Last week, I attracted something to me through a wound I still carried. It was a fascinating experience and the insight came quickly, which I’m grateful for.
While I knew I still had residual pain about the topic, I could only see that I’d attracted through that pain when on the other side of it.
And after I’d chosen differently.
It’s like in relationships when we attract the same thing to ourselves, over and over, as an opportunity to work out what truly exists within us. It’s not about the other person so much as it’s about what we are being given the opportunity to learn and the energetic pattern we are now able to release.
Into my inbox had come a request for help from a local man. He said he was struggling and personally grappling because he knew that there was a man in our town who was taking advantage of women through his position of authority and spirituality. He said that he just wasn’t okay with this anymore.
He even said that he’d received my name in his meditations about this as someone who could help! The divine was involved!
I was thinking, “Wow, I’m finally going to get to do the work I’ve been wanting and willing to do for so long. I’m finally being recognized for the wisdom I’ve cultivated. And God is even in on it!”
THE HISTORY - ABBREVIATED.
I have carried so much pain about this topic, because I have been close to a few prominent men, in positions of authority in spiritual or men’s work communities, who I’ve learned were not actually acting in integrity, particularly where women and the feminine were concerned.
When I had attempted in the past to name it, the same individuals who called me a friend, who supported my work in masculine and feminine energetics, and claimed to support my professional path, would completely and totally disregard me.
Over the years there were so many examples that demonstrated that it was as though I had to exist within their power, ego and hidden shadow, not actually shining my own light and wisdom, in order to be accepted and professionally supported.
If they were happy with my insights about masculine / feminine and it supported them, then I’d perhaps have friendships, invitations to collaborate, and support in the community exposing my work.
But if I didn’t exactly support their stance, behaviors, or lack of integrity, then I’d miss out on connection, work, and income.
This happened literally over and over. One man who is a local shadow-work practitioner said that unless I came to him to work on my shadow, he wouldn’t support the presentation proposal I’d just submitted to the group he was affiliated with. I knew in my being that this was not what I needed and it felt imposing and also limiting. I believe he likely played an active part in blocking my proposal.
THE WOUND.
Perhaps needless to say, I have carried rejection and pain about this complex history. But also, this has negatively impacted my livelihood.
And, this is the story that I told myself and what I held in my heart.
The story also went something like this….
“When I give my resources to men, they are taken advantage of and I’m left with less available for myself and my child.”
“Men want my wisdom and accolades when it makes them feel good, but reject my wisdom when it challenges their evolution.”
“Men want my energy for free.”
And sure enough, this is what I’ve experienced. No matter what approach or tone, no matter how much I cultivated my feminine (internalizing the causality), it continued to happen.
It wasn’t about how I behaved as a woman, rather, it was the underlying and inherently patriarchal energetics still at play.
WILL IT BE DIFFERENT THIS TIME?
When we carry a wound, we want someone to come show us that it can be different this time. We want the evidence to the contrary. We want to be shown that our stories of pain, being unloved, having been taken advantage of, our unworthiness, etc, can now be proven wrong.
I wanted, when I received the inquiry, an opportunity that would disprove what I’d been shown before.
Did it? Of course not.
Long story short, the man was not going to hire me. He enjoyed talking to me and wanted more of it. He didn’t consider hiring me, but instead decided he was attracted to me (this is common in spiritually-seeking men who don’t fully know how to honor the cultivated wisdom of women). He was also not available for commitment in relationships with women, so in essence, he just wanted to have my feminine energy and resources available to him. He likely wants this from other women too. The same pattern I’d experienced plenty of times, and the same pattern in the spiritual self-appointed guru who was bothering him. Of course, this insight was also rejected when I shared it with him.
He came to me with his concern, he said he heard my name ten times through divine guidance, and he rejected what I said. Okay, no problem.
But this isn’t about him. I mean, thank goodness it didn’t work out.
Because there was liberation in it.
Because it’s been years of me defining my feminine resources and value, discerning what I will and will not give, cultivating self worth and self love, being able to detect when a man would like to take without replenishing, and being able to trust my cultivated feminine wisdom and gnosis in connection to the divine, above anything else externally.
It was a graduation, glory glory.
It was an opportunity to look at the wound that had been cleaned out but hadn’t quite healed. It was an opportunity to discern that it was not a good investment of my feminine resources.
It was an opportunity to know what I know, without needing a man to validate it, with his intellect, approval, love, or money.
It was an opportunity to reflect that I no longer participate in games of extraction. And I don’t need to attract any more opportunities to realize that.
WOUNDS OF EXTRACTION:
While this is a much bigger topic that I plan to address extensively in my work, I’ll say here that I fully have come to see that the heart of the wound in women around self-value, exchange, self-worth and such related topics is actually based in experiences of feminine resource extraction.
Over time, we’ve needed to trade our feminine resources for our external resources and our security. This could include subduing our thoughts or wisdom, trading marriage and sex for security and a home, and countless other examples of the things that women have had to do in order to have what we’ve needed inside of the culture as it has so-far existed.
Historically, if a man, church, or husband was not approving of our behavior, we risked losing. If women rocked the boat, we could miss out from the men of privilege who had (historically) greater access to financial resources and also decision making power. You could call this “gate keeping.”
It happens all the time. I have not been allowed into spaces with my work in feminine and masculine because the male gatekeepers were those I referenced earlier. I have, over the years, missed out on economic opportunities and even housing for my child and I because of these old antics. And in a place that’s supposedly “progressive,” Asheville NC, and by men who are supposedly “conscious.” And also, my work could have actually helped to progress consciousness and connection among men and women! That’s the incredible irony.
Through my experience, I’ve developed a concept that there are eight inherent feminine resources in women. These are inherent and implicit resources, regardless of economic value. Some, like time, we could trade for economic value, and yet others, like women’s care and capacity to love, has been expected but not economically compensated.
I’m not saying that economics should be the measure of true value. In fact, I’m saying the opposite. I’m saying that women can completely redefine their own worth and value by removing the concept of money and value exchange from their inherent resource worth as women. When we rebuild our own definitions of inherent value, then what we will and will not exchange, whether economically or energetically, becomes much more concrete to us.
For example, we don’t invest our feminine insight, energy, time and love into a man who will never commit when what we desire is commitment. Or we will not invest for free if what we need is paid work.
Our internal feminine resources are the very basis of everything we’ve got. It’s time to stop defining our value according to what is either given masculine approval or economic value.
LIBERATION:
I don’t exactly know how or why, because it exists within the fabric of my soul, but I feel liberated.
Perhaps it was my early “no thank you,” perhaps it was a satisfaction with knowing what I know and trusting myself regardless of anyone else’s behavior, approval or compensation. Perhaps it is a readiness to just move on and to also receive from places that celebrate the feminine and want to amplify its inherent resource abundance.
Yes to that.
And perhaps, and this feels true, it has to do with the simultaneous and planetary opportunities for women to release all wounds of extraction, all wounds of our feminine resources being taken advantage of, and to receive all opportunities to come out from behind the veil of illusion of false masculinity being the powerful and decision-making force on our planet.
If a man self-proclaims himself as spiritual or woke, it matters not.
There is ONE thing that matters and determines how conscious a man actually is. One thing.
Are his behaviors inherently extractive of the feminine, or does he invest in the amplification of thriving life by recognizing the true value of the feminine?
This is the difference between ego and honor.
This is the difference between boy and man.
This is the difference between authority and leadership.
And this is an inside job within men.
More and more, women will be able to detect his lip-service versus his true embodiment of honor, and honor for the whole of her resources and the whole of her life - including her children and creations.
I am grateful to witness more evidence of the lengthy and persistent path of detangling my woman-self from the extractive patriarchal paradigm now paying off.
A path that no man needs to validate. But certainly, one that willing men could learn from.
I'm over here, ready to receive honorable invitations and energetic compensation!
Maybe when all the women are sovereign in their feminine resources and stop allowing men to subtly extract from them, and men are thirsty and realizing that the only way to truly approach the Well is with honor, then we will experience a paradigm shift.
Women, we will go first. We are.
But we do not need to participate in extraction, and we do not need to attract from there either, to have a man prove to us that it is done.
It is done when we know it is done, when our energy says it is done.
Say it with me. "It is done."
Sarah Poet is a subject-matter expert in feminine/masculine dynamics and remapping connection between men and women based in sovereignty and integrity.
Learn more at www.SarahPoet.com and schedule sessions for women, men, couples and organizations with services ranging from speaking to consulting and healing.
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