November 13, 2009
On the morning of Day 2 all the men were separated from the women. We learned how to breathe very deeply, and after two hours of that we were in a completely different state by the afternoon. One woman commented that as we walked back into the room she went from feeling afraid of the men the night before, to feeling like she could ask any one of us for anything she needed. It was that big of a shift.
Men are presence.
This is what a woman wants more than anything. A man who is completely there with him. She will follow a present man to the ends of the earth, and chop his balls off when he goes unconscious. That’s all well and good, but there’s a flip side to this that women do not like. You see, presence comes from nothingness. It is only nothingness that can hold that full presence.
But most women do not understand a man’s attraction to nothingness. Why? Because women think a man has a woman’s brain. She thinks when he’s upset that what he really wants is to talk and to be held. Hardly! He wants space. He wants nothingness. When he comes home from work and just sits in front of the television, that is his nothingness. Women try to fight it… they make him engage, they make him talk about his day. David said to forget that. He said, you want your man to engage, put dinner in front of him and go down on him as you massage his legs. Then he will do anything you want… It’s true.
Women are light.
A woman’s essence is light. It’s this divine grace that attracts a man. It’s this light that opens him up to God. And it’s this light that powers him to live his purpose… A man who is fully present realizes that a commitment to a woman is actually freedom, because he is free to live his true purpose when he has a woman supporting him. Now that’s all well and good , but the flip side is that with the divine light comes completely inexplicable behavior.
Men believe that women have a man’s mind, so they think she says what she means, and will not change her mind. But in reality her mind changes like the weather, and fighting it is like getting angry at the sky for the thunderstorm. In fact, David says a woman’s complaints are not really complaints at all. They’re foreplay. Yes. She is riling up her man, testing him, seeing how strong he is, with a huge desire for him to pass the test and take her. David said, do not try to rationalize with her, it won’t work. Her complaint isn’t even relevant to what she’s saying. She’s really testing her man, and the superior man is not only unfazed, but turned on.
It all comes down to baseball
Women’s views on relationships are the same as men’s views on baseball. If you have a favorite team, you like to see them win. But if the game is 20 to 0, it’s just not a good game. Yes, your team won, but it’s not a good game. If it’s tie score, bottom of the 9th, and a 3-2 pitch, then it’s a very interesting game. This is how women are with relationships. They don’t want the easy win. They WANT the risk of losing it all.
I didn’t think this could be real until David said, “Have you read a romance novel? You have a woman who married a man who goes off to war, and she thinks he’s dead and marries his best friend, but then her husband comes back ten years later and she doesn’t know what to do because her first love is back, but now her son is with his best friend…. Now all the men here are thinking – what a nightmare! And all the women are on the edges of their seat.”
Love vs. Sex vs. Romance
Love is pure acceptance. It’s absolutely required for your relationship, but you can have love with anyone (love for your parents, kids, etc).
Sex is what David calls “polarity” – the poles of masculine and feminine. But it’s not just physical sex, it’s intercourse an all levels. It’s intellectual intercourse, emotional intercourse, spiritual intercourse – all of these have a masculine and feminine and they are at play in a relationship. If either is lacking, then the polarity is dead and the relationship goes down hill. David actually believes that women are evolving faster than men, and since the masculine is not catching up, women have to be their own men when they don’t find one. He said that’s why women will take on the masculine but then have their boy-toy boyfriends (e.g. Angelina and Brad).
Romance… romance is the big MacGuffin. It comes and it goes. In other words, it’s unnecessary. That sudden rush of excitement, that fluttering heart – it fades. Yes, it’s nice. But it’s not necessary for a great relationship the way love and polarity are must-haves. (e.g. this is why arranged marriages work). This one was hard for me to swallow.
I’ve always been convinced there is “the one.” But now I’m not so sure. And once we started the exercises between men and women, I saw first hand how it’s completely possible to love anyone. How it’s possible to even feel a sexual attraction to anyone. It was such an intense feeling that my whole body was going into shock.
