Rebirthing Masculinity

And Embracing the Wild Feminine

Hi Everyone,

I’m sharing here the talk I did a few weeks ago at the Threshold Summit about Rebirthing Masculinity and Embracing the Wild Feminine. I’ve re-recorded myself giving the talk because, well, it was written to be orated rather than read. You can listen here

Hello, and Welcome.

And thank you for being a part of this magical process we are about to engage in. Rebirthing, together, in some small way a construct that has been failing us. The construct of masculinity.

Now, I’d like to start from a place of gratitude and acknowledgement. First and foremost gratitude to this great majestic planet Earth. The water that flows, the great sun that showers us with warmth and light, and the rest of the jovial celestial bodies that play around our there in space.

to the Yellow Barn and the threshold Collective for bringing into existence the possibility of this moment right now and of all of us gathering in this way. And gratitude to the musicians.

And of course, gratitude to all those non-material forces that orchestrate how life and living happen behind the scenes.

And gratitude to our ancestors. Those humans who did their best to lives their lives in a way that could give us lives they believed would be good.

And gratitude for you all.

And now, briefly, some acknowledgments.

First acknowledging that this land was originally stewarded by the Ute, Chayenne, and Arapahoe.

And, perhaps more relevant to our conversation today that I stand before you as a cis-gendered upper middle class white male of Jewish decent. That carries an array of impacts on my lived experience and therefor what I share and how I share and what we do here together. We’re exploring a topic that for many people is charged and involves hurt and pain as well as love and goodness. I stand here humbly and fully aware of my limitations (including how much time we have). And so I apologize in advance if anything I say is in any way hurtful or harmful and request that you reach out and connect and help me understand and grow if that happens.

And finally, I’d like to just say explicitly that masculinity and patriarchy (from where I stand) are two very different things, although entangled. My hope that as we rebirth masculinity we contribute the crumbling of the patriarchy… and in that note, let’s dive in.

First we dive into what it means to rebirth. It means we’re here in a space that’s pregnant. That means there’s something here that’s not fully known, that hasn’t fully come into being, that’s hidden from us, but that’s ready to emerge and together we get to support that emergence.

If we’re all humans and humans have an enourmous number of possible qualities , we seemed to have boxed those qualities into different categories originally based on biological sex and hence we created these concepts, the ideas of the masculine and feminine. Different cultures did this differently and things have clearly changed through the years. Now, in certain ways the boxes here helpful, they kinda help us get a sense of how we might be in the world, but sometimes people experienced discord between what the box they were in said they should be and how they felt themselves to be or how they wanted to be. Their aunthetic self didn’t fit in the box.

For men, particularly in Western patriarchal culture, this box often included things like strong and powerful. Strength and Power themselves can be ideas that exhibit in different ways, but the way it’s been understood has been part of the pathology.

Because well, strength and power often have an “I’ve got this quality” which is to say, “I’m in control” and of course there’s various degrees of control, but it seems like this is a focal issue.

Namely because without models of power and strength that don’t involve  “being in control” options like “surrender “ and/or “not being in control” are off the table or outside of the box. This shows up all over the place but I think there are a few places where it's particularly and obviously painful. But before we dive into those areas I want to speak to where we DO FIND models of strength and power that don’t involve control : the realm of the WILD FEMININE. Well, at least that a name I’m using. Partially cuz it sounds badass but mostly because the ways I’ve seen this type of power expressed have been mostly in this realm. It’s everything the patriarchy fears most, it’s Witch Power, the Prophet Miriam, it’s the mysterious potency of the vast chaotic darkness that all life comes from. And it’s terrifying because its so powerful and so impossible to control.

Let’s bring patriarchal power in the room for a moment (apologies in advance as this may feel familiar and uncomfortable). There’s a stern, sharp, cutting, threatening , cold, unempathic quality here.

Ay, let’s shake that off….

Now let’s invite that Wild feminine… juicy untamed free whimsical and inclusive unafraid and with deep roots into a vast well. Soak. It. Up. Yum.

Now… let’s bring the room back to neutral…. Or back to the pregnancy from which this new masculine will emerge. We’ll experience what it feels like as we come to a close together.

So, circling back to this idea of control (let’s circle back slowly so we don’t get dizzy, ey?)

The first element we can explore where this comes to play is emotions. Boys have not been taught how to experience and navigate feelings.  Without this education, emotions have a way of making boys feel out of control which is to say weak and powerless, and so the quest to control and subdue feelings begins. Controling and subduing emotions also means the denying the expression of the authentic self. There’s a loss of contact with a vast part of human experience and in that, there’s hardening, calcification. It’s not that all men are walking around with stone hearts, it’s a spectrum. Some men one part of their hearts crusted over while other men have hidden other parts of their hearts closed off caves and caverns.

Part of “the work” is to bring life back to the Stoney outcroppings, to let the moss and lichen do their work until blood can once again flow through parts of the heart previously hidden away.

Imagine a masculinity that is tender-hearted in its strength.

Imagine a masculinity of people who know and feel fear, and can share that without shame.

Imagine a masculinity of people who know grief and sadness, not just in private, not as something that's hidden away in their literal and figurative basements. But sadness that can wail and tear up and cry in community, with other men, with women, with children, with elders.

Imagine a masculinity of people who know anger and rage, so well, so intimately, that they ride it in a way that doesn't blame others and that minimizes harm.

Imagine a masculinity of people who know JOY, who can enthusiastically and unabashedly share and express their delight in the world, from the way light trickles down through leaves, to the joy of watching a loved one overcome struggles.

Imagine a masculinity of people who know EMOTION, who flow with feeling, who can attune and connect and empathize.

It's coming... it's coming... it's coming...

Grown men, fathers, grandfathers, brothers, uncles, nephews are learning and practicing, and getting very very very uncomfortable in the name of rebirthing masculinity. Men are letting go of control and losing their identities to build news ones that feel and express and know emotion. I see it in the mens groups, in the coaching and acupunctures sessions.

Is it enough? How many? How Quickly? Oooohhhh.... beautiful questions to hold and cherish and wonder with... and to explore where, where do those questions from...?

Are we teaching boys differently, here and there and yes. Over there, maybe not yet... Permission, freedom, letting go of control, because it's better to be connected in control. Boys are learning from men who are learning and it's all imperfectly perfect and painfully slow but each step towards feeling is a delight even as it's uncomfortable.

And what's another area this whole control thing shows up?

Sex. "Let's talk about sex baby, lets talk about you and me." Yes, we need to go there. Because as boys go through puberty (OMG did he just puberty, ew!), this really powerful urges and feelings start to show up and there's no one that really helps them navigate those experiences. So boys becoming men are left in a tug of war controlling and being controlled by their evolutionary impulses, also known as mojo, which leads to all sorts of twisted expressions of a potent primal energy that when expressed through love brings beauty and connection into the world. What a mess, the tug of war leads to violence, pain, and suffering…

If you're sitting here in a male body or male identified perhaps you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you're a male body or male identified person who does not know what I'm alluding to it's not because somethings wrong with you, it's because you have you're own beautiful experience of sex and sexual energy.

If you're sitting here in a female body or female identified you may also know what I'm talking about either through witnessing and relating to boys becoming men or from your own direct internal experience (which I don't know as much about that).

Male sexual energy is hot and fast. And our modern western world at times seems like it's vibrating on a frequency of that energy. It's missing something, the thing it's missing is the thing it's rushing towards, the yin, the soft and supple the wet and moist to help it cool down and get anchored.

But there's another ingredient that can help soften and slow and tenderize the frenetic impulsivity of masculine sexual energy: Love.

Love.

Yes, I said Love. And no, it's not cheesy.

I believe that if we can take love, and beam it into that intense volcanic fires of sexual passion, something happens, and all of the sudden, the urgency, and the anxious vibrations, slowly but surely calm.

When will we talk to our boys and our brothers about LOVE. Could it be even more taboo, even less, manly (in the patriarchial sense) than talking about sex? I think yes. I think people are happy to talk about sex, but LOVE.... whoah... too touchy feely? too emotional? to gentle? to vulnerable?

LOVE LOVE LOVE. Yes.

And Sex.

Yes, they go together (and know they don't have to and yes it can be complicated), but when love is involved, the need to control, well it dissipates. Because love doesn't want control. Love wants connection. And even the fiery passions of sex, are no match in the face of love.

So what do we do? Where do we go?

As patriarchy disintegrates under the conscious gaze of integrated people, boys and men and males can embrace of model of masculinity that is comfortable with the wild feminine. That embraces the untamed  forces of the unknown which is required for the birth of something known.

A Masculinity that feels feelings and emotions

A Masculinity that that knows love deeply.

What exactly that looks like is being discovered here today and tomorrow by us.

Let’s let’s this conversation continue to works it’s magic on us through time and space and bring this sometimes taboo topic to our dinner tables for feasts of freedom and possibility.

End.

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Here in Service,

Noah