“Feeling is really hard! It is really challenging!”
These were words I spoke in the third video of the Conversations With Men series with Raphael Awen. In it we talk about the challenges for many of us, especially men, to get down to deep and vulnerable feeling. To actually feel our feelings.
Raphael mentions in the beginning that we are all emotive beings in constant feeling. The question is are we really feeling the feelings and being honest and vulnerable with them? What is feeling as opposed to reactions and/or states of being?
As boys (and girls, too!) we are conditioned to suppress our more sensitive emotions, our true heart reality. This suppression tends to result in anger or depression (numbness), or both! Rage becomes an emotion that is normalized in men rather than hurt.
The inner boy’s feelings are not welcome and sequestered to the shadow where hurt foments into rage. A protection forms that pushes away or shuts down in a myriad of ways. For the more spiritually inclined man, the activation of the upper chakras in cahoots with the lower chakras can create a bypassing of the most human heart chakra.
This may form as an abusive teacher/healer/mate. A narcissism is formed as a protection against feeling the pain of the inner boy’s trauma. There may be a self-destructive path that leads to addictions, self/other-harm, or possible suicide (one of the leading causes of death among younger men).
If we could create an environment where it is safe for men to feel what they are feeling as they are feeling it, with the ability to process those feelings as parts of themselves rather than being fused to them, I believe we would see a new calvary of men that have the wear-with-all to co-create a new world with the feminine in sacred collaboration.
A tall order? Maybe. A deep desire and need? Yes. I feel the challenges, I am challenged, yet with the support of like-hearted men and women in community, I am finding my way. I believe that other men too could find their way when the desire to truly heal the heart becomes the single most important thing they feel they can offer the world.
Please check out our video for more conversation and please share with other men that you feel would be interested in this mission of deep soul and heart transformation. Comments and questions are deeply invited.
Thank you for being on this journey with us. 🙂
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Gabriel Heartman is a SoulFullHeart Facilitator and Collaborator. Visit https://www.soulfullheartorg.com for more information about sessions, group calls/events, videos, community, etc.