Elevating the Feminine
Gender and Power Dynamics in our society, organizations, and relationships are shifting and evolving quickly. The pandemic has highlighted many of these shifts that have been shifting. As men, we have a choice - do we learn and adapt or do we hold on a traditional mindset. Based on the way the systems have been designed and developed, the majority of systems, structures, cultures, and institution have been built on a masculine ideal that favors men and the masculine. This is fact and this is our reality.
Rather than taking a good/bad/right/wrong - dualistic view - I only ask one question in all of these conversations - at what cost? What has been the cost to living and operating with a masculine ideal? In these conversations, I do not take a progressive or conservative stance, but rather a humanity stance. By living in a masculine ideal, what has been the cost to our individual and collective humanity?
What has the impact of the masculine ideal been on men, on women, on those who don’t have identify as either? What has been the impact on our organizations, on our institutions, on our systems, on our relationships, and in the communities where we live? In many instances, we have diminished the feminine and the voices of women and those who don’t identify as men or women. Yet at the same time, what we need more than anything right now is the ability to access the feminine energy - from within ourselves, in our systems, and across society.
The feminine is such a scary proposition for so many and in my experience it is a triggering word for many men and women. We have demonized and minimized the feminine in so many ways throughout our lives and in our narrative that many of us possess a level of shame when this word is uttered.
At my old company, we had an Akashic Reader available to all employees. Our Akashic Reader said to me one day, Sean, it’s great that you have a vision and a plan, but now I need you to walk out of your masculine and into you feminine from this place of curiosity and wonderment and let go of the need to let go of the outcome. It is only when I really walked this path that I walked into my calling and my sense of purpose. It was the walking into the emergence that is so critical at this point in our history where so much is shifting and evolving.
As I think about the pain and suffering that comes from these crumbling systems, it is where I see the need for the healing power of the feminine. When we think about the masculine, this energy often tells us that there is a problem that needs to be fixed. When we consider the feminine, this energy often tells us that there are wounds that need healing.
You’ll never hear me say the words Toxic Masculinity, but that suggests that men and masculinity are broken and need to be fixed. From my observation, the majority of us across the gender continuum are walking around wounded from the masculine ideals that have been dominated our systems and the social conditioning that have shown us the should’s. How should we be and operate in the world rather than who are we at our core, from our most authentic? Most of us don’t know who we really are because we haven’t had access our full embodiment of who we are.
We are at a moment in time where men’s healing, integration, and transformation are paramount to creating societal systems change. This is a critical lever in redefining the way we operate as a society, within our institutions, in our communities, and in our relationships with others and with ourselves. By liberating this lever, we are able to scale a new way of being in the world. We’ll open ourselves to the full access of our hearts and souls that deepen our understanding in the world. We’ll find a new way forward steeped in deeper consciousness, compassion, and connection that allows for greater inclusion. We can reframe our lens for a new possibility across our society.