I have pulled this up from the "Different languages" discussion because a member has been showing it to men and women and getting very different reactions. What do you make of it. If the woman asking a straigh-forward question and the man being evasive or is the woman being aggressive and the man trying to avoid an argument, or what?
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What a beautiful description of your soul Maithrisimha. So nice of you that you have the courage to share a view of a part of your landscape here... thank you _/\_
These responses contain such sensitivity and concern for each other's feelings my heart grows warmer. I am one of the women who has torn through men's gardens. I read somewhere long ago that when a man loves a woman, she holds within her power the most tender part of him, his ju ju or genii aspect, the youngest and most vulnerable person inside. I have tried, since learning this, to be much quicker to respond to this when I feel/sense/see it coming from my partner, or from clients. We have such power, all of us!
I feel honoured by your thoughtful reply. There is a lot to think about here. There is your openness and description of how you perceive your feelings and also issues of trust when someone (often a woman) asks you to be open. Your image of a garden is powerful for me.
An image comes up for me about what love and support we could give one another if we weren't so clumsy, if we could better understand the differences between how men and women communicate. Maybe some learning and practice could be done with this new understanding. In my own life I feel there is much richness available in the gardens of each other— if we could learn about these differences and build better trust and gradually let each other in.
I am remembering a trip to Turkey where I was able to visit some very beautiful temples and mosques. It was important to me to know how to dress appropriately. I was able to ask my hosts about this. Maybe it is a bit the same when a woman would like to enter a man's garden. She would want to know how to "dress", how to ask, how to leave space, how to listen. But usually she has no one to ask. Often in my life, I have tried to talk to a man the way I would talk to a woman, and it does not work well. To understand the way a man thinks about his feelings is more like learning a new language or to dress appropriately. It would not make the woman disingenuous; it would give her a way to be more herself without being misunderstood. More understanding would mean that she could approach the man in a way that made him feel safe and comfortable. To build a space where the man and woman could be together and explore the garden together as friends.
You mention you have had bad experiences with women, particularly with women who have tried to "reorganize" you. This seems very important. I think maybe with true and supportive friends, we do change but because we might help each other see things, but this is something shared together, not one deciding for the other. Maybe the question becomes: How can I learn to be a true friend?"
Thank you for your friendly and inviting reply.
I think I can only give you my personal experience with someone (a woman sometimes) asking me such question.
1. I have to reach inside, this is an conscious act and a bit of an effort so to say. As such a problem if you expect me to answer in a spontaneous outpouring for words that signify my feelings.
2. Now I am perhaps a bit interested in such things as moods (colours for me, I paint) and other free floating feelings that sometimes just come up like shards of text, poetry and the like. Everyone has that I presume. But most of the time I feel about something actual and specific, a circumstance, a person, a beautiful painting a woman I admire, but feelings of my body as well The first category are my inner space, my soulscape so to say. The second category are feelings about something actual and specific
3. Of course feelings of pain, sadness, rage, lust are too part of palet of colours and 'forms' that feelings represent for me.
4. Little poem, translated from Dutch:
If you grow older,
you become full of tears
no, not of sadness
but of something
that is too big for words.
5. So yes I became in the years of my more sensitive, got a thinner skin, above all I know the sublime in art, the being moved by beauty in art in people and a lot of other things.
6. But perhaps one wants to hear from the failures, the shame, the remorse, the drama, my feelings of compassion of hopeless misunderstanding.
I answer you in this way because outside undermining/destructive relationshipgames the male soul is a wonderfull sometimes rough landscape (garden) in which I can only admit entrance for someone who I can trust not beginning to reorganise what I live with and is dear to me.
And yes to be honest I am cautious to admit women in the garden were my feelings live. Some bad experiences there. That cautiousness is open for inspection by the way.
I'm very interested in the main dialogue most recently added to by Maotrisimha and Carol, but here I just want to comment on the digression about Aphrodite and other gods/goddesses. It is true that the Olympians were sometimes perpetrators of the most terrible crimes as well as being the symbols of our highest aspirations. They are wonderful and terrible all at the same time. As such they are like a magnifying mirror that shows us all our passionate nature. I think part of what you are saying, Maitrisimha, is that that passionate nature of ours should not be invalidated. I agree. The path to sanity lies through a recognition of our whole selves and the reality of our world.
As a woman, I often want to ask a man what he is feeling. A woman sees this question "how are you feeling?" as a supportive invitation to talk, it contains an implicit message that the questioner is offering a sympathetic ear. My conjecture– and I would like to hear if this is true from the perspective of the men out there— is that when a woman asks a man this question, alarm bells go off in his head... What is she REALLY asking? What is she setting him up for? Is this the start of some kind of manipulation? If this is the case, it means that the conditions are rarely there for him to feel safe enough to open up.
Is this a fair interpretation? And if it is what do the men out there suggest?
What I mean is that the texts that in this script are given to a man and a woman, whereby the man gets the cool role, only few words. The internal dialogue with all the feelings is for the woman part of course. As if men are denied to have the same feelings now and then or even continuously: lonely and unloved, confused, insecure, lost in oneself. I had this feelings and sometime have them. I suggested against cliche. And thought that it would be a good play that explored the deeper realms of a man's soul. While I write I'm thinking of Shakespeare, was he not the master in laying bare the tenderness the madness, the insecurity, the childessness a.s.o. in men's and women's soul.
Oh yeah..... did you know that Aphrodite, by you sen as the goddess of peace and beauty, was a cold lady and sometimes even cruel. Have the other goddesses not a history of murder, war a.s.o. One problem the had not on the Olympus, they did not have a gender problem. Female gods and male gods just as bad from time to time.
David Brazier said:
OK, I've separated the two discussions. All the comments related to the tangential discussion have now been moved to "What is love, anyway?" I have deleted them from this thread.
Thank you Carol. I agree with Charlene. Also, yes, there are effectively two discussions going on here. Perhaps I'll try and separate them into different threads.
That's really clear, Carol. Thank you for this.
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