From 'Feminine Reproach' to Oceanic Love

And an event to bridge the gap.

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The Resonant Man and She Became We are delighted to invite you to join us online on Wednesday, February 5 at 19:00 GMT (14:00 EST) to explore how the work we do in our respective men and women’s circles supports us as individuals — and can catalyse cultural change. Details here, and you can register for free here:

I also highly recommend this six-week Global Social Witnessing course co-facilitated by my friend Manda Johnson and Robert Buxbaum, starting on February 25. I wrote about Manda and Robert’s amazing work here.

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Resonant World #126

When I committed to learning as much as I could about the principles of integrating individual, collective and ancestral trauma, I had in mind the legacy of wars, genocides, slavery, racism, colonialism, inequality, dictatorships, the climate crisis, and the many other macro-scale evils that have stalked humanity forever.

What I wasn’t anticipating was the depth of the reckoning I would experience with the collective and inter-generational wounds carried by women in relation to men, and by men in relation to women.

Such is the charge around this topic, and so polarised the discourse, that it’s only relatively recently that I’ve felt brave enough to write about it.

But my experiences over years of immersive trainings with Thomas Hübl and team, and in other settings prior, have convinced me that creating spaces to begin to integrate these wounds will be a critical task in building a viable world.

I’m not going to attempt to document the sheer breadth of this topic here, rather share a highly impressionistic, partial account of what I’ve experienced over multiple retreats, and countless small group dialogues, where participants felt safe enough to voice truths that might otherwise have stayed muted.

This may not come as much of a surprise to women readers. But as a man, one of the most vivid moments in this process for me was coming into direct contact with the overwhelming depth — and quiet, implacable ferocity — of what I’ve come to think of as the Feminine Reproach.¹

The Reproach lives in the female collective body. It is an energy that arises in response to the accumulated violence, rape, oppression, invalidation, abusive parenting, folly and countless other harms inflicted on women, men and nature by emotionally immature, wounded men since the dawn of time, and which continues to play out in ever-proliferating, hydra-headed forms to this day.

The Reproach — when it allows itself to be fully perceived, and when a man is ready to receive it — is utterly, existentially terrifying.

It is the Great Mother on the warpath.

It is nature’s most savage wrath.

It is the moment the psychedelic journey turns dark.

It is the look we men spend our whole lives — consciously or unconsciously — trying to avoid.

To perceive the full, cosmic depths of this Reproach is a form of initiation.

And in this initiation, it is instantaneously clear that The Reproach is merciless only because it has to be: Its ultimate and only function is to protect Life.

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

It starts to become visible at home, at work, and on the political stage — casting each moment of friction caused by a man’s failure to attune, take responsibility for himself, or exercise due care, in an archetypal light.

The Reproach presents us men with a simple choice: Fall to our knees, beg forgiveness, and commit to changing our behaviour (preferably with the support of other men) — or seal our hearts so tightly shut that we’ll never know the true meaning of love.

Moment of Revelation

My initiation into the Feminine Reproach occurred in a process involving about 120 women and 60 men — a group large enough for the immensity of this aspect of our shared experience to be clearly perceived. This happened during a week-long retreat in Germany, part of the two-year Timeless Wisdom Training with Thomas.

In the moment of revelation I experienced, there was no outward sign of aggression or hostility from the women. And yet, for a brief moment, I felt a visceral fear that I was literally about to be torn to pieces by an enraged female mob, clawing at my flesh with bare hands.

And I’d be dismembered knowing — at some level, I’d deserved it.

It was a lot.

But there was another revelation about to unfold.

Once the awesome potency of the Feminine Reproach had entered my system, I began to perceive, faintly at first, then more clearly, an oceanic depth of Feminine Love.

The Love that sees the fragility, weakness and woundedness of men, and their desperate — often misguided — attempts to “get it right”.

The Love that senses with omniscient precision the exact location of every molecule of the accumulated pain we carry from the endless cruelties inflicted by our wounded ancestors.

This Love has infinite patience for guiding and initiating men into a journey of higher awareness.

But I understood in that moment that we can only receive this love when we cultivate the humility required to let it in.

We must find the courage to begin to unwind the generations of false conditioning that’s been layered so deep into our bodies that we think it’s keeping us safe — when in fact this conditioning forms the bars of our collective prison.

This isn’t to suggest that there’s something intrinsically “better” about women than men, or that men should be more “like women.”

This is merely the best account I can give of my direct experience.

Unconscious Mechanisms

While honouring the incalculable depth and gravity of the collective wounds suffered by women at the hands of men, I’ve also since learned more about the wounds men carry from women, as my journey into collective trauma work has deepened.

Patterns that have come into my awareness lately include the unconscious mechanisms by which women can inflict their unresolved anger at their fathers onto their sons; the harm caused by the Devouring Mother (Mother Gothel) archetype; and the sense of confusion and isolation men can experience when they lack the support and vocabulary that could help them process experiences of abuse or manipulation by women partners, or colleagues.

This might all sound rather heavy.

The fact is, at least in my experience, that facing these truths liberates both men and women to engage in far more rewarding relationships, at every level — from the most intimate, to the creative and professional.

And yes, that does indeed include outrageously better s&x.

The Resonant Man Meets She Became We

Last summer,

Jacob Kishere

and I staged an open dialogue in

The Resonant Man

, our men’s initiative, bringing men and women together to explore the theme of “finding integrity in relationship.”

We’re very excited to be staging our next mixed event this Wednesday with She Became We, an ever-expanding, ever-evolving intentional meditation initiative for women, represented by Melinda Chandler, J’aime Rothbard and Jodi Newhall.

She Became We was born out of Melinda’s sense of aloneness during the height of pandemic restrictions in 2020, when she did something audacious — she invited a small group of women to gather. You can hear the full story here:

Our free 90-minute session on Wednesday will be an opportunity for participants to engage in dialogue on how the work we do in men’s and women’s circles can contribute to healthier relationships — and unlock the wider cultural transformation we need to create a more harmonious, emotionally attuned world.

I believe these kinds of conversations serve to transmute the kind of stuck energies in the collective that inhibit our capacity for authentic relating — and I’m delighted that She Became We and the Resonant Man are collaborating in this way.

The event starts at 19:00 UK (GMT) / 20:00 Berlin / 14:00 New York / 11:00 Los Angeles and lasts 90 minutes. (To register, click here).

There will be some dialogue between myself and Jacob, Melinda, J’aime and Jodi, followed by opportunities to join breakouts to reflect on the themes that have emerged, then harvest our insights as a group.

We invite anyone who’s committed to relating more deeply, skilfully and joyfully to join us.

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New Dialogue From the Resonant Man:

Flow, Healing and Revelation

Jacob Kishere

and I recorded this dialogue for

The Resonant Man

in London last month, via his new initiative,

SENSESPACE Studio

.

We explored:

• What it takes to radically imagine a life of flow

• The rarefied value of a space to deeply land who you actually are

• The Philosopher’s Secret: Being in the question

• Why the media hasn’t integrated the UAP story

• Exploring UAP through mystical and metaphysical lenses

Subscribe to

The Resonant Man

and learn about joining the space at:

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  Resonant World’s mission to build a trauma-integrating media system.

Thank you!

1. As

faye boam

wrote in a recent note: “The terms ‘Masculine’ and ‘Feminine’ get people all fired up and also, very confused.” I didn’t want to get into this in the above post, but I’m using the terms here in the same broad way that faye explains them in her note.