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 Pictures Tell Terrorists 'We're Not Afraid'
July 14, 2005
Alfie Dennen is looking for
people like him who are not afraid.
After last week's London bombings,
Dennen, who lives and works in London, decided he wanted to spread his message to terrorists and the rest of the world, that
he is not afraid.
Dennen's first message of
"fearlessness" was a photo he posted to a Web site he created called "werenotafraid.com" featuring a
friend pictured in one of the London underground stations with smoke billowing out from behind him, a sock in his mouth and
the words "We're Not Afraid" spread across the image.
One week later, Dennen and
team of 10 workers are fielding 5 or 6 images a minute, having received upward of 7,000 images to date.
"It kind of occurred to me
that it would be an amazing thing to have a place where people can send their own images of support which would be inspirational," Dennen said. "And I thought that not being afraid of this and not letting it affect us would be the right sort of sentiment
to hit."
Dennen's message has hit home
with people everywhere.
After discovering Dennen's
Web site on a blog, Marg Whelan submitted a photo of her and her children and superimposed the message "Not Afraid, Freedom
Kicks A**" on her son's T-shirt.
"The pictures I saw on there
were so inspiring and so filled with hope in different aspects of people's lives," said Whelan.
No Room for Hate
As the creative images of
courage continue to roll in, Dennen says his team looks at each one and reads every e-mail so it can weed out any anti-Muslim messages.
"There's no place for it anywhere
in this world," said Dennen.
Instead, werenotafraid.com is focusing on keeping fear out of people's lives.
"I like to think that 'We're Not Afraid' is helping." Dennen added. "I like to think that people will come away with a feeling of, 'I can deal with it a littler bit more and I can deal with it in the right way,' which is not to go through my following
days in fear."
'Not Afraid' website overwhelmed
A website set up to give
Londoners a voice after last week's bomb attacks has been overwhelmed with messages from around the world.
The We're Not Afraid site,
created by London web designer Alfie Dennan, had four million hits on Monday alone from as far afield as Italy and Africa.
The idea came from a picture
of one of the bombed trains sent from a mobile phone to Mr Dennan's own weblog.
Someone else added the words
"We're Not Afraid" sparking a huge response.
Another blog site, thesharpener.net,
is also running a defiant message, pledging a public demonstration to show solidarity with Londoners and defiance to the bombers.
And St George flags have been
put up outside shops around Liverpool Street - scene of one of the underground bombings - while union flags have gone up outside
some houses.
In the past few days about
3,500 photos - from holiday snaps to doctored pictures of London buses and Tube stations - have been sent in to Mr Dennan's
website, all containing the "We are not afraid" message.
Mr Dennan said the site had
become a symbol for people to show solidarity with London and say they will not be cowed by the bombings.
"It is very unusual for Londoners
to be afraid. They're showing that they aren't going to react to this by fear.
"I set up the website to give
people a voice online, to show their distaste for this tragedy and have received a huge response - I've
been amazed."
Lexicographers, the people who put dictionaries together, don't make up definitions or meanings. They derive the meanings of words from how we in our language use words daily to communicate in our speech
and in our writing.
I have to believe that you, Dear Reader, generally accept the meanings of words as they're presented in dictionaries of our shared language, for they're the meanings that we've created
through long usage.
Permit me to note that “communicate,” like its relatives (common, commune, communion, community, communism, etc.), basically means “to
share.” We can't communicate effectively w/ each other unless we share
the meanings of the words that we're using, for the meaning of a word is about agreement between the users of that word.
We
human beings have come to our definition of fear thru many years of trial and error. As a result of our frightening experiences, most of us have been persuaded to think that fear is really bad, something truly negative. Just take a look at all of the negativity in the modern definition of the word “fear,” which is defined as
“a feeling of anxiety and agitation caused by the nearness or presence of danger, pain, evil, etc.”
It's “an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.”
It's “a feeling of uneasiness, disquiet, or apprehension; concern.”
It's “respectful or extreme reverence, dread, or awe, especially toward a deity.”
It's “timidity, terror and fright.”
It's “a cause for fear; a possibility; a chance.”
It's “a reason for alarm: DANGER.”
This
definition exists, I assert, because we human beings have been terrorized by existence itself
into thinking that fear is exclusively negative, that fear can only be bad for us.
We've been convinced by natural experience that if we “buy
into” fear, negative things will happen to us. And no one wants to suffer negative experiences; no one wants to feel bad all of the time.
Since
dictionary definitions reflect the way we use words, this definition means that we users of Modern English view fear as an almost totally negative human reaction. Nowhere in this definition do we easily notice any positive qualities, unless we think about reverence toward a deity, the quality of being God-fearing.
But
even that idea doesn't come thru as clearly positive because it's clearly overwhelmed by a sea of what appear to be negatively charged words:
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danger
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pain
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evil
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unpleasant
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uneasiness
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disquiet
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dread
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alarm
Can
it get any more negative than this, Dear Reader?
Nowhere
do we read that fear is:
“a positive feeling of anxiety and agitation reflected in the human experiences of beauty, wonder, courage, care, love, joy, respect and happiness.”
Why is this so?
The vast majority of us have been conditioned to think that fear is a totally negative aspect of life. We've been conditioned to think that we don’t like being afraid. But
this is simply not true, for it doesn't even measure up against how fear really operates in our lives.
Fearful self-deception
We don’t like to admit that we're feeling fear even when we know we're feeling it. So, you, Dear Reader, aren't about to accept the refrain of this book yet:
Fear is what life is all about.
If others think of us as fearful, we'll fearfully deny our fearful feelings - even to ourselves!
We practice this self-deception as a way of protecting ourselves from the overwhelming power of our terrifying universe. We deceive ourselves as a way of dealing with a reality that terrifies us too much.
Sometimes, we go as far as to self-deceptively convince ourselves that we're not afraid of anything or anyone. I know, for I've been there and done that, but thanks to the inspiring Amazing Grace, I've learned that fear can be positively enjoyed. One step in learning how to do this is to
understand how we first learn to deceive ourselves about fear.
Think of an experience you may have had or may have been a witness to when you were a young child, Dear Reader. Something really terrified you and you showed it by your facial expressions and bodily movements. Along
came an insensitive older child or a confused adult with one of the most misleading and intimidating questions any human being can ask another:
“You’re
not afraid, are you?” You knew by the
tone of voice that you were expected to answer, “No.” This or a similar
situation may be where we first began to lie to ourselves about being afraid. Fear itself promotes self-deception & repression of reality.
However,
our self-deception doesn't need a specific triggering event. Life or existence itself is so terrifying for us as young human beings that we'll generally deny its fearful reality all by ourselves -w/out any help. Life itself teaches us to repress our fears deep within our minds. Life itself teaches us to lie - to others & to ourselves.
This
explains why children can slide so easily into the act of lying.
Life
truly terrifies us as children & fear is the only reason we lie.
Fear is also the only reason we adults lie to children when we make catch-22 statements to them such as “Don’t
be afraid” after some truly terrifying event has occurred such as the recent terrorist acts here in the United States. How
can children not be afraid about something that truly terrifies them?
What
we need to say to children (& to ourselves) is:
“It’s
all right to be afraid when something really scares you.”
& then we need to find positive ways to help children deal w/ their negative fears - deal w/ them, not get rid of them.
This means that we need to teach children how to be positively afraid. But we can't do this as long as we think that we're not supposed to be afraid - all
of the time.
We can't do this if we think fear is exclusively negative and something that we need to get rid of. We can't do this until we ourselves recognize one vital truth about fear:
if we're ever to positively enjoy being afraid, we must have a concept of positive fear in our minds.
I'm
reminded of a situation that often occurs in middle school where I've been teaching for the past 21 years. Two students are getting ready to fight. A crowd of students
encircles them, inciting them to get the fight started. But the 2 would-be fighters
usually engage in pure self-deception before they fight by making statements such as “I ain’t ‘fraid o’
you!”
Of course, the response is, “I ain’t ‘fraid o’
you neither!” Truthfully, the upcoming fight
terrifies both of the would-be combatants & it terrifies the crowd of other students surrounding them too, delightfully so.
The
crowd can barely contain its excitement at being witness to this deliciously dangerous situation, so it forms that circle partly to prevent the would-be fighters
from escaping the fight; that is, it forms the circle to prevent the loss of its enjoyment in experiencing
a dangerous & thrilling situation.
Do the would be fighters actually believe that each isn't scared of fighting the other? Of course, they do. They'll
tell us so if we ask, for by middle school young human beings have learned to lie about their feelings of fear no matter how strongly they feel them.
When it comes to understanding fear, Dear Reader, too many of us adults are like middle school students getting ready to fight. We're stuck in a kind of adolescent mentality of self-deception & denial.
We
simply lie about how we feel.
During
the past 15 years of doing motivational workshops, I've had participants who state, as I once believed, that they're afraid of nothing or no one. So,
I've developed what I call my “key” test. I take my keys out of my
pocket & ask, “Do you have any of these?”
I almost always hear a “Yes,” so I ask, “Why don’t you throw your keys
away & leave your home &/or car unlocked?” You can imagine the
looks I have received. I then suggest that the person probably has insurance
on the car &/or on the home also. Insurance?
What could she or he be afraid of? Furthermore, I suggest that the person probably not only locks his or her car & house or apartment
when he or she is away from them, but probably locks them also when she or he is inside of them - especially at night. They've all gotten the “key” message.
But
I don’t stop there. I ask participants if they pay taxes of any kind. I then ask them if they realize that taxes are protection payments made because we're terrified. In the US we pay taxes for police protection 24 hours of it every day.
We pay taxes for sanitation departments, fire departments, “correction” departments,
etc. We pay taxes for our armed forces.
Do our armed forces protect us from lions, tigers & snakes? No, they protect us from the most dangerous animals on earth: us human beings 24 hours a day.
And still some of us believe that we're afraid of no one. As one of my
friends jokingly suggested, this is known as the “river in Egypt” problem or “the Nile.”
We're
naturally terrified of each other & I emphasize “naturally.” We need to know this consciously if we desire to positively enjoy being afraid. Our natural fear of each other is a fact that we can't change no matter how hard we try.
We especially can't change it by denying it. As I will show later, our natural fear of each other is built into existence itself, which is why it must be natural, hey, Dear Reader?
We
could deal w/our fear of each other in a more positive manner if we recognized that fear comes w/existence. To be alive is to be afraid. If we had a better understanding of what fear is all about, we would recognize that our fear of each other isn't just negative. It's positive too - more positive than negative.
Thinking that fear is exclusively negative leads us into self-destructive mental traps such as thinking that there must be something wrong with those that we fear. But worse yet, our exclusively negative view of fear forces too many of us to think that there must be something wrong with us, too, because we seem to fear everybody & everything & we don’t know why.
I
mentioned above that telling children “Don’t be afraid” is a catch-22
bind we put them in. We only make this statement to children who show us that
they're already afraid. So, if
a child who is already afraid is told “Don’t be afraid”
by someone in authority that he or she respects, then that child can only conclude, since he or she feels fearful, that there's something wrong with him or her for feeling afraid.
Telling children who are already afraid not to be
afraid is the same thing as telling them not to feel what they already feel. It doesn’t get more catch-22 than that. This kind of mental
bind contributes to & intensifies our human confusion about fear.
It intensifies our negative view of fear & it teaches denial & unnecessary repression of our fears. Telling children “Don’t be afraid”
teaches them to lie about their feelings.
Our
exclusively negative view of fear is dangerously contradictory, self-deception & self-destructive. Like two middle school students about to fight, we're unable to talk honestly w/each other.
Since we lie to ourselves about ourselves,
we have no choice but to lie to others.
Having been conditioned by life itself to be negatively afraid of life, we're:
Most unfortunately,
we're:
which means that we become trapped
in self-deception & repression of our real feelings.
Furthermore,
a self-deception view of fear prevents us from dealing honestly & realistically w/serious human problems - problems that will never be resolved until we learn to see thru our self-deceptions concerning fear.
Therefore, it's time for each of us to revise our view of fear itself if we're to free ourselves from the self-destructive trap of contradiction & self-deception brought about by our almost totally negative view of fear, a view that prevents us from positively enjoying being afraid.
I'm Afraid .... I'm OK - by Alan Lowen
All that stands in the way of our great actions
is our fear of them, of what will happen if...
Our great actions may not necessarily
bring us fame or fortune. It can be a great action to consciously choose w/ your partner to bring a child into the world,
or to object to someone’s cruelty, or to quit your job, or to take your vacation in Peru,
or to go & work for the International Red Cross in Bangladesh, or to open your own art gallery.
If I look back at my own great actions over the years & the missed opportunities too, I see that what made
the difference was my relationship to my own fear. Sometimes I let it stop me; other times I acted anyway.
To do what I’m afraid
to do because it matters that much has always felt good. Conversely, my saddest
memory is of a certain occasion when I was too afraid to say, "Yes." I'll always carry the
wound this caused & I let it be every day of my life a guide & teacher, reminding me of
how important it is to be willing to breathe thru my fears instead of being stopped by them.
I’m not talking about learning to be fearless.
True, it sometimes enables people to accomplish awesomely brave feats & some people enjoy fearlessness so much that they spend their lives in pursuit of life-threatening adventures.
Fearless people can perform brave or reckless actions because they don’t feel much. They're desensitized, often as a result of having suffered an abusive childhood in which they had to learn to protect themselves by shutting down their feelings.
Or they may have been raised in stoic families or cultures to endure everything & fear nothing. Again, essentially this requires a denial or rejection of all tender & vulnerable
feelings.
I’m talking about something more genuinely courageous; being fully aware of your fear & choosing to act anyway. Your action arises out of full acceptance of what you're feeling & of all the consequences of your action, whatever they may be. The learning isn't about enduring w/out feeling, but about being willing to experience everything that happens in you & to live anyway. This is learning that transforms
your whole being!
Your Life is Hidden in Your Fear
Virtually the first lesson people learn in all Art of Being workshops
is to become aware of their feelings, or of how they're suppressing their feelings. Your feelings are like the weather. You don’t decide what the weather will be like. The weather is what the weather is!
What you can do is learn to have a healthy relationship
with whatever you're feeling. The healthiest relationship you can have & the most heart-warming & nourishing, is friendship. As you become aware of your feelings & fears you can gradually learn to be friendly towards everything that they ever experience.
I grew up in a world where the people
around me didn't respect my feelings. How could they? They didn't respect their own. Whenever I felt tender, sad,
vulnerable, I tried to suppress those feelings. But sometimes my feelings were so strong that they'd overwhelm my defences against them & I'd end up in tears, or just feeling really helpless & lost.
That felt like defeat; "they" had won & I'd lost. Because there was no one around to help me to trust my tender feelings it took me many years to discover that surrendering to them wasn’t defeat. It took me even longer to learn to trust & surrender to
my feelings of joy & ecstasy.
I didn’t know I was afraid of being joyous. It just wasn’t something that I could fully allow; I always had to maintain a certain amount of restraint.
How very English of me!
But this is the way it is with what we
fear in ourselves. We don’t notice what we’re missing because we're used to not feeling it, whether it's joy or sadness or anger or sexual or whatever. Many, many people in our culture are petrified. What a perfect word!
It means very afraid,
beyond terrified & it means turned to stone. When our fear is extreme, we live in a petrified state. Whatever is too fearful for us we deaden; or maybe we just half-deaden it because what we fear is our own intensity & excitement.
So this
is why I make a point during my workshops of directing people over & over again towards awareness of their feelings, or of the dead holes where their feelings would be if those feelings hadn't been driven into hiding.
Then gradually they can begin to restore life to
whatever they're afraid of in themselves, as long as they're willing to feel afraid. This is an essential requirement because the first thing that you're going to feel as if you've
petrified some part of yourself & you begin to say hello to it, is afraid.
Of course, because what caused you to deaden it
in the first place was your fear.
You're Already Good Enough for Existence
You had to put your joyousness away because it made your serious father angry & that scared you. You became frightened of your erotic feelings because you grew up always feeling your mother’s sexual shame, or God’s condemnation handed down to you in no uncertain
terms by teachers, priests & puritans.
You grew up terrified of anger because your alcoholic father taught you that anger equals violence. You desensitized your skin because nobody stroked & massaged your
body in the days & weeks after you were born & so to be touched sensually & lovingly 30 years later would arouse all your petrified infantile longing for contact.
Ah, how many ways we've become afraid & mostly hardly aware of the fact at all! But if you become willing to feel these fears or even just the deadness in yourself, then life reappears.
If there's someone there with you who can
say to you, "It’s OK, breathe, let yourself feel it, you’re allowed to be scared" so that you keep finding the courage to be afraid, then your fear gradually becomes excitement.
After all, this is what fear is! Trembling is an excited state. So is your pulse racing, your palms getting sweaty, your breath coming hard & fast & so on: all excitement!
There's magic in this excitement; it begins to awaken the feelings & experiences you're afraid of. At this moment your whole conditioning
starts ringing alarm bells warning you to shut down. At first you may need to do this too, just to feel safe.
Then gradually, knowing that you have this old
dead safe state that you can return to whenever you need, you can begin to feel more & more of what you'd become afraid of in yourself.
An old, long-dead English psychologist used to say "you're good enough". That’s beautiful!
As you learn to let yourself be you gradually realize
that who you already are is good enough.
After all, you’re good enough for existence!
You begin to see that other people’s judgments about you are reflections of their own unfriended fears. They judge in you what they're not friendly towards in themselves.
This doesn’t mean that you’re always loving & caring. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have moments of unkindness, coldness, meanness & so on & being friendly towards yourself in such moments doesn’t mean saying, "My unkindness is good enough". No, it means you're friendly towards the feelings that are causing you to behave meanly.
Instead of judging yourself for being mean the way others probably judge you, you're willing to feel everything that's going on in your unkindness.
Have you ever had the experience of being loved by someone when you were being ugly or mean or cruel? I think those moments have opened me up, broken my heart open & dissolved my nastiness more than anything else.
To be loved anyway is one of life’s great healing experiences. I believe we all need, many times in our lives, to experience being loved this way by someone, preferably by our parents from the day we're born, so that we can learn how to give this kind of love to ourselves (& then to our children & each other).
To allow yourself to feel everything that's going on in you when you're being unkind transforms you because you're so much more than just unkindness. Behind that is the pain & hurt that triggered your unkindness.
Opening up to these wounds in a spirit of friendliness is what surrender really means & it's the beginning of your healing. If you keep surrendering in friendship, you'll eventually
learn to love.
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Web site 'not afraid'
Avril
Korman is awake in the Bronx while London sleeps, reading E-mails from around the world that carry the same message: We're not afraid.
She has worked 18-hour stints
every day since Sunday for the new British Web site werenotafraid.com.
Korman, 36, is the only American
on the skeleton crew behind an Internet photo gallery born just hours after the London attacks.
The phenomenon began when
Londoner Adam Stacey snapped a photo of himself with his cell phone, holding a black cloth over his face as he exited a bombed-out
subway train. Stacey sent the image to 29-year-old London Web developer Alfie Dennen, who posted it on his blog.
Stacey's photo was soon published
around the world. Within 8 hours, Dennen posted a self-portrait on his blog, holding a defiant hand-lettered sign reading,
"We're not afraid." The enormous response from visitors prompted him to start a dedicated site.
Dennen spent all day Friday
posting the hundreds of photos that flooded in, each with their own creative take on "We're not
afraid." They include a pregnant couple, a young man with a bandaged face, & Bill Williams, who "wasn't afraid when he fought the Blitz & is not afraid now."
Korman, Dennen's online friend,
offered to help manage the site in New York. "I don't think that Alfie in any way expected what he got," she said.
Korman edits 500 photos a
day & has more than 2,000 waiting in her in-box. "People are really emotionally invested in what they send us," she said.
"They really mean it."
Elva Ramirez
Are you so afraid that
you're too restless, agitated or irritable to read an article now?
then this spot is for you!
if you've skimmed over the article above & articles left and you see that
the article - "fear defined" is way too long for you to sit still & read now.... this is the point to be pondered upon
.....
in london... there was a terror attack & it made many people afraid. they were
so afraid that they had to make a choice. they could choose to sit in their "flats" (? is that
what they call it in london?) and become increasing fearful of further attacks or... they could choose to do whatever
it was that they could do... the person above & left... designed a website... a website that people could make a statement
for the terrorists to see that they had made a choice - a choice to be brave, courageous, and fearless....
those that chose to sit in their flats or apartments or homes... and dwell in negativity,
paralyzed with fear... well that subject is dealt with in the article "fear defined."
main point from that article
"....human beings have been terrorized by existence itself into thinking that fear is exclusively negative, that fear can only be bad for us."
"Fear is what life is all about."
“It’s all right to be
afraid when something really scares you.”
"Life
truly terrifies us as children & fear is the only reason we lie. "
We simply lie about how we feel.
We can't do this until we ourselves recognize one vital truth about fear: if we are ever to positively enjoy being afraid, we must have a concept of positive fear in our minds.
enjoy fear? think positively about fear?
yes... as the designer of the website - we're not afraid... what a delightful outcome for a single person
that simply did what he could in a moment of extreme, intense fear...
he made a choice. he designed a website because that's what he knew how to do. he offered to millions of
people all over the world the opportunity to send a message to those horrid terrorists..... we're not afraid....
we have a healthy respect for terrorists, but we're not going to sit in our homes, afraid ... anymore...
global warming is causing too many species to become extinct.... we all need to make a choice... be afraid
of what the world will become in the next decade or following decade... or make the choice to take a stand.. do what we know
how to do... get involved to make a change. find out how to help... it's that simple.
it's our own responsibility... fear feeds on fear... make the choice... take a stand... and come back when
you can concentrate alittle better. then you can read the article and perhaps a few others to find your own personal message
in the words.... kathleen
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additional resources
Understanding the Masculine & Feminine Side
By John and Micki Baumann
Everyone has both a masculine & a feminine side. This basic duality is part of
you whether you're a man or woman, boy or girl.
Overview of the Masculine-Feminine Duality
Essentially, the masculine side comes from a place of strength. Strength is at the top end of
the scale, whereas weakness is at the bottom end.
In contrast, the feminine side comes from a place of goodness. Here, goodness is
at the top end of the scale, whereas badness or evil is at the bottom end.
You develop the strength of the masculine side by having a deep belief in the value of your own life & you develop the goodness of the feminine side by having a
deep belief in the value of the life of others.
The balance between the masculine & feminine side is very important. If you have too much strength for the amount of goodness you have, you can really do a lot of harm to people. Conversely,
if you have too much goodness for the amount of strength you have, then you can do harm to yourself, because you tend to "give
it all away".
On a more physical level, if you have a strong masculine side, you
have the ability to take control of your own life & if you have a strong feminine side, you have the ability to let go of trying to control the lives of others.
A strong feminine side keeps you from interfering with the choices that others have
the right to make for themselves. In terms of energy output, the masculine side always has energy feeling available, being available to put into accomplishing things, while the feminine side always has energy feeling available, being available for doing what's right or good.
How developed one side is compared to the other
defines the balance between the masculine & feminine sides. This balance not only determines how you treat others relative to yourself, but it also determines what types of emotions you feel most strongly.
Why do some people have a stronger masculine side while
others have a stronger feminine side? It depends to some extent on whether you are a man or a woman, because hormones do play
a role, but it also depends a great deal on who you are as a Being.
That is, both the masculine & feminine sides depend on what your Inner Being
has learned to become.
The Masculine Side:
The
masculine side deals with the strength of the self. It's what causes you to act either timidly or self-confidently. The thing
that's most important in determining the strength of the masculine side, is the value that you, at a deep level, place
on yourself.
This is a value you know within yourself
that you have really & truly earned. It could be thought of as a sort of self esteem. Placing a high value on yourself affects your whole being & helps you feel strong & confident in operating your life.
And, in the reverse direction, when you're able to operate your life confidently, things can really turn around for you because you get more out of life & this automatically
makes you place a higher value on yourself.
You can build the masculine side through progress & small wins, through positive reinforcement, by practicing & by doing things & generally taking an active part in operating your life.
If you have a strong masculine side, you're in charge of your own life because you're internally controlled. You tend to look people in the eye. You stand straight & you usually command attention when you walk into a room, whether
you say anything or not.
This happens because of the strength within. If you have a weak masculine side, you
also have a lot of doubts. You doubt yourself, your abilities, your capability to do things. Things intimidate you & you don't move forward well.
You're afraid to put yourself out there because
you know you're going to fail, so you don't even try to accomplish things. If you have a weak masculine side, you often feel the need to show off your attributes & accomplishments, whereas if you have a strong masculine side you are self-confident & don't feel it is necessary to show off.
The masculine side is full of things
that you have to be strong & self-confident in order to do. These include being able to claim your basic rights, such as the right to feel free to operate independently of others & the right to belong or fit into society in any way you please.
Claiming your rights also includes being able to stand up to people who try to take away your rights, either by force or intimidation, or by manipulation, or by trying to hinder you in choosing your own direction in life.
The masculine side also includes the ability to take risks when appropriate, to be
decisive when necessary & to focus or
concentrate in order to get something done.
In addition, it includes being able to figure out how to accomplish things so you can get more of what you want out of life. Part of this is being able to figure out how to operate your life
in a responsible manner, how to reason without distorting reality & without fooling yourself & how to accurately weigh probabilities
so that you know the most likely outcome to expect in situations you come across.
The Feminine Side:
Like
the masculine side, the basis for the feminine side is also a value. But instead of a being
a value you place on yourself, the feminine side is based on a value
that you, at the same deep level, place on others.
It could be thought of as a sort of other esteem. The value you place on others affects your whole being. If
you have a strong feminine side & place a high value on others, you're often giving
& unselfish. You usually know what's good for people & you tend to operate in ways that
helps others get what they want out of life.
You happily let people operate their own life without interference from you, but when asked, you're also willing to help by supporting, cooperating & giving advice. People feel comfortable with you because you give of who you are without pushing yourself on others.
If you have a strong feminine side, people also feel comfortable being around you because there is no selfishness for them to detect.
If you have a weak feminine side, you place a low value on others & you aren't
a giving person. Instead, you're selfish & greedy & tend to keep yourself closed off from people. You're isolated because you don't want to share yourself, or anything you have. Also, you don't take responsibility for yourself, but blame others for your problems.
Although the feminine side is generally not as well understood
as the masculine side, the negative or selfish aspect of the feminine side is something almost everybody recognizes, especially in others.
In fact, it may be the most easily recognizable characteristic of all, because of the discomfort factor involved in being around a selfish person.
If someone has a weak feminine side, it could also be said that he has a strong dark side (the
evil or negatively motivated side).
The feminine side is always very weak in someone with a strong dark side, while the
masculine side can be anywhere from weak to strong. In the extreme situation where a person has an almost nonexistent feminine
side, he will often act in ways that could be considered evil in nature, because he acts only on his own behalf & does
it to such an extent that he doesn't care how much his actions hurt others in the process.
If you have a strong feminine side, you often behave in
ways that are considered feminine in nature. You do things you have to be giving & unselfish in order to do.
These include recognizing the basic right of all people to use their own will to operate their own life, i.e., by allowing them freedom to operate
independently, freedom to fit in where & how they want & freedom to choose what things to confront or face up to in
life.
Allowing people their basic rights also includes allowing them to control their own life without interference from you, to choose their own obligations in life without being manipulated by you &
to choose their own path or direction in life without hindrance from you.
The feminine side also includes having enthusiasm & zest for life & recognizing what things are worth getting enthusiastic about. And it includes having the persistence &
tenacity to stay with things to the end, while still knowing when to give up on something if your energy is better used elsewhere.
In addition, the feminine side also includes being kind, compassionate, patient,
responsive to the needs of others, and it includes knowing how much energy you can put into each of these without hurting
yourself by draining your own energy.
The balance:
The masculine/feminine or yin/yang balance is extremely important, almost more important than how much you have grown as a person. Even a less evolved person, if he
is balanced, treats others the same way he treats himself. And that is what balance is all about. If the masculine side is much stronger than the feminine side, you tend to be pushy and take unfair advantage
of people.
On the other hand, if the feminine side is much stronger than the masculine side,
you tend to let others take advantage of you, and you become a doormat for people. How can you tell which side is stronger
for you? The balance between fear and anger in your life is a good indication.
If the masculine side is stronger than the feminine side, you tend to feel anger more easily than fear. The greater the imbalance in this direction, the more easily you will feel unjustly treated by others,
and the more easily you will become angry and aggressive with them, because you have an unrealistically high opinion of your own rights compared to those of others.
Conversely, if the feminine side is stronger than the masculine side, you tend to
feel fear more easily than anger. The greater the imbalance in this direction, the more easily you will feel you are treating others unjustly, and the more
easily you will become fearful and defensive, because you have an unrealistically low opinion of your own rights as compared
to those of others.
Also, the greater the imbalance in this direction, the more easily you will become
angry with yourself, because you don't like your low level of self-confidence, and you inherently realize you are not living up
to your potential.
Rights: The masculine side determines in general how you feel
about your own rights, while the feminine side determines how you feel about the rights of others. If the masculine side is
stronger than the feminine side, you tend to think of your own rights as being stronger or somehow more valid than the rights
of others.
This means you will slant those rights in your own favor and will sometimes take
advantage of other people's rights to the extent of your masculine/feminine imbalance. Conversely, if the feminine side is
stronger than the masculine side, you tend to think of other people's rights as being stronger or somehow more valid than
yours.
This means you are likely to give up some of your rights in order to give someone
else more than his rights actually entitle him to, and consequently, you will sometimes be taken advantage of. If you have
a good balance between your masculine and feminine sides, you will generally exercise your own rights when you want, but you will also allow
others the full measure of their rights.
The Balance and Greed: If you have an imbalance toward the masculine side, that is, a stronger masculine than feminine side, it
means you place a lower value on others than on yourself. This often shows itself as greed, which
is a form of selfishness, and a natural consequence of this kind of imbalance. Greed produces the
desire to want more than your fair share of things. It is wanting things at the expense of others.
A greedy person usually makes his gains by exploiting others. Greed is the opposite
of generosity, since generosity results from wanting everyone to have enough of everything. Greed is a form of
selfishness, and is one of the ways that an imbalance shows itself.
Sexuality &
the Masculine/Feminine Balance: The stronger the masculine side, the stronger is your sex drive, and the more aggressive you are sexually. The stronger the feminine side, the more giving you are sexually. Also, the stronger the feminine side,
the greater is your capacity to really enjoy sex when the circumstances are right. This is why selfish
people
generally don't enjoy sex very much. So it can be seen that the best lovers are people whose masculine and
feminine sides are both strong.
The Historic Dominance of the Masculine Side: The
masculine side is the side that everybody knows and understands. All through time, people have
had to develop the masculine side in order to be able to survive and thrive in the physical sense. Many books have been written
about developing the self esteem and self-confidence of the masculine side. There have also been many "success"
programs such as Scientology, Est, Lifespring, Tony Robbins, etc.
These programs develop the masculine "I can do it" attitude, and they are effective
as far as they go. They are good for people with a stronger feminine side and a weaker masculine side, because what they teach
helps that kind of person achieve balance. But for people who are balanced in this way, or who already have a strong masculine side, these programs often create an imbalance, or add to an already
existing imbalance.
This is because they develop the masculine side while ignoring the feminine. And
it is precisely because the feminine side has been largely neglected, that the masculine side is so much better understood.
Dominance of the Masculine Side in Business: Business has always operated from the
completely masculine concept of the bottom line, and not from the feminine concept of existing in order to do what is good
for people by benefiting those it serves. The desire to be powerful has had a large part in this, and has led to a tolerance
and even encouragement of the idea that power over others in small but insidious forms is acceptable, especially where money is concerned.
And money is power, in the sense that, if you have money you can buy the time of others and have them do your bidding. This completely
masculine orientation has kept business from operating in a balanced way that could be good for the people served by business, in addition to being good for the bottom line.
Liberation & the Developing Masculine Side in Women: Women have also been working on developing the masculine
side, sometimes at the expense of the feminine side. Liberation has helped many women develop the masculine side by teaching
them to stand up for their rights & not be coerced in any way.
This has gone a long way in changing the old traditional viewpoint in which the man
was the boss & the woman was the slave. The problem is that, in some areas, liberation has placed men in the role of the
enemy & this has prevented many women from using their feminine side in interacting with men.
This is because liberation has taught some women to feel free to choose only to withhold
from men, but not to feel free to choose to give unselfishly to men. True liberation for a woman is freedom to choose how
to operate her own life. This includes the freedom to choose to give unselfishly to another person as well as to withhold
giving from them.
Technology, Spiritual Development & the Global Masculine / Feminine
Balance: When we look at the development of our species as a whole, technological development could be compared to
the masculine side, while spiritual development could be compared to the feminine side.
And just as balance is necessary for an individual, it is equally important for us as a species to maintain a balance between our technological & spiritual development. At the present time, the masculine or technological side is too strong
compared to the feminine or spiritual side. This is a dangerous position to be in because we have technology that is capable
of great destruction, but we're hardly developed enough to use it wisely.
There's an expression that says, "Technology & human nature are sometimes a volatile
mix." This volatility is a result of the imbalance that occurs by having too much technology for our level of spiritual evolution.
To correct this imbalance, it's necessary to develop the feminine side & bring it into closer balance with the masculine side, both individually & as a species.
This will allow us to use our technology without misusing it, not only in areas of
conflict or war, but also in areas of caring for our planet in a way that is good for her & consequently good for us.
Only then will we no longer have to feel that "Whenever we pull a technological rabbit out of a hat, we end up being disappointed
by the droppings it leaves behind".
Balance Requires Developing the Feminine Side: For reasons of survival, liberation, business & technology, most people
have been able to develop the masculine side to a greater extent than the feminine. It may be that it is just easier to learn
the lessons of the masculine side, but the result is that, as a species, we're left with a serious masculine / feminine imbalance.
And it's a dangerous imbalance because it's a formula for destruction & hurting
people. The time has come to develop the feminine side & achieve a greater balance in this area. It's time to recognize that the feminine side has value & that its value lies in knowing & doing what is GOOD
FOR PEOPLE.
It's time to recognize that it's good for people to give & help each other, because that creates less turmoil in the world. It's time
to recognize that at this moment in our evolution, most people are here to learn to develop the feminine side, because that's what will
give us balance.
source: selfgrowth.com
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