Fighting and Feeling
Is there a different path to spiritual answers by virtue of gender? In other words, can we envision two broad, generalized paths within which lie individualized paths? Before an answer, two disclaimers: one, I’m a guy. Two, my spiritual “upbringing” was highly influenced by Richard Rose – who felt the paths of men and women were definitely different.
As Rose said in his Boston College lecture:
Rose: …The female is able to pick this up very quickly, much more quickly than the man. It’s like an intuition. A girl or a woman can come and hear me talk and they will know. They will know me.
Question: But the man will have to work at it?
Rose: Right.
This view distilled in my mind as: men must fight (think) their way to the Truth, while women feel their way. So I read a lot, pondered, debated, meditated, tried to control my mind, fasted, prayed, denied myself various pleasures, and dozens of other practices short and long-lived. The few women who passed through my world of spiritual interests… well, they did something else. Yes, they read, but not as much. They meditated, but not as consistently. They debated, but not as hotly. Yet many of the women seemed closer to an answer to their search.
I think men are designed by nature to conquer and protect. In a spiritual search, that manifests as deep discontent and intensity of action. Women are designed to keep themselves and their children alive. Women have a greater faith (based in intuition) in Life. In fact, the most remarkable difference I’ve noticed between men and women is that men are disturbed by the thought of death/non-existence, while women pay little mind to it. A major motivator on my path was seemingly of little use for women.
It seemed our paths were different. It seemed men were rather dense, but often determined, while women were more aware of something greater than themselves, but not taking action to pursue it or to definitely determine if their feeling was the final truth.
I reasoned that if you combined the strengths of men and women, you would be in a better position to find an answer.
Men start with thinking being their strongest tool and women have feeling/intuition as their strongest. I saw that women who applied some discrimination to their feeling, improved their feeling and consistency of efforts. I saw myself work to improve intuition and eventually discover that thinking and feeling originate from the same source.
Men must learn to fight with wisdom – in the direction their feeling leads them. Women must learn to learn – to discriminate between the feeling of Life and the feeling of the Absolute. In this way, the paths of men and women intersect and amplify each other.