A Manifesto for Conscious Men:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/consciousmen?v=app_4949752878
Dear Woman:
As a man, I feel sorrow that women and feminine energy have been suppressed for so many thousands of years on our planet. Everywhere we look, women have been disenfranchised. Throughout history, we have raped and abused you, burned you at the stake, bought and sold your bodies for sexual pleasure, barred you from religious and political office, relegated you to subservient chores, forced you to hide your faces and even cut off your organs of sexual pleasure.
Although I may not have done these things personally, I am aware of the forces in the masculine psyche that are responsible for dishonoring the feminine. I take responsibility for those forces and choose no longer to be run by them. I do this on behalf of all men, in order to usher in a new era of co-creation.
I vow to treat your heart as the sacred temple it is, and I commit to celebrating the feminine in my relationships as well as in my relationship to all life.
As a man, I acknowledge that the religions of the past several thousand years have been mainly founded by and propagated by men. As men, we have often acted as if we have the last word on God and the spiritual life, when all we have really known is the masculine expression of those things. I honor your pathways of spiritual awakening. I commit to the celebration of feminine spirituality.
As a man, I honor your deep connection to the earth. As men, our relationship to our planet, its resources, its weather, its oceans and its forests has for too long been motivated by acquisition and dominion. I commit to listening to the intuitive sense you have of how to heal our planet and make it thrive.
As a man, I honor your intuition and your ability to feel. As men, we have often devalued feeling and intuition in favor of a view dominated by data and logic. I commit to respecting the arts of feeling, intuition and wisdom of the feminine heart, so that together we can integrate them into a balanced view of life.
As a man, I love the beauty of your body. I feel sorrow that we men have used your beauty as a form of commerce: in prostitution, pornography and the sale of products through advertising. I take a stand against any form of commercialization of woman’s beauty, and I respect that your body belongs to you.
I honor your capacity for peaceful resolution of conflicts. We men have waged endless wars over our disagreements; by contrast, it is rare to find an invasion or war instigated by a woman. We welcome your wisdom in creating a world that can get along.
I honor your capacity to listen to your body and its needs for food, rest and playtime. As men, our preoccupation with goals and results has often driven us into a burn out mentality. I know we have often drawn you into that as well. I welcome your reminders to maintain balance in our bodies.
I honor your sense of compassionate justice. In our justice system,, men have dominated as judges and police, built prisons, and set punishment as a higher value than restitution. I welcome you to bring the return of the heart to our system of justice.
I honor your capacity to enjoy and pay attention to what is here, right now. As men, we often get overly-focused on reaching the next milestone. We place so much emphasis on progress — what is new and better and faster — that we often forget to enjoy what we already have. I know that together we can co-create in bringing forth the wisdom of sufficiency.
I know that in joining hands, and leaving the past behind we can create a synergy of our strengths. I know, and I know that you know, that then there is nothing that we cannot do together.
