How masculine wounds can be healed
I don’t think I have ever felt so much grief. Or shame and guilt for that matter. Though I am aware of certain deeds of mine that correspond to toxic masculinity - I have definitely not been a saint - I cannot connect these emotions to the man I have been and life I have lived. This level of grief and pain was beyond me as the person I now am.
I am going to share with you a series of experiences related to the masculine, but also feminine wounds, that I have experienced in my years of training as a shaman, earthkeeper and templekeeper. My aim is to deepen the discourse on the masculine and feminine, to provide other sources of reference to base our perceptions on and surpass our social notions of what masculinity and femininity are, to bring it to the level of the soul.
The first experience is a more personal one:
“We were asked to work on a topic from this life, a wound or trauma we experienced. Since this medicine wheel training was my second time, I didnt really prepare or have a topic in mind. “I already did it once” a thought said. I just wanted to step into the healing exercise with no mind. And it worked. I grabbed one of my healing stones and my belly started to coil. In my lower abdomen a pain rose up. A heavy stinging pain, growing, fixing itself to my pelvic floor until it felt like a big wall of bricks. An immense wall that hurt gravely.
“I can’t reach it. It is totally locked.” I told the teacher. My aim was to connect to it, to let emotions arise to bring this energy into motion. To work with it and release the patterns that are attached to it. But it didn’t move. It was just there as a heavy load of old rocks hurting my belly like crazy.
“What is it that you are not allowed to feel?” the teacher said. And in that instant it opened up and erupted a fountain of emotions. They rose up along my spine, through my belly and chest, touching my heart and throat, and I cried. I wailed. I weeped intensily and my heart burned with grief. So much grief.
This was the grief for all I had done. The regrets and remorse for my deeds. Not from this life, but from the many where I caused harm, pain and suffering to others.
After the grief came the guilt, and after the shame. For all the times I allowed myself to be corrupted, to turn away from the light.”
This was one of the first experiences where I accessed grief as a pure emotion, and shame and guilt. Never did I exprience it on this level. It is an important experience because to feel is to heal.
If we are not ready to allow grief, guilt and shame to surface, because we feel we are innocent, because we feel it is not about us, or we feel we are not the offender, then there will be no healing of wounds.
A second experience happened to me in the Exploring Expedition in Sardinia where we visited the Temple of the Sun, a place devoted to the masculine. As a first time visiting this place, we wanted to explore what this prehistoric site was about by what we call tracking; a shamanic way of sensing the traces from ancient times, to learn what this temple was built for. But for me personally, it quickly turned into a healing process:
“I needed to walk the steps. One step at a time. A walk of atonement. One step for each misstep of men. Men failing to preserve the beauty of this world. Men denying their own beauty as guardians of the creation of life.
This walkway was slightly steep leading up toward the steps. I followed my body and at every step words came out of me. Confessions, apologies, forgiveness, for myself and my brothers. Tears started rolling along my cheeks as I felt the pain in my body. The sorrow for all we have done, for everything we missed in life, what we didn’t see or refused to see. All we ignored while we inflicted pain. Our blindness, our ignorance, our pride, our power craving, our corruption, our power misuse. How we abused, we harmed, we damaged, we killed, we raped, we murdered, we tortured, we annihilated. How we denied to take responsibility. We deny to see who we are, as brothers of life. How we don’t remember anymore how it used to be as men, together, standing together for love, for the good of life and the beauty of creation, the feminine force.”
With every step, I atoned. And at the top I was empty, completely depleted. Until I positioned myself on the platform and the energy of the Sun entered me. That week during the expedition, I was blessed to receive a higher energy. For it is not just about the pain and suffering, but also about receiving the highest information about what the masculine is and always has been. Something, in my perception, very different than what we now as society frame as ‘masculinity’.
This perception I have now, on what masculinity is, has only been deepened by the second expedition to Sardinia, where one of the most powerful healing experiences happened to me. I got to see, experience and feel, the deeper potential of what men are on this earth. During our Templekeeper Expedition, where we visited 7 temples connected to the Pleiades star system, we visited the Nuraghe Longu.
When you arrive at this site, and I have been there 4 times now, you can feel the power of this tower. It holds an immense potential of power. Like a volcano’s charged power prior to eruption. We encircled the Nuraghe to start our tracking after which we shared the information we received.
“I felt dissatisfied. The information we tracked was numbed, filtered, like something wasn’t coming through. Something hidden. I also felt personally out of balance, like being sick, like I could go toward fainting on the spot. We all felt I had to enter alone, as the single man of the group, because there was something happening around the masculine and we received information this was not the moment for women to enter.
As the rest of the group moved to stand around the Nuraghe again, I noticed I needed to go visit them. For what reason I don’t know, but I just couldn’t enter the Nuraghe before doing this. I went to the group member closest to me and as I walked up to her I felt what I needed to do. For some reason, I realised, I needed to say sorry. It cracked me up and I started weeping. The ‘sorry’ felt simple as a word, but the world of sorrow and grief behind it reminded me of earlier experiences (as I shared above in this post). One after the other I visited them all to apologise and ask for a hug to make contact, to find comfort and a form of acceptance or forgiveness. It all happened on an emotional and embodied level and there wasn’t much reason. After this circle of visits I felt I could enter the temple.
It was dark as I entered the Nuraghe. And silent. Outside there was the heat of the sun, the wind and the buzzing of cicadas, but as I bowed my head to go underneath the big rock overarching the entrance, it was as if I stepped into emptiness, a timeless void where nothing existed. Until I heard the voices.
Inside, I didn’t know what to do. I started to call for spirit to guide me, “what was needed here?“ Flashes of images came to me. How this Nuraghe was a place where the seeds were kept, the treasures of the valley. The gold. In the image I was guided down in a spiraling motion along stairs. The walls had alcoves that were empty. The seeds were gone. Lost. “We lost it all“ the voices said.
A conversation took place with the ancestors of the Nuraghe. They told me that in the ancient times of the valley, close toward the end of this civilisation, there was a moment where the men betrayed the valley, they were corrupted by outside forces making false promises. It wasn’t just for gold, power or money, but mainly for safegaurding this valley. That was their responsibility as men, the guardians of life. But they stepped into a trap believing that by sacrificing the seeds and secrets of the valley, they compromised to keep the valley safe, sacrificing their truth and authenticity. They made a deal and eventually those outside forces came and destroyed everything.
I don’t know how much time passed inside there, but it felt like hours or days. I went through all kinds of emotions of grief, sorrow, anger, hate, sadness, guilt, blame and shame. I talked to the ancestors with empathy and truth, persuading them to move, to unblock the confusing, filtering and limiting power they instilled in this place, for they were unwilling to move out of shame and guilt for what they had done. I cleared old energies with body, breath and energy. Until in the end I understood how this temple, the temple of the seeds, in fact was the temple of the rose in its essence. There to safeguard seeds, literally but also symbolically. To safeguard the infinite potential of the life force, all that life can be, from the seed that sprouts to the rose that flourishes and shows her true colours.”
I felt the ancestors as brothers, this whole process we went through together, a process of healing. Where we talked, exchanged information, emotions and I guided us all toward confessions, emotional releases, healing and forgiveness.
For many it requires a first step of disarming. To let go of the guards, shields and other weaponry we have put in place to not feel, to be innocent, to not offend, to be the good guy, to defend ourselves or even stand up for our masculinity or a form of safety we need to protect. We need to let it all go.
This is precisely what is needed for all the brothers and sisters in the world to step into the collective healing of the masculine wounds.