It's time to rip the cover off what really works to ditch addiction, depression, anger, anxiety, and all other kinds of human suffering. No, not sobriety. We're talking the F-word here: Freedom. We'll share, straight from the trenches, what we have learned from leaving our own addictions behind, and coaching hundreds of others to do the same—and since it's such a heavy topic, we might as well have a good time while we're at it. [00:27.6]
Bob: Alright guys, welcome back to the Alive and Free Podcast. Have you been around if you've been around recently, have you heard the phrase toxic masculinity or one that I've started to hear a toxic femininity? Have you ever been taught about what is masculine and what is feminine, whether that's with regard to how you dress or what you do, or the kinds of activities you do in all of these kinds of things. These are, this is hot topics these days. If you're in any way, looking for answers to mental health problems and whatnot, what you'll find is eventually you're going to run into topics like getting in touch with your feminine energy or getting in touch with your masculinity and honoring the masculine and empowering men or empowered women and all of these different terms that are used to try and help point you to maybe something that's missing in you. You know, maybe what's going on is that you're just not in touch with it is to be a woman or, and maybe that's what you need, you're needing to get in touch with that. [01:28.3]
Well, today I want to take you on a little bit of journey and help you see through all the clutter so that this can be a very, very clear, simple thing. Recently, we ran two retreats, one for men, one for women. Why do we run them separately? Well, because generally in this society, the things that men are dealing with, they don't like to open up about in front of a bunch of strange women. It's funny how that works. They, in certain circumstances, obviously that can work, but with the kind of work that we're doing, you know, these are really raw, deep conversations. And definitely men tend to operate in some different ways, so it's true. And so they tend to connect with things. Not a lot of women would like to be around a bunch of grown men telling fart jokes, cause guys do that kind of thing. And likewise with the women, you know, sometimes what women have to say, they're not comfortable sharing around a lot of men. And in both cases, both genders have had issues with the opposite sex. A lot of guys have women issues. A lot of girls have men issues, especially if either of them have been through a lot of trauma. [02:30.3]
So if that's you and your life, or even if you haven't been through a lot of trauma, right. If that's you and your life, and you've just been rejected by a girl or whatnot, or you've been listening to television shows and movies and radio shows and podcasts that are playing up, the differences between men and women, then what you'll find is you probably have a lot of ideas about what women are or what men are that are driving, how you interact with them, what women need and what men need that driving, how you interact with them. We're going to stop that short here. And we're going to go on a trip down through the ages a little bit briefly, not over the top and give you a sense of where some of these things might come from and what what's really going on under the hood there. But before we do that, I want to stop everything short and ask you what percentage of your genetic material makes you a man or a woman. In your DNA, what percentage of it is making you man or woman? [03:24.0]
And if you're really looking, we got 23 pairs of chromosomes. The average person does, some of them have trisomy, so they might have a couple extra, but they have other health problems as a result of that. And gender issues, usually aren't an issue. And so, okay. So 23 pairs of chromosomes, that means 46 chromosomes. There's only one pair that determines whether or not you're a guy or girl. And in that only one of the two chromosomes is the determining factor. So either you're an XX, or an XY which means you're one out of 46, which is 2.17% or thereabouts. What that means is the differences between guys and girls is very, very tiny. We play them up in our society because that has been the ultimate focus of what's been going on, right. But ever since the beginning, that's the only real differences between us. Women's bodies are really subject to the cycles of the moon, which is why monthly they have certain cycles within their body. Men also have these cycles; they just don't have it as obvious. So you'll still find if you're observing a man, a man that they're kind of in sync a little bit with those cycles, but particularly with the cycles of the sun, men's bodies changing a little bit over time. [04:37.4]
It's just not noticeable cause there isn't like fluid discharge and other types of things. So we have this kind of thing going on. If women weren't in sync with the moon, we wouldn't have the human race, so we're glad that that's the case. But really it's just minor variations is all. And we play up that these minor variations make a huge difference in how we are in terms of healing. But if you look at the opposite number and you say 97.83% means that we're the same in terms of genetic structure, of being human. And so much of the effort these days is focused on helping you focus on 2% of who you are instead of the other 90%, 98% of who you are. And they're saying, if you heal this, then that's what you really need. And what's really missing is we still have an address the other 90%, 98% of what it means to be human. Does it mean that women might connect with certain things that men don't connect with? [05:30.3]
Absolutely, I've definitely seen that. But let me give you this one shining example. If you're a woman, you will never not know what it feels like to be a woman. You will never not know, not be in touch with being a woman because everything you feel, what you feel now is what it's like to feel to be a woman, feeling those things. That's it. And so you will always be in touch with what it's like to feel like a woman. And a lot of times what people's ideas are is that they have an idea of what it's supposed to feel like to feel like a woman. And then we're chasing after these ideas and not in touch with reality. The same with men, men are being shown all of these ideas of strong man, muscular men, doing all kinds of things, none of which have proven to be exceptionally like powerful in terms of longevity and health and wellbeing. They just happened to maybe you get a girl or maybe they're features that people tend to like, or you win competitions and whatnot. But none of these particular activities are necessarily the best activities for what it is to be a man either. They just happened to be activities that men have been doing. [06:33.2]
And a lot of guys that are like, man, I need to rediscover my masculinity. I gotta find my masculine energy. They're being led by people who are showing them how to punch and kick and all kinds of stuff. And I do these things too, from a very different standpoint. And so you'll find martial arts tend to be filled with men. You know, healing arts tend to be filled with a lot of women unless they're manipulative healing arts. And then you find a lot of men in them. The medical profession has a lot of men in it and that's changing. I don't actually know what the percentages are now, but that's taken a lot of work from women stepping up and saying, Hey, look, we're equally good as medical professionals. So I want you to look back through the annals of time, way back in the day in the sub-con, the Indian sub-continent. This is a culture that was built around the idea of spirituality around the idea of a human being achieving liberation. So it's not a culture built around domination. It's not a culture built around being right or a single religion. It's a culture with a certain primary focus. So parts of that culture were totally supported by the rest of the culture. Nearly a third of the population walked around, begging for food while the rest of the population just understood that that's not their path, but we need people like that in our community, because those are the people that are going to remind us that there are bigger things here. [07:46.0]
And those are the people that can give us wisdom and times, and their change is also benefiting the land and so they supported this. Inside of that culture, men and women were equal. They were treated as equal. Gender was not made a big issue. The physicality of the body was simply addressed and whatever energy stuff was needed was simply addressed in term in daily life, it was built into the culture. But what happened was invaders started to come in. People like Alexander, the great and others started to come in and they'd see these women and the men preferred to take the women and ravaged them in all kinds of things. So then what happened was in defense, these men hid the women. They hid them in grain silos and protected them and put, put pots over their heads. So it just looked like a stack of, of grain. And then there's just a pot sitting in the middle of it and the woman is safe. And it became this like the men protect the women and the women end up doing certain things. And over time, certain tasks became relegated to women so that the men would be out protecting the borders and whatnot. But that became a, that came out of a necessity from invasion that's in the Indian sub-continent and over time, then women were, have been slowly, slowly relegated to certain roles just based on cast and based on gender with no understanding or no real look at what women are capable of. [09:00.1]
In China, we had a totally different look at things. And again, you have a similar situation, but confucius, this is a 2,500 years ago, right. And he's teaching about the way society should be structured and virtuous and everything else. And he had great teachings and it was a very, very patriarchal society, a patrilineal society where the men were out doing all the big things in the world. And the women were relegated to certain roles and tasks and whatnot. It doesn't mean these women weren't fierce. If you had met any one of them, you would have found that the few Chinese women, real Chinese women, that I've encountered in my life, were definitely just as equally capable as anyone else I've ever met. The point is the teachings came down from this story past. And this tradition that was meant to be upheld and women just got relegated to certain roles. And so ideas about certain activities became masculine and feminine. But I want you to know even further back in the midst of time in those cultures, in Eastern cultures way before we have all this stuff, we have people that are discovering things called energy. Now Chinese call it Chi, the Indians might call it Prana or Shakti, Ki is in Japan or, or in Korea. [10:12.2]
You know, the Navajo have different terms for it. Like there's a different term for all the, whatever this thing is, that's powering your body, right. It's not physical or otherwise we'd be able to see it, but we can't cut open a body and see it. But there's definitely a difference between a living body and a dead body. Then some people have measured it in ounces and whatnot, but the idea is there's something. And I published a book in 2015 on energy healing, if you're interested in exploring that realm, that's called, Is That Even Possible? The Nuts and Bolts of Energy Healing for the Curious, Wary and Totally Bewildered, it's on Amazon. You can check it out. [10:43.3]
If you or someone you know is looking to drop the F-bomb of “Freedom” in their life, whether that's from past trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction, or any other host of emotional and personal struggles, but they just don't know how or wants some help doing it. Head on over to thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow and check out some of the things we've got in store for you or book a call so we can look at your unique situation and get you the help that you're looking for. [11:10.9]
But the idea here is way back. There are people that are discovering how to feel this life force. If you want to call it that, bio energy inside of their system, they can feel it. And as they feel it, they start to work with it and they start to differentiate that this energy has different feelings in different ways. So for instance, even in my own experiences, I've trained this stuff, yang energy, otherwise known as masculine energy has a certain feeling to it. And it has a certain chunkiness to it. It has a certain verve to it. And yin energy has a very different feeling. When those two are combined there’s a different possibility that shows up, and those tend to be dominant in different areas of the body, which means that you man have feminine energy and you woman have masculine energy. But those words were relative words, like I might be considered a yin or feminine to another guy who was more aggressive or masculine. Likewise, I might be considered yang or more masculine to a little boy who maybe was less aggressive or less big or something like that. [12:18.4]
So these were relative terms like good and bad and stronger and weaker and stuff like that, but they became gender related. So it was Yang and Yin. And those were originally ideas that meant the light side of a hill. The site that the sun was baking. So you have heat, you have dryness, you have like radiants and you have movement and stuff. And then you had the cool side of the hill, the shadow side of the hill, which was like cold and damp and still, and things of that nature. And those became like, there's this whole, so you can find charts online. A whole series of different words that compare this Yang and Yin energy. In the West we picked that up as masculine and feminine. And now there's been a ton of books written and a lot of teaching online of a lot of people who heard these terms, associated them with gendered stuff and have felt some intuitions and possibly felt a little bit of energy, but have not differentiated those energies within their own system yet. [13:14.9]
And don't have that level of perception and they're running around saying, Oh yeah, we have to get in touch with the feminine or get in touch with the masculine. And they don't actually know what they're talking about. And so they're talking about certain kinds of activities that dance is feminine, is it? Dance might have a certain quality, but as I last time I checked guys and girls dance. And guys and girls have very different like feeling in dance and yet they can both do different kinds of dance. Is martial arts masculine? There are some of the greatest martial arts in history have been feminine. If you've watched the movie Mulan recently, she was a general in China for like 12 years. She was so good. She helped protect the country. According to what little history we have of Mulan, not the Disney history, the actual history. [14:02.0]
And I used to teach them Mulan fans in my Chinese Kung Fu school and teach people like certain moves that were named after her because she was such a great martial artist. In fact, the entire martial art Ying Wing Chun was developed by a woman for a woman. And now it's dominated by guys who say that Wing Chun, is the best thing that since, since baked bread and you know, there's a lot of great martial artists around it. And Yip Mun has taken the scene, but it was named for a woman, her name was Ying Wing Chun. So is martial arts masculine or feminine? It's simply an activity is dance masculine or feminine? Is massage, masculine or feminine? If I do a deep tissue massage as a guy, is that a masculine or feminine activity? It's simply an activity. And you and I, and the rest of our society has put our ideas about what is masculine and what is feminine on top of it. And as a result, what we come with is like men are from Mars. Women are from Venus and guys versus girls in sitcoms and all kinds of other stuff. And there's a lot of people having this crisis because they don't feel man enough. You can't not be man enough. You're a man. It's your ideas about what being a man are that are in question. And it's your ideas about what being a woman are that are in question. [15:11.2]
Those very ideas are the problem because they have nothing to do with reality. They have nothing to do with your life. They have everything to do with your emotions. They have to do with what people taught you to believe about what you need to be in touch with in order to be a real woman or a real man, or to feel whole and complete. And so if you are a woman wondering, like how do I get in touch with my femininity? Let me suggest that you already are in touch with it. You know exactly what it's like to be in touch with your femininity, as you are handling life, the way that you're handling it. And as a man, you want to get in touch with your masculinity. You already are in touch with it. You’re you're using it the way you're using it right now, but you already are in touch with it. And if you can get past these ideas of what it means to be a guy, what it means to be a girl, we won't have any toxic masculinity and toxic femininity around. [16:02.9]
Because you're already in touch with it. You'll simply do what is needed for each person because 98% of it almost is about being human. And these retreats that we go to, these retreats that we hold, they're literally, they're designed to get past all this talk of like all the ideas of what you think you should be and go straight to the heart of what it is to be the unique person that you are, including your gender, but without having to cater to some idea that somebody handed you about what a gender should be. Unfortunately, because there was so much repression of women over the years, and there had, there's been a ton, much of it's still unchronicled. There's been tons of oppression of men over the years, too, just in a different way. But women have gotten the butt end of the stick for a long time and they started rising and they wanted to be equal. But the problem was they wanted to prove that they were equally good as men. And so they started taking over the activities of men, even though those are activities that maybe they didn't want to do, right. And they started in introducing themselves into male culture and they started becoming like the men because they thought that's what they needed to be and whatnot. And so it goes back and forth. The problem is that they've stepped down and now there's this big movement of women embracing their femininity and men embracing their masculinity. And those are just different boxes. We lift out of one box, which was patriarchal society. [17:18.7]
And we jumped into a second box and anytime you're in a box, you're in bondage. Let me repeat that. Anytime you're in a box, you're in bondage and eventually you will bump up against the side of that box and you will want out. Because no human that I know of likes to be in a cage. As soon as we feel limitation, there is a yearning and a longing inside of us to go beyond that limitation. It's natural. I don't know all the bits and pieces of where it comes from. You could say it's part of your spiritual nature, whatever you want to call it. But any human, as soon as they find a limitation, their natural longing is to go beyond. They may not believe they're capable of going beyond. They may not try to go beyond, but there's a longing on the inside to go beyond, to no longer be limited in that way. And this comes down to one of the basic problems, all suffering; all bondage is a result of everything that you are identified with. [18:14.4]
We run around today and we talk about gender identity. But if your gender is only 2% of who you are, if I took 2% of your anatomy right now, and I said, Hey, this is so-and-so. And I put your genitalia up, not to be crass. But if I did that, would anybody actually believe that that is you? No, that's just a body part. And yet we do the same thing with ourselves and we say, this is how I identify. And the problem with that is not, yeah, if you have same-sex attraction or you're lesbian or gay, or you're straight, and you love that type of thing, or you're bisexual or transgender or anything that's going on, those are simply experiences that you're having in life. And they're likely many of them beautiful experiences for some of you. And for some of you, you don't want those experiences and they are negative, but those are just experiences. If you identify with those experiences, all you've done is limit your life. 98% of you almost, has nothing to do with your gender. And if you could explore that part of what it is to be human, you might just find so much more joy and possibility and potential to explore than constantly being stuck in the box of masculine or feminine. [19:24.7]
So as you're looking through your life this week, let me suggest to you that there are more boxes that you're stuck in than you may have realized. And they have been handed to you by traditions and cultures of people who did that's the way it's always been. And they, they handed it to you that way. But if you really look at life, you really look at what is in front of you and let's assume that what is in front of you was made by a creator who knew what they were doing. Maybe just, maybe you might see through all this boxes and recognize that life itself is maybe telling you something different, especially when it comes to gender, masculinity or femininity. If that person doesn't have a deep perception of the differentiation between those energies in their own system, then they likely just borrowed some terms and are using it because they've had some really powerful even healing and emotional experiences with it, but they don't actually know what they're talking about with regard to masculinity and femininity. [20:20.6]
You, dear listener are a human being. And what is possible with being human is so much greater than what is possible with simply being a man or a woman that is one fraction of what being human really is. And I invite you to explore beyond that and start to look at what life could be, because you know, in the beginning, gender didn't matter to you until hormones took over. At that point in time, yeah, people taught you stuff growing up, but as a baby, gender was no big deal. And then you learned that gender was a big deal. And then hormone showed up and then it really became a big deal. And that's helpful because we exist on the planet because of these hormones, but just because women showed up doesn't mean that gender is really a big deal. Look at the people around you as people. Don't look at them as men or women. See them for what they are. And you might find that your relationships grow a whole lot more smoothly. [21:18.1]
And that's it for todays “Alive and Free Podcast.” If you enjoyed this show and want some more freedom bombs landing in your ear buds, subscribe right now at wherever you get your podcasts from. And, while you're at it, give us a rating and a review. It'll help us keep delivering great stuff to you. Plus, it's just nice to be nice. [21:36.6]
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