The Humanness In Men

Created By: Web Server on 04/14/97 at 04:20 AM
Category: Emotional Discharge

Nature of our humanness

Our humanness has many solid, positive qualities. Intelligence, courage, creativity, are human qualities. The vulnerability to being hurt is also a fundamental part of our humanness. It is the reason that we have been susceptible to conditioning and it is the cause of all the irrational behaviour that threatens us, our cultures and our planet.

It is in the nature of how we can be hurt that our hurts have only three effects upon us. They are:

to distort the nature of reality for us (into a kind of collage of old hurt experiences),
to make us forget, and
to persist in distorting our feelings and thinking (until the hurts are healed completely).

The ability to heal emotional tension is always present in every human. The nature of this ability is that any time that we can see or tell that the past tensions are not now present we heal to the full extent that we have realized it.

Our underlying inherent nature is completely cooperative, loving, generous, universal, always reachable, unique, whole, unconditional, limitless, and permanent.

Inherent healing process

Using the healing process that is signalled with tears, laughing, yawning etc. is a basic human activity that is spontaneously entered into at any time there is enough closeness and safety between one human and other humans.

What we have that is new is the knowledge of how to use this process with deliberate attention and time to create our liberation as men. In order to build relationships that have enough safety and are stable we need to give each other confidentiality in all our sharing with each other. We also need to make special time with friends who are close enough and trusted enough to heal with and make sure that equal turns are taken. We need to give time listening as well as healing or thinking. We will have to face that we will need to train ourselves and each other to learn to give full and complete attention to our friends. This is necessary so that deep hurts that require more safety of time and commitment can heal.

Effective use of our inherent ability to heal

As you approach the man you are going to listen to and assist to heal from his old distresses:

1. Notice that he is a fine human being. Think of his past successes. Respect the many struggles that he has fought.

2. Notice the distresses that he is showing you. Do yourself, make the best guess you can as to what the key hurt is.

3. Think of all the possible ways that this big hurt can be shown to be no longer part of the present.

4. Act so that the person can see that the hurt is in the past.

He will heal spontaneously to the full extent that he has seen that the hurt is no longer present.

It is especially key to effective men's work to respect the need for the man to make a choice to feel and show hurt. It is a key part of our conditioning as men that we must "tough it out" and "work for others". This can be completely in the way of any emotional work at all if our need to choose freely is not completely respected.

In order to sustain emotional discharge most people need to have the attention and the encouragement of another in order to continue. A key skill at this point is to remember what allowed the person to be emotional and repeat it again and again. Our work is to allow each other to heal. We need to assist each other to "ache".

In our work with each other the overall direction that we take is to put attention away from and against the conditioning to be stoic.

The basic tools that we have at our disposal are our facial expression, tone of voice, posture or movement, attitudes we take, decisions and words that we use. Of all of these, words are the least effective, as they have been misused the most.

We have been told what is wrong with us tens of thousands of times and it has very seldom helped. If we step outside of our conditioned numbness and use our native voices, faces, postures and perhaps words we can demonstrate humanness with profound consequences for those around us.

The attitudes we need to take to a man who we have made a commitment to be with and assist to heal are respect, relaxed high expectations, commitment to stay with him as he feels and heals, confidence in him that he has what it takes, generosity about his past mistakes, approval, delight in and love for him as a person and as a man.

We need to be tolerant and understanding about what we hate about other men and other groups of men. We also need complete commitment to each other's leadership as brothers.

A key and useful question to ask of one another is: when did you start to not feel good enough to be the model of a man? Cleaning up this place will lets us be ourselves instead of being the role.

The indications of healing

Kind of Painful Emotions	Indication of Healing Tension
Vitality (our nature with out painful emotion)	Expansion of awareness to the process of living fully
Boredom	Laughter Animated Talking Reluctant Talking (not repeating)
Light Angers	Laughter, Warm Perspiration
Heavy Angers	Angry noises, sharp movements warm perspiration
Light Fears	Laughter, cold perspiration
Heavy Fears	Trembling, shivers, cold perspiration, active kidneys
Grief	Tears, sobbing
Physical Pains and Tensions	Yawns, stretching, scratching

People heal the level of emotions that are available to them, given the safety available, and given the nature of their tensions. A new born baby will often begin with grief, then move to fears, then angers, then boredom, then to aliveness if loving attention is paid to them for long enough. The physical tensions are released at all levels of hurts but often there are a lot of yawns left after all the painful emotions have been released.

Each level of painful emotion is as important as the others. Often the anxiety of a listener will want to push someone (whose "turn" it is) to cry, as this seems the deepest level of emotion. The listener may even "feel" that the person is avoiding something by laughing. However, each of us has his own order of emotional release that he needs to follow to heal. Often a man will laugh for a long time before he feels safe enough to cry or sweat or shake with fear. We can be relaxed in our listening and allow the level of emotion that is presented to be dealt with patiently.

Paul Whyte Sydney Men's Network +61-2-9879-4979

...........................