Why and How We Need to Address Our Historical Gender Imbalance

Chinese Taoism has a very powerful paradigm that explains the dynamics of effective living.  In my opinion, this paradigm is becoming increasingly significant in order to chart an effective way forward in the 21st century. Yin-Yang Paradigm

It's called the Yin and the Yang.  Yin-Yang is used to describe how seemingly opposite or contrary forces are in fact interconnected and interdependent and how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary (instead of opposing) forces interacting to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the parts. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, (for instance shadow cannot exist without light).  That's why you notice, in the symbol for Yin-Yang, that each part has the other (small dot) within it.

Describing Yin and Yang

"Yang is the white side with the black dot on it, and yin is the black side with the white dot on it. The relationship between yin and yang is often described in terms of sunlight playing over a mountain and a valley. Yin (literally the 'shady place' or 'north slope') is the dark area occluded by the mountain's bulk, while yang (literally the 'sunny place' or 'south slope') is the brightly lit portion. As the sun moves across the sky, yin and yang gradually trade places with each other, revealing what was obscured and obscuring what was revealed."  (Wikipedia)

Yin is characterized as slow, soft, yielding, diffuse, cool and refreshing, wet, and reflective; and is associated with water, earth, the moon, femininity and nighttime.

Yang, by contrast, is fast, hard, solid, focused, hot, dry, and aggressive; and is associated with fire, sky, the sun, masculinity and daytime.

Yin-Yang Implications for the 21st Century

So how does this fit in with my last blog post about the Athena Doctrine?

One, The authors, in their extensive global research*, have found that more and more people in our 21st century are being drawn to a different-than-usual way of living and working and being in the world.  They're realizing for our world to achieve its potential for wholeness and transformation, both Yin and Yang need to be expressed, validated, and incorporated.

Two, for much of history, there has been a Yang path forward--predominantly masculine, where aggression, power, win-lose, dominance have ruled the day.  The Yin, more feminine part of life, has been devalued and considered "too soft" to be effective at the forefront of and in the halls of influence in a world filled with conflict, enemies, survival and growth.

Three, and yet, as the authors of The Athena Doctrine are pointing out from their extensive research, the majority of people (66%) representing countries around the world are saying that for the world to achieve its full potential, the Yin side--more feminine qualities--needs to be brought to the forefront.

Four, the powerful piece to this is that people aren't saying it's an "either/or" proposition--throw out all the men and bring in all the women.  Rather, it's a "both/and" necessity.

A World of Complementarity Instead of Opposition

Here's the way the authors describe it:

"People seek a more expressive style of leader who shares feelings more openly and honestly as well as patience and reason to break gridlock.  We also want long term thinkers who can dig in and plan for the future.  The more masculine qualities like decisiveness and resilience are important, but so is being flexible in order to build consensus and get things done.  Also, in the new economy winning is becoming a group construct:  masculine traits like aggression and independent trail the feminine values of collaboration and sharing credit.  And being loyal (which is feminine) is more valued than being proud (which is masculine), which point to being devoted to the cause rather than one's self.  And that we want our leaders to be more intuitive--(also feminine)--speaks to the lack of many leaders to have the capacity to relate to ordinary people and their points of view."

The central facet of Yin-Yang is the emphasis on the interconnectedness of life, one cannot exist without the other, both are complementary to each other rather than opposing forces, interacting to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the parts.  For this to occur, both sides have to be equally valued in the shifting seasons and shadows of life.

The Necessity of Addressing a Historical Imbalance

There has been a sad imbalance of this equation for much of history.  And the tragic results of this are evident everywhere:  violence, gridlock, greed for power-status-wealth, economic injustice, aggression, win-lose, lack of compassion, us again them mentality, being right is more important than being in relationship.

This has to change if we are going to experience a world where everyone has an equal place at the table with equal opportunities, and where we steward our natural resources in sustainable ways, all built upon a foundation of mutual honor, respect, worth, and empathy.

It's time to place inordinate value upon the feminine characteristics and ways of thinking and being as central to our path forward.  It's time to place more women and men who think like them at positions of influence in charting our path forward.  It's time to shape a global rather than tribal world based upon the value of interconnectedness and dynamic complementarity in navigating our path forward.  It's time to honor both Yin and Yang together and empower both to work interdependently in building an effective path forward.

The future and quality of our world depend upon it.

____________________________

*The Athena Doctrine:  How Women (and the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the World, John Gerzema & MichaeL D’Antonio

There's Power in a Creative Pause

This week I was pointed to an online article called "What Happened To Downtime? The Extinction Of Deep Thinking And Sacred Space."  The author is Scott Belsky, CEO of Behance and author of the national bestselling book Making Ideas Happen.  He's speaking a very prophetic word to our contemporary culture. Dangers of Living in a Digital Age

Living in a digital-age where we are connected 24/7 through our technologies, the experience of interruption-free space is almost nonexistent.  Even airlines these days are beginning to offer mobile and digital connectivity on flights, that last bastion of forced, no-guilt relaxation opportunity.

But this constant plugged-in existence is doing great damage to our souls and imaginations.

"Despite the incredible power and potential of sacred spaces, they are quickly becoming extinct. We are depriving ourselves of every opportunity for disconnection. And our imaginations suffer the consequences."

Creating Creative Pauses

What this means is that we have to be especially intentional about carving out what Belsky calls "the creative pause"--learning to savor downtime which is one of the most effective ways to enhance our imagination for life.  We have to be willing to shape times when we unplug and disconnect in order to plug in and connect to to a whole different Spirit.

The ancient Jews called this sacred experience Sabbath.  It was intentional, weekly sacred space carved out for the purpose of plugging in to the Divine Life in a renewed and revitalized way.  It was a tool to remind them of their spiritual identity as children of God--"We are not simply consumers and producers (brickmakers for the Pharoah and rulers of worldly empires).  We are children of the God of Heaven who calls us His own and gifts us with love, compassion, and goodness--not for what we do but simply for who we are."

Benefits of Uninterrupted Sacred Space

There is tremendous power in this kind of creative pause and uninterrupted sacred space.  Notice the way eminent Jewish philosopher and theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel describes it:

“In the tempestuous ocean of time and toil there are islands of stillness where man may enter a harbor and reclaim his dignity.  The island is the Sabbath, a day of detachment from things, instruments and practical affairs, as well as attachment to the spirit . . . The Sabbath is the exodus from tension, the liberation of man from his own muddiness, the installation of man as a sovereign in the world of time.”

Notice all the words that describe benefits from observing sabbath:  reclaiming dignity, deeper attachment to the true spirit of life, exodus from tension, liberation from identity confusion, restoring a sense of sovereignty over your time instead of being a victim to time.  Who among us wouldn't want these experiences?

I truly believe that one of the great spiritual practices for our contemporary culture is this intentional choice to savor downtime, to establish a creative pause, to carve out sacred space, to learn the art of sabbathing our time--to use these sacred moments to remind ourselves of our deepest core identity as interconnected human beings, sovereign children of God, loved and valued not for what we do for but for who we are.

My Wednesday Night Speaking Series

This is one of the reasons I have planned this public speaking event for Wednesday nights, right smack dab in the middle of our busy, frenetic weeks.  It's an opportunity to step into a creative pause and sacred space to enhance the depth of our lives as we reconnect with the Spirit.  We need regular appointments like this because we all know the powerful benefits of regularity.  You don't eat a meal only once, saying to yourself that since you've just eaten and you feel full that must be enough.  You eat again and again, with regularity, in order to sustain your life.

If you aren't living close enough to San Francisco to get in on these Wednesday night events but would still like to set aside a creative pause to view them, the videos will be made available soon.  I'll be happy to let you know when and how to access them.  Email me (greg@flyagaincoaching.com).  Here's the information about the series.  Check it out.

Your Intentional Choice

Let's face it:  we live in a world where we're confronted with the sometimes overwhelming temptation to stay connected and plugged in to our technologies and communities 24/7.  Little by little, the life in our souls is seeping out through over-stimulation and nonstop activity.  We're paying a very high price.

Belsky challenges us:  "Soon enough, planes, trains, subways, and, yes, showers will offer the option of staying connected. Knowing that we cannot rely on spaces that force us to unplug to survive much longer, we must be proactive in creating these spaces for ourselves. And when we have a precious opportunity to NOT be connected, we should develop the capacity to use it and protect it."

This is definitely a word to the wise for our generation.  How will you go about sabbathing your life?  What intentionality will you choose to manifest to experience sacred space and downtime?  Why not enjoy the profound life power in a creative pause.

My Offer To You

One of the things I do is coach people on how to develop this kind of deeply personal, meaningful spiritual path.  I have a 7 Day Curriculum called "How To Breathe More Soul Into Your Life"--it's all about developing specific intentional ways to experience the benefits of daily sabbathing your week.  People have found this to be very transformational in establishing regularity to the spiritual habit/practice.  Over a four week process (in four customized phone calls), I help unpack this experience, provide daily assignments, and help bring support and encouraging accountability to this personalized journey.

I'm willing to give a 10% discount to my blog readers for this coaching experience which begins Monday, Nov 7.  Contact me in the next 5 days (by Oct. 26) to take advantage of this discount.  Email me for the details (greg@flyagaincoaching.com).

Two Implications About Spirituality From Terry Jones' Qur'an Burning Frenzy

A Moment in the TV Studio Malcolm Muggeridge, the English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist, wrote about the time he escorted Mother Teresa into a New York television studio so that she could be interviewed on a network morning show, “a program,” he wrote, “which helps Americans from coast to coast to munch their breakfast cereal and gulp down their breakfast coffee.”  Her interviewer for this TV show was, as Muggeridge described him, a man “with a drooping green mustache, a purple nose and scarlet hair.”

Here’s the way Muggeridge told the story.  “It was the first time Mother Teresa had been in an American television studio, and so she was quite unprepared for the constant interruptions for commercials.  As it happened, surely as a result of divine intervention, all the commercials that particular morning were to do with different varieties of packaged food, recommended as being nonfattening and non-nourishing.  Mother Teresa looked at them with a kind of wonder, her own constant preoccupation being, of course, to find the wherewithal to nourish the starving and put some flesh on [the] human skeletons [in Calcutta where she served].  It took some little time for the irony of the situation to strike her.  When it did, she remarked in a perfect audible voice:  ‘I see that Christ is needed in television studios.’  A total silence descended on all present, and I fully expected the light to go out and the floor manager to drop dead.  Reality had momentarily intruded into one of the media’s mills of fantasy – an unprecedented occurrence.”  (quoted in Gordon MacDonald, Forging A Real World Faith, p. 42)

Both Malcolm Muggeridge and Mother Teresa certainly knew that this world they were in that day, this environment of the TV studio run and operated by real people with real lives facing real issues was a real world.  But it wasn’t the whole world.  It was a world that tended to be isolated from the starving and suffering people she served every day in India – the commercials and advertisements that day revealed that truth.  In contrast, her spirituality and faith were informed every day by the realities of a bigger world where the poor, suffering, and dying existed on dirty streets and faced daily injustices and inequalities.  A world beyond the sanitized TV studio – the world of the ghettos, where the color of your skin or the level of your economics or the place of your birth determined your opportunities or lack of opportunities in life.  Mother Teresa’s spirituality compelled her to point out the reality of their limited world that day in the studio.

Muggeridge had lived most of his life as an agnostic.  But his relationship with Mother Teresa, his up close and personal witness to her passion to live out a real-world spirituality and faith that made such a radical difference in the lives of so many suffering people through the years, ended up leading him to convert to Catholicism and Christianity.

One of our great temptations is to assume that the world we live and work in is the whole world.  When that happens, our spirituality and faith become narrow and small.  Our faith and spirituality become in fact unreal – divorced from the rest of the planet.  And the irony is that that is antithetical to the true nature of spirituality and faith.

True spirituality, having a faith that is genuine and that works, has to be connected with the whole world – it has to work in the rest of the world beyond the fences & studios of our own little lives.

So we’ve started a Saturday morning series at Second Wind this month called “APPLYING YOUR SPIRITUALITY TO THIS WEEK’S GLOCAL* HOT SPOT."  Our goal is to inform our spirituality by means of seeing the rest of the world beyond our individual lives.  So each week, we’re focusing on a current issue taking place in the world (*GLOCAL = think global + act local).  What is the crisis/need/situation – what are the issues involved – who are the people involved – how is the situation being currently handled – how are we impacted?  And how does this situation inform and shape our spirituality, and how does our spirituality inform our response?

Last Saturday we looked carefully at the stunning circus surrounding Pastor Terry Jones (of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida) and his threat to burn over 200 Qur'ans (Islam's holy scriptures) on the anniversary of 9/11.  I call it a "stunning circus" because Pastor Jones' hateful rhetoric and threats managed to provoke not just a local response but a global one, including personal statements to him by the leaders of our government including the President, the Pope, and governments across the world.  His YouTube sermons and Facebook pages went viral on the internet.  The media became obsessed and every other news story was obscured by their coverage of this one man and his tiny congregation.  In one month, he had become a global media celebrity.

The Spirituality of Interconnectedness

Let me suggest two implications for real-world spirituality from this major news event.  First, interconnectedness.  Genuine and transformational spirituality must embrace today's global reality:  nothing ever happens in isolation.  We no longer live and act in isolation – one action can cause a global stir.  We are first and foremost citizens of the world.  Which then embraces the truth that we have a responsibility to each other on a planetary scale.

Spirituality and faith are not just about me and God (or whatever label you put on your Life Source) and the rest of the world can go to hell.  Personal spirituality must include global interconnectedness and interdependence.  I must allow the "other side" of the world to help shape and inform my spiritual life.  And I must recognize that the way I live out my faith impacts the "other side" of the world, too.  Though John Donne wrote "no man is an island" several centuries ago, that paradigm is especially true today.

My sense of global citizenship profoundly shapes my spiritual life because I allow my mind and heart to open up to broader, wider, deeper possibilities and realities beyond my local world.  Mother Teresa comes into my personal studio - a place where my focus is on what cereal I'm going to have for breakfast in the morning - and interjects global reality - children and adults are dying from hunger on her streets of Calcutta.  And suddenly I'm forced to open up my spirituality by asking, What do my spirituality and faith do in response to that acute awareness and need?

The Spirituality of Honoring Others

Second, freedom and expediency.  We live in a country that honors and values religious freedom.  It's protected by our Constitution shaped by our founding fathers and mothers.  It protects the right for the Terry Jones in our midst to proclaim their message of personal and religious conviction.  Even though the city of Gainesville was refusing to give Terry Jones' congregation a fire permit to burn the Qur'ans on their property, his lawyers were reminding him that his right to burn those books was a guaranteed and protected right.  So go ahead if you are so convicted, they said.

Genuine spirituality acknowledges freedom.  Embraces it.  Celebrates it.  And it also willingly includes a caveat.  "All things are permissible," says the Christian New Testament, "but not all things are expedient.  You are allowed to do anything, but not everything is beneficial.  So don't think only of your good.  Think of others and what is best for them."  (1 Corinthians 10:23-24)

Manifesting the Divine Nature

Transformational spirituality embraces complete freedom with self-imposed limitations in order to show tangible honor and respect for the Other.  Terry Jones' worldview compels him to conquer the Other by putting his own convictions and even rights ahead of honor and respect.  Though he concludes that he is putting his honor for God ahead of all others and therefore is not compromising his faith, ironically his approach reveals a lack of understanding about the very God he feels he's honoring, "who though he [Jesus] was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God.  He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form ...."  (Philippians 2:5-7)

That's profound!  The very nature of the divine life, the very nature of divine freedom, is expressed in the context of self-imposed limitations out of honor and respect for the Other.  Terry Jones missed that nonnegotiable center of Godly living.  Exercising the freedom of his convictions was more important to him than whether they were truly beneficial to the Other as perceived by the Other.  This tends to produce a very self-centered spirituality with minimal benefit and often destructiveness to the world.

The central and core principle at the heart of every enduring spiritual tradition is what has been called The Golden Rule:  do to others only what you would want them to do to you.  Transformational spirituality uses freedom to show honor and respect to the Other, just as you would want that same honor and respect shown to you.  What a profound contrast the two spiritualities of Mother Teresa and Rev. Terry Jones are!  This isn't about having to agree with everyone.  It is about honoring and showing care toward others even in the midst of our disagreements.  Which of the two spiritualities would you like someone in your world possessing?

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