Boys to Men

I have been thinking about men. Well, masculinity to be more accurate.

In Jungian psychology, women have a masculine aspect to their psyche, just as men have a feminine aspect. What happens to those parts of us in relationship can be really interesting (or infuriating at first, then interesting later).

Sometimes rather than own that polar part of us, we can unconsciously seek it out in those of the opposite gender around us - our partners, parents, friends, colleagues and employers. In short, sometimes how we see men or women is not actually so much about how they truly are, but what our inner masculine or feminine is. If we are not conscious of this inner part of us, we see the world around us, and the people in it, through a filtered vision that can keep us trapped in patterns that aren't of our conscious choosing.

So for example, if you are an open, receptive person, and still learning who you are as a person, (that includes most of us, right?) and your partner has a particularly strong projection, you can feel hijacked by a persona that doesn’t belong to you!

A man could experience this as increased financial pressure to provide when he gets into a relationship or a woman might experience it as a pressure to run a household in a particular way when she moves in with a man, depending on how conservative the projections may be.

A dear friend of mine can lay testament to this when she witnessed me falling into a short-term obsession with cookbooks after moving in with my boyfriend earlier this year, instead of my usual fare of shoes and handbags. It was a short-lived departure from Self to performing seal (perhaps that is a bit harsh but being captivated by another’s unconscious projection stung deep and I am still recovering!).

In my own journey, I am learning much about what contemporary femininity can be. Who am I as a woman? How does this feminine body inform and guide my spiritual growth this lifetime?

This naturally leads to an inquiry about how I work with my inner masculinity, that part of me that discerns, decides and acts, because the two develop like interlocking strands of DNA – they inform and guide each other into consciousness.

I believe that part of what this new era is about on our planet, for human beings at least, is a conscious experimentation of what masculine and feminine can evolve into.

We can see it acted out, experimented with in fashion and trends, in the world of art and music (that so often mirrors our deeper collective human growth) and even in changing body shapes and sizes. My partner and his mates are especially befuddled by some of the clothing trends for young men that are more androgynous than typically masculine. Given they couldn't fit much more than their forearm into a pair of skinny jeans, they often view such fashions as questionable and have openly wondered what kind of men seek out this way of expressing themselves.

Its part of our conscious human evolution to wonder what it is to be a conscious man or woman, part of our human spiritual journey to explore gender and let it grow up and evolve into an even more beautiful, co-operative and empowered expression through our lives on this planet.

To think about how a woman can work consciously with her own masculinity so she isn’t dependent on the men around her to be conscious or to ‘wear’ her inner masculinity for her, unless she consciously chooses to enter into such a dynamic, is also a part of this. Masculinity in women gives them choices, a voice, the ability to act on her inner truth, to say "yes" or "no" and to sort out healthy from toxic lifestyle, work and relationship choices, just to name a few examples.

In considering my own inner masculinity, I started with what I wanted from a man and then progressed into how I could work this into my own inner journey.

I thought about a story shared with me by a dynamic woman who runs her own radio show in the United States.

Her son’s girlfriend rang to talk to him on a day that he was having doubts about the relationship. He wanted his mother to take care of it and tell his girlfriend that he couldn’t talk to her.

His mum got angry. It was one of the best examples of healthy constructive anger that I have ever heard, she just handled it so consciously.

She told him that his girlfriend shared her body, her time, her energy and her emotions with him, and the way he treated her was representative of the way he treated women, and did he want to disrepect her, and his mother, and his sister and every other woman in his life?

Then she asked him a powerful question, she said ‘what kind of man do you want to be?’

This is the newly evolving feminine and masculine in action together. Its an expression of the kind of femininity that I believe we are growing into as men and women. This is the part of us that holds value, truth and a sense of outrage when something is not right. Its not about judging religion, or race or political persuasion, its about fundamental values that are universal – respect, love, kindness, treating others as you would be treated, and consideration.

Its also an example of the kind of masculinity that we are developing as human beings, still learning what it is to be conscious men and women. Its certainly the type of masculinity that I want in my life, within myself and in the men around me.

Its that sort of expression that is not about the boyish demand to have the feminine as a mother-figure, taking care of his every need. It’s a more mature masculine expression of tenderness and protection, of listening to the feminine, because he gets her worth, he knows that she is wise and he wants to be the best man he can be, the better man, the more evolved human being. So he can listen to her words and do what is difficult sometimes because it is the wiser, kinder, more conscious action to take.

It can be hard for men sometimes to grow up. Hell, it can be hard for all of us. But to see the feminine as a mother-substitute, as a provider of all needs, as an object, says something about the challenge of the role of mother for a woman and the challenge of moving from a boy to a man.

In actuality as a child, the mother surrenders her body and much of her identity to that of her child, because its needed for the child’s survival. Some women have the psychic energy to maintain other identity too and some do not have that energy or the wish to do so. Whatever the path is, the path is, and each of us has our own journey.

Where the difficulty seems to lay is in later years if that child doesn’t ever come to see mother as a person, but still as an object to serve his or her needs. That depends on the actions of the mother – does she assert her individuality from the child in a healthy way as he or she grows up without letting guilt or judgment (from herself or others) suffocate her emerging expanded identity – and on the child – can they mature with or without this healthy individuation from the parent? Ideally, these elements happen together, but sometimes they don’t and so the onus is left on one party.

For a man, this transition is what enables him to become a man in his relationship, rather than a boy-man that struggles to see his partner as she really is, finding it easier to just see her as his idealized wish to meet his needs and fantasies of what she ‘should’ be like. A man gets to have a real relationship with a real woman in real time, whereas a boy-man has a pseudo-relationship with a projected image onto the woman in his life, which is largely based in the past. The latter can be a sad, frustrating, unfulfilling and lonely place to be for all involved.

It’s the same for a woman with her own inner masculinity. Can we learn who we are, in body and soul, rather than who we think we should be as women? In contemporary human culture, the challenge for women is to heal how we relate to our own femininity - own bodies, our own values (which in truth are very often going to go against popular values and culture and be quite difficult to stand true to and live consciously at times), and to protect and nurture our bodies, our values, our truths, with love, respect and courage. Sometimes this is really hard. It means we have to be vocal. Creative. Trusting of ourselves. Many times its just plain difficult, just as it can be for a man to learn how to relate to a real woman in the here and now, and not get all tangled up in his own beliefs (and often unconscious opinions) about her body and soul.

If you have ever treated your body as a whipping post, used it in addiction to placate your pain or pushed it from pillar to post to just get stuff done and not really honoured its needs for health, wellbeing, gentleness or kindness, then you, like me, are on this journey. If you are attempting to tune in and listen to your body wisdom, then you are on this journey too, learning how to best have masculine and feminine energies relate to each other within you, just as you are attempting to create a healing, conscious relationship perhaps with those around you.

What I especially loved about the response of this beautiful woman to her son, was how instinctive, from deep within, her feminine "NO!" was, and her inner masculine gave it the words, that didn’t attempt to stifle it or silence her, but made a powerful expression of her truth. In that moment, she won. And so did her son. And his girlfriend. Her speaking her feminine truth gave her son a chance to be more than a boy. He had the opportunity to make the choice to be a man. That is what conscious feminine and masculine can do together - create truth and give choice. In this instance her son chose to benefit from that empowering combo. He made a choice and grew up a little more into living as a better man.