Cultivate Maturity

Cultivate Maturity

It is interesting to me how often lessons seem to pop into our lives on cue I have been particularly enjoying the articles and chapters on resacralizing the feminine and the female body in particular. I loved all the readings but was completely captivated by Deena Metzger’s essay in To Be a Woman. I had been pondering how tragic it is for women to have their bodies seen as something dirty, something to be hidden away, the cause of social ills. I have been outraged for years by the dichotomous messages of our culture: sex is everywhere: ads, billboards, television, and yet women who too obviously indulge (“man-like” behaviors?) in sexual behavior are still whores. It was while reading the chapters on the animus and anima and the return of the Holy Prostitute that a man, who randomly shows up like the proverbial “bad penny,” called me. Now, he and I have a less-than-normal or pleasant history, having met online…a bad idea all around…and our conversation came around to sex (this was the problem all along—no respect for me as a human being).
During this conversation, he said something that has made me think hard about many things regarding femininity, the sacredness of the body, what spiritual maturity looks like, and how much damage the patriarchy has done to men, especially in this culture. While talking about his possible partner he is struggling to define his relationship with, he made the comment that while she shared his interest in sustainable farming, there was something lacking in the relationship when it came to passion. He then made a comment that rocked me back: he said: “It’s like you need someone for the daylight hours and someone else for the nighttime.” My first thought was how tragic that he perceives intimate relationships that way. How dichotomous and torn. The more I pondered this interesting, and distasteful, conversation the more I could see that some men are still caught up in the “Madonna and Whore” syndrome. Dark and light. Good and Bad. Black and white thinking to the nth degree. The inability to see a woman as whole and full of potential lies at the root of much pain in relationships, never mind the societal implications!
While I could go on and on about the social ills caused by these kind of male power plays and the damage they do to women and most assuredly they do and have, I have been thinking about how damaged such men are. To live internally so split and torn and to see other beings as halves to be used. At a soul level, this is like a sickness to me. I fully agree that spiritual maturity is different for women, measured as it is against such a damaged power structure. Men, too, pay the price for this division.
I believe that, for me, spiritual maturity is about healing the damage done and letting go of the anger; by this I do not mean to say that I do not have some righteous anger and a wish to change things; I do. However, the kind of anger that cripples one and stops us from integrating our spirituality, our sacredness of physical self is what needs to be let go of. For me, part of that process is embracing my physical being and respecting it and my Self enough to say no to others who would disrespect me or only see me as one aspect of a total being. Additionally, maturity is also seeing the value in sometimes distasteful conversations because you just never know when an epiphany will occur