Picture courtesy of Pexels and Cleyton Ewerton
Over the last half year I’ve been engaged in a lot of work around exploring my relationship with my own sense of masculinity, and what it means to be a man, as well as what is sacred about masculinity. My own relationship with my father, my model for the masculine, was never a healthy one, and I found over the years that I’ve sometimes embodied the immature masculine, because I simply didn’t know what else was available. I think this is a problem most men, and boys face and it is becoming more and more complicated because we don’t have good models or the necessary rites of passage that are needed.
The rites of passage that are available in modern society is learning to drive (age 16), voting (age 18) and Drinking legally (age 21). Beyond that there really isn’t a structure in place that explores a coming of age for anyone regardless of what gender they identify with, but for the purposes of this writing I’m speaking in context to the journey of being a man, regardless of how a person comes to identify themselves as male.
The question I’ve been exploring in my personal work is how do I heal my relationship with the masculine. Part of this work has naturally involved (for me) my relationship with other men as well as with women. I’ve looked at these relationships through a variety of lens, informed by what I’ve read and my reflections and meditations on what I’ve been exploring. But part of it has also involved healing my relationship with myself.
I see where I have been divorced from my own sense of masculinity, afraid to embrace it, because of experiences with toxic masculinity, but also a tendency of our overall culture to ridicule and mock the masculine in some ways. It’s become quite easy for us to simultaneously put the masculine down and also create an antagonistic relationship with it that leaves many men questioning how to comfortably inhabit and be grounded in their masculine identity. I’ve come to recognize that in order for me to heal my own relationship with masculinity I have had to embrace my masculinity as a positive and also start developing relationships with other men from a place of positivity. It hasn’t been easy, but it is enlightening because its helping me see how much those relationships are needed in order to develop a healthier relationship with the masculine overall.
Even writing this article is a struggle because the exploration of masculinity doesn’t feel like it can be done openly in a way that is supported in society. Yet my exploration of masculinity isn’t an attempt to affirm patriarchy so much as its an attempt to discover what it can mean to be a man in a healthy way, in a manner that truly appreciates and honors the sacredness of masculinity and encourages it as an active spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical embodiment for expression for a self-identified man.
A lot of the books I’ve been reading have presented answers and in some cases have highlighted the problematic aspects of masculinity that men have to grapple with. Too often masculinity is situated in context to the feminine and other forms of gender identity, without the consideration that perhaps what is really needed is an embracing of the masculine for its own sake, without erasing the feminine or other identified forms of gender, but rather exploring the masculine as something that isn’t wholly defined by its relationship with other genders. Another problematic aspect is the association of the masculine with sex, and specifically with the sexual roles that men encounter and inhabit and that are often used to define the masculine while excluding other aspects of the masculine in the process. While sex is a normal and healthy part of life, the over sexualization of the masculine has overshadowed other aspects of what it means to be a man in this world. It’s no surprise that men have their own shadows around sexuality to deal with, but these swept under the rug a lot of the time or dealt with in a way that doesn’t encourage deeper inquiry or exploration.
My healing around the sacred masculine is coming about through discovering my own needs and actually paying attention to them from a place of conscious awareness. I’ve never really listened to those needs from a place of conscious awareness. I’ve acted on them from a place of unconscious subversion and it has not served me or anyone else. But another way I’ve begun that healing has involved exploring the sacred masculine from the perspective of becoming a leader/king as well as exploring my relationship with the inner warrior and how I navigate conflict within myself and with others. There’s a lot of room for growth in those areas but the active choice to work with those aspects is proving helpful because its giving me a chance to recognize how they have already shown up in my life and how I can integrate them into my life with more awareness.
Another way my healing is showing up is through the relationship I’m discovering with Saturn, drawing on Saturn as a primal masculine archetype that can embody both the unhealthy aspects of masculinity in the form of the devourer and the healthy aspects in the form of the harvester. Working with the shadow side of Saturn in the form of the devourer has allowed me to work with my fear and recognize how that fear has played a role in a lot of my interactions. I’m learning work with fear as an ally, instead of as a motivator for my actions. Working with the healthier aspects of Saturn has enabled me to explore what my boundaries are and express them in a healthy way, why also paying closer attention to boundary awareness in general.
All of this work is necessary for my own healing and might be useful for other men. If we are discover to who we can be as males and how we can show up in our lives and the lives of others from a healthier place, it requires that we explore the healing of the wounds within ourselves, the generational, cultural, and personal wounds we bear and must be acknowledged if we are to find a genuine sense of self and identity that grounds us in the inevitable experiences of life that come our way.
