Loving Powerful Women and Powerful Loving Men

by Tijana Ristic

The Bible talks of a man being the head of the household (Ephesians, chapters 5 & 6). This statement truly has more than one meaning, it has a mystical inner meaning, but also an outer, more literal meaning. The latter of course is obvious. Up until the second half of the last century, it was the role of a man to be the sole provider of his family, which would include protecting the family from outside forces to the best of his ability and providing a safe framework for the family to grow. The role of a woman was as a nurturer—she worked within the family to support, teach and help children grow on a more personal level. These roles are simply a stepping down, of outpicturing in the physical universe, the roles of the Father and Mother aspects of God.

But what has happened in our society is that the roles we have been taught are actually very subtle (and in some cases not so subtle) perversions of the true roles of father and mother.

We live in a society where boys are taught that they need to be macho tough guys. From a very early age they are taught that to display any kind of emotion (other than perhaps anger) is seen as girly or soft. From a young boy they are told "Be a big boy now" and "Boys don't cry." It is such a societal conditioning that leads boys to grow into men who are not in touch with their feminine side.

You see, even though we find ourselves in a male or a female body, we were not created as this physical body. We were truly created as spiritual beings which have a perfect balance of the feminine and masculine aspects of God within us. Not one person was created as only feminine or only masculine. When we come into the physical universe and embody in a male or female body then for that lifetime we are meant to have slightly more of the energy of the body that we are embodied in, that is to say a woman is meant to be about 60% feminine and 40% masculine, while a man is the other way around.

But through societal conditioning men are taught to reject any kind of femininity in themselves, while women have in the past been taught to reject any kind of masculinity. This imbalance and rejection of a part of ourselves causes much strife not only on a personal level, but also on a societal level, where we see the outpicturing of these imbalances.

As an example, a 1996 Australian study of 6300 women1 found that 23% of women who had ever been married or in a marriage-like relationship had experienced violence by their partner at some time in their relationship. That is almost one in four. And this statistic only includes physical or sexual violence and not other forms of abuse, such as emotional, social (such as being isolated from family or friends) and economical (not being given access to money) or spiritual (being abused or ridiculed for their spiritual beliefs). So when expanded to include these other forms of abuse, the number would surely rise. 12% of women who had been abused by their current partner said that they were presently living in fear.

It is time for both men and women to take a stand and say that these kind of statistics—that this kind of behavior—is simply not acceptable any more.

But how do we propose to stop this from occurring. The violence against women is only a symptom. And a symptom might be suppressed temporarily, but to truly overcome it we need to look at the cause. We need to face and deal with our own psychology individually, and then go out and be the example and teach others how to overcome it. It needs to happen from a grass-roots level—as the popular saying goes "to change the world start by changing yourself."

As women we need to learn that to be truly whole we need to accept the masculine part of ourselves. We need to come to an inner understanding that to be a loving woman does not mean we have to be a pushover, that it is okay for our husbands or boyfriends or anyone else to mistreat us, that we somehow deserve it. It begins with loving ourselves, loving the God in ourselves and loving God as Power within ourselves. So we need to unlearn all those years and perhaps lifetimes of conditioning that has made us believe that to be a real woman one must be soft and gentle all of the time.

Yes gentleness is a feminine quality, but so is strength. We need to learn that Power is not a dirty word when it is balanced in Love. We need to be strong in throwing off the stereotypes we have grown up with, we need to be at peace with who we truly are, we need to come to understand that we have a right to be here. When we are tempted by the forces of this world to go back to the old ways of acting or reacting, we need to center in the peace inside ourselves and rebuke the old patterns of self destructiveness. We can say just as Jesus did when he was tempted, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

As a society we need to teach boys (and men) about the feminine aspect of themselves and to nurture that aspect which is just as important as their masculinity. Thus, when they grow into men they will be more balanced in how they express themselves, and be able to express and deal with their emotions, without resorting to violence.

Men need to come to an inner understanding that a real man is one who is balanced and can express his power in a loving way to benefit his family, the society at large and himself. Men need to learn that just as they have that feminine part of themselves which is worthy of nurturance, so is the feminine aspect in all life worthy of nurturance. Thus they can come to honor women and their rightful place in society—not just as sex objects, there to serve and please men, but as individualizations of God, as spiritual beings that are of equal value in the eyes of God:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1:27)

1 Mulroney, J. 2003. Australian statistics on domestic violence. Retrieved June 17, 2007, from http://www.austdvclearinghouse.unsw.edu.au/topics/topics_pdf_files/Statistics_final.pdf

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© Tijana Ristic, Love Is.