(A) Those are excellent questions. Thank you for asking them. First I want to say there is essentially no difference between the basic collective pain of the universal gay/same gender loving man and the basic collective pain of the universal straight or bisexually identified man, or any other man for that matter. This awareness becomes one of the many avenues available to us for true love, understanding and fellowship across sexual orientation lines among men.
Second, for others who will read this, some people may not be familiar with the concept Tolle introduces in “The Power of Now” that he calls “the pain body.” So I want to give a brief explanation of this terminology first. Essentially, Tolle says that most people carry many different forms of pain in their physical and emotional bodies as well as in the psyche and that spring from many sources. At the most basic level, we each have pain that is derived from the totality of our human experiences at any given moment. This is an experience that typically, and over a lifetime contains love, beauty, joy and the like. It also typically includes challenge, grief, and other things that could be called “negative.” Tolle believes a lot of our individual pain comes from our families of origin. Tolle also posits an idea he calls “collective pain bodies.” This is pain that is derived from the collective experiences of a gender, an ethnic group, a religious group, etc. This collective pain is usually the result of group persecution that has gone on for many, many generations and that is passed down energetically and even genetically as well according to Tolle.
I also noticed how Tolle spent little if no time devoted to the discussion of the collective male pain body in either “The Power of Now” or “A New Earth.” I am certain he is aware of a collective male pain body. I am guessing for whatever reason, it simply was not something he either believed he was particularly tuned into or it may not have been a priority for him, given the other very weighty topics he dealt with in both books. Or perhaps he knew someone like me was waiting in the wings and was more than ready, willing and able to address it. I am very eager and willing to discuss this.
So without further delay, yes I believe there is a collective male pain body. It is largely connected to the dynamic around Fathers and Sons and to a slightly less intense degree connected to the dynamic around Mothers and Sons, particularly in situations where the father was totally or mostly absent or where a divorce or separation took place and the son remained primarily with the mother. I believe a relatively small percentage of men on the planet have had a truly incredible and directly healing experience with their biological fathers or the man or men who served as their primary father figures during their formative years.
First, and very importantly, such men, men who served as young boys primary father figures during their formative years were most likely consistently physically present and available. There was also near unconditional love, emotional bonding, physical affection, emotional support, recognition of all and various achievements of the boy, little or no pressure for the young boy and emerging man to conform to gender-based norms, appropriate and loving initiation into manhood, etc.
Most men living on the planet today I believe, had pretty much the opposite experience from that which I listed above. I can speak far more competently about Western men in this regard than I can about men who grew up in non-Western environments. Though my intuition tells me there is likely not a huge difference there. In either case, the presence or absence of this father/son love forms, in my opinion, the basic foundation of a modern man’s life experience/life injury.
Even if a man had the most magical and amazing experience with his father or father figure, he would have been surrounded by friends, brothers-in-law, co-workers, step brothers and such who did not. He will not be able to escape the very real pain this causes the vast majority of men around him nor how it is played out in everyday life. Further, he is likely to have bosses, supervisors, colleagues, cousins and the like who through their father/son pain experience will project many of the dysfunctional aspects of this onto him.
Male competition (and not the friendly kind) is one of the most common examples of this. There is a belief among many of my feminist women friends that women are the most vicious creatures on earth in terms of how they generally or potentially act toward other women. I don’t want to get into a game of “whose the worst to whom.” What I can say is if there are large numbers of women out there who are more vicious to their sisters than I have observed and experienced corporate, fraternity, military, athletic association based, and other men acting toward their brothers, then-- May God help us all!
So the central and predominant collective male pain body experience on the planet and that has been in existence for thousands upon thousands of years is the sons desire and failure to obtain (he believes at least) the love of his father or the dominant father figure in his life. And then secondarily how the mother consciously or unconsciously contributes to that.
Connected to this is another predominant male experience. This is the competition between men that is born out of the desire for that love that was missing from the father and the struggle to somehow compensate for that. And of course if the sons biological father is still alive there could be competition with and between them on both extremely subtle as well as not so subtle levels. This could be true even if there is no tangible and active relationship between the two or hasn't been for years. The line that separates deep, real, even sexual love from real aggression can be an extremely blurred line in the conscious but mostly unconscious lives of many men. This is primarily because of the extremely deep bond between most men and their fathers, even if this bond resides mostly in the subconscious realm. Traditional psychoanalysis, I believe, has not really understood this.
And where there is this deep bond, the resentment often is usually just as deep. This sets the stage for the archetypal love-hate relationship energy that exists on the planet. It is a love-hate relationship energy that I believe is nearly 100% about and between men. Women represent the womb and the giving of life. The love-hate dynamic on the planet is not essentially perpetrated by women at least not at the deepest psychological and archetypal level. It is perpetrated by men and collective male pain. There is a reason much of the weaponry on the planet resembles on a small scale (handguns, arrows used in bows and arrows, etc) or on an extremely large scale (weapons of mass destruction such as bombs and rockets), the male penis.
Nowhere is this potentially more true than in gay male romantic relationships. This is also one of the main reasons gay male romantic relationships are potentially some of the most powerful healing energies on the planet, especially gay male relationships between two men of color. The sane and enlightened and inspired and sexual and unconditional love between 2 men and especially two men of color (because of the added historical pain and oppression of men of color, usually at the hands of other men) has the power to heal the collective male pain body more than almost anything else I am consciously aware of at this time on our entire planet.
Every man who hates gay men is consciously or more likely unconsciously aware of and extremely fearful of the powerful and healing, completely natural and innate bond of love between men, whether or not that love is ever expressed sexually. When women hate gay men something entirely different is going on. Addressing that is beyond the scope of answering your question. So I won't go into that.
What I will go into briefly is the cultural socialization that many men around the world receive and that I also believe is a strong element within the collective male pain body. Essentially what we are talking about is the development where men are not allowed to display the full breadth of the emotional repertoire available to humans. Men are perceived variously as weak, feminine, not masculine, wimpy and many other unflattering things when we display many of these emotions. There are also many secondary issues that come from this basic emotional dissonance men are forced to live with-- many of which, over the centuries, have become just as powerful and dysfunctional as the root issue---how men are socialized culturally around emotions and emotional display.
Historians are beginning to do a fairly good job of recording the horrifying depth of oppression and atrocities history has expressed against women. One of the major consequences however, of being the "dominant" gender on the planet is that the at least equally horrifying and atrocious and long standing violence men have perpetrated against other men is historically lumped into the phrase and consciousness as "crimes against hu-man-ity." This unfortunately diffuses the power of the specific suffering of men in that equation. Many people still have difficulty wrapping their heads around the idea that men have historically been the victims of great violence on the planet and for thousands of years.
Here's an easily accessible remedy for that (especially if you are an American or Jewish male). And I absolutely mean no disrespect to the Jewish faith here whatsoever. Still, if you are male, American, Jewish or from certain other world destinations, take a look just a little south of the equator on your body. There you will likely find the living evidence of the first physical act of extreme violence that was perpetrated on you relatively soon after birth. From that pivotal and horrifying moment in your very young male existence, the hits just kept on coming.
No comments:
Post a Comment