The Divine Masculine

In my early thirties, I attended a spiritual festival in Israel that brought teachers from all over the country. I remember we were in a large indoor space with perhaps 50 men and women, and I don’t remember what the topic of the session was, but it evolved around masculine and feminine energy. The two facilitators, who were a man and a woman, kicked off the session with some dancing. Once in a while, they would call out some kind of theme or idea that we should all dance to.

At one point, they said “Everybody dance in a feminine way”. The women seemed to be at home, comfortable in their own skins, and they moved with the theme. The men were extremely bashful, and many of us froze or tried to come up with something in spite of serious challenges. The discomfort was very clear.

Then the callers flipped the switch, and said, “Now, everyone dance in a masculine way.” The result was so strange that it surprised even the facilitators: Everybody froze. No one knew what to do, or how to move. I remember seeing the faces of the two facilitators: Shocked, not sure what to do, wondering how it was that no one even had a fantasy of the masculine that they could dance to. After a few awkward moments, the women began to move in a somewhat up-and-down, linear, crouching fashion and started to grunt in rhythm, until one of the men said, “Wait, he said ‘men’, not ‘baboons’.”

In the moment, people laughed. But I remember marveling at the thought that the masculine… is gone.

Is it?

More recently, but just a few years back, I was at a “celebration of the union between the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine”. It sounded cool on paper. But I was very surprised that all of the representations of the masculine at that gathering - were negative. An angry drunk, a critic and instigator, two “friends” who were competing to an offensive pitch… The event contained many quotes that described the divine feminine with much beauty, grace, and inspiration; but there was hardly anything about the divine masculine that was really helpful or substantial. The quotes were vague, at best. Many of them were negative. Certainly, we know the toxic masculine. He is all over the news, all over the media, all over the governments, and all over the world. But what shall we replace him with?

I can talk dirty. I can say what a troubled society we are, that we have lost our divine masculine to the point where we really can’t remember what it is. But I want to try the positive approach: I want to spark a conversation.

What is the divine masculine, to you?

If you find yourself at a loss, try starting from the feminine. Oftentimes the feminine and masculine will complement each other, so that one can serve as a hint toward finding its counterpart. But I’m going to try and describe what comes to me, and I want to be clear about two things (that should already be clear to everyone):

1) Everyone has masculine and feminine traits, so let’s not get hung up on that dichotomy. I’m looking for an energy, which is shared by everyone.

2) I am not writing answers here. I am just trying to add to the exploration that I believe it’s high time we all take a more active part in. I would love for people to be talking about this more.

So here goes.

The divine masculine is, first and foremost, a seer. He is governed and inspired by light, and truth. He is fascinated by everything that light embodies: It reveals, it explores, it penetrates. And it brings life.

The divine masculine is a creator. If I may say that the feminine nurtures whom and what she loves, the masculine sees a void and fills it. He introduces new ideas, things that weren’t there before. He initiates, and he leads beyond existing boundaries.

The masculine is, in his nature, a fighter. He is a warrior, and he takes pride in his strengths. I am not talking about vanity, I am talking about pride. The masculine can overcome great hardships, because he knows what really matters to him.

The warrior spirit has taken a lot of criticism in our world, because fighting can be so destructive, and brings so much pain. That is what happens when there is clinging, and ignorance. But the divine masculine cuts through this ignorance in one critical point: He does not fight for himself. If he can follow the light that is his nature to its end, and penetrate the truth completely, then he should see that there is no real self in this universe for which to fight; and thereupon, he fights for others.

Please share your thoughts, and join the conversation.

Illustration by GodsFavoriteArts, Pixabay.com