In the hour this morning before my son transitioned back to his father’s house, I asked him for a conversation. A fifteen year old’s favorite thing to do with his mother, right? He agreed to sit down, but resisted talking.
So much resistance lately. So much of his energy going toward active resistance. He says that he wants more freedom.
And after trying in multiple ways to approach him about topics like accountability and responsibility, and how if he utilizes more of both of those he actually gets more freedom, I felt it.
Palpable across our large dining room table only used by the two of us.
I felt the energy in the room that told me, “If you let go a little more, the energy of freedom will bless this situation.”
My fifteen year old wants freedom. Of course he does. This is a teen’s job. But it still surprises me how much it happens given how I’ve intended to parent.
But there it was. This intuition to “set him more free.” Not the easiest thing for a mother to do.
THE MASCULINE CRAVES FREEDOM:
They say the masculine needs freedom. Supposedly it’s among the top descriptions of the masculine/male archetype.
This experience with my son this morning has me reflecting on this.
The mother/son relationship is a man’s first impression of the feminine. It’s where the psyche of a man will form its association with the feminine that he takes into all of his relationships with women, and to the eternal feminine.
I’ve parented my child knowing these things. I have not successfully given him the perfect impression of the feminine.
Because no mother does. No mother can.
It’s a part of the soul’s initiation into manhood. To break free of the mother, to become initiated into manhood - hopefully by initiated elders in positive ways, not at a keg party in a frat house. Knowing this, I also put my son into a boys’ initiatory program at the age of 12. So far he’s done six rites of passage. It is progress in the grand scheme of things, but not perfection.
But there is another initiation that a man has to go through, especially if he’s going to be in a love relationship with women, that hardly anyone ever mentions, I think because even most grown men don’t realize it. That being the initiation back into right relationship with the feminine.
The eternal feminine. Beyond the human mother. Beyond all women. Beyond society’s association with the feminine on all levels.
He has to quest, in his man-heart, for his right relationship to the Eternal Mother. To Her. To the Divine Feminine. By any and all names. It’s between him and the Eternal Her.
I work with men who are actively in this quest, as a guide and in part, initiator, and while a woman can help, this is up to men to quest for this in his heart.
FREEDOM FROM WHAT?
I don’t think that it is the evolved and initiated masculine who needs freedom as a primary definition of manhood. I think it is the man who is still seeking freedom from the mother.
The mother who sets the limits, who tells him what to do, who nags him when he doesn’t clean his room. The mother who sometimes gets love right and sometimes doesn’t.
I’ve asked myself over and over - how do I raise a man in my house but not give him this mother complex? With single parenting and daily stressors, I don’t get it right, in ways that he’s telling me he wants freedom from. It’s one of the most continually humbling experiences of my adult life - the experience of raising a son as consciously as I can and still seeing that he’ll have so much of his own work to do after this. Of course he will. If I thought I could be all things feminine to my son, I’d be fucking up even more than I am.
Of course this teenage male would want freedom from imposed limits from mom.
More generally speaking, there is a representation of the feminine that is also very unhealthy and continually controlling with men in general and far beyond the mother/son relationship.
I’ll call this the Lunar Feminine.
The lunar feminine is not aware of how to be lovingly conscious, I’d assume there is still a lot of unresolved trauma and shadow material with her relationship to all levels of the masculine, from man to society to the Divine.
The lunar feminine will go to great lengths to control masculine energy. And a man with an unresolved mother complex is the perfect match for a lunar feminine. Said differently, a man who has not walked through his own soul-level initiations with the feminine at the level of the Divine in his heart, will be a likely partner for a lunar feminine woman.
And in this way, this man will always actually want freedom.
He will feel in his psyche and cells that he has to get away. But he can’t, because he’s also looped into things like obligation, being available to his partner, making himself smaller to her zany feminine ways. He wants freedom, and truly, he should claim it for himself.
But don’t call that a primary masculine stereotype. It’s a symptom of the situation, a symptom of the limitations at play.
FREEDOM THROUGH THE FEMININE: A BROADER DIALOGUE
There is actually, in adult conscious partnerships, an immense freedom in full commitment and full immersion into union.
How can this be? Full freedom in full commitment?
The feminine, by nature, is eternal spaciousness. In nature, it’s actually an eternal sound current, and the masculine an eternal light current. The feminine is incredibly vast and could never be fully tamed or understood.
This intimidates men who are truly uninitiated to the feminine.
In human terms, this vastness can be called things like: emotionality, confusion, craziness, mystical, uncontrollable. Many of the words and associations with the feminine force are the result of how untamable it truly is, and then the male-mind’s reaction to that. Can’t control something? Call it crazy and diminish it. Can’t see your own importance in the vastness? Undermine it. It’s the male behavioral counterpart to the lunar feminine.
To the uninitiated man with an unresolved mother complex, the feminine would be a force to either be dominated and controlled, understood and defined, or obeyed, to his own detriment. You see this throughout history. His ego identity will be confused and intimidated by the true vastness of the eternal feminine. And yet, in his subconscious he also craves it more than anything else.
To the initiated conscious man who honors the truth of what the feminine is, he knows that his masculinity is in direct proportionality to how much he honors the vastness.
And he actually finds his freedom in that.
He becomes the eternal match of electrifying light for her feminine nature of eternal sound. Both are eternal. Both want to be in union. The opportunity to be fully expressed, whether feminine or masculine, is freedom.
Read that again - full expression is freedom.
A MOTHER’S ROLE IN CULTIVATING MASCULINE ENERGY
It’s not my role in my son’s life to get him to this place of knowing the eternal feminine and his potentiality of eternal freedom through his own, full expression of his true self. I am the first woman, the first impression of mother as feminine energy.
I am the one he has to rebel against. And I know that he has to. He has to break free of the mother in order to become a man. And so I don’t give him endless permissions or stop being an active parent. Not at all. The dichotomy of “be controlled or be free” is actually a false one. I hope I can teach him this. What I try to give him are opportunities for self-responsibility and self-expression.
This morning I said to him, “Please do not waste your energy rebelling against me or your father. Spend your energy becoming who you truly are.”
Do not be a man defining your freedom through your rebellion, be a man defining your freedom by being in your fullest expression.
I do not set you free to just anything. I set you free unto yourself.
And yes, my dear son, one day I hope you learn how much your relationship with the true feminine can truly set you free. I hope that is the kind of man that you become.
In the meanwhile, it is an honor to be the woman who gets to be your mom.
Sarah Poet, M.Ed is a coach & consultant in conscious feminine and masculine relating for women, men, couples and organizations. As a former educator of adolescents, she also helps teens and families. She doesn’t have it all figured out, but that is not the point. The point is, can we come together in right relationship and learn how to have innovative conversations and more conscious relating? This is what Sarah is in service to. Explore her service offerings and schedule consultations and appointments at www.sarahpoet.com.
I'm amazed how spot on this is, like wow. Its everything I've recently learned summed up perfectly 🥰