Emerald

In lieu of seeing women as independent human beings, what are the assumptions you project onto women in terms of what you believe is happening internally for them thoughts and emotions-wise? Do you think she is scheming? Or that there is nothing going on inside? Or is it a blank for you? Or perhaps something else?

Which areas would you say you experience the most resistance to women and femininity on a regular bases? So, when all the issues of the original post come up, what triggers that fear? And what outcomes or potential realities are you afraid of?

When I was more in an Orange POV, as a child and teenager, my idea of empowerment came from the idea of the rejection of all things feminine and girly and the ability to relate to and be "one of the guys." It was a given to me that femininity was weak, and that masculinity was superior. And I was quite misogynistic as a late elementary school kid. I appreciated the thought that I was some kind of special girl that was the loophole... the only cool girl that was as good as a boy. So, on one hand I was always trying to prove myself. But I also wanted a feminine facade, so that I could be respected in that way as well. So, that I could be male on the inside and female on the outside. When I started to transition into Green thinking as a teenager, I still had the majority Orange. But my misogynistic views lessened and I found other masculine girls (or simply girls who were not traditionally feminine) as close personal friends. So, my prejudice was toward femininity instead of girls. I respected girls who had a well-developed masculine side and felt at home with the gender non-conforming... especially as a bisexual woman. But I still had this idea that I was special because of my man-on-the-inside but woman-on-the-outside dynamic. And I did get quite a bit of respect compared to other girls my age... so it added to my ego identification with my superiority over feminine women. And at the time, I could have totally started the Red Pill movement, as so many of their beliefs I had at the time. So, even in that transition to early Green, there was still a ton of resistance to the feminine. And as I embraced Green more and more, I became comfortable in deconstructing the notions of gender and masculinity and femininity altogether. My favorite phrase at the time was "It's a social construct" as I believed everything to be a social construct. I thought that personalities essentially sprang forth from circumstance and that no amount of nature was inherently there. I had a very "tabula rasa" idea of how people were, except in convenient circumstances when explaining homosexuality's validity to homophobes. And I consciously rejected most gender norms, and say others that participated in gender norms as dull and "boxed in"... a slave to a social construct. And even though this resistance, I later recognized as a barrier, it helped me grow. I was able to skate circles around others who were so attached to their gender identity. I allowed myself any expression and was very experimental with my appearance, creative endeavors, and life in general. Some of my most useful personal development happened at that time. But underneath those Green and Orange ideas, there was still lurking a natural feminine energy that was my most dominant energy. And also lurking below was the misogyny and hatred of the feminine that I had learned over the years. So, there was always an internal conflict for me, that even continues into present day. It was only when I had my experiences of ego transcendence that I experienced the Divine Feminine and all the femininity that I had been repressing since childhood. I had related femininity to weakness because of subtle conditionings over the course of my life from the media, friends, family, school, church, etc. I didn't even notice it as it was happening, as I consciously always believed in the equality of the genders even in my most misogynistic periods. So, I had learned to reject my most dominant energy, that cut me off so much from major aspects of myself and reality. Ever since then, I've been taking a more Green/Yellow approach to looking at issues of gender, feminine/masculine, Yin/Yang, etc. And seeing how this issue intones on many different levels into reality. As for your Orange coming off as feminine (assuming you're a woman), this is very common for women to get really obsessed with looks at this stage. They want to be seen as feminine because, at Orange, the woman's primary societal value is as a sexual commodity and her secondary value as a worker and competitor in capitalist society. Women at this stage will try to embody both, as I did, if they are interested in social status. Plus, the desire to be seen as feminine does cross over the sexual instinct as well. Perhaps your transition to Green illuminated this unhealthy dynamic and you became protective of yourself, because you realized that you and society was seeing you as sexual currency primarily. So, a masculine facade can help avoid that kind of attention as well as your tendency to see yourself in a limiting and dehumanizing way. Also, looking masculine is a way to seem more competent and less threatening simultaneously, even if it has a marginalizing effect to a certain degree. Men are less likely to project unpleasant things onto you, as they are unlikely to notice you that much. It's a trade off of greater discomforts for lesser discomforts. But none of it is yet embracing true feminine power as you're just trying to mitigate various blocks to the feminine being able to be integrated into your conscious awareness and by extension the collective consciousness. That takes a lot of letting go and the cultivation of receptivity, emotional intelligence, and intuition. I hope this helps. I definitely assumed that you're a woman, so my answer was based on that assumption. If it's not the case, my response may differ.

Yes...

So, would you say that it's accurate that you don't have any emotional reaction or attachments to being or seeming masculine or simply avoiding seeming feminine?

Stage Orange is the beginning of the gender role rejection that women engage in. But it is more of a rejection of femininity and an adoption of masculinity, at that stage. And it is based in unconscious internalized misogyny. Imagine a woman who detests the color pink, shoots guns, rejects feelings, can compete with the guys, and is a cool girl who's one of the girls who loves beer and pizza. At Green, however, there begins to be a questioning of gender roles and their efficacy in general in response to the awareness of the LGBT community and a growing awareness of internalized misogyny as a phenomenon. So, at Green, it is less of a cleaving to masculinity as with Orange, but a rejection fo the existence of masculine and feminine in general... and an unconscious falling back into the masculine principle unknowingly. And yes. Both are necessary transitions that allow women to transcend the confines of the traditional gender roles. This is key to allowing the emergence of the Divine Feminine within human society. They are part of the liberation process, but that will have to be shed in later stages. Exactly. And there is an early part of the Green transition that is genuinely a place of not knowing how to express in a masculine way. There is a resistance to the traditional masculine way of doing things as there is a dawning awareness that masculine preference has caused a lot of issues and that a lot of it is very toxic. So, a lot of guy's over-correct and find it difficult to own and express their masculinity because they don't want to be part of the problem. They are not aware that their traditional ideas of masculinity and manhood are just ideas, and that the actual energy of the masculine is something that can be expressed in other ways that are not destructive. So, the transition to Green is genuinely a bit scary. And men who value their masculinity above all else will likely never make the transition. "As more females transition through Green and into Yellow, they will be less attracted to traditionally masculine "alpha males". They will be more attracted to Green and Yellow level masculinity. I think we are seeing this now. Traditionally masculine men are seeing techies, hipsters, snowflakes, yoga, politically correct males getting in on their alpha male action. These wussy Green men are becoming more successful with women, which causes confusion, anxiety and frustration in blue/orange men (hence an attraction to speakers like Jordan Peterson). Yes?" If I look at the type of men that I'm interested in, I would say that what you say is true. But I wouldn't describe these men as un-masculine or in denial of masculinity as men are at early Green. I do genuinely have a lack of attraction to early Green men who are in resistance to their masculinity. But I also don't find them as tiring as Orange men who are obsessed with a limited version of masculinity who feel like they're pretending every step of the way. The former I lack attraction to, but the latter I find directly unattractive and have an aversion to. So, it the men I tend to find attractive, their masculinity is definitely a major facet of what I find attractive in them. But I would describe their masculinity as subtle and unpretended. It just emanates from them through a congruence with their essential nature without the distortion of societal notions... but with the ability to engage in both gender roles or neither without wavering from his natural energetic signature... which is mostly masculine with some feminine, both integrated. So, his masculinity emanates from an integrity with himself as a naturally masculine oriented person, as opposed to an obligation to perform particular versions of masculinity and wearing a mask. And there is still a hint of the "dominance" and strength that is attractive in the alpha male archetype. The alpha male becomes a latent aspect of the highly developed man who is highly developed but still has an energetic congruence with his animalistic nature. But the dominance is not domineering and just exists as a background potential... like a weapon in the holster of a really responsible person or a lion with a superior lion-tamer. Strength and the ability to protect if necessary are still attractive qualities in a man. The core instincts still exist that polarity attracts. So, most women will be attracted to men who are centered in their masculine energy. But it won't be a brutish or immature masculinity. It will be subtle. To allude to some men who embody this, I always imagine someone like Rupert Spira or Adyashanti when I think about subtle and unpretended masculinity. It simply is what is there, but they aren't trying to perform it. And it may seem strange to mention these men as attractive, but I find them to both be very much so. But most of my strongest examples are men that I know from real-life who are just highly developed people who have a high degree of awareness and integrity with themselves.

@XYZ In some respects, it is more feminine because it makes such leaps and bounds toward the integration of the feminine principle as compared to the previous stages which were all about resistance to the feminine. So, it is the first stage since the transition from Beige to beginning Purple, where the feminine begins to rebrandish itself in collective consciousness. And in Beige and early Purple the feminine is dangerous to the survival of human beings in a way unparalleled in other, more developed stages. That is why the widespread resistance to it came up in the first place. All the other stages past that and up until Orange have to do with the intention toward the suppression of the feminine as those stages are emblematic of man's struggle against the powerful forces of MOTHER Nature. This struggle of man against Mother Nature is not won until Orange comes upon the scene. But at that point, the goal quickly reverses. Orange is where we become too powerful over Mother Nature and too slanted in the masculine direction. So, there is a need to transition to feminine allowing Green to avoid destroying ourselves at Orange. Orange is by far the most dangerous stage. So, the struggle of man against nature and as an extension masculinity against femininity, is a major defining characteristic of later stage Purple, Red, Blue, and Orange. But in late Orange, there is a need for there to be a change in the view of the masculine in order to make room for the feminine to be reintegrated into society. And this is largely what that underlying transition of the past century has been about with all the Feminism, environmental activism, and equality movements in general. But in every stage there is a masculine intonation and feminine intonation of the stage, in terms of human ways of being. For example, in stage Blue we can imagine both a masculine intonation of that stage and a feminine intonation of that stage, even if we could call that stage masculine in nature. The same is true with stage Orange, which we could also call more masculine in nature. But there is still a general male intonation and a general female intonation. With Green, there are many other intonations than male and female that begin to be recognized. And gender is not confined to to a binary. But there is still a masculine and feminine intonation. The problem with Green in this way is that at the beginning of the transition there is a fear of traditional gender norms as there is fear of going backwards. In early Green, women tend to like to buck the gender roles of the past because there is a sense of freedom from the confines of gender roles being like a prison. So, it is much easier for women to ignore the impact of gender and polarity, as there feels like there is a lot more to lose from identifying with femaleness and femininity. There is power to be regained in divorcing one's self from the feminine gender role, as it is understood in early Green that femininity=prison. So, this discomfort tends to jettison women into early Green before men get there. Liberation is easier when the alternative sucks. With men, however, they tend to find empowerment in the gender roles of the past because it paints a narrative where they are in charge and superior. And everything is polar and a lot sexier for them. So, men don't like this ignoring of gender as a factor because they see their gender role as empowering and rewarding, sexually and otherwise. To many Orange men, masculinity=super power. So, there is a desire to remain in Orange and play the status games of "Who's the most masculine?" And many men get comfortable in Orange because they fear letting go of that perceived power. So, men don't often see the power of transitioning to Green. The issue here is that the idea of masculinity tends to supplant their actual masculinity at the Orange stage and before. Their actual masculinity can't be found until men liberate themselves from the norms of the past in late Green or early Yellow. But a mature Green man, in later Green, will start to get in touch with his actual subtle masculinity that is a separate thing entirely from cultural notions of the masculine. For this, you can imagine a man who is embodying the masculine effortlessly without attachment and in a very subtle way that radiates from him and is not try-hard or immature. But this will be unlikely to be fully realized until he starts to make the jump to Yellow.

Uh oh! I just realized that I put this post in the wrong section. If any mods can switch it, I'd really appreciate it.

What if you were perceived as simply being unmanly? Like if they (or you) thought you failed to live up to the societal standards of manhood.

I can break it down a little bit. So, first off, how do you feel if you believe that your actions will be perceived as feminine, woman-like, or simply not masculine or not masculine enough? If you perceive yourself or think others are perceiving you as being like a woman, then what is your internal experience in terms of thought and emotions?

Thank you! That's very encouraging!

Hi Leo. I'm planning to make a digital course that relates to ego/persona development, individuation, and the alchemy of the self. Right now, I figure it will probably be about half the size of your course... which has 90 or so lessons in it, if memory serves. So, it will have about 40-50 ten to fifteen minute video lessons in it along with worksheets and activities to complete. My question is, how long did it take you (in hours and in months) to create your course? And what were your biggest challenges? And on the technical end, I see that your website is done through the Invision company. That one seems to be pretty popular. Which plan do you recommend for someone who is wanting to sell a digital course through their website that can be accessed with a log in? Also, if anyone else has input, that would be awesome too! @Leo Gura

To be fair... the Devil is also a sweet little angel.

I knew you weren't referring to what I said. But I wanted to know if you looked into it.

@saffron Did you look at what I wrote? My impression is that this is the root cause of your fear. You are projecting an image of power over you onto women that isn't there. This is what Anima possession does. I think you would benefit a lot by integrating the Anima.

Jordan Peterson is not an asshole. In his mind, he thinks he's being altruistic and fixing things and sustaining "Western culture". His intentions are good. He sees problems in society and believes that bringing people back to a more traditional way of living will remedy those issues and that we will fall into a more natural order. But the point still stands that, despite his positive intentions, his teachings are to the detriment of society and encourage individuals to get caught down in regressive perspectives. And there are real consequences there. So, it is to the detriment of individuals to avoid voicing these concerns simply to avoid offending people or rustling people's jimmies. So, suck it up buttercups! If ye' melting snowflakes can't take the heat, then stay out of the kitchen. Go find a safe space ye' bleeding heart triggered cucks! So, I am not being mean to Jordan Peterson. So, I can't cease being mean to him, as I've never been mean to him. I'm just being very honest and blunt about what I perceive. And I'll continue to do so. Yet again, I've never started a thread about JP and I don't intend to start doing that. But I will certainly throw in my two cents.

Did you decide yet when you're going to be doing each of these phases yet, or are you still deciding?

@Annoynymous @Andreas Thank you. It's very encouraging to me.

Believe is the key word here. Don't believe anything. Go look for it and see what you find. I have personally found that reality is empty of good and evil as empirically observable phenomena. And I have found that everything is perfect. There is no combination of words that will talk me into trusting those words more than my own experiences. You can tell me that the color blue is a figment of my imagination all you want. If I see blue all around me, then it's wisest for me to realize that blue is a phenomenological reality that I'm currently experiencing and not believe a person that is telling me that blue doesn't exist and all of their rationalization as to why they believe that it does not. Also, what is a perception? What is a notion? Where do these things exist? I am not interested in debating this in the philosophical sense or getting you to believe what I'm saying is true. Go out and observe beyond the fodder of the mind what "evil" actually is. You will never find out by making postulations about the nature of reality. It must be observed.

I do take every opportunity to inform people about this because I see something happening that I think others (and society) would benefit from knowing about. I especially stress it on here because I know that people here are also actively trying to become more conscious. I know that it probably sounds like I put myself on a pedestal relative to other people in this. But it's not that. I just recognize that I'm looking at things from a different vantage point than a lot of people do. So, I can see what's going on from a perspective that many others are not seeing things from. But I'm not thinking this makes me better or more enlightened. I'm just detecting what, form my vantage point, is just a really obvious and tangible problem that a lot of people are not detecting in Jordan Peterson's teachings. So, I frantically (as I am quite attached in this way) try to point out the traps that so many people are falling into. For example, let's say that there are a bunch of people that are walking and they don't realize that they're about to fall into a giant hole as they're only looking up at the sky, as they think that's the right vantage point to take. So, they don't even think that looking at the ground is a viable perspective as looking up at the sky is the "superior" perspective. So, I see this as a person who realizes that they can both look up at the sky, the ground, side to side, etc., and that each of these vantage points will give me different information. And because of this, I realize that a lot of people are going to fall in that giant hole if I don't warn them to change their perspective and look down at where they're going. So, I am not so detached from this because I don't want them to fall in the hole. And it makes sense to me to help them avoid it. So, this is the dynamic that I'm seeing with Jordan Peterson and so many other influences that help people fall into that "hole". This "hole" is a huge part of the contemporary zeitgeist. And it's not a fun zeitgeist. Now, you could take a more detached perspective and could say that, perhaps these people falling into the hole is just part of how the entire system is supposed to work. Maybe because these people "fall in the hole" it will create such a catastrophic situation that humanity has no other choice but to become more conscious. And to some degree, I recognize that this is the case. So, the people in the hole become the example of what others want to avoid doing. And that eventually the system will work itself out in the way it's supposed to without my intervention or the intervention of others looking from a similar perspective to mine. So, that perhaps it is just best to trust that the system will do its thing. Or perhaps even the detachment to outcome and realizing that maybe humanity is supposed to destroy itself at some point and that's just part of the cosmic cycle. But I personally don't know if that's the wisest perspective to take. If I can assist people to avoid falling in that hole, that may help bring society forward without a ton of people getting into a bad situation. It is my preference to see fewer people in a situation of upheaval and I still feel like (perhaps foolishly) that helping individuals get free from the common illusions of the day will help us move forward while avoiding really destructive scenarios. But perhaps this is a pipe dream of mine. Maybe things are going to do what they're going to do. And perhaps my small ripple effect will have no impact to next to no impact. But this general topic (not just focused on JP) is on my mind a lot. It comes up clearly every day. And I can tell that EVERYONE is being affected by it, every day. No on is hiding from this zeitgeist. So, I feel that perhaps my obsession and others' obsession that comes across in different ways is just a natural symptom of the explorations that humanity is doing relative to the collective shadow. So, I want to facilitate this movement toward greater consciousness in every way that I know how.

All human frameworks are by their very nature based in relative truth. The second things go through the human intellectual lens, they automatically become relativistic. This is true, even if the truths allude to the level of absolute truth. Absolute truth can be experienced in an absolute way, but can only be described and interpreted through the lens of relative truth. God is infinite. Therefore it is perfect... but within the absolute perfection exists the inherent imperfection of the relative. If you avoid viewing things from different frameworks, you will be blind to certain relative truths and awareness of the absolute. Good and evil are human concepts based in both universal and individual human preferences. So, it is based in the needs and wants of human beings. But it doesn't have anything to do with an absolute value, as human preference and absolute value are not the same thing. Human beings don't want to die, and may consider causes of death to be in the realm of evil. But from the absolute perspective, death is just another aspect of reality no better or worse than anything else. It is only human preference for living that makes death seem negative or "evil." God is not just good. God is infinite. So, it is everything, good, bad, and ugly. But that's only to speak relativistically and from the human understanding of the world. On the ultimate level, God is perfect and is pure divine love. It abhors none... even if human beings don't like those things or they aversely affect our health. But if you're looking for an absolute truth morality, you won't find it. But in finding the absolute truth and recognizing that all is one, there will be a natural compassion that springs forth and you will resonate at the level of perfect unconditional love. This is how realization of the absolute and resonating at perfect divine love tends to affect human emotions and behaviors. When I had my experiences of ego transcendence and observed these things, I had an overwhelming amount of love for all things and my abilities for empathy and compassion were through the roof in a way that I was never capable when I was leaving it to my conscious mind to formulate ideas about morality. Morality begets judgement and gets in the way of perfect unconditional love because it invalidates certain aspects of reality. And it creates distortions and blindspots that keep us from coming into resonance with that perfect love. So, counterintuitively, the way to more ethical actions is through letting go of the need to cling to particular morals or ideas of good and evil as meaning valid and invalid. So, I think the main point to drive across here is to stop philosophizing and creating ideas and frameworks and seek to discover for yourselves @Sockrattes what good and evil is and isn't. And try to find something about reality that is actually invalid to exist. Can you empirically find something that "shouldn't" exist?

Perfectly said. And I think the OP misunderstands why Leo is openly against Jordan Peterson. It's not for the purpose of demonizing him. It's for the purpose of helping others out of unconsciousness... which is his whole deal. It's ultimately, that Jordan Peterson has a high degree of influence over people, and the recognition that his influence enables people to get further lodged into a contracted perspective that is unconscious, destructive, and discouraging to the forward momentum of society and thus our ability to make the paradigmatic jumps necessary to avoid destroying ourselves. So, Leo's ranting against Jordan Peterson is likely in hopes to get people up out of the unconscious perspective that JP assists people in getting lodged down in. So, his "rants" are for very practical reasons. And I'm glad that someone of influence who also has a high degree of systemic awareness is calling out the traps inherent in JP's perspective. The way to "help people with Jordan Peterson" is to make people realize that his perspective is narrow, unconscious, and steeped in all sorts of biases (especially anti-feminine biases). He flies under so many people's radar, that it's troubling.

I also have a video on the topic...

@saffron The best thing to do would be to work on releasing resistance to the feminine and integrate your feminine side in the form of the Anima (aka the inner woman in every man as an archetypal aspect of the psyche). When a society has really strong resistance to the feminine principle and women by extension (as has been the case in almost all cultures for the vast majority of written history up until present day), the men in that society will usually have issues with Anima integration that will have debilitating effects on their psychological health, which brandishes itself most in the form of sexual obsession issues and misogyny. Because the Anima is literally the aspect of you that is a woman, it has needs and feeling and desires and strengths, just like the conscious aspect. So, if you learned a resistance to the feminine from a young age, and an extreme one at that, it will manifest in the form of Anima repression and Anima possession. And it is always the Anima's desire to reintegrate and become known and accepted by your conscious awareness. It wants to reunite with you and be accepted. So, it projects itself out onto reality in form of an acute sexual obsession (or obsession in general) with women. This is especially strong, since the man sees this as the only acceptable outlet for connection to the feminine... as he has a strong desire to reunite with his own feminine side but society disapproves... and he has learned to disapprove in the same way. So, sex with a woman is like a metaphor for the connection with himself that he unconsciously desires, so he craves sex with women in a stronger way than normal. But despite the desire to reintegrate, the Anima also gets jealous and spiteful. She doesn't like to be rejected. So, she seeks revenge upon the man that rejected her by projecting onto women an image of power over the man who rejected her. And that power that she projects is that women have the power to validate and invalidate the man's very existence just through forming an opinion about a man's sexual desirability. And the Anima will project the image of the cold and impersonal woman who is up on a pedestal and all powerful and holds a man's worth in her hands. So, the man who is Anima possessed will have deep feelings of misogyny and a strong desire to drag women down from the pedestaled position of power that he projects onto reality. And when he sees images of men dominating women physically, sexually, and otherwise, it will be very satisfying because to him it is the story of the underdog male taking down the all-powerful female tyrant and putting her in her place. And archetypally, it will be the false story of how he overcomes the issue of Anima possession by beating his feminine side away and keeping it in a state of submission. But this beating away is just adding fuel to the fire of his Anima possession, as this is the very pattern that causes Anima possession in the first place. So, it becomes a self-feeding cycle and the Anima possesses the man more and more and the shadow feminine consumes him. So, the only way to actually overcome Anima possession is to integrate the Anima and accept the feminine side as an integral part of yourself. Also, with the integration of the Anima, you will gain access to divine wisdom hidden in the unconscious mind.

I personally find Spiral Dynamics to not be too compelling or helpful as a tool for self-growth and self-diagnosis. There's too much potential for ego to come in and want to label itself this and that. So, I honestly couldn't tell you where I am on the Spiral. But I find it to be an EXTREMELY compelling model for understanding how complex societal issues tick and to give more context for the events of present day and how they will likely lead into certain other predictable patterns. So, it's a great tool for understanding humanity on the systems level. And it illuminates many viable solutions to the issues of present day and what we should encourage and advocate for in the near and distant future.