Annnnnnd here's part 2, as promised. Hey, I have a lot of lost time to make up for. Joth coming into my life has been such a blessing, and not just in the romantical butterfly giddy happiness floating on cloud 9 way. I mean, YES to all those things, but it is refining me as a person. How is gold purified? Fire.
And THAT is why I value and cherish this so much, not because of how it makes me FEEL, because feelings are transitory and anyway what good are they in and of themselves? They aren't tangible, you can't eat them, you can't spend them. However they CAN motivate you to actually DO something, and those actions have value. The reason that I feel so grateful for this experience is because of how it is helping me learn, grow, and evolve. It is enlightening. It is healthy. It is constructive. We're not just languishing about getting high on love and retreating into our inner ego world of self-indulgence. We're going to accomplish things -- awesome things -- with the combined force of our amazing energies.
And everything in its exact right time, too -- I spent this past year learning. I gathered the knowledge from books and videos, but as we know, that isn't complete knowledge or understanding. It will only take you so far. They say when the student is ready, the teacher will appear -- it just so happened that for me, my teacher is also my partner. I am now able to actually LEARN the things I have read. And make no mistake -- it makes me mad sometimes!
Joth will be telling me something and I'm like, I KNOW this! Yet I only know it in my HEAD, while my behavior still contradicts that knowledge. It's like when a devout Christian goes around judging people -- obviously they KNOW, on an intellectual level, from their sacred text that judging is not godly. When you tell them they shouldn't judge, this isn't news to them. It isn't like they missed that day in church. They know, but they don't KNOW. It takes a lesson, an experience, to complete the understanding. That is what's happening with me. First the partnership/ownership thing, which I thought I knew but had to learn. This last time, it was nonduality.
We had kind of an argument, well it started out as a debate. I sometimes passionately debate, and it isn't personal but I get high on sharing ideas and learning. I do need to be careful with my words, though, because during this debate the other person may say something that touches a nerve. And out of reflex, I lash out. And for a second, it's personal -- yet I'm not trying to actually attack my opponent. It's just that I sometimes react instead of responding.
We were talking about feminism. I have always been a feminist, and by that I don't mean someone who thinks women are superior. I mean that I have supported equality and empowerment for women. I am outraged and hurt by the oppression women have to deal with in other countries, such as being regarded as property, having acid thrown on their faces, female circumcision, fewer rights. It saddens me yet it emboldens me to be a warrior for change. Women are sacred, beautiful, divine expressions of the sacred feminine. We deserve to reclaim our throne right beside the almighty king. We need to restore the balance -- not overtake or overpower.
People -- feminists included -- sometimes have a hard time understanding what this means. Or being able to accept that we can be EQUAL but still DIFFERENT -- in fact, the difference is NECESSARY for true balance. The white side of the yin yang is equal to the black side, but it is not identical! We have our differences, our strengths, our unique energies. Let's celebrate these, not deny them! However, where does feminism fit into a life which recognizes nonduality?
In every other area of life, I have felt that we should focus on our unity, our oneness. I have felt that the government, in its evil manipulative way, has purposely created these imaginary lines to set us against each other. Divide and conquer. I say that all the time -- the more they can get us fighting amongst ourselves over the stupidest, most trivial things, the less powerful we are against THEM. And the more distracted we are to even notice what is going on around us! So we have our right-wing republicans vs. our left-wing democrats, our whites against our blacks, our Christians against everything else, our Americans vs. our Mexicans, and all of these things I reject. However...when it comes to our men vs. our women...why do I make an exception?
And maybe we should empower something without tearing something else down. Maybe we can empower women without DISEMPOWERING men. Or maybe we can just empower PEOPLE, in general, because people who love themselves and feel spiritually whole and mentally calm will naturally make better choices and treat one another better. And here's the part where I was getting mad -- Joth started telling me things I already knew. Why did that anger me? Because all of a sudden, I started to realize that I was completely contradicting what I believed. He was telling me how we shouldn't be AGAINST anything, because we give energy to what we focus on. We should just be FOR what we want. And don't I ALWAYS say that? I wrote a whole blog entry about that! I already know!!!!
But if I know that, then why am I sitting here talking about being AGAINST discrimination and how I REFUSE to align myself with someone who thinks his masculinity makes him superior and how we need to STOP the way men view women as supported by their patriarchal religions...? So of course, when I didn't know what to say, when he told me basically that we are all one and setting up these imaginary lines just serves to further divide us, I pulled some script from the arguments I constantly read on feminist websites and said, "Look at YOU and your male privilege!" What I have learned is, basically, if a man does not agree with a feminist viewpoint, it is because of male privilege. A man can not understand the oppression of women and if he dares suggest that men suffer as well, he is ignorant and wrong.
If I am to see beyond the labels, and truly understand advaita, I can not keep putting people in boxes. There is a little bit of everyone in everyone. We are all made up of the same stuff, just poured into different containers. But the essence of us? It isn't our vessels, the color of our skin or our genitalia. The actions we take against one another are not created by the space our spirit occupies. People hurt people. People love people. We are all mirrors for one another, reflecting different aspects of the qualities we ALL possess.
Now I'm not sure if I'm going to go on to write a third entry about the amazing mystical merging of soul which has occurred between Joth and I, or maybe save that for another day. But this. Is. Epic. We're going to do amazing things together -- wait and see. I'm SO excited!!!!!
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