Reader Tanga has pointed out that I’m getting dualistic in my advocacy of pushing back against Hollywood sexual harassment.
And she’s right.
In my present state of mind, with the vasanas that I have, mostly centered around my Mother’s sexual mistreatment, I’m not an impartial observer. I’m very much a partial participant. Biased, preset views, gung-ho, the whole lot.
All my instincts, all my conditioning is protective – Prince Valiant, King Arthur, Moses, everything I read as a kid, everything my Mother would have connected with “being a gentleman,” gets reactivated.
The way I’m designing my life is a statement of it. The Michaelangelo Fund will almost all be staffed by women. It’s designed to offer women all the positions in the corporation while handling very large sums of money.
The Gender Equality Fund will flow funds to women’s groups around the world. I’m not involved. I’m committed. So I am not neutral here.
Kathleen and I have as part of our joint mission the restoration of balance to the sacred partnership of the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine, of gender equality. Again we’re committed.
Now that having been said, I also know that the kind of passion that advocacy generates can lead to residue and us-against-them conflict. Many genuine social movements have been derailed because they were simply us-against-them coalitions in disguise. Look at our governments at the moment. They profess to value democracy and equality and they’re very far from being either democratic or egalitarian.
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I face a paradox that Tanga neatly summarized in her non-dual reminder to me.
On the one hand, I’m strongly activist in the area of gender equality. On the other hand, I’m instructed to be universally loving.
How do I solve that conundrum?
I hear Archangel Michael saying: “It isn’t either/or. It’s both.”
And in fact that’s so. I resolve to be a social activist in the area of behavior that is not gender equal. But I resolve to be universally loving and respectful to the people involved. It isn’t the people whom I oppose; it’s the behavior.
The paradox is that I’m not impartial. I’m biased, positional, and committed. How can I be universally loving and committed?
I cannot at this moment reach a place of loving men who sexually harrass women, even though I know I’ll have to eventually.
I need to move beyond my dualism and even my passion if I’m really to be of use.
Until I’m beyond creating and taking sides, I declare my conflict of interest in the matter. While I should be standing back and observing this one as a lightworker, in truth I’m an engaged participant as a lightwarrior.
Some vasanas I don’t feel at all bad about and this is one of them. It’ll take some digging for me to reach the place of being ready to stand down. If I even should stand down.
How to be a brick wall for needed social change and still be universally loving?
OK, I see it now. It’s as Gandhi said: Be the change you want to see in the world. I must be universally loving before I take up the activist’s pen.
That would be me being the change I want to see in the world. Unless I am the change I want to see, I will never get my point across.
The warrior side of me…? Things will not turn out happy if I act on it. I have to find out how to be universally loving while being an agent of social change. Thank you to Tanga for pointing it out to me.