For the month of June, I have been discussing what are the essential components to be a mindful, conscious man in this culture.

Two fundamental questions I  ask:  1. Who am I?  I play with my identity……  Question 2:  What am I to do here?  In answering these two questions, a context is created which can help a man develop relationships with overflow and generosity.    It is not what we take but what we offer.     Leaving a place better than we found it.  Contributing!  The overflow experience….

In relationship, my practice is to let go of resentments and become the wind that travels through the trees.  Can you hear the wind and sway like the trees?  What a wonderful opportunity we are given as we look into ourselves deeply.   Dr. Gerald J. Jud, one of my teachers used to say that loving is a skill that we need to need to practice.   Love is the art of listening, the art of acceptance, the art of creating good will, and the art of creating a spaciousness.  Can we listen with the vastness of space, the ocean, and the sky.  Have you ever yelled at the ocean?  Or the sky?    Listening without reacting, without wanting to fix it.  Sometimes we just need to be heard.

Another concept I want to bring into the conversation is Sacred. Sacred comes from the Latin root sacer which means holy.   This takes a slowing down, an ability to understand that obstacles are part of the process to work through, and to recognize that the real relationship starts after the honeymoon period.  After the adrenaline calms down, the chemical reaction ceases, and that is when the true intimacy begins.

We can come from our history, or we can come from a broader identity which then says is our unification to all living things.  I call this species inclusivity.  I believe this can only come when we slow down our nervous system, connect deeply to our inner self through the breath or other practices.  Every experience comes with a larger context.  We actually carry billions of years of a planetary history, and we don’t even know it!  Embodying both the masculine and feminine aspects means that we carry the lineage of both.  I am asking myself and other men to step out of their traditional roles

I will leave you with the following traditional values that I play with:

• A man needs to make more money than a woman
• A man never cooks as well as a woman
• A man is the only gender good at mechanical things
• A man should never cry, or if he does, it should only be in private by himself.

I want to thank all my ancestors especially from the male lineage  The more we can acknowledge them, the more we they can help and guide us.  To learn more about my workshops contact me at: www.DrSamBerne.com

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