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The Necessary Rise of Women

12/27/2015

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"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic." - Martin Luther King Jr.

We live in very unbalanced times.  Male domination of church, state, business, community and family is killing us and taking a huge gouge out of the earth as the male machine flails about recklessly and abusively fueled by insecurity, scarcity and pride.

The Problem
Books can be written on the harm created, ranging from the personal to the global, by the imbalance of male over female.  Let me highlight just two results of male dominated control:
  • 1 in 3 women will experience violence in their lifetime.* You've heard this statistic. How can we hear this and not be outraged?    Men are perpetrating the lion's share of this violence.  As a father of a 21 year old daughter this sickens and terrifies me.  So many women friends of mine have shared their own stories of emotional, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of men.  This problem is very real.  We collectively have known this for decades and we have not made a dent in alleviating the misery
  • Species extinction is occurring 1000 to 10,000 times faster than the evolutionary norm because of human (male) activity.**  Conquest of the planet as a false sense of birthright has created a sense of extraction without impunity.  All take and no return.  Consume wildly without regard to impact.  These are the characteristics of an immature male psyche.  Some serious growing is needed for men so they may take their rightful place as protectors and providers at a community and global level.
We are harming our daughters, sisters, mothers and we are harming our planet.  This is not just, this is not who we are.  We are experiencing power without love, male without female, with disastrous results.  We desperately need to regain balance of anima and animus.

Harm, grievous harm, is happening, individually and on a global basis, largely through the domination of male over female.  One does not have to look far, this is a fucked situation and must be addressed.  Please do not hear the statistics and go back to sleep.

What Needs to Happen
If we have any hope of creating a just and loving society, women must rise.  The necessary rise of women must come in (at least) two forms:
  • Women must rise and come into power and leadership in all forms of our society.  As community leaders, ritual leaders, social leaders.  Enlightened men must work tirelessly to make this happen.
  • The divine feminine within each of us, male and female, must rise.  This presence, this power must be courted, invited and brought forward in our psyches.  Female/Male, Love/Power, Fire/Water balance and reconciliation within each of us will provide the base for the work to come.

How
In the limited space of this post, I would like to offer three important pieces in the necessary rise of women.
  • Women (and nice boys) need to claim fire.  The energy of protest and motivation, the energy of volition and of moving forward.  Fire does not apologize, it is not subservient, it leaps up.  Balance certainly is needed, for women can also become all male and behave no better than the insecure, adolescent boys running the show, but I would not worry too much as women claim their fire.  We need more power-filled, strong women in this world.
  • Patriarchy must be dismantled.  Break down male privileged at all levels and in all aspects of society.  This is fundamentally what has gotten us into all our trouble.  This is where we went into the weeds several thousands years ago.  One group dominating another group is a recipe for disaster.  We need to come into partnerships, interdependence, mutual respect for the gifts brought by all genders (and of course all cultures, but I'm talking men/women here).  
    • Dismantle patriarchy, start now.  Question why the institutions exist, who benefits, who will resist the change and vision a new way of being.
  • Men need to grow up.  I went through a yearlong men's initiation process which sought to introduce us to the much larger scope of being an adult male.  This society does not provide us with the necessary rituals and process to move boys from adolescence to adulthood.  When the world is ruled by teenage boys in men's bodies, great harm is created.  We need to discover initiation processes native to our own culture.  Francis Weller has done great work in this area.

Now what?
OK, plenty needs to happen in terms of education, personal development, local and national action.  I'm starting the dialog within myself and hopefully those who know me.  We have got to wake the fuck up.

Don't go back to sleep.  Check out my page on Harsh Truths.  We are the resistance.


*http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures
**http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/
I am

The blood on my hands
drips and flows
  red and slippery
    making it hard to hold on to anything.
 
I am white
And have wielded the lash and chain.
Enslaving others with skin different than my own.
 
I am male
And have raped and beaten
because I had the muscles, phallus and insecurity.
Patriarchy has served me well
at the expense of the other half of humanity.
 
I am a colonist
And have wiped out entire civilizations.
Tossing thousands of years of culture into flames.
Claiming land and resources, not mine, as my own.
 
I am a Christian
And have murdered, oh highest blasphemy, in the name of Jesus.
Blood flowing from God’s children.
Pagan and Native, Jew and Muslim.
 
I am a consumer
And have taken more than I return.
Leaving an open wound from Africa to Appalachia.
Consuming raw materials at a blinding pace,
breaking body, bone and spirit in the race.
 
There is blood on my hands.
Rivers of red.
And all the distractions of MTV and the Kardashians
cannot blot up or blot out the stain.

These harsh truths I acknowledge
yet I cannot be crushed by this knowledge.
 
It is time for me, my brothers and others
to take a long, hard, honest look.
 
Our past, our future, this moment
Make their demand.

 - Jose Enciso

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I accept myself as I am

12/19/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
I am not a problem to be fixed.
I am a glorious mystery to be embraced.


Too often we define ourselves by one experience.  We are not one thing, one feeling, one trauma, one failure.
The last 10 years of my life have been a journey to accept all the parts of who I am.  The insecurities, the defensiveness, the part who fears abandonment, the poet, the lover, the good man, the wild man.  All of who I am.


"Can you welcome that part?" was a favorite question my brilliant mentor and therapist Francis Weller would often ask when I described a defensive reaction or a shameful part of me.  "Where is that story located in your body and how do you feel towards it?" a favorite question from my current, soulful, insightful therapist Angela Agenlian-Neuert.  "Welcome the outcast brother" is a favorite refrain in my men's circles as we encourage each other to welcome the parts who were cast away so many years ago.

These aspects of our selves which confound us the most present the greatest potential source of our healing.  The addictions, the depressions, the shameful feelings, repeated patterns in relationships all can be teachers, pointing to parts of our selves which need compassion, not blame.

For too long I defined myself by my wounds or the vicious internal criticisms which said “Oh if you only weren’t so sensitive, or if you only weren’t so insecure...  You would be happy, you would be accepted….”  I wanted to get rid of being sensitive or make myself into some macho confident facade.  Anything other than what I was feeling.

Embracing all of who I am, the stories, the glorious parts, even the critical parts, has been a huge theme and learning for me.  It continues to be an ongoing, perhaps lifelong, practice.  We need to look within with love rather than with blame.  We need to welcome these wounded parts rather than trying to get rid of them because we think they get in the way of our happiness.  As wise people before have stated, “What is in the way is the way.”

Accepting all of who I am is not saying, “I eat chocolate chip cookies 'till my head starts buzzing, oh well, I accept myself”.  Accepting all of who I am is being compassionately curious and holding all these parts with respect.  “Hmm, I’m eating a lot of chocolate chip cookies, what’s that about?  It’s probably not the most healthy for me, but I’m not going to shame myself.  What story is happening here?”

Accepting ourselves and holding our brokenness is easier if we have a community who can also hold our brokenness.  We weren’t built to do things alone.  We need each other and we need to do our own work as well.   A balance can be established.  We can’t just let someone else fix us or love us into complete wholeness, we need to participate in that loving.  The community holds us and our higher adult selves hold ourselves as well.  I view the poem at the end of this writing expressing both holding each other and holding ourselves.

I dance most Sunday mornings and still haven’t really gotten used to walking into a large room full of people I don’t know.  If I feel fear or nervousness, I don’t suck in my gut and soldier on, I say to myself, “I’m scared” and then envision who is scared inside and let them tell me a bit about their story, what they believe, what they think will happen.  I welcome this part (usually a very young one), I listen, I say “I understand where you are coming from, it makes sense and you know what?  We’re going to be OK”  I may then dance with that part for a couple of songs and then let my adult breathe into the greater dance.  In this exchange I understand a little more about the wounds and stories which used to unconsciously drive my behavior and interactions.  I bring the wounds and stories into a compassionate conscious awareness.  My relationships benefit from vulnerably sharing this awareness which in turn creates greater intimacy.

We need each other
To model accepting ourselves
To love each other
To be held
To hold


As I reflected one day on accepting and holding our brokenness the following poem emerged:

Being Held, Being Loved

In our brokenness
we long to be held.

Cherished and seen as holy.

Though the disfigurements
may be profound
we long for welcoming arms.

Cherished and seen as holy.

We bring the brokenness and disfigurements
as a child
crawling into a loving parent’s lap.

Wrapped in a soft blanket of love
held warmly
for as long as it takes
for the brokenness and disfigurements
to no longer matter
or define us.

This is our greatest gift
to each other.
To hold each other.
Loving the outcasts
and saying
“Welcome home, my love.
I am so glad you are in my life!”

-Jose Enciso

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    Author

    Jose Enciso is an engineer by profession, a poet by necessity and a seeker of spirit and soul.  He brings a gentle presence and deep respect for the interior journey as expressed through creative and expressive arts.  Jose is a skilled group facilitator who is committed to the spiritual and psychological growth of those around him.  He trained under Francis Weller to lead men’s initiation groups doing deep soul work and is equally comfortable in managing complex technical projects.  Jose is devoted to the emergence of the divine feminine, supporting women and men claiming their voice and power, and rediscovering the soul of masculinity.  He is currently working on multiple projects including a book which seeks to encourage everyone to write their own poetry as a discovery of their own soul's truth.

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