More Than Men

More Than Men

*This article previously appeared in an issue of _Creation Spirituality_ magazine.*

I propose that it is more difficult to be a man today than in any previous era. We are unsure of exactly what it is that a man is supposed to be. Our celluloid role models appear to us now as inane caricatures, and we feel more than a little guilt about the sins of our fathers. We are unsure as to what genuine alternatives might be ours. Many of us who are feminists sense within ourselves an atrophied presence, the anima, as Jung called it, our feminine nature whom we have, through myriad generations, sought to suppress, and with "her," as Elémere Zolla writes, we have also lost her gifts: "the art of listening to forewarnings, of accepting frailty, of feeling tenderness toward the cosmos. Masculine regimentation, planning, [and] utilitarian exploitation have grown to the extent of bringing us to the verge of self-destruction."

This suspicion about the feminine latent in the man and the masculine latent in the woman is an intuition which has pervaded every culture. Mythologies around the planet have equated the division of the sexes as a great cosmic breach which can only be healed by reunification. In the early Christian Gnostic scriptures it is written that "in the days when Eve was in Adam, death did not exist. When she was separated from him, death came into existence. If he reenters and takes [her] unto himself death will not exist." This split into two distinct "natures" ushered in dualism, which the medieval Catholic mystic Scotus Erigena believed to be the original sin. When the feminine was removed from the previously androgynous Adam, the world fell out of harmony and into conflict. Erigena's remedy is reunification, which he said would result in the reunification of Earth and heaven.

Sages of every tradition have perceived this connection and many have spiritual exercises which facilitate this unity. In Taoism, there is a meditation in which the believer balances the masculine and feminine energies within his or her own body, the union of which produces offspring: the "foetus of immortality." The offspring is one's own soul, complete and whole.

A similar meditation is found in the Tantric branch of Hinduism. In this practice, the male energy is represented by the figure of the kundalini, the serpent of the spine, which as the practice progresses will eventually rise, passing through each of the chakras or energy centers of the body, ultimately uniting with the "thousand-petalled lotus," the final chakra which represents the feminine energy of the universe. This unification destroys the meditator's illusions of duality, and sets him or her free, knowing that, in truth, the cosmos is One. In Tibetan Tantric (Buddhist) practice, one who has pierced this veil of illusion becomes Jivan Mukta, for whom, as Franklin Abbot puts it, "opposites do not hold and absolute liberty allows that person to fly, to be in two places at once, to walk on water and produce other assorted miracles."

The union of the gendered energies, therefore, traditionally affords an adept supernatural powers. This is found in places as diverse as the mythologies of Greece (as evidenced by the blind, and double transsexual prophet Tiresias) and the shamanic practices of Native African and Native American spiritualities. The African priest of the Ndembu tribe is considered both male and female, and homosexuality in Native American practice is, in the Sioux and many other tribes, traditionally indicative of great spiritual sensitivity.

A reason for this is that wholeness is not very far removed from holiness. The person in whom androgyny manifests is more like God, who is not sexless, but sexful, being both Father and Mother of the universe. In Jewish mysticism, God's name, YHWH, can be divided symbolically to show that the first Y corresponds to the Father, the H to the Mother, and WH to the cosmic androgene, the Son/Daughter of which we are all a part.

Gnostic Christianity has dealt with these questions extensively, and holds for us the key to the masculine dilemma. Gnostic scripture describes the soul as existing in suffering: "But when she (the soul) weeps and repents, then [God] will have mercy on her and will make her womb turn from outside and will turn it again inward...then the soul becomes again what sh e was before." Elaine Pagels comments that this "suggests that the soul in everyone,men and women alike, recovers its original androgyny...by withdrawing from mere sensation, and turning ward." For men this means having the courage to become quiet, to listen instead of speaking, to reflect inwardly as well as outwardly. The reclaiming of our feminine natures does not detract, odes not make us any less men, but in fact it makes us more than men. Women, through the women's liberation movement have rediscovered and reclaimed their animus, their masculinity, proving themselves to be equal to the male, and because they have masculinity in addition to their femininity, they are more than women. Until men are reunited with their feminine selves, women will continue to surpass them spiritually.

These observations are not lost on our Western Christian tradition, either. Matthew Fox, in a comparison of the images of the soul in the writings of medieval Christian mystics Meister Eckhart and Teresa of Avila, notes that "to be authentically human means that the male is in touch with the deep female within himself," and points out the preponderance of feminine images of the soul in Eckhart (a man) and the many masculine images of the soul in Teresa (a women). He also reminds us of Jung's warning that "one way to lose one's soul is for the male to seek the feminine wholly outside himself and for the female to seek the masculine exclusively outside herself."

Jesus, in the Gospel of Thomas, promises us, "When you make the inner as the outer, the outer as the inner, and the upper as the lower, and when you make the male and female into one, so the male shall not be male and the female shall not be female, then shall you enter paradise."