MEN: Are They The Biggest Problem in the World?
Kay Urlich
Ebook EDITION
Published by SOTEH Publishing on Smashwords 2011
Copyright © Kay Urlich, all rights reserved
Book three in a series of three
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
INTRODUCTION
When I tell people the title of this book they smile politely and assume I’m writing a comedy. “Is this a joke?” they ask. When I say no, their mouths drop open in disbelief as if I’d just hit their baby. They say that I must hate men to even suggest such a thing; that women cause problems too; women are bitches and behave worse than men sometimes and …!
So, no, I can categorically state that neither the writing of this book, nor its content, is a joke. However, these people are not wrong in asking, because while the evidence is so compelling, it is also widely ignored. We all understand that men are wonderful sons, brothers, lovers, fathers and husbands; they are the creators of great art, music and civilizations, but I was beginning to think that I’d dreamed up the facts that men are also:
The builders and users of technology which has devastating consequences for humanity and the environment through pesticides, germ warfare, ammunition and other types of ruthless technology
The holders of more wealth, land and privileges than women. Men are paid more than women for equal work.
The main physical and financial beneficiaries of trafficked women and children for pornography and sexual purposes: Child pornography alone earns three billion dollars annually. Meanwhile many thousands of children starve to death daily.
However, the more I researched the question, the more I thought the Universe must be playing some kind of mad game. Why did some people react so ferociously to such well-known facts? Originally, all I wanted to know is why is there is so much poverty, despair and war for many, and so much wealth and privilege for so few? I wanted to explore the cause of violence, and what is it about a world that lets millions of children be so brutalized and to starve to death every year, that ignores those orphaned from AIDs who have no medication, schooling and no one to love and guide them – I wanted to engage in open dialogue about who, or what, is really responsible.
Other things too, such as how has the status quo continued for so long, when men are the known beneficiaries of power: over women, nature, the environment, food supplies, water rights and so on?
Statistics, not that you really need them, (because if you are a woman then proof is in your paycheck), prove that it’s men who are pulling the global strings. Therefore they must be responsible for all the world’s problems, right?
Well, it’s a reasonable assumption to make given the facts I’ve just mentioned. However, to my surprise, and despite all the evidence I have seen, as I looked deeper into the cause through the eyes of another paradigm, I realized that physical evidence and statistics aren’t quite as simple as they first appear. I realized that if people and cultures are willing to look into the cause of personal and global dysfunction, then they can solve many problems and make real changes to their lives and environment. Understanding causation is not about attributing blame, it is about expanding our personal and global awareness.
Greater knowledge is vital at this time, because what we see in the physical world is only one part of a very large human puzzle. My ongoing enquiries led me to another important understanding, that men, while they appear to be the perpetrators of violence, may actually be having a hard time of it too; they may be victims of their own benefits.
You may be getting a bit frustrated by now because these statements are so contradictory, and you’re right, they are. They’re like life, and life is complicated and paradoxical. Not only that, but the true essence of life, love and the universe can only reveal itself through differing perspectives, where conflict and opposition unravel the real magic of both evolution and creation.
Statistics simply give us an overview of a world that has lost its way; where Humanity has gone awry. But they cannot answer the biggest question of all: Does power, in the hands of a few (a few men that is), prevent humanity’s evolution? Furthermore, it is only by finding how we were severed from whole consciousness that we can start drawing the fragments together to unmask the real problem and perpetrator.
By finding the source of personal and global dysfunction, you find the key to life’s purpose. This leads to the discovery of how simple life really can be as your life-force merges with an interconnected universal consciousness. You find:
Where real power is held
Why and what has caused so much suffering and despair
MEN: Are they the biggest problem in the world? exposes some facts and fallacies about opposing forces: through the merging polarities of male and female, physical and spiritual connections we find our real purpose. Furthermore, by understanding ourselves we affect the consciousness of the whole planet. Your part in this is vital; there are things to be done and much to be known as we enter into a new world cycle.
MEN: Are they the Biggest Problem in the World?
CHAPTER ONE
Childhood Reflections
When my siblings and I were children, visitors would give us gifts of money. I would look at them, puzzled, and ask “why does my brother get three times more than my sisters and I do?” These old men from the homeland, the former Yugoslavia, would shake their head and explain very slowly as though I were an idiot that, “it’s because he’s a boy”. Then I asked my father, “Why do boys get more money than girls?” His reply was, “that’s life, sometimes it happens”. Next I asked my mother, “What does that mean?” She answered, “It happens because it’s a man’s world!”
*When we were older my brother became an **All Black. After the games at ***Eden Park there would be a function for the team and their closest family members. The men, along with my father and brother, would be in one room celebrating; eating oysters and ham and drinking alcohol. Meanwhile, my mother, sister-in-law and the other women, who had been separated from the men, were in another room being served sandwiches, cakes and cups of tea.
* Sourced from www.kayurlich.com/newsletter **New Zealand Rugby representative – the Alpha Male of NZ sport. ***Eden Park, the most prestigious sports park in NZ.
As I advanced further into womanhood my confusion turned into a much deeper need - to comprehend my growing awareness of the massive gap between the rights and rewards of men, and the apparent acquiescence of women. Despite being the butt of people’s anger simply for asking, I continued to spend a great deal of time trying to answer “Why do men receive more than women?”
I found many plausible-sounding explanations and excuses, however, I had yet to receive a satisfactory reply, or come to any logical conclusion as to why they actually keep getting it. Besides that, there was so much more I wanted to know, such as what is ‘a man’s-world’ that my mother spoke of. Other questions were forming in my mind too. Was there a woman’s world, and if so, what did it all mean for me?
I’ve always suspected the worse and it’s always been worse than I expected – Henry James
Entrenched in Different Realities
My enquiries led me to understand that ‘a man’s world’ is a male-orientated power structure that has been scrupulously upheld and maintained, to the point that it remains a dominant characteristic in our societies. I know this is not news to most people, nor is it quite as simple as that. I found ‘a man’s world’ to be a multifaceted universe wherein the subtle and not so subtle elitism of men not only existed openly, but flourished within every aspect of our personal, cultural and social connections. I continued to be astounded by how much it permeated every aspect of our business and political structures, from the personal to the global, and how readily its power was enacted to ensure the preservation of men’s superiority over women and women’s qualities.
Contrary to popular belief, these were not the ramblings of unresolved sibling rivalry nor was I blaming men for every single little thing that happened in the world; however it was fairly obvious that many men, and women too, are so entrenched in this reality that they’re barely aware of how they are being pulled, this way and that, by the tides of society’s conventions and its dictates. They are influenced by the power that men were taught was theirs by right, simply because they were born male. When I was a little younger we believed that men understood the complexities of life, as women, it was well known, could not.
You’ve Come a Long Way Baby
Feminism has made great strides to advance women’s causes. It improved life for many people as it rattled the conservative aspects of male domination. The Western World has come a long way since the mid-nineteenth century when women had no civil status under the law;
‘where they were pronounced civilly dead upon their marriage, or who remained legal minors if they did not marry; who could not sign a will or even have custody of their own children upon divorce; who were not taught even to read, let alone admitted to college (the most privileged of them were equipped with a knowledge of embroidery, china painting, French, and harpsichord): who had no political voice whatever. Thus, even after the Civil War, more than half this country’s population (USA) was still legally enslaved, literally not owning even the bustles on their backs.’ - Excerpt from The Dialectic of Sex 1970 by Shulamith Firestone
Consider the impact of ‘a man’s world’ paradigm that exists even now. Not only are male privileges and expectations still commonplace, but you are vilified still if you foolishly even question its existence too deeply.
But, perhaps I’m just ungrateful. This is the 21st century after all, and things have changed since I was a child; you’ve come a long way baby! Women are taking men’s jobs; women have got it made! Women have the right to make real choices now - don’t they?
CHAPTER TWO
How Are Women Valued Now?
So, before you close your mind to my concerns, ask yourself how have women fared until now? Are women valued equally for their intellectual input, or for financial contributions, for ‘women’s work’? (That is, the draining physical and emotional labor women do in homes or in jobs that care for the sick and the elderly, as compared to a male road worker, or more commercial work that is usually done by men)
Men’s traits are said to be more
Action based
Hierarchically focused
Logically minded
Individually rewarded
Where male ideas and actions are valued more - for their competitive, strong and ruthless qualities, rather than women’s more compassionate and caring roles – ‘that’s business’, we are told. What’s more, we hear that male qualities are more important in a ‘survival of the fittest’ world, and during hard times it is ‘everybody’s right’, to attain as much wealth as possible in a Free Trade World.
But how does a Free Trade ideology work, when no country in the world has equal pay for equal work for women? There are a few jobs that buck this trend; however there is no overall pay equity in any country in the world. The one thing that is universal is that not only are women denied equal pay in ‘a man’s world’, or for work that is done by men, but they meet with greater obstacles to gaining wealth.
One of the main reasons for this is that women are the caregivers of children, which is of course of little worth.
But that’s just the Third World, right?
Wrong.
What’s more, as we shall see later, divorced women with children, are the most marginalized and poverty stricken group in the USA. The lack of equal pay for equal work, plus the many problems and costs that come with finding good childcare, are obvious discrepancies that contribute to female poverty world-wide.
You Can’t Blame Men for Everything!
‘But hey, wait a minute!’ I hear voices screaming, ‘men are suffering too! They’re under-paid, out of work; they look after children; they exist in slavery; they are maltreated by those who have power over them…’
Yes, this is true, and according to Eric Toussaint, author of Your Money or Your Life, “70% of the world’s poor are women”, which means that 30% of the world’s poor are men - so you can’t blame men for everything, right, I get that! However, men, even the poorest of the poor, have power over women: over wives, daughters, sisters and mothers - and therefore over family finances, which incidentally are not always used for the benefit of the family, and in particular for the care, education and welfare of children.
Former Child Fund, Non Governmental Organization Director (NGO), and author of LoveThink, Michael Vujnovich, who traveled regularly to Sri Lanka, Zambia, Kenya, Ethiopia, East Timor, Philippines and Vietnam (amongst others), states that
“… statistics show that one dollar in aid given to men means that $0.20 of that dollar will go to the welfare of children. Whereas one dollar given to women shows $0.80 of that dollar will go to the welfare of children…”
Men, even poor men, have financial freedoms that women in most cultures do not have. They also have small and personal freedoms which are banned for hundreds of millions of women in many societies.
For example, sexual freedom for women, which has become so much a part of the ‘free world’, is still a great crime in many countries, where women have no choice of when, where or whom they have sex with. It is almost certain that children also will be forced into prostitution or to marry, sometimes at eight or nine years of age, yet an adult woman will be stoned to death for the ‘crime’ of sexual equality. Even in the West, where women are supposed to be free to act as they wish, they are still judged harshly for too much sexual activity; activity that would be applauded when acted out by men. Double standards exist in most places. Women are punished for freedoms and entitlements that are normal, expected behaviors for men: how much they are punished, is simply a matter of degree.
The Sin of Being a Girl
In some countries a girl will be starved so her brother can eat and go to school, in others, girls are silenced before they are even born. There are countries where abortion is not about the freedom of women to choose whether to bear a child or not, or even about the health and welfare of the mother and child. It is about societies with the technology to identify early the sex of a fetus, and families whose desire for a male child pressures a mother to abort her baby/fetus for the sin of its being a girl.
I found large and small acts of violence toward women accepted and plentiful. It is so rife in fact, and downgrades the value of women to such a degree, that it profoundly and negatively disables women’s power and ability to protect all their children born or unborn; so boys and girls within all cultures suffer. Moreover, the disempowerment of women opens the door for further and massive exploitation of the most vulnerable children of the world.
The inequality of women is the threshold, the opening of the door, for personal and global violence toward the innocent, the dispossessed and the powerless; it allows for child abuse in the home, child slavery, child soldiers and child prostitution. The downgrading of women and female qualities, as we shall see, is the main cause of the massive exploitation of not only women and children, but also the foundation of global degradation of indigenous cultures, the environment, animals, medical misadventure, spiritual and political corruption, and the devitalizing of food throughout its cycles of growth and production through the tons of pesticides and poisons that smother the earth annually.
The impoverishment and disempowerment of women downgrades the consciousness of humanity.
CHAPTER THREE
The Expendables
We live in an independent, mind-focused world where technologically-driven ideology has crushed the interconnected relationships and values of many societies. This has left many cultures bordering on extinction, all in the name of progress, where systems of self interest and greed have taken over in small and large ways to affect the balance of gender equity. Much of this is in the extreme range when it comes to sharing wealth and power.
Man-made systems, no matter their political, religious or business ideology, are dominating most of the world’s resources: Action and monetary growth based hierarchically focused, and individually rewarded systems, are in control of billions of people and most of the world’s environment.
Action and Monetary Based
Hierarchically Focused
Individually rewarded
The ‘action at all cost’, dominant mindset, and unfair financial distribution methods, are failing the majority.
We need to ask, why does wealth and its benefits reach so few people, apart from those at the top end of the financial spectrum, and we must especially ask why is it that women still
“…. do two-thirds of the world’s work, receive 10 percent of the world’s income and own 1 percent of the means of production.”? — Richard H. Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999)
Wealth and power are the rewards that are elevated as the highest goals to attain, and occur at the cost of humanity’s wellbeing. Extreme dominant and hierarchical policies succeed despite having little regard for the vulnerable, or because of it.
Last century saw rapidly changing ideologies, and all to a greater or lesser degree had similar effects on their environment whereby female qualities were degraded, deemed to be of no value and of no consequence. Female qualities of nurturing children and compassion for the sick and elderly are believed worthless to Communism, Socialism, Free Trade and Capitalism. Add to that the new and expanding reliance on technology, and we have a female-oppressive and rapidly changing world environment and, as we shall see, many societies/cultures are now being stroked by large international political and global business interests for further exploitation.
Where does women’s work fit in this, when what women do is regarded as being of little value because of its lack of economic input? Women’s work is still seen (if it’s seen at all) as low paid, inconsequential, charitable doings, or as women’s rightful and unpaid caring role for the young or the elderly.
Ask yourself, is a woman’s work rewarded? How are the nurturing and compassionate qualities that women contribute to the welfare of people repaid in terms of actual financial reward? Are women and women’s work even seen for the real value they have to humanity?
The World’s Caregivers
Much of what women do is caring for people. Women, young and old, black or white - especially black or indigenous - are the world’s caregivers, those who care for the ill and nurture the vulnerable. They are the women who work for little or no reward, silently, as they care for their own and others’ children; bright, innocent girls who lose their worth to the world of men as soon as their youth and beauty fades (On this point, women in Brazil between the ages of 18 – 25 are the highest paid, well above average rates); they are women who have spent all their precious time doing housework in often bleak and unfortunate conditions. Women’s work is both taken for granted and poorly rewarded for the magnificent and remarkable impact it has on humanity’s health, plus the great and wonderful benefits it has for humanity’s welfare. Women are seldom acknowledged for what they do. It is taken for granted that they will keep doing it for love.
Moreover, their labors of loving kindness are not seen until they are not done. Just as a city’s inhabitants would be greatly inconvenienced during a rubbish strike as rubbish lined the streets, so too would families, businesses and cities be brought into complete chaos if women’s work was not done. It shows when child safety and financial care is not available to support a needy child: that child grows to be lacking in:
Compassion
Nurturing
Physical Care
Astoundingly, the compassion, nurturing and physical care that women do all day, and often much of the night, is unseen and for the most part poorly rewarded.
This is explained by Eric Toussaint, who reports, in Your Money or Your Life,
‘Based on current wage rates, the invisible nonmonetary contribution of women is worth $11 trillion. (Italics K.U.) Given that the total value of annual world production is $23 trillion, women’s contribution to humankind as a whole is easy to understand (UNDP 1995,6). This figure does not even account for persistent injustice in women’s wage rates, where they are paid less for their labor. Taking into account places where significant progress in this area has been made, not a single country in the world pays women at the same rate as men. Some industrialized countries have even fallen way back…’
Women are remarkable advocates and workers for humanity’s welfare, as they financially and emotionally support men and children, and yet they have little or no power in the worlds of politics, business or religion.
It reminds me of my pre-teen grandchildren and their (nearly) two year old sister when they play Play-Station. While they play she grizzles miserably at being excluded, so they give her a monitor so she can play too. Then, pressing the keyboard happily, watching carefully and busily in tune with their moves - fast when they’re fast, slow when they’re slow - she clicks and pounds away totally unaware that her monitor is unplugged; she is contentedly oblivious to the fact that she has no impact on the game at all. But she is included – part of their world.
They Had Eyes in the Back of Their Head
There is still such a lack of understanding about the injustice toward women, and the work and loving care that women contribute to children’s welfare and growth, therefore the whole of humanity, that it’s like the indigenous peoples of America who so many decades ago could not see the great sailing ship in their harbor. They had no comprehension of that form, therefore could not integrate what was right in front of their eyes; it was such a different reality that they were blind to an unknown paradigm. They were looking into a parallel universe that they could not at the time understand.
With the same lack of understanding of worldly things, I believed that the life I lived was the whole truth, and while I’m at risk of overdoing the analogies it can be likened to Maori, the indigenous peoples of NZ, (the Tangata Whenua) who paddled their waka* facing forward, logically, so they could see where they were going. So perhaps we could imagine their amazement when they first saw the strange white men, rowing their boats while facing backwards. It didn’t make sense. They must have eyes in the back of their heads, assumed Maori, because they appeared to know where they were going.
It Doesn’t Make Sense
Growing up, many things didn’t make sense to me either.
Surely, if everybody thought it was okay, then it must be me who had the problem. I needed to change my thinking. I too, must assume that men knew where they were going.
Unfortunately, then, I assumed a great deal.
I came to believe, through my conditioning, that men had special gifts and that a man’s view was more important than a woman’s silly thoughts and expectations, which indicated inner confusion. I believed, erroneously, that unlike women, men were worth listening to, and that what they said was always more important and for unknown magical reasons, all men had all the answers which were not to be questioned; they took for granted that we would follow them without question.
But they were wrong. Last century many women like me (and some men too), began to see through the illusion, we began to rebel at the constraints faced at every turn. Many wanted to escape the inferior place it was assumed women would occupy in this particular scheme of things. We could see more clearly that much of humanity had become completely lost in the paradigm of ‘a man’s-world’ that my mother spoke of. That it was men who were still in charge, behind the wheels of religion, commerce and politics, who were driving hard the pace of science and technology. And the biggest question we asked was - where was it all going?
The Dead End Roads We Blunder Down
As that scary insight dawned on me I began to worry more. Judging by the nightly news and its local and global horrors, I understood clearly that humanity wasn’t budging from ‘a man’s-world’ paradigm; moreover, it was highly unlikely that those in charge, no matter which dead end road they blundered down, or how off track they were while dragging us all along with them, would ever stop to ask for directions. Moreover I became increasingly bewildered at how it came to be like this. What is it that created greed, cynicism and self interest, where the world had become so brutal and uncaring, lacking empathy and compassion. How had life grown so harsh and why were so many people suffering so much?
What was it that caused little girls to become disappointed women and little boys to hide themselves beneath macho male bravado - what was the real cause of so much gender conflict, global brutality and disharmony? Even Hitler had been an innocent baby once. What is it that changes a baby into a monster?
My initial queries had been personal, but the more I asked, the more the questions expanded, and to my disappointment, the more I discovered I found the less I actually knew. Two things I did know for sure - my confusion was increasing rapidly as my mind battled against itself, and that my worries vied both for attention and for relief.
I have watched, waited and hoped for big change to take place, to find what it is that we value most in the world. I have come to understand clearly, especially in this new wave of the twenty-first century with its massive drive for information and gadgets, that ‘a man’s world’ is still with us, and does not answer the big questions about where it’s going.
This is because it still does not know; it does not know where it’s going at all.
With these thoughts crashing wildly through my mind, what did it all mean?
What could I, one person, do?
CHAPTER FOUR
The Structure of Energy Healing
All I could do was get on with my life, and in time the answers I had been seeking for so long began to arrive from an unexpected source. During the process of my recovery from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and the healing work that followed (See The Structure of Energy Healing at www.kayurlich.com ) I began to see that people had common character traits that at a glance appeared to be quite random, such as:
Dependent Curious Hierarchical
Action Divine-Love Passive Logical
Intuitive Empathetic Nourishing Protector
Merciful Inspirational Collective
Active - Compassion Innocent Independent
People were a mixture of personality traits; sometimes curious and inspirational; sometimes protective and compassionate, or active, intuitive and curious, shifting from one trait to another depending on their situation.
I found that some people were strong in some traits - just as some people dominate other people - so too, do some traits dominate other traits. Not only that, but also quite by chance I found that these apparently random characteristics, that at first glance appeared from nowhere, were not so random at all. They did appear from somewhere; they came from their own uniquely identifiable energy fields. I found that people were responding from energy fields that existed in structures within the male and female, physical and spiritual worlds. The Structure of Energy Healing is the name I gave to these fields to identify their qualities. I called them the
Spiritual Male energy field
Spiritual Female energy field
Earth Male energy field
Earth Female energy field.
These are the elements of each field that we are born with, along with the phenomenal ability we have to create personalities (or should I say the personalities that are created through our environment) through the energy field characteristics that we come to depend on, that parents and cultural expectations, encourage.
Energy Field Currents and Consciousness
The
term ‘energy fields’, describes a collection of energy traits
and their qualities, where both men and women have access to exactly
the same traits and energy structure. And while these fields are
united through the same consciousness they
are
also energetically independent of each other, and can open or close
themselves down separately. However, while interconnecting through
consciousness, they often have little awareness or appreciation of
the other. You could say they hover around each other in separate
yet parallel universes, each in its own hologram. You could liken it
to the initial meeting of the white men and indigenous peoples.
In their most healthy state, energy fields act from wholly aware, interacting and flowing pools of awareness which then interact wider within a healthy globally-aligned consciousness. Despite our genes, our past life experiences or karma, these fields exist in different states within each of us. It is where our life-force is moving freely inward and outward, where connections are made and kept between all fields which maintain their structure. Moreover, it is these ever-moving and connecting fields of consciousness which are the real creators of the child that determine the personality of the adult that we will become.
MEN and WOMEN have the same
energetic characteristics
Spiritual
Male-------------Female
Mercy--------------Active
Curiosity--Compassion
Inspiration----Empathy
Innocence-Divine Love
Earth
Male----------- Female
Active---------------Passive
Logical--------------Intuitive
Independent--Dependent
Hierarchical----Collective
Life-Force Exists in our Energy fields like Electric Currents
I could see that energy fields exist like living cells to be activated from within. When people’s hearts and minds are open and aware, they respond openly and lovingly to the world around them. When they are unable to respond from a loving space then this indicates where parts of their energy fields have closed down.
‘In the mid-1800s, two of England’s greatest scientists opened the door to electricity’s domain a crack wider. They found that the electricity sizzling through wires doesn’t move on its own. There is something else, a pervasive rush of unseen waves, that pushes it along… all the space around us – from the air above to our flesh within – is filled with millions of flying, invisible waves…several researchers who heard of these waves... became more confirmed of their religious faith; others saw in these hitherto unsuspected waves a mechanism by which extrasensory perception and other psychic phenomena could take place.’
Source Electric Universe by David Bodanis ISBN 0-316-72972-8
What happens when your heart can’t find love, what then? What happens when your action energy is blocked, or when a heart and mind is full of rage and anger and all seems lost? Through the structure of energy fields I could see how energy fields were like electric currents, then how they became separate and blocked where men and women had only action and hierarchical, or passive and yielding responses to stress, and why they reacted the way they did to solve their problems. They were living separately in universes that did not understand each other. What’s more, I could see clearly how the life-force within these fields passes through us, either activating or blocking our feelings and our mind. Energy fields began to show particular gender traits which identified how personal and cultural differences were formed.
The Nature of Survival
I could see that the life-force running through our body, mind and spirit reacted similarly to the life-force of a power circuit. Where the circuits would become stressed and overloaded then breakdown, this then would interfere with our energy fields’ ability to maintain their own consciousness. Through energy field dysfunction, we would become as dysfunctional as our broken-down radio or TV as our life-force became severed from our consciousness. Then, without free and interconnecting waves circuiting around the whole structure of our energy fields, they would break off into their individual parts.
However, unlike the TV or radio which cannot function without whole parts working and connecting to the circuits that power them, human beings have energy fields that act like little individual batteries; each part just keeps on going. It is then that we begin to function through limited paradigms by relying on individual holograms and limited consciousness, by the activation of a few energy field traits.
This doesn’t function well, admittedly, but I found this to be the nature of survival, that humanity can survive within very limited paradigms. We function when we’re sick, no matter if our illness is physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. How many stories have you read of great survival under the most horrendous of circumstances?
The nature of survival is that instead of life-force running through whole connected circuits, the energy traits of the strongest fields that would keep us alive and functioning start drawing what energy remains toward themselves. They then start going around in one big circle, draining other fields as they draw more and more life-force while gaining ever more momentum within their own hemisphere. This causes the whole structure of our consciousness to focus and divide more into single entities feeding only themselves. This is survival of the fittest at its core.
The division of energy fields begins in childhood, as babies come into the world with the inherent knowledge that to survive, they must align with their environment.
CHAPTER FIVE
Aligning to the Environment
Babies are born with a full range of energy traits, as Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker explains in the article, Big Answers from little People by David Dobbs, in Scientific American Reports, Volume 17, Number 2, 2007.
“…voluminous evidence from decades of research shows little if any inherently sex-based differences in infants or toddlers. At those early ages when culture has the least effect but sex hormone levels are extremely high, no sex based differences have shown themselves in a huge variety of skills that underlie mathematical thinking”.
However
as a baby
begins aligning more and more into its cultural environment,
its open curiosity and joyful
connections start to break down. Due to the experiences a child
encounters within its home and society, it begins to block or expand
parts of itself,
starting with either its softer and more gentle nurturing traits, or
its action and logical comprehension. The child suppresses those
actions and feelings it can’t understand, that it is discouraged
from using, or is unable to integrate.
The un-integrated life-force is suppressed further as the child grows and survives its environment. Unknowingly and unconsciously, the child submerges vital parts of its energy field traits and their consciousness. (Read more in The Structure of Energy Healing for more information on personal healing at www.kayurlich.com )
It is human nature to survive in any environment by aligning into our family and community ideals. To do this most often means that the child must slowly submerge its true united and conscious self, growing and living ever more through a created persona, as they increasingly lose contact with their free and natural self.
For instance, as a small example, if somebody told you while you were young and impressionable that you could not sing, you would in all likelihood carry that voice in your head for the rest of your life - telling you that you cannot sing, and you would probably believe them and never sing again. However the truth is that you can sing. While you may not sell a million CDs, you can sing to your heart’s content in the bath and enjoy it. However we become self conscious and start to live off the voices in our head.
The Voices in our Head
Too often the voices in our head are more ominous and can reach dangerous proportions, as William discovered while trying to give up his addiction to alcohol. William had many voices in his head and thought he was an alcoholic because one voice in particular kept telling him so. William came for energy healing and after an in-depth look into his energy fields I found him to be a mass of conflicting energy field traits, some of which had closed down completely and others that had gained total control. Not only that, but it had developed to the point where William believed they were all true; William believed most of all that he was just an alcoholic. William listened constantly to the darkest, strongest voice which told him he needed a drink. Therefore he allowed his life to be directed by the most negative aspect of his mind - he continued to listen, drinking mindlessly. However when he looked at the energy fields traits that had closed down, he understood why he had such a problem supporting himself to heal. All of his compassionate and nurturing qualities had gone unconscious. William understood this and began to acknowledge that he had no compassion for himself, and no curiosity about the world around him, all of which was affecting his mind. William understood he had lost consciousness on many levels of his energy fields.
Spiritual
Male------------Female
Mercy---------------Active
Curiosity
---Compassion
Inspiration------Empathy
Innocence---Divine
Love
Earth
Male-------------Female
Active----------------Passive
Logical--------------Intuitive
Independent--Dependent
Hierarchical-----Collective
First, as the diagram shows, there was little life-force flowing though his body, mind and spirit. Second, the life-force that did flow was not conducive to his healing, and while he listened to the voices in his head, they were only adding to his problems. He also had strong passive and dependent qualities: the action and hierarchical forces that had control of his mind had no reason to change; the passive and dependent qualities only fed on and added to his despair. Why would anything change? A few aspects of his energy field structure had complete control to block his life-force and interfere with his mind.
During William’s recovery, his growing awareness as life-force was restored built up the areas that would aid his body and mind to rebalance. While no alcohol was permitted during this time, we did not work to ‘cure’ his alcoholism. We worked to recover the life-force of his energy fields that would reinvigorate the consciousness of the disempowered characteristics. This was not so much about healing his physical body, it was about re-activating the life-force and its energy field communication.
After working together for three months William reinforced the life-force of traits such as empathy, compassion, nurturing, curiosity etc. When he was re-empowered in places that would develop to aid the recovery of his body, mind and spirit, to re-establish his consciousness, this then allowed William to acknowledge that he was not limited to ‘being an alcoholic’.
It is clear that throughout our lives we empower certain traits which then become the main aspects of our growing self. However, it seems to me that a society’s main task is to separate us from our whole and conscious self, by suppressing or promoting certain aspects of our life-force while reinforcing other traits according to cultural and gender expectations.
CHAPTER SIX
The Problem with Men and Women
Societal expectations, that boys will be active and girls will be passive, cause some characteristics like ‘active’ and ‘passive’ to be identified primarily as male or female traits. Society not only claims these divided characteristics to be fixed biological behaviors for men and women respectively, but even more damning are the claims that these traits are unchangeable. This has resulted in human beings and their structural imbalances becoming self identified within fixed gender states, causing us to believe that men are more active and logical than women, and that women are more passive and intuitive than men.
Therefore, we are led to believe that men value characteristics of the mind, that
Action
Logic
Independence
are male characteristics and that female characteristics of the heart are the dominant traits of women; that they are:
Passive
Intuitive
Inter-dependent
I came to understand that this misinformation is active in all things and could not help but see its restrictive results in action everywhere I looked; furthermore, I could see how well known and accepted personal, cultural and global paradigms within paradigms were formed.
Some energy traits were growing into such forces on their own that their qualities ceased connecting to other qualities within their own energy field, moreover, they were unable to hold the full consciousness of that field. As people identified more with one particular energy trait then it would further remove them from a united and whole consciousness; they became locked into their own paradigm within a paradigm. This was happening by merely closing down energy traits that connected them with parts of their brain.
Energy Field Brain Patterns
Left Brain----Right Brain
Active----------------Passive
Hierarchical----Interactive
Mind---------------Emotions
Thought-------------Senses
The Cultural Context of Intelligence from Psychology by Henry Gleitman, Alan J. Fridlund and Danel Reisberg (Sixth edition, W.W. Norton & Company Inc.) explains Sternberg’s work on multiple intelligences points up certain limitations of standard I.Q. tests.
These limitations become more glaring when trying to assess intelligence in members of another culture. To begin with, many standard intelligence tests put a premium on quick and decisive responses. But not all cultures share our Western preoccupation with speed (action). Indians and Native Americans, for example, place higher value on being deliberate; in effect, they would rather be right than quick. In addition they prefer to qualify, or to say “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure.”
For instance when a trait like hierarchical is not inter-connecting to logic and passive but activating answers for the sake of speed, it means that it is losing an important life-force connections; never mind about the whole structure of energy fields that it is separating from, it is now impossible to connect and interact with much of its own life-force causing more disconnection in both personal and cultural interactions.
The right brain and left brain each have male or female qualities which bind us to their earth-male and earth-female energy field roles. However as we have seen Western culture idealizes a literal and separate view of male and female energies in a whole structure of male and female qualities. It is a view which is derived from literal thinking that we have separated gender minds. But as said before all qualities exist in all men and women. It is cultural conditioning based on exaggerated biological evidence that restricts people’s consciousness to limited and divided roles and restrictive points of view.
Biology of Boys and Girls
In ‘The Truth about Boys and Girls’ in Scientific American Mind May/June 2010, Lise Elliot states that
Gender Culture and the Brain. “Boys and girls are different, but most psychological sex differences are not especially large. For example, gaps in verbal skills, maths performance, empathy and even most types of aggression are generally much smaller than disparity in adult height, in which the average five-foot 10 inch man is taller than 99 percent of women. When it comes to mental abilities, male and females overlap more than they stand apart.
Furthermore, few of these sex differences are as fixed, or hardwired, as popular accounts have lately portrayed. Genes and hormones light the spark for most boy-girl differences, but the flame is strongly fanned by the essentially separate cultures in which boys and girls grow up. Appreciating how sex differences emerge can reduce dangerous stereotyping and give parents and teachers ideas for cross training boys’ and girls’ minds, to minimize their more troubling discrepancies and enable all children to more fully develop their diverse talents.”
Energy fields hold the traits of our emotional, mental and spiritual awareness, they are the foundation of how we develop and contribute to the self that we become as grown ups. Moreover, every person I worked with existed within a structure of energy fields that maintained and balanced, or unbalanced, the traits they have to affect the wellbeing of their life-force and consciousness. (Read The Structure of Energy Healing and Soul Mate or Soul Inmate? at www.kayurlich.com)
Some aspects within us have grown so far apart from the others and so strong in their single paradigm that they have become dominating personalities. This misinformation is accepted everywhere as being ‘natural law’, survival of the fittest, and is seen around the world as ‘normal’ human behavior.
What is even more alarming is that the stronger energies have risen like balloons to the top and gained superior status within systems of entitlement. This is a dominating paradigm that has infiltrated all societies. Throughout the history of the world - of mankind - power has come from a paradigm of action and hierarchy which is attributed solely to men. Many people, while understanding this on some level, want to maintain the status quo because it gives them endless entitlement and unlimited power.
I have labeled this paradigm Man-World. Man-World I believe is the biggest problem in the world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Man-World: The Biggest Problem in the World Begins with Entitlement.
Entitlement, says educator Tony Porter, on www.ted.com is the position from which many men view women, women’s work, and women’s qualities. It gives men a distorted superior view of themselves personally and culturally and gives a lack of value to women and their place in the world. Men’s perceived entitlement, he says, comes from Man-Box thinking which includes statements like:
Boys don’t cry
Don’t show weakness
Do not be like a woman
Do not be like a gay
Demonstrate power
Be tough, athletic, be aggressive, dominant
View women as objects
Make decisions, do not ask for help
It is the Earth Male energy field, separating within itself creating paradigms within paradigms, which holds Man-Box behavior and thinking: it discounts qualities within itself, which then discounts most of the qualities of the Earth Female energy field, leaving many without the qualities of compassion, gentleness and nurturing. It promotes strong personal structures within men which are designed to maintain/uphold the imbalance of both men and women within a series of structures maintained through personal and cultural beliefs. However, this mindset not only denies women equality, it further denies all humanity, men and women, access to certain aspects of their consciousness.
The consciousness you can express depends on the culture you live in. Whether you are allotted power or not, all people are allocated a place in society because of their sex. It is status allotment through gender.
For instance, when women are denied the privilege of driving a car, they are actually denied aspects of their Earth Male energy field consciousness; of taking the independent action that is needed to drive a car. They are then forced to depend on men, who then become equally locked into the system as the enforcers of restrictions toward women, they become their keepers. They are so busy enforcing rules and controlling women that they must also close down female traits within themselves, which locks them too, out of consciousness of their own energy fields. What you deny others reflects in yourself and it is this lack of consciousness that is passed on to children.
Like the society they live in, men and women serve to restrict each other, like a jailer with the key, they too are restricted. Where social restriction enforces internal conflict, both men and women are unable to link into their complete and fully aligned conscious self.
Who We Think We Are – What Comes First, the Chicken or the Egg
Wellness of body, mind and spirit comes or goes according to the state of the energy field traits. The willingness of the person to open into a new life-force affects the wellness of their health and relationships, and it does not stop there. The structure of our energy fields and their characteristics affect us greatly, as they then go on to “fill the space around them” to affect the societies we live in. It means that no matter where it started, it is only we who can personally make change to our energy fields; what we do now matters greatly.
The improved alignment of one person’s energy structure will more than likely improve the energy of those around them as those changes are “filling the space around them with flying invisible waves”. Aligning one person’s energy force affects the people closest to them such as their family and friends. (For more on personal and relationship healing read The Structure of Energy Healing and Soul Mate or Soul Inmate?)
Unfortunately energy fields are presently so divided and misaligned that they have become known as single entities, and divided energy fields cannot evolve past who they think they are to fill the vacuum around them. I could see that unbalanced and unnatural behaviors are not so hard to find, as they expose themselves, not only in large global injustice but also in the smallest of acts.
Sidelined by the Sidewalk
As I roamed the internet one day I found the following blog - Entitlement of Men - Sidewalk Behavior exercise October 30, 2010. There’s been a fascinating discussion on WMST-L (USA) about gendered differences in sidewalk behavior - the expectation that women will get out of mens’ way, and the expectation that men won’t do this for women. Jessica Nathanson reports the following:
‘I’ve assigned students the task of walking down the sidewalk and not getting out of men’s way and then reporting what happens. Several women have reported being bumped into. What was particularly interesting was hearing about this as learned gender behavior when one male student who was also trans (sexual) talked about learning that he had to walk down the middle of the sidewalk, through crowded spaces such as clubs, etc., with his head up, eyes directly ahead, without saying excuse me or worrying about bumping into people. What my students and I learned from this exercise is that walking down the middle of the sidewalk is a male entitlement, as is expecting others to get out of one’s way in other crowded spaces. And - not only is it an entitlement, but it is also a way of performing maleness, so that NOT doing these things marks one as less than manly.’
It goes without saying that sidewalk behavior varies in its degree as you go from town to town, country to country, but overall I received an overwhelming response from women about the acts of male superiority and the sidewalk male attitude; just as people are groomed by society’s into sexual roles.
One woman described how her husband would pull her arm quite violently, digging his fingers into her skin, making her get out of other men’s way as they walked past. There were many and varying stories with this same theme as the person’s former natural born childhood inclinations of interconnectedness, softness, curiosity and inspiration are withdrawn from the world; from a world that gives little value to stillness, yielding, interconnectedness or compassion.
In my own observation of male sidewalk behavior I notice as I wait, women who are with men will slide past too, in behind their men. I found that most women who are with men do not give way either, and this is in line with women’s behavior in gaining power by aligning with men’s values, while living and surviving in a man’s-world environment. (See Soul Mate or Soul Inmate? for more on the female-alignment-with-men-for power phenomenon at www.kayurlich.com)
The Supporters and Critics of Feminism
Some masculists view masculism as a complementary movement to feminism, with both movements seeking to correct gender discrimination, while other masculists explicitly oppose feminism and support a "new patriarchy."….Pro-feminism is the support of feminism without implying that the supporter is a member of the feminist movement. The term is most often used in reference to men who are actively supportive of feminism. ‘Anti-feminism is defined as the opposition to women's equality or alternatively, the opposition to feminism in some or all of its forms.’ – Source Wikipedia
Many people were asking: What has the vote and rights for some women, mainly Western women, achieved in the way of world peace and for the rights of women and children around the world who are the victims of violence and/or abuse? What has feminism or women’s liberation really achieved and why aren’t the statistics for women’s welfare getting better all over the world? Where has the right to vote achieved an improvement in the status of women when actually, the right to vote has simply enabled women to shuffle around in the politics of men and take on the qualities of a man’s-world and fulfill their agenda?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Into the Unconscious Worlds: Closing Down Energy Fields
The different criteria for boys and girls in each society affect them greatly, and the division can be seen most clearly in cultures that don’t even pretend to equalize male and female characteristics, or to liberate women. Here, the created core values of the gender mind put people in a ‘catch twenty two’ situation; the imbalance is being recreated in the life around us leaving these people unable to value the full depth of their own or another’s true potential, and that is not the end of it. As we have seen, any imbalance within fields will build on itself as some traits become stronger and beget more power and entitlement. For instance, the more the attachment to belonging in one field pays off, such as logically minded and hierarchical behavior receiving greater rewards, the more people will find ways to close down their female energy compassionate qualities. They will continue to promote those traits that receive more power and rewards; moreover in doing this they must continue to invalidate female characteristics. This is done in both subtle and non-subtle ways.
Men and women, through cultural beliefs and societal conditioning, are attributed greater male or female characteristics; more active logical and hierarchical, or more nurturing, collective and intuitive, and they are treated accordingly. While Man-World is obvious to most of us, Woman-World is a little harder to unravel, because we hardly take the time to see, or acknowledge it!
Man-World
Men are attributed more
Earth Male Characteristics
Hierarchical
Paternal
Mind
Thought
Logical
Forceful
Active
Women-World
Women are attributed more