I woke up frustrated this morning. The aching tightness in my back and neck had multiplied overnight, and I felt a near crippling stiffness that has become the norm for me lately. Until very recently I had been living in a van in Northern California. I loved my life there. I had a wealth of friends, multiple exciting relationships (I’m polyamorous), freedom to roam and wander, and above all a sense of community that I’ve never experienced elsewhere. People know me there as “the mushroom man” because I’ve developed a lifestyle and career that revolves around fungi: foraging, wildcrafting, cultivating, educating, and a lot of networking. The only problem was that my body itself seemed to be decomposing.
For almost a year now I’ve developed a suite of health issues that will seem familiar to many. Gut problems. Fatigue. Brain fog. Worsening back pain. I stopped drinking and smoking. I changed my diet and eating habits with various meandering complexities. These obvious lifestyle shifts have helped with the internal symptoms, and while the recovery has been a long road, I at least know that I’m moving in the right direction. The back pain, on the other hand, seems utterly resistant to my best attempts to heal myself.
One has only so many hours in a day to devote to rolling around on a foam cylinder or ball, to yoga, to light exercise. The van life certainly wasn’t helping, nor was my frantic lifestyle, so I moved back in with my mom. I’ve been here several weeks now and have had the great luxury of time to focus on these physical therapies. And yet, progress has so far seemed beyond my grasp.
My pain has a very particular pattern: it manifests on the right side almost exclusively. From my hip bone to my skull, just about every little muscle on the right side of my back is contorted in so many frustrated knots of tension that my range of motion is quite limited and simple things like sitting quickly become painful. Hope, for me, has been in short supply lately and too often I feel trapped in my own body. This morning, I went looking for other solutions.
My mom is a very spiritual woman. She is an author, philosopher, life coach, healer, and my best friend. This morning she told me a story. Years ago, she found herself struggling with a pattern of physical pain that resisted any therapy. Knee pain, hip pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, arm pain, all on the right side of her body. While lamenting this frustrating state to a friend, her friend mentioned that the right side of the body is associated with masculine, or Yang, energy. Her friend asked: “how is your relationship with your father?” To which my mother replied: “what relationship?” The seed of insight was planted. Some time later she found herself in deep meditation reflecting on that relationship she’d had with a man who should have been her protector and guide but acted as a warlord and tyrant. She began to weep, out of her right eye only. The festering toxicity of her father’s overbearing masculinity was a poison in her soul that was manifesting in her body. She released it. The pain, some of which she’d struggled with for 6 years, dissolved within a week.
As for myself, I am lucky to have a strong and healthy relationship with my father. But if I look back on my life thus far, I can see how my masculine energy might be constipated in other ways. I think my sensitivity to masculine energy reaches back to my adolescence. My body was always tall and reasonably athletic underneath a fluctuating chubbiness that usually foretold of a growth spurt. My fourth-grade teacher described me once as “often appearing ‘intense’”, a reference to my resting brood face. I’m well aware that these youthful precursors to a stereotypically praised masculine appearance saved me from some degree of bullying and insecurity that is imposed upon so many young boys in our culture whose bodies and faces develop differently. But I became hyper aware of my own body in a different way. In middle school a girl I had a crush on asked me why I looked angry all the time. That was the first time I remember understanding that my physique and visage had an intimidating effect on others. This contrasted so starkly with the way I felt inside! I am and always have been gentle, sensitive, accommodating, and kind. The thing that makes me most uncomfortable is the discomfort of others. Once I realized that my outward appearance gave others such an inaccurate idea of the contents of my soul I became very cognizant of the space I occupied. That was when I first turned away from my own masculinity.
I’m 28 now and have spent most of my adulthood embracing my femininity while generally considering masculinity to be toxic. This seems to be reflected in the zeitgeist of our age. How many times have you heard talk of the Divine Feminine? How about Toxic Masculinity? Surely Toxic Femininity is a force in the world to be wary of, just as Divine Masculinity is an exalted goal to be sought, praised, and revered. For me, in this moment, I suspect that my body is suffering from a suppression of the Divine Masculine.
My Divine Mother helped me to this theory. As an exercise in exploring how to address this issue we DuckDuckWent looking for online articles regarding the Divine Masculine. We encountered many opinions, some insights, and many flaws. Most articles approached it this way: The Divine Masculine is defined by such-and-such traits which are defined as follows… These traits included some admirable and likely appropriate ones such as action, confidence, and assertiveness. Some lists included questionable traits like adventurousness or creativity which I personally do not find to be particularly masculine. But all articles I read lacked exploration of something that I find to be the key to Divinity: balance.
I consider myself a Taoist these days. As such, I tend to think a lot about Yin (-/feminine) and Yang (+/masculine), the two poles of cosmic energy that comprise the universe. Polarity, as Alan Watts points out in Tao: The Watercourse Way, “is not to be confused with the ideas of opposition or conflict.” Think light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, positive vs. negative, life vs. death. Such is the way our culture often views the world. Banish one and the other will flourish! I can tell you, as a mycologist, that most definitively there would be no life and growth without death and decay. Watts goes on: “Thus the art of life is not seen as holding to Yang and banishing Yin, but as keeping the two in balance.”
Mom and I, disappointed with the definitions of Divine Masculinity we found online, decided that we could do better. We came up with a list of traits, as did the others, but also an opposing list of qualities that must balance those traits for them to fit the mold of Divinity. My hope is that by studying this list and incorporating it into my daily life and habits I will be able to energetically heal my physical blockages. Our guide is as follows.
1. Strength/Vulnerability. Strength is the capacity to resist strain or stress; durability; physical power or capacity. Strength is one of the definitive qualities of the masculine. And yet, too much strength can be overbearing, destructive, counterproductive, and toxic. It must be balanced by vulnerability, a word with many definitions. I like to think of it as the capacity to entrust one’s well-being (physically or emotionally) to another. Ultimately, who is stronger: the rugged individualist or the member of a close-knit, interdependent community? We all have strengths; we all have weaknesses. Divine Strength acknowledges and embraces Divine Vulnerability. We are individuals but we need others to survive.
2. Action/Rest. Action is the state or process of doing something. Related to assertiveness, it is how we manifest change in the world, or the act of implementing solutions to problems of any kind. The ability to observe patterns, predict outcomes, and shape the world to fit our needs is an integral part of what makes us human. Action requires energy. Energy is not infinite, nor is it free. We must take the time to rest and recover in order to maintain the energy to act, and in that space of rest we should reflect on our past actions so that our future actions will be in the best interest of ourselves and others.
3. Logic/Emotion. Logic is a powerful tool that allows us to analyze patterns of reasoning and draw conclusions from these patterns. Our ability to use sound and rational decision-making skills to guide our actions towards the most harmonious outcomes is, in large part, based on logic. We are, however, deeply emotional beings. Emotions can defy logic, and that’s ok! Our feelings often guide us towards other truths that fall beyond the scope of logic. An action may seem to make logical sense, but if our emotions tell us that action is out of alignment for ourselves or others that warning should be heeded. Both methods of truth seeking are fallible, and both are valid.
4. Protectiveness/Allowing. Everyone has something to protect. It may be a person, a place, a pet, yourself. We experience a deep urge to keep that which we love safe from harm. To a certain degree this can be productive and helpful. We must be sensitive to the vulnerabilities of others and protect the people, places, and things that need intervention in order to thrive. But our intervention is not always necessary, even regarding that which may sometimes need it. We cannot control everything, and we cannot always keep safe that which we love. By allowing the universe to take its course we engender growth.
5. Confidence/Humility. To be confident we must believe in our own abilities and have faith and conviction that the outcomes of our actions will be favorable. By understanding and having confidence in our knowledge, skills, wisdom, and abilities we can rise to meet occasions and challenges that we are uniquely suited to address. This gives us the ability to be good teammates and community members, but only if tempered by humility. Misplaced confidence can lead to folly. In certain instances, we may know the right course of action. In others, we must acquiesce to the knowledge, skills, wisdom, and abilities of others who may be more experienced in that particular realm. The best leaders are the ones who are open to the leadership of others.
6. Responsibility/Lightheartedness. From those to whom much is given, much is expected. Thus said the bible and my mom. We are all part of this global community and have a duty to use our gifts to contribute to the betterment of the world. This can manifest across a spectrum from the minutia to the revolutionary. Responsibility also refers to the ability to own the consequences of our actions and be held accountable. We will make mistakes sometimes, and in those instances, blame shouldn’t be shifted to another. Lightheartedness makes this easier. If we can view the world more playfully, with less gravity, action becomes easier and admitting fault feels less catastrophic. We can laugh at how comically imperfect everyone and everything is and move forward with forgiveness.
What do you think? Anything to Add?
