Dear Men,
Thank you for all your strength. For all the times you had to go into battle and face harm and even death. For all the hard work you have done under the pressure to provide and to protect. For thousands of lifetimes, you have had to be the strong one. The one who knew all the answers. The one who took charge. Who fixed it all. Who could never show weakness. You have had to stay on guard for so long. I know it takes time for the armor to come off. It’s not fair to expect you to suddenly rip it all off at once. It will come off when you are ready. You decide. I know these are confusing times for you. First, you had to carry the job of being the bigger sex. Now there are messages out there telling you to make yourself small and be obedient. That it's wrong to be powerful. You are seen as both, God and the Devil. It's not just women. You too have also been manipulated and used. Projected upon. You experience deep pain and fear too. Personally, I disagree that it’s your job to fix “patriarchy”. I also know you have been shamed for your sexual desire and yet told it makes you a "real man”. You feel pressure to perform and know what to do, without any guidance. Unrealistic expectations that no human could satisfy, much less experience love. Vulnerability is a challenge for me. For you, that challenge is multiplied, many times over. I think it’s so perfect and beautiful to be a woman. And it's so perfect and beautiful that you are a man. I don't want us to be the same or to always agree or see life the same way. How boring would that be? Thank you men. For teaching me to be compassionate and understanding. Thank you men for pushing me to find my strength and independence. To take responsibility for my own thoughts and feelings. And my boundaries. Most of all thank you for teaching me that my choices are my own. I know the moments of power struggles and those little battles will still happen. But even when it's chaotic and messy, deep down I still remain so grateful for all of it. So grateful for you being you. I have seen so clearly that we were never meant to save each other and satisfy each other's expectations. But instead to help know and love ourselves. And share our self-knowledge, presence, and love with each other. I love our dance of interdependence. Dear Men, you are essential. Essential to everything. You are one half of this earthly experience. You are one half of me. I'm so glad you exist! To all men, I just simply love you. **This one felt too personal to use a stock image for. So I dug out some old photographs that I took and processed a long time ago in a college photography class. The model is my then-boyfriend. Back then I thought being naked was all it took to be intimate.
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Dating is totally different for me since doing inner work. It has gone from painful drama to Adventure! A story to illustrate this. Several years ago I met a man online. At first it was just a few friendly messages. The conversations quickly became more frequent and we seemed to have a lot in common. I found him easy to talk to. We started chatting on video too (we live in different states). In our conversations I would have these moments thinking “wow, he says all the right things!”. I felt such a strong connection and trust with him. And this is all happening in the space of 3 weeks or so. I felt like I could really be myself and not worry about anything. I don’t remember most of the details of our conversations except this one thing he told me: “No matter what, I never stop being someone’s friend. I never cut someone out of my life.” This gave me such a feeling of safety. So my mind was saying yes to this man. But my body was apparently saying something else entirely. I just wasn’t really listening to my body at first. During one video chat he looked at me curiously and asked me if I was cold. I looked down and I was wearing a sweater with two jackets over it (pretty hilarious actually, it was summer). We were talking about sex during that conversation and as we talked I kept getting up to grab more clothes to wear. I wasn’t cold. I was uncomfortable. But I dismissed my discomfort as my own woundedness because I was working through a lot of trauma during that time. I told myself “Keep an open mind. It’s good to discuss these things openly”. I happened to have a retreat trip planned in California a few hours from where he lived coming up and I was considering adding extra days to my trip so I can visit him. But it was all happening really fast and I started to have mixed feelings. The mixed feelings were the conflict of what was coming from what my mind wanted and what my body & intuition were saying. So I decided to dedicate some time to focus and go inward and go deeper into my intuition. When I let go of my mind and I did this I got very clear very fast: It didn’t feel right to visit him on my trip. Not only that, it didn’t feel right to even pursue a relationship with this man. I decided to trust this and act on this. Even though I didn’t really know why, I mean he still seemed like a great guy to me. I emailed him to let him know that I would like to just remain friends. I explained it so he would know I wasn’t angry or had a problem about anything. I also figured if it’s meant to be more than friendship then it can happen with time. I also understood that it might trigger some insecurity in him but that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal for such an emotionally mature man as him. He replied and expressed shock at my sudden change of heart. But he said he understood and honored my decision. Then the next day he blocked me from all social media and completely disconnected from me. Now I was the one shocked. But just at first. I was also actually so glad to see how right my intuition was! I realized most of the conversations coming from him were lies. He was telling me what I wanted to hear. I wasn’t angry though. I saw why it worked on me. He made me feel special. He made me feel understood. He made me feel safe. He made me feel important and significant. He gave me what I was starving for and unconsciously looking outside of myself for. He showed me where my insecurities were. Experiences like this have helped me transform those starving parts of myself. Each experience, whether positive or negative, brings me a step closer to being whole within myself. I’m also much more self-aware. I can feel when a situation or person makes me feel “special” or “important”. If something feels good, great I enjoy it. But I’m much more alert to the difference of feeling good that is coming from my ego-mind (self-importance) and those of my body (it feels more organic and less like a story of my identity getting fed). Am I completely done with insecurity, with any attachment to being special or important? No. But I am celebrating the distance I have traveled to this place of being on an adventure. Does the adventure mean no pain? No. But the pain, when it does happen, is VERY useful. Before doing this inner work there was so much anxiety and pain in dating and relationships. I was at times living out a longing and fantasy and there was no genuine intimacy. It was total bullshit actually (sorry to any exes reading this). Then I would feel betrayed if I felt the person wasn’t genuine. But I wasn’t even genuine with myself. There was no possibility in those situations for any sincere intimacy. Our socialized ideas of romance are fantasies that come from our unfulfilled needs and longings. To stay in this is to ride the roller coaster ride of pain and heartbreak. It’s actually insane, if you really see if for what it is. So much drama, and we actually create the whole thing ourselves much of the time. But coming out of this game has been liberating. Instead of feeling resentful and blame towards anyone I’m glad to have the experience because each person teaches me so much about myself. Instead of shutting down my trust and becoming bitter or fearful from these learning experiences, I grow MORE trusting. MORE trusting of myself. MORE trusting of whatever life brings me. I don’t need to carry the hurt memories. I don’t need to guard against or worry about other people and their intentions. I also don’t get too offended when someone lies to me. It’s not personal. It’s their own issue and not for me to figure out. My only responsibility is to see through my own delusions. I don’t trust because people are trustworthy. I trust because I am trustworthy. 
So what is the difference between self-love and narcissism?
I see them as existing in different universes, that's how different they are. Narcissism is superiority. Superiority is based on comparison, competition, and insecurity. It is looking outward for who we are. It is needing to prove something. It is a temporary compensation for the painful feeling of smallness deep down. Superiority is there only because somewhere inside there is inferiority. Two sides to the same coin. We come out of this painful game when we change direction and start looking within to transform the root of what is making us feel small or needing to prove anything. This is not a “fake it till you make it” kinda thing. Not at all. Do we need yet another facade to hide behind? No, I don’t think so. The first step is to be honest with ourselves about how we really feel. It’s tricky because we don’t actually need to be taught how to LOVE ourselves. How to TRUST ourselves. How GOOD we are. How POWERFUL we are. How BIG we are. How MAGICAL we are. (but role models and facilitators are a huge help). We were born already knowing this. We just have to UNLEARN what we were taught. We need to see through and undo all the lies. All that we took on during our time here on this planet. A technique to transform the root of insecurities: Dalian Method sessions by Lila Do your own Dalian Method sessions |
AuthorLeela Haris ~ Expanding Consciousness Archives
February 2019
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