessing and experiencing a masculinity that is a pale shadow of what it could be. In lieu of a healthy functional masculinity we have corporate sponsored environmental destruction, criminal behavior and greed, Wall St. swindles, hoarding, consumerism, power-over domination, war, absentee fathers, domestic violence and addiction. Not a pretty picture.

Certainly men are paying a price for this within their psyches—but it is women who are being decimated and brutalized. Unheard, starving, and deeply distraught, Nala, our heroine, goes off alone to find sustenance for her tribe—courageously tackling more than she should have to. She has taken all that she can from the abuser and now ventures forth as a final resort. How many women have issued the demand, “it is time TO GROW UP”? Or have had to go it alone, or remained children themselves, or have bravely banded together to create a new society? And how many men have just walked away?

While hunting and about to attack two funny creatures Nala is jumped and comes face to face with a large male lion. She has more than enough prowess to pin him to the ground. Isn’t this the way it is even in our time, women can very easily decimate a man at times of vulnerability. And here is something crucially profound—Simba recognizes his friend and calls out her name, where upon she dismounts, staring in complete disbelief. All it takes sometimes is for men to softly recognize the magnificence of the feminine, which allows her to reopen.

Nala has now discovered the masculine in his hideout, eating grubs—this is ludicrous, the king, eating grubs. The arrival of his best friend, now a fully evolved adult female, along with the joy and confrontation that ensued, provided a rich environment for self-rediscovery. Simba it seems had abdicated his true self due to unexplored faulty thoughts. An unexamined life. Me too at times.

How much of myself do I see in this story? Quite a bit! The larger-than-life issues of ostracizing familial betrayal, followed by a life geared toward minimization. Living on the fringe or at the edge and not knowing one’s true worth or purpose, floundering about alone. I’ve done this. I’ve lived like this. I recognize the Simba in me. Tears appear and also new strength, well, if not new, then at least an evolving strength. Even with rigorous inquiry at times, it has seemed as though my personal healing has had a timeframe of its own. It’s not that transformation hasn’t been occurring, its just that there have been so many layers to this psyche needing attention. As layer after layer have been illumined, more and more have come to the surface.

As Simba and Nala rediscover each other, after the exuberant joy comes the bellowing, “What in the tarnation have you been doing with yourself?? We needed you.” Ouch. She expresses her righteous feelings, and he plummets into his buried fear, misery and inner pain, which leads him again angrily into his abandonment story.

Lamenting, “ So many things to tell her, but how to make her see, the truth about my past, impossible, she’ll turn away from me.”

She cries out, “ He’s holding back, he’s hiding, but what I can’t decide. Why won’t he be the king I know he is, the king I see inside.”

Could this be the major thematic element of our times? Many men are lost and afraid, though it might not appear that way. Women have been evolving through the 70’s until now, while men have been dragged kicking and screaming to accept what is. Their predominant cultural roles are no longer the only game in town, the paradigm has changed. Their closed down emotional lives and hearts are being asked to open. The healthy feminine needs a healthy masculine to right this ship. I have been blessed and cursed to have a wonderful woman in my life whose been breaking my door down. The curse has been in fighting this incursion. She has seen the king in me when I haven’t. To have a true friend seeing us, who could really be more blessed?

In our story, the healthy masculine, his father, the murdered king, had promised to always be there, and this young adult’s sense of self has suffered in thinking himself the cause of the murder. As he’s angrily sulking and screaming to the heavens, his inner guide, in the form of Rafiki magically appears to bash him upside the head with some sense —“You don’t even know who you are?” How right is this?! He doesn’t. How many of us truly do? The head bashing continues and our awakening, newly alive guy runs off and is soon confronted with his own reflection, where upon Rafiki, this time ever so softly, challenges Simba to look deeply within himself. And here he sees that his dad, the king is in fact within him. And that he has been in there all along.

“He lives in you, he lives in me. He watches over, everything we see. Into the water, into the truth, in your reflection, he lives in you.”

Who is this “he“? Could be our higher selves, our spirit guides, God, angels, the ancestors, or the collective, all knowing source? Who really knows, but we are most certainly not alone in here.

In getting this….understanding this, he can now return to his homeland, take his rightful place as king and go about repairing the damage. And loving his gal, right along side him as well.

A roadmap for us? With these recognitions, comes new energy to move forward in life. Seeing the archetypal nature of this particular story provides a rich fertile place from which to heal very old wounds. Realizing where one has gone astray and some of the root originating factors leading to this annihilating self-betrayal is just what is needed for our culture to grow up and evolve.

 

It is time to awaken—to awaken from whatever slumber holds us captive.

It is time to love.

It is time to grow up from our cultural adolescence.

It is time emerge from hiding.

It is time to treat all beings with respect, love and dignity, including ourselves.

It is time to recognize the animals as our teachers.

It is time to honor the earth, and all upon and within it

It is time to fully recognize the oneness of this universe.

On and on……….

I T    I S    T I M E!

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Are We Miners?

Posted in Big Questions, Not your normal letter to the editor with tags , , , , on February 23, 2011 by matthewstruth

This small resort town in paradise has been working to keep a molybdenum mine from desecrating our closest beloved mountain and water for nearly 40 years. Right now market forces, and personal and corporate greed are colluding, thereby threatening everything here. There are certain specifics, but these ideas and feelings are relevant everywhere. This is a letter to my newspaper and community.

　

Is it conceivable that within the travesty of this current mine debacle, that there lies a hidden opportunity—a possibility for massive transformation? What might it take for us to feel into and recognize this?

Many here are rightly appalled, aghast, terrified and angry about the prospect of this never-ending mine quagmire becoming a reality. Many have written eloquently about what this could mean and the potential impacts from such a disastrous possibility.

While no doubt a majority will vehemently oppose this prospect, I see the opportunity within this opposition for an even deeper engagement with ourselves, one another and the way that we live our lives. If this opposition is based primarily upon an “us vs. them” mentality, no matter the righteousness of our opposition, it will have limited effect. However, can we delve into the ways in which we might be complicit and unconsciously aligned with a mining mentality? What are the ways in which we live, the behaviors that we might unquestioningly engage in that are virtually the same as the ones that we are opposed too? Do our lifestyles show that we are in fact mini-miners? If so, will we change?

Before going into what I see as being some of the ways that we are complicit, I’d like to first emphatically state that if we do the Herculean and radical work to go against the tide of our societal dictates, that we can clean up our own behaviors and entitled lifestyles and get ourselves well positioned to be a voice of absolute power. We will be ardently,  more morally equipped to keep this tragedy from occurring. This is a monumental opportunity to unveil our unity. So while what I’m about to speak about could be inconvenient to read, I feel that it is imperative to get past our resistance.

Greed, rape, squander, waste, polluting, pillage, desecrate—these are some of the terms that come to mind when mining happens. Despicable behaviors without a doubt. But is it only large, heartless, far away corporations that engage in these? What about us? How do we engage in polluting, wasting and all of the others?

Absolutely every single time we spark up the automobile, for whatever use, we are doing just that. Every single time we start ‘er up and leave it there unnecessarily warming up, idling somewhere, or cruising around, we are wasting fuel, polluting our towns air, spewing carbon and mindlessly creating noise pollution.  We are wasting a precious resource that we’ve had no part in creating, a resource that will be needed for far greater uses than hauling our physiques about at our whim. Its been said that the amount of available energy encapsulated within a barrel of oil, which today can be bought for 94 bucks is the equivalent of one persons physical hand labor of nine years. Astounding! And we just waste it. A question—if we know this and don’t modify our actions, what does this state about our morality? If we’re unaware of the implications and think that this fuel just magically appears for our misguided use, what does that say? And if we knowingly and boldly don’t give a hoot, isn’t this the most insidious form of dastardly behavior? Like that of a mining corporation?

What about water? What are the multitudes of ways that we waste this resource? Unconsciously flushing, showering every single day, water running non-stop while washing dishes, on and on this listing could go. Home heating, gigantic dwellings, lights on in businesses all night, driving the little ones to school when there are buses. How about desecrating the land with more and more resource wasting buildings? Insulation and light bulbs will not combat the larger questions of why these buildings even need to exist in the first place. The commonly stated mantra of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” neglected a couple—“Reconsider, Refuse”. And dust? Who speeds down unpaved roads, kicking up enormous dust clouds? How is this dust different than what a mine’s vehicle will kick up?

Every single time that we opt for convenience, or an “I want it now” attitude, regardless of the consequences, we are engaging in behaviors that pillage.

How about our personal energies—in what ways does our manic driven euphoria inhibit deep personal connection? In what ways does the “go, go, go” mentality dominate and crush personal inner alone time, time necessary for recognizing “what is“? What about the substances that we ingest, or how we treat our bodies—what does this say about our level of self-care? How can we powerfully care about our landbase when so many don’t care about their own bodies?

And what about the prevalence of gossiping and bad mouthing another? Telling other peoples stories, and the lack of clear personal boundaries? How does this desecrate someone else’s esteem or privacy? If we can’t keep personal boundaries clear, why do expect corporations to do so?

Sure the scale is far different, but aren‘t all of these behaviors reminiscent of what mines do, aren’t the underlying energies similar? While these examples barely scratch the surface, we can take solace knowing that we are ALL complicit in wasting, polluting, squandering, some of us consciously, others unconsciously. And sure, again, we are indignant about the proposal of the mine, can we become equally indignant about the ways in which we live our lives, and do the great work of changing. Can we bring a massive amount of conscious awareness to our predicament? This is a huge opportunity to transform, re-work, and re-write our destiny. We can create a much more functional relationship to everything. This mine proposal is equivalent to what humans everywhere are being asked to consider. Namely, that how we live our lives matters and has drastic consequences for what comes next in our earthly journey.

As we work diligently to see that our lands are not raped, spoiled, sacrificed, polluted, desecrated—lets also see that the same does not continue for ourselves. Then our power will be undeniable and unstoppable.

 

 

 

　

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Shootings Heart Opening

Posted in Big Questions, Feelings, Men with tags , , , , on January 30, 2011 by matthewstruth

On a typical day in this winter paradise, thoughts and feelings of mine are usually focused towards the majestic knee buckling beauty of ethereal lighting upon rugged peaks, and basking with delight at my husky’s exuberance at being in her primal element. But on this day, while checking email before heading out into the splendor, there it was, highlighted, at the top of the page, “Arizona Congresswoman Shot”.

My body went into a shock that I haven’t felt in quite this way before. I cried, and I ached while clicking to the appropriate page. My instantaneous inner reactions to these few words told me that this was a moment of grave importance and that no matter what the motive was behind this, forces at work in our culture had laid the groundwork for this tragedy long ago.

My shaking and tears continued as the news of the massacre became more apparent. So many humans gunned down. A man shooting a woman. A man shooting a member of Congress. A man shooting, randomly, dozens of human beings, terrorizing what in this country has become our misguided civic symbol, a shopping center. As initial reports of the congress woman’s death emerged I broke down even further with deep anguish for the fate of our culture and world.

What was it about this particular violent act that penetrated my usual armor of numbness? Why am I crying now, when there have been oh so many violent crimes committed by governments and individuals that left me unfazed? How come I didn’t weep and break down over the tragedy’s of natural disasters that have effected hundreds of thousands of people? Why haven’t I become enraged at the heinous activities of corporations and some businesses that are raping our world? And why have I done virtually nothing to stop any of this?

So why was this day different? There could be so many reasons. I know that on this day the two words “congress” and “woman” had an enormous impact on me, as did the third “Arizona“. While I am generally not a huge fan of government activities, witnessing a member of our government being potentially assassinated got through my defenses of non-feeling. I was just a toddler and then a child straight jacketed in a catholic school uniform when black and white leaders of our country were slaughtered. Playing with my Tonka trucks didn’t become interrupted by these crimes, though my manic depressive mother’s howling at being in love with JFK, and not us, certainly contributed to my innocent childs heart closing down.

Could it be that this was my first experience of attempted assassination in my country. But Reagan was shot and I felt nothing. Others world leaders have been shot and killed and I felt nothing. People are being killed by our government every day and I generally feel nothing. People are murdered every day and still I feel nothing. How many of us allow these events to penetrate our tightly constructed lives?

Why was this day different? Maybe it’s that this was a member of our government who was a woman, being brutally attacked by a man. How long have these supremely barbaric attacks been going on? For thousands of years men have been bludgeoning women and our planet to death. What would happen if I, we, all men, would stop and feel this? We have been killing and tormenting those that bring life into existence. When will we stop? When will we kneel on the ground, bow down and stop? When will we cry and cry for our perpetrated atrocities upon those who are magnificent beings of wonder?

This day was different because I felt. My heart opened and hurt. My body and soul cried tears of rage, fear, deep sadness, and love. Love for a woman, love for a gathering of human beings brutally attacked, and love for a man much like my deceased, mentally ill brother, enveloped in the deepest anguish. Why aren’t we loving those among us who are troubled and disturbed? Why aren’t WE troubled and disturbed? When will we awaken to our inherent birthright as glorious human beings, inhabiting an awe inspiring planet with other sentient beings, all of these animals, plants and minerals that share this place with us. When will we awaken to love?

On this day I was one man deeply touched and less numbed. I am not going back.

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