PLEASE NOTE: Each of us has both masculine and feminine energies, whatever our gender. However, for purposes of this webpost, I will use men as my example of the masculine energy. For the word “man” you can read “male\animus energy.”

In positive manifestation, masculine means tolerant, patient and accommodating. The fundamental masculine quality is immovability and bluntness. Men may have the wisdom to know what is happening, whether just or unjust, good or bad, negative or positive, and to just let things be as they are. Masculine energy is also known for loyalty, reliability, and the ability to join in groups to achieve common goals. It is culturally associated with politics, institutions and traditions. <source: Judith Simmer-Brown, “Pure Passion”, Shambhala Sun, July 1999. Click here to read full article.>

But there are times when “to just let things be as they are,” as mentioned above, arises from fear of hearing something you’d rather not hear, or having to express feelings you’d rather not express, not from a positive application of the masculine principle. On this negative manifestation of male energy, Judith Simmer-Brown comments:

On the other hand, masculine energy can be too accommodating, even lazy, and tends to be dull and oblivious. Without the stimulation of feminine wisdom the masculine can go to sleep or be lulled into merely habitual routines…. Click here to read full article. <source: Judith Simmer-Brown, Pure Passion>

While growing up, I was somewhat of a “daddy’s girl” and wanted to know that he was there for me. Like many men in my experience, Dad didn’t have a great deal of enthusiasm for expresing feelings. Or talking about personal problems.

At the age of 21, while walking along the white sands of Fort Myers Beach, Florida at Christmas, I told him I felt that he didn’t support me. He was surprised. By “unsupportive” I meant that he didn’t initiate a discussion of matters that concerned me. He could sense that there were areas of my life with which I wasn’t pleased, or about which I might be troubled. But he “just let things be as they are.” As a result, I didn’t initiate discussions with him because I felt he didn’t want to hear or talk about these matters.  I interpreted this lack of meaningful communication to mean that he was uninterested. Once he understood how I saw his silence, he broached topics that he thought may concern me without waiting for me to initiate conversation.

For my father to think that he knew what I was concerned about and therefore didn’t have to talk to me about them, was, to me, an intellectualization. I believe that the purpose can be to avoid the expression of our genuine feelings vis-a-vis significant others, in this case, daughters\women. Intellectualizing feelings, because the male energy thinks it that it knows all the answers or that the expression of feelings is really not important, can shut the door on important aspects of relationships that are significant to us.

Here is a pictorial representation of the negative male energy:

<The Son of Swords card in the Motherpeace Tarot deck represents the negative male energy. It) implies that you are approaching your goals in an overly rational way. The thoughts that determine your movements are like words cutting you off from the nourishment you need to sustain life. The cold logic of your ego is about to strangle the dove of your heart. You need to soften and remember that you are not functioning in a vacuum. Let go of the false sense of isolation you feel and connect to the rest of life….you need to stop thinking and get down to feeling. <source: Motherpeace: A Way to the Goddess through Myth, art and Tarot by Vicki Noble>

I believe that fear is the most common motivator for not expressing one’s feelings, even to the point of continually remaining silent in the face of appropriate and healthy opportunities to express feelings.

Our world suggests that when we open our heart, we risk tremendous sorrow and pain. Thus, we are encouraged to keep the tenderest part of ourselves hidden—but this is also where love, creativity, and magic reside.

It is dangerous to open your heart, but only if you fear sorrow and pain. When we become unafraid of the darker, sweeter, and more piercing emotions and learn to embrace them instead, we discover the source of power and its inseparability from vulnerability. (Please click here for source of quotation.)

The result of fear is that we become self-absorbed and centralized into ourselves in an effort to guard our territory and habitual comfort zone. We fail to “reach out and touch someone” as the advertisement says. Eventually, in the face of an ongoing refusal to step up to the plate of our own lives, we become emotionally dead. And we may not even realize it!

The result? The daughter\woman may withdraw in some way. In the absence of any genuine expression of feelings on the father’s\man’s part — e.g. “I feel sad because it seems to me that you don’t have what you want” — she may experience this lack of open, straightforward communication as keeping her at arm’s length. So she begins to stay at arm’s length in some way that may not be easily perceptible until it has gone on for a long time. Meanwhile, opportunities for a richer, more fulfilling, relationship based on the truth, have been ignored.

Again, my father’s habitual response to the expression of feelings was “Don’t wear (openly express) your heart (emotions, feelings) on your sleeve.”

Wrong, dear dad. Of course, there can be a negative side to wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve if it involves emotional manipulation. But on the positive side, wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve is an expression of basic goodness on the relative plane. (Click here for description of basis goodness.)

The lesson? It can be dangerous to assume much of anything in a relationship with a daugher or any other significant woman.  If we care about keeping emotionally connected with them, then we have to keep “checking in” on the feeling level on a periodic basis.

We can summarize this webpost in terms of a kind of three-fold logic:

1. The problem\issue\challenge: Negative animus\male principle is not willing to expresses our feelings.
2. The reason: Fear.
3. The result: Self-absorption and eventual emotional deadness.

Warriors, having courageously communicated thoroughly with their own fears, engage in fearless communication.

Put another way,  in close personal relationships heart should trump ego and its fears.

We’ll have plenty of time to stay as silent as the grave when we die!

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