There are many organisations dedicated to the eradication of violence and abuse towards women. It is a worthwhile endeavour and one that deserves to be explored more deeply; not from the point of view of berating men, but from a need to delve deeper into understanding why:
35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime[i]
70% of human trafficking (slavery) is of women and children [ii]
200 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation, most of them before they were 5 years old [iii]
92% of women in New Delhi reported experiencing some form of sexual violence in public spaces[iii]
43% of women in the European Union experience some form of psychological violence[iii]
One woman is killed every seven days by their partner (current or former) in Australia [iv]
The simple explanation for this would be to blame certain religions, cultures or socio-economic conditions for creating a culture where this kind of abuse occurs, yet the reality is violence against women occurs at all strata of society, all over the world. This level of prevalence suggests that something else might be going on.
What is so threatening about women that they need to be controlled in this way?
According to the Ageless Wisdom, as presented by Universal Medicine, the energetic essence of men and women are the same and equal. This means there is no need for a battle if we accept ourselves and each other at this level of essence. While each gender brings a slightly different expression of this equal quality, without acceptance of our energetic equality we fail to appreciate what each gender can offer.
Maleness is our activity, it is about offering a direction and focus for our endeavours; it is also about our innate sensitivity and tenderness. Femaleness is about our sacredness, our nurturing and our relationship with divinity; it is also about understanding that true power is not achieved through brute force but through respecting what is delicate in all.
All these qualities are equally needed and equally available within men and women. Yet each gender has something to learn from the other, for example, men living with equal femaleness and women with true maleness.
Note: the focus is on maleness and femaleness, not man or woman. This is not about men becoming women and women becoming men, but rather, showing a willingness to learn how these qualities best interact and work together. For example, motion (activity) without divinity will never lead to harmony – harmony without activity will lead to stagnation.
In fact, if looked at through the filter of reincarnation, the sexes become a farce. We have each lived as both genders multiple times in the past, so why the hard fought effort to control and diminish what each gender can otherwise offer the other?
The reason is: because women hold the key to showing the world how to act in a way that is more nurturing and in line with what is sacred within us, people and institutions that are more interested in power and control can be threatened by this and seek to quash what is an innate, immutable and perpetual offering. To be very clear, this is NOT diminishing women to suggest they bring more nurturing and sacredness, indeed there is untold power in those two qualities alone.
In fact, it could be said that women hold the key to ending violence and abuse.
Could it be that a woman brings a power that is not expressed in physical strength, but rather through a depth of connection to the fact that we are more than human that we have and hold a power and responsibility for what we create? Could it be that a woman, allowed to be in a leadership role in all her femaleness, rather than needing to act like a man, would bring a decidedly different filter for decisions?
What could be more confronting for a society that has succeeded through greed, misuse of power, through violence and abuse, than a woman living in a way that shows success can also be achieved without all these.
Indeed, there is a version of success that can be achieved through greed and violence but it does not deliver any harmony. This is not to say men are innately greedy or violent, the fact is that men only become like this when they are not raised to appreciate their own sensitivity and tenderness. Men get taught that being tough, competing, being the saviour, the protector, the provider is the most important thing. It’s a crushing denial of their innate sensitivity and one that leaves them feeling the misguided justification that they can misuse their physical strength and entrenched social domination.
Thus we end up in a no-win cycle, where men are taught to win the game of survival and end up leading through fear and control, yet all the while suffering because of it. Then we have women being shown that the only way to succeed in life is either to be compliant or being taught equality is only achieved through becoming like the men.
On both counts everyone loses: the men lose as is shown by their high rates of suicide and depression, and women lose for all the reasons this article started with and more.
However, undoing violence against women is not a ‘man against woman’ thing, and female equality is not a ‘woman against man’ thing. The leadership that is required starts in our homes and our own lives, claiming the true qualities of what we are.
For women[v] this means reconnecting to the truth of their true power and responsibility to show the world what this way looks like, regardless of what men do.
For men it means healing the hurts of not being allowed to show the world their sensitivity – giving them the freedom so they can lay down the spears and shields. It is up to men who have done this – and for women – to appreciate, welcome and accept nothing less than this quality in men.
We are each a piece of the puzzle that will make the difference: men who have accepted their tenderness will not harm another, women who have accepted their femaleness will be less likely to be in a situation where abuse occurs. If we start with blame, we perpetuate abuse on some level; if we start with self-responsibility, we get true change.
The best part about this approach is that it doesn’t require structural change, but will cause it; it doesn’t need anyone else’s permission and it can start with us right now.
[i] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs239/en/
[ii] UNODC (2014). Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, p. 5, 11
[iii] http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures
[iv] https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/understand-domestic-violence/facts-violence-women/domestic-violence-statistics/
[v] http://www.esotericwomenshealth.com
Comments