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Abomination Or Denial Of The Unbalanced Spirit	Athena	Athena/Artemis — Hecate?	Castaneda	Feminine Gender Burden Basket	Finding a Way to Live a Healed & Healthy Masculine	Gratitude	Healed Wounded Masculine Leaders	Healing From the Anger of Abuse
Initiating to the Feminine	Is Balance Obtainable or is it Illusion	Living Your Warrior Woman	Maiden, Mother, Crone	Male Gender Burden Basket	Mary Magdaline Discussion	Masculine Rite of Passage	Masculine Spirituality Request for Information	Maternal Instinct
Men in Balance	Mother Earth	One Flaw in Women	Sacred Masculine Energy	Seeing Through Soft Eyes	Speaking the Truth	Spirit Lights	Stepping Out of the Shadows	The Fisher King
The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths & Secrets	Variances Between Male & Female Medicine	Warrior Societies	Warrior Women	What Balance Is or Means to Me	What Spiritual Activities Do You Consider Masculine?	What Was Your First Indicator of What You Would Become?	Womb With A View	Woman Depression & Anger

Living Your Warrior Woman
By Michelangelo2

Ta'ah, Grandmother, Tsleil Waututh elder, who participated in Greenpeace action to stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline and oil tankers in British Columbia, Canada. Photo by Zach Emery.

I was wondering if anyone has tips on living your warrior woman without being a jerk? How to be assertive and protect the fort, without attacking or losing the plot?

I've found this balance only on a couple occasions. They had to do with prayer, lovingkindness, and opening sacred space. I also think (this is silly) that Cesar Milan does his warrior well in The Dog Whisperer...when he goes into that calm assertive state. For me, it is very hard to be calm when I am being assertive.

Just on the topic, if anyone has other suggestions I'd be interested.

Wynsong:
So being calm and assertive are opposites in your mind. They are two absolutely mutually exclusive things?

Remember my circles...the subsets.
Calm in one. Assertive in the other...
There may be aspects of them that are mutually exclusive (for me that isn't true, so I can't speak to that).
Now where to the two circles overlap.
What is in that subset...which people do you know who live that subset and therefore hold the key to that part of your light shadow that you haven't yet acknowledge is a part of you?
When have you touched that subset, and been both calm and assertive...(you alluded to that happening a couple of times)? Why were those times different? Did they touch a different part of your being? Did they touch on stuff that you've already journeyed and so you own your own story in that area?

For me, that is always the case.
If I find that I cannot hold my center in a situation...and deal with it from that place of calm centeredness that is such a desire for me....then I know I haven't done my work around whatever triggered me.
And I step back...(maybe physically, maybe not) while I figure out the hidden trigger for me...the reason whatever it is I'm dealing with triggers behavior or response from me, that I didn't expect myself, and that I cannot be proud to act out...
So I've touched on hurting other people...and while I would choose not to when possible, I have no trouble owning that I do it, and sometimes it is conscious and sometimes it is unconscious, and it is all okay.
So I've touched on being selfish...and while I like to also be selfless, I am good with the fact that in this particular incarnation I'm a Self, and that sometimes I'll be selfish and sometimes selfless, and both are okay.
etc.

MichElAngelO....daughter of my heart. Is it possible you look at your own behavior and responses and judge them against the responses and behaviors of people who have walked their walk much longer than you have.
I found my center by walking my own walk. By being the persons I didn't want to be, and examining those journeys.
You are such a beautyfull soul. You walk your walk with a joy and energy that is way beyond your physical years, in my experience. Your Warrior Woman, while there, may not yet have had much reason to be present. Your fey energy has dominated your walk thus far.

You are so beautyfull, and time will only create more and more beauty in your presence.

I was thinking of some of MonSnoLeeDra's responses in the other Warrior Woman thread, and was thinking that accepting who we are, especially when it doesn't fit the mold of who we wish we could be...may be an act of our warrior woman. I can't imagine any warrior wanting to set out to actually kill, but they accept killing as a possibility...them killing and them being killed.

In the more peace filled version of being a warrior within, I would think that facing all the parts of who we are, that we really wish we didn't have to be, and acknowledging them, and living with them, and accepting their gifts, and dealing with the aspects of them we aren't so keen to know or have seen...may be the act of the inner warrior, regardless of sex.

I also could be all wet, which is what I intend to be in 5 minutes, in my Jacuzzi.

CinnamonMoon:
For what it's worth in the moment I'm sitting here thinking about my warrior woman, how many years I resisted setting her free and held her within myself to do battle with my Self. Decades! And Stars Above did she want to get out! Oh I'd try to set her free now and then but others pushed her back, those who I looked to for guidance in my life. I'd be chastised for the assertiveness, for not acting like a lady, for being disrespectful to others and I sat with a lot of confusion about that working through things. I didn't realize as a teen that's what was happening but I felt her within me, times were different then though and so were women's roles. Victorian thinking was all around me and I come from a different era than you do so perhaps this means nothing but I'll continue to share a bit here just in case there's something that will help you.

I knew there was a warrior there within me, it was unmistakable...and when she was stirring, whoa, did I feel her. It just happened that when she did stir it was usually a contrary trigger that set her off and I didn't have the skill or life experience to find the balance at first. My nature is not to fight, but I walk with Badger Medicine and today understand why. Badger taught me about self-defense, territorial defense, and the stories that battles hold. As the years unfolded it seemed she had to come up through the layers and under many different challenges because I'd repressed her so much…and she's sooooooooo strong! Little by little those skills did develop. I think often we have to learn by experience, it is a Master Teacher, and in that it takes time. We learn through our mishaps, carelessness, mistakes, the contrary sides of our nature when we're learning by experience because we can't see the traits any other way, if we could we wouldn't need the lessons life teaches. So she matured with me, came into her poise and balance with me, mirrored by life and through life experiences.

What I did discover was that she could rise up quickly and often unexpectedly and if I didn't take control on the spot things got real ugly. The control was also so shaky initially that I became afraid of what could happen if I let her loose. I saw the potential to harm and it scared me, I didn't want to hurt others but messed up plenty of times anyway and there are regrets that had to be processed. I can cut off my nose to spite my face with the best of them...but...that's how I learned that it was often best to withdraw and assess things, enter the Silence, and wait for the answers to come. Yes, sometimes I pray if need be, looking for the 'best' way to conduct myself, the best solution, looking beyond just myself to others that might be involved and what's best for them too. I sought answers as to whether the trigger was really about my involvement in the first place. I had a choice to enter the battles or not…and a choice as to the actions I'd take. I needed to know why I was taking them.

Do you know when I really got to know her best? After all the wasted battles, useless spent energies, and compromising positions I'd allowed to color my judgments, when age started to creep into my world...the Solar Crone taught me as much about her as life had and in the end it was really just about doing the right thing and seeing 'whose issue' the trigger really was. She taught me tolerance for others and for myself, forgiveness for mistakes was part of that on both sides too. We live and we learn. A major lesson involved the emotional triggers…that's where things get out of control and bringing them into balance calls for logic to be applied. Is the battle (wherever it may present itself) worth the fight in the first place? There was/still is a tremendous amount of inner work and reflection that is involved whenever she needs to come forward but many past experiences have also mapped the course I take with that insight and why.

That's where I find the calm assertiveness, it comes from the experiences of the past and understandings they brought me to ("If I do this, then this will happen"), and in understanding those things I came to know wisdom in when to act or not or if something is truly mine to deal with. I will not fight battles for others, I will fight with them at their side when warranted though because I realize we all have them to contend with on some level and sometimes we need a little

help. Being calm allows room for logic, being assertive comes based on conviction and principles worth standing up for. IMHO and in my thoughts of the moment that's what I feel I can share. However…I'm not necessarily done with this thread. ROFL I may be back. Just wanted to add what was fleeting through my mind right now, I hope it helps you a little.

Michelangelo2:
Crow I love the show too!
And yup that's me.....angry warrior.....not yet calm, assertive warrior. Love you!

Wynsong...not quite...calm, assertive are not opposites in my mind....just something I haven't been able to do simultaneously very often yet.
They go well together certainly....they are the best pair.
Calm...because what really matters? (unattached to other's reaction, etc.)
Assertive....because certain things do matter (to me).
Yes, there are some times I've done it...with certain difficult persons.
I think those are moments when I can simultaneously love a person and be unattached to them.

Who do I know who does this well? I'd say a certain hand belonging to eagles that I know. She is nothing but calm, loving and utterly polite......and somehow I know to never, ever mess with her. laughs. Is that a reflection of me? Maybe. But I can't see it yet. Thanks Cinnamon.~ I like what you said about triggers, and thinking...'Whose issue is it?' Ahhh alas, it is nearly always my issue... And I agree that sometimes that answer is retreating to the Silence and praying...and yet I resist it sometimes. When something has really triggered my 'fight', I resist calm..... I am so like a dog...and am in training....learning this behavior brings about this consequence....and finding how to redirect the behavior to get a desired result. Half the time what I want would be to be listened to. I imagine the best way to get that would be to speak clearly. I expect I will have many more years left to practice this. xox

Wynsong:
I expect so too.

EagleSinging:
Living your warrior woman - calm and assertive... I think I am beginning to get a nice handle on this. Finally it has arrived after a lifetime of either blowing up because I've held things in too long or jumping in to protect and defend. I am calmly assertive with ease now, and it is more a way of life for me than something that I access. Oh sure I get excited, angry, frustrated and all the other wonderful emotions, and I still act out at times. But, those times are less and less with each passing moon. It has taken a concentrated effort to do this; being mindful of my intentions as I take each step and do each act. It has come to me only with work and a lot of effort.

I used to intimidate people often with my assertiveness (not aggression, but assertiveness) - of those who were intimidated, men thought I was pushy and bitchy, women were outright intimidated and acted out along the lines of their own fears. I still can intimidate, but I'm learning when to use it and how strongly to use it. Most of the time now, I don't feel a need to use assertiveness at a strong elevated level. This is so even at work in my highly confrontational profession. People seem to see me now as laid back, professional and easy going. That is true to an extent, of course. My clients put their trust in me. My opponents get along with me unless they don't want to and then I don't want to get along with them either.

I find that I am calm and assertive when I know going into something what is important to me and what is not important. It all isn't important. It never is. I learn what is important in a situation by defining my place and my role in situations, and I do that by looking back and being self-reflective on times where patterns have repeated themselves. Specifically, what I mean is that when I am in a situation that is causing some dissonance within me, there are always common threads that I can find in past situations, persons, or issues. I reflect on how I acted then, the results of my actions (and others' actions) and whether all of that was "okay" with me or not, and I reflect on what I would do differently given the chance (the chance of course is staring me in the face which is why I dove into self-reflection). I sit in the Silence when I do this and I use the Medicine Wheel as a tool to guide me along this exploration.

After that - and it is a process, kid you not - I tend to know what is important to me, what is not important and how I want to try handling myself in the situation. In the end, the result may not be what I had hoped, but I am always pleased that I handled things better, both within and without. It is through that process that I have been able to find that calm assertiveness. Practicing those steps is what has made the most visible impact for me. We are all unique.

By asking these questions that you are asking, you will find what works best for you and I am confident that in the near future you too will be feeling that calm assertiveness more often!

Michelangelo2:
(((ES)))...thank you for sharing your story and process! I celebrate your journey to calm, assertiveness. A light went on for me today. back on the topic of calm, assertive. I've sometimes had a bit of trouble with people who do calm, assertive very well...and particularly do 'closed' very well. And I figured out why. Boundaries. Sometimes, I resent their boundaries. I try to be respectful of them, but I'm resentful nonetheless. Why> Because I don't set myself up the same boundaries. Mine are much more wide open. I like that....people can talk to me, and others with similar welcomes or lack of 'do not disturb' boundaries let me in their know to talk with them. Being close is my favorite thing. Until it causes me problems.

I remember having troubles saying no to men when they tried to push my boundaries physically, and I let them. I fought with it...but they still won. Sometimes, I really need a boundary, and not ever really practicing this well, I have anxiety over it as I try to invent something for myself that I rarely use. I think I'm slightly jealous of those who brush me off with their boundaries, or slightly insulted that they don't deem me worth to be let in their circle. Because, I am wide open and all are welcome. And then I'm resentful of how exposed I feel naked next to them, who are fully covered, even with turtlenecks. In truth, I have trouble liking these people much. I don't want to stand in line for years waiting for the VIP pass to see someone's inner concert. While I do love this openness about me, I would like to set it up so I have the option to open or close my boundary....so it is a choice. Because it is a choice. I'm doing it in small ways already. Setting limits to my availability, remembering a dream of the circle I had and the guardian who defended it (He's a jolly round Scotsman, but he also carries an axe), and remembering the gentle ward off movements of Tai Chi. Boundaries can be gently solid. Now this process is just becoming conscious. So this is cool. xo

SwanFeather:
My Warrior Woman shows up most often in defense/protection of those I love. Occasionally she walks in my shoes for me. Not often, but once in a blue moon. When I think of Warrior Women I think of a couple of nurses I've known and....stay with me now....Eleanor Roosevelt. Yeah. Calm-Assertive. Yup. Just thinking, which means dismiss at will.

EagleSinging:
So, michelangelo2 - a few thoughts came to mind, and no need to answer them - I just wanted to share them. These people with boundaries: Is it boundaries or their dismissive nature toward you? Is it boundaries or their lack or that their heart is closed? Is it boundaries or that they aren't able to or don't want to share of themselves with you? When we have not had time and space to develop a relationship with someone, a friendship or something deeper, the way people behave is about them and really nothing to do with us - except that we were the person they directed their behavior to. How we respond and feel is about us. People like you described can get my blood boiling too, not so often anymore, but there are still times I feel that way. For me, I don't like to be dismissed, to discounted before they even know me. I wonder how someone could make a decision to not like me, to not let me in, when they don't even know me. It hurts. At some point for me the light went on....they don't know me so how can their actions be about who I am? I am merely in their line of fire, someone they choose to act out toward.

Swan, I know what you mean about the warrior women walking in your shoes for you. It happens to me too sometimes, well, like the other day it did come to think of it. I like it when it happens...she kind of takes over and it sure is a wonderful thing!

Michelangelo2:
(((SwanFeather))) (((ES)))....hmmmm....very interesting. And I don't know. I'm not sure I see the difference between boundaries and those things you said... but I do get that most often, none of it is personal.... just like my qualms are not personal....not about the other person....they are about me. I'm getting the hang of this very slowly...... I'm speaking up more too....learning where it is okay to go wild angry warrior (i.e. in my journals) and where it is better to do calm assertive (anyplace I'd like someone to listen).

EagleSinging:
It is all about finding the balance that works for us, for who we are. Sounds like you are finding your comfort level and are well on that path! Yeah! It gets easier as we go. I promise.

Michelangelo2:
Oh good! You know, I've never heard that before. Often it's the grumble 'It ain't getting any easier kiddo, buck up!' laughs. So thanks! I had another idea last night.... About the warrior.... Warrior doesn't mean winning the fight. I'm kind of coming to terms with the fact that even when I'm in a 'strong warrior state', I can still, very often, 'lose the fight' as it were. Lately with doctors. I've been trying to insist on the best medical care for my spouse, and I go in with an 'I'm not leaving until you do such and such' attitude....and I've been losing the battle. His case is 'too complicated, too out-of-the-box'...they don't have time to care. And it's been about 10 months now, and I think I'm defeated. I believe I've been going into warrior with some belief of 'I am invincible! I will win.'...which of course is nonsense... Warrior is choosing the right battles....protecting my space to the best of my ability if that is what's needed, AND accepting defeat if it comes, with surrender. And the warrior is often defeated...... But falls down 7 times, stands up 8. Maybe that is the strength. Just more daydreams. Love, Cath

Wynsong:
Not daydreams...exactly right. I was coming into this thread wondering if anyone had mentioned that Warriors don't always win. And you had written it. I think we maybe need to talk about your spouses medical issues. I have to believe that your folks would care enough to listen and guide. I love you... I love the part of you that is warrior. Warriors become more adept as they learn more skills...like every other way of being that is.

You've been giving your warrior a work out lately, it sounds like...so she will be getting better and better at her craft. I don't know if you remember my Warrior journey, when I stopped trying to rescue everyone else, and fight their battles, but turned my warrior inward to hold my own victim.

Michelangelo2:
“When I stopped trying to rescue everyone else, and fight their battles, but turned my warrior inward to hold my own victim.”

...what truth there.....and I see that now. And yes, there will be better care soon, I'm faithful. I'm just done approaching it in a 'battle and need the victory now' type way. xo

EagleSinging:
M2, you said "Warrior is choosing the right battles....protecting my space to the best of my ability if that is what's needed, AND accepting defeat if it comes, with surrender. And the warrior is often defeated...... But falls down 7 times, stands up 8. Maybe that is the strength." Yes, AND…For me, it isn't about being right or correct ("winning" in those contexts). For me, it is about being true to what is important to me (even when I'm disappointed in the end result). And, maybe that is "winning." It all depends on one's perspective. I often don't get to "choose" my battles, but what I do get to do is always choose how I will BE in the battles. For me, that is the essence of living my Warrior Woman as I understand it at this stage of my life. It is a process, a path I try to walk. I fall down a lot, and, yup, I get back up (eventually). I am sad to hear about your husband. I didn't know he was ill and that you are not happy with the time, attention and care that he receiving. That is very frustrating and disconcerting. There are many things outside of our control. But, the things that matter most are within our control and those things are all about how we choose to live our life. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

Michelangelo2:
hear you ES........our way of being, our choices.......good points...... Every blessing~ (And he's not my husband, we just 'live in sin'.) *laughsI Thank you for your caring. Much appreciated. My mum is also being very helpful.

CinnamonMoon:
“Warrior is choosing the right battles....protecting my space to the best of my ability if that is what's needed, AND accepting defeat if it comes, with surrender. And the warrior is often defeated...... But falls down 7 times, stands up 8. Maybe that is the strength.”

This IS a true Warrioress speaking Truth. *Warm smile* Seems the answer was in the question. Do not stop being yourself or striving for your goals. You'll find the right doctor that will do the right thing, you just have to keep going. The battle for your partner is worth fighting.

Michelangelo2:
It sure is, Cinn...and the journey continues....flows.... this Warrior talk, and a bunch of not fun things that happened last week led into my next level of unraveling.... (This is how I've written it from my journal....a place where the 'yous' are directed at no one, just to be clear) When things get crappy, I tend to read really good books.... I picked up Oriah Mountain Dreamer's the Invitation. I've read it many times by now... and each next time, it always feels that it is the first time. As life continues to surprise, I continue to readjust to the new 'center' of what is, now. Oriah said it better than I ever could have realized..... From a very young age I (and she) have always felt a sort of desire and responsibility to alleviate another's pain/sorrow/disappointments/heartache. Even as a young child, when my parents were fighting, or my sisters were hurting, etc...I always wanted to help and believed I could. This has the appearance of being me just being kind. And there is that. But...there is so much out of my control, which I've tried to control. There are hidden messages....

One is, I don't believe you can handle your pain. I don't have confidence in you to handle your pain, but somehow, I believe I can help.

The second is, Not only do I hope to alleviate your pain, but I am dis-comfortable with your pain, and dis-comfortable with my own.

What a no brainer....pain is discomforting. Ahhh....but it doesn't have to be. I don't have to 'feel the pain of feeling the pain'....I can simply feel the pain. I can sit in my pain....and ONLY then....can I allow your pain....and ONLY then, when each of us as we are- with or without pains- is allowed to be, can I also sit in a level of compassion and beauty... A level which is greater than life's betrayals or life's trophies, which is deeper than whatever is going on right now, ....which simply is. And I am sorry, for all those souls in pain who I didn't have confidence in to be 'okay', including myself. I remember being in pain before and believing 'There's no way I can get through this.' But I did. And so have you. I see my beliefs have been flawed. Ask, and I'll try to help you...but I may not be able to. Likely, you are most able to help yourself. If I can help me, I will help me. If I need assistance, I will ask for it. But if you do not ask, and I have already done everything I can do to help me, then I will sit with things as they are. And surrender to sitting with the beauty that seems ugly. And surrender my need to control your outcomes. In my attempts to control your level of suffering, I have forgotten my responsibility to tend/be with/accept/etc. my own heartache, and my own pain. ~~Sitting with~~

CinnamonMoon:
That is beautiful! What a wonderful discovery you've made about yourself and life. It's so true! And remember, there's nothing wrong at all with being a Giver by nature and heart. It's what makes the world turn IMHO, but to be a Giver in the 'right' manner we need to understand how to give and you've expressed that so well, be it pain or any other issue, we need to be able to discern who can help themselves and who needs our help as they strive to do it...and who doesn't. *Soft smile* That's the strong but tender warrioress who holds that in her awareness.

EagleSinging:
It takes a lot of courage and strength and fortitude to acknowledge and put into words what you did. Warrior, a resilient warrior, embodied. I believe so.

Wynsong:
Bravo. What a beauty full journey. Knowing you are, makes me smile.

Michelangelo2:
Thank you ladies.

DragonHawk:
Hey SL

Earlier in this thread, Wynsong said: “In the more peace filled version of being a warrior within, I would think that facing all the parts of who we are, that we really wish we didn't have to be, and acknowledging them, and living with them, and accepting their gifts, and dealing with the aspects of them we aren't so keen to know.”

and that exactly sums up the view I have of the Warrior Woman: the view I was given by both my grandmothers’ of the Warrior Woman that I spoke of early in the other thread. My grandmothers never complained by all accounts: they just got on with it and made the best of what they had. As Wynsong goes on to say this would apply to both sexes

“and dealing with the aspects of them we aren't so keen to know or have seen...may be the act of the inner warrior, regardless of sex.

the "have seen" aspect here speaks to me of bringing those inner aspects we can't admit to out into the world and this section to me is the masculine aspect of the Warrior Woman.” Whether it’s a male soldier accepting their lot in having to kill, or a the potential worries of a mother struggling to put food on the table for her kids, I would say it is the Inner feminine aspect as Warrior that gives us the strength to do what has to be done to gets us through and helps us cope on an internal level and carry on bringing forward the Creation in whatever form it is needed for our survival. The actual act of killing a soldier performs or the mother stating her case at a social security office, or with a drunk husband who is spending all their money on beer, is outside the self, out in the world, and is therefore of the masculine, regardless of sex as Wynsong points out. The feminine brings Within, the masculine brings Without. Both play their part in the Creation. Now it may not seem that a soldier killing is a Creative act, but dissolution and death is part of the cycle of Life. The aftermath and result of the women's Suffrage movement has done women and our western societies a great deal of damage The feminine was undervalued and has now become largely forgotten to the extent that most women do not even know how to use it, let alone men! In the UK today the value of nurturer, and of Mother, both spiritually and physically has been totally undermined.by a political class determined to increase production at all costs. I am sure that the UK is not alone in this. A stay at home mum is now made to feel inadequate: as if she is not fulfilling her potential in some way: when, in her role as nurturer, she fulfills the most important job in our society: rearing the next generation. Now whether that role is fulfilled by a man or a woman is unimportant: but in most western households in the UK today both parents work and that nurturance is not being given to the next generation: and then people ask why our teenagers are out of their faces on alcohol and drugs and acting in anti-social ways out on our streets: why gang culture has become so prevalent in our societies.. Now, women are not to blame for the state of our societies, but they are to blame for allowing the notion of the feminine as Nurturer to be undervalued to the extent it has been. To me the masculine aspect of the Warrior Woman: the aspect that goes Without: that fights for right to that Nurturance has be used not to nurture the Whole and ourselves as part of that Whole, but to nurture the self in the "me, me, me," "more, more, more," western society we have created as a result. In the 20th Century Suffrage women dressed as men to have their voice heard and lived the Warrior Woman as men. Perhaps in the 21st Century they will Live the Warrior Woman as women. So if want to talk about "living the Warrior Women," it strikes me what we are really talking about is finding the Warrior Feminine and living that: finding that nurturing creative power Within and using it to sustain the self Without. Most of us today, whether men or women, do the opposite: we seek that nurturance outside the Self in the mundane world of "having" as opposed to "Being". We know there is something missing in our lives and search for it Without whether that is in consumer durables, high-powered jobs etc., etc., etc., creating a selfish nurturing of self as opposed to the altruistic ideals of Self that nurture the Whole and ourself as part of that Whole. Oh we kid ourselves that we are nurturing the Whole by giving to charity, doing voluntary work etc., etc.: but would you give up your income to truly give of yourself? Would you give up your income to nurture your Self? I had no choice with the way construction collapsed, both here in the UK and in the UAE, but what I found in the intervening year is something far more valuable. Despite having given up two years’ worth of income I never went without anything. I had a few scary moments when I came close to reaching the bottom of the savings barrel, but Spirit came through with enough work to replenish my funds in those moments Was it luck that in the two years before the crash I had finally learnt to save? Perhaps not. I've been at SL for maybe 6 years but for the most part I was working long hours in that time and didn't have time to really sit and ponder these questions. I knew I wasn't happy, but could not place why in that time. The superficial moments that my earnings allowed brought temporary happiness but that did not last Two years with very little work and a massive decrease in disposal income, has focused my mind on what is important in my life and what brings happiness. The fact that more and more people are waking up to their spiritual nature and the role of Nurturing is, to me, all part of the Remembering.

Wynsong:
I'm going to take exception to this quote.

“Now, women are not to blame for the state of our societies, but they are to blame for allowing the notion of the feminine as Nurturer to be undervalued to the extent it has been.” Which may seem unfair to pull this one quote out of such a long and clearly thoughtful post, but it derailed my reading, and my state of mind...and when I'm more ready to deal with that statement, outside of the interesting twist my family life is taking today...then I will address the entire piece.

Okay... So this isn't about your post DragonHawk, at least not in answer... It is about the ANGER that that one little quote is unlocking in me. NOT the fiery transformative ANGER I am comfortable with...the kind that I use as a tool to move from intolerable to change...

NO! This is about the FROZEN ANGER that I've been holding my whole life...maybe generations of lives...maybe generations of familial life... THIS IS ABOUT being unable to confront an ANGER that I cannot even describe yet. WOMEN ARE TO BLAME FOR THE LOSS OF THE VALUE OF NURTURER....?????? THE LOSS OF VALUE IN NURTURER IS WHAT THE SUFFRAGETTES FOUGHT AGAINST! in my humble opinion. THE focus of societies and some will argue Masculine based, had all but made WOMEN NON PERSONS! THE SUFFRAGETTES FOUGHT TO GIVE WOMEN STATUS AS PEOPLE AND NOT CHATTEL! THEY FOUGHT IN MEN'S GARB??????...funny I don't remember those images as being women in men's clothing... THAT BATTLE (and by your definition OUTWARD- therefore Masculine in nature) when women dressed like men, was fought in the 70's, with our three piece suits, and pant suits and ties.... The first time I remember women being seen in public in male type clothing, was during the wars, when women took on the jobs that there were no longer enough men to do...the Male's role within society, as the men had gone off to war.

The beginning of the feminist movement might be linked to that event...similar to the experience of native and men of color, who during the crisis were allowed to be seen as full members of the society, and then during peace, had to deal with a white masculine based power that wanted to force them back into a box that was now just too damned small to hold people. Anyway ...that isn't where I want to go in this post. Anyway...the key here isn't an argument. The key here is me saying thank you for putting me in touch with the ANGER I keep FROZEN. The anger I've been trying to locate, so I could explore it. YOU put the X on it. Thanks.

Michelangelo2:
That is a good journey, Wynsong.....the aspects of you locked up........... If I wasn't so tired, that response from Dragonhawk would have also tickled my own anger. Just to explain my thought DH...it would be because it simply blindsided how personal this post was....being that is full of personal experiences I am having, including everything I am feeling, living, embodying, being....and you dodged all that and took it to a philosophical, intellectual, theoretical level....ignoring my whole journey. To your credit, your opinion is totally fair because that's how the thread began....more philosophical....and being philosophical is grand and normally I'd chime in. I'm just saying, if I had the energy to care right now, your response would have made me feel completely invisible. And while I don't particularly need everyone to 'see' me, when I do pour my heart out, it sucks being invisible. And I too have to thank you, because normally I'd play 'just let it roll off the shoulder', and you have given me an opportunity to speak my truth..... and it is from a loving heart that I do.

Earthwalker:
SL, Some personal wandering thoughts about "blame" as follows.

Time equates to choice and in the now we choose to be.

What do we choose to be? I believe we are each responsible for our choice; therein I don't find anger in the statement "Now, women are not to blame for the state of our societies, but they are to blame for allowing the notion of the feminine as Nurturer to be undervalued to the extent it has been ". If there is concern or anger about the statement then I think an inward exploration to discover what choices we have made that goes against our nature maybe appropriate. Where have we given away personal responsibility to others yielding dependency might be another appropriate question?

Culture evolves, as do individuals. As an example, as women have entered the workforce and climbed the corporate ladders they have most often chosen to emphasize the masculine nature rather that the female nurturer of the warrior. This is often the expectation of the work environment. Still it must be recognized as a choice. Therein, I do believe that we are often to blame for allowing the feminine as nurturer to be undervalued?

This choice is most easily observed in the choice we each make between financial gain and or the lack there of. How often do we defend our choice by saying we have no choice. Yet the reality is we choose every second of every day. How often do women bring the nurturer to work? How often do we indicate that I see from a different perspective when it is dictated that more needs to be done with less? How often have we allowed ourselves to be culturally conditioned by corporate environment and / or accepted the manipulation of people, as taught in the management courses, as the correct path forward? How often have we publically denounced this direction? If we have not, then we have chosen one path. Aren't we "to blame" for our choices. Haven't we chosen to give up the nurturer to the cultural norm of manipulation and /or disrespect for the individuals?

Still we need to examine the word by removing emotional responses. The word blame suggests judgment; an observation of a choice made in the past. In actuality, isn't the word a trigger to invoke nonjudgmental exploration of the past, to yield a response, possible more responsible choice, in the now. Doesn't this exploration in turn make us aware of personal responsibilities and help us recognize when we choose to keep responsibility and /or when we choose to give it to another. Aren't we each responsible for and want to be responsible for the choices we make? Admittedly, we can shrug off personal blame and place it on culture by choosing instead to be a victim of circumstance. Yet isn't this too, a choice which we are to blame for? Aren't we truly responsible for the balance between the masculine and female that we choose to maintain in life no matter what cultural conditioning fosters? Doesn't freedom (peace) comes from recognizing the balance in responsibilities, recognizing choice through blame (examination of action through the window of the past), and moving forward again in choice?

The future is ours to create and I hope we are to blame for our choices; recognition of blame is our path forward both as individuals and culturally.

Wynsong:
I left a quote on my journal today... It seems appropriate given your response Earthwalker...although it is not necessarily directed at you... "Who said anything about fault, I said I was going to blame you." Blame is, in my mind a way to misdirect self-anger. Anger at self for choices made. There is no blame for me, in the statement above. There is anger in me, when someone misdirects their anger in my direction, or blames me by something as random as a gender based allegation.

I make no excuses for my choices, and all choices around the topic stated were made consciously by me. I stayed home and raised my four sons, my ex-husband and his mother. I am a nurturer at work. I sacrificed a lot of my personal ability to be financially comfortable (not even well off) for those choices, and I have not one regret...AND I will not now or ever again possibly play nice, when someone makes a sweeping statement that whisks me up in its shortsightedness. Society...the consensual illusion of society...loves to affix blame, it rarely looks at fault, or as law would look at it, the balance of fault.

Those most often unconscious of their ability to make personal choices around things, then latch on to societal illusions to give consent to how they choose to behave...."You have to just accept that this is reality", "Take off your rose colored glasses....", "It was how I was brought up." I agree the now and the future are ours to create, in this moment. I would like it, if everyone I met behaved that way, and it has not been my experience. This thread was very much about personal experience... Maybe we (SL community) could choose to move a more philosophical discussion to a separate thread...as those of us twigged by the need to find and be comfortable with our warrior nature, and those that wish to discuss theory around it...may not be able to agree to disagree calmly... (regardless of gender)

And as MichElAngelO stated quite well, it often feels like one who has just opened up their heart, is being dismissed when their comments, are lost in a theoretical discussion. It may not be real in the mind of the poster, but clearly it is real in the mind of the person who feels swept aside...and while I hold no one response able for my feelings...I do recognize my personal stuff around being invisible in MichElAngelO's statement. I own that, and it feels real for me...and clearly for others.

Earthwalker:
Wynsong, My personal thoughts. Please note I didn't mean to intrude on your journey.

To me depersonalizing or moving toward the more theoretical is done to protect not to hurt. It allows a broader discussion from which an individual can appropriately choose and integrate that which is appropriate, if appropriate at all. It's intention is respect and seems more appropriate in a forum like this where we don't truly know each other.

In terms of being dismissed, it is something most people and I have felt at times. Recognition of this personal need for recognition has lead me to question myself. I have questioned myself. So what if they have dismissed me? Why do I need that recognition and why can't I just let the person be who they are? Often I have stated a different perspective and simply continue to choose to live my way. Why isn't that action enough? Why can't I respect the other person enough to let them choose their own way even if that choice is dismissal? The exception to this is when I am personally being impacted at which time the warrior (male) comes to the fore ground.

I have further question why? Why do I need expect to be listened to? Doesn't the person have the right to dismiss me? Their dismissal has for the most part has no impact on me. I have chosen to act, they have chosen to act and we each live with the consequences of personal actions. Where have these expectation come from. Do they need to be reevaluated? I conclude that this apparent need for recognition or inclusion is truly irrelevant and I simply tell myself to get over it or make a change. Therein, I can choose to walk in respect both for the other and myself. Isn't it enough to send out a seed for thought; a thought that can influence a future decision even while being dismissed in the now. For me it simply is.

As for broad statements triggering a reaction, I carefully choose my battles since they aren't meant to be taken personally. How often do we write to senators etc. to state an opinion. It is most often dismissed with a blanket statement and a request for donation. Nevertheless, the seed is there. For me, it is enough. Action comes later and if it’s through another that's okay too. If I truly want the change to occur I recognize that the source doesn't matter. Recognition is nice but I personally do not feel it is a need. The need for me is to highlight through statement my perspective and continue to follow the path I choose through responsible action. I choose to let others have the right of personal choice and also the obligation to live with the consequence of their actions. It could be construed as a middle road but it works for me.

Take care and enjoy the personal journey.

EagleSinging:
I believe these are good questions being asked all around. These conversations are extremely difficult, because we are not intimate with one another and therefore do not really understand the paths each of us has walked. Therefore, it is easy rise the ire of another during the sharing of personal perspectives and approaches that work for some yet do not work for others. There is a time and place for theoretical discussions and there is a time and place for the hands-on discovering, acknowledging, and growing within through our emotions, senses, and thoughts. Generally, when theoretical discussion is interspersed in the rough and tumble world of sensual discussions, conversations and discovery tends to come to halt. For what it is worth, I merely want to highlight that while planting seeds is a good thing how they are planted impacts the quality of that which grows from the seed.

Wynsong:
I answered, The board decided to upgrade or whatever and I had not backed up my answer. I'm not going there again...as what I have to say, more appropriately belongs in the thread FROZEN ANGER, so that is where I'll take it. Thanks to all whose responses have moved me in my journey.

DragonHawk:
Wynsong, I am running through this evening, but I wanted to say something on this now. Yeh blame was probably a bad word to use. Can't think of a better word off the top of my head for what I was trying to say, but yeh that was a bad word

What I was trying to get at was the notion that woman generally have not valued their innate attributes within themselves: in which case who else is going to value it for them? In not valuing it they have forgotten how to use it. Throughout this and the other thread on the subject, there seemed to be something missing to me: the interplay between the masculine and the feminine Within each of us. The Suffragettes used masculine means and, because they were apparently successful, women have been using those masculine means ever since to achieve ends: but it isn't authentic: it can't be authentic for a women to act as a man.

The Dress Reform movement goes way back into the 1800's: the first example often referred to in the States was a woman called

The point about the Suffragettes (as opposed to the earlier Suffragists who did seek to uphold their feminine nature) is that they used masculine means and in doing so allowed themselves to be used by commercial interests: early consumerist propaganda was almost entirely aimed at women: the London department store Selfidges walking hand in hand with the Suffragettes and providing funding for them: in whose interests? Women's? No, it was in the interests of the store: its founder Harry Selfridge having quickly realizing the spending power that would be unleashed by the Suffragette movement and how, with a degree of control (in London) over editorial in papers like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express the department store's advertising revenue enabled, control over a newly democratized portion of the community: a level of control that could extend to the political process itself if women got the vote. That control has not been taken back. Next time you watch TV, read a newspaper to look at ads on the net, just look at how much the content at those ads are aimed at women regardless of the product, and how many of those ads are specifically aimed at women. The reason I mentioned this generation's grandmother's not being inculcated in this situation is that they were brought up in the era before the mass-media of the newspaper barons and particularly TV advertising. Their generation still stood by what we here might call the power of Women's Medicine. So when you say the following: “Those most often unconscious of their ability to make personal

choices around things, then latch on to societal illusions to give consent to how they choose to behave....”

To me you are speaking of how women have fallen into the advertiser's claws. Look at the size zero model debate: women have a personal choice to ignore the debate, but instead they choose to perpetuate the societal illusion that skinny is beautiful. That such a debate should even be going on: is women giving their consent to that behavior: if women really wanted to stop it happening they would simply, enmass, stop buying the clothes: it is women who choose to perpetuate the illusion and give consent to the behaviors both of the women who buy the clothes and the designer to carry on designing clothes that flatter that size and shape (or lack thereof) of woman. Can you imagine if, in a native tribe of any culture, but taking the NA as an example one woman went against the female group: against the elders of that group? Yet this is what women today do all the time: or there would not be a size zero debate. It started (at least in Britain) in 1905 at the Manchester Free Trade Hall when Cristobel Pankhurst slapped a policeman's face and got herself arrested: going one step further than the group had done to get herself noticed: exact same thing as the women who wear size zero dresses. Prior to that women had been united in the cause of Suffrage along the lines of Suffragists, but the moment that more aggressive more militant element came forward, and there are pictures of (Crisobel Pankhurst and one of her associates in male dress) it set a path towards the movement being split and allowed it to be high-jacked by the consumer lobby Conveniently history forgets earlier UK Suffragists, such as Lydia Becker, who came from my home town and who was working in the women's right movement in Manchester from the 1860's and names Christobel's mother, Emmeline Pankhurst, as the founder of the Suffragist movement, quietly also side-lining Christobel, so that on the surface, the Suffrage movement was led by a Suffragist, not by the more excitable militant elements that played right into the establishment's hands in creating the consumer model. I don't know the names of leaders in the American Suffrage movement in the 1800's: so I wonder if names like Ammelia Bloomer and Mary Walker figure highly: both of them were very early reformers (including Dress reformers: Walker arrested numerous times for "impersonating a man") and Women's Rights activists in the mid 1800's. M2,

I admit I did not read every post you have made here: but I did read a few and your first post were asking how to be assertive and calm, which is something I had lessons in in the UAE I am sorry you feel I dismissed you: there was no intention to do so on my part. I do feel that we have a choice to feel how we feel and that that choice it is our own: I have no control over how you choose to feel so, whilst I can understand that you are telling me you feel dismissed, I cannot take responsibility for your feeling so, particularly as there was no intention on my part to so dismiss you. I think Earthwalker provided a very good explanation of why I looked at things from a more philosophical level, so I am not going to comment further on that point

“Just to explain my thought DH...it would be because it simply blindsided how personal this post was....being that is full of personal experiences I am having, including everything I am. Feeling, living, embodying, being....and you dodged all that and ....ignoring my whole journey.

I believe that we are a result of our conditioning: so far from dodging your journey (or anyone else’s who has commented on this thread) I was actually trying to take it a few stages back. For most of us, the influences we recognize will stretch only as far back as our grandparents. I look at my mum and sister and I consider discussions I have had with my mother about her relationship with her mother. I speak to other members of my mother's family who confirm what my mother has spoken about regarding her mother. My mother is anything but calm and anything but assertive, but her mother was the exact opposite. My sister, though very much calmer in general is very much like my mother when difficult circumstances arise. So I questioned why my grandmother was calm and assertive and why my mother and sister were the opposite. You asked what we have learnt about calm and assertiveness. I shared what I had learnt about those words in my own Journey. ” To me in order to be calm we must be authentic. When we are coming from out true Self we can remain calm in any circumstance: the UAE taught me that, both through upright and contrary lessons. To me that is a inner-world thing: a feminine aspect of self. The same applies to the word assertive. Though actually I believe that that word is a misnomer, as it implies a wish to overtly influence another to our point of view, in a manner that actually detracts from what we are trying to achieve i.e. having our voice heard.

I believe that when we state our case calmly we do so in what others call an assertive manner because, coming from an authentic perspective, we recognize that whether the other person can accept our truth is of no real importance: we have stated our case and spoken our truth and that is what is important. If another decides not to accept our truth, that is their prerogative. "Assertive" to me implies a notion of desiring another person to accept our truth as their own which may not be authentic to them. Thus we may fail and if we allow that failure to produce affects in us, we are lining ourselves up for a fall in my opinion. But more importantly to me it is confrontational: even the sound of it on your lips has the effect of quite a negative "stabbing" sort of energy. I did a quick Word thesaurus check on the word and apart from terms related to confident and self-assured the other words associated with it were all words we would perceive as quite negative in the sense of trying to get our point of view across: forward, pushy, aggressive. Forceful, one of the other words is more neutral but can have negative connotations. In my experience in business or in general discussions we are rarely successful when we are forward, pushy or aggressive. I would much prefer words such as confident or self-assured as a word to describe our attempts to put our point of view across. Assertive and confident/self-assured to me are masculine forces: something is emanating from Within. Assertive to me would be to bring forward the truth of self, a contrary action: whereas confidence would be to bring it forward from our Self: and upright action.

Lydia Berker is remembered for having got the vote for many thousands of women in Manchester in the third and fourth quarters of 1800's: long before 1928 when the law was passed that officially gave women the vote (though some women: those Lydia Barker had campaigned for widows and unmarried property owners got the vote in 1918). To me she was confident. Crystobel Pankhurst is remembered for slapping (or spitting in the face of) a policemen (dependent on which report you read). The former simply went about her business and achieved here aims. The latter to me was assertive She achieved nothing other than her own notoriety. She is however noted for having got the Suffrage movement into the newspapers for the first time, which to me sounds strange given that the movement had had its own daily newspaper: now one of countries most popular daily tabloid newspapers, "The Mirror". The Daily Mirror as it was then called started life as a woman's paper run by women for women in November 1903. At first it had copy in excess of 200,000, but by Spring of 1904 it was down to only 25,000 and the female journalists were sacked and the paper rebranded as a paper for men and women. Now they say that all publicity is good publicity, but it was with Pankhurst's arrest that the main newspapers took an interest in the movement and advertisers started to see the potential in all those wealthy middle-class women with time on their hands: and the British consumer age took its first tottering steps. Enter the fray a man named Harry Selfridge in 1909 and the age began in earnest. What I learnt from my investigation into my mother's lack of calm or "assertiveness" is that we are not simply the product of our own lives and experiences: we are the product of all those generation who have gone before us who impact the next generation. Something had changed between my grandmother and mother's generation. There were indicators in my family, but not large enough ones to explain the difference. So i started to look outside the family. My mother was raised in rural Ireland. The aunt and uncle I stay with when I go to Ireland live in the house my mother was raised in: and even today the pace of life there is so slow that it is as if it is caught up in a time warp, despite the fact it is less than an hour from Dublin. My mother moved to England when she was twenty years old: from a rural backwater to a large town on the edge of a major city. My granddad suffered from epilepsy very badly, so couldn't work. With 15 kids to feed, their smallholding that sold the produce, both ran by my grandmother, was their only real source of income. They weren’t exactly poor, far from it (they were the first in the area to get electricity!), but I don't think there was much room for non-essentials: nor any place to buy them.

My mother moved to England, and although, as a trainee nurse, she wouldn't have had a great deal of money, there was money for non-essentials: and the opportunity to buy them. My sister has a good job and has more than ample funds for non-essentials. Both are heavily influenced by advertising; something my grandmother probably rarely saw. Even today the local paper where my aunt and uncle live, and my mother was brought up, is not full of advertisements the way our local papers are. My aunt and uncle don't get a tirade of junk mail and flyers coming through the doors the way I do, but I digress: the point is my grandmother was not subjected to advertising and my mum and sister were.

In England, the turn of the twentieth century, when my grandmother was born, marked a sea-change in US and UK social history as a result of the rise of the middle class in the 1800's and its massive expansion in the early 1900's. It's effects would have been slow to filter down to the working class, but as Wynsong points out by the end of the second world war a lot had changed, in our neck of the woods partly as a result of the "Yanks" stationed here during the war. Selfridges and the London consumer boom was already in decline in the 50's ,when my mother arrived in England, but in our neck of the woods it was the Yanks who brought notions of consumer durables during WWII, and the austerity years in Britain after the war, increased desire to have them once better conditions prevailed in the 1960's. So I began to wonder what had created that consumer boom further back and watched a series on TV about the social history of 20th century Britain, which first brought my attention to the Suffrage movement, given that one of its early protagonists came from my town.

It also spoke of how one man, Harry Selfridge, an American, was marked out as pretty much importing, and single-handedly responsible for, the consumer-age in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century, using advertising in a manner not seen before: but in the store itself, by of all things the innovation of a ladies toilet in his London department store: the first store to have such a convenience: there was no men's toilet at that time, just ladies': the point being that if the women did not have to cease their shopping expeditions to return home to use the toilet, they would stay out shopping longer. Men did not shop they were either working or at their club.

Selfridge was an innovator, so he not only invented conveniences in department stores, but this one innovation, his associations with the Suffrage movement and his the impact his reliance on advertising had on newspaper editorial are noted as cornerstones of his success’. One of the places Selftidge used to advertise was the Suffrage magazines and such advertising helped them immensely in their struggle: without Selfridge there might not have been a Suffrage movement in Britain: or at least it might have taken them a lot longer to achieve their aims. It must have paid for itself in terms of sales or Selfridge would not have continued advertising: Selfridge was too shrewd to pay out money blindly.

This is the inheritance woman have today: the unwitting chief protagonists of a consumer boom based on advertising that leaves women today with all sorts of insecurities that play into familial insecurities going back into the pre-advertising era. Maybe it is because the feminine takes Within and the masculine brings Without and Harry Selfridge and other such early advertiser's instinctively knew and used this to their advantage? Wherever a scene was set that has continued to this day: in fact is rampant in our era. In the 20th century, nurturance was perceived as something that could be bought, rather than something that lies Within. Without Nurturing ourself we cannot find out True Self our authentic Self . That authentic Self is confident and it does not need to be assertive: it's power comes from it's authenticity not from the hyped-up "pushy" "forward" or "aggressive" notions of assertiveness.

Michelangelo2:
Sometimes intention doesn't matter. Whether you forgot to check your rear view mirror before you backed up or whether you drive right into it forwards.... the car was hit. Now I have had time to sleep on it, I see it was my car.

You hit my car, so to speak. When people hit cars, they can say why they didn't hit your car, they can explain that it is Your Choice whether or not your car got hit, they can go on about how they simply forgot to check their mirrors, or they can apologize. While you've done the second and third of these, you've also done the fourth. And thank you, and I accept your apology. Lovingly. All I can do in these situations is say 'my car got hit.' Is it a big deal in a couple days? no. am I being dramatic? no. if I were, I could not do this from such a loving space. am I justified? doesn't matter. I'd just like to add a couple things.

First, DragonHawk...,,.THANK YOU..... most people, when they are told that something they've done has mistakenly hurt someone....they run away....and that doesn't help. You have stayed. That means a lot to me. And it shows that truly you are your own strong and LOVING warrior. Thanks. And...I want to say I understand where you are coming from. And I understand your intentions. I get it. And...I want to say I do own my own hurt. I am a total MESS right now. and that's my issue. my crap. not because of this thread but because of a lot of other crap going on. This puts me in a position to be easily hurt. And I own that I am in that position. And I own my own role in this. Though I will say, even if I wasn't in this sensitive position, I think I still would have been hurt. And when I am ready to stop being in an illogical spiral of hurt....I will take the next journey that called....'why does it bother me to be emotionally invisible?' And I also want to thank you for eventually getting personal....and talking about your own experiences. And lastly.....assertive is not aggression. Assertive is saying simply No. It is saying simply Stop. It is saying simply a preference or a feeling, and owning it. It is not violent, and it is not intended to inflict hurt.

Oh this is spiraling now into growth at great speeds..... Do I have an aggression problem?....yes. guilty. I've been forceful and pushy with doctors and demanding they listen to me....and while it has come from a place of loving my spouse and being pissed off at all the shortfalls of the medical system....aggression it is NOT working for me....and hence the journey. I've tried to do calm, assertive from a loving heart with you DragonHawk. Hopefully you can feel the difference.

Am I depressed....yes! Can I be happy and joyful with life, as it is.....despite all the CRAP? I sure hope so. This is a very un-pretty road to be on, but by golly, I'm doing it. Love, a rather ungraceful, Cath

And there it is! STANDING in crap, and choosing life. STANDING in crap, and choosing love, still. STANDING in all that I cannot control, all that I do not know, all the sucks and hurts and is painful and embarrassing STANDING in it. AND CHOOSING LIFE! Letting my heart SWELL....deeper than my pain. Deeper than anything. Letting my heart swell even in the crap. Dear Lord, I am NOT VERY GOOD AT THIS. But I am standing. Standing with my swollen heart.

Dragonhawk....I seem to have used you as a catalyst for my own journey in a way that was probably not particularly pleasant for you. I am truly sorry about that. And though you might not have signed up for the role, you have given a great gift. I haven't been reading other threads so maybe someone has already come to this in someplace else. Love, a wacky, imperfect and growing Cath

Wynsong:
You forgot beauty full, And Love full, and a whole bunch of other stuff that also describes you. Love holding space for you and your journeys. Munay

DragonHawk:
M2, I have been in the pub tonight (village quiz night!) so I am not going to say too much right now. We have known each other at another site: though not on a personal basis: but we know "of" each other so to speak and I hope you know that there was no intention to hurt you.

One thing I will never do is shy away from a discussion: I will always speak my truth. I didn't get personal in first instance as I know very few men who would speak of the word "assertive": it's just not a word men use, so I could not comment from that perspective. What I could do is comment from the perspective of observing women who have crossed my path and how, as an outsider looking in so to speak, I have witnessed (in the 43 years I have been on this planet) the way women interact with each other and the way the interact with the world outside i.e. the mundane: and with very few exceptions the way they thwart themselves. I am speaking here particularly about my mother, but the more I looked around at female friends and at other women in my environment (such as the next door neighbors I had so many problems with) I saw a pattern immerging.

You could actually say that my mother is very assertive (in the terms the word is commonly used, but not in the way I would use it) : you could say that the wife in the house next door was very assertive (I say "was" as they are now divorced and she no longer lives there): you could say that one of my best friends from my late teen/early twenties (who now lives in California) was very assertive: my friend who runs the employment business that I used to work through was extremely assertive in the sense that word is ordinarily used: but all these women are desperately unhappy. All have created a life for themselves that they commanded: but that, with the exception of my pal in California (who I would imagine is the least unhappy of the four), their choices were almost made for them: and they have been battling those choices ever since.

I looked back and tried to find the common factor: yes, there were family issues in each case, but what brought forward the perspective that gave them: a group of women from very, very different backgrounds, similar perspectives: it had to be a conditioning thing that went beyond familial backgrounds. I've gone way back in history in my father's family line, and found various events that affected my father's family. I have gone back almost a couple of hundred years in my mother's. I have researched the social history that both of my family lines have lived through: and with the exception of the potato famine in Ireland in my mum's side and the religious and civil wars of the 1500's and 1600's in my dad's side: both of which felt too far back in history to still be affecting my generation.

The only significant events were those of the social changes of the 20th century: as outlined above. We can agree to disagree on the word "assertive" but I would say that to say I hit your car feels, to me, a little....can't think of the word off the top of my head, but personally I would say that I was simply driving my car: I wasn't bumping into anything: it was you who was bumped into if that distinction make sense? Like I said, this is just a quick post so if it is a bit "on the hoof" so be it

Michelangelo2:
Wynsong...I suppose I did forget that. Dragonhawk....again....thank you for staying. That is really kind, and I will say that if the situation was reversed, I'm not sure I would be able to be that kind. So thanks. And yes you're right that you were just driving your car.......living your life.......and somehow my car got hit......and however it happened, it was simply a car accident. Yes, those are better word choices. I hope that feels a bit better for you. And I'm good with it all now. And I will say, that while this is in the sacred feminine thread, it takes BALLS to do this journey. laughs.

I'm not really ready to do ancestral stuff, but I'm sure there is that there. And before I go.....there is some VERY good news....... I found that when I was able STAND in the crap, and choose life, and choose love...... with a wide open vulnerability that was more important than saving face or keeping the peace or being thought highly of.... From a place of allowing myself to be OPENED by life's betrayals.... When I chose to rise above the seemingly insurmountable amount of CRAP..... to my amazement..... it began to FLUSH. Slowly. The pile was high and the drains are small. But there is flushing. Who knew it would take me so long to be potty trained. It is a messy process. Thank you for not begrudging me the mess you got caught up in here. Enjoy the pints. Love Cath

Wynsong:
((((MichElAngelO)))) It is a good journey, in the results. Munay

Michelangelo2:
lessons lessons lessons. This thread has been FULL of them for me. I've learned about ...wow I've learned about speaking my truth.... I've learned that living my journey fully, ruffles feathers sometimes. If I could find a way to always be me and do my journey without ever ruffling anyone....that would be nice. Though I am not sure it is possible. I've learned to stop running, and own my own hurt, and take responsibility, and not judge the hurt for its worthiness of being there. I've learned about humility, and that I value the journey more than I do another's approval... I've learned how to sit in safety for the self, and let my love and approval be enough. I've learned about standing in the CRAP.

And when I say crap...to clarify....I don't mean I had a bad week, or someone at the grocery store is annoying me....there is no childish angst here.

It's a place where if someone asked me 'what's wrong?' I wouldn't have any idea where to start. I mean.... when my legs have been pulled out from under me....and the foundation has crumbled....and everything I hold dear, drops.... and I am low, shaking, DEFEATED on all fronts, and the prospect of carrying on with life STINKS.... When I can stand in the crap, and find it in my heart, my gut, my balls, to make the very difficult choice to choose Life, Still,..... to choose to be OPENED by life's betrayals....and find a place of love..... then...................LOVE HEALS. And while I have always known that theoretically. I have never Lived that on such a profoundly deep, transformative level. And I've learned that some people are amazing, like DragonHawk especially and Wynsong and others, and despite what it does to them, they will STAND BY YOU while you stand in the crap. And that has been awesome. And while there are many other journeys that have called to be taken.... I'm pooped. So I think I will find a quiet place and rest a few days. My heartfelt gratitude for the space to do this and the help extended through this journey flows. This has been life changing.

EagleSinging:
Cath, this journey is one of those life changing moments. And while it was Thanksgiving in the U.S. I still checked in on this thread because I wanted to see how you were doing. I've struggled as you have. I get it. I was reminded of the lessons of the 11th Moon, Walks Tall Woman. Walking tall takes effort, a comfort in Truth and from that comfort (whether we like it or not, but it IS acceptance that bring the comfort) we can walk tall.

This Thanksgiving a good friend reminded me how far I've come and how I've grown since she has known me. Through my family's hardships and the struggles and the painful times I've had, I didn't see myself as having grown. But she is correct, and she reminded me of some of those life changing journeys that shifted me forever - they were the painfully excruciating and rewarding in the end life changing journeys - that have contributed to the whole of me NOW. My friend's comment with my own reflections in this 11th Moon are timely. I don't know if Life gets easier to negotiate, but Living does get easier when we can bring forth the Warrior Woman when we know that we need to.

I believe on of the greatest traits on the Feminine is knowing when to turn on/up and when to turn off/down our energies whether that be warrior, mother, caregiver...etc. It is the Awake woman, the Awake person, who comes to learn how to do that. And, learning comes by embracing the painful journeys, the life changing journeys, for what they are. It is tough. I will continue to sort and fight and reclaim as you have here. You've had wonderful company here, company that challenges and accepts. Sometimes words get minced which can be due to how things are phrased and how they are received, of course. And, we can't look someone in the eye to determine their intentions. With that we deal, but we do know here at Spirit Lodge we all are explorers, learners and teachers - for each other and our Self.

Happy Thanksgiving - U.S. and Canadian - and may the blessings we celebrated encourage us today and into 2010.

Michelangelo2:
Bollix....I realized something. While my selfish instincts are to run away and hide right now ---irony of ALL ironies....longing for the invisibility that previously bothered me..... I have a responsibility to STAY. And yes (((EagleSinging))), (((Cinnamon))) and many others I probably forgot....you have been here on this walk with me, and I see and THANK YOU, very much.

I forgot (((Earthwalker)))...thank you for participating....your role was very important, especially as a friend to DragonHawk while he was being exposed to unsafety.

And thank you everyone else who did not verbally participate, but held space for the journeys. Sorry that I didn't go through all the names before....there are a lot of you. And you have each helped tremendously. Thank you for the company. Thank you. And, ES, thanks for checking in. I am okay. I will check out those posts soon enough. And Happy ThanksGiving!

I have to address an issue of SAFETY on the journey. Sometimes the journey is uncomfortable. Somewhat unsafe. And while I aim to always love you and be considerate of you, I cannot promise that I will always be safe for you. And to create your own safety......you can 'stand 15 feet back from the lioness'.....or you can ask me to leave. That is fine...I would understand. Or you can find your own safety some other way. Or if it not too bothersome for you, you can stand in the fire with me. And generally, I will try to do the journey much more privately so this isn't an issue. It isn't very comfortable for me to do this here. Though truthfully, if I had done this privately, I don't think I would have been able to do as much as I have. And still....I would very much like to ask for forgiveness for the unsafety me and my journey created. I'm guessing the journey gets easier only in the sense that next time this happens......I will know what to do. (((DragonHawk)))...bless your heart. Thank you for your presence, and your presents. Please forgive me for involving you in crap you might rather not have been exposed to or involved with. Life changing, yes. And Life. Changing.

Love Cath I keep editing this post....it's not coming out quite right.

Mouse:
For me, there's: · passive, · aggressive, and · assertive.

Passive says "I am lesser, you are better".

Aggressive says "I'm better, you are lesser".

(Passive Aggressive pretends to say "I'm lesser, you're better", but secretly feels "I'm better, you're lesser".)

Assertive says "we're equal, and I have every right to own my choices and actions, and I don't have to own yours in the process".

The 'you win, I lose' position is passive. (I give you my power - wrong use of power) The 'you lose, I win' position is aggressive. (I take your power - wrong use of power) Finding a win-win situation is assertive where the rights of both parties are recognized, respected and utilized in reaching a healthy compromise. (The power is in both of us, AND in the process - power used with integrity and respect for all)

I can apply these in my relationships with people and dogs. In it, I can see where I walk (or sometimes teeter precariously, and sometimes slip down a slippery slope) between the three. Where I start off assertive, move to passive, then feel so helpless or powerless that I become aggressive. Or became aggressive, then slid down into passivity. I give up on my goal, and give in to the kids or the dog - I become passive. I force my goal, and yell at the kids, EarthSky or the dog, or go ahead and do something against a previous agreement or in spite of something/ to spite someone - I become aggressive. Or I pretend that I give up, and shame or blame others into doing it my way after all - I become passive aggressive. And I strive to be assertive - that my needs are met WHILE I meet other peoples' needs, that my rights are met WHILE I safeguard the rights of others. Basically, that I give myself (or am given) the same respect that I give others. Giving up my own needs or rights is disrespectful. Forcing my stuff on another is disrespectful. When I allow others to disrespect my needs or rights without stating that they are doing so, I am disrespectful of myself, *regardless* of whether someone else is disrespecting me. It is my responsibility to meet my needs and to uphold my rights - nobody else's. If someone else chooses to play a role in the story of my needs being met - it's great. If they do it without me asking for it - it's great.

If they don't do it, it's great. And sometimes raising my voice is not aggressive, because I am still in control of the volume of my voice - it's a *choice* to speak loudly, without the desire to instill fear or to dominate a situation or a person. Sometimes raising my voice is to restore the balance, not to tip it. And knowing what is what, when it is happening - that's the trick. The biggest tell-tale signs for me are that with the aggressive yelling (reaction), I have all kinds of doubts niggling in my head and heart the moment I am yelling, and I have guilt afterward. It's a draining experience. If I was raising my voice while I am in control of my emotions, it's a choice (creation) and I feel energized and encouraged/ heartened (anyone here notice that the root of courage is 'cour', which is from cor, the Latin word for 'heart'?). And so I come to the part of the journey where I realize that the Warrior Woman's actions are based in LOVE. Not the 'nicey-nice' love, but the kind and compassionate LOVE, even if her actions are fierce (from 'ferus', the Latin word for 'wild/ untamed').

I love "Women who Run with the Wolves" as an exploration of passive, aggressive and assertive by means of the archetypes and roles and expectations that we construct as a result. The wild woman is assertive. She's not trying to dominate, or being dominated. The wild woman doesn't go for coulds, shoulds, duty and obligation. Her focus is responsibility and integrity - for all. She does something because she believes in what she's doing and she knows it will benefit everyone. The wild woman automatically includes everyone, because she IS everyone and everyone is her. All is one, and one is all.

The wild woman is constantly increasing her consciousness, actively seeking keys to awareness. She intends to increase light, not to increase dark or hide the dark. There is nothing to hide, and nothing needs to be hidden. For me, the warrior woman and wild woman are the same. The strength of the warrior woman is not in how much she dares to fight, has fought or will fight. The strength is in that she *is*. She is a dis-coverer, un-coverer of that which is hidden. She has compassion for the pain it can trigger when something is un-covered. But she won't leave something covered to prevent pain from happening. Neither does she evade her own pain if she finds there's something to dis-cover.

Anyone remember the story of the butterfly, who was 'helped' out of the cocoon and in the process lost its ability to fly and died a horrible death? It was seemingly 'nice' to help the butterfly, by preventing its journey of struggle and hard work; but it was far from kind.

Warrior woman is kind, not nice. It's not her job to be nice, it's her job to increase consciousness, to bring hidden things to light, to move forward and upward. She knows what she needs to do and she does it with compassion and with the goal of a win-win. She isn't attempting to dominate or to submit. She wants truth, and she wants what's right by everyone. In this topic I see everyone being assertive. I don't see aggression or passivity - I see win-win, respect and an increase of consciousness. And I love each and every one of you for it. (((Hugs)))

For what it's worth, DragonHawk - from what you've said of your neighbor (who is now divorced)... I wouldn't call her assertive. I would say she is alternating between passive and aggressive, anxious/ nervous submissive and anxious/ nervous dominant in Cesar Millan lingo. A very unbalanced state of mind in Millan lingo. She's using might and force, rather than inner power/strength. Anyway - all this to say that it's darn hard to LIVE the Warrior Woman for me too. So often I get sucked into the unconscious victim/perp drama in the stories my mind loves to make. And yet, I know that Warrior Woman is still within me, plugging away at the things that need to be dis-covered even if I can't yet distinguish consciously in the moment. But afterward, I notice that Warrior Woman is still there.

Warrior Woman isn't only there in interaction with others - she's also there in interaction with myself. Reflecting on something, so that it can be improved. Realizing I did something wrong, and giving me the courage to admit it and to correct it. Warrior Woman is the one who does the right thing, even when nobody is looking. (edited to add some more white space, and to separate out some of the lines to break it up a bit. Sorry for the loads of words Mich!)

Just a mousie little detail so that there's no confusion about it - we are currently in the Gives Praise moon - the 12th Moon, with full moon on December 2. The Blue Moon (Thirteenth Moon) starts on December 16, and becomes full on December 31. I'll sticky a list of when which moon was full in 2009 (the other topics are for 07 and 08).

Michelangelo2:
A couple more things won't leave me alone....and I wish they would....because it's Friday night and I'm supposed to be watching a movie.

A few more pieces of the journey were.... BLAME. Bugger I hate this one. And you all said it....and I DIDN'T LISTEN. I'm sorry....my ability to concentrate right now has gone kaput.....I'm not smarter than a 5th grader tonight, if you know what I mean. When I hurt...I blame OUT......because that somehow feels easier than simply owning it right from the get go. I got to the OWNING hurt eventually.....but my instinct is to blame OUT. And for years now.....I have been RUNNING from HURT. And that's not good.....because it creates a big pile.... and makes me OVERLY SENSITIVE.....and me being OVERLY SENSITIVE is not fun for anyone. From that place....little things SET ME OFF. And while I resist the rest of the journey....I see I need to FINISH THE JOURNEY..... and that means I have to FACE MY HURTS....and STOP RUNNING FROM........go into the stillness and address simple little things AS THEY COME. Do I like being the sh... disturber? NO I DO NOT! And sometimes...I guess I AM. Do I resist HUMILITY? Sometimes when I would like to be heard.... YES.....and I am also very aware that OTHER PEOPLE KNOW MORE THAN ME. And that makes sense. And so I think (hopefully) that I have done most of the hard stuff. And am ready to listen. Although I request if people want me to understand what they are saying over the next 4 days or so..... could you please do me a favor and press ENTER half way through a line across the page when you are typing. I'm much more of a telephone person and can't seem to take it in the entire width of the computer very well. It's also helpful if every so often you can double space things....so the words aren't so overwhelming. Thanks. Mouse....Hello....I'm not ignoring you I just haven't had a chance to read what you wrote yet....but I will try to sometime this weekend. ((((((((Mouse)))))))) Thank you. Dear Lord, thank you. Yes, that is the journey. And I couldn't have explained it so well myself. And thank you also for adding in all the white space. I'll check out the moon stuff eventually. And I am happy to have found that the next step of the journey led to Relaxation. A number of more transformative things have happened since my last post. I looked at my pains very closely. I could find them in my body, describe them, see them. I looked at my sorrow. It is a Drop. A big drop....not to the floor, or five flights down.....but a drop from my gut to the centre of the earth. Not a violent drop. A very gentle fast drop from here to there. And I sat in my pain and allowed it to be.

And it was horrible. My neck my back....ouch. And I didn't take pain killers.....which wouldn't have been bad if I did....but it wouldn't have helped the journey. Another way to run from pain. I looked at blame and decided to stop Blaming and judging and being angry with myself for running. It is simply an extension of my survival 'flight' instinct. And I understand why I run from pain. Pain hurts. And....another thing developed. I began dropping things. Not just cups and saucers. I dropped momentarily a number of abilities: my intellect, my ability to read, to concentrate, to swallow hurt and Do for You, to hide. And I no longer need capital letters. And I developed....lo and behold.....my boundaries. As a young Awake person, it is very easy for me to get so excited with all the journeying that I try to do too much. There are a million things for me to learn and explore. Even here at Spirit Lodge. And I can't go to all the threads right now because I can't do it all right now. And I can't comprehend all the words. I see a lot of potential truths at once, and as an adventurer, I want to explore them. I saw the message of all the dropping. I can't hold it anymore. I am at capacity, thank you. And that's great. There is lots of time. This journey is enough right now. The journey to peace with pain. It is wonderful, very messy, and it is enough. The gifts of the pile of crap....are that it brought me to a place where I cannot lie, cannot hide, cannot pretend, cannot maintain ego, and cannot worry about xyz. And I am Eating my words from a discussion I had awhile back with Wynsong............. I have stopped trying to hold the universe. And I have allowed the universe to Hold Me. And I am finding it a rather emotional next step to return to a place of loving me, and forgiving me, while standing in all this that is. The pains in my back have lessened substantially. and things have begun to quiet and slooooowwwww down. Thank you for the space, and the help. Love Cath

wait....there is more.... A lovely friend Warrioress has helped me see......

Slack. After the wind has been taken out of the sails......Slack. Movement. Dancing. And humility, yes. And Divinity. It is extremely hard for me to step into my own divinity because my inner critic is so loud. But....lies aside.... I. Am. Great. And So. Are. You. Stepping into my own Divinity. I am done ignoring my extraordinariness.......and from this place......I see yours. Love, MICHELANGELO Womaste. The Warrior Woman in me sees and honors the Warrior Women in you,.

Still not done.... I found this poem I wrote a couple years back. I had no idea what I was talking about at the time. And I read it now....and if feels quite like the Warrior Woman journey. And while I have not been able to do this NEARLY so gracefully....It is what I have strived to do. The princess king walked With frailty, and gentle grace, with water in her fire's heart, Humbling her warrior face. She knelt before a tree bug to thank it for its contribution, and marvel at the work done for its family's restitution. The princess king walked through sharpened spears flying The power of intended steps, Their beauty fortifying. She knelt before a soldier with an arrow in his eye, To grant him vision in his blindness and wish him safely 'bye'. The princess king walked with minnows and with spiders an unquestionable glory she needn't long for higher. She knelt before the elders, who didn't understand when she held them up in holy skies and couldn't reach their hand.

The princess king walked among a field of answers to sift through them take them from knowing lands to wonders. She knelt before the children, and with the holiest of hearts, thanked them for their fearless faith, and the lessons they impart. The princess king walked in mystery, in present in the awakening of royalty, in the empathy of peasant. She knelt before tomorrow to allow it what would come, and placed two hands upon the head where diverted lives are one. I see this has come full spiral. And I am nearly relieved of this particular journey. But there are two more things. There is offering thanks, and there is celebration. And let me tell you.......my gratitude flows......it FLOWS. For those participating either in voice or in space, and for those sitting scratching their heads asking 'what is she on about?' For all the Men and Women who have passed me on my journey....my gratitude FLOWS. And, if you can, you may RECEIVE some of this gratitude. Hold it. It's yours. You earned it. It is warming my heart, and let it warm yours too. Let it fill you up and serve as a testament that all your efforts through this bumpy road have been HelpFull. And know that we are ALL better off upon the HEALING of a SISTER. Let us hold that beauty. It is real. And it is temporary. We must treasure this powerful beauty wholeheartedly Now.... because throughout life, This Too Shall Pass. Let this be a lesson....(originally the pronouns were I...but given all the company...I thought WE was more appropriate.) We cannot give up when things are uncomfortable and difficult. Sometimes, life has to get UGLY before it can get GORGEOUS.

Sometimes, along the road, we can come to the point where there is an overwhelming pile of crap. And it is bigger than us. It is. BUT.....it is Not bigger than LOVING HEALING and the UNITY of SoulFULL Brothers and Sisters. Love Saves. And it starts from being our own savior. Asking advice. Acknowledging stuff. And carrying on. My loving prayer follows...... ~~~Channeling the vibrations in a different direction. Redirecting intent to travel where the heart is, Because sometimes that's what it takes, when it doesn't happen easily. After you've sat in pain, and known it and learned from it, and you're ready to step on, Sometimes, trying is needed. Place a song on my lips, Lord, and I will exhale a butterfly. Place a friend in my arms, Lord and I will let their wonderment testify. Place courage in my feet, Lord, and I will walk without a shield. Place surrendering in my heart, Lord, and I will let your wisdom wield. Place your touch on my hand, Lord, and I will persevere. Place improvement in the creature, Lord and I will happily disappear. ~~~ And now....it is time for the CELEBRATION. Where we can CELEBRATE the journey. Things are messy. Times are tough. Defeat happens. and along the way out of it there can be bumps and bruises. But the road is not longer than we can manage. And there are great rewards in FINISHING the journey. And I would like to say, you are all invited to the party. The party is going to last this whole day. And then I'm going to sleep for a week. And then I believe that this particular journey, is finished. And you are INVITED. and you are invited AS YOU ARE. Whether you are old or young, male or female, happy or sad, healthfull or ill, pleased or spitefull, however. You are INVITED. And you don't have to come. And if you come, you can sit in the corner. That's great.

Or you can be silly. And you don't have to acknowledge that you came to the party by posting a response here. And you can come late. Oh....There will be MUSIC and there will be DANCING and there will be PINTS and CHOCOLATE and CAPITAL LETTERS.... There will be LAUGHTER and JOY and there may also be tears and other things.... and it will be a blast..... And we can join in with James Brown....and sing I FEEL GOOD. And then....after.....there will be sleep and quiet, I should say there will be those things from me, at least for a little while. THANKS. GIVING. The timing is just right. HALLELUJIAH. Amen.

DragonHawk:
Hey gang, I looked at this notion of "assertiveness" last time we had a debate on the subject here. It is form that work that I came to the conclusion that the overall tenor of the word is not particularly positive: there are far too many inferences that imply a lack of seeing another person's point of view and being able to integrate that into one's thinking and communication. I think the other reason I don't like the word is that it implies a position of weakness: that we might feel a need to "assert" something in a manner that, regardless of whether intendedand, we invoke the word's possible negative implications. Assertiveness does not come from a position of strength to me.

Going back to the difference between Lydia Becker and Tincabel Pankhurst: Becker got things done by positive affirmative action: she campaigned for women’s rights generally and the right to vote particularly and actually took women from all over Manchester to the voting stations to ensure they did vote when the chance arose: as often if there was no male head of household noted in the census, voting papers were often sent in the female head of household's name: despite the fact women were not allowed to vote. Tincabel Pankhurst slapped a policeman to get herself in the papers: which course would you take? The change in law in 1918 in Britain that first gave any woman the vote was for those whom Becker had fought for: not for what Tincabel Pankhurst fought for: and Becker had been fighting since the 1860's. It was only when it was decided by the powers that be that, on economic grounds, particularly given just how many men had lost their lives in the Great War (WWI), it would be economically advantageous to start giving women more rights including the vote.

And for those who argue that it was the rise in socialism that made the difference: Cristobel's mother Emmeline secured the funds for the first Socialist Hall in Manchester and was then told by the ruling committee of the Labor Party that she could not enter because it was a male-only club! So much for socialism and women's Suffrage. To me, the three words Mouse spoke of would be passive, aggressive and affirmative: affirmative speaks much more to me of being on solid ground: of being in touch with our sense of Self (i.e. that sense that tells us we can achieve anything that is in accordance with our core values and which we truly desire) and our ability to be "calm" but also with being strong enough Within to be heard Without. How people perceive us does to an extent depend on how we perceive ourselves. It's a known fact that people with good communication skills rise up the corporate ladder quicker, and to greater heights, than their counterparts with lesser skills. In my twenties I had very strong self-belief and I achieved everything I set out to achieve: so much so that I when I did, I sat there and thought: where do I go from here? I hadn't prepared goals for what came after being made a company director at twenty seven: that was the end goal from when I first started work at nineteen.

I stopped Dreaming at twenty seven and it was all downhill to redundancy at thirty when the company went bust. So I know that when I feel confident inside, I can communicate better: and people seem to want to listen and almost synchronistically I act in a manner that brings about the things I desire more often. I am affirmative. When I am down on myself I cannot make people listen and it all becomes hard work: but I don’t stop trying to get what I feel I need: I might still get what I desire, but it would not be from a position of strength and there probably wouldn't be as much "win-win" in that situation: I would be much more assertive in ensuring what I needed was achieved. So, to me, there is an element of the "victim" in the world assertive: the person isn't being acknowledged, which makes any feelings of victimhood even more pronounced and their need to have their voice heard (whether male or female) comes in in an over-compensatory fashion. Rarely are we calm when over-compensate. So to me the words "calm" and "assertive" are opposites. But when we come from a perspective of "affirming" we not only affirm our own rights, but by the nature of the word we seem to affirm the rights of those we are interacting with: there is much more of a basis of "mutualness" (bad word I know, but can't think of a better one right now) about that word. To me assertive implies energy going from one person to another, an opinion being voiced that does not "affirm" the opinion of the other person in the interaction, whereas to affirmative is much more neutral: just energy "happening" between the two parties: neither is giving or receiving the energy as is the case with "assertive", it is just there between them being exchanged but not sent or received.

Okay, thinking of another way of putting this: get two "assertive" people interacting and in my experience sparks will fly and little is achieved. Get two affirmative people interacting and a degree of synchronicity occurs. To be affirming in the first place to me says that we are confident in ourselves; so there wouldn't be that sense of taking offense that can occur when one party in a conversation says something that the other party cannot accept. If both parties feel confident in who they are Within, the strength offered by that allows us to accept another’s point of view is different than our own: but it doesn't impact our point of view to the extent that it makes us defensive and feel the need to become aggressive (as Tincabel Pankhurst became) or act aggressively towards others (even if done so when we feel in full control of our actions) Okay visitors so gonna have to come back to this: but I leave below the dictionary work I did on the word "assertive". Wiktionary -adjective boldly self-assured; aggressively confident; cocky Dictionary.com -adjective confidently aggressive or self-assured; positive: aggressive; dogmatic:. having a distinctive or pronounced taste or aroma. Inclined to bold or confident assertion; aggressively self-assured. Merriam-Webster online 1 : disposed to or characterized by bold or confident assertion <an assertive leader> 2 : having a strong or distinctive flavor or aroma <assertive wines> synonyms see AGGRESSIVE Cambridge dictionary of American English describes someone who behaves confidently and is not frightened to say what they want or believe: yourdictionary.com adjective characterized by assertion; positive or confident in a persistent way Wordsmyth.com forward or aggressive in speech or action. one.look.com Assertive Positive; affirming confidently; affirmative; peremptory.

Now I did not understand what peremptory meant, so had to look that up:

Peremptory -adjective

1 leaving no opportunity for denial or refusal; imperative: a peremptory command. 2 imperious or dictatorial. 3 positive or assertive in speech, tone, manner, etc. 4 at Law: A that precludes or does not admit of debate, question, etc.: a peremptory edict. B decisive or final. C in which a command is absolute and unconditional: a peremptory writ.

Origin: 1505-15; < L peremptorius final, decisive, lit., deadly, destructive (deriv. of premiere to take away fully, destroy, slay), equiv. to per- PER- + em-, base of emere to buy, orig. to take + -torius -TORY 1 , with intrusive p

Synonyms: arbitrary, dogmatic, domineering.

Cocky? Confidently aggressive? Synonym "aggressive"? Dogmatic! Are these states that we should aspire to?

The word bold appears in there too. Now, I know it is only a usage of a term that relates to a particular geographic area, but whenever I go to Ireland I hear this term being used to declare negative behavior "you're being very bold" as a rebuke to a child whose behavior isn't considered acceptable: akin to "naughty" but implying more a lack of consideration for others: not quite as strong as naughty and giving the child the opportunity to correct the behavior itself: but a clear warning that if the behavior continues the child will be reprimanded. If an adult is described as bold (and they are) it is considered very bad: as if an adult should know better than to be "bold". Now "bold" in normal usage has connotations of daring and courage, as noted in the Merriam-Webster description: but look at the synonym used there: aggressive, implying assertiveness in the way "bold" is used in Ireland, Another interesting way the word "bold" is used is in the sense that it is used to make something stand out in written text. Taking that back to behavior, one of the more positive aspect of the concept of assertiveness is in the context of having one's voice heard: in internet etiquette, at least in the early days of internet, "bolding" a comment was the equivalent of "shouting" in face to face communication and I can't help but feel in that sense that "bold" again has that connotation of behavior that isn't considered acceptable: a need to have one's voice/opinion heard above others.

The most positive descriptors of the word assertive was this:

Synonyms: 1. forceful, decisive, forward.

Forward? Now this could be seen as a positive word: forward thinking for instance? But it can also have connotations with regard to those who can be a little "in your face" I found the examples of use of the word, but had not referenced the link Example: "Too assertive as a salesman" Example: "An energetic assertive boy who was always ready to argue"

Free-dictionary.org gives a range of meanings for assertive:

absolute, affirmative, affirmatory, aggressive, assortative, assertional, bold, bossy, certain, confident, decided, declarative/declaratory, definite, doctrinaire, dogmatic, domineering, emphatic, firm, insistent, opinionated, peremptory, positive, predicational, predicative, pushy, sure

I coloured them so that I made sure I got them all then grouped the words according to whether they allowed debate, were negative, positive or moving towards negative: Absolute, certain, decided, definite, emphatic, sure

Aggressive, bossy, doctrinaire

(doctrinaire synonyms: authoritarian, uncompromising, inflexible, unyielding)

dogmatic domineering, opinionated, pushy

affirmative/tory, confident, positive

Declarative/tory, bold, firm, insistent predicational/ive (predicational/ive: to proclaim; declare; affirm; assert, make an affirmation or assertion)

CinnamonMoon:
Michelangelo, I was one of those who stood back holding Space for you as I followed your journey. I found it filled with pain and beauty...you stood in the Fire and with your heart stepped from it without burns. And I will come to your party and I will Dance with you to Celebrate your growth. Well done! Congratulations!

DragonHawk, I can see the technical points you are making about 'assertiveness'. But, for me, they raise the question: doesn't the word hold neutrality until we put the intent behind it? In those definitions I can see the positive terms at times, negatives at others. All the terms used to describe it can be intended either way depending on the circumstances. So with this in mind, I feel the word assertive can be a positive. Let me explain: I'm coming from a woman's perspective, speaking for myself having grown up through the feminist movement (which is a Big Picture perspective) and personal challenges through it (Detailed Picture perspective) so now at a ripe old age I'm asserting my opinion. There are times, as a woman, I've had to assert myself in both negative and positive ways to overcome challenges, I may not be proud of the negatives assertions but I am comfortable with the positive ones. I've had to stay the path against angry winds, to hold faith and dig for the courage to do so. I've had to apply that courage assertively to find the strength to overcome and I would venture that there are many others (male or female) who have had to do much the same at times in their lives. I walk my path with conviction and in that conviction is found faith, strength and yes, assertiveness at times to stay the course...regardless of what someone else might try to do to dissuade or steer me off course. It took a lot to get to this point and in my positive assertiveness I do not see the negativity being present. I see a positive strength in it. I'm not pushing my journey on anyone, they are welcome to walk their own, but I do walk assertively in own my ways. There is no room for arguing that my convictions are my own, and I do not see that as a negative either. It is my choice. It was made for my Self. In this light I believe asserting can be a very positive thing. There are times, when someone is or has been repressed, that asserting themselves is called for to overcome that oppression. If done in a right manner it's a positive action taken. IMHO I feel that's at the heart of the feminine warrior too. It can drive us up and out of difficult times when the human element (right action called for) is added to the definition. I'm not saying you or the dictionaries are wrong here, quite the contrary. I'm only saying that perhaps it's the slant on the word? Or the perspective we hold with it? Or the intent behind it that alters or defines it as well. Rather than looking at women as a whole perhaps we also need to look at the woman striving to be whole. Just a munchie for you to consider, my friend, as while I can't disagree with you, I can't fully agree either as I do put that slant I mentioned on it personally. Words are energy, energy is neutral until the intent sets things in motion in a positive or contrary manner. IMHO

Michelangelo2:
Well I could only carry the celebration for one James Brown CD and one Aretha. And then slept for 5 + hours. But it is Back On! In would like to learn how to speak from my heart without needed capital letters all the time.... so it doesn't sound like I am attacking the reader.....because I'm not. DragonHawk...you will be so happy....I found the last piece. Why does it bother me to feel invisible even when there is clearly no intention for that? Because I don't Own my own Power. And so I am sitting....no....I am Dancing and Rejoicing in MichElAngelO.....for I believe the very first time. My spouse doesn't recognize me. "Cathy, you look different." "I am different." "And your out-breath is longer." "Yes. It is." And so I am Going Out On The Town..........and feeling great. And Cinnamon......Bless your Heart. I really appreciated the space and the silence from you and everyone too. If there were thirty voices, this could not have happened. Much love, Michelangelo

Oh and DragonHawk....I see your point. If you wish, you can change all my 'assertives' in your mind to 'affirmative'......because that is more truly what I meant. I don't spend much time with dictionaries....Cesar Milan from the Dog Whisperer TV show uses 'assertive' when more truly he means 'affirmative'. Cheers. p.s. Thank you for the large typeface.

Oh well now this is done....I find I don't want to sleep! I am revved and Stoked and enthused! And I want to invite you to come PLAY with me! Does anyone live in Edmonton? And I want to Celebrate you and your Divinity. And I want to empower you as this journey has empowered me!~ And I live in Joy! I have been completely transformed. Don't know who this knew me is. But she talks. A lot. And she is very honest. and loving still. She is still vulnerable and sensitive, but not a china shop. I found my creativity, my spunk, my humor, my sensuality and sexuality and athletic side, my inner Gorilla, my Wild Woman, my ability to rejoice and bask in love. And the nerve to Do fun things that I do Badly. Oh....and that I don't care at all for housework! And now that I have healed the feminine stuff.....I find I am able to get along much better with Men. Including my father, who challenges me. Men will treat you very well if you make simple, direct requests. So will women. And if you are interested in a story you are telling a Man, then they are interested too. Men are interested in stuff. Of course so are women. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I don't know if all the people in my life are quite ready for the 'Agent of Change' I am.........and that's their journey. Anyway, I just wanted to add that. The journey has been worthwhile and the gratitude flows. Goodnight.

The messages keep waking me up ....and Waking me, too. Turns out....the journey was not done. Although the hard stuff was. The last piece is understanding Men. I've been having some very interesting discussions with my spouse. I have always loved Men....loved them to a fault!.....but I have never understood them. Now....I believe I'm starting to get it. Men like facts. They need to be respected, yes, and they have feelings and can do feelings, but they also like facts. And when a man says he disagrees with me, he is not saying he disagrees with ME, but he disagrees with my particular words or actions at that time. He is simply stating his honesty. OH! OKAY!~ And while Men to need to know they are loved and appreciated, they don't need to hear it at every conversation. And now that I get this.....I might not need to know it in every conversation either. Do I like hearing it? YES.

Men don't always need a hundred fluffies and flowers. They would be fine if you ended the conversation with "It was very nice talking to you. Peace out Bro." And it is me who has the need, being a woman, to say 'Love you heaps. Bye now.' and if I can find a way to tell men I love them from a way that more speaks their language....like saying 'You're awesome', for example....then that is appreciated. Am I particularly interested in facts? Not especially. I'm more interested in feelings and personal experiences. Tell me of a time where you were totally out of gas, and how you found the strength to wake up in the morning. That's more a conversation I'm interested in. And when I simply explain how I work......Men understand me too! And I also found..... there are some facts that I AM INTERESTED in. And VOILA....we have common ground! I am interested in Science. From this thread, you would probably not believe me if I told you I am a plant geneticist. But I am. I love genetics. And plants. Although I am having a very hard time keeping them alive at work. First deer problems, now insects. And because of my schooling, my language skills are very developed when it comes to talking about science. I can make long, full sentences. I'm still not very good at reading them. I am also interested in biochemistry, and physics. Although my knowledge there is much less. I also like to talk about the Weather. And Dance. And Food. If there is a neat book your reading because it taught you something, that would be interesting for me to hear of too. I am less interested in history, literature, intricate gadgets, cars, football or hockey. And I'm good with the fact that other people may be very interested in those things. Actually it's great. Someone has to like cars....or we would all have problems! I'm saying this not to initiate a long scientific chat.....but because it is a dis-covery of another side of me.....and from there, I understand more about all of you. And I have arrived at a place of not just Womaste.......(I would like to say Menamaste....but I am not a Man....) I have arrived at Namaste. From my own space of power and being, I see yours, love you, and understand you a little bit more. Love, Michelangelo and Peace out Bros.

DragonHawk:
M2, I am still here, reading and holding space: just busy in the mundane right now so not able to post as often as I would like. You said: “STANDING in crap, and choosing life.

STANDING in crap, and choosing love, still. STANIDNG in all that I cannot control, all that I do not know, all the sucks and hurts and is painful and emarassing STANDING in it.

CHOOSING LIFE!”

And “Letting my heart SWELL....deeper than my pain. Deeper than anything. Letting my heart swell even in the crap.”

Well I have been there a couple of times, in the UAE particularly. First of all, in Abu Dhabi a female spirit came: in of all places my hotel room. I wasn't sure about her as she was black: but she was the place of my fears: the fears I projected onto her: as in reality she was the space of my creative potential. I didn't see that till I met her out in the desert though. So she scared me and I avoided her: didn't interact with her: just watched as she grew larger and then changed into a spiral and disappeared: I see now she was showing me the cycles of life and death: growing and receding. Later this would be important.

When I moved to Dubai, after the rows with a personnel girl that brought me there, a male spirit came to me in my apartment just as I moved in. He would "run" down the apartment and fly out the glass wall (French doors and screens) at the bottom end of my living area. I felt he was trying to coerce me to do the same. That scared me.

I already had a really bad cold and other health stuff going on, which I later found out to be Hepatitis A, picked up no doubt from poor food prep in the Abu Dhabi hotel (which for a Sheriton was bad news!). I went on my visa run to Oman and met the female spirit again out in the desert. This time she was the desert: she was the Land, she was Mother: the creative potential. Then Dubai collapsed (the extent of collapse everyone out there knew was happening at the time but has only really got into the news in the last week) and I was made redundant. There was nowhere I could go: I was stuck there: all my worst "security" fears manifested: in a foreign country I could not leave due to their employment laws I had to go through a process: no job, no funds and the threat of incurring something like £35,000's worth of debt with rent and fines as my company had not applied for my work visa: meaning I had effectively been working there illegally.

Swollen heart? Yep. Luckily Cinn and I had had been communicating throughout my period in the UAE and with her help in the spiritual and Jagaur Eye's help in the mundane I got through. Cinn showed me how to open up to healing: to release all that fear and the pain it brought: and somehow I did. I realized that the male spirit was speaking of Shamanic Death: letting go. The female spirit first brought the promise of new beginnings, and the strength that lies within when I met her in the hotel room in Abu Dhabi. By releasing and opening up my heart to my true potential, she showed me that potential; she showed her (or my) Self to me out in the desert that day. Funny, but in the bible they call the desert the wilderness: but really they mean that place Within us were we are alone with OUR Self. The male spirit invited me to accept the Death which I did by the releasing I was chatting through with Cinn: at which point the female spirit could show the Self to me as it truly is: its power and its creativity: it's ability to take us beyond mundane hurt and pain to a state of pure bliss.

That place is the place where all our misconceptions: all the conditioning of our mundane lives is released and we can simply BE for a while. Then we can take action to change what needs to be changed. We can let go of conditioning. And be out True Self in the physical.

That was the point about Suffrage. Lydia Becker was living her True Self to me and she was empowering other women to do the same: to take responsibility and achieve as women. She was showing them how and guiding them through the process as women. She was a role-model in that respect. Tincobel Pankhurst was trying to change the notion of woman by becoming more man-like: by acting like a man: moving away from that empowering Inner World satisfaction and ability to create I found in the UAE to something hollow Without. She as a Shadow Teacher to me, but due to her notoriety that was the way Suffrage went under her model. Something was lost in Pankfurst's actions: the ability to find Mother in either men or women: as the role-model was now of the masculine woman and the Shadow Masculine at that. I have some very successful female friends: women who have "made it". Their success and their wealth have not brought them happiness.

Yet the first woman I recall ever meeting in recent years who seemed happy was Jaguar Eyes. Seeing her and her hubby (Dolphin Man) together for the first time in the mundane I saw the Union in full swing. As Arethra Frankin (I think it was) sang "behind every great man there has to be a great women". Jaguar and her hubby "lived" that song. Her children are grown up now and have their own lives: but she still lives as Mother. Not in the sense of physical Mother, but in the sense of being the creative spark that allows Dolphin to go out into the world: he takes the spark out into the world and then brings the fruits home for Jaguar to weave. The cycle repeats. Few people are actually successful out in the UAE. It's a very difficult place to live for westerners. Jaguar and Dolphin lived it successfully for eight years together, made all the right moves at the right times. They had burdens to carry, such as when Jaguar's daughter was sick : but they had the strength to hold true. I believe that that strength came from Jaguar's ability to be Mother. Not in the physical sense, but in the spiritual sense. That's what I believe has been lost in our society. That ability for women to appreciate their role as co-creators and Mothers: so many women I know wonder why they are unhappy: why their lives don't go as they would wish: they are simply not co-creating them: they are trying to create themselves, without the Father: so there is no Union, and nothing to bring forth. It's the same for men too: but women hold the seed of the Creation, not men.

Spirit/Mother provided the funds for me to remain in this inner world most of this year: free of the encumbrance of having to go to work for all but a short period during the height of summer (south: experience) where I had a female boss who was more like a man in drag than a women: even down to her physical appearance (having more the body of a late-teens boy than a woman). She, and other women in my life this year showed me how we can be thwarted. She was the most aggressively confrontational women I have come across in a long time. She had just had twin boys (about 6 months old) and almost every day for the four months I was at that company, the nursery would ring because one of them was sick and every day she would have to make the choice to stay at work or be a mother. Rarely did she leave work to go to her children. Work came first, but the anguish of that decision was clear on her face.

The word blame was a bad word to use in the sentence Wynsong picked up on but all the same, but I do think that without that model (Lydia Becker again) of Mother we have lost something in our society. I think the notion that any of us can have it all is stupid. Apart from the fact it is selfish, there is no union: nothing from which New Life can come forth.

I had a reading done a couple of months ago, where there was talk of an inheritance: a death in the family and an inheritance. Well I couldn't see this. But when I thought about it in terms of my spiritual life: the Death was obviously a Shamanic Death and the inheritance was one of moving beyond societal norms and early conditioning and finding my spiritual inheritance: find the co-creator in me. The spirit I met in the desert was Mother Nature. Our True Nature. In the same reading notions of men who I aspired to be in my early life came forward; and the only guy I could come up with was a man like Jaguar's hubby (whose wife was like Jaguar: another model of the Union). In this reading I was being shown how to use the models to Create.

To cut a long story short M2 it is from the heart that we Create our Earth Walk. The mind cannot do it: it can take the flash of inspiration and channel it to the heart, but all actions that come out in the world have to pass through the heart (to our legs that walk the Journey) first. A swollen heart holds the potential to accept the flash of inspiration that renews and heals us: ready to take us out into the world again.

“Dragonhawk....I seem to have used you as a catalyst for my own journey in a way that was probably not particularly pleasant for you. I am truly sorry about that. And though you might not have signed up for the role, you have given a great gift.”

M2, there was no unpleasantness for me. One of the beauties of my UAE Journey is that, from finding that Mother Within, that inner me, I am much more able to distinguish what is mine and what is not. If someone is angry or upset at me, I see that that is their anger/upset not mine. I have a choice then to look Within my Self and decide how I will respond. I can look objectively at how my actions might have been the catalyst for their anger/upset and decide how to respond if that is the case. In this case I saw I had used a word badly and stated so. You said I wasn't looking and backed into your car. That may be the case actually in the bad use of the word blame: but you (and Wynsong) chose to be hurt by my actions: I didn’t back my car into you purposely and even if I had, it would not have been to hurt either of you: and actually, I don't believe in accidents: I think everything happens for a reason: we may not know that reason, but I do believe there is reason behind everything that happens in our life. The Journey both yourself and Wynsong have taken as a result of this "accident" could be the reason. You are both seeking the Mother with swollen hearts to find the root of that anger/hurt: very appropriate for the Celtic Moons of the season and Winter itself: where we go let go of our concerns in the mundane and go Within the deepest darkest (as in hidden) parts of our Self, ready to shine a light on what we find their as the Light is reborn at Solstice: the Light then fading into a pinpoint that gives direction until the light fully return at Beltane of the coming year. I had no choice but to stay in my pain in the UAE: it was time and I was avoiding doing so, so Spirit/Mother brought me a lesson where I could not escape: and I learnt from that.

I ran at the start of this year when someone accidently backed their car into me at a time i was feeling very vulnerable. In doing so, I found the pin-prick of Light and followed it: it showed me, through experience in the mundane over summer, how my conditioning and people who were in my early life acted as mentors or Shadow Teachers and how (which is what I have shared here in your thread). The opportunity to relive the experience of the start of the year arose briefly in the Summer (experience again) and this time it was no accident: someone set out deliberately to provoke me having failed a couple of times since the first experience: and whislt I chose my actions then, rather than re-acting from an emotional perspective, there was still a degree of accepting their anger/hurt in my responding. It was very slight, but I felt it. So I have to thank you and Wynsong for the opportunity to experience your anger/hurt, but not take it on board and feel hurt/angry myself. In summer the angry person ran, but you have stayed and I thank you for that. Winter is the season of Wisdom, when the assimilations of the summer experiences are brought to Wisdom so it feels pertinent for me to experience this lesson again and not take on board yours and Wynsongs’ anger/hurt. Okay, time waits for no man lol, so I have to go again, but I will be back.

M2, Reading some of your later posts before I left I found this:

“DragonHawk...you will be so happy....I found the last piece. Why does it bother me to feel invisible even when there is clearly no intention for that? Because I don't Own my own Power. “

When I was in Ireland over Samhain I went to the Hill of Tara (on Samhain): a hill-top Neolithic mound monument with fantastic views over the surrounding landscape. it is reputedly the home of the ancient High Kings of Ireland. I go every time I visit Ireland am have a ritual: I walk up the "avenue" (a long cutting on the side of the hill that takes you to the earthworks on top) and around the various mounds and features on the top in a particular fashion with particular thoughts in my mind and heart. I asked to come into my own Power this visit. As with other things since the events in teh UAE and finding the Mother Within, things happened pretty quickly. A couple of nights later I was lying in bed at my aunt and uncles which was my mother's childhood home. I was lying with my back to the door when I heard a sound like someone pushing down the handle on the bedroom door (i.e. to open the door). I fumbled for the light by the side of my bed as I knew my aunt and uncle had gone to bed long before me. Nothing happened: but I felt a presence out in the hall. I lay there, realizing it was a spirit who said he was Death. I sat there petrified for maybe half an hour, refusing this spirit entry to the room or the opportunity to speak to me calling on the Light like biliio! It waited out in the hall and did not ask again to come in. Eventually, I figured that if this was death for me I needed to face it, so despite my fear, I decided I was going out in the hall. I put my jeans and ‘T’ on and opened the bedroom door as quick as I could. Nothing. But I heard noises in the large living-kitchen on the other side of the hall. With a degree of trepidation I quickly burst into the kitchen and switched on the light. Nothing. But I heard voices on the lane that goes up by the side of the house outside.

At this point I did not know if the voices were spirit or mundane. I walked over to the kitchen window on the other side of the room. I thought if they were mundane I would see shadows on the blinded window from the single lamppost on the crossroads outside. No such shadows. But I did think I recognized the voice as two of my uncles who have now passed over to the other side. I remained in the kitchen for a good hour: not quite sure what was going on and not totally convinced the voices I heard were spirits. But who else would be out on the lane at 3am out in the middle of nowhere in rural Ireland? Eventually after about an hour the voices ceased, the spirit that said he was death had gone too. He came again the next night, the last night of the Samhain festivities, but this time I was not scared. I didn't speak to him, other than to tell him to leave this place and asked Spirit to guard over myself and my loved ones, but I was not scared of Death.

It strikes me when you speak of men that there is a reference to your own masculine in there too. The masculine to me is the warrior aspect to a degree who takes the power that comes from the Mother Within and uses it out in the mundane. In the assimilations of my Journey to the UAE I was shown an X shape with the Upright Feminine (Mother Creator) and the Shadow Masculine (Death/Destroyer) on one axis and the Shadow Feminine (Baron Woman?)) and the Upright Masculine (Power?) on the other. The first pairing makes sense to me: that which is created must be destroyed if the Creation is to continue. The second I am still working with, but would the situation I was discussing when power is used without reference to the feminine: the Inner World Self. Like I said still working on these pairings. Could be that the two Upright and two Shadows should be together on the same axis: don't know as yet as I have only just started working with the Father. But more than anything I wanted to say that, to me, once we find the Mother Within, we are led to the Father Within i.e. the masculine comes after the feminine in that respect: the feminine must come forward first, bring the seed, and be the vessel for the inner masculine or Father

Michelangelo2:
And here is another piece of the puzzle.... Owning and Loving the contradictions of my Self. I am a Nice Girl. And I am a B1tch. I am Quiet and I am the Sh... Disturber. I am a Creator and I am a Destroyer. I am honest and clearly, I've been telling lots of lies to my Self. I am feminine, and I am masculine. I am a pushover and I am assertive. I am easy going and I am overly sensitive. I am emotional and I am smart. I am irrational and I am rational. I am Strong and I am weak and vulnerable. And OVERLY and TOO is something I place on my Self. Something I decide it is TOO because it is More than I am comfortable with, not more than someone else is comfortable with. And I EMBRACE my Overly and Too because it BRINGS GIFTS. The DUALITIES of the Self. The 2 of Michelangelo. Okay, okay, okay. Thank you thank you thank you.

And DragonHawk....thanks. I'll get to your posts eventually. Love, Michelangelo2

EagleSinging:
I am enjoying getting to know a bit more about you, Michelangelo2.

Michelangelo2:
Thank You! (((Eagle Singing))) I know you know this journey. So I would like to ask you..... How do you tame the power? I need to learn this. I need to learn it before I hurt people. How do you return to Planet Earth??? You can inbox me. I'd like to wrap up this thread. Thank you so much. (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((Spirit Lodge)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) There is more to the journey. I have decided to step out of Center Stage now! LOL. And I would like to watch Other People's Shows!!! I would like to get to know you more. I will travel to other threads shortly. It would have been nice if I could have gotten to know everybody first and then done my journeying. I am sorry I couldn't do that. It came from a place of tiring from the life of 'you first, me later.' I sort of fought to reclaim balance. There is balance now. I am very happy about that. If you are particularly curious about something you may inbox me privately. I like to share, I won't mind. I've caught the flu. Another manifestation of the journey. Needing rest. So I have a valid reason to take a week off. (((DragonHawk))) You have taught me that it is okay to be thorough. That it is okay that I speak. Thank you, Dear DragonHawk. You have taught me that it is okay that I ENTER space, when loving souls are holding it for me. Your profound experiences in the UAE sound no doubt transformative~! Thank you for telling me your beautyfull, moving stories. They are heard and cherished.

Through the process....I felt a pull to want to call you Uncle. Would you like to be my pretend Uncle? Maybe you could teach me how to read better. I won't invite you to dysfunctional family gatherings.....though there is FUN in dysfunctional. You don't need to answer me. Just know you were invited into family. If you wish, you may inbox me. DragonHawk. I celebrate that you are a Literary MasterMind. That you are a detective. You hunt for clues....bring forth the evidence....solve the puzzle. That your IQ is high. That you are able to express yourself fully and accurately. I also celebrate that I have reading comprehension difficulties. People in my life keep telling me that I don't. They're wrong. I can read well, but it is a struggle. That may limit me quite a bit at online boards. Oh well. If something is important for me to hear right now, I trust I'll hear it. I am seeing things now....Angel messages....it is weird. I will say it was incredible to see you FLY. I believe you are one of the Spirit Beings that, while you probably live in Tenor, or one of the ones below that....you can do Baritone, Bass, Tenor, Alto, Soprano. I have lived in Alto. And I've seen recently, I'm actually more strong (and weak) in Soprano. I can do other ranges. Sometimes it is a stretch. To Every One at (((Spirit Lodge))), I cannot put into words my gratitude right now. It is big. Thank you very kindly for the S P A C E and the patience and the nudges. I nearly quit.............and you lifted me. And I needed it. Have a great week! Namaste.

CinnamonMoon:
Glad you made the inbox invitation. Check your mail. *Smiles*

DragonHawk:
Hey M2 , I graciously accept your kind words, though I do think you have and yes you can call me Uncle if I can call you Aunt because you reminded me of something in this thread:

What should we strive to be? We shouldn't. We already ARE all of it.

This was the result of my UAE Journey and I had forgotten it. I'm human and I forget things and that's OK as long as I take time-out to remember. It seems appropriate that the notion your words brought should return as I end the year of assimilations of the UAE Journey. In many respects your thread and the discussions You and I have had here were like what Jamie Sams calls a "Pop Quiz" for me: a reminder lesson that asks us if we have integrated the learning and knowledge the original lesson brought to the point it becomes Knowing. We are at the Full Moon of the Celtic "Tide Moon" right now: we are in the deep depths of the House of Tethra (the deepest darkest (again as in hidden) part of self: the Self (at least as we understand Self from a human perspective).

I walked out to the car to go to the local store for some milk around nine last night and the Moon was full and bright staring down directly from the east (clarity) and I was reminded to allow my Self to go to Tethra Like your "I am X and I am Y" the House of Tethra is both Death and the promise of New Life. The Moon has no Light of its own, it reflects the Light of the Sun in the otherwise dark night sky showing us that the life we live on the earth plane is not Life, but only a reflection of Life. In this respect Night is like a synonym for our Earth Walk: our self in comparison to our spirit's Day: Life and the Self. The Moon reminds me that even at the darkest times, when we are feeling "less than" the Light is still there: Life never leaves us but is our constant companion: but in those "less than" times we are perhaps only seeing the reflection of the Light, not the Light itself: this would be "assertive" Light: a reflection of True "affirming" Light. In that respect I can see the value of "assertive" as the contrary of "affirming": just as when a totem comes to us it usually comes as Contrary Medicine until we have mastered it's Medicine, so in that respect I can see that we have to be assertive before we can be affirming. Maybe Tincobel Pankhurst and the way the Suffrage movement went after her actions (i.e. the Suffragettes) had to assertive before women could become affirmative (Suffragists)? That too is a remembering as that was how women like Lydia Becker worked: they didn't want women to become like men: they wanted women to retain their femininity: the early Suffrage women (in the UK at least: though I am not sure if the same could be said in the States) were Suffragists. Tincobel's mother Emmeline backed away from the Suffragettes and its ties with socialism, even becoming a Conservative later in life: funny how it is her name, not Tincobel's, that is remembered as being the leading figure in the Suffrage movement in the UK: thus hiding the unsavory aspects of the movement: and the (male) Establishment's unsavory consumption-orientated reasoning for giving women the vote and other rights. All nicely swept under the carpet in the figure of Emmiline Pankhurst: the respectable face of UK Suffrage, but one that hides Truth. The current UK government (led first by Tony Blair and now by Gordon Brown) have shown just how Machiavellian that Establishment can be and how they will use any means to achieve their aims. Unlike previous Establishment figures, or men like Obama, they have not been clever enough to hide their true motives. Your use of the word "striving" just struck me as relevant to the notion of assertive/affirmative. We strive to be "assertive" but we don't usually strive to be affirmative: we can't strive to be affirmative, we either are or we are not: yet many strive to be assertive. Like calm, affirmative speaks more as a state of Being whereas assertive seems more like a doing word. I know both are adjectives but assertive seems more like a verb to me. Your notion of Ass and Firm in those words reminded me of the time in my early thirties when I was getting over being made redundant aged 30 when the firm I worked for went belly up. I was "striving" to get back into the swing of work again, having lost some of my "get up and go" attitude towards work. I was deep into personal and management development via tapes at my local library. One day there was not much on the shelves so I took a series called "Assertiveness Training with Dr. Helga Rodey". I remember it so well as the woman was an Ass. Just another reminder, so thanks for that! Should we strive to be assertive? No, we are already affirmative: we just need to remember that. Thanks for the inbox invitation and being invited into your family: I consider it an honor. Oh and my inbox has no restriction, so if you ever want a chat about something feel free to contact me.

Michelangelo2:
Oh man I posted a response here and it's gone. I don't think I'm gonna bother retyping it all. The short version is: thanks again Cinnamon, glad you had fun brainy Uncle DragonHawk! We passed the pop quiz. Nice analogy. Thanks for making me look up Machiavelli, though I don't know if you meant that. There were messages there. I can't take all the cues in now. I'm good with that! Affirmation has come, as has ancestral wisdom you'll be pleased to know. Milk and bananas are important and helping your Aunt Cathy right now. hehe. Bookstores are dangerous! I've been to one and managed not to buy the whole store. I haven't sat down and opened the books yet, but I plan to give it a start this evening. Thank you. It's been a slice~! Bye for now.

CinnamonMoon:
You’re welcome. *Smiles*

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