Sex, Truth, and Masculinity Part II

Read Part I here,

Before time and space there was Truth and Beauty.
Truth says, I love you so much. You are perfect just as you are. Don’t change a thing.
Beauty says I love you, too, and I’ll change if I want to.
But I love you just the way you are. Look at me, I never change.
That’s you. I’m me. I like new things.
But you don’t need them.
I determine what I need, not you.
But I am Truth. I know best.
And I am Beauty, so take a rest.
I am Truth. What I say goes.
And I am Beauty, thorn and rose.
Truth: You must obey the Truth.
Beauty: f*** off. You don’t own me.

She is dark, stormy and stubborn. She digs in and resists all forms of tyranny. No one is going to rule over her. Beauty goes where her heart leads, and where it is safe to be completely at ease. She follows what inspires and illuminates her, is scornful of mediocrity, and cannot tolerate boredom for long. She tries to hide these things to be polite but she is dark and she loves the light.

Since Truth could not control her he resorted to power over her. This was a betrayal of his love for her; she wanted Truth to lead, not control. Beauty took revenge; she withdrew and became ugly. Love was lost. Truth shriveled into a lie, seeking power and domination instead.

Truth could have left Beauty unmolested and trusted her wildness. But Truth feared the wild. Instead of facing his fear and powerlessness, and what he could not control, he also took revenge. He hired a bunch of metaphysical thugs and ecclesiastical goons to trample over Beauty and throw her into the dungeon of his Failure to Notice the Obvious: that Beauty is wild and free and will not tolerate control.

My Point

The masculine uses Truth to establish order and then rails against the chaos and darkness of the feminine. This is how we men trespass against women and burden them with our failure at protecting their freedom and the spiritual bankruptcy from which it comes. The Sun never says to the Earth, “Look at all that I have done for you! You owe me…” (Hafez). Men of Truth are obligated to not weaponize their power in control of others. Instead, we can support Beauty from the depth of our Love and Trust in Her.

Truth and Beauty are said to have originally lived together in innocence; they were deeply united but their love crashed on the rocky shores of complaint, the wrecking ball to intimacy, saying: “Why can’t you be like me?” If she were like you, you wouldn’t be attracted to her, and so there’s that. But the real problem is that men have believed lies about what constitutes masculinity and have resorted to brute force and control. When that doesn’t work, we just double-down on more force and control. A small crack in the marriage turns into a vast abyss.

The Abyss

If we don’t know who or what we are, it is impossible to know the other; we can only project our own ignorance onto them. Many relationships and marriages function in this way as a collusion between two people combining their broken parts which is different from a relationship between two, self-owned, whole beings.

I have believed many things that were not true; things that were told to me by sincere and decent people I trusted. Their intentions were pure and honorable but they did not know that what they told me was not true. They sought to ensure my well-being, explain the cause of my suffering and how to avoid it, because they loved me Their formula for happiness, though well-intended, failed. Why? It was nothing more than speculation all dressed up as scientific fact or divine revelation passed down to them by people who also believed what they were told.

One thing we can all count on is that whatever Reality is altogether, it stands on its own. It has no need of support or endorsement from religion, science, academia, philosophy, metaphysics, or any point of view whatsoever. I’m not talking about “my” reality or “yours” but Reality Itself, No one can own or control it but that doesn’t stop people from trying.

Unfortunately, everything in life can be weaponized. Treachery and betrayal is terrible, but even such nefarious activity is motivated by a desire to create a better world. After centuries of abuse, humanity appears now like a battered wife who agrees with her abusive husband only because she’s scared to death and doesn’t want to live on the street with her kids.

Getting to the Root

Infinite consciousness lies at the root of our human nature and all phenomena. This Living Awareness is not located in time or space. It’s not inside our head anymore than it is anywhere else. As an eternal source it is the only thing that is NOT a thing. Light, electricity, magnetism, matter, energy, space, time, the universe and humankind are its manifestations.

Failure to understand who and what we are, is a crime we commit against ourselves. We do so whenever we hand over our enormous, inherent power to those who do not care about us, and who use us for self-serving purposes. How did we get ourselves into this mess? By believing what people we trusted told us, who were both sincere and clueless, about the wondrous nature of Reality.

The Return of Moral Anger

Men are the entirely positive, masculine presence of love on Earth, the electric charge that lights up the world, the caretaker and gardener of humanity. We have an astronomical power that goes unacknowledged and gets wasted and trivialized. In the 21st century the message men suffer most is that we are toxic at the core, that our strength is a curse, and that we should be ashamed.

I agree that men can be toxic but not because we are men, but rather because we have not been willing to look beyond what we have been told. Anger is not toxic. Toxicity and violence come from ignorance and the misuse of the sacred power men possess. Control is toxic. Anger that is contaminated by the justification of violence is toxic.

Is anger at exploitation and abuse toxic? No. Such anger is an expression of love. It’s what we do with (and to) anger that makes it toxic. Healthy anger exists to clear the space of lies and mistreatment so that love, trust and respect can be restored. Anger that intends no harm, but only to clarify and protect, is what men are meant to do.

My Failed Marriage

In my failed marriage, I learned that love, unlike what the movies and hit songs said, is not enough. Love gets things started but can easily die without structure, a framework, to preserve it. My wife and I had neither: our relationship looked like a bar fight where the gloves had come off.

We actually did not have a relationship; it was our neurotic patterns and psychological survival mechanisms that did. We just stood around like deer in the headlights frozen by, and to, the dictates of our ego assumptions. We could not solve even the simplest of problems. Everything was a trigger to hidden landmines and entrenched habits that exploded at the most inopportune times

This type of anger, moral anger, has been hijacked and lumped into the same basket as violence, disrespect and mistreatment. Yet moral anger exists to prevent violence, disrespect and mistreatment. Pencils don’t cause misspelled words, spoons don’t make you fat, and anger is not toxic unless it is misused as a justification for emotional or physical violence.

The marriage suffered a choking death. I ended up spending a lot of time alone being anonymous, licking my wounds and trying to figure out what happened. I finally managed to figure it out. I understand my part, her part, and why we didn’t have a chance, given both of our unexamined assumptions.

We entered the marriage gleefully and naively, but neither of us had a clue about the nuclear holocaust we had entered. I finally discovered the victim/perpetrator collusion we played out; one built from the dramatization of rejection, blame and withdrawal. These each carried a highly-explosive charge that damaged everything within range.

One of my many contributions to our difficulties was that I took her issues and complaints so personally that everything ended up being about me. Her totally legitimate issues got buried in the avalanche of my self-possession and inability to leave her to her own point of view. I used a lot of alcohol to create “space” for myself but it only created distance between us. I left the relationship in 2016 and filed for divorce. I couldn’t accept it; I couldn’t change it, so I had no choice but to leave it.

Will Truth and Beauty Reunite?

Theologians threw us a bone with Mary the Mother of God but she never made it into the Pantheon of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. No, instead of our Mother taking her place as an equal to the Father, she became nothing more than a placeholder, a stand-in to keep the mob placated and distracted from the crimes committed against her – and everyone else.

With the Universal Mother exiled from the Godhead, men have suffered and stagnated. Instead, the masculine-only model implies divorced celestial parents who hate each other.

What’s left of the Father is so pathetic and poisonous it boggles the mind, since the Mother has effectively been raped and abandoned. Not only has the Mother been overlooked and devalued, she gets blamed for problems caused only by her refusal to participate in the crimes committed against her. Though ‘jailed’ under false charges against her will, she is then blamed and accused of not caring properly for her children.

A lopsided masculine catastrophe of epic proportions is the result. In the absence of a real Mother who complements her Husband as an equal, and is celebrated as the very Portal of Life itself, she gets reduced to refugee status begging on the street corner. It wouldn’t be so bad if Father made up for her absence by taking really good care of the family, like how a man does when he has lost his wife and wants the best for his children. But more often he psychologically beats the family into submission while taking no responsibility for his part of the problem.

Men degrade themselves and their families when they adopt this generational model that perpetuates the dark side of power. They unwittingly advance a military mindset of domination and ruin on whatever intimacy that could have been. Women hate this; they are starving for the recognition they deserve beyond what modern Feminism offers, and that only encourages them to behave more like the men they despise.

If this situation is ever going to change, we men will have to be the first ones to step-up. We need to spearhead the project of reuniting Truth and Beauty. But as men, we first must recognize the lies we’ve been told about ourselves and return to our true human nature of Love and Trust.

Men of honor, the Builders, Gardeners and Guardians of Benefit, can and will restore the Mother to her rightful place as an equal and bring the new Earth to fruition: a world that works for everyone.