A Culture of Compassion without Compromise
It takes a Village to Raise a Relationship
Our Culture does not work any more. We need to create a new one!
In an interview with ABC newsman Ted Koppel, sociologist Morrie Swartz once said "Our culture does not work. We need to create a new one."
One part of creating a new culture is letting our children know the truth about the culture we live in. For example we need to tell them that if you murder someone and you are wealthy you are much, much more likely to go free than if you are poor. And if you do get convicted you are much more likely to get lethal injection or electrocution if you are African American or Hispanic, and a life sentence if you are Caucasian. If you are female you will get paid less for whatever you do than if you are male.
I wish parents would explain to their children what their values are and where the culture deviates from these values. It is very painful and confusing to children to have their parents paint the culture with one whitewashing brush as good and fair, as if all the inconsistencies and injustices do not exist.
It is also confusing to have your family take a counter cultural victim position, which says "The culture isn’t fair, therefore whatever I do to balance the injustice is justifiable." I never forgot how proud my mother was of her new husband’s (number four or five, I can not remember) cleverness when he tapped into the electrical line from the pole outside and ran a wire to our house bypassing the electric meter so that we did not have to pay an electric bill. My mother explained this behavior in terms of the Bryson family values. A blend of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith goes to Washington meets Malcom X. A sort of stick up for the little man by any means necessary. She explained to me that the electric company had an unfair monopoly and was price gouging the poor. And we clever Brysons are like the noble David who always finds a way to defeat the unfair Goliath of our culture. Of course she never explained to me to what extent she went. Years later my father told me that they used to drive from Arizona into Texas to do a few Bonnie and Clyde jobs on gas stations and then drive back.
This openness and honesty about the larger culture we live in is of course just one small thread in a tapestry of transparency that I would like to see develop in our culture. Certainly the most nurturing transparency that occurs, happens within the community of our circle of friends. However you may have noticed that many of our little community cultures are less than open, honest and nurturing to their members. Instead they are cesspools of gossip, backbiting, infighting and politicking.
One of the pillars in the paradigm of a culture of cruelty is the following belief:
* Expressing oneself honestly causes psychological pain for others. *
Parents are taught to tell their children "It hurts mommy’s feelings when you tell her that the dinner she slaved over a hot stove to make ‘sucks’." This often comes from best selling parenting books in America that unwittingly teach parents how to set these kinds of hooks deep into their children’s hearts so that emotional manipulation can be effectively used to control feelings and behavior through the use of fear, guilt and shame
One key to transforming this familiar family scene is to tell the truth. The kids did not hurt Mommy. What hurt was what she said to herself. A more self-aware mommy might notice that her hurt is coming from her interpretation of the child’s honesty as a rejection of her. If the child is under nine she would hopefully choose to deal with her feelings by asking her husband or a friend for empathy about what was triggered, or do some journaling. She might say to herself, "I’m angry because I’m thinking children should hide their dissatisfaction." Or, "I’m feeling hurt because I think my child does not care about my feelings." Or, "I’m ashamed thinking that I am a poor cook." Or, "I feeling guilty because I think I should have realized I was over salting it."
If the child is mature enough to understand, the mommy might tell the child "I hear you do not like the food. Would you acknowledge though that I did try hard to make you some food you like?"
Self-awareness is just that simple. No deep insight or analysis required. Yet most of us lack this simple skill. Instead, we habitually blame, punish and project.
Sadly, these patterns of dishonesty destroy "transparency" and "congruency." When we are transparent, we are honest and self responsible. We express what is alive and truly going on within us. We are congruent when we say what we are feeling and our face, gesture and tone are all in concert with that. (What we are feeling, needing and thinking and what our face, words and voice tone is expressing is the same.) If I am incongruent, you will instantly sense I am not trustworthy. You will withhold cooperation. Trust is the basic factor needed for cooperation. When we trust we open our eyes to another’s humanness. Trust lets us empathize. It allows for natural openness and affection. It clarifies our understanding of each other.
Trust allows for the free flow of honesty, affection, accurate perceptions of each other, risk taking and love. In cultures and in couples where this basic trust is missing the need arises for a great degree of external control, rules, policing, punishment and a general loss of true freedom. True freedom is not the ability to own three SUV’s and a super wide screen TV but a joyful flow of connectedness, peace and creativity within one’s community.
When a group or a couple has transparency, a full disclosure of all the important elements of one’s inner and outer life, then individuals cannot be turned against each other through the spread of false rumors. This allows trust to grow strong. The commitment to stay open to each other even when someone does something out of integrity makes it much easier for everyone to keep telling the whole truth.
Part of the reason most of us do not have this ‘true freedom’ is because we live in what I call the soap opera culture of the Five C's: Collision, Confusion, Collusion, Cover-up, and Chicken Soup. Our personal communities stay superficial or knotted up in strife, and pain-filled struggle, because we do not know how to support each other in working through the difficulties that inevitably come up with each other. John Bradshaw, best selling self-help author, says that we can only have deep intimacy if we have strong skills at working through the inevitable conflicts that arise as human beings interact closely. When someone expresses pain that was triggered by a community or family member (Collision), and then they form static judgements and turn against that person, this tears at the fabric of cohesiveness of the group .
The fear that is generated by coping with conflict this way creates an atmosphere of fear in the group that severely limits it’s tolerance of mistakes, and therefore growth and creative individual expression. This contributes to divisiveness in the community, which frequently results in all sorts of schisms and conflicting camps. Just look at the cliques in high schools. It was the venom between some of these cliques that led to several different school shootings including Columbine.
It is also painful, isolating and depressing to stuff down pain to protect another person’s reputation in the community (Cover-up). Knowing that you are undermining someone’s respect within their community can lead to debilitating guilt. It is this guilt and the fear of this guilt that prevents an open free flow of communication within a community. This constipation of communication creates all kinds of violent, unhealthy, painful consequences for that community including, scape-goating, low enthusiasm, power struggles, confusion etc.
Because we have so few true forums of transparency occurring in our personal communities, honesty gets repressed, split off and closed up. Any time any part of ourselves, whether it be sadness, anger, fear or sexuality, gets separated off or shut down, it begins to take on a daemonic life of it’s own and usually comes out in a destructive way. Then, according to my mentor, Virginia Satir, the mother of family systems therapy, "they become like ravenous dogs that you put down in the basement. And one day when you least expect it, they bust the door down and wreak havoc."
In community when honesty is not given it’s space,
Gossip and in-fighting will soon take its place.
Because we live in a punishment/reward, Patriarchal, and often judgmental culture it can be quite dangerous to be honest about what is happening. Consider the cost Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesus paid for telling it like it is. However if we do not run the risk of telling the whole truth we set in motion inescapable dynamics destructive to harmony among human beings. These destructive dynamics occur based on a principle of ecology that says: "Nature hates a closed system."
According to Dieter Duhm, founder of the Zegg Community in Germany (Zegg is a German word which means ‘an experiment in cultural design’) it is particularly important to keep the communication open and flowing in those areas where we tend to have shame around and are tempted to sweep under the rug. These things include sex, anger, fear, disease and money.
Duhm wrote: "Building a humane community usually means confronting difficulties that are deeply rooted in people. Instead of the fixation on humanitarian slogans and demands, what is needed is that emotional reality must at all times and places be made visible, with as playful and joyful methods as possible, until all pretense and hypocrisy drop away. Try to make what happens in the community understandable and transparent to everyone. Especially emotional and sexual processes for they are behind almost everything that makes the group situation difficult and opaque. Only if all processes are transparent will the members lose their paranoia, and the destructive processes will be kept from leading a life of their own. Only then can the causes of rifts and fractures in the group be treated before it is too late.".
It takes a village to raise a relationship -
It is particularly difficult for couples to survive in the culture common to most American communities. When one party of the couple reaches out to their community for understanding about some pain or struggle they are having with their partner, nine times out of ten, all they will get is collusion, collision, confusion, chicken soup or cover up. Here are some examples:
Collusion: "I am scared that my boyfriend is going to a party in hopes of seeing his former girlfriend" says a desperately-seeking-help Susan. Her girl friend responds "You’re right that is abusive, he needs a good therapist."
Collision:"Do not be so insecure you will suffocate the man." (. This happens when the person you are sharing your feelings with has their own fear or pain triggered. Then instead of empathizing with you they offer their own reaction, often in the form of a psychological diagnosis.)
Confusion: "How could you even think that about him"
Chicken Soup:"Have you considered cosmetic surgery" (A woman in a workshop I did in Hollywood, Ca. told me that her best girldfriend actually said this to her after she share that she was afraid that her husband was starting to look at other women.)
Health Nut Chicken Soup: "You sound depressed. Zinc is very good for depression. Here I think I have some here in my purse. I can not find the Zinc, but I did find this yummy Ginsing Protein Bar which should help balance some of that yucky yang energy your feeling."
New Age Chicken Soup: "Why are you creating this in your life? Maybe you need to this weekend to the seminar with the Jolly Llama called Totally Transforming your Life."
Cover-up: "I am sure it’s harmless, how could he think of leaving you for her, have some bologna hors d'oeuvres?"
Susan also may feel scared to tell her girlfriend the painful truth for fear of judgement that she is "needy" or dependent or the more sophisticated judgement "codependent". And there is always the fear that her girlfriend will gossip in the community that she can not keep her man happy. In many a competitive community, sharing this vulnerability will be perceived as a weakness in the relationship and therefore a potential opening for other women to try to steal him away.
Many women in our culture live in constant fear of competition, which creates an atmosphere of mistrust in the community of women. This mistrust creates shallowness of relating, which prevents women from drawing strength from their potential collective unity. When women do not have this strength that comes from their collective emotional unity they feel weak, insecure, and vulnerable. When they bring this fear and emotional depletion to their male partners, the men sometimes feel overwhelmed and inadequate at not being able to meet their emotional needs. Men will frequently deal with their overwhelm and inadequacy by either withdrawing or blaming. The blaming may sound like "You’re so needy, overly sensitive, controlling, demanding, and as Yul Brenner (In The King and I) would say…etc., etc. etc."
A key component in strong community is the members knowing how to support people in their strength instead of colluding with them in their powerlessness.
When women are not in a primary relationship the power of their sisterhood is often much stronger. They are not in the fear of competition. This fear of competition includes the fear of losing their partner to a girlfriend and the fear of feeling shame when they compare themselves to that girlfriend unfavorably. Until a woman can develop a network of strong women who have some depth of experience, and know how to be present with empathy and emotional honesty she will likely continue to create a sort of A–Frame dependency with her partners. This is where she perceives her partner's needs for spontaneity, freedom, involvement with the world and connection with others as abandonment and he perceives her needs for closeness, security, continuity, and reassurance as controlling and/or needy. His slightest request for freedom triggers her fear of abandonment and comparison. Her slightest request for reassurance or security is judged by him as a weakness, a lack of trust in him or a demanding need to control. This of course is not a gender rigid dynamic. I have seen the gender reversed on this many times.
Other polarizations within couples include closeness vs. autonomy, security vs. spontaneity or certainty vs. uncertainty, and being trusted vs. being valued.
How do we create intimacy in communities of men and women? One way is to get it on the table how we feel about each other , and about each other's partners. What if the women just told each other whom they were attracted to and whether they planned to take any action on this attraction. Maybe we would begin to create an atmosphere of trust where at least such things could be talked about before they are acted upon in secrecy. This could allow for dialogue between all the concerned parties instead of the covert war of stealth and competition, which keeps us all talking about the weather and subconsciously looking for clues about who is starting to hit on whom.
This atmosphere of trust is destroyed by the injunction not to talk about the inevitable attractions that take place between people. Most women have a strong intuitive sense about who is attracted to whom. It is the attempt to hide this truth and cover it up that creates so much mistrust. Also without a clear expression of how people intend to act on or respond to these attractions great fear is often generated, as women and men try to protect themselves from the possible loss of the loved one.
Another reason couples need transparent community so much is to break up the polarization dynamic that so frequently occurs when two human beings engage each other deeply. Polarization within a couple is difficult to discharge without contact with outside positive and/or negative energies. By positive and negative I mean in an electrical or electromagnetic sense, not good or bad. Positive and negative poles of a magnate repel each other when brought into close contact, yet they are naturally and dynamically on opposite ends of the same magnate. So too with couples as they are brought into close contact, the truth about why opposites attract comes out. The attraction and the tension between the neatnicks and the slobs, the spendthrifts and the misers, the spontaneous and the cautious, the extroverts and the introverts, the freedom loving kites and the grounded strings, the party animals and the homebodies, etc. often starts to manifest as conflict. Two things are desperately needed if harmonious development of the relationship is to occur. One is good communication skills and the other is a mature outside support system. And by outside, I mean other people in the community besides the dynamic duo themselves. By positive outside support I mean self responsible honesty and by negative I mean the vital vacuum force of empathy. This vacuum force sucks conflicts, anger, resentments, and withholds onto the table of discussion. It is created by people who have great presence, a nonjudgemental attitude, an ability for accurate empathy, and great listening skills.
It is tragic to me that so many times an attempt to get help from an outside source is interpreted as a threat, betrayal or abandonment. Or sometimes it is interpreted as more proof that one is not enough or else the partner would have no outside needs. Other tragic interpretations include:
What I mean by polarization is when the woman’s old wounds trigger the man’s old wounds and vice versa. (Of course these dynamics also occur in all types of relationships, gay, bisexual, multiple, platonic, etc.) There are thousands of nuances within these different examples. Part of the reasons that we feel strong attractions to certain people is because of the concave, convex, dovetailing of wounds. In other words we are attracted to our opposite, to someone who has the qualities we do not possess, the qualities that, as a unit, make us more whole. The male, yang quality is pulled toward the female, yin quality. An example of this would be where partner A has been wounded in the area of security, perhaps one or both parents died or left or were not emotionally present. He or she is often attracted to someone who seems to display a certain confidence or trust in life. Partner B has been wounded in the area of freedom, perhaps his or her freedom was restricted or lost and there is a lingering fear that that freedom will be given away for the sake of the relationship. So the cycle begins:
She: "I am worried about you’re going to that party, because your ex girlfriend Jane is going to be there". (Here the security need is being expressed. In some ways I like the term security need better than insecurity or security issue because it suggests what needs are up instead of what is sick or wrong with someone)
He: "So great now I have to get clearance before I can go anywhere just in case there are any known past lovers or felons around. Why do not you just get me one of those ankle bracelet things that go off whenever I get more than fifty feet from the house. I feel like I am on house arrest and you are my parole officer anyway."
Now why does not he just go ahead and assert his freedom needs? Why does not he just say "Look I really want to go to this party and I trust you to deal with your fear and pain about it."? It is partly because of his underlying fear that if he does that he will be abandoned. He also fears that his community will judge him as selfish and shun him.
He could not give her any understanding for her fear because of his own reaction of the fear of giving up his freedom again. She could not understand the need related to wanting to go to the party because her fear of loss/abandonment and fear of comparison had been triggered.
I remember one couple I counseled where this dynamic was particularly strong. She would ask him to go with her to a certain party. He would then frequently tell her that he felt threatened or jealous of different men who might be at the party. Her first response would be something like "Shoot, I was really wanting to go to that party too. Oh, well maybe we could go to a movie instead." It did not even occur to her that ,she had a choice to go or not. It did not occur to her that she could continue to talk and negotiate about it. And of course one of the reasons the couple came in for counseling was to help treat her inevitable depression. Depression is the expression of having given up on one’s passions.
When couples are locked in a tug of war, pulling for their polarized positions it is very useful to have a loving friend or couple to intercede. (Or as my Uncle Jake would say ‘When two dogs get locked into a fight with each other the best thing to do is to turn the hose on ‘em) In this case the hose would be squirting the calming elixir of empathy and/or the sobering salve of honest.
For example: The loving interceding friend might offer the woman "Are you worried about his reconnecting with his ex and you want to protect your relationship from loss?"
And then later in the conversation after trust, safety and understanding have been established the loving friend might find an opening to express some enlightening honesty like: "I am worried that if he gives up going to this party as a way of preserving the peace between you two, he will begin to resent you, which will certainly weaken the relationship. Would you be willing to keep talking about it until you both feel good about whatever the party decision is?"
This brings me around to another larger issue of what really allows for ‘Deep Community". Duhm says that as long as one person's paying attention to another triggers pain in a third party, true community is difficult to establish. And until there is deep strong community it is very difficult to sustain a very deep, alive, creative relationship. The fact that someone has had a reaction to one person giving attention, recognition, affection to a third person is seldom talked about when it does happen. And of course it happens even when there is no romantic interest involved at all. Jealousy can and does occur across all gender, orientation and relationship lines. Whereever three or more of us are gathered in the name of relating, jealousy can emerge. And it frequently does, although it may be difficult to detect because people have so much shame about it that they usually hide it very well.
I think jealousy has been very destructive within an organization I am associated with, the International Centers for Nonviolent Communication(sm), in competing for Dr. Marshall Rosenberg’s attention. (He is the charismatic, caring founder of the organization.) I even heard that one jealous organization member burned up the files in the office in a fit of jeaousy. This is not so much a reflection on the organization as it is the culture from which members are drawn. Jealousy can be found among the most sophisticated and highly educated people and is far, far more rampant and influential than I ever perceived before I began to study it. Here’s what well known author and public TV Guru Dr. Wayne Dyer says about the pervasiveness of jealousy:
"Most of you are jealous and possessive in your love. When your love turns to possessiveness it makes demands. The demands then alienate the loved one and you incorporate anger and fear into the relationship. With these come bitterness and aggression, and whether we speak of individual love relationships or global interactions, what you call love, but is in fact ownership and manipulation, takes over and the problems then flow." There are many reasons why a community does not meet the needs of it’s members for healthy relationships and stays in what M.Scott Peck M.D., calls the superficial phase of pseudomutuality. A healthy community is like a lapidary's rock tumbler. where you put a bunch of rocks in and tumble them until they are all shiny and smooth. Some polite/nice communities are like putting a bunch of marshmallows in a tumbler. The tumble and tumble and in the end they come out just the same. Here are a few dynamics and beliefs that keep ‘Nice Superficial’ communities ever exploring new depths in shallowness:
There's a myth that having intimate contact, even eye contact, with members of the opposite sex incurs an obligation to have sex. (This probably causes more problems for women than for men.)
Edited up to here
We have all heard the horror stories about kids in high school who kill themselves after losing an important football game, or track meet, or the little league parents who scream at their kids, each other and the umpires. Recently there was a national news story or a hockey Dad that killed another hockey Dad with his bare hands. There is tremendous pressure and value given to be the ONE, and only one that comes out on top, the winner to be cheered instead of the loser to be jeered.
Sadly we bring this same pressure and fear of feeling ‘worth less’ into our love life. We cannot simply coat check this ‘consciousness of competition’ at our bedroom door. We bring it into all our love relationships in this culture. The idea that we have somehow ‘lost at love’ comes up, and images of being the rejected jeered loser emerge, when our love interest gets close with some one else. If we are not in total control of our partner, or if they share closeness with someone else we are taught to interpret it as meaning that we are some how inferior, and are losers at the game of love.
And what do young men ask each other the next day after the big date with the new girl at school? Did you score? Did you take her? As if love is a game, a big competition, where one person bests and dominates another. These same young men are taught that intimacy is effeminate and real men "win" by getting to "home plate." (a euphemism for sexual intercourse) This value of having sex without feelings is how many young men get initiated into "manhood." It is a raucous seedy sex scene with a prostitute and laughing fraternity brothers or military buddies standing by. And on the other side young women are taught life is about surrendering y into the romantic arms of a solitary Prince Charming. Men conquer, women care. What are the roots to this domination/submission dynamic in our personal love relationships? It is the very culture we are so immersed in that we do not see it, just like fish do not relate to themselves as being ‘in water.’ Here is an illustration from Riane Eisler’s book "Sacred Pleasure". "We may not be conscious of it, but we have all been influenced in how we think of sex by what we have been taught about our sexual origins. Take for example the familiar cartoon of the club-carrying caveman dragging a woman around by her hair. In a few "amusing" strokes it tells us that from time immemorial men have equated sex with violence and women have been passive sex objects. In other words, it teaches us that sex, male dominance, and violence are all of one cloth – and that underneath our veneer of civilization, this is how it is."
In another book by Eisler, "The Chalice and the Blade", she explains how this male myth about the nature of our sexuality and mankind was created. She suggests that male archeologists and historians, who had already been socialized into stereotypical Western male gender roles, interpreted history through those glasses, and came out with a highly skewed picture of Paleolithic and Neolithic civilization. Like someone taking a Rorschach Ink Blot Test they saw spears and weapons, where later interpretations indicated tree branches and plants. All these scholars assume that it was only man who painted and now there is evidence that much of it was done by women. Where these male scholars saw bloodthirsty, warlike hunters, it is now evident the paintings are of women dancing in circles. And most importantly where these supposedly objective scientists saw "the insignificant expressions of a crude form of pornography", merely male sex objects, painted by some horny cave boy graffiti artist. It is now clear that all these paintings and figurines, once considered unimportant, are the symbolic representation of a female centered anthropomorphic form of worship of Gaia, the great Mother Goddess, Giver of All. They were kind of tantric, Stone Age, spiritual Ecologists.
This art and many other artifacts, previously misunderstood, now reveal a Goddess-centered culture and social structure without images of male domination, war, or wide disparities in class (as shown by equality of burial sites). For tens of thousands of years men and women worked in equal partnership, with women as heads of clans, priestesses and leaders. There was no art glorifying weapons, battles, slavery or angry male deities like the thunderbolt throwing Zeus. From studying the history of these artifacts Eisler, in the same book, draws the following conclusion: "If the central religious image was a woman giving birth and not, as in our time, a man dying on a cross, it would not be unreasonable to infer that life and the love of life-rather than death and the fear of death-were dominant in society as well as art."
(I wonder how Dr. Martin Luther King would feel about the instrument of his death being chosen as the symbol to represent his teachings. Can you imagine? What if in a hundred years or so the religion of Kingism or Kingianity started to emerge. We would have huge churches with the glorious symbol of the "Rifle" affixed atop them, pointing upward in celebration of Nonviolence. It’s followers would wear wooden, pewter or ivory carved rifle pendants around their necks, while the really devoted would have plastic rifles glued to the dashboards of their cars.)
So although our culture has come to equate sex with domination and violence it is interesting to note that it has not always been this way. It was a developmental direction that our Western Civilization took that great parts of ancient cultures, as described above, and other smaller lesser known cultures did not. An interesting symbol of this direction is contained in the historical development of mythological figure of Cupid the god of love. He started out being not male but androgynous in Paleolithic art. By Greek times he was not only the son of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, but son of Aries, the Greek god of war. In early pictures he/she was a sweet chubby cherub, but by Roman times he was the capricious, malicious winged little boy armed with bow and arrows. He was now also accompanied by Anteros who avenged unrequited love. What started out as an image of feminine sexual creativity became a symbol of male conquering warrior. And with this shift came a political change. As the Roman Emperor Constantine hijacked Christianity, women and sexuality became the spoils of war of male deities. They became property to be used and controlled as the Patriarchy saw fit.
Time and again great spiritual beings emerge in the world and lead the people back toward a more egalitarian culture that worships the joy and pleasure of love and teaches respect for women. Jesus who taught accountability and compassion, had female disciples who had equal status with their male counterparts, although I am doubtful you will find any fundamentalist Christians who will acknowledge the historical fact of female disciples.
Popular religious historian Karen Anderson said that the Prophet Mohammed, the founder of Islam, had four wives who were enormously influential in the government after the prophet died. Throughout history about a hundred years following the deaths of the founders of some of the world's great religions (Buddha, Zoraster, Krishna) the religions have been politically taken over by Patriarchal Dominator forces. They were basically assimilated into the male power structure of the prevailing government. They take the heat of being a counter cultural catalyst for a while but eventually they succumb to fear of torture and death, and sell out, joining forces with the patriarchy. This protects them from being viewed as a threat. Then these religious leaders use the usual force and fear to collaborate with government leaders to maintain control over the people. Invariably these religious forces horde power, accumulate wealth for the church, dominate and repress women and children, basically proclaim the life force of sexuality evil, and seek to be the controlling moral authority.
Only today I heard on British Broadcast System radio that the governing body of those sweet robe-wearing Buddhists, were in an uproar because a woman had dared seek a position of authority within the religion in Thailand.
Even though I wonder how this hijacking of compassion gets turned into control, I can already see the beginnings of it in our New Age Spirituality movement. I was at a New Age Tantric Puja (Puja means prayer and Tantric is about the bringing together of spirituality and sexuality) gathering recently and the facilitator told us to be careful that we did not indulge in any of that "lower chakra" (meaning sexual) energy. He kept encouraging us to "elevate the energy" into the "higher chakras". Eisler makes the point this way: "I think one of the great tragedies of Western religion (and New Age Spirituality) as most of us have known it has been its compartmentalized view of human experience, and particularly its elevation of disembodied or "spiritual" (higher chakra) love over embodied (lower chakra) or "carnal" love.
Some would say that it is just man’s nature to want to be dominant. If that were true then how could so many cultures have developed that are not based on dominance but cooperation. Ruth Benedict, in her book "Synergistic Societies", writes about thirty- six such cultures. I think that perhaps mankind does not have a hard-wired nature but a choice. A choice to move towards partnership communities, where people are the partners of nature, women the equal partners of men, and the whole communities the partners of children.
Surely we could at least evolve to the level of certain species of monkeys like the bonobos, whose society is not based on a hierarchical social system. Unlike the chimpanzee the bonobos do not have an alpha male that dominates the social order. Nor do they have violence to speak of, unlike the pugnacious chimps and most groups of human species. Comparative psychologists suggest that this is due to the affectionate bonds that the female bonobos make with each other, and the many cross bonds between all the different males and females. Chimps, on the other hand, use their male bonding to determine power relations and controls over who gets how much food when. This does not happen with bonobos. Because of the strong female bonding, males do not displace females at feeding sites nor are they allowed to coerce sex from the younger or older females.
Strong female bonding is a hallmark of nonviolent communities. All of the strong nonviolent matrilineal cultures that I have studies were based on the strength of the women’s circle. At the Zegg Community the women meet together daily to clear the air between them and to strengthen, nurture and show affection for each other. This prevents divisive elements from growing, and creates a powerful spiritual force field that will not tolerate any form of violence. It establishes a basis of trust between the women, precluding the fear and distrust that dominator society women have when it comes to their men. There is a trust and even an encouragement that the husbands of these women would be loved by their sisters.
This kind of bonding is of course not allowed in totalitarian social systems like the fundamentalist Islamic societies like Afghanistan’s Taliban. There are several common cultural norms that keep the religious right’s stranglehold of power over their people:
In Alice Miller’s study of German family systems and culture she describes how the tyrannical family unit, headed by a single strict dominating male, were the building blocks that allowed a Nazi Government to do what it did. Wilhelm Reich, a refugee from Nazi Germany, said in his masterpiece book, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, that historically the best way for repressive governments to hold onto power was through the authoritarian family system, where it’s repressive ideology is indoctrinated into the next generation, and particularly through "sexual suppression". He says the "psychosexual roots" of tyranny have a deep and long history.
Kurodab, a Kyoto university primatologist suggests that another reason the Bonobos are ‘pacific, peaceful and gregarious’ is because they have made an evolutionary movement toward sex as a means of creating a peaceful culture based on the sharing of sensual and sexual pleasure rather than on coercion and fear.
The widespread myth that if we have any intimacy or physical contact with someone, we must submit to sexual intercourse, is particularly sad for me. I really have talked to a lot of people who do not know that they have permission to open up, have whatever degree of contact and intimacy they want and then stop at whatever point they want. They do not know that they have no obligation to satisfy another’s needs even if they did participate in a certain level of intimacy with that person. I wish everyone knew that they have permission to stop, guilt free, and without having to explain or apologize. It is a tragedy that the intimacy, the gentle touch, the hand holding, the eye gazing, the stroking, the warmth, the openness does not occur because the culture of our communities do not live and breath and express and affirm the sacred value and divine right for all of its members to be supported in always being "at choice".
In certain "New Age" communities I have known, hugging was not a choice, but an expectation. These communities are covertly and unconsciously operating out of a patriarchal dominator paradigm. Some of the indications are that the idea of having a choice about the custom, in this case hugging, is not discussed. If someone does say "No" to a hug, there is often a reaction of hurt or a cultural judgement like "You are just not a very open hearted person like me." Most of the community members support this judgment making it all the more difficult for people to stay "at choice" and "in transparent truth."
I want communities to make it clear to its’ members that every one has the right to stop the progression of any interaction at any time. This cultural value of the freedom to say "No" will make it safer to start saying "Yes" to the sharing, affection and connectiveness that we are all so hungry for.
Perhaps one of the reasons it is so difficult for many of us to say "No" is because most of us grew up in and exist in the West in what author, historian, Riane Eisler describes as a dominator culture. It is a trait of a Dominator Cultural value system that "No" is punished when expressed by certain elements of the community, usually underlings, slaves, women and children. The roots of this belief that "it is not OK for some people in the community to say ‘No’" are subtle and run deep in our Western psyche. One basis of it comes out of our basic cultural building block: the "couple", or marriage relationship. The norms and values for our Western marriage come from Europe, England and the Christian Church. Eisler notes that "the Church never took a vigorous position against the customary Germanic practice of men killing adulterous wives. Nor did it take a position against wife beating or the domination of women by men that it serves to maintain. In fact, the English common law governing marriage, which in large part is derived from earlier Church law, permitted a man to beat his wife if she did not perform her services to his satisfaction, just as slave owners were permitted to beat their slaves if they were not satisfied with them."
The Church also supported this sexual domination of women by men by making it a sin to ever say "No" to sex with one’s husband. Archbishop Stephen Langton suggested that the wife should allow herself to be killed before she allowed her husband to go sexually unsatisfied which might lead him to the great sin of adultery. So if a wife is to save her husband from the weeping and wailing of eternal hell fire she must subjugate her own will to his and violate her own sacred sexuality. If fact in early Church law a man was allowed to beat his wife if she did not satisfy him sexually.
Even the "Free Love’ movement of the sixties was stolen and co-opted by this Patriarchal paradigm that punishes, primarily women, for saying "No." They did this by making it ‘uncool’ to say no to sex, and by the use of something perhaps even more painful than physical beatings, ‘shunning.’ Once you were labeled ‘uptight’ and ‘unhip’ you were no longer invited to be a part of that particular community’s all important ‘party scene.’ "Free Love" came to mean giving up your free will to say no. How ironic! Sometimes you can take the man out of the prison, but you can not take the prison out of the man.
Because early Church leaders were primarily celebate, which was according to St. Paul was the only truly Spiritual path, they created a monastery culture of a lot of very frustrated and therefore sexually obsessed men. It was from this breeding (or rather non-breeding) pool of men that the church chose the next leaders for their hierarchy. This created quite a constipation of testosterone in the Church organization. And as with any part of ourselves that gets compartmentalized and cut off it became obsessive/compulsive. This obsession got acted out, as most obsessions do, with a perverse need for control. (More and more has been coming out recently about the tens of thousands of children proven to have been molested by Catholic Priests in the US, since a "60 Minutes" TV documentary. And of course the Church’s primary response has been to try to ‘save it’s image’.) In the early Church this need for control got expressed by prying into the pants and pajamas of both priests and parishioners. Their unconscious anger was basically saying, "If we cannot enjoy any (sex) then we are going to make sure you do not either!" Perhaps following St. Paul’s often quoted ‘it is better to marry than to burn in Hell’ they made any sex that is not solely for the purpose of procreating (and therefore never for love or pleasure) a damnable sin. After all it is strongly suggested in the Genesis story that the cause of the very fall of Mankind was Eve tempting Adam with sex.
The control of the body, sexual behavior, particularly women’s bodies and behavior, and even sexual thoughts through the use of shame is the "ultimate mainstay of the dominator social organization" according to Eisler.
Among the thousands of rules dictating every aspect of sexual life was detailed anal instruction about sexual positioning. The man, first and foremost, must always be on top. Any departure from this according to the official church doctrine Codes latinus Monacensis 22233 was a sin as serious as murder. This did not seem extreme to them but divinely ordained since everyone knew that women were morally inferior and needed their evil natures to be controlled by men. All of this created what Eisler calls the "eroticisation of dominance" in our Western culture.
In our American culture this dominance is maintained by a process called the "eroticisation of violence." This is where men’s sexual arousal patterns are addictively linked to a cycle of pursuit, seduction and eventual conquest of their prey, women.
There is also, what is called in Behavioral Psychology, an element of classical conditioning in the "eroticisation of violence". In the well-known experiment by the scientist Ivan Pavlov, a primary stimulus, like the presenting of foodto a dog, is done at the same time that a secondary stimulus occurs, ringing of a bell. After a certain number of times that food is offered to the dogs as a bell is being rung, it only takes ringing the bell to trigger the dog’s salivation response.
In dominator cultures, images, scenes and acts of violence, cruelty and domination are frequently associated with a beautiful woman's body (the primary stimulus for male sexual arousal). In all the popular action movies, and most TV dramas, the hero kills the bad guy at the climax of the movie. Then he is rewarded by riding off into the sunset with a beautiful girl to have ‘you know what’ (That’s sex for you boy scouts and girl scouts.) After a while there is a sort of mis-association, and then the violence itself excites and arouses the man. This conditioning affects both men and women to the degree that cruelty and domination actually seem desirable and arousing to both sexes. There are many people who cannot even get sexually aroused without some sort of inflicted pain (whips) or domination (handcuffs).
In my clinical practice as a marriage, family and child therapist I have worked with many marriages suffering from what traditional therapists label "disorder of desire." The primary cause of the loss of erotic energy in the sex life of these couples has several roots. Sometimes one of the two, usually the woman, recognizes the unconscious demand for sex being placed on her by her husband. She rebels by resisting submitting to sex, which creates conflict. The more angry and hurt the man becomes in response to her need to assert her long abandoned autonomy the more the woman resists and avoids him. As he learns to have empathy for the emotional trauma his wife has suffered growing up in a woman-hating dominator culture, he will give her the space to allow her sexual energy to emerge and blossom. If instead men continue to force themselves into women’s psychosexual space, the quantity and quality of women’s erotic energy will diminish. So it is really in men’s interest to end the dominator dynamic if they want more of that delicious loving, erotic, sensual, sexual energy in their lives. To change the dominator dynamic within oneself it is helpful to understand how it works.
There are clinical experiments where men are shown five pornographic movies that have scenes linking sex and violence. The men are interviewed before and after viewing the films. After watching the movies the men are much more likely to condone what the men in the movie did to the women and believe that the women enjoyed it. Also instead of being disgusted by the violence they are turned on by it with pleasurable physiological responses caused by surges of chemicals within the body.
The creates a climate of fear for women. One fear is that if they do not obey men they will be hurt. Another fear is that other men will not only not have compassion and not protect them from men who violate them, but will instead be aroused by the violence. And it only takes a few acts of "community-condoned violence" to create such fear in the women that they dare not rock the boat.
This is the same function the Ku Klux Klan served in "keeping niggers in their place." And it operates in family communities, too. I only had to get hit once by my physically abusive uncle to know that if I "stepped out of line" again I would get hit again.
It is also interesting that this social sanctioning of violence toward certain groups usually occurs in communities that generally teach the immorality of violence. The many Ku Klux Klansmen that I grew up with in Brooksville, Florida went to church every Sunday and would tell you that hurting people is wrong. But specific targeted violence was used to "keep the niggers from getting too uppity" and keep the "Old Boys Network" in control, keep the castes separated and hierarchically ranked. Of course the Nazis did the same with the Jews.
It is particularly sad for me when I see members of such oppressed group defending the very system that oppresses them. It is sad but also a predictable dynamic of oppressed people. I have worked for years with abused children who were removed from their homes. Invariable it is these same children who defend their parents actions the most and cling to them out of their learned helplessness and dependency. I believe this is the same dynamic that keeps fundamentalist religious women defending traditional patriarchal marriage. Just as the slaves fought on the side of the south by the thousands to "preserve their way of life" women in our modern times sign up in droves for workshops to learn "The Rules" for tricking a man into a traditional marriage. Or for those already married there is the "How to" book for success in a traditional marriage called "The Surrendered Wife," written by a woman, showing women how to quit resisting the man’s superiority. Maybe it should have been called "The Subjugated Wife." I wish women particularly would quit joking that "if rape is inevitable you might as well learn how to enjoy it."
I have also talked with African women who tell me that they support their own patriarchal cultural tradition of removing the clitoris of their daughters (again to prevent the women from being tempted to have sex outside of a possessive marriage), after all it happened to them and they turned out to be good wives (generally obedient) and mothers. (It is understandable that we would have millions of people chopping each other up with machetes on a continent where over two hundred million women have gone through female genital mutilation to control their sexual ‘promiscuity’)
As a man dissociates from his emotional body, by getting highly sexually aroused he is able to do things to women that he could not otherwise do. Without the sexual arousal he might start to feel empathy for the women’s pain and fear and his conscience might stop him. This is important to understand because this is also how boys are socialized to be violent in many other ways. Boys are trained to feel a sexy powerful surge of good feelings whenever they are dominating someone. They are trained to identify with the aggressor and disidentify with the weak, disgusting victim. After all who do you want to be -- Superman or the cowardly weasel he is crushing? In dominator cultures this dissociating into sexual arousal is used in military training to pump up (pardon the pun) testosterone charged young men to be able to suppress their natural empathy and kill and hurt people. (Although I do not think it is necessary for a country to use this tactic to create a strong army.) But it is part of our American army culture to use domination of women, as we saw in the "Tailhook" pilots scandal here in San Diego. To maintain male army honor and keep the women from becoming equal in rank by becoming pilots, they regularly held organized events where the women were systematically sexually assaulted.
It was this same contempt for the feminine, and for soft or caring sex, that I found among the Serbian military men and teachers I worked with in Belgrade, Serbia. This is the same military, under orders from their government, that raped tens of thousands women and children in Bosnia in order to reestablish their country’s control over the Muslims and Croats. It was during the Bosnian war that I was asked by the Psychology Department of the University of Belgrade to come and teach their psychologists how to help the victims of these rapes to heal. Interestingly, of the sixty or so psychologists in the group only one was male. They also flew me to Montenegro, where many raped refugees fled from the Serbian army, to help their almost entirely female group of therapists to do the same with their case loads of traumatized victims which sometimes numbered in the hundreds. The contempt and scoffing that the male college teachers offered me as I showed them how to use Nonviolent Communication(sm) to establish empathy reflected their culturally learned fear of feelings, soft sexuality and the feminine.
It is this hate for and fear of the feminine, the surrender to the emotional and the sexual, that is the central dynamic in dominator systems. There is a fear that if men have empathy or care for anyone outside their group they will be exploited and victimized. Little boys are socialized from the beginning to see some feelings as masculine, anger and contempt (Feelings useful for dominating people) and some as feminine, sadness and compassion. The masculine feelings are portrayed as superior, and therefore not ladylike, and the feminine feelings are portrayed as inferior and associated with weakness. Little boys are taught "Don’t Cry, Get Mad, Get Even." This hate for the soft and the feminine is also a hate for love, sexuality and indeed caring of any kind.
It is ancient tradition that a part of the spoils of war that go to the good warrior are the rewards of raping the women of their conquered foe. In Germany at the close of World War II the Russian army is said to have raped every woman in Berlin between eight and eighty. More and more information is coming out every day about the fundamentalist Islamic cultures, like the Taliban and Osoma Bin Laden’s cult, that promise their young suicide bomber warriors fifty virgins in Heaven if they do their deadly duty to their God and their people.
The Christian Church’s equation of sex with sin, damnation and guilt creates a great fear of true intimacy between men and women. It also puts people, particularly men, up in their heads to stay hypervigilant about what the ‘right’ thing to think or do is and dissociated from their bodies where all those painful emotions and evil impulses exist. Now who determines what the ‘right’ thing to think and do is? Why the Church of course! It is this dissociation from the body with all its own emotions of empathy, compassion and caring that makes it possible for people to participate in the painful domination of others and even to allow themselves to be made into slaves. What prevents rebellion from breaking out? Alice Miller says it is the use of the concept that all the control and punishment is done "For your own Good". In other words you are being dominated to protect you from going to Hell and to fit into a your dominator society so you will not starve and be shunned.
If the Church can convince you that pleasure is bad and pain is good, which often seems to be it’s primary mission, then maybe it is not bad to cause pain to others, as long as you do it "For their own Good." Without this kind of dissociation from the body and abandonment of one’s own inner compassionate empathic authority we never would have had the Church’s inquisitions, crusades, torturous religious schools with righteous nuns meting out corporal punishment on children, and the slaughter of almost one million nature-worshiping female herbalist in three hundred AD
I would also like communities to be clear that none of us are obligated to meet another’s needs at our expense. We have many opportunities to give to another’s needs and it will serve life only if it also meets our own needs to do so. It is my sweet responsibility to myself to never give anything to another out of obligation or to prevent them from freaking out over this. Giving your honest ‘No’ is also a very great gift to another person. 'No' says you trust them to deal with the truth that it does not fit for you to give to them right now. Without this kind of honesty it becomes very scary in the community to ask for things because you never know when someone is going to give out of obligation or niceness and then resent it. This resentment is often expressed in the form of "playing the big martyr." The martyr is forever crying about how little appreciation they get and trying to guilt others into becoming self sacrificing, duty-giving martyrs too. This begins to create a very toxic emotional environment where people are constantly using power under techniques to out guilt each other. I experience it first hand working in certain Kibbutzim in Israel.
The community I want to live in would have a value of giving to each other only if we could do so with the kind of joy a little child has when feeding bread crumbs to hungry ducks at the park (an image I stole from Dr. Rosenberg who uses it to describe Nonviolent Communication(sm)). And if something has gotten in the way of that natural joy of giving to each other let us sit down together with whatever support we need and uncover it again. Because that joy is our interconnectedness, our amoebic oneness of organism, and it can never be destroyed -- only buried beneath the hurts of our misperception of each other’s intentions.
It is very easy for this interconnectedness to get lost in the push-pull polarization of the couple unit. It may be that the human being is a tribal or pack animal like wolves and giraffes and not like swans that travel and live in pairs.
The strength and security that a tribe supplies is essential to preventing the usual codependency in couple relationships. Without this strength of emotional and spiritual security clinging is inevitable, which is poison to love.
Here is how Paul Ferrini in his book "Love without conditions" describes this dynamic:
"Compassion and detachment go hand in hand. You cannot love someone and seek to control him. Only by wanting what is best for him do you offer your brother freedom. And if you do not offer him freedom, you do not offer him love.
"Every situation in your life provides you with an opportunity to gain greater intimacy and greater freedom. As you love more and more people more and more deeply, you become less attached to them individually. You become attached not to the specific person, but to the love that each one extends to you. This is a movement toward the experience of Divine Love which is beyond the body, indeed beyond form of any kind."
Many ‘primitive’ cultures cannot understand our ‘advanced’ Western Civilization. They can not understand how we could abandon a mother to raise her child basically by herself and her SUV. They do not know how we can stand the isolation of our little cookie cutter neighborhoods. They are saddened by our lack of purpose and service and expression in daily life. Here is a reaction from tribal leader, Sobonfu Some from the African Dagara tribes, to how we in the West try to make the couple substitute for Community. This is from her book "The spirit of Intimacy - Ancient African Teachings."
"It's very strange to regard two people as a community. Where is everybody else?"
"Community is the spirit, the guiding light of the tribe, whereby people come together in order to fulfill a specific purpose, to help others fulfill their purpose, and to take care of one another. The goal of the community is to make sure that each member of the community is heard and is properly giving the gifts he has brought to this world. Without this giving, the community dies."
There seems to be an interdependent ecology needed for peaceful communities to occur. It starts with an individual feeling the significance, belonging, the freedom to love as one sees fit and security of knowing his/her niche in the fabric of their community. Without this security an unconscious collective insecurity develops in the culture that manifests in the forms of pillaging nature, war between the sexes and cultures like Israelis and Palestinians attacking each other. With this security, perhaps a flow of loving relations could occur at every level.
What is the genesis of our cultural insecurity? Here is what Dieter Duhm, who is a founder of a group of healing biotope intentional communities in Europe, says;
"The Judeo-Christian culture has two key principles that form the spiritual backbone of it's cultural paradigm. One is the idea of a punishing god which keeps the majority of the culture under a blanket of controlling fear. The second is the ancient myth of love and the belief that love and jealousy are inseparable. This idea is not only false, it is self-contradictory. Jealousy is not a part of love it is an obstacle to love. It is the death of love. As long as the traditional sacrament of marriage remains so closely linked to possessiveness, jealousy will continue to rant and rage. No violent-free Earth, no sexpeace and no permanent love will be allowed to develop, neither on an individual basis between lovers nor as a catalyst for an overall culture. In ecological, military, and human terms, nothing has devastated our Earth more than the fatal guiding mechanism of this false conception of love. Nothing else has been more to blame for driving us to loneliness, despair, grief and cynicism. And nothing else has produced so many mental and physical diseases as the eternal waiting for fulfillment which is impossible under these circumstances. This should be included in the diagnosis of almost every psychosomatic illness: patient is suffering from an incurable lovesickness caused by a false conception of love."
This false conception of love is maintained through the institution of traditional marriage. Traditional "Holy Matrimony" is really an unholy and wholly unfair business transaction and has the same pathetic dynamics as the institution of prostitution. Riane Eisler points out that "the assumptions behind prostitution as an economic transaction through which men purchase women’s bodies are actually not so very different from the contractual assumption behind ‘traditional marriage.’ For the traditional marriage contract (like the agreement between a man and a prostitute) is essentially also one of power imbalances: one through which the less powerful woman unconditionally sells her body to the more powerful man. Hence the failure even to our day in some American states to recognize marital rape as a crime rather than a ‘natural’ aspect of a husband’s entitlement to his wife’s sexual services in conformance to stereotypical masculine and feminine gender roles."
This false conception of love is also supported by how some of the writings in our great religions anthropomorphise God. This means that many ancient writers projected their own human weakness onto their image of God thereby not only releasing themselves of guilt about it but making the quality of jealousy holy and blessed. The desire for the jealous control over others becomes good, noble and righteous quality.
In the old testament we read that God is a jealous God and will not tolerate any other God. (Sounds a little insecure to me.) There are similar passages in Islam, Hinduism, and other world religions which become the justifications for Crusades, Inquisitions and Jihads (Islamic ‘Holy Wars’), not to mention certain acts of terrorism involving tall buildings. The idea that the gods of these different religions are jealous contributes to the justification for conquering each other’s societies through out history. It also sanctifies religious patriarchies in the hallowed practice of the domination of women, children and sexuality. Of course this domination is said to be done only "for their own good" presumably to protect them from their inherent evil, selfish and sexual nature. There has been much debate among the founding fathers of Christianity as to whether women even had a soul.
Riane Eisler says that the distortion of sexuality – the equating of masculinity with both sexual and social domination, and equating femininity with sexual and social submission -- is critical to the maintenance of a dominator social organization, and particularly to the male socialization for domination and violence.
It is this same false conception of love that is the meat and potatoes of Pop psychology in America. In huge red letters on the front cover of the June 2000 edition of Psychology Today it reads "JEALOUSY – Why we need it as much as love and sex." On page sixty it says "If he reacts to her flirtations with emotional indifference, she knows he lacks commitment; if he gets jealous, she knows he’s in love." Wow! There it is in black and red, white and blue. I can see a new dot com company forming now: "Girls -- tired of the same old commitment-phobic men? Get on line now and get hooked up with a man who will never leave and knows how to commit. Just log on at www.Stalkers.com . Jealousy is a part of Love in the same way that asthma is a part of breathing. Nor are fear and shame a part of Spirituality.
I think that in order to have a true conception of love we need to develop "unconditional trust" in our relationships and "personal potency" within ourselves. Without unconditional trust we cannot have unconditional love. By unconditional trust I mean a trust without a "that" behind it. So unconditional trust would not say "I trust (that) you will always take care of me" or "(that) you will always feel affectionate or sexual towards me" or "that you will always remember my birthday or "that you will love only me." True trust or faith, as in faithfulness, sets no conditions or expectations. This supports the free flow of true love. When we have expectations of others to love us in certain ways, they will either submit to us or rebel against us. Submission creates resentment which creates deadness in our relationships. Rebellion creates endless conflict.
I think it is very difficult to hold this consciousness of unconditional trust outside a field of energy, which gets created by a community of people holding a certain consciousness and intention. This group of connected potent people must value unconditional trust and transparency. Without this energy field of unconditional trust there will always be the hiding of shameful and guilty feelings, thoughts and actions. The hiding of shameful and guilty feelings and thoughts gives people an explosive compulsive power that often leads to physical illness or a destructive uncontrollable expression through an action. These actions include things like the phenomena of the secret affairs that America seems so addicted to and fascinated by. Where would Jerry Springer and Bill Clinton be without them?
Those holding an attitude of unconditional trust do not interpret the inevitable human violations as a breech of trust. When a community supports interpretations of this kind, it serves to tear at the fabric of all relationships and can be totally destructive to the family structure. I wish some of Washington's fundamentalist, "Family Values" big wig lobbyists, could work with me for a day as a family therapist and see the effect their "ethics" have on families. Once you have a whole community supporting you in your religious rage about somone having ‘cheated’ or ‘lied’ or ‘been permissive with their children’ it is damn hard to get them to come down out of their judgemental heads and practice what Jesus taught – forgiveness and understanding.
When I was a child our community centered around a certain Baptist Church. Our family of six had run into difficult financial times, so my father humbled himself and asked the church if they could help us with some groceries. The only response from the minister was a Bible verse: "The poor will always be with you." When my father was put in prison for stealing to feed his four children the church condemned him for it. After a few years of my father’s imprisonment my mother had an affair, and the church condemned her for it. When my father got out of prison he left my mother out of the shame and shunning our church offered him. It was not long before the social workers came and sent us off into different foster homes due to neglect and impoverished home conditions. Our family was never reunited. And this is the fate of too many families in America.
Practicing unconditional trust reminds me to look for the always understandable, but not necessarily condonable, reasons for my partner’s behavior. These reasons are often mixed with misunderstandings, false beliefs and past pain. Unconditional trust keeps me conscious of the "inevitability" that we will heal and reconnect in our love for each other if we are willing to continue trying to have empathy for each other.
This effort to keep having empathy for each other must be supported by a closely knit community. The fact that our culture does not know how to support couples and families emotionally is a primary cause of the disintegration of families.
Why is it that the mental health philosophers have recognized as an "identified patient" a child acting out in an alcoholic family, calling this part of a dysfunctional system -- but we still think of a couple having problems as being a dysfunctional couple? Maybe they are just the "identified patients" within a dysfunctional community system? Part of the problem with this thinking is that we often consider couples to be a complete little closed system unto itself. And in our dominator culture (a term given to us by Riane Eisler in her book "Sacred Pleasure"), a couple is basically a closed energy system. There are many reasons for this that go way back in history. . Margaret Mead, the great anthropologist said that we developed the closed nuclear family some hundreds of years ago as a response to the many wars that were occurring. Small nuclear families were much more mobile and could not only flee war more effectively but also start over in a new location more easily. Mead says we lived in tribes or clans of between twelve and thirty six people for many thousands of years.
Another big historical reason for keeping a tight closed couple system is to protect men’s property rights. What property am I referring to? His wife and children. Have you ever heard the term "rule of thumb"? It comes from an early British law that said that you were not allowed to beat your wife with a stick larger than your thumb in your legal attempt to get her to keep the "obey" part of the "love, honor and obey" marriage vow.
If you want to understand the effects and dynamics of a closed social system, study incestuous families. Everything is controlled by one person in the family in order to prevent the ‘dirty laundry’ from being aired. The metaphorical drapes of the house are drawn, little in-depth interaction is allowed with other people, which prevents any understanding of what healthy interaction feels like. Also in this stagnant closed system, self-worth plummets as fear of abandonment and a desperate sense of dependency keep shameful secrets secret.
Closed social systems are like little stagnant ponds that breed all the vile reptiles of the human psyche. Open social systems are like rushing rivers that give fresh life and perspective to the soul.
In their book ‘Hot and Cool Sex’, by Anna and Robert Francoeur, we read that "Professor Ray Birdwhistell, a family psychiatrist, studied the expectations of the model American family, which he traces back to the late nineteenth century. This model contained two main components: the first, the ‘fantastic’ notion that one man and one woman should be responsible for satisfying all of each other’s emotional needs; the second, the idea that parents should be responsible for meeting all their children’s needs. Birdwhistell uses terms like ‘cannibalistic,’ ‘exotic and impossible,’ to describe these two expectations, and rightly so. The ideal is never achieved in life, yet it is a very real social model that turns the home into a cage. ‘Caging,’ Birdwhistell suggests, is accomplished by reducing meaningful lateral contacts, especially for the parents. Parents and children exist in a self-enclosed unit. Relationships outside the cage are formal and impersonal, and contribute little, if anything, to personal growth and development. Children are raised in this emotional cage and, when old enough, pushed out to set up their own cages, from the isolated cages of suburban homes and urban condominiums and tenements to the smaller cages reserved for the aged, our ‘leisure villages.’"
The whole question of nonviolent societies, peace on earth, dominance and submission, oppressor and oppressed, and even Rodney King’s ‘Can’t we just get along,’ is reflected within the dysfunctional couple dynamic.
Any culture’s generalized couple dynamic is a hologram or symbolic representation of the whole culture. You can understand what’s wrong in a culture by understand what’s wrong within it’s couple dynamic. Virginia Satir used to portray the American Couple through the use of body sculpting. First she would portray the male as standing with an angry, contemptuous expression, pointing a shaming index finger downward toward a groveling, cowering, sniveling, crying woman, curled up on the floor with folded hands apologetically begging for mercy.
In any system, family, culture or organization if you can convince people that it is a part of love to withhold love or punish another for their own good, you can create a master/slave culture. Punishment and withholding love must be replaced by the skillful use of presence, the dialogical use of honesty and empathy for negotiating in an egalitarian way, and the protective use of force based on self compassion. The ability to control how love and sexuality is dispensed allows the dynamic of domination to emerge in a couple or in a culture. Love and sexuality can be spiritual forces for the nurturing of harmony within individuals and groups as long as the sacredness and primacy of free will and autonomy is maintained.
I just returned from about five weeks of studying the healing biotope ecovillage in Germany called Zegg. It is understood there, as it is in many intentional communities, that when two people are not getting along it affects the whole community’s emotional atmosphere. The ecological interdependence of the basic unit of relationship, the couple, and the larger community is recognized and consciously addressed. This is vastly different than what happens in most American subculture groups where a couples problems are seen as their own private business and are ignored by the group.
There is also an understanding that many problems cannot be solved at the same level as they were created,. So at the Zegg community when couples have problems, the problems are taken on as a community project. The community supports each individual to withdraw the polarizing projection and take responsibility for asserting whatever their needs are within the community. In Dietre Duhm’s book, "Towards a New Culture", in the chapter entitled "Building a Humanly Functioning Community", he says, "Jealousy especially cannot be worked out by the couple alone. An inner group coherence based on transparent structures can only grow and develop if the pair can open themselves and trust the group with their internal difficulties. Without this trust the couple stays in their closed system and usually develops some dysfunctional adaptation to it. They go dead in their relationship, move to separate parts of the house or enter a superficial fantasy relationship."
Jealousy is also a form of attachment and can be a type of addiction. So coercing your wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend to listen to you for extended periods of time about the pain of jealousy, may contribute to your own fear that you cannot feel okay without that particular person's attention. It may be useful to go to other people and certainly to one's journal/self to get the empathy and mirroring one may need to reestablish connection with one's faith, confidence, potency, inner security.
When I go to my beloved for empathy about jealousy I am feeling in relation to her, it is like me going to my heroin pusher for drug addiction counseling. Anything I get from her will increase my dependence on her. The fact that I am jealous indicates that I am overly dependent on her. I am only jealous toward people I am trying to get my self worth from.
Often when a partner does support the one who is jealous, it is because of a sense of guilt about his/her actions or their own fear of loss of connection with this person. This of course will lead to resentment over time, because it is given from fear and guilt and not from the heart.
When jealousy is supported as a value in a community everyone hates everyone else who has power/potency or attractiveness. This also generally makes it difficult for anyone to really let their light shine or get into their power, because to do so runs the risk of being shunned by the majority of the same sex. This general insecurity in the community makes it difficult for anyone to slip into their power. The men hate other powerful men for the shame and comparison feelings they feel. They also fear them for different reasons including that they may take their women from them. Women hate and fear women who have potency because they, too, compare themselves unfavorably and fear they will lose their men to them.
These dynamics of jealousy contribute to creating thousands and thousands of social circles all across the country based on fear, competition and scarcity. The shallowness of these circles leave their members empty and looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right to fill the hole in their soul -- and too often finding a drug with which to dull the pain.
Virginia Satir, said to me frequently "There are no bad people only bad rules that create bad systems." These bad systems do two things. First, they confuse the truth with it’s opposite, by suggesting things like fear of loss and jealousy is love. Secondly, they advocate the value of cutting off and repressing parts of human nature, particularly our power, our bodily emotions and the fullness of our sexual nature. Many sociologists and psychologists are now coming into agreement about the link between repressed instincts and drives to cruelty. And many many doctors are now documenting the connection between this repression and illness.
I. Emergency first aid for when the Jealousy button gets pushed
II. Taking Preventative action for Jealousy
So where to start creating this cultural change that is so desperately needed? Gandhi said we must be the change we seek to see in the world. Dietre Duhm said it this way "What then follows is cultural work with ourselves and the way we lead our daily lives. Our suffering is a signal from a life that is not lived. Healing consists of recognizing – and living – that ‘unlived’ life. To surmount our deeply engrained restraints, our fears and weariness, our much too cozy humanness, and our alternative gardens of refuge, we need an experimental milieu in which such a transformations is understood and affirmed. We need an inner centering and free communication outwards. That is the key for a new culture. It includes new forms of living together, raising children, new forms of love and sexuality. The creation of a life-oriented culture requires the creation of a new social and emotional space where people can again learn to live and breath freely. Such places would create the most dependable healing power against fear and hatred – love."
Many new leaders in the quest for this life-oriented culture are emerging and pointing the way to more enlightened ethics, as Eisler describes here: "Some writers, such as the anthropologist Gayle Rubin, have taken the position that a new sexual ethic should revolve primarily around whether sex is consensual. However, she qualifies this by adding that – rather than the traditional division between acceptable or good sex as heterosexual, married, monogamous, and reproductive, and bad sex as anything else – sexual acts should be judged ‘by the way partners treat one another, the level of mutual consideration, the presence or absence of coercion, and the quantity and quality of the pleasure they provide."
This New Culture would have as the measure of morality the value of consensus instead of coercion. It would stress compassion, instead of control, pleasure instead of pain. This would apply to all areas of human interactions, whether it be sexuality, business, government, family life or communication. But because sexuality is the spiritual core of our love and physical life, and the lynchpin that dominator forces use to accumulate power over societies, these new ethics must apply most vigorously to our sexuality. * * *
* * *
What Re-Sources you? Here are a few things that reconnect me with Spiritual, Emotional and Physical Life Energy:
Writing, dancing, reading stories and nonfiction, seeing meaningful movies, meditation, walks in nature, a walk in a bustling city, conversations with thoughtful friends, fishing, watching birds eat birdseed, exploring caves, repotting plants, planning the future, meeting with my support groups, writing or reading science fiction stories, writing poetry, reading philosophy, making love, meeting energized people to help make my dreams come true, painting, playing music, singing, writing songs, cooking, swimming, riding a bike, throwing a Frisbee, walking a dog, riding a horse, flying a kite, eating sushi, calling an old friend or relative long distance, playing basketball, taking a hottub with a friend, reading a book to my two year old, writing down things I am grateful for, journaling, writing a letter to my inner child, reading the list I keep of appreciations people have given me, writing down things I appreciate myself for, calling a friend to go watch the sun set, reading scriptures, co-creating a project with a group, oh and I almost forgot – great sex!!
Of course one of the very best resources you can have is a conscious community. If you do not have one you can co-create one with your friends. I just started inviting my friends and their friends to do some of the following activities and gradually the need to become more organized so we could enjoy even more community spirit experience arose. These are also things that Re-Source any community: (Some of these are from "Communities" magazine. See website: www.ic.org to subscribe.)
*Working together
*Personal sharing time
*Conflict resolution Time
*Shared meals
*Decision making that includes everyone
*Children in the community
*Shared values, a common vision and purpose
*Appreciating and acknowledging each other
*Singing, dancing, making music
*Celebrations and rituals
*Snuggling, puppy piles
*Creating Theatrical performances
*Co-Creating Projects, a newsletter, an event, etc.
"If we succeed in completing the cultural shift from a dominator to a partnership social and ideological organization, we will see a real sexual revolution - one in which sex will no longer be associated with domination and submission but with the full expression of our powerful human yearning for connection and for erotic pleasure. It will be a sexuality that will make it possible for us to more fully express and experience sexual passion as an altered state of consciousness. It will also bring the recognition that erotic pleasure can be imbued with a spirituality that is both immanent and transcendent. And it will combine greater sexual freedom with greater empathy, respect, responsibility, and caring."
by
Kelly Bryson M.A. MFT
Oh
the places you could go if you weren’t afraid of
“No”.
If
you felt you had protection from all kinds of rejection,
You
could go anywhere, anywhere that you dare.
You
could ask a girl to become your new sweetie
And
to come with you please on a trip to Tahiti.
And
ask for a ride in a green limousine,
If
you weren’t afraid the driver was mean.
What
places what spaces would you like to see?
If
you felt safe to choose to be totally free.
Now
just what free is might take some reflection,
But
one thing it isn’t, is the fear of rejection.
And
what is rejection? Does it really exist?
I
declare here and now and if fact I insist,
It’s
just a bad dream about love that I missed,
And
the pain about wanting to be hugged and kissed.
And
it all gets stirred up when you tell me no,
And
I think you dislike me and want me to go.
I
remember a woman I once asked to dance,
It
was so very scary but I took the chance.
I
didn’t know why, but she told me no
I
later found out she had a hurt toe.
She
needed to heal and that need is a gift.
When
I heard the “no” that way I felt the sweet shift.
And
no longer wanted, to dance with her knowing,
That
the hurt in her toe would be growing and growing.
The
truth is your “No” is never about me.
It’s
just needs of yours you’re letting me see.
So
when I get all dressed up in my fanciest pants,
And
walk straight up to you and ask you to dance,
I
won’t be afraid to hear that word “No”.
I’ll
be grateful you allowed your honesty to show.
Cause
I’ll understand that you’re tired or uneasy,
Or
my bright pink plaid pants made you feel queasy.
Or
maybe you’re waiting for Prince Charming to come,
In
a white suite with long tails and a silk cumberbun.
And
even if it is the worst thing of all,
That
you were hoping to dance with someone more tall.
I
won’t judge you as snobbish or think you were rude.
Just
for asking I’ll give myself gratitude.
I’ll
take care not to judge my sweet need as needy.
And
I’ll buy some new pants, cause I agree these are seedy.
Understanding
your needs turns my hurt into compassion.
And
I bow with respect even if it’s old fashion.
I
find my own freedom in giving you understanding
‘Cause
you’re free to give, and I’m free from demanding.
Except
when I’m not and that happens a lot.
Instead
I choose to become a Tasmanian devil,
And
indulge in should thinking and in anger revel.
And
then I send myself to my own mental hell,
A
place I’m afraid I know all to well.
What
goes off in my head is better left unsaid.
But
for the sake of this book lets take a look.
There’s
comparison Jackals all ten feet tall,
Pointing
out to me that I’m relatively small.
They
remind me I’m nobody, not famous like Amos.
It’s
not something I’m proud of, in fact I feel shamous.
That
I haven’t done more with the gifts I’ve been given.
I’ve
hardly done nothing I’ve hardly been livin.
And
I don’t have much money not one share of stock.
On
Christmas I’ll betcha I get rocks in my sock.
How
I’m not much to look at with a growing potbelly.
And
it’ hard to be macho with a girl’s name like Kelly.
Comparison
Jackals area fast breeding lot
They
never get tired of pointing out what your not.
Even
if you’ve won an Olympic Gold medal
Will
your jackal be happy and finally settle?
No,
it will scream “What’s the matter with you?
If
you’d only tried harder you could have won two?”
So
whether you try your least or your most
You
can trust your Jackal to move the goal post.
Now
I’m scared that I’ve shared this unsavory stuff
Is
it more than you wanted, have you had quite enough?
And
now that you know me I’m sure you’re disgusted.
I
shouldn’t have shared. I
shouldn’t have trusted.
Now
how do I get out of this dungeon of doubt?
I
take each nightmare and turn it inside out.
And
detect the dream that’s hidden within
And
if I remember, say “Rumplestiltskin”.
Then
the fear and the pain can be seen as my need
And
to care of myself I then can proceed.
If
I need more money that’s easily done
Find
some one to pay me for just having fun.
And
if the size of my belly is giving me pain
There’s
a way I could feed two birds with one grain.
‘Cause
some people will pay you to just walk their dog.
I
bet I’d lose weight if I got paid to jog.
But
I need to be careful when I start to give
That
the reason is just to put life in my live.
And
not to win the comparison game,
‘Cause
you’ll be quite frustrated if that is your aim.
But
to lose yourself into selfless esteem
And
think your own thoughts and dream your own dream.
And
always to ask for 100 percent
Of
what ever you want so you’ll never resent.
That
way you’ll never miss out on a chance
To
invite yourself to enter life’s dance.
But
be prepared to hear that word “No”.
‘Cause
people use it wherever you go.
In
Russia it’s Nyet, in Germany it’s Nine.
With
practice you can hear it and still feel just fine.
In
Swedish and Flemish it’s the same word naa.
It’s
the gift of their truth in their own special way.
In
Arabic it’s la, in Hebrew it’s lo.
Please
understand it doesn’t mean “go”.
In
France it’s non, in Ethiopia it’s lakey,
And
can be translated, “Come dance with me!”
In
Iceland it’s nei, in Vietnam it’s khong.
It
still doesn’t mean you did something wrong.
If
fact I would argue quite the contrary,
Asking
for what you want is extraordinary.
It’s
an act of self responsible self caring ,
And
you’ve done it with a touch of international daring.
So
whether I persist until we both find our yes,
Or
I shift to meet your needs, I still want to stress,
That
there’s never a need to give in or give up,
And
slink away feeling like a whipped pup.
And
there really is hope to not feel like a dope,
Just
because somebody says to you “nope”.
So
to ask for what I want I’m no longer afraid
Cause
all of my rejection dues have been paid.
I
ask for what I want with freedom and glee
Cause
I know that your “No” is never about me.