Ten Lessons in 2020: The Inner Masculine

Photo: @thetemplegaia

“When you listen to your woman, listen to her as you would the ocean, or the wind in the leaves. …what she says is the sound of her feelings.” - David Deida

Discovering David Deida rocked my world at the end of the year last year, his book The Way of the Superior Man landed in my lap on retreat with an incredible group of people who were talking about it one night at dinner. I felt like the only one at the table who hadn’t heard of the book or the work.

When I learned that it was a guide book written for men my curiosity was peaked even more. I ordered it immediately and devoured it cover to cover before even returning home.

At the time I was in an incredibly evolved partnership; one of the most of my life. I knew that my partner and I were working through some big things at the soul level but in the end it didn’t serve me to stay and I’ve spent the last year integrating the new lessons learned from this teacher.

Applying the axiom “as within, so without” I found myself naively stumped at the fact that I had attracted a critical and angry man this time; two big mirrors that hadn’t shown themselves as boldly before. Determined to find the exact spots in me that were aligning with this energy I began to investigate.

Giving yourself permission to step inside of yourself is a powerful first step.

The downloads began immediately and the entire universe conspired to show me the way. Deida led me to John Wineland, and to the Yoga of Intimacy. I wandered into a Hieros Gamos group, explored the Sacred Art of Feminine Submission, and deepened into Tantra and Kundalini. I found Maddy Moon, Michaela Boehm, Esther Perel…and so many more. The expansion I have felt just in the research phase of this lesson has been one of the most beautiful blessings of the year.

The day that I realized the inner masculine in me was what attracted the mortal masculine outside of me was one of the biggest a-ha moments of my life; when this missing piece of the puzzle locked into place I literally felt a paradigm shift happen and my life has not been the same since.

I wanted to know everything about him, who this inner masculine is and how he got the way that he is…I dove in, into the darkness and into a space of me that I had not ever explored before. It was messy, and telling, and there are still many things to shore up in there but finding my inner masculine this year is one of my favorite lessons of the year.

This work was so big, and so beautifully delicious that I created a program out of the conversation. I called it “Honoring Your Inner King,” and I invited women equally curious to join me. I admitted that I did not have the answers and I was not “teaching” anything in this program, but that I wanted to facilitate a deep and intellectual conversation with other women about this topic. Seven women joined me and the month-long program turned into two.

I will never forget the day that we each introduced our Kings to each other.

I have learned that my inner masculine was created as armor in the beginning to protect me, crafted by experiences in which I did not trust the masculine outside of me for truth, safety or love. This armor from a young age has stayed with me throughout the years, it has gotten heavier and heavier as I use it to shield me from true connection and as a catalyst for proving myself instead of being myself.

Every single one of us in this first group felt this heaviness, and at the end of the two months together we dropped our armor and softened into our feminine with a feeling of a much healthier deep, deep holding from within.

Even bigger than knowing that my inner masculine energy is attracting (or distracting) masculine energy outside of me was the new awareness about the law of polarity. I have especially loved learning about the framework of “Alpha and Omega” from Londin Angel Winters and Justin Patrick Pierce. So many beautiful people and couples are leading this work right now.

This year, within weeks of the pandemic starting Traver Boehm led a simple meditation on his Instagram account. I was newly exploring my inner masculine and really ready to drop the armor and I found myself sitting with him in his meditation this day. It was the first time in a very long time, maybe ever, that I was able to sit with a man and arrive there fully in my feminine essence and what happened that day will always be my favorite - I felt held by his masculine energy, fully held in a way that I haven’t ever felt before.

It doesn’t take much, but it is so powerful.

In the words of Erica Cage, “unless and until we exalt our inner masculine, we can never birth the fullness of our feminine, the fullness of our Shakti.”

The greatest softening of my life began this year as I stripped myself of heavy inner masculine armor that was weighing me down, attracting the wrong masculine energy, getting in the way of my doing instead of being and keeping me from living fully in my heart.

Thank you 2020.