Karma has happened, that’s what!
It is no coincidence that most of the yoga, Pilates, natural medicine and other healthy and spiritual materials (including this site) are looked into and used mostly by women and the gay community. Most heterosexual males don’t seem to be very interested in much except sports, drinking, fighting, war, over working, being with their male friends, lying on the sofa or watching some sort of competition between others. (funny, I was writing this piece then I had to go to see a client and on the way outside of a shop there was a gang of men watching a boxing match on a tv screen. There was not a woman insight.)
I have travelled for the passed 22 years to all continents and many of the different countries, was brought up in a Moslem country, then lived in the West and this is what I have found. Men have set out the rules and done the role playing that suited them for so long that we forgot the balance of male/female energy that is naturally in each human being.
Now men have ruled women for as long as we know and they still do in some countries. If we go by the law of Karma and the cause and effect rule which brings back to us everything we have thought and done, men may be in the trouble they are in (living less than women by at least 12 years and having many more times the rate of most diseases than women) because of this passed karma of trying to control women for their own ego self.
Talking to straight guys all around Europe and America I come across men expressing the same struggles-’we don’t feel needed by women except for sex, making babies or being emotionally supportive.’ This I translate into ‘ Women have the same rights, go to work and think for themselves so now we don’t know what to do with the time that we use to spend controlling the female race.’
The cure is not to try and cater to women but to be more balanced in the female/male-Moon/Sun energy in the body & mind so when you do meet someone, you can have a natural relationship devoid of expectations and judgments about what the other is not doing for you.
What do you think? Ask your friends and see if this rings true for them.
Yogi Cameron
on Nov 28th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Interesting blog - I certainly think people have become too obsessed with polarising the sexes into choices of male and female without realising that everybody has a degree of masculine and feminine elements within them.
However, there are certain male traits that make men better at what they do (comedy, architecture, directing films, team sports, building and destroying things etc) it is their testosterone that drives the aggression required for this. Men might have controlled women for a millenia, but women developed means by which to control men (high heels, makeup, low cut tops etc). So I guess it works both ways and not at all if your an unfortunate looking woman.
on Nov 28th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Hi! I tryed to leave a message at the previous post, but it just wouldn’t show up. Is there anything wrong with the site for the moment?
on Nov 28th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
How true, Thomas!
Heterosexual men are usually in absentia when it comes to yogic lifestyles for one fundamental reason–fear. Like Thomas touched upon, testosterone driven aggression makes them fearful of failure. Failure to grasp, to understand. Failure to delve into spiritual things because they lack tangible “rewards/conquests.” Yoga involves many spiritual and unknown paths and a lack of tangible physicality men need for domination purposes. The lack of tangible reward and uselessness of male domination in this arena are probably repellent if not insipid to the heterosexual male psyche, as subtly subconscious and as it may seem.
Cameron, you are a, highly unusual, beautiful individual- inside and out. Having been so makes you fearless. A fearlessly heterosexual yogi male, and yes again, highly unusual.
on Nov 28th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
@Tomas: what has the testosteron to do with better results in comedy, architecture and directing films?! Let’s get real.
on Nov 28th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
To understand how it really works between a man and a woman, it is important to go back to Antiquity. If we identify the woman to the Nature because she is able to give birth, the conquest of the man on this Nature reads itself as a victory on the woman [nature] gifted of dangerous powers for the male. Greek philosophers and psychoanalysts (Thanks Mr. Freud!) participated in this caricature!
But if we consider this Nature as a whole – the couple Sky / earth, the “bisexué” – the cultural institutionalization of certain natural phenomenon, such as motherhood, appears then as a conquest of the man AND the woman on their own biological dependency. And it makes them complementary.
My point here is to say, because of such archaic thoughts, the understanding between men and women is unbalanced. The collective consciousness reminds us constantly how men and women are different instead of thinking in terms of complementarity.
Unfortunately, over the centuries, patriarchal societies and monotheistic religions have accentuated the differences between men and women. Rather than make these biological differences a strength.
If the relationship between men and women had not built on the precepts of domination, we would not today discuss about the status of women in the world. Men and women would live in a harmonious way. A mutual understanding would be free of incessant and sterile questioning.
However, if we can disregard all these ideas, a man and a woman together can accomplish great things and love each other in the greatest respect, by maintaining their own personalities. And, therefore, enjoy “a natural relationship devoid of expectations and judgments about what the other is not doing for you” as you wrote Cameron.
It is not something easy to accomplish because of such archaic thoughts mentioned above. As a woman, I had to fight against archetypes like “she is a woman, how can she tell me what to do?”. The world of macho is not about to disappear. But my experience made me change and correct behaviors regarding the opposite sex. The detachment and selfless help me to see beyond appearances. And because of what I learned over the past years, I do not try to see myself as the equal of the man anymore but as his complementarity and vice versa.
on Nov 29th, 2008 at 10:25 am
In certain martial arts it’s not asked if you’re a woman or a man - you just fight your opponent/s - one or more at the same time.And most of the martial arts are not only about physical fighting but have a theory and regular practice of meditation.Which means the mind is trained at the same time and does not think in terms of male being and female being but teaches the individual to be balanced in both the male and female energies in oneslef.
on Nov 30th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Well Cri Cri… Statiscally most stand up comics are male, most architects are male ad most film directors are male… Its just that men are better at some things and women are better at other things…. AND the thing that makes men male is testosterone and the thing that makes women female is oestrogen.
Eqaulity isn’t about women wearing suits with shoulder pads…. its about celebrating the difference between masculine and feminine qaulities and allowing those differences, whether u are male or female, to be fully explored and expressed AND being “real” is about recognising that and not pretending that we are all born the same… we ain’t… but making the most of what we have shows the difference bwteen those with insight and those withinout.
on Dec 20th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Well Tomas… Only a few words. Avoiding the history , the thing is that man and women are complementaries, and today there are a balanced number of architects, film directors and bla bla. It’s because of the society not the biological differences between genres.