A New Meaning of Courage For Men Living in Heart and Mind

Last year during one of the men’s circles in Santa Barbara, California, one of the men was attempting to connect, identify and claim a limited pattern that had been working against him for many years. While he was sharing with the circle he stopped cold and announced to the group of men, “I can’t go on, I think that if I acknowledge this limitation in me, I may become it… I’m also afraid of the judgment from you and the men in the circle. I am afraid that once I put this into words in front of the circle that I’ll never be able to hold myself as before.” Sensing the difficulty that he was going through, I asked him to go into his heart and tell us what he was feeling. He closed his eyes and attempted to connect to his feelings, as we had been learning to do for the last couple of weeks. After a short while he opened his eyes, visibly shaken he said, “I… can’t… I just can’t.” In an attempt to support him, I responded, “I hear your mind saying that it doesn’t want to go to the feeling and emotional body. Tell me, how do you feel about that?” Again, he closed his eyes and attempted to connect with his feeling body. You could tell, by the continuous movement of his legs, that he was getting frustrated and angry with himself because he couldn’t connect with that part of him that carries his feelings and emotions. He opened his eyes and angrily said to me, “I can’t do this, this takes to much. It takes too much energy and too much nerve, and I just can’t go there right now, to be in heart that is… I just can’t.”

This is an example of how some men have great difficulty directing their awareness to their emotional body. The truth is that most men have been brought up and conditioned to believe that having courage is about not recognizing feelings and emotions, especially those feelings that may be surfacing as a result of a particular situation and or experience in their lives, present or past. They have been taught that ignoring the feeling body and the intuition, which resides in the emotional body, equates to being strong and brave.

In addition to learning how to bypass the feeling body, young men are taught that they need to use their own personal will to go past this intuitive place in them that might have deeper knowing or meaning. This place of intuition, in this context, is our own internal warning system that alerts us there might be something irregular or maybe even dangerous just ahead. This human alarm, that can “feel” or “sense” a situation even before it happens is our own internal mechanism that warns us to be cautious and aware of possible situations relevant to our safety in that particular moment.

This may be a good time to clarify the difference between men’s feelings; emotions, the emotional body, and the intuition as described in this writing and the work in helping men connect to their emotional sense and being. A “feeling” is a sensation felt and or perceived by the physical, mental, and emotional bodies. It’s an instinctive awareness of something inside, that can happen moment to moment.

The “emotional body” is that part in humans that holds the feelings and emotions. An “emotion” is a collection of similar feelings that come together because each holds the same type of energy. This emotion, in turn, can create a limited pattern of protection and defense that may have been created in childhood as a survival mechanism. Many of us still operate from this place of defense without even realizing it and it may be working against us in our quest for happiness.

“Intuition” is the ability to know something, not from the thinking mind but from the feeling and emotional part in men. It’s having knowledge of something instinctively, without having mental evidence for it. My sense is that this intuitive place in men is primarily attained and maintained by accessing, owning, and expressing feelings and emotions, moment to moment. When men don’t acknowledge these feelings and emotions, they disown pieces of the Self, which in time resurface in their emotional body as unhealed parts. This unhealed part, or wound, may be expressed unconsciously through some type of limited expression or behavior.

When I experienced combat as a helicopter pilot in South East Asia, the act of suppressing our feelings during flights in combat and the emotions of our actions there, were reinforced by the command as we learned to put passengers, the aircraft and military equipment before our own safety. We were taught through example, by the command and through comparison and competition, that we needed to suppress that part of us that was sounding our own internal warning alarm system. In an attempt to get past the fear, we conditioned ourselves to disconnect from this sense of intuition by suppressing our feeling body, so that we could focus on the job that we were called to do.

The challenge for men today, especially for those of us who have gone through any kind of crisis or domestication that required the suppression of feelings of fear, is that when we want to connect with the “whole-self,” which includes the feeling body, it may be extremely difficult. This may be a result of years of conditioning ourselves to hold in feelings and emotions. Many of the men that returned home after combat, found that their ability to hide their feelings and emotions made it difficult to connect with deeper parts in them that could take them to intimate places with themselves and others from a place of heart. For the most part, these men found that they were not able to own and express their feelings. This separation from their emotional body prevented the men from being present in each moment, especially in their new lives outside of the attack and defense mode of combat.

When I first started working as an apprentice with Don Miguel he would often talk to me about the parasite in humans that infects our emotional body. He said that the parasite would continue to grow until finally it was able to control us through the use of our own fear. That was the case with me, my challenge was that I was not consciously aware of the disparity in me. It was not until I met my teacher that I was able to identify and subsequently heal this parasite living in me.

Before I met Miguel I felt numb. I was not connected to my emotional body or true Self and consequently I was disconnected from my truth. My fear was of what I would find if I opened my awareness to this part of me that had been numb for so long. I had unconsciously developed a defense system that enabled me to numb myself and disconnect, which in turn fed my thinking that everything was all right.

Once I was freer from the pattern of not supporting my emotional body and living someone else’s dream by participating in a war, I felt that I had little to stand for except maybe another lie. To feed my mind with more untruth, I created another lie. This time it was that my emotional body was ok. I imagined, as I had already become accustomed to the falseness of my own thinking, that another false truth could not be that detrimental. In fact, I believed that the first one probably saved my life, so perhaps this one could also. The problem was that I could not hold on to this false truth, especially when I started to face myself, little by little and with the help of my teacher.

My sense is that many men today operate from this false sense and lack of relationship with themselves by not connecting to their emotional body, i.e. feelings and emotions, and consequently are not able to connect to their true nature and Spirit. Men today have a different choice. This is the choice to become strong and brave from a new place of heart. Instead of hiding all of these feelings and emotions, men can choose to acknowledge this bigger part of them, their whole Self. In doing this, each man will open himself to a place of self-empowerment in being all that he has co-created for himself in this lifetime.

This choice that I am referring to has proven to be one of the most challenging lessons for myself and many of the brave men who walk this path along with me. This challenge is really about meeting our own feminine, our feeling body, as we do our masculine, our mind. Men meet their feminine, the emotional body in them, by connecting and owning their feelings and emotions moment to moment. This practice will eventually give way in connecting with the heart. It is an unspoken partnership between the “thinking mind,” and the “feeling body,” where the feelings, emotions, thinking, intuition and wholeness reside. This is where the new power of men lies, in the heart along with the mind, equally, side by side and in balance.

This new paradigm is about giving men the opportunity to connect to their emotional side through sharing the fear that we have been domesticated not to feel. Historically, men have learned to deal with the fear that they have been holding, by closing off to their own feminine, which results in a disconnection from the women in their lives. This is the test for many men today, especially for men that hold feelings of separation with women. This comes from their own fear, and they mask this fear by creating a block to this part of themselves and the feminine in the outside dream.

As men deepen to meet their own feminine, they will see an improvement in both their relationships with themselves and with others from a place of heart. The challenge here is that doing this requires a new kind of courage. This new kind of courage that I am referring to requires that men be aware of their feelings and emotions moment to moment. Once the awareness in brought to the feeling or emotion, the man must learn to express them from his heart without utilizing old patterns of rage or anger. This awareness and expression results in a strong connection to one’s individual Truth.

This new courage is very different from the old kind we called upon to shut out the feeling and intuitive sense, in an attempt to go numb. It takes great courage and skill to shift your perception from projections from the outside dream, to your emotional body. Then you can see what is affecting your limited perception of life, through stalking the emotional body. Once you can identify these wounds coming from inside of you, you can initiate a very deep healing process.

From my point of view, the new kind of courage essential for men today, calls for men to come face to face with inner issues that keep them disconnected from their whole selves. When a man connects with this part of his feeling body, it can bring about a heart opening experience. The opening of the heart can take men to a deeper place in their own relationship with Self and with the others. The end result is that the individual may now find it possible to enter a relationship free of judgment, fear, and projection with him self and beloved.

I see the ability to live life from the duality, as the true empowerment of men today. Through this empowerment, men will find the courage to continue holding the feminine, from the initial feeling stage through the intuition process, for internal creation and planning in their lives. On the other end of the spectrum, they will continue to honor and hold the masculine through their intellect, bringing about the manifestation of that creation in the outer dream of life.

I believe that this may be a new choice for men today in becoming strong and courageous in heart and mind.

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