Emerald

To be clear, I don't have any attraction to these guys in real life. I think Jordan Peterson would be somewhat handsome to me if he wasn't such an ideologue. But the other guys, I genuinely find unattractive in multiple ways, especially Elon Musk. I think it's more about my own power... and pushing away my own potentials for power because of my disgust towards the misuse of power and the imperfect systems I'd have to leverage to increase my power. But I do have a very strong will to power and very strong survival impulses. I just feel conflicted about it because I'm very sensitive the the sufferings in the world. And there's been this pattern of "Why should I get to thrive, when there are people in the world who are barely surviving?" (Of course, this is a question none of these guys from my dreams would ask themselves. They'd just be like "Who cares? I'm getting mine.") But my concern for human suffering causes me to find self-enriching and empowering endeavors very conflicting because I need them to feel safe and comfortable and empowered... but "Why should I get to feel safe and comfortable and empowered when so many others don't?" And I have a lot of feelings of responsibility over the suffering in the world. And it's this over-extension into the Nurturing Mother archetype that's left me drained because I've unconsciously felt like the mother to the entire world since I was a child because of certain patterns that were at play in my childhood. And I don't like it when people use their will to power in a way that benefits themselves at the expense of others. So, I think this is about integrating and coming to peace with my will to power... even if others are still struggling out there. I have to basically leave them behind in the fire of the world to save myself and my family.... like an animal in the woods that must eat or be eaten But there's still this self-sacrificing sense of, "I should go down with the ship" that I find difficult to shake despite its fruitlessness and the depletion it causes.

@mmKay I definitely think there's a lot to that love/hate dynamic.... both internally and externally. It's the resistance and dislike that creates the attraction to my own Shadow... and the Masculine qualities that I've been repressing. But there's also this dynamic in the macrocosm with men and women... where there's this strong love/hate and difficulty with integration and harmony. And I see this Shadow Masculine dynamic coming up like in the story of the Princess and the Frog, where the princess is disgusted with the frog. But she kisses it (accepts and loves it), and so it transforms into a handsome prince. And we are all the princess... we are all the frog... and we all have the potential to be the prince. That's why I'm putting this here in this subforum. I think it has a more macrocosmic application. Like, how can we all "kiss the frog" of things like exploitation, tyranny, authoritarianism, hegemony, war, and all the other 'disgusting' expressions of the Shadow Masculine... and allow for higher expressions of the Masculine to rise from them. It's similar to how the World Wars of the early 20th century were the dirt that the flower of the peace and equality-related movements of the 60s to grow out of. You can't have the flower without the dirt. And you can't have the prince without the frog.

@Brittany That makes sense. I don't like gender essentialism because it fits people into boxes and creates polarization. Plus, I am naturally quite a bit Masculine in my energy as well. So, I want to own whatever is there. I find it mostly helpful to know about these energies and archetypes to spot the biases and imbalances in myself and society at large. And it really opens ones eyes up about how polarized into the Masculine society really is... in ways that have almost nothing to do with human gender. The key is really to use the understanding to pinpoint imbalances and deconstruct boxes... rather than using them to construct them. Like, you can use the understanding of the Masculine and Feminine principle to create rules like "Men do/should behave this way. Women do/should behave that way." And then, it becomes an issue that creates more repression and polarization. But if these understandings reveal a deeper pattern of resistance towards the Masculine or Feminine, they can be used to subtract and deconstruct biases that we may not realize are there without an understanding of the archetypal Feminine/Masculine. And it's important to set the goal as integration and taking away barriers to wholeness.

That is true. I feel a lot of anger and disgust in real life at this entire collective human pattern around the rise in authoritarian thinking. I intensely dislike it, and I fear the implications of what it could mean about where we're heading as a species. And I am especially disgusted by the famous people who are spear-heading and stoking the flames of it... often times just to grift and make money. But I think that intensity of disgust and anger that I feel translates to me pushing away parts of myself to try to be "nothing like them". And in that disgust, I push these parts of myself away. And then, I have these intense passionate and romantic feelings in these dreams about sexual union with these men I find repulsive in real life. But it's just me wanting union with the parts of myself that I've pushed away in my disgust.

Sure, they're grifters. That's part of the disgust factor and why they're the Frog. They play tough guy misogynist online to steal attention and money from insecure men and people who hate the passage of time. But the bigger disgust factor is that they're effective and they're popular. So, it's more a a disgust at this Froggy Masculine side of humanity at large. Edit: But this is where the large scale application of these dreams comes in. How to embrace this Froggy Masculinity in humanity in a way that doesn't enable it or excuse it... but yet transforms it into something exalted.

I see they're both about connecting with the Queen archetype. Mine is more about connecting with the Queen (which represents internal authority), via embrace, compassion, and acceptance towards the lower Masculine of the Frog (things that I find disgusting about the Masculine principle). And this transforms the lower Masculine into the higher Masculine of the Prince (Really positive exalted expressions of the Masculine). And it is only via the Prince that I can access the power of Queen. For example, I am aware of the problems inherent within the current Capitalist economic system that are simply part and parcel to that system. And systems in general are Masculine... as is economics because value is a non-physical imaginal concept. And I can sense all the exploitation within the way that Capitalism functions and how that's not a bug, but a feature. And this has created resistance to coming to an acceptance of imperfect systems (which is a Masculine value that I held as a teenager). And because of that, I have resisted doing well in that economic system because of my awareness of the harm it causes to others. And it is a rejection of self-preservation (a Masculine principled value) in favor of staying in alignment with my ethical framework of valuing species preservation over self-preservation (which is valuing Feminine over Masculine). And because of this disgust to the problems of the system, I have been out of alignment with success within that system because it feels somewhat dirty and unethical to be successful. And yet, I still want to be successful and have financial freedom. And it is only with success that I can live deliberately from my sovereignty (the Queen) instead of from a place of being on the backfoot and out of power because I can't come to peace with he way things are and kiss the frog enough to throw myself fully into pursuing financial self-preservation. And this is just one example of a difficulty kissing the frog of the lower Masculine (like exploitation within the system) to access the higher Masculine (of embracing the system and doing my best to be successful and powerful without feeling ethical qualms about it). For yours, it is accessing the Queen (which again, represents the internal authority) without the intermediary of the King (which represents external authority). So, it is about accessing the Queen archetype through direct connection with your internal compass... and without reference to external kings.

That makes sense. Rarely am I ever disgusted by the individual men that I interact with. But that could be because of the way I've cultivated my social circle. I've been trying to develop a root-level understanding about certain political patterns and values patterns in many men collectively that I sense as (and many that are) a threat to safety and sovereignty for myself and others. And to notice the underlying vulnerability as to why these patterns arise and why a large portion of men are drawn to them... even at their own expense. But the actual famous figures that were in the dreams are a bit harder to empathize with because they are spearheads. And some of them are even aware of the issues they're causing... like Tucker Carlson. He doesn't believe anything he's saying... but yet he puts on a charade for his viewers and is well-paid to do so. So, individual men are very easy to be compassionate towards... men as a collective a bit harder... and these guys in particular, very difficult.

First off, when I say Masculine... I don't mean things primarily pertaining to gender. Masculine and Feminine are two polar energies that exist in all living and non-living systems. It's more like Yin and Yang than Woman-like-ness and Man-like-ness. And the issue with being unaware of which energies and archetypes are at play in a given dynamic is that we can have a bias against one of the energies/archetypes without realizing we have a bias. For example, when I was under the age of 20, I was thinking very similarly to you. And I thought that Masculinity and Femininity was nothing more than a social construct and that it was just limiting boxes to put everyone in. (And people can indeed make that mistake if they're not careful if they use this awareness to box themselves in.) But then, I had a direct experience of the Feminine in a medicine journey. And it defied all societal norms and boxes. And it had absolutely nothing to do with the Feminine gender role in society's eyes. But I felt a deep sense that I couldn't use any other descriptor other than Feminine to describe what I was experiencing. And I realized that I had been repressing this Feminine energy my entire life and it was disconnecting me from nature and my body... and huge parts of my personality. And prior to that, I had unknowingly polarized into Masculine traits and saw them as superior to Feminine traits across the board. Because I saw all traits as neutral and didn't realize that Masculinity and Femininity is real on an archetypal and energetic level, I didn't recognize my patriarchal biases which had resulted in a lot of Feminine repression and internalized misogyny. Also, in my post I only characterized tyranny, picking on the weaker, and making career power moves at the expense of other and society at large as Shadow Masculine traits. And these are archetypal Masculine traits that happen to be negative. Foolish, dishonest, heartless, repulsive, and frothing people into a rage and direct that rage towards more vulnerable groups of people is very specific to these types of famous right wing figures. So, the heartless one fits as a Shadow Masculine trait because disconnection from emotions is an expression of the negative Masculine. But the others could fall into either category. Wanting to be more successful than others and competitive are more neutral Masculine traits that can be expressed in positive and negative ways. But yes, right wing women often times do have many Shadow Masculine traits because that's what makes you more fit for survival in a patriarchal environment. Femininity isn't a plant that can grow in patriarchal soil, so all women in these hyper-Masculine environments must repress their Femininity and use Masculine shields to protect themselves. So, there's a dynamic with famous right wing women of being hyper-Feminine in appearance but possessing more domineering and Masculine personality qualities. Think of people like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Green. But like I mentioned, the Masculine and Feminine exist in all living and non-living systems. Anyone can have positive Masculine or Feminine qualities. Also in patriarchal religions like Christianity, most of the things characterized as sins fall into the Feminine principle. In an archetypally patriarchal religion, there is a distant God that's usually associated with the sky. And there is the notion that the Earth is a lower plane and that the lower plane must be transcended by detaching from the world of form or the sins of the flesh. The Masculine has to do with the non-physical/spiritual/perfect and the Feminine has to do with the body, the physical world, and the imperfect. And Christianity is all about overcoming the sins of the physical world to transcend to a non-physical superior world. So, there is a very strong Masculine principled bias... even if it SOMETIMES isn't spelled out as such (though sometimes it definitely is). That's why it's important to know about these archetypes. We can accidentally become anti-Feminine just because so much of our philosophical framework is based on a rejection of the Feminine principle and the Earthly nature. So, Earth is like the Feminine... as is Hell which is even more deeply inset into the Earth. And Heaven is like the Masculine.

That's fair. I'll see myself out.

That's an interesting journey. I recommend the authors Jean Raffa, Maureen Murdoch, and June Singer. These were the most helpful authors that I found when I first started to reintegrate the Feminine.

Yeah, I see it more along the lines of them being symbols of my disgust towards my Masculine side. It also occurs to me now that perhaps their famousness is part of the symbol... as it isn't just some random right wingy guy with similar values to them. One of the regrets that I have about my YouTube channel is that I've been lukewarm in my motivations towards it. And despite that, I've still been pretty successful. I have almost 70,000 subscribers now. But if I had been more diligent like I was as a teenager with my polarization into the Masculine, I have no doubt that I could have made many more videos and a broader audience. And I would have been able to express far more of my insights. Yet again, my polarization from back them and my disconnection from the Feminine made me much narrower in my perspectives. So, I wouldn't have been able to provide as much value as I can now that I've gone through that process. So, I think... if I want to be able to be more prolific in my creative and intellectual endeavors and to grow my audience, I really have to heal my relationship with the Masculine. It's such a frustrating thing when you had something so completely in the palm of your hand before... and then you lose it.

I could see how that would apply to that dynamic with the "I can change him" thing. But in these dreams, it's almost like my attraction comes mostly from my sensing of their negativity... except the one with Andrew Tate. It's funny that he was like this super tender hearted guy in my dream. And I felt so guilty for sleeping with him because I could sense that he was in love with me and wanted a long term relationship. So, I think it has more to do with my need to embrace my own Masculine side that I've developed some aversion and disgust towards because of how I parted with it back when I was 20. I spent the first 20 years of my life totally polarized to the Masculine and basing my value on my productivity and achievement... and my ability to be more successful than others. And I really saw myself as a "human doing" rather than as a "human being". So, I was a workaholic by the time I hit my teen years. And this benefitted me in some major ways. I ended up graduating Summa Cum Laude from high school purely off of my own motivation (I haven't lived with my parents since I was 16), I developed a high degree of skill in the arts, and I brought myself through college. I was really into the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality back then, and I was deep in this Stage Orange hyper-individualism and competition. And I really felt like, if I wasn't achieving, that I was total trash. And I secretly harbored lots of judgments towards others based off of their ability to stick to my values (which I assumed to be universal values) around things like work ethic, chastity, honest, excellence, success, etc. Then, at 20... my whole house of cards fell down and life pulled my "I always succeed, even in the face of chaos" identity out from under me. And I sunk deep into my shame. And I happened to have my first medicine journeys during that time. And I had this realization in the first one that the Masculine and Feminine was real (and not just a social construct as I'd previously assumed). And I could sense the Feminine in the night air, in the trees, and the grass... and in myself. And this led to a year-long foray into integration of the Feminine by rending myself loose from all my hyper-Masculining patriarchal conditionings that were now very evident to me that every value that I held was archetypally Masculine... and I hated most archetypal Feminine values. But along with this dynamic, I also kicked my motivational motors out from under me. And I've found better motivational motors, but never fully reintegrated the Masculine. And now, there's a lot of accountability issues and laziness... and identities that correspond. Previously, I used to be the most motivated person I knew and wore that badge with pride. But now, I'm just gingerly rowing the boat down the stream in a way that's a little too liesurely for my liking. And I miss some elements of the lower state of Masculinity that I used to be in. But now I see an opportunity to integrate the higher Masculine, now that I've spent so much time detached from the lower Masculine and marinating and languishing in the positive and negative Feminine.

I do think the higher male suicide rate could be attributed partially to men tending to hold their emotional struggles to themselves more and not reaching out for help. That's especially true if his only connections are with brass tacks solution-oriented guys that he can't really bring up his emotional struggles with, as these guys might be at a loss of what to do with his feelings other than to try to solve them for him.

It's a means of opening up emotionally about problems and creating intimacy and connection with that other person. And it's a relief because I don't have to struggle with those problems alone and hold them in to myself. And I feel a lot lighter if I can have a heart to heart with someone in that way. I might even sometimes cry, which is a good stress reliever. Like, if I talk with people about my problems, it's 90% for the purpose of connection and sharing my life with that person. It's like, "Hey, I want you to know what I'm going through and what my internal state is because I want to you know this part of me." I rarely need someone's help to solve my problems for me. I usually know how to solve them, and am in the process of doing so. Like, right now I'm in the process of making big changes within my business. And I know my game plan. It will just take quite a while. So, if I open up to someone about my stresses with my business, 9 times out of 10 I'm not looking for solutions because I know what I'm doing already. The map is drawn out, and I have nothing else to do but do it. But when I'm stressed, I find it relieving sometimes to talk to friends about it.

I haven't read any Ken Wilbur. But I am familiar with his ideas around development versus awakening. And I do think of humanity as developing through more and more conscious stages of societal evolution as our technology develops... and that people can be more or less developed along those Spiral Dynamics lines. So, within the context of our species, I see that there is a kind of 10 steps forward and 9 steps back towards a more conscious and aware society, as is evident to me just from the changes in society and the paradigms we hold in the short time I've been alive. But in terms of evolution (in the Darwinian sense), humanity hasn't always been in a situation where more conscious humans are the most fit to the environment. In fact, the ability to be selfish, ruthless, and unconscious has conferred immediate survival and reproduction value up until present day... though it sabotages our collective survival and ability to raise healthy children who will be good for our collective survival. But right now is an exciting time to be alive. In our globalized world with air travel, the internet, and the atom bomb... we are in a place where we need to wake up to love and oneness or go extinct. Develop or die. It is only just now that our Darwinian survival of evolving to be the most fit to our environment... and development within the Spiral (in the ways that Wilbur speaks about) start to converge in ways that can only be ignored to our collective peril. And we may simply continue to default to what worked before to be fit to our environment (the ruthlessness and selfishness of us against them) and go extinct because that's no longer fit to the environment. Or we can recognize that our Darwinian survival requires global unity and an awakening to deeper levels of loving-kindness... and Darwinian evolution and Spiral evolution become indistinguishable from one other. And then, we might make it as a species.

You're welcome

It's similar to what I was expressing to you yesterday or the day before that. If you want real wisdom... and not just intellectual spiritual knowledge to help you spiritually bypass down-to-Earth human truths like "It feels bad to kick dogs"... you must hold two perspectives at once. And these two perspectives are... human-hearted and God-minded. From the God-minded perspective, you're operating from the perspective of the video game designer that recognizes the importance of positives and negatives within the game design. It recognizes that both Mario and Bowser are integral to the game. And from this perspectives, it is an acceptance of both mercy and suffering as integral to reality itself. But from the human-hearted perspective, it is the recognition that it is a much better experience to practice loving-kindness towards yourself and others... and to reduce suffering as much as is feasible. And it is honoring the bias of all sentient beings to want pleasure over pain, happiness over sadness, and mercy over suffering. This is the perspective where we recognize that, while Bowser is an integral part of the game, we still want Mario to win.

That makes sense. There could be an underlying belief that "intimate relationships always lead to conflict." And that could certainly be a reason for avoidance.

Do you have any experiences in childhood with controlling parents? This is a common reason for relationship avoidance. Another common reason is if we had family members going over our boundaries frequently when we were growing up. This creates the sense that "connection means allowing people to go over my boundaries." In both of these patterns, the main over-riding theme is the sense of connection and authenticity/boundaries/freedom being mutually exclusive, where you can have one but not the other. Does any of this resonate with you?

It only works that way for those who fail to grasp the value of beauty-in-itself, and only value utility. Not as to say that it isn't an incredibly human thing to devalue real beauty and engage in seeing everything as merely a ticket to another end. It is common. But it is a failure to see the true value and beauty in a potential partner to only view them through this 'supply and demand' lens.

If you mean by your bidding analogy that another person would only be interesting if others were also actively interested in them, I feel like this is a pretty immature way to look at relationship prospects that wouldn't lead to good relationship outcomes. If you need social proof and "other bidders" to be interested in someone, then you're not really interested in that person. You'd just be interested in chasing the social status of being with that person.

You can't actually be socially conservative and pro-human rights in a way that's meaningful in 2024. To revert back to social conservatism would be to cut back significantly on hard-won human rights over the past century. To be socially conservative is a paradigm that aligns with living in a small, mono-cultural, mono-religious, agrarian, patriarchal community where there are rigid gender roles to ensure that land is passed from father to son. And sexuality must be tightly controlled. And everyone has a role to play in a very rigid hierarchy... where men are at the top, the women are governed by the men, then the children are owned by the men but cared for by the women. And all social deviants (like gay people, trans people, people of other cultures/races, women who intermarry with other races, people who don't subscribe to the "one true religion", or other "degenerates") are kicked out from the rigid hierarchy of society. This is the paradigm social conservatives are operating off of. And to adopt that way of thinking would be to regress and undercut the rights of women, gay people, trans people, everyone in the out-group religions, and everyone in the out-group cultures/ethnicities/races. Also, you can't have a democratic theocracy. Those two things also don't go together.

They weren't talking about 'not sitting around for men' as a collective group. After all, not every man will ignore a woman he's interested in. In fact, most men don't do that. They were talking about not sitting around for a particular man that ignores them... and instead moving on to a man who doesn't ignore them. I feel like it's pretty obvious what they're saying. Move on from a man who ignores you, and instead invest your effort in one that doesn't. It's pretty straight forward. What's the value in pretending to be confused and making it out like they're being inconsistent?

Whoa! Young McConnell ad.

Integrating suffering is in the acceptance of suffering as an integral part of reality itself, and that mercy and suffering are two sides to one coin. It's like Yin and Yang. And in this integration, it means to recognize that a world without suffering would be like playing a video game with no obstacles. But if you apply the perspective of the "game designer" to your gameplay as the "avatar", you will play the game foolishly because you will see negative and positive as relative equals within the gameplay. And that is the mistake that you are making. You are applying the logic of the game designer to over-write the human-hearted common sense logic of the avatar. From the perspective of the game designer, you need to program the game with a workable balance of both positives and negatives in order to make a good video game. And the game won't be interesting if it's too easy or too difficult. For example, if you're the creator of the Mario games... both Mario and Bowser are an integral part of the game play. And you need a Bowser to give Mario a proper obstacle to work against. So, this is the higher perspective you would need to look at the world from to integrate suffering. This is what I referred to as God-mindedness because it looks at reality through the eyes of the creator who codes both negative and positive into reality. And it weaves suffering into the gameplay, because it teaches wisdom through contrast. But if you, as the avatar, engage in the gameplay from the perspective of the video game designer, you will just let Bowser kill you... because it's all an integral part of the gameplay. And you will see no difference between Mario and Bowser and lose the game. So, don't be foolish and reach for top-shelf God Consciousness truths to over-write more common sense down-to-Earth human-hearted wisdom. It is foolish to always be promoting top-shelf spiritual truths over down-to-Earth practical truths. Remember... Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. Instead of Spiritual Bypassing, embrace your humanity and be human-hearted. And to do that skillfully is where you do your best to reduce suffering as much as you can and to spread loving kindness as far and wide as possible. To operate otherwise is just folly.