BECOMING A MAN IS A PROJECT, BECOMING A WOMAN IS A REALISATION.
The small differences that determine a huge variation in the manifestation of human power.
Is it necessary to speak of masculine energy in order to describe powerful feminine energy? To describe something deep, it is necessary to begin with the superficial.
The man is not made by the mere fact of being born man. He also has to do something to become one. He has to gain or achieve something. The man is born to go out looking, to be playing something throughout his whole life , to have money, hobbies, to perform space travel, to be number one in a sport, to become president or millionaire. The penis and its pointing towards any type of hole confining the man to be always calculating how and when to put his penis through some type of hole. There are so many emotional, business, sexual, professional, spiritual or human holes that tempt you to be penetrated that you only live for that, to PENETRATE. To enter with the penis. The holes represent the goals and objectives, and the penis represents the unsatisfied psyche of man. Therefore, the life of man runs in struggle mode to achieve all that is proposed. Wanting to become is the most sophisticated neurosis that humans have, and of all the possibilities of wanting to become, the most complex, challenging and complicated is to become a man, a feat almost impossible to achieve because most of our mothers have confined us to being eternal children.
The woman is made by the mere fact of being one. She does not need anything more than being a woman to feel that she has arrived, she has nothing to do or even to be. If you are a woman you already have everything, you do not need anything more than being born a woman. Everything else will come your way. It does not occur to you to become a woman because you already are, you carry it inside, you feel it as your essence.
Here is a clarification those who believe that I am comparing: if I speak of white and black I do not compare them but I describe them. White is cold, black is hot; white rejects the light, black absorbs it. In this sense we can say that black is warmer than white and that white is colder than black, but I am not claiming that one is better than the other. There is no comparison but a conscious observation of the characteristics of each one.
When we speak of the man and woman, an internal comparison is inevitable because the speaker can be male or female, or they may wish to be a man or be a woman, or they may reject some masculine or feminine part of themself or other human beings. There will be no objectivity in any case. That is, we are facing a vision of two energetic states that come from an internal projection. To speak of the man or the woman is not to speak of the man or the woman but of different states or colours, of different realities or conditions; and any vision we give will be contaminated by different types of subjectivities and valuations that are unreliable from the point of view of the purity of observation.
I recently told a tremendously intelligent young man: “your girlfriend overpowers you.” Today that man wrote me this short letter: “Alberto, I have been tormented from the day you told me that. The problem is that I think that’s the case, but I do not want to live competing or take away my peace, harmony or well-being, but I admit that it hurts me to feel inferior. You also told me that I should dare to feel inferior because with it I would mature as a man; But are there superior and inferior people? It is clear that there are people braver than others, more persistent, more responsible; and that probably my girlfriend is greater than me in the sense that she is all those things combined. But I do not want to feel that way. On the other hand I consider others inferior to me, but that does not suppose an interference in my life, but to compare myself with my girlfriend yes. This brings me complete rage. It makes me feel like shit and it awakens my hatred for her and also my hate towards you for telling me. But I know that something that was already in me was activated and that you did it for some reason. Perhaps I have built my identity based on comparing myself with others and that is falling apart as part of my process of improvement, because it disconnects me. It could be that I always tried to be the best, although mentally I do not think there is anyone superior or inferior, although I do believe that someone can overcome another in a skill.”
There are five things you have said that are key to identifying and addressing them well:
- That you feel inferior.
- That you do not believe that there is inferior and superior.
- That you do not want to compete or compare yourself so as not to suffer.
- That hate is produced in you when you are made to see the inferiority that you do not want to accept.
- That you have dedicated your entire life to being superior but you have not yet achieved it.
Feeling inferior is not as serious as it seems. The tragedy is not recognising it if you feel it. What stagnates you is not wanting to see the inferiority when you are feeling it and you suffer it, because in this way you will never be able to overcome it. When you do not want to recognise this reality, you choose to do everything to feel superior, and even if we get it, the feeling of inferiority will still be there deeply hidden, because the idea of inferiority can not be replaced by superiority, You can superimpose over it to try to hide it but not heal it by feeling superior. You will only forget for a moment how inferior you felt. Even the inferiority complex is dangerous because underneath the supposed power that you acquire by feeling superior you hide a hatred and resentment that can come out in a virulent way by using the place of authority that you have achieved in forcing a superiority. It is the cradle of tyrants, dictators, and all kinds of messianic supremacies.
My suggestion to you at the time was that you surrender yourself to the feeling of inferiority because it is the fastest way to take responsibility for the reality in which you live “I AM INFERIOR”, so what?
If you want to go deeper by using what is happening to you, I could tell you that the basic situation that can be seen in your question and in almost all human reality is the struggle for power. What has the power? The hole or the penis? Money or sex? Force or seduction? Sensibility or coldness? Emotion or intelligence? To be multi-orgasmic or a premature ejaculator? To want or to be desired? To be successful or o be beautiful? Being a businessman or being a prostitute? Being a project or a realisation? Being a father or being a mother? To be a man or to be a woman? To be president or to be the president’s wife? The majority of wives of the great dictators of history have known how to use men very well to fulfil their hidden objectives. If you are the wife of an artist, a creative, sensitive and vulnerable man, surely you will not be able to do the same. Power can be used on those who want it, but when a man does not want power, he leaves the woman without the power to dominate him. It is part of this complex law that governs power struggles.
If you want someone you are using the power of seduction to dominate who you want. If you do what is necessary to create desire in others you are using the energy of seduction to have power. Whether you desire or want to be desired, you acquire a false power. But if someone really desires or is really desired, without being interested in the power that desire could give them, then they put themself above both because they do not care. Then real power comes to them.
While we are beneath the mechanisms that control and dominate us we will be slaves of them. We will not overcome them only by realising how we have fallen into these power games, because the solution is deeper and more complex.
The woman, superficial as it may seem, always has a predisposition to go deepen. She has a deep hole in her body through which the penis of man penetrates. The semen reaches the depths to fertilize and produce life. This in itself is a biological factor that marks one of the great differences with the man. I know many women who even hide their ability to go deeper because they do not want to scare off the man they are with. They prefer to demonstrate that they are superficial so as not to bother them or lose them. But when they are not with them and they are any topic in-depth is proposed to or raised with them, they react immediately by opening to “go inside”. In this sense they seem more courageous and determined to jump, to submerge, to enter, to feel and to look inside. But man is much more superficial in general. When a man is profound it is because he has developed the feminine part much more than the masculine, as if the feminine were a condition more in keeping with life and its nature. To settle in something concrete rather than travelling through unattainable projects. These are just some differences that do not make women better or worse, but very different. But these differences are perceived as a loss of power by most men.
If we leave the feminine and masculine genres for a moment, we can see more things on the same subject. Many people seek to feel superior by being better than others. That gives them a special power that is enjoyed because they see themselves at the top; as if they were the maximum, the unattainable. One day a girl said to me: “I want to always have the best mobile phone that exists in order to show my friends that I am the best”. When she told me, I congratulated her for being so sincere. It was a magical moment of recognition of that search for superiority over others and whoever wants to achieve it by having something that another can not have. This is human history, and the power struggle that we have been dragging on ever since.
Two years ago a psychologist and a professor from a US university told me he had to talk to me. He waited 2 hours for me at the hotel where I was in Mexico City. When I saw him he said: “I looked for you and waited to tell you that you you have the power to decide which way the use of Ayahuasca will go in the world. You can use all your communication devices, your charismatic power, your experience and your influence to say how Ayahuasca should be used, and most of those who read or listen to you will follow what you say. In fact you are doing it now, but you must be aware of it.” This man has been fundamental in my awareness of the power I have in relation to something, but it took me months to cleanse my mind of that absurd belief. The mind, the self, the identifications…they want to have and manage power, a lot of power over others. But really, what do I want to have that power for? What does it mean to me to hold a certain power? Is it real power? Can that power make me happy and allow me to live in harmony? What if my happiness depended on being a source of inspiration for others to reach the level of power they can and can not achieve?
If you are focused on the fact that you can have power by being the best, and suddenly a woman comes to you and shows you in your face that she are better than you, you are in a big mess. Either you will have to recognise her superiority, or you will try to fight to sustain the idea that you are superior (which will make you lower than you were before you knew), by doing everything to overcome it because it is something you can not afford. If you recognise her superiority you will be accessing the path of understanding. If you fight, everything will be complicated by greater incomprehension.
Someday you will see that behind the superiority complex there is a search for power, and that behind the inferiority complex there is another power struggle. Both want to have power from different places. Some from domination and others from submission, some from slavery and others from freedom, some from victim-hood and others from abuse, some from pride and others from humility. But when you leave this bipolar search for power you will begin to feel that power is inherent in your own level of consciousness, your ability to realise it, your ability not to get caught up in false power games. Then you will access a space of harmony, a relaxation in relation to the power that will give you the same as whoever has or doesn’t have it, because what will matter most is knowing that the only power that exists is in the fact of being unaware of one’s own power. There is no power greater than this. I refer to the fact of living in power but not bragging about it. To feel the power in your guts but not to use it abusively. To have increasingly large quotas of power but not to use them to subjugate others, but rather to support and accompany them on the way to the meeting of their own power. Those who have come to have some kind of power are corrupted in their use of power, including teachers and spiritual gurus, because it is the great temptation of the human. Being unconscious of power does not mean that you do not know that you have it, but that your mind does not resort to the fact that you have it because you consider it more as a responsibility. So if you are responsible for your power, it is because you have it in your hands, and not power that holds you.
Why don’t you collaborate in the development of your girlfriend’s power? Support her in her quest for power, accompany her in achieving all that her power allows, inspire her to realise herself through the flourishing of her power. What do you think is going to happen to you? That she is going to crush you with this power? I must give you the bad news that this will not happen. You will only receive love and gratitude, admiration and respect. And is that not a part of the authentic power you are looking for? Perhaps unconsciously it is what you never want to have: AUTHENTIC POWER OVER YOURSELF.
Right now I went down to get a juice from the kitchen of my house and I found a woman talking to a man on the phone. She is a student of our school. In the tone that she spoke and was spoken to (because it was very easy to here) she could perceive the tremendous darkness in human relationships when there is a power struggle. Perhaps because of this, the woman had all the lights of the house on.
Alberto José Varela
