From Women - About Women: A reader's poll

We put out a call to you, our reader, to participate in a reader’s poll.
We asked these 4 questions:

1. What issues are you facing as a man or woman as the world changes?
2. What are you thinking about or how is your role changing?
3. How are your relationships with others of your same gender changing or growing?
4. How are you perceiving others of the opposite sex?

These are the answers from the women. We only edited a bit for clarity and published most all of your responses. We hope you will find this as interesting as we did.

I am an older woman — 63 this year and married to the same man for 40 years. For the longest time I thought I understood men, women and marriage. In the past few years when my marriage was in chaos, I learned I had a voice, I have been finding that I am re-learning the role of men, women and marriage. Wonderful trip, bit scary and so glad I am on this adventure.
Blessings
Anne, Brownfield, Maine

Many years ago when I was young (17 years old) I painted a picture of a goddess rising out of a field of skulls. She was sending blessings and emerging with new life. Perhaps this IS the time of Kali(yuga) The time where woman’s spirituality is emerging and finally after all these thousands of years, giving direct expression of Herself — Kali both as destuctress and giver of new life in her own Power renewing and shifting this world.

In my work I see many shifts. I work with the elderly in a psychiatric hospital. Many men that come have never learned to be attuned to their emotions. They come from the old school “of men don’t cry”. Yet I see many elderly men/ clients for the first time in their lives having to deal with emotions, and feelings, and I see them dealing with issues on learning to live with their sensitivity. Men that are 70, 80 years old that are learning that they are caring and nurturing beings with big BIG hearts. Some of these men have served in very hard and tough situations and jobs careers their whole lives. It is very exciting to see this.

I am not married. I live a celibate life as a nun. I do not read much at all about living a celibate life. So many of the new age thinkers and teachers have thrown out celibacy as traditionalist, rigid, and no longer viable or necessary. There has been an explosion of looking at relationships, and intimacy within new frameworks based on deep Insight and Freedom — a relationship as a direct expression of the Heart.

For me that is how I live my celibate life. I work consciously with the life force/sexual energy. One has to be very, very aware and work with it skillfully, with as much intention and attention as one would in an intimate relationship.

I realize that this email does not answer your poll, the question of gender and relationship in this time of shift and change and renewal. But I also wanted to write that within me is a new exploration of celibacy, an expression of life that goes much further than simply “no sex”, and so called abstinence, not out of some puritanical understanding but also a direct expression of relation/of the Heart, in the full expression of life.
In the dharma, Anita

We want to know what issues you are facing as a man or woman as the world changes. What are you thinking about or how is your role changing?

As a woman I find that the man in my life does not want to grow spiritually and it is bringing me down. In addition, he makes a high salary so I face a lower income level if I leave. Which I am planning on doing eventually.

How are your relationships with others of your same gender changing or growing?

Most of my women friends are in the same situation. It seems like supporting ourselves financially is a real challenge.

How are you perceiving others of the opposite sex — in other words what do you see happening with the men in your life.

Many men appear to be stuck. Very stubborn I would say on how they want to live their lives.

I am 56 years old, grew up in Austria, continued my adult life in Mexico and came back to live in Europe in my third marriage, with 2 stepdaughters in Germany, but without my sons who stayed on in Mexico.

In several partnerships and relationships with older generations, offspring and numerous friends in many countries, I have learned that it is great to consciously live as a woman in this lifetime.

When I was a young girl, sex was the one topic never talked about by my devout catholic mother, as if we too had come from virgin birth somehow. My name being Eva, I had to find out more. And I did. I felt confused for many years because I had a professional attitude in the workplace where being a woman was an inferior position. However, I also grew into full womanhood as wife and mother in Mexico. The mother image in Mexico is much better than in modern Germany and helped me identify with the Great Mother. My own mother was a very authoritarian figure when she was younger but became a sweet and loving grandmother over the years.

By taking back our own power, developing love for ourselves as women and mothers, we became whole and centered which allowed the males in our surroundings to feel accepted without having to be heroes, machos or servants.

I feel now that the role of mother is pivotal in a family/ society. We are all born of mothers. All men are sons, all women daughters. When our mothers are loved and their sexuality celebrated and personal freedom respected, we can all explore life from a source of joy that never fails because we were fed the water of life with our mother’s milk. A woman who loves her partner and herself will radiate this light. When all women love themselves and all men love the women they are in relationship with, we will vibrate in harmony and creative joy.
Hugs and smiles, Eva Germany

Okay, I will tell you what I think of the females of my generation and younger. I am now 53 years old and have been a OB/GYN nurse for 34 years. It was in my generation where divorce became more acceptable.

The Opra Show states that 51 % of the Mother’s in the United States are single mothers. Many of the Women that are now in their 30′s and 40′s lived with a male partner, had children but never got married. And many of the girls in their 20′s are having children, but not living with the father of their children, and choosing to stay home with their own parents. Thus, the grandparents are helping to raise their grandchildren.

Personally, I think that most Women are becoming less dependent on Men and can hold their own. They are becoming less co-dependent on a man for their survival. At the same time, the “Family” as we know it, is imbalanced. Raising my children alone for the last 13 years has been one of the hardest tasks I have ever experienced! And I am still doing it. Maybe the pendulum will swing the other way in the next generations to come. But now, I see the family unit as broken and imbalanced.

Women however, are much more independent and powerful in the work place. They are great at multi-tasking and are good at prioritizing their duties in the work situation. However, when the Women is taken out of the Home for at least 40 hours a week or more, the home-cooked meals are almost a thing of the past except on major holidays. And it’s very hard to keep up with the laundry and house cleaning. Having time to balance one’s check book is even a challenge, and I know that other women have voiced the same concerns.

When the children are living with their Mother 24 x 7, it’s impossible to get every thing done at home. Three of the OB/GYN Dr’s I work with are single moms. And three of the Nurses I work with are also single moms. We are all “the responsible” parent, while the Fathers have not accepted their role’s as Father on a daily basis. In my opinion, most of the males of the United States are emotionally weak. Many men have run away from responsibilities within the family unit. They do not see the sacredness of life and just want to be free and go play. I realize that there are a few responsible Fathers out there as was my own Father, but they are growing fewer, and fewer as the years go by. I know this, by seeing the young single girls who come into our ob/gyn Dr’s office as single, first time mothers. In my observation, it’s sad what has happened to America and other countries where the mother has been forced out of the home to survive financially and make a living. Our Children have suffered.

I am a long-time closet fan of Drunvalo’s work. I am also a woman and one reason I am choosing to address this inquiry with “About Women” is because 3 years ago when I turned 30, I came out as a lesbian (well…I came out as a bisexual first).

For me, a BIG part of my consciousness journey was shedding the many, many layers of societal expectations and parental programming that I was using a lot of my energy to hold in place. As I have grown into this new understanding of who I am as a sexual being, I have also come to understand issues around gender differently.

While my female identification and the glorification of that identification is strong in me, I have developed a relationship with the masculine side of my nature. See, for years, I lived in a kind of split reality where I was identifying fully as a feminine female, but there was the fragmented and alienated man inside me as well. This “severed” man would whisper to me his attractions and repulsions of the women I encountered, but I wasn’t able to integrate this fractured part of me until I gave myself permission to entertain the idea that I might be just a little bit gay.

When I was in my teens and 20′s, I was that girl who had a zillion guy friends, but got easily bored and agitated when the girls wanted to hang out and do girly things.

Now I don’t think I have any close guy friends, but I love all the ladies in my life!

I find men to be kind of dull, competitive, out of touch and narrow-focused a lot of the time (of course, none of you!), while women are alive and electric! (and soooo much softer and more sensual)

A lot of my female friends are straight and were my friends prior to my coming out, but since coming out, my friendships with them have blossomed because I am able to treat them with a kind of intuitive sensitivity paired with a chivalrous and confident stance that they crave from the men in their life but rarely get. I’ve even tempted a few to explore “my side”.

Anyway, it’s been a great journey and I am happier, healthier and more full of life than I’ve ever known possible!
Hope this is useful!
Love, Carter Prema Jaya Saraswati Devi

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to express my opinions.

I’m not in a relationship at the moment although most of my life has been spent in a relationship with a man. It’s in my karma to develop my spiritual identity and for the moment this, together with my spiritual therapy work, means that a relationship is not on the agenda. Mind you, I have not met any men of late who are free who correspond to my partnership needs. My personal experience with men has a lot to do with re-encountering men from my karmic past to resolve issues and let them go, Fortunately I feel I have done just this.

Some people say to me that when a relationship ends this means failure. For me it’s a question of growth and should there be no visible growth I’d say it’s a question of paving the way for growth.

My growth was not met with growth on the part of my former partners, as far as I could see. I came to understand that we each must freely make our own choices. When it became clear to me that my choices were neither shared nor appreciated this led me to renounce. It also became clear to me that in certain cases this involved a non conscious attempt to obstruct my spiritual progress. This has also happened to me with certain women so I can’t attribute this to gender specific behavior.

For many years I worked on female identity. This involved running multi-method experiential women’s groups, discovering expressing and developing aspects of female identity. Perhaps the single most important point which I have learned in the process is that a balanced relationship between the sexes involves unity in diversity: both the man and the woman having a sufficiently developed gender identity and a certain measure of autonomy to truly relate and love. Stated differently, relating to someone implies a two term interaction and not a fusion. A prerequisite for this is for each to have achieved a good balance between male and female psychical components.

Women seem at an advantage these days, despite distorted societal male and female models, in that men in society seem still to have more difficulty in role flexibility. In Italy where I live, change in roles is slower than elsewhere. Yesterday I heard a 47 year old man who is a bank executive say that little has changed in his life. When he got married his parents moved into another flat and his wife moved in with him. My mother went away and my wife arrived, he said, concluding that this didn’t change things particularly. Many people here still live according to a rather strict division of gender roles, particularly within the family.

Among my circle of friends and clients a certain number of women are working to improve themselves, and most have been doing so for a number of years. Often the focus for change is personal and relationship orientated. It’s difficult to make generalizations or to quantify a success rate but there are two broad categories in my experience: those who are making visible progress and those who seem to be learning to “limp” better rather than heal. I work with two other healers and we agree that in our circles many people have been facing knotty problems in recent years and in the last year roughly various people are making unexpected progress. This is also true of myself in many ways. I am more able to be myself in facing situations, more authentic in my relationships. This is influencing positively the people I relate to. The role of reciprocity in our mutual progress is central to this process. Although there are exceptions to the general rule I have to admit that this kind of reciprocity is much more common between women than between women and men.
Best wishes, Carole Campbell Spencer

I was raised to believe that women were born to get married, have children, and do household chores while stretching every dollar.

When I became a wife, I tried to silence the voice inside of me that told me I was born to be much more than what I was, and as a result, I became codependent on a relationship that sometimes seemed comfortable because I had to descend into a lower plane in order to make the relationship work. I had to silence my voice.

Over the years, while pursuing and achieving a higher level of consciousness, I now know for a fact that I can choose to be with a man, but I don’t need to. I can enjoy a man’s company, his friendship, his affection, and have great sex without feeling that I’m cheating myself and that I’m less than an equal.
Ines, Puerto Rico

First, I would like to comment on my own personal relationship on this plane. (Above 4th plane [I believe] there are no genders, no polarities.)

I have been with my husband since 1968 and I am experiencing the most wonderful changing relationship. Prior to becoming a student of a Gnostic School (Ramtha’s School of Ancient Wisdom) in 1998, I could easily think of legitimate reasons why not to appreciate my beautiful husband.

I did not appreciate his generosity and his ways of saying “I love you” whether it was an extra dollop of mashed potatoes, or a pickled onion! He was so quiet, that I often times did not even ask him what he wanted Or thought, I assumed I knew!

I easily blamed him for anything which was not quite right in my life. Then I discovered the school. And I was on my way to enlightenment, and no one was not going to keep me back!

Then came the truth!

The first truth, I realized, was that I was not even ON the journey. I Had not even taken the first step.

Then the second truth and my first step on the journey was to look at BLAME. I pondered it all day with the help of another student and I realized everything I thought my husband was — yes, you guessed it, was ME!

I realized he was a mirror of myself — every little niggly thing was ME! Nothing escapes a mirror — it is true reflection of the person peering into it.
What a wondrous lesson! Once I owned BLAME, then CONTROL, then JUDGEMENT, SELF-IMPORTANCE and….so on, guess what?

My most beautiful husband (who was always that way) emerged. I spoke less, he spoke more and I listened. His focus, patience, gentle ways, became mine also. We laugh a lot. We are allowing, forgiving, loving. And the magic of it all is that I now know that the beautiful things I see in him are also in me.

So for relationships of any sort, I learned — LOVE THYSELF — and the reflection then can be only LOVE.

Secondly, as you can imagine, by taking full responsibility for myself and my life, my relationships with others, men and women, have improved and continue to improve. I love my life and everyone in it!
Bron, Maleny Queensland, Australia

I feel like my whole female being has been changing for the last few years. It is as though I’m leaving behind any situation in which I am not at conscious choice in regard to the woman’s place in the world and within the family.

This pertains to any submission to anything in life, even if it was done willingly from my point of view. It has a lot to do with my relation to my partner and also to my children (4 of them and the last one is 16).

It seems I just can’t do anything that I don’t feel it inside anymore even if it is cooking dinner for the family or cleaning the house (and I cannot live in a dirty house).

I also have the feeling that something about my place as a woman — something that has been going on for as long as I can remember — is also healing within me.

I did realize that many of my female friends have been going through similar things and it seems that these things are now beginning in friends who have not been previously open to the energy changes.

I still do my part in the family but I do not accept being ordered around by my husband (even though he is a very dear man) or from my teenagers anymore.

I’m not angry. I’m just starting to respect myself in every small situation of life, especially the ones which seemed to me quite insignificant just a short time ago.
Isabelle, France

At my age, (77) I feel that my relationship with my husband will not change for the better. We have been together too long and while I have kept up with new changes in our world today, he will not. So, I just accept it and keep myself active in projects that interest me.

Women today are terrific. They are so good at communicating there thoughts and feelings. It was not so when I was younger, particularly if you came from a strict and old fashioned culture. Today, some women my age still think the way they did 40 or 50 years ago. Not all of them, but a great number of them. My relationships are with women that are in their 50′s and 60′s. I have adopted so many of them and they keep me young as I learn so much from them. God bless them.

I try to attend Workshops that deal with the issues and feelings of women today and that has helped me cope with the inadequacies of my marriage. My husband is a wonderful man, but he’s too settled in his ways and ideas and I respect that, but I choose to move forward with the times.

I don’t know if this will be of any interest for your articles, but there it is. It just felt good to write my feelings and get some of my frustrations off my chest.

Thanks for your time and continue your good work.
Many Blessings.

Dearest all,
What’s going on in my life, how do I perceive things? I feel free.

Before I was not at all free. I have let others dictate my life, felt like a victim of the limitations I found myself in and I followed a narrow and painful road. I felt very unworthy. I have lived my life for so long with these heavy emotional and fatiguing storms. I have felt so sad and hurt and tired, and now I find it almost incomparable if I look at the way I have changed these last years , months and even days. I perceive the worldly issues in a very different way.

I very consciously seek everyday, the stillness amongst the world around me and if I manage to stay centered in the midst of the noise it is an unbelievable beautiful feeling — as if I am in the eye of the storm, not moving at all while everything around me is turbulent..

I feel at peace Halleluja if I stay awake and if I don’t let myself be carried away by the sometimes craziness of my environment or the emotions of the ones around me. The more I manage to stay in touch with my real home while I am in the midst of my present life, the stronger the Joy that I am starting to feel.

I still have my job which is not to demanding and I work with and meet many people.

I am still working on myself, trying to get clearer and clearer as days go by — becoming more and more who I really am. I am not there yet, and I feel it is inside of me and I feel this deep movement of quiet and yet overwhelming Joy and Love in my heart.

I do not accomplish great things in the eyes of this world maybe. I only walk through my life with this one desire in my heart to walk the path of Truth that my light may shine brighter everyday and every moment and try to interweave this Freedom and Joy and this new perception that glimmers more conscious in myself and my life. Hopefully this will reflect in the world and the ones around me.
With Love, Leyla — age 49