Enightenment Ain't Cheap: How Do We Support Our Partners' Transformation?

A little over a year ago, the most amazing woman I'd ever met came into my life. I'd always liked strong women, but she was clearly the strongest woman I'd ever seen: powerful, capable, courageous, loving, and with fully embodied feminine and masculine aspects. Today she is my Beloved, and we're on the way to building our life and future together.

I believe that the reason this woman came into my life and that I was able to step up to her and her power, is because a few years ago I decided I had to be the kind of man that a woman like this would be attracted to. I had to fully step into my own power, and that meant doing my own work, not just sitting by and letting life take me, but by me taking charge of my life and my own embodied masculine. When both of us do our own work, it helps us support each other in the directions that most serve our growth in love, relationship and happiness.

Your woman is going through some inevitable changes in her life. She chose you and she wants you to join her in this growth and she wants your support and your strength. It's the greatest gift you can give her.

I wrote this a few days ago at Anyaa's request. She's writing an article on how the masculine can support their partners as they go through the Shamanic Priestess Process she facilitates for women all over the world. She's asked men who have successfully supported their women through this transformative process to support other men who are now going through what they went through with a couple of written paragraphs she can share.

I have a T-Shirt on the i-Boutique that says "Enlightenment ain't cheap." It's a dual meaning: Yes, we pay a lot of money to attend workshops, etc., but we also pay with our relationships, our jobs, and our blood, sweat, and tears. Many men are frightened that their relationship with their woman is going to change as a result of this process, and it is, but I refer you back to my quote at the top.

One of the responses she got was from a man who objects to the duality of masculine and feminine approaches to conscious evolution, and I understand that once one has attained the ability to rest in the non-dual, that the masculine and feminine dissolve away into one-ness. People can even attain the non-dual in altered states (temporary) before they reach the stage (access at will).

But until we get past the states and into the stage structures, there is a natural hierarchy that must be met (don't confuse natural hierarchies with dominator hierarchies), and one of those is going through and healing our masculine and feminine selves. Women have had thousands of years of domination by the masculine that they generally have to work through before they're able to begin to step into their true power, and this work, at this level, cannot be taught by men, any more than a men's group can be led by a woman.

So to get to the later state-stage structures, especially the non-dual, it's critical that the masculine and feminine work be completed, or we bring the ego and shadow aspects of those qualities with us, to trick us, harass us, and fool us into thinking we've made it when we really haven't.

So for the men who fear the work their woman is doing, do your own work and step up to who she's becoming, or at least support her....because she's becoming....with or without you.

And for those who think we can get to enlightenment in a single, sudden gift of a leap without doing the work (and it does happen but rarely), for most of us, there are many. many paths to the non-dual, and denial of those different paths is just "enlightened" fundamentalism.

A "What is Enlightenment" Catastrophe

In the latest issue of "What is Enlightenment," Andrew Cohen and Ken talk about enlightenment for women and how they have to get past and give up their sexual (feminine) power in order to become enlightened.

Andrew's approach is a total disaster, replete with an unbelievable reductionist view and total confusion and lack of understanding in the difference between "woman" and "the Feminine," and disappointingly, Ken does not correct him, but merely places what Andrew is saying into an integral context (to his credit, he does this very well).

Andrew totally fails to recognize any understanding that there might be different approaches to enlightenment. Before you protest, he's basically saying that the only approach is the masculine, that a feminine approach doesn't work, and that women have to drop the feminine in order to become enlightened. He does not ask that men drop the masculine to do the same.

He also claims to have been working on breaking through with this approach for 12 years and that he has finally cracked the code. Could that have anything to do with the fact that he's a man? Perhaps not in every case, but in this one, my answer is a definite "yes."

Women have been successfully doing this work for over thirty years. Too bad Andrew's ego wouldn't allow him to work with some of them as a student, instead of doing a spiritual bypasss himself, having his women students do the same, not by integrating the feminine, but by transcending and excluding it. This is like "enlightened" fundamantalism.

I'm talking to a lot of conscious women who are outraged by Andrew's audacity and I share that outrage. What a shame!

See my partner Anyaa McAndrew's blog on the same subject.

Sex. Passion, and Enlightenment: The Infomercial

There were some noticeably nervous men walking in the door at the beginning of the the free all day Warrior Sage workshop yesterday: many they had been dragged, threatened, cajoled, or sweet-talked into attending something they might not ordinarily and willingly attended without the threat or no sex for a year or impending alimony and child support payments.

And although I could almost hear them thinking, "WTF am I doing here?", almost all of them were singing a different tune at the end of the day.

But before I get into what I really liked about this workshop. let me touch on what I didn't. As I expressed in my previous entry, I was turned off by what I felt was a pretty tasteless web presentation that could have been geared to hawking Viagra tablets. The presentation was similar in that I couldn't get away from the sense that I was sitting in infomercial hell (If you act now, that price is only....).

The second thing was that Satyen Raja, the man I went to see, was no where to be seen. In fairness, the infomercials never said he would be, but they sure implied it! The workshop was facilitated by Gary and Deborah, a charming couple with lots of presence and energy, but I felt let down by not seeing Raja.

Now to the good stuff. The best part of the day was when some actual work began. The men and women were separated and off to do their own work. When the men were in their "cave" (actually a medium sized hotel meeting room with no chairs), Gary's tone noticeably shifted to a hyper-masculine mode. After talking a bit, Gary had us do a couple of exercises that helped the men both get in touch with their softer sides toward other men, and to define and challenge each other's purpose, with other's giving feedback. Pretty powerful stuff, designed to allow us to take ourselves off the relativistic cross the we've allowed ourselves to bear, through culture and our own confusion about what it means to be a 3rd stage man.

The women had been doing their own work, and when we came back together in a set up procession, the polarity between the men and women was incredibly high. The men were stronger, more capable of meeting these women on their own terms. empty, ready to be filled, and the women, more juicy and full than when we had left, and both, literally, melted into each others masculine and feminine with an almost indescribable richness. This is really good stuff!

My friend Brian, who also attended and is a member of SeattleIntegral's Core Group, and I talked later about how important we thought a men's group would be for SeattleIntegral. Warrior Sage has a local men's group, but you have to go through their actual 3-day workshop before you can join it, and we want to offer this work to the men of SI as soon as possible. 3rd stage/second tier men need to have other men meeting them, challenging them in a loving manner, and holding each other accountable.

An example of how you can lovingly hold your male friend accountable: "Dude, I love you you, but you need to get your ass off the couch and into the gym...."

You could never say that to your woman, but you could say, "God, it really turns me on when you come back from the gym and you're just glowing...."

So to all my men friends, in and out of SeattleIntegral, in spite of a pretty cheesy marketing program (which apparently works because there were over a hundred people there): "Dudes....get your ass to a Warrior Sage workshop and learn how to fully meet your woman or to call that woman into your life and stop screwing around in the dark around your relationships."

Besides.......there are some really juicy women there!

And to my female friends, if you're single, these guys that attend are doing the work...and if you're already in relationship, this will greatly improve that relationship.

Two thumbs up to Warrior Sage for doing great and really important work.