BraveHeart article written by Michael - October 2013
BraveHeart
My name is Michael, of the Rice Family - born in Ireland just before the Summer Solstice 1967, or so I have been told. I am a man, but once I go a little deeper I become aware that I am also a collection of assumptions, agreements and memories that are made manifest in an ever-changing physical body which projects and orbits a soul on a journey of self-exploration. My name, along with all the definitions, descriptions and dramas that have become anchored to it, has becoming increasingly open to the light of truth; which has the effect of illuminating and exposing any patterns, characteristics or behaviours that no longer serve my own spiritual evolution.
This is usually not an easy process, as such stories of self have a tendency to become quite entrenched in our lives, reinforced in all of our living structures, beliefs and relationship models. Letting go of these stories can oftentimes be traumatic, shocking and destructive; but it can also reveal our hidden potentials as we respond to the challenges (and opportunities) that arise once we begin to realise who we really are and how we can best serve all Life.
Although this general process of Becoming is common to all life-forms, each being expresses it uniquely, in their own way and in their own time - according to a larger pattern. And as this larger pattern reveals itself in our everyday experiences we can see that it is not entirely random; there is an order to it, based in part on a set of cosmic 'recommendations and guidelines', that provide some flow-chart to how life unfolds and creates. Once we develop even a basic understanding of the principles which underpin these creative movements we can really begin to dance with the mind and the heart, generating a flow of conscious focus and feeling, which allows us to be carried on the winds and wings of Love.
Personally I cannot say when I first became conscious of and responsible for my own evolution; but I can say that the last few years have accelerated the process to a level that I quite literally could not have imagined before. In these few short years I have lived and let go a lifetime of accumulated ideas about who I am and why I am here. I have felt completely lost and completely aligned, I have felt totally alone, and totally connected. I have closed some doors and opened others, and I have built bridges and watched them burn behind me. It continues to be a full spectrum learning experience providing ample opportunity to develop my ability to direct myself within this flow, so that I become all that I am meant to become. As my friend said to me - "Love comes knocking on your door, like the black hand of death, and once you open the door, you cannot close it again". All that remains is to welcome Love into your home and your heart, and celebrate the joy and sometimes chaotic but always creative energy that it brings. It is a huge learning, and as with anything worth learning, we must begin with the basics.
There is a saying - 'you teach what you most wish to learn', and this has been my primary motivation over the years as I have taught workshops and seminars in many countries. The topics and subjects of these presentations included such areas of study and application as BioArchitecture, Karate, Feng Shui, Sacred Geometry and more. All different disciplines in terms of expression but all sharing a common root source; the desire to learn how to create harmony and balance in our homes, our hearts, our bodies and our minds, using the pure principles that underpin the power and creative processes of all living systems. It is with and within this source that I wish to align.
For example, in my seminars on Sacred Geometry, we explore how everything in existence arises through the interplay of energy and form. We see how the singular point is full of potential to create and express, but it must MOVE in order to do so, and in so doing it creates and gives birth to a second point, or Polarity. From this 'point' onwards all form emerges in a harmonic cascade of profound beauty and simplicity. Taoists referred to this original point as the Nature of Being, the Way or the Tao. This Way has a singular purpose - to explore and express all potential. And as Sacred Geometry demonstrates, in order to explore it must move, and when it moves it creates form. So all that we see, feel, think, do and create comes about from the living intercourse between two opposing dynamics or forces.
In the Taoist tradition these forces are called Yin / Yang. In other more modern contexts they are described as Positive / Negative or Expanding / Contracting. Others systems of belief refer to them as Light / Dark, while others feel more comfortable seeing these forces as representations of the Masculine and Feminine Essences. Regardless of what labels we give them, these forces are always transforming themselves into the other; ever dancing and playing together in an inconceivably complex multi-dimensional symphony of energy and information. These forces or essences provide the power to generate movement and change, effectively turning the primary substrate of pure being or unchanging consciousness into the ever changing field of all that exists. Heavy stuff!
But before we jump too fast ahead of ourselves, it may be time to pause, breathe and remember that we are living in a truly amazing time; and in truth we are very lucky to be here together on this beautiful planet. But having said that, it must also be said and acknowledged that it is not an easy time for most of us, at a practical, human, 'real-life' level. All around us fundamental changes are happening at what seems to be a break neck speed. The rate of this speed appears to be increasing or accelerating noticeably each day. If we are honest with ourselves and each other, we may admit that we no longer know anything with any degree of certainty. Global, local and personal transformations and evolutions appear to be occurring and impacting all aspects of our lives. What we believed and acted upon yesterday no longer works today, and many of us live in constant fear of what tomorrow will bring. It should come as no surprise that we can become somewhat lost in all of this, individually and collectively, with the result that many of us are seeking frantically to find and establish any stability and shelter in this storm of change. As such we are not always aware of the potential of this time, or the energy it represents, or how to use this time and power constructively and creatively.
If you are reading this now, it is safe to say that you successfully survived the end of the world in December 2012. Well done. But now what? Do we stumble forward waiting for the next apocalypse / group belief and do our best to prepare, following someone who claims to know the 'truth'? Or do we change our whole way of seeing the world and our role within it, so that we can bring back the power that we have chained in the past, and projected fearfully into the future - and begin using it in the Now?
We need to make some more conscious decisions, because Love is the only reality, and everything else is an illusion. All of creation exists and continues to create from and with Love. Despite evidence to the contrary, Love is the beginning and end of all being, all knowing.. and all experience. It is the substrate of existence and the movement of all life. Everything else is just a fragment of our imagination, filtered through our hearts and minds, presenting as navigation to our soul. In each moment we are either opening to love, or refusing to. This sounds good, but how can we achieve this practically, and in the areas of our lives that represent our primary sources of both stress and happiness - our relationships.
We have heard a lot about how this new time is about the rise again of the Divine Feminine, which promises to bring forth a new consciousness on the planet; a massive paradigm shift that will usher in a new world based on beauty, harmony and openness. The Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine are aspects of each and every one of us, and neither is limited to expressing only in women or men respectively. However, most women are more identified with the Divine Feminine energy, and can feel it and open to it more than most men. There is a lot of evidence to support this, and all over the world hundreds of thousands of amazing women are waking up, rising up and re-discovering their Goddess power, their innate beauty and their holistic, life-supporting visions. These women are opening their hearts, connecting to the Earth, and daring to imagine (and demanding) a world where Love is the primary motivator; the beginning and end of each thought, word and action.
In every country, women are coming together to share and support each other in ways that this Planet has not seen for thousands of years. It is time. For example, in Moravia, South Eastern Czech Republic, there is a beautiful and truly remarkable woman, called Karaimi, who offers a number of very powerful seminar experiences just for women. Called 'The Grail', these events provide the women many diverse opportunities to go deep into themselves, each other and the living planet, so that they can remember who they are - Creators, Warriors, Goddesses, Lovers and more. The energy of the Divine Feminine surges through these women and flows out into their lives, changing and transforming everything in its path. It is a remarkable energy and I can say with complete honesty that I am fully committed to its emergence. It is the Key to a world that we all want our children to call home.
But in order to activate fully and express completely, the Divine Feminine needs its counterpart, the Divine Masculine; to support it, guide it and fight for it. And this is where and when the men are being given the opportunity to step up and assume this role and the responsibilities and challenges that come with it. It is time for us men to dare to open to this force and rise up in full service. But for many of us men, this time and the energy it is opening, is deeply confusing and challenging, on so many levels. We have been conditioned for millennia into believing and investing in systems of government, societal structures and destructive planetary mismanagement that represents all that is negative about the masculine energy. We look around and we can see and feel the changes in our women and in our world, and we are at a loss to know how best to serve them, or serve the world. It is as if everything we thought was solid and secure is falling away or being taken away from us, leaving us adrift in a sea of uncertainty and self doubt. We are losing the power to move, create or respond appropriately. When we do see some island in this dark sea and step (crawl or get dragged) up onto this new land, it remains unfamiliar and foreign to us. So what can we do? What and how can we learn to navigate our way into the future with power and integrity, and be part of the Great Unfolding in full partnership with our women?
In an attempt to explore and provide some answers to these questions I am reminded of the story of a very successful book that was conceived and produced in Britain some years ago, which apparently sold over a million copies. It was titled something like - 'What Men Understand about Women' and consisted of over 150 pages, all of them completely blank! - not a single word written within its covers. All over the country women bought this joke book as a loaded 'gift' for the men in their lives. The message was obvious and not so subtle - when it comes to understanding women, we men are simply 'blank'. Indeed, it is generally believed and accepted as fact that, as a sub-species, we men are simply not equipped to ever fully understand the woman; apparently because we lack the necessary awareness, sensitivity and empathy. This may or may not be true, but it should not deter us from learning as much as we can, about ourselves and about our women.
However, such a belief has been centuries in the making, and fuels the division between the sexes that expresses at every level of society, oftentimes in ways that are very damaging. Young people all over the world inherit these beliefs, assumptions and suppositions and go on to form and develop relationships that are based on incomplete and inconsistent information, which in turn keeps the potentially destructive cycle turning for yet another generation. The result is often deep unhappiness and fundamental dissatisfaction becoming the accepted norm. Much of the time, we seek to only survive in our relationships, trying to negotiate our way without a map or sense of direction. We are crippled with fear about being alone, so we settle for much less than we deserve. We will hurt ourselves rather than risk walking away from an relationship that does not serve our heart. Occasionally, we seem to be getting something right, only to have it change utterly a moment later. And a lot of the time it seems that LOVE is either missing, or off having a cup of tea somewhere else with someone else.
Many books have been written that seek to illuminate this fundamental dilemma, by presenting elaborate constructions and descriptions of the differing characteristics and tendencies of the man and woman, and what planet they may come from. However, in many instances, these tomes of wisdom fall short of giving us a way to practically evolve our understanding to the point that a whole new reality can become manifest - a world where the evolved man and evolved woman can come together and co-create new relationship models based on love, awareness and freedom.
But every now and then someone comes along who offers a fresh perspective and presents it not as fact, but as an art; and one that can be learned and applied to create more beauty and truth in our lives. One such man is American teacher and author, David Deida. He has written a number of wonderful books about relationships and sex, each of them containing a wealth of insight and inspiration which can serve to greatly improve our existing relationships, or help us to attract new relationships that feed our soul rather than drain our energy. His most well know work is called The Way of the Superior Man, and when I read it, and began to integrate this information into my life, everything changed for me.
He has a unique, coherent and flexible definition of the Masculine and Feminine, which underpins all of his teachings and philosophies. Above all, he is a practical and very experienced teacher, who wishes to educate people so that they may learn to dance with these fundamental polarised forces in order to consciously create more love and happiness in each moment.
So to paraphrase Deida; the way of the Superior Man is about giving who he is to the world. It is about giving himself more and more deeply to the world, to his woman, his family and to everyone. In order to do this we men need to grow, and this growth goes through three basic stages. The first stage is when we want to grow for our own sake, so for example, a man in this stage might feel a desire to become financially independent, and make some money for himself. Over time this man may grow to what Deida calls the second stage, which is when this man wants to share and cooperate with other people. So the man not only wishes to make money for himself, but also for his family, his community and to generally better the world.
Now in Deida's understanding, the third stage is about realising that everything is only CHANGE, and change means death. So the beginning of the way of the Superior Man means that the man must come to terms with not only his own death, but the death of everything he can build, create and make. So in the third stage of a man's life, when we are here to give, we are coming from the depths of our heart, feeling our deepest purpose, offering our love outward and we realise that nobody may accept what we have to give. Our art that we create may not be received, our love that we have to give may not be received. A Superior Man does not stop giving merely because he is not received. He may never be acknowledged, he may never receive what he feels he deserves, but he BECOMES the Giving. He lives as a gift. But to do so he needs to feel deeply within himself and deeply into the world AT THE SAME TIME. So Deida believes that the Superior Man feels deeply in himself 'who am I?' - 'who am I most deeply?' Asking this question is the beginning of relaxing as the Superior Man.
Such a man can still feel that there is a witnessing behind it all, an unchanging sense of self, amidst constant change, and this essence is what Deida calls the Masculine. It is the unmoving consciousness that has no specific form, that which is eternal, and the more that a man (or woman) is identified with that, the more such a person is in their masculine. The masculine seeks to be happy through freedom; from worry, constraint, limit, control or chaos. In contrast, the more a man or woman is identified with that which changes; their minds, bodies, relationships, the world etc., then the more such a person is identified with the Feminine.
In his context, the Feminine is everything that moves; everything one can see, hear, smell, taste or feel. The motion of the mind is a pure feminine dance, as is the beating of the heart, and the rotation of the planet beneath our feet. The feminine is activated and enlivened by life force, and is seeking happiness through more love, more energy, movement and activity. It is worth reminding ourselves here that everybody has both essences within them, but most people would predominately identify with one energy / essence more than the other. It is a vast subject of study, as it literally includes all that was, is, or ever could be. But put simply, the Masculine and Feminine dance together in a passionate play, creating all that we are and ever could experience. The arc of energy between these two forces drives us, inspires us, challenges us and attracts us. It motivates us on every level and is the substrate of our whole existence. Understanding it, even at a basic level, could be considered vital information for everyone, especially our young people.
So when I was introduced to this information, I could see and feel how easily it fit into the understanding I had developed through my other methods, teachings and personal experiences. I realised that once more the best way for me to integrate this information knowledge into my own process of evolution and expression, was to stand up and teach it. For me, stepping into the role of teacher makes me a much better student, because when I am up front and centre, and need to present something clearly, or answer a question - there is nowhere to hide.
So I moved towards this primarily for myself, but of course I also wanted to provide an opportunity for men to share, learn and celebrate with me, and I felt that if I do my job right then these men can go forth and support their women to create the world of beauty that we are all seeking to manifest.
But before I felt ready to assume this role of leading men fully in an intensive seminar environment, I needed to make sure that what I was presenting made sense, philosophically and practically. I also needed to make sure that I was living or trying to live the truth of what I was seeking to learn in my own life. The whole process must be authentic and true, or at least moving towards this a little more each day. So I began to give three-hour evening talks every few weeks, in many venues in different countries to quite diverse audiences. I felt it was important to test my teaching for consistency and universality, asking the same questions to people from different backgrounds and developing a better understanding of what it was I wished to discover and offer.
I would typically begin the talk by describing and graphically demonstrating the fundamental principles of Sacred Geometry that I mentioned above, then I would develop this flow to present the interplay of the two primary polar forces at work in our world. From there I would open the talk to outline the masculine and feminine essences at play in each of us, and then get specific to how these essences present in our behaviours and relationships.
Always at this stage, when I mention the magic word - 'relationship', people became even more interested, as most people invest their relationships with huge significance. How those connections to others are structured and express can, in any moment, be a source of profound delight and happiness or deep stress and discord.
There would come a point in my talk where I would ask the men in the audience to stay quiet, and then I would invite all the women to give me some single words that would describe their perfect man, their perfect 'Mr. Right'. These words needed to describe the character attributes of their ideal intimate partner; someone who they could trust fully and open their bodies, minds and hearts to. The only stipulation was that all of the women in the room needed to agree upon the words. For example, one woman's idea of the perfect man for her might be the archetypal 'tall, dark and handsome' complete with long black hair and a pointy goatee! Another woman might prefer a man that could pass for a bewildered Hobbit on the set of Lord of the Rings. So they must be in agreement, and choose or reject the words accordingly.
The energy in the room would always become more animated at this point, as their imaginations were fully operational, their hearts were opening and their collective desire to generate feeling and movement/ discussion in the space became active and alive.
The words were offered one by one, and the women quickly worked together to decide if what was being suggested was in fact an innate property of their ideal man, their perfect intimate partner, shared by them all. I would write the agreed words down on the white board until we had six words, and to my continued amazement and delight, in every country and in every talk the women proposed and agreed upon the SAME six words! This was truly amazing, and indicated to me that what I was opening to was indeed something approaching an 'operating system' for relationships, or at the very least a pallet of colours from which each of us can practice and create art in all of our relationships, but especially our most precious and intimate ones.
So for the men in the room, they were never more attentive, listening to every word that apparently indicated what they should be or must become if they wanted to be fully loved and desired by their woman. With each characteristic you could see and feel each man there silently gauging whether or not they could claim to be such a man. It was very playful, but process also pointed to a fundamental drive in all of us, fuelled by the power of polarity, being the arc of energy and attraction between two opposites.
So what were these six words? I am sure you would like to know! They arose in no particular hierarchy, and for the most part the women agreed that the words were all equally important. The first word that found agreement in the group was POWER. Women all said that they wanted their man to have the attribute of 'power', in every imaginable way. They wanted a man who could generate, display and utilise this power physically, emotionally and practically. This was big for them, it was primary. For some women the power could be expressing as a knowing silence, for others it needed to be a man with more charismatic power, that was felt by everyone when he entered the room.
The second word that was offered and agreed upon was PRESENCE. Women clearly stated that they all wanted to feel that when they were with their man he was giving them his full attention, at the level of mind, heart and body. She could never be fully content to have her man 'half listen' to her when she wished to share the details of her day with him, or how she felt about something or describing something that she needs. His monosyllabic grunts of dismissal as he watched sport on television, or scrolled through Facebook, or texted someone while claiming to be listening fully to her. She needed and wanted a man who could give her the gift of his full presence. This presence could be with her or with his children, his work colleagues or even with a complete stranger. It could also take the form of an almost shamanic stalking awareness like a tracker or hunter. Generally, as a primary attribute of her perfect man, she wanted to know her man had the ability to focus and apply, with presence.
The third word was PASSION. This created a lot of laughter usually, as the women began to imagine how their man could express this passion. They all agreed that they wanted their chosen intimate partner to be passionate in how he made love; she wanted to feel the full extent of his desire for her, through his eyes, his body and his actions. She wanted to be able to see his passion in the way that he looked at her, moved towards her, took her in his arms, kissed her and made love to her. She wanted to have his passion fuelled by his power, and enhanced by his presence. She also wanted to be able to witness and experience his passion for life in general, and for his children, and for issues that were important to him and to her. She wanted to know that he could feel and use his passion to get things done, to follow his path and keep going no matter what happened.
The fourth word was INTELLIGENCE. The women were very sure that they wanted a man who knew his mind and how to use it. They wanted to be able to relax into any moment with him knowing that he could reason, plan and strategise his way out of trouble and into safety. She also wanted him to be interesting, to be creative and to use his intelligence to stimulate and inspire, rather than manipulate or control. They wanted a man who could manifest her vision using the power of his intelligence. She also wanted to feel and know that her man was equally intelligent with his heart. This was a big aspect of what they meant with this word.
The fifth word was HUMOUR. The humour they described was not the self-effacing, joke-orientated shield that many men use as a defence against showing their true emotions, or making someone else feel bad. The humour they wanted in their man was expressed as a light-heartedness that meant that he did not take himself too seriously. They wanted a man who might collapse in a moment of weakness or attack, but would stand up immediately, dust himself off and laugh at his own mistake, but still move on and keep going. The humour needed to be rooted in a deep knowing that everything is always changing and ultimately leads to death. Far from nihilistic, this humour is a lubricant for any stresses that might arise, and a powerful remedy for any mistake he might make.
The last word that was suggested and received unanimous agreement was PURPOSE / DIRECTION, and described how the women want their perfect man to know his mission, his deepest purpose or his most sacred dream. He needed to sense this, feel it and orientate his life around it and towards it. His direction represented what he is here on the planet to do; his souls plan to serve life. She wanted a man who can have the strength and focus to move ever more consciously towards the manifestation of the deepest inclination of his heart. For her, a man without this direction cannot be fully trusted, and with him she cannot feel relaxed enough to fully let go and surrender her body, her heart and her mind to God. She will always perceive and associate his not knowing his mission with her inability to fully let go. The women felt sure that they wanted to be the most important person in her man's life, but not necessarily the most important thing in his life. Even though she might not always agree with his direction or how he chooses to follow it, she nevertheless deeply respected and admired him for continuing to align with it.
So once I had written this potent list on the white board, we were all able to play with it, explore it and basically fabricate a virtual simulacrum of their perfect man in all of the women's minds and hearts. At this point many of the men were nervously laughing, but inside were feeling less and less secure in themselves. It was now time to ask the men what they wanted in their perfect woman, their chosen intimate partner. The women were asked not to contribute in any way to this, which was so hard for them, no matter where I did this. Also some of the men were in the audience with their real life partners and wives, and many of them felt a little self conscious about expressing their deepest desires and definitions of their perfect woman in front of their real life woman. However, within a few minutes, after some playful yet powerful breathing exercises the energy would relax and the men began to really open themselves to what it they want from and in their women.
The first word that came almost immediately was BEAUTY. There tended to be a ripple of apprehension at this stage amongst the women when they heard this word, as decades of social conditioning and marketing manipulation had convinced so many of them that they were not 'beautiful' in the collectively agreed sense. The men assured them that beauty was very much in the eyes of the beholder, and that the beauty they spoke about was unique and specific to each and every one of them. In essence the masculine is so attracted to the world, the beauty of the world, the variation, the diversity and the ever changing nature of all life. And beauty is the language of life.
The next word that presented was RADIANCE. This was actually quite a surprise at first, but upon reflection and further consideration made total sense. Beauty can be seen as a static state but radiance is an energetic quality that expresses health and harmony within. Radiance is the flower in the hair, the sparkles in the eyes, the flowing dress, the glance across the room, the shift in energy when she enters. Radiance is such a gift to the world because it is the whisper of the living goddess in each breath, each word, smile and touch. Radiance is the woman's ability to take a room or a home and make it more beautiful, sometimes just by her mere presence in the space.
The third word was INTELLIGENCE, just like with the women. For many men there is nothing sexier than the mind of a woman that is fully firing, bridging the left and right hemispheres in a sensory avalanche of inspiration and creativity. This intelligence is also rooted in an innate respect that the man has for the natural inherent knowing that a woman holds in her heart and in her body; an intuition that spans and extends beyond space and time.
The fourth word that usually experienced difficulty being openly suggested, but which nevertheless all men agreed upon, was SEXUAL OPENNESS. The specifics varied a little, but by this the men were describing a woman who was open and prepared to explore all aspects of his and her sexuality and share them with him.
A lot of the women would bristle at the mention of it, feeling the stress many of them held in their bodies which had accumulated from many years of repression and disappointment in their own sexual experiences. They 'knew' that sexual openness was big for the man, but from their perspective many of them could not really resonate with this, because they could never quite trust their man deeply enough to show him the full extent of their own desires and needs.
The fifth word was TRUST, primarily for the man's direction. The men expressed that what they really wanted from their woman was trust in their commitment to their deepest purpose. They did not wish to be second guessed, or doubted or argued with; especially in matters directly relating to what it is they most feel they need to do or achieve so that they could die complete. Not being trusted was tantamount to betrayal in some men's eyes, but some of these men did not fully appreciate that trust needs to be earned in order to be felt and offered.
The last word that was agreed upon was SUPPORT, again support primarily for the man's direction or mission. Trust was desired and sought after, but support, be it practical, intellectual, emotional or even sexual, was very important to the man. He felt the need to be able to work towards something on his own terms but to know that she was there for him when he needed it.
So once we had these two lists up side by side we could see a representation of what each wanted from the other. This would usually generate a lot of stimulating discussion, as everybody began to self-evaluate themselves and their partners. Sometimes couples in the room would playfully tease or even hit each other; pointing to the board as proof that they were 'right' all along, and were now delighting that the wisdom of the crowd was revealing what they knew to be true, but couldn't express before. So it was and continues to be a useful and fun exploration, which opens us up to being able to focus on what it is we wish to change about ourselves, or what it is we wish to develop within ourselves, or jointly as a couple.
Of course all the words uttered, discussed and presented are appropriate to describe all of us, men and women, to greater or lesser extents from one moment to the next. They are not exclusive to one sex or the other. They merely point towards an agreement within the general public about what it is we want to attract and hold in our relationships. This is valuable information, but also should not be considered the final say on why we are here. Many people, both men and women, are perfectly content to be alone, and focused on something big or small, that does not directly involve another person, especially at the intimate level. But, regardless of how we chose to express our movements through life, every day our thoughts and actions are governed by the interplay of the two polar forces. Our ability to navigate successfully through each day, opening fully to love with each breath and giving the gift of our light to everyone and anything, depends on our level of self-knowing first, and our skill at relating to others.
The words became pointers to a greater understanding of polarised motivations and manifestations; and provided me with a rudimentary format around which I could create a structure for the men's seminars. There are three seminars in the series, and each one is loosely associated with the three stages of evolution of the 'Superior Man'; the first stage is all about the individual or the 'me', the second stage is about the collective or the 'we', and the third stage is 'free'.
From this concept the seminars provide a cumulative experiential effect where each man can explore his own life arcing evolutionary path, condensed into a relatively short time. In effect, it is designed and presented as a fractal model of accelerated learning and integration. And of course each of the men is a mirror for every other man, and within this environment we can all see more clearly who we have become and how we might change and grow.
Within each seminar are opportunities for the men to feel their power, or lack of it; to generate presence, or become aware of where and when it is missing. They could feel excitement and passion, but also experience how it feels to have none. They would also be challenged, physically and mentally, so that they could discover how to apply their innate intelligence in new situations. Also I wanted to ensure that there would be a lot of laughter, and dedicated time discovering or fine tuning their direction, or deepest purpose. Basically, I wanted to create a chance for us to become what it is we wanted to be, and what it was that our women wanted also.
In designing the course curriculum I remembered the advice of Stephen Covey, the author of Seven Habits of Successful People - where he said that in order to know if your vision has succeeded, you must first define what success actually means to you. So in this case, success for me was to create a seminar series for men, each one three and a half days long, which would help, support and guide men to open their hearts, clear their minds and strengthen their bodies. The primary purpose of this is to create an opportunity for the men to connect with, explore and express their fullest potential, in conscious loving service to all life. I wanted to generate a program that was focused and powerful, challenging and revealing.
Within this general definition I wanted each man to be able to measure his own success within this overall experience, and for him to be able to go home afterwards and apply their new knowledge and express their new energetic understanding directly and productively in their relationships and in their lives.
In deciding on a name for the seminar series, one of the men suggested 'BraveHeart', and it instantly resonated with me. It seemed very appropriate. What we are being asked to connect with and open is our hearts, so that we can feel into ourselves and into the world at the same time - Deida's definition of the third stage man. For most of us, we are heading into very unfamiliar territory - the mystical and magical land of the human heart; traditionally inhabited by those strange but beautiful creatures, called women.
We need to be brave, in our hearts, so that we can feel the fear and still step forward with courage into the unknown; to risk failure, disappointment, and loss. This is not to suggest that men cannot feel, or are incapable of expressing these feelings; but for many men the capacity to feel and use this information with power, focus and direction, is a relatively new concept, and a skill that rarely gets exercised.
In structuring each seminar program itself, I used a geometric concept that I developed many years ago, to describe how we can best learn something, and retain it, integrate it and understand it. The shape is a simple spiral path, almost but not quite circular, that continues round and round getting closer to the centre with each rotation. Radiating out from the centre, like spokes on a bicycle wheel, are a series of thin, seed-like shapes or zones; differing in size, position and location. They sit above the spiral path, transversely connecting adjacent revolutions. The spiral path itself represents the linear time centric journey we would take over the time at the seminar, moving ever closer to clarity or fusion, depicted by the centre point. The seed like shapes are concepts, ideas or exercises that we introduce and experience over the course of the seminar.
So in effect, as we travel around and in, along the spiral path, we will encounter a 'new' idea or exercise and it will show us something. Then there will be another encounter with another concept or experience, and then another. However, with each revolution we get to return to the original concept encounters, one by one, turn by turn, and with each re-visit time the context becomes richer, clearer and more comfortable. This way, the men can open to something, but experience it from a number of different aspects and directions, building understanding and integrating it all as they go.
This is the key to learning anything worth learning. The process must be natural, instinctive, easy, and of course it must be fun. This process aligns with an educational model known as Multiple Intelligences, which describes a natural property of learning where we access and relate to information in a number of different ways, each according to our own sensory strengths, abilities and predilections. So I wanted to present these seminars in a graphic way, a grounded way, a practical way; which would give us real life contexts for magical possibilities.
Most of our teaching styles and traditions seek to elevate our understanding by offering us a path 'upwards', from the mundane to the spiritual; from the physical to the meta-physical. In my experience this can lead us to believe that the answer is always somewhere above us, and we are not 'there' yet. Perhaps, if I climb one more step I will get it, see it, attain it or understand it? This linear vertical model of perceived growth and evolution is dimensionally very limited, and quite often tends to leave everyone feeling inadequate, weak or disillusioned.
We speak longingly of 'higher' dimensions and 'higher' beings, 'higher' states of awareness and connecting to our 'higher' selves. We seek and obsess about 'ascension' as if it is the magical answer to all our woes. We routinely give our power aware to a plethora of entities who apparently populate these 'higher' dimensions of consciousness, imagining that they are somehow better, more noble or more spiritual. All the while, this upward obsession continues to take us from where we are, this moment and this place, and tries to segregate our attention and divide our focus - always looking for help or inspiration from 'up there'. It limits of sense of self, and our trust in our own power and abilities.
So I wanted to create a time, space and place where we could take a so-called 'high' concept, and bring it kicking and screaming down to the very grounded physical, and work directly with it on this level. As the Universe is structured on the basis of 'as above, so below' this seemed to be a 'no-brainer'. The potential here is to see if we can ground a high principle at a so called 'low' level, then it would become more real, more useful, more integrated, especially at the conditioned sensory response level. I much prefer the approach that seeks for a 'fuller' experience, rather than a 'higher' one. Moving toward this approach allows us to take full responsibility for all of ourselves, in this moment and in this place. It gives us the chance to open more fully, not just connect higher.
So to expand on this a little more I would like to describe how on the first seminar we explore how each of us has a large number of psychological programs running at a subconscious level, many of which do not serve us particularly well, especially in terms of our desire to become more than we are. These programs initiate quite automatically in response to certain stimuli in our everyday environment, such as somebody saying something negative to us, which switches on the pre-programmed response mechanism, and before we have time to feel it and change it, we have said or done something out of pure habit, locking us and the person who 'caused' it into a loop-de-loop of blah blah blah. We are all familiar with such occurrences, and even with daily meditations, often we lack the necessary in-the-moment awareness to catch these program switch points, and so are at their mercy. These programs are run by the ego, and are fuelled ultimately by fear and lack of self-awareness. So what can we do to stop this happening? Are there some special techniques that can help us become aware of this happening just before it happens?
Well, we have a brilliantly designed nervous system which is continuously connected to all of the elements of the environment. Our bodies are so cool, representing a multi-cellular community of mostly healthy cells, all chatting to each other happily. We have on average about 60 trillion cells living in relative harmony in this community, each with approximately 100 thousand stimuli receptors on their surface membranes. So this is a perception ability that consists of about 600,000,000,000,000,000 ways that we can read and react to what is happening in each moment of blessed aliveness. That's quite a lot of ways to see, feel and relate to our world. So as information flows to us, through us and from us, as a incredibly complex living and conscious wave phenomenon, we arise from this field of interplay and call it home; our mind, our heart, our bodies, our lives and our world.
However, over time, this system of integration and expression, begins to take on certain patterned responses at a macro level, due to exposure to these patterns in our early formative years, traumas or inherited beliefs and predominant thinking systems. So in an effort to react and respond to something happening 'to' us, sometimes it is energetically easier to just sit back and allow an old program to kick in and deal with it quickly, if not very healthily. Mostly though, we only become aware of these programs after they kicked in and ran through our system.
At a human level, a good example of this is when your partner comes in and says to you - "how many times do I have to tell you to put out the garbage?" She says this out of her own frustration and stress, but when we hear this at this time, we may not hearing the voice of our lover, our chosen intimate partner, but rather we are listening to the voice of one or both of our or in some cases her parents. In this moment her words transport us instantly back to a time where we felt weak, controlled, judged and perhaps even manipulated. We lose our power and in less than a second we react with some programmed response such as "hey, I will do it later!, I am working hard here, earning money for the family and don't appreciate you nagging me over and over again, woman!". And she is unlikely to feel warm and full of love in this moment.
Her feminine ability and awareness helped her to feel that taking the garbage out would result in a nicer home environment, filled with more space and harmony and beauty. She did not necessarily think of it in those terms, but her desire to create beauty and fill the home with life force drove her to want to change something to make that become real. Because she can feel the whole space as and in her body, she can feel where there is stress and disharmony; in this case the garbage that was sitting and overflowing in the corner of the kitchen, the place where she puts her love into cooking for her family.
So from her perspective, in one moment she asked for help from her man to put the garbage out, and then the moment shifted and her energy went elsewhere.
However, within the logical linear grid of space and time, a place very comfortable to the masculine, he figured that it was perfectly reasonable for him to do it 'later', because in his reasoning there is no big panic or urgency. Because he lacks the feeling capability to connect with the space as she does, he did not see how this one small point was connected to EVERYTHING else in her world, at that moment in time. She remains stressed, but is not sure why, and the love is not able to flow smoothly in her, through her or from her. She is contracted and uncomfortable, stressed and perhaps a little agitated. Now she looks around and feels that everything is for nothing! Then she sees the garbage still there, perhaps made even worse by the fact that the dog had smelt some food in it, grabbed the top of it and knocked some of it onto the floor. Now she gets it: her trust in her man is gone. She shuts down and lets roar. She has had enough. She shouts, he reacts, she counter reacts, he tells her to relax and lighten up, reminding her that it's 'only' the garbage and don't be so neurotic... etc,. Game over.
So what happened? A pre-program that had been recorded many years ago, and reinforced over the time since, has emerged in direct response to a present moment signal resonance with the originating signal information. And before we could step in, we acted it out and in that moment love was not in flow. In this garbage example, the man missed the opportunity to open this moment to more love. He missed the chance to magically turn stress into harmony and delight. He failed to have the necessary awareness to step in, change the energy and create, rather than responding to some conditioned reaction. Of course, step one is to learn to do what the woman asks when she asks it. However, without awareness this can lead to a slave / good boy / puppy dog relationship scenario, which again limits massively the opportunity for love and passion to flow. But the next step is for the man to extend his field of attention, stalking awareness and overall consciousness into himself, into her, into the home, the planet - and to feel what is needed to turn stress into love, discord into peace, and anger into passion and playfulness. The man can take out the garbage before she even feels it is a problem, not because he wants her to think he is good, or trustworthy; but because he must know what she needs, wants and desires, even before she does, and he wants to give this to her, without any attachment to it being noticed, received or appreciated. Love.
So this is an example of one of the many skills that we men must learn, develop and be prepared to use in any and every moment. This is what our women want from us (amongst other things!). This is one way that we can give our gift to her and to the world. This is one way that we can rise above our animal / reptilian nature and dare to dance with the angels.
(Actually, on that point, I believe we are much more powerful than the angels - no offense there guys...).
In the first seminar we create a specific exercise that affords us a visceral example of a program that controls our ability to respond consciously and lovingly - which is our 'response-ability'. I have the men divide into two lines facing each other. Then I instruct one line to quickly grab the man opposite them into a tight head-lock, just like back in the school yard. From there the exercise is simple; the man applying the headlock has to keep it, and drag the other man across the room or field. The 'victim' here needs to try to escape and free himself. Now I know this may sound a bit too much, but after several attempts the men learn directly how it feels to have your head in a lock, your thinking in a trap, your awareness diminished and limited to a fight or flight response. So over the next half hour or so, I show them how to escape from this lock, physically, using a series of practical moves which all have a 'higher' metaphoric component and understanding.
It is a little hard to describe in words, but what this exercise gives the men is an initial feeling of helplessness, which transforms over time and training, into awareness and empowerment - and this is applied directly to the psychological counter point of the fear based pre-programmed ego response. They learn to become more aware of what is happening in each moment, and are developing ways to respond that 'free' them and allow them the necessary conscious space to open the moment to something beautiful from this place of freedom and power. This is just a first stage exercise but will hopefully illustrate how these seminars are offering a full spectrum training ground for all aspects of our lives, and give us the tools to become the man we want to be, in service to our women, our families and the world. In the second and third seminars we elevate this potential to another level of understanding and integration, and have it sit within other contexts to allow our awareness and conscious to expand even further.
This is what we want to be able to do, and what our women would love us to be able to do. They want to be able to feel our mind, and sense its intelligence, humour and power. They want to be able to feel our hearts, and sense its openness and its presence. They want to feel our bodies and sense our passion and desire. And they want to be able to feel that we are always moving towards our deepest purpose, and will remain strong and dedicated enough not to collapse, be distracted or easily deviated from it. They will love us enough to constantly test us, in every area of expression; seeking to expose and activate any weakness or leakage of integrity. They can feel us, and they love us, and they know us and they want us to be the best we can be. And when we can rise to this, even though we are continuously making mistakes and self-correcting, then our women can begin to trust us, relax into their deepest and truest essence, and open themselves and us and the world to Love and the Light of God. It is absolutely worth the effort, believe me.
I hope that this will give you a better sense of what it is I am creating and developing with the BraveHeart seminars. Thank you for your time, energy, attention and love.
Michael
21st October 2013
My name is Michael, of the Rice Family - born in Ireland just before the Summer Solstice 1967, or so I have been told. I am a man, but once I go a little deeper I become aware that I am also a collection of assumptions, agreements and memories that are made manifest in an ever-changing physical body which projects and orbits a soul on a journey of self-exploration. My name, along with all the definitions, descriptions and dramas that have become anchored to it, has becoming increasingly open to the light of truth; which has the effect of illuminating and exposing any patterns, characteristics or behaviours that no longer serve my own spiritual evolution.
This is usually not an easy process, as such stories of self have a tendency to become quite entrenched in our lives, reinforced in all of our living structures, beliefs and relationship models. Letting go of these stories can oftentimes be traumatic, shocking and destructive; but it can also reveal our hidden potentials as we respond to the challenges (and opportunities) that arise once we begin to realise who we really are and how we can best serve all Life.
Although this general process of Becoming is common to all life-forms, each being expresses it uniquely, in their own way and in their own time - according to a larger pattern. And as this larger pattern reveals itself in our everyday experiences we can see that it is not entirely random; there is an order to it, based in part on a set of cosmic 'recommendations and guidelines', that provide some flow-chart to how life unfolds and creates. Once we develop even a basic understanding of the principles which underpin these creative movements we can really begin to dance with the mind and the heart, generating a flow of conscious focus and feeling, which allows us to be carried on the winds and wings of Love.
Personally I cannot say when I first became conscious of and responsible for my own evolution; but I can say that the last few years have accelerated the process to a level that I quite literally could not have imagined before. In these few short years I have lived and let go a lifetime of accumulated ideas about who I am and why I am here. I have felt completely lost and completely aligned, I have felt totally alone, and totally connected. I have closed some doors and opened others, and I have built bridges and watched them burn behind me. It continues to be a full spectrum learning experience providing ample opportunity to develop my ability to direct myself within this flow, so that I become all that I am meant to become. As my friend said to me - "Love comes knocking on your door, like the black hand of death, and once you open the door, you cannot close it again". All that remains is to welcome Love into your home and your heart, and celebrate the joy and sometimes chaotic but always creative energy that it brings. It is a huge learning, and as with anything worth learning, we must begin with the basics.
There is a saying - 'you teach what you most wish to learn', and this has been my primary motivation over the years as I have taught workshops and seminars in many countries. The topics and subjects of these presentations included such areas of study and application as BioArchitecture, Karate, Feng Shui, Sacred Geometry and more. All different disciplines in terms of expression but all sharing a common root source; the desire to learn how to create harmony and balance in our homes, our hearts, our bodies and our minds, using the pure principles that underpin the power and creative processes of all living systems. It is with and within this source that I wish to align.
For example, in my seminars on Sacred Geometry, we explore how everything in existence arises through the interplay of energy and form. We see how the singular point is full of potential to create and express, but it must MOVE in order to do so, and in so doing it creates and gives birth to a second point, or Polarity. From this 'point' onwards all form emerges in a harmonic cascade of profound beauty and simplicity. Taoists referred to this original point as the Nature of Being, the Way or the Tao. This Way has a singular purpose - to explore and express all potential. And as Sacred Geometry demonstrates, in order to explore it must move, and when it moves it creates form. So all that we see, feel, think, do and create comes about from the living intercourse between two opposing dynamics or forces.
In the Taoist tradition these forces are called Yin / Yang. In other more modern contexts they are described as Positive / Negative or Expanding / Contracting. Others systems of belief refer to them as Light / Dark, while others feel more comfortable seeing these forces as representations of the Masculine and Feminine Essences. Regardless of what labels we give them, these forces are always transforming themselves into the other; ever dancing and playing together in an inconceivably complex multi-dimensional symphony of energy and information. These forces or essences provide the power to generate movement and change, effectively turning the primary substrate of pure being or unchanging consciousness into the ever changing field of all that exists. Heavy stuff!
But before we jump too fast ahead of ourselves, it may be time to pause, breathe and remember that we are living in a truly amazing time; and in truth we are very lucky to be here together on this beautiful planet. But having said that, it must also be said and acknowledged that it is not an easy time for most of us, at a practical, human, 'real-life' level. All around us fundamental changes are happening at what seems to be a break neck speed. The rate of this speed appears to be increasing or accelerating noticeably each day. If we are honest with ourselves and each other, we may admit that we no longer know anything with any degree of certainty. Global, local and personal transformations and evolutions appear to be occurring and impacting all aspects of our lives. What we believed and acted upon yesterday no longer works today, and many of us live in constant fear of what tomorrow will bring. It should come as no surprise that we can become somewhat lost in all of this, individually and collectively, with the result that many of us are seeking frantically to find and establish any stability and shelter in this storm of change. As such we are not always aware of the potential of this time, or the energy it represents, or how to use this time and power constructively and creatively.
If you are reading this now, it is safe to say that you successfully survived the end of the world in December 2012. Well done. But now what? Do we stumble forward waiting for the next apocalypse / group belief and do our best to prepare, following someone who claims to know the 'truth'? Or do we change our whole way of seeing the world and our role within it, so that we can bring back the power that we have chained in the past, and projected fearfully into the future - and begin using it in the Now?
We need to make some more conscious decisions, because Love is the only reality, and everything else is an illusion. All of creation exists and continues to create from and with Love. Despite evidence to the contrary, Love is the beginning and end of all being, all knowing.. and all experience. It is the substrate of existence and the movement of all life. Everything else is just a fragment of our imagination, filtered through our hearts and minds, presenting as navigation to our soul. In each moment we are either opening to love, or refusing to. This sounds good, but how can we achieve this practically, and in the areas of our lives that represent our primary sources of both stress and happiness - our relationships.
We have heard a lot about how this new time is about the rise again of the Divine Feminine, which promises to bring forth a new consciousness on the planet; a massive paradigm shift that will usher in a new world based on beauty, harmony and openness. The Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine are aspects of each and every one of us, and neither is limited to expressing only in women or men respectively. However, most women are more identified with the Divine Feminine energy, and can feel it and open to it more than most men. There is a lot of evidence to support this, and all over the world hundreds of thousands of amazing women are waking up, rising up and re-discovering their Goddess power, their innate beauty and their holistic, life-supporting visions. These women are opening their hearts, connecting to the Earth, and daring to imagine (and demanding) a world where Love is the primary motivator; the beginning and end of each thought, word and action.
In every country, women are coming together to share and support each other in ways that this Planet has not seen for thousands of years. It is time. For example, in Moravia, South Eastern Czech Republic, there is a beautiful and truly remarkable woman, called Karaimi, who offers a number of very powerful seminar experiences just for women. Called 'The Grail', these events provide the women many diverse opportunities to go deep into themselves, each other and the living planet, so that they can remember who they are - Creators, Warriors, Goddesses, Lovers and more. The energy of the Divine Feminine surges through these women and flows out into their lives, changing and transforming everything in its path. It is a remarkable energy and I can say with complete honesty that I am fully committed to its emergence. It is the Key to a world that we all want our children to call home.
But in order to activate fully and express completely, the Divine Feminine needs its counterpart, the Divine Masculine; to support it, guide it and fight for it. And this is where and when the men are being given the opportunity to step up and assume this role and the responsibilities and challenges that come with it. It is time for us men to dare to open to this force and rise up in full service. But for many of us men, this time and the energy it is opening, is deeply confusing and challenging, on so many levels. We have been conditioned for millennia into believing and investing in systems of government, societal structures and destructive planetary mismanagement that represents all that is negative about the masculine energy. We look around and we can see and feel the changes in our women and in our world, and we are at a loss to know how best to serve them, or serve the world. It is as if everything we thought was solid and secure is falling away or being taken away from us, leaving us adrift in a sea of uncertainty and self doubt. We are losing the power to move, create or respond appropriately. When we do see some island in this dark sea and step (crawl or get dragged) up onto this new land, it remains unfamiliar and foreign to us. So what can we do? What and how can we learn to navigate our way into the future with power and integrity, and be part of the Great Unfolding in full partnership with our women?
In an attempt to explore and provide some answers to these questions I am reminded of the story of a very successful book that was conceived and produced in Britain some years ago, which apparently sold over a million copies. It was titled something like - 'What Men Understand about Women' and consisted of over 150 pages, all of them completely blank! - not a single word written within its covers. All over the country women bought this joke book as a loaded 'gift' for the men in their lives. The message was obvious and not so subtle - when it comes to understanding women, we men are simply 'blank'. Indeed, it is generally believed and accepted as fact that, as a sub-species, we men are simply not equipped to ever fully understand the woman; apparently because we lack the necessary awareness, sensitivity and empathy. This may or may not be true, but it should not deter us from learning as much as we can, about ourselves and about our women.
However, such a belief has been centuries in the making, and fuels the division between the sexes that expresses at every level of society, oftentimes in ways that are very damaging. Young people all over the world inherit these beliefs, assumptions and suppositions and go on to form and develop relationships that are based on incomplete and inconsistent information, which in turn keeps the potentially destructive cycle turning for yet another generation. The result is often deep unhappiness and fundamental dissatisfaction becoming the accepted norm. Much of the time, we seek to only survive in our relationships, trying to negotiate our way without a map or sense of direction. We are crippled with fear about being alone, so we settle for much less than we deserve. We will hurt ourselves rather than risk walking away from an relationship that does not serve our heart. Occasionally, we seem to be getting something right, only to have it change utterly a moment later. And a lot of the time it seems that LOVE is either missing, or off having a cup of tea somewhere else with someone else.
Many books have been written that seek to illuminate this fundamental dilemma, by presenting elaborate constructions and descriptions of the differing characteristics and tendencies of the man and woman, and what planet they may come from. However, in many instances, these tomes of wisdom fall short of giving us a way to practically evolve our understanding to the point that a whole new reality can become manifest - a world where the evolved man and evolved woman can come together and co-create new relationship models based on love, awareness and freedom.
But every now and then someone comes along who offers a fresh perspective and presents it not as fact, but as an art; and one that can be learned and applied to create more beauty and truth in our lives. One such man is American teacher and author, David Deida. He has written a number of wonderful books about relationships and sex, each of them containing a wealth of insight and inspiration which can serve to greatly improve our existing relationships, or help us to attract new relationships that feed our soul rather than drain our energy. His most well know work is called The Way of the Superior Man, and when I read it, and began to integrate this information into my life, everything changed for me.
He has a unique, coherent and flexible definition of the Masculine and Feminine, which underpins all of his teachings and philosophies. Above all, he is a practical and very experienced teacher, who wishes to educate people so that they may learn to dance with these fundamental polarised forces in order to consciously create more love and happiness in each moment.
So to paraphrase Deida; the way of the Superior Man is about giving who he is to the world. It is about giving himself more and more deeply to the world, to his woman, his family and to everyone. In order to do this we men need to grow, and this growth goes through three basic stages. The first stage is when we want to grow for our own sake, so for example, a man in this stage might feel a desire to become financially independent, and make some money for himself. Over time this man may grow to what Deida calls the second stage, which is when this man wants to share and cooperate with other people. So the man not only wishes to make money for himself, but also for his family, his community and to generally better the world.
Now in Deida's understanding, the third stage is about realising that everything is only CHANGE, and change means death. So the beginning of the way of the Superior Man means that the man must come to terms with not only his own death, but the death of everything he can build, create and make. So in the third stage of a man's life, when we are here to give, we are coming from the depths of our heart, feeling our deepest purpose, offering our love outward and we realise that nobody may accept what we have to give. Our art that we create may not be received, our love that we have to give may not be received. A Superior Man does not stop giving merely because he is not received. He may never be acknowledged, he may never receive what he feels he deserves, but he BECOMES the Giving. He lives as a gift. But to do so he needs to feel deeply within himself and deeply into the world AT THE SAME TIME. So Deida believes that the Superior Man feels deeply in himself 'who am I?' - 'who am I most deeply?' Asking this question is the beginning of relaxing as the Superior Man.
Such a man can still feel that there is a witnessing behind it all, an unchanging sense of self, amidst constant change, and this essence is what Deida calls the Masculine. It is the unmoving consciousness that has no specific form, that which is eternal, and the more that a man (or woman) is identified with that, the more such a person is in their masculine. The masculine seeks to be happy through freedom; from worry, constraint, limit, control or chaos. In contrast, the more a man or woman is identified with that which changes; their minds, bodies, relationships, the world etc., then the more such a person is identified with the Feminine.
In his context, the Feminine is everything that moves; everything one can see, hear, smell, taste or feel. The motion of the mind is a pure feminine dance, as is the beating of the heart, and the rotation of the planet beneath our feet. The feminine is activated and enlivened by life force, and is seeking happiness through more love, more energy, movement and activity. It is worth reminding ourselves here that everybody has both essences within them, but most people would predominately identify with one energy / essence more than the other. It is a vast subject of study, as it literally includes all that was, is, or ever could be. But put simply, the Masculine and Feminine dance together in a passionate play, creating all that we are and ever could experience. The arc of energy between these two forces drives us, inspires us, challenges us and attracts us. It motivates us on every level and is the substrate of our whole existence. Understanding it, even at a basic level, could be considered vital information for everyone, especially our young people.
So when I was introduced to this information, I could see and feel how easily it fit into the understanding I had developed through my other methods, teachings and personal experiences. I realised that once more the best way for me to integrate this information knowledge into my own process of evolution and expression, was to stand up and teach it. For me, stepping into the role of teacher makes me a much better student, because when I am up front and centre, and need to present something clearly, or answer a question - there is nowhere to hide.
So I moved towards this primarily for myself, but of course I also wanted to provide an opportunity for men to share, learn and celebrate with me, and I felt that if I do my job right then these men can go forth and support their women to create the world of beauty that we are all seeking to manifest.
But before I felt ready to assume this role of leading men fully in an intensive seminar environment, I needed to make sure that what I was presenting made sense, philosophically and practically. I also needed to make sure that I was living or trying to live the truth of what I was seeking to learn in my own life. The whole process must be authentic and true, or at least moving towards this a little more each day. So I began to give three-hour evening talks every few weeks, in many venues in different countries to quite diverse audiences. I felt it was important to test my teaching for consistency and universality, asking the same questions to people from different backgrounds and developing a better understanding of what it was I wished to discover and offer.
I would typically begin the talk by describing and graphically demonstrating the fundamental principles of Sacred Geometry that I mentioned above, then I would develop this flow to present the interplay of the two primary polar forces at work in our world. From there I would open the talk to outline the masculine and feminine essences at play in each of us, and then get specific to how these essences present in our behaviours and relationships.
Always at this stage, when I mention the magic word - 'relationship', people became even more interested, as most people invest their relationships with huge significance. How those connections to others are structured and express can, in any moment, be a source of profound delight and happiness or deep stress and discord.
There would come a point in my talk where I would ask the men in the audience to stay quiet, and then I would invite all the women to give me some single words that would describe their perfect man, their perfect 'Mr. Right'. These words needed to describe the character attributes of their ideal intimate partner; someone who they could trust fully and open their bodies, minds and hearts to. The only stipulation was that all of the women in the room needed to agree upon the words. For example, one woman's idea of the perfect man for her might be the archetypal 'tall, dark and handsome' complete with long black hair and a pointy goatee! Another woman might prefer a man that could pass for a bewildered Hobbit on the set of Lord of the Rings. So they must be in agreement, and choose or reject the words accordingly.
The energy in the room would always become more animated at this point, as their imaginations were fully operational, their hearts were opening and their collective desire to generate feeling and movement/ discussion in the space became active and alive.
The words were offered one by one, and the women quickly worked together to decide if what was being suggested was in fact an innate property of their ideal man, their perfect intimate partner, shared by them all. I would write the agreed words down on the white board until we had six words, and to my continued amazement and delight, in every country and in every talk the women proposed and agreed upon the SAME six words! This was truly amazing, and indicated to me that what I was opening to was indeed something approaching an 'operating system' for relationships, or at the very least a pallet of colours from which each of us can practice and create art in all of our relationships, but especially our most precious and intimate ones.
So for the men in the room, they were never more attentive, listening to every word that apparently indicated what they should be or must become if they wanted to be fully loved and desired by their woman. With each characteristic you could see and feel each man there silently gauging whether or not they could claim to be such a man. It was very playful, but process also pointed to a fundamental drive in all of us, fuelled by the power of polarity, being the arc of energy and attraction between two opposites.
So what were these six words? I am sure you would like to know! They arose in no particular hierarchy, and for the most part the women agreed that the words were all equally important. The first word that found agreement in the group was POWER. Women all said that they wanted their man to have the attribute of 'power', in every imaginable way. They wanted a man who could generate, display and utilise this power physically, emotionally and practically. This was big for them, it was primary. For some women the power could be expressing as a knowing silence, for others it needed to be a man with more charismatic power, that was felt by everyone when he entered the room.
The second word that was offered and agreed upon was PRESENCE. Women clearly stated that they all wanted to feel that when they were with their man he was giving them his full attention, at the level of mind, heart and body. She could never be fully content to have her man 'half listen' to her when she wished to share the details of her day with him, or how she felt about something or describing something that she needs. His monosyllabic grunts of dismissal as he watched sport on television, or scrolled through Facebook, or texted someone while claiming to be listening fully to her. She needed and wanted a man who could give her the gift of his full presence. This presence could be with her or with his children, his work colleagues or even with a complete stranger. It could also take the form of an almost shamanic stalking awareness like a tracker or hunter. Generally, as a primary attribute of her perfect man, she wanted to know her man had the ability to focus and apply, with presence.
The third word was PASSION. This created a lot of laughter usually, as the women began to imagine how their man could express this passion. They all agreed that they wanted their chosen intimate partner to be passionate in how he made love; she wanted to feel the full extent of his desire for her, through his eyes, his body and his actions. She wanted to be able to see his passion in the way that he looked at her, moved towards her, took her in his arms, kissed her and made love to her. She wanted to have his passion fuelled by his power, and enhanced by his presence. She also wanted to be able to witness and experience his passion for life in general, and for his children, and for issues that were important to him and to her. She wanted to know that he could feel and use his passion to get things done, to follow his path and keep going no matter what happened.
The fourth word was INTELLIGENCE. The women were very sure that they wanted a man who knew his mind and how to use it. They wanted to be able to relax into any moment with him knowing that he could reason, plan and strategise his way out of trouble and into safety. She also wanted him to be interesting, to be creative and to use his intelligence to stimulate and inspire, rather than manipulate or control. They wanted a man who could manifest her vision using the power of his intelligence. She also wanted to feel and know that her man was equally intelligent with his heart. This was a big aspect of what they meant with this word.
The fifth word was HUMOUR. The humour they described was not the self-effacing, joke-orientated shield that many men use as a defence against showing their true emotions, or making someone else feel bad. The humour they wanted in their man was expressed as a light-heartedness that meant that he did not take himself too seriously. They wanted a man who might collapse in a moment of weakness or attack, but would stand up immediately, dust himself off and laugh at his own mistake, but still move on and keep going. The humour needed to be rooted in a deep knowing that everything is always changing and ultimately leads to death. Far from nihilistic, this humour is a lubricant for any stresses that might arise, and a powerful remedy for any mistake he might make.
The last word that was suggested and received unanimous agreement was PURPOSE / DIRECTION, and described how the women want their perfect man to know his mission, his deepest purpose or his most sacred dream. He needed to sense this, feel it and orientate his life around it and towards it. His direction represented what he is here on the planet to do; his souls plan to serve life. She wanted a man who can have the strength and focus to move ever more consciously towards the manifestation of the deepest inclination of his heart. For her, a man without this direction cannot be fully trusted, and with him she cannot feel relaxed enough to fully let go and surrender her body, her heart and her mind to God. She will always perceive and associate his not knowing his mission with her inability to fully let go. The women felt sure that they wanted to be the most important person in her man's life, but not necessarily the most important thing in his life. Even though she might not always agree with his direction or how he chooses to follow it, she nevertheless deeply respected and admired him for continuing to align with it.
So once I had written this potent list on the white board, we were all able to play with it, explore it and basically fabricate a virtual simulacrum of their perfect man in all of the women's minds and hearts. At this point many of the men were nervously laughing, but inside were feeling less and less secure in themselves. It was now time to ask the men what they wanted in their perfect woman, their chosen intimate partner. The women were asked not to contribute in any way to this, which was so hard for them, no matter where I did this. Also some of the men were in the audience with their real life partners and wives, and many of them felt a little self conscious about expressing their deepest desires and definitions of their perfect woman in front of their real life woman. However, within a few minutes, after some playful yet powerful breathing exercises the energy would relax and the men began to really open themselves to what it they want from and in their women.
The first word that came almost immediately was BEAUTY. There tended to be a ripple of apprehension at this stage amongst the women when they heard this word, as decades of social conditioning and marketing manipulation had convinced so many of them that they were not 'beautiful' in the collectively agreed sense. The men assured them that beauty was very much in the eyes of the beholder, and that the beauty they spoke about was unique and specific to each and every one of them. In essence the masculine is so attracted to the world, the beauty of the world, the variation, the diversity and the ever changing nature of all life. And beauty is the language of life.
The next word that presented was RADIANCE. This was actually quite a surprise at first, but upon reflection and further consideration made total sense. Beauty can be seen as a static state but radiance is an energetic quality that expresses health and harmony within. Radiance is the flower in the hair, the sparkles in the eyes, the flowing dress, the glance across the room, the shift in energy when she enters. Radiance is such a gift to the world because it is the whisper of the living goddess in each breath, each word, smile and touch. Radiance is the woman's ability to take a room or a home and make it more beautiful, sometimes just by her mere presence in the space.
The third word was INTELLIGENCE, just like with the women. For many men there is nothing sexier than the mind of a woman that is fully firing, bridging the left and right hemispheres in a sensory avalanche of inspiration and creativity. This intelligence is also rooted in an innate respect that the man has for the natural inherent knowing that a woman holds in her heart and in her body; an intuition that spans and extends beyond space and time.
The fourth word that usually experienced difficulty being openly suggested, but which nevertheless all men agreed upon, was SEXUAL OPENNESS. The specifics varied a little, but by this the men were describing a woman who was open and prepared to explore all aspects of his and her sexuality and share them with him.
A lot of the women would bristle at the mention of it, feeling the stress many of them held in their bodies which had accumulated from many years of repression and disappointment in their own sexual experiences. They 'knew' that sexual openness was big for the man, but from their perspective many of them could not really resonate with this, because they could never quite trust their man deeply enough to show him the full extent of their own desires and needs.
The fifth word was TRUST, primarily for the man's direction. The men expressed that what they really wanted from their woman was trust in their commitment to their deepest purpose. They did not wish to be second guessed, or doubted or argued with; especially in matters directly relating to what it is they most feel they need to do or achieve so that they could die complete. Not being trusted was tantamount to betrayal in some men's eyes, but some of these men did not fully appreciate that trust needs to be earned in order to be felt and offered.
The last word that was agreed upon was SUPPORT, again support primarily for the man's direction or mission. Trust was desired and sought after, but support, be it practical, intellectual, emotional or even sexual, was very important to the man. He felt the need to be able to work towards something on his own terms but to know that she was there for him when he needed it.
So once we had these two lists up side by side we could see a representation of what each wanted from the other. This would usually generate a lot of stimulating discussion, as everybody began to self-evaluate themselves and their partners. Sometimes couples in the room would playfully tease or even hit each other; pointing to the board as proof that they were 'right' all along, and were now delighting that the wisdom of the crowd was revealing what they knew to be true, but couldn't express before. So it was and continues to be a useful and fun exploration, which opens us up to being able to focus on what it is we wish to change about ourselves, or what it is we wish to develop within ourselves, or jointly as a couple.
Of course all the words uttered, discussed and presented are appropriate to describe all of us, men and women, to greater or lesser extents from one moment to the next. They are not exclusive to one sex or the other. They merely point towards an agreement within the general public about what it is we want to attract and hold in our relationships. This is valuable information, but also should not be considered the final say on why we are here. Many people, both men and women, are perfectly content to be alone, and focused on something big or small, that does not directly involve another person, especially at the intimate level. But, regardless of how we chose to express our movements through life, every day our thoughts and actions are governed by the interplay of the two polar forces. Our ability to navigate successfully through each day, opening fully to love with each breath and giving the gift of our light to everyone and anything, depends on our level of self-knowing first, and our skill at relating to others.
The words became pointers to a greater understanding of polarised motivations and manifestations; and provided me with a rudimentary format around which I could create a structure for the men's seminars. There are three seminars in the series, and each one is loosely associated with the three stages of evolution of the 'Superior Man'; the first stage is all about the individual or the 'me', the second stage is about the collective or the 'we', and the third stage is 'free'.
From this concept the seminars provide a cumulative experiential effect where each man can explore his own life arcing evolutionary path, condensed into a relatively short time. In effect, it is designed and presented as a fractal model of accelerated learning and integration. And of course each of the men is a mirror for every other man, and within this environment we can all see more clearly who we have become and how we might change and grow.
Within each seminar are opportunities for the men to feel their power, or lack of it; to generate presence, or become aware of where and when it is missing. They could feel excitement and passion, but also experience how it feels to have none. They would also be challenged, physically and mentally, so that they could discover how to apply their innate intelligence in new situations. Also I wanted to ensure that there would be a lot of laughter, and dedicated time discovering or fine tuning their direction, or deepest purpose. Basically, I wanted to create a chance for us to become what it is we wanted to be, and what it was that our women wanted also.
In designing the course curriculum I remembered the advice of Stephen Covey, the author of Seven Habits of Successful People - where he said that in order to know if your vision has succeeded, you must first define what success actually means to you. So in this case, success for me was to create a seminar series for men, each one three and a half days long, which would help, support and guide men to open their hearts, clear their minds and strengthen their bodies. The primary purpose of this is to create an opportunity for the men to connect with, explore and express their fullest potential, in conscious loving service to all life. I wanted to generate a program that was focused and powerful, challenging and revealing.
Within this general definition I wanted each man to be able to measure his own success within this overall experience, and for him to be able to go home afterwards and apply their new knowledge and express their new energetic understanding directly and productively in their relationships and in their lives.
In deciding on a name for the seminar series, one of the men suggested 'BraveHeart', and it instantly resonated with me. It seemed very appropriate. What we are being asked to connect with and open is our hearts, so that we can feel into ourselves and into the world at the same time - Deida's definition of the third stage man. For most of us, we are heading into very unfamiliar territory - the mystical and magical land of the human heart; traditionally inhabited by those strange but beautiful creatures, called women.
We need to be brave, in our hearts, so that we can feel the fear and still step forward with courage into the unknown; to risk failure, disappointment, and loss. This is not to suggest that men cannot feel, or are incapable of expressing these feelings; but for many men the capacity to feel and use this information with power, focus and direction, is a relatively new concept, and a skill that rarely gets exercised.
In structuring each seminar program itself, I used a geometric concept that I developed many years ago, to describe how we can best learn something, and retain it, integrate it and understand it. The shape is a simple spiral path, almost but not quite circular, that continues round and round getting closer to the centre with each rotation. Radiating out from the centre, like spokes on a bicycle wheel, are a series of thin, seed-like shapes or zones; differing in size, position and location. They sit above the spiral path, transversely connecting adjacent revolutions. The spiral path itself represents the linear time centric journey we would take over the time at the seminar, moving ever closer to clarity or fusion, depicted by the centre point. The seed like shapes are concepts, ideas or exercises that we introduce and experience over the course of the seminar.
So in effect, as we travel around and in, along the spiral path, we will encounter a 'new' idea or exercise and it will show us something. Then there will be another encounter with another concept or experience, and then another. However, with each revolution we get to return to the original concept encounters, one by one, turn by turn, and with each re-visit time the context becomes richer, clearer and more comfortable. This way, the men can open to something, but experience it from a number of different aspects and directions, building understanding and integrating it all as they go.
This is the key to learning anything worth learning. The process must be natural, instinctive, easy, and of course it must be fun. This process aligns with an educational model known as Multiple Intelligences, which describes a natural property of learning where we access and relate to information in a number of different ways, each according to our own sensory strengths, abilities and predilections. So I wanted to present these seminars in a graphic way, a grounded way, a practical way; which would give us real life contexts for magical possibilities.
Most of our teaching styles and traditions seek to elevate our understanding by offering us a path 'upwards', from the mundane to the spiritual; from the physical to the meta-physical. In my experience this can lead us to believe that the answer is always somewhere above us, and we are not 'there' yet. Perhaps, if I climb one more step I will get it, see it, attain it or understand it? This linear vertical model of perceived growth and evolution is dimensionally very limited, and quite often tends to leave everyone feeling inadequate, weak or disillusioned.
We speak longingly of 'higher' dimensions and 'higher' beings, 'higher' states of awareness and connecting to our 'higher' selves. We seek and obsess about 'ascension' as if it is the magical answer to all our woes. We routinely give our power aware to a plethora of entities who apparently populate these 'higher' dimensions of consciousness, imagining that they are somehow better, more noble or more spiritual. All the while, this upward obsession continues to take us from where we are, this moment and this place, and tries to segregate our attention and divide our focus - always looking for help or inspiration from 'up there'. It limits of sense of self, and our trust in our own power and abilities.
So I wanted to create a time, space and place where we could take a so-called 'high' concept, and bring it kicking and screaming down to the very grounded physical, and work directly with it on this level. As the Universe is structured on the basis of 'as above, so below' this seemed to be a 'no-brainer'. The potential here is to see if we can ground a high principle at a so called 'low' level, then it would become more real, more useful, more integrated, especially at the conditioned sensory response level. I much prefer the approach that seeks for a 'fuller' experience, rather than a 'higher' one. Moving toward this approach allows us to take full responsibility for all of ourselves, in this moment and in this place. It gives us the chance to open more fully, not just connect higher.
So to expand on this a little more I would like to describe how on the first seminar we explore how each of us has a large number of psychological programs running at a subconscious level, many of which do not serve us particularly well, especially in terms of our desire to become more than we are. These programs initiate quite automatically in response to certain stimuli in our everyday environment, such as somebody saying something negative to us, which switches on the pre-programmed response mechanism, and before we have time to feel it and change it, we have said or done something out of pure habit, locking us and the person who 'caused' it into a loop-de-loop of blah blah blah. We are all familiar with such occurrences, and even with daily meditations, often we lack the necessary in-the-moment awareness to catch these program switch points, and so are at their mercy. These programs are run by the ego, and are fuelled ultimately by fear and lack of self-awareness. So what can we do to stop this happening? Are there some special techniques that can help us become aware of this happening just before it happens?
Well, we have a brilliantly designed nervous system which is continuously connected to all of the elements of the environment. Our bodies are so cool, representing a multi-cellular community of mostly healthy cells, all chatting to each other happily. We have on average about 60 trillion cells living in relative harmony in this community, each with approximately 100 thousand stimuli receptors on their surface membranes. So this is a perception ability that consists of about 600,000,000,000,000,000 ways that we can read and react to what is happening in each moment of blessed aliveness. That's quite a lot of ways to see, feel and relate to our world. So as information flows to us, through us and from us, as a incredibly complex living and conscious wave phenomenon, we arise from this field of interplay and call it home; our mind, our heart, our bodies, our lives and our world.
However, over time, this system of integration and expression, begins to take on certain patterned responses at a macro level, due to exposure to these patterns in our early formative years, traumas or inherited beliefs and predominant thinking systems. So in an effort to react and respond to something happening 'to' us, sometimes it is energetically easier to just sit back and allow an old program to kick in and deal with it quickly, if not very healthily. Mostly though, we only become aware of these programs after they kicked in and ran through our system.
At a human level, a good example of this is when your partner comes in and says to you - "how many times do I have to tell you to put out the garbage?" She says this out of her own frustration and stress, but when we hear this at this time, we may not hearing the voice of our lover, our chosen intimate partner, but rather we are listening to the voice of one or both of our or in some cases her parents. In this moment her words transport us instantly back to a time where we felt weak, controlled, judged and perhaps even manipulated. We lose our power and in less than a second we react with some programmed response such as "hey, I will do it later!, I am working hard here, earning money for the family and don't appreciate you nagging me over and over again, woman!". And she is unlikely to feel warm and full of love in this moment.
Her feminine ability and awareness helped her to feel that taking the garbage out would result in a nicer home environment, filled with more space and harmony and beauty. She did not necessarily think of it in those terms, but her desire to create beauty and fill the home with life force drove her to want to change something to make that become real. Because she can feel the whole space as and in her body, she can feel where there is stress and disharmony; in this case the garbage that was sitting and overflowing in the corner of the kitchen, the place where she puts her love into cooking for her family.
So from her perspective, in one moment she asked for help from her man to put the garbage out, and then the moment shifted and her energy went elsewhere.
However, within the logical linear grid of space and time, a place very comfortable to the masculine, he figured that it was perfectly reasonable for him to do it 'later', because in his reasoning there is no big panic or urgency. Because he lacks the feeling capability to connect with the space as she does, he did not see how this one small point was connected to EVERYTHING else in her world, at that moment in time. She remains stressed, but is not sure why, and the love is not able to flow smoothly in her, through her or from her. She is contracted and uncomfortable, stressed and perhaps a little agitated. Now she looks around and feels that everything is for nothing! Then she sees the garbage still there, perhaps made even worse by the fact that the dog had smelt some food in it, grabbed the top of it and knocked some of it onto the floor. Now she gets it: her trust in her man is gone. She shuts down and lets roar. She has had enough. She shouts, he reacts, she counter reacts, he tells her to relax and lighten up, reminding her that it's 'only' the garbage and don't be so neurotic... etc,. Game over.
So what happened? A pre-program that had been recorded many years ago, and reinforced over the time since, has emerged in direct response to a present moment signal resonance with the originating signal information. And before we could step in, we acted it out and in that moment love was not in flow. In this garbage example, the man missed the opportunity to open this moment to more love. He missed the chance to magically turn stress into harmony and delight. He failed to have the necessary awareness to step in, change the energy and create, rather than responding to some conditioned reaction. Of course, step one is to learn to do what the woman asks when she asks it. However, without awareness this can lead to a slave / good boy / puppy dog relationship scenario, which again limits massively the opportunity for love and passion to flow. But the next step is for the man to extend his field of attention, stalking awareness and overall consciousness into himself, into her, into the home, the planet - and to feel what is needed to turn stress into love, discord into peace, and anger into passion and playfulness. The man can take out the garbage before she even feels it is a problem, not because he wants her to think he is good, or trustworthy; but because he must know what she needs, wants and desires, even before she does, and he wants to give this to her, without any attachment to it being noticed, received or appreciated. Love.
So this is an example of one of the many skills that we men must learn, develop and be prepared to use in any and every moment. This is what our women want from us (amongst other things!). This is one way that we can give our gift to her and to the world. This is one way that we can rise above our animal / reptilian nature and dare to dance with the angels.
(Actually, on that point, I believe we are much more powerful than the angels - no offense there guys...).
In the first seminar we create a specific exercise that affords us a visceral example of a program that controls our ability to respond consciously and lovingly - which is our 'response-ability'. I have the men divide into two lines facing each other. Then I instruct one line to quickly grab the man opposite them into a tight head-lock, just like back in the school yard. From there the exercise is simple; the man applying the headlock has to keep it, and drag the other man across the room or field. The 'victim' here needs to try to escape and free himself. Now I know this may sound a bit too much, but after several attempts the men learn directly how it feels to have your head in a lock, your thinking in a trap, your awareness diminished and limited to a fight or flight response. So over the next half hour or so, I show them how to escape from this lock, physically, using a series of practical moves which all have a 'higher' metaphoric component and understanding.
It is a little hard to describe in words, but what this exercise gives the men is an initial feeling of helplessness, which transforms over time and training, into awareness and empowerment - and this is applied directly to the psychological counter point of the fear based pre-programmed ego response. They learn to become more aware of what is happening in each moment, and are developing ways to respond that 'free' them and allow them the necessary conscious space to open the moment to something beautiful from this place of freedom and power. This is just a first stage exercise but will hopefully illustrate how these seminars are offering a full spectrum training ground for all aspects of our lives, and give us the tools to become the man we want to be, in service to our women, our families and the world. In the second and third seminars we elevate this potential to another level of understanding and integration, and have it sit within other contexts to allow our awareness and conscious to expand even further.
This is what we want to be able to do, and what our women would love us to be able to do. They want to be able to feel our mind, and sense its intelligence, humour and power. They want to be able to feel our hearts, and sense its openness and its presence. They want to feel our bodies and sense our passion and desire. And they want to be able to feel that we are always moving towards our deepest purpose, and will remain strong and dedicated enough not to collapse, be distracted or easily deviated from it. They will love us enough to constantly test us, in every area of expression; seeking to expose and activate any weakness or leakage of integrity. They can feel us, and they love us, and they know us and they want us to be the best we can be. And when we can rise to this, even though we are continuously making mistakes and self-correcting, then our women can begin to trust us, relax into their deepest and truest essence, and open themselves and us and the world to Love and the Light of God. It is absolutely worth the effort, believe me.
I hope that this will give you a better sense of what it is I am creating and developing with the BraveHeart seminars. Thank you for your time, energy, attention and love.
Michael
21st October 2013
