Relationships

A relationship can only reflect the truth about who you are. If you are someone who needs the validation of others for their sense of self-esteem, then by God, that is what you will create in your relationship, and it will always reflect this painful state of need. If on the other hand, you are someone who has gone to the bottom of who you are, and you are secure in what you have seen, then your relationship will reflect that instead. It will reflect the fact that you have a light to give, a light to share, and that what you bring to the table is not the fulfillment of another's need, but the example of someone who is capable of fulfilling that need within yourself.

In this way, you will leap-frog jealous emotions, and possessiveness. You will let go of the worry about losing who love, because those who love you will love for what you give them, and what you are giving them is a sense of power and security in their own selves.

The challenge for men today is to hit bottom. It is to delve within and come back out knowing who you are, and knowing your power. We cannot afford to create short cuts, by making the women in our lives compensate for what we feel we lack, or for even transferring the responsibility for our power, onto the ones that we love or are involved with.

One thing that has become clear to me recently is that what I find sexy in a woman, is what I seek to manifest within myself. Generally, at the most basic level, we are attracted to power. This isn't always bad. In fact, if we believe Nietzsche, then all human life is a kind of will to power. And I do think this is true to an extent. But what is madness, is to seek power through the domination of others, or through the possession of them.

When a woman is intelligent, has a refreshing mind, can enlighten me and demonstrates genuine talent, then I can safely say I find her sexy. (I am not fucking around – it is not enough for her to have great set of pins. It's just not enough. I am modern man. I need the goods, not some smoke and mirrors hocus pocus).

But the fact is, what I am finding sexy, is the aspiration within myself to manifest these qualities. If I jump into a relationship without understanding this, then I will always be worried about losing this person, because I will always associate her with those qualities. I will always rely on her for that aspect of myself to manifest.

However – if I work at this stuff within my own heart, if I allow myself to see the greater potential reflected in my erotic inspirations, then a relationship will serve as a kind of open plain of mutual understanding. You no longer need the other to manifest yourself, but the relationship serves to help you express this truth about who you are. So, then need is a much higher, spiritual need. But it is not a need borne out of desperation. It's more of a mutual dynamic, than a need.

This can't be done, though, unless we are willing to sort our own shit out first. That means being very clear about which direction you want to channel your erotic energies. That means understanding your own power. And it means cutting off from thousands of years, millennia, of biological and social conditioning.

It means war. But not war as in the shedding of another blood. It means war with your twisted social ego. It means that when you experience jealousy, pride, anger and suffering, you don't back away from it. You don't distract yourself, using sex as a way of realigning power within yourself. Instead, you look deeply into the emotion, because within that emotion lies the roots of your self. In and beyond the limited, suppressed, and manipulated social idea of yourself as a man, lies source. God. The full-blooded heat of the sun. And in the discovery of that, you find the ability to really love and accept the love of another.

No one, especially a woman, wants to be needed, or possessed. Those days are over, boys, if they ever existed at all. What creates a powerful, mutually inspiring relationship, depends on what you bring to the table. And what you bring to the table, depends on what you have within you.

If this sounds too fluffy, too vague, well ma-lad, theirin lies the fucking rub. If the idea of having some internal sense of self leaves you feeling blank, at a loss, empty, then you are not alone. This is the condition of modern masculinity. We have been conditioned as men to define ourselves by our environments.

There is no doubt that our environments are a key aspect of who we are. But our environment, like our relationships, is not a one way dynamic. The question is, what do you bring to your environment? What do you bring to the table?