Making Peace with Masculine

I have been wondering what to write about for March, and many topics have come in and out of my peripheral vision. Many have piqued my interest, and I hope to be able to write about many more of my thoughts in the future. For now, my time is my biggest commodity, and I have to choose what I believe is the most powerful and potent current topic of thought and then put it down on paper. So here is a story about the journey that I have been on in the last few weeks, healing my mind and my soul from my feelings about the masculine—which is quite fitting because March is named after Mars, and Mars carries all the masculine energy. We have just entered Aries, which also carries a whole lot more masculine energy. It is time to make peace and find balance on this.

Before I start my story, let me first clarify what is masculine and what is feminine, because I am not talking about “men and women.” Masculine and feminine are energies or qualities that exist in everyone. Every man also carries feminine energy, and every woman also carries masculine energy. Every person contains both the divine masculine and the divine feminine in equal amounts, and each of these energies manifests in different ways. In ancient Taoist philosophies, these energies are classified as Yin and Yang, and we are all familiar with the associated symbol. Feminine energy is “Yin,” and the masculine is “Yang.

Both of these different energies exist equally in each person, but when we do not realize it and make an effort to nurture both of these sides of ourselves, they can express themselves in an unbalanced way. When the masculine is nurtured too much and the feminine is forgotten, people become controlling, rigid, aggressive, or emotionally detached. When the feminine is nurtured and the masculine is forgotten, people become passive, overly emotional, indecisive, and people-pleasing. The key to your own personal growth and success is to learn how to nurture both sides so that they work together to accelerate your growth, healing, and overall life experience.

So, back to the story. I never even knew the extent of my discontent toward the masculine until I joined a workshop earlier this year. The workshop is entitled Embracing Sensuality and is offered by a wonderful space holder and healer from South Africa called Tamara, who was a facilitator last year at my Aya ceremony. I joined the workshop because I felt deeply compelled, even though I didn’t know what it was about or what we would do. Since my Aya ceremony last year, I had felt a disconnect from sensuality, finding it hard to find satisfaction or fulfillment from any touch, even my own. So, I dived into this online workshop blindly, hoping that it would help me reconnect with a side of myself that I felt disconnected from.

I had no idea what to expect or what I would experience, but during the first meeting, we were given homework that would be in process for the following weeks—and it has completely shifted my feelings and my experience with the masculine and with life in general.

The homework is to express your anger toward the masculine. Write down and express every time you have felt angry, neglected, mistreated, or misunderstood by a man in your life. Think about the first time you were not given the attention you craved from your father. Think about what that said to the little girl who felt that initial rejection. Think about every and any other time you experienced rejection. Think about every time you were spoken over and didn’t get heard by a man. Think about every time you were mistreated, mishandled, or misunderstood by a man—from your father to your brothers, to your uncles, to your friends, boyfriends, husbands, doctors, pastors, and any man who has ever crossed your path and left you feeling bad in any way. Think about it and then, most importantly—give it voice and let it out by writing it down.

That sounds like an incredibly brutal exercise to go through, and it is. It is not easy. It is really hard to dive deep into yourself and actually come face to face with so much rage and disappointment that you have experienced. And then to write it down and say it out loud and express that anger, is also really not easy. But something happens when you allow your emotions out. When you allow yourself to feel and experience your emotions, whatever they may be, something amazing happens. We overcome and heal from those experiences.

I am not going to deep-dive into my rage at specific men here, but I can show you a snippet of general rage against the masculine as an example of how it might look.

I really hate the way men are spineless, and the moment they cannot provide, they go into depression or run away from responsibility. I hate that men often shut down when they get criticized. I hate that many men feel entitled to take whatever they want and have an unhealthy sense of ownership or possession. I hate that many men have short fuses and explosive rages. I hate that many men have such a big but fragile ego and show so much insecurity when it gets challenged in any way. I hate that they rarely open up and communicate freely about what they think and feel. I hate that men don’t want to commit to something that could be really great if they just took the plunge and gave it a shot. I hate that they don’t pick up on cues and give attention when it is needed. I hate that they need to be told the same thing again and again and still don’t always hear. I hate that many men are unable to control their anger. I hate that men hate to feel painful emotions so much that they will avoid processing their trauma for years and years, escaping into games, alcohol, or drugs. I hate that men can be so stubborn. I hate that they are so rigid and stuck in their ways. I hate that they are not always open to change. I hate that they are stuck in their comfort zone and make excuses for why not to step out of that comfort zone and actually process and heal their shit… etc.

When we express all the anger that we have been keeping inside, we heal from the rejection that the little girl felt. We heal from being made to feel small and unheard. We heal from being made to believe that we were weak. We heal from being told that we can’t achieve, create, and provide. We heal from being made to feel less than. We heal from being made to feel like we were not enough. When you give voice to the anger that you feel towards men, you let go and you heal, not only your relationship with men in general, but also your relationship with your own masculine energy.

As Tamara explained it to us, we have to express all the anger that we can think of, and in the process, we are healing and empowering our own masculine energy to hold us and support us. When we let go of the things that have made us hate men, we can finally start understanding, appreciating, and nurturing the good aspects of the masculine. The things that we want and love about the masculine, like having drive, direction, taking action, being decisive, feeling held, supported, and protected.

If we cannot overcome our anger at men and the masculine, then we cannot embrace and love our own masculine energy. If we don’t nurture and embrace our own masculine energy, then we move around and around in cycles of avoiding life, procrastinating, stagnating, people-pleasing, stuck in our emotions, and unable to find the drive to move forward to create the life that we dream of.

It is so important to remember that the masculine lives within us, and not just outside us in the people that have disappointed and mistreated us. So when we are angry at them, we are also essentially angry at ourselves. If you live life with hatred and anger towards yourself in any way, it damages your ability to function to your maximum capacity. Imagine the child that doesn’t get much love and constantly gets told that they are shit and not good enough – it creates permanent damage for the long term. In the same way, when you sit with hatred and anger at certain aspects of the masculine or the feminine or yourself, you are creating seriously deep damage in your body and your mind – not just emotionally but physically as well. I am sure you are all familiar with the class experiment where the children tell one plant all their good thoughts and the other plant all their bad thoughts, and the plant with the good thoughts grows tall and thrives, whilst the plant with the bad thoughts hardly grows at all and eventually gets sick and dies.

That brings me to the next part of the workshop homework. After expressing and releasing all that rage and anger, it is important to forgive. Sit in front of a mirror and forgive the hurt feelings, the abandonment, the pain, the rejection, and everything else caused by all the other men that you have experienced. Once you have forgiven them, you need to forgive yourself, because what you experience from them is also a reflection of what you experience from yourself. Forgive yourself for all the times that you didn’t show up in your life in the way that you wanted. Forgive your masculine energy for all the times it has let you down, behaved selfishly, and disappointed you. All the times it was too harsh or rigid, all the times it projected itself in a negative way onto others. I actually started this self-forgiveness journey last year, before I even knew that it would be homework for this workshop. It is a very powerful practice, and I can encourage everyone to start this journey. You don’t need a workshop, you just need 2 minutes a day and to create a little habit to forgive yourself aloud for something every day.

You can start like this: I forgive myself for not always believing in myself. I forgive myself for not always showing up in a way that makes me proud. I forgive myself for not feeling worthy of achieving my dreams. I forgive myself for having unnecessary fights and arguments with people that I love. I forgive myself for self-criticism. I forgive myself for speaking badly about my body, my thoughts, and my actions. I forgive myself for building walls to hide behind because I don’t want to get hurt. I forgive myself for making excuses for my bad habits. I forgive myself for shutting people out. I forgive myself for suppressing my emotions. I forgive myself for running away or quitting when things get hard. I forgive myself for not always being consistent. I forgive myself for sometimes insisting that I am right, when I know that I don’t know everything and I don’t always know best... etc.

Forgiving the masculine within and without has somehow set me free. It has set me free from being trapped in the same cycles. It has set me free from my stagnation and procrastination. It has set me free from holding myself back and not speaking my truth in case I step on some toes. It has set me free from being stuck in the little maiden mentality, and I can feel myself growing and evolving into the matriarch that I am destined to be.

One of the most noteworthy changes I can feel within myself is the fact that I am resonating at a different and much higher frequency. Changing the frequency which I put out has drastically changed what resonates with me and what I draw in toward myself and my life. Within a few weeks of this process, I met someone who is 100% different from any other partner I have ever been with. Someone who is motivated, driven, hard-working, successful, and on his own path to understanding and healing himself. It has set me free from falling for the same type of people who do not actually want to grow or find balance within their own lives.

The last part of the homework is to breathe and practice gratitude. This is already a regular part of my life. My son and I practice giving gratitude for what we have every morning. When you recognize all the blessings in your life, you draw them in closer and draw even more blessings toward you. If you do not give recognition to the things you have, achieve, and create, they could disappear before you even realize.

I don’t know why some people struggle so much with showing gratitude... I find it so easy. Start small and give gratitude for the senses - I am grateful that I can see the butterflies and the bees, I am grateful that I can feel the breeze on my skin, I am grateful that I can hear the birds sing, I am grateful that I can smell the rain in the air, I am grateful that I can taste my warm cup of tea… Remember that not everyone is blessed enough to have these things, so be grateful for your senses that work…

You can expand the gratitude into your body – I am grateful that my toes help me balance, my feet help me walk through life, and my legs help me to stand tall and dance in the rain. I am grateful that my muscles can grow and move my body around. I am grateful that my skeleton and my bones are strong and give my body structural integrity. I am grateful that my organs function well. I am grateful that my ovaries produce hormones and release eggs every month, my liver and kidneys clean and filter my blood, my digestive system breaks down my food and absorbs nutrients to build new strong cells, my lungs breathe in oxygen, and my heart and blood help carry it to everywhere it is needed. I am grateful that my nervous system helps me to feel pain and helps send messages from my body to my brain.

Maybe this kind of physical gratitude seems silly, but I think it is so valuable and important to recognize everything that we have, that is functioning well, because not everyone has that, and every speck of your functioning body really is a blessing. We never say thank you to our teeth for not hurting, and most of the time, they are doing a really great job of chewing your food. Yet, we only notice them when they start to hurt as a result of our own neglect, and then we are angry about it. How silly is that?

Then, you can expand your gratitude outwards. I am grateful that I was born in an empty country, during a time of peace. I am grateful that I was blessed to be born to a loving and supportive family. I am grateful that I was born privileged, and I have always had enough food to eat, a warm bed to sleep in, and a roof over my head. I am grateful that I have a hardworking father who provides and cares for us and sets a stellar example of what it takes to build yourself up from nothing. I am grateful for all the pets I have been blessed to love and continue to love now. I am grateful that I was able to go to a great school. I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to study after school. I am grateful that I am constantly growing emotionally and spiritually. I am grateful to have amazing family, friends, and students that grow with me. I am grateful for my incredible son, who is kind and sincere. I am grateful that I can work and that I am creating many opportunities for myself to do so. I am grateful for this journey and for my expansion… Etc.

I don’t know who among you read The Secret when it was popular so many years ago, or listened to Abraham Hicks, but some of the ideas that get covered seem so completely understandable and rational to me on a logical, scientific level. Expressing gratitude is a repeated theme. Like attracts like… I spoke about how frequency amplifies when it meets a similar frequency in my post about random acts of kindness. This is science, it is not just airy-fairy, floaty thoughts that get spewed by the spiritual community. If a frequency meets the same frequency, it becomes amplified.
If you say, “I wish I had more money” or “I don’t have enough money,” you are pushing out a frequency of lack and need. If you say, “I am grateful for every penny that I have,” you are shifting that frequency to a space of having and abundance. In the same way, if we sit with anger and rage at everything we hate about the masculine, which is also essentially things that we are hating and raging at about ourselves, we attract more of that into our lives and into our experience. If we can let it go and focus on all the good things instead, then we will attract more of those good qualities into our experience and in the men that we meet.

With that thought, let's give gratitude to the divine masculine and everything good about it. I am grateful for the strength and stability that the masculine provides. I am grateful that the masculine is so grounded and composed and can stay calm even in difficult and emotional situations. I am grateful for the focus and direction, and when it knows where it is going, it moves there by taking decisive action. I am grateful for the logic and strategic thinking. I am grateful that the masculine carries courage and faces fears without worrying about outcomes. I am grateful for the consistency, dependability, and protection provided by the well-balanced masculine. I am so grateful that the masculine stands up for what it believes in and stands up for those in need. I am grateful that the masculine has motivation and ambition and strives to materialize ideas and get things done. I am grateful that the masculine uses structure and routine to take action and create change through consistency. I am grateful that the masculine makes clear decisions and finds solutions instead of dwelling on problems. I am grateful that the masculine can be loyal, standing by and protecting those they love. I am grateful that the masculine can be honest and direct. I am incredibly grateful that the masculine provides a clear framework and structure for pursuing growth and success.

There needs to be balance and both the masculine and the feminine, the yin and the yang are equally important, and require each other for optimal balance and life success. There is a beautiful analogy that I remember, shared a long time ago by another beautiful dancing Soul, Nikita Winkler. I can’t remember her exact words but it was about the feminine being liquid. Fluid, adaptable and ever changing, it can be both the vicious storm or the gentle stream. Water goes with the flow and as we know, she takes the shape of whatever contains her.
The masculine is the container. It is structured, stable and gives support and direction as it protects the water. Without the container, the water is just an aimless puddle, and without the water, the container is just empty and purposeless.
When they come together the container doesn’t control the water, it simply provides a safe space within which the water can move and create. The water softens and fills the container completely, giving it purpose and meaning, a reason to exist.

And with all of that, I make peace with the masculine. As I embrace the balance between the masculine and feminine within me, I open myself to new possibilities and growth. May we all find the courage to honor both energies, allowing them to coexist harmoniously and lead us to a life full of purpose, peace, and collective healing. With this balance, may we create a world where both the container and the water are revered, and where we move forward together. May we be guided and led by the Yang as we flow and sway within the Yin. May the Matriarchy and the Patriarchy come together for the greater good of humanity, and work together to bring balance to Earth.

And so it is - Aho