the maps we’ve been given

and how they've led us astray

Dearest Human,

When potential clients come to me and we have the initial discovery call to see if we’re a fit what they often say in language unique to each of them is that they had a map for life, they followed it, and now they are in an unsatisfied internal wasteland, although from an external perspective everything looks fine. In fact, they themselves don’t know what’s wrong.

These are brilliant, successful people, with jobs, families, sometimes vacation homes, multiple cars. They are often traditionally educated with higher degrees and accolades, or self-educated in a manner more rigorous than any higher institution could have offered. They are accomplished, connected, hold a global consciousness, have weathered places of “failure” (i actually don’t believe there is such a thing as failure, but for the sake of description) or defeat, and learned and tried again. This probably sounds familiar.

So, for all practical purposes, they are confused as to why they are not relishing their life. Why they’re not enjoying their accomplishments, their work, their relationships. Nothing is really wrong, they often tell me slightly embarrassed. I think they find it a little humiliating to essentially complain about their good fortune, or feel like they need therapeutic help or spiritual guidance when, again, nothing is really wrong.

As we delve deeper though, the symptoms i have come to expect, that i also experienced particular to my being’s mosaic, come to the surface. They’re anxious all the time. They sleep poorly and they either don’t dream, or their dreams are vivid, seemingly all night long kind of scapes of such intense detail that their unconscious is clearly sending them message after message. They’ve lost the luster for living. They find themselves floating away at cocktail parties, at work conferences, at church or temple or mosque. They don’t feel real and neither does their life.

The list of symptoms goes one, their relationships are good (you should hear the tone here, the upward tilt of the voice, the elongated vowel sound like a question, and then the self-reassurance), Yeah, they are goooooood.

“Are they?” i ask.

“No, but i don’t know why i feel that,” they sigh.

Muir Woods

Friends, nine years ago, i was in a similar place. My life looked wondrous from the outside. I was in doctoral program working toward my dream degree and teaching college courses. I had more friends than i could keep up with. I was newly married (about 3 years) to a gorgeous, artistic, kind, spiritually mature man who was smitten with me and vice versa. I could go on and on about all that was working for me if you were to peek at my life from the outside.  

Internally, i felt like a wreck in many ways. I developed bronchitis fourteen times in one year. Eventually, i was diagnosed with asthma after two breathing attacks nearly took my life. I felt constantly depressed or anxious and had to go on medication as a way to support my therapeutic work. I would go to church or have interactions with my family that left me bowled over, wanting to stay in bed and cry for three or four days after. I didn’t, because i was also one to not let myself linger in misery.

My brand of coping wasn’t the (to a degree) healthier wallow. It was the get up and get shit done. Which i did most every day of my life, which is why my husband even now tells me on the weekends, we don’t have to do anything. He usually follows it up with I need to do nothing for a day, which gets him a loving eye-roll from me. It’s the true Rx for deep living that i never learned in my first home, or anywhere for that matter, except with him. Long story short, like the humans i get to accompany now, I asked myself the same question over and over again what is wrong … with me?

Beautiful humans, I was following all the maps i had been handed by religion, by the dominant culture, with the unique flavors of my family, nuclear and extended, the threads that intertwined from the matriarchal and patriarchal lines that culminated in my body and psyche.

My particular map looks something like this, though not exhaustive:

Obey. Children are here to be seen, not heard, and to be obedient and pleasing. To make their families proud.

Perform and be brilliant in school. Become erudite.

Discover other gifts you have to serve God and humanity. In fact, give the best of your energy to your family and church.

Don’t have sex before marriage. Like really, don’t fuck this one up. (My sister and i did processing later in life where we felt like if we had ever gotten pregnant out of wedlock, death would be a better alternative. I know! The fear was that intense.

Eventually, after schooling (just the right amount, not too much, so you don’t get ideas about changing your world/the systems) get married, have a few children, perhaps let God decide how many children you have, but also don’t just let yourself go and have a dozen (always the catch 22).

There are also some subtle and other no-so-subtle strands to highlight:

Have desire, but only for your husband, for one man, or for men only, of course! Don’t express that desire! Don’t be a slut! Don’t be frumpy, but also by god, don’t be seductive. You wear a skirt like that and men will lust after you, or worse. It’s your responsibility to notlead a man into sin.

Be successful, work faithfully (maybe even stay in the same place for decades, this isn’t about fulfillment, it’s about service), make good money, but don’t be too wealthy. If you are wealthy, give as much of it away, but also look good doing it. Also, don’t become a pauper and embarrass your family.

Don’t question. Don’t question the faith, don’t question your parents, don’t question the family’s legacy.

Don’t question the men in authority in your life. Your father. Your pastor. Your professor.

Be smart, but not too smart.

Be gifted. Shine, but not too brightly.

Be modest.

Be humble.

Be quiet. Especially, as a woman damn it, be a little more quiet.

Stop with the whole patriarchal bullshit. People need to be under authority. Women need to be under authority. No, a woman cannot preach. Or if she does, she needs to hide her body under robes.

I’ll pause here.

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Max Patch, NC

Dear ones, as women, or men, or nonbinary folks, you have your own version of this, though i know we share many common themes. Even though, i am a third culture human, living the hybridity of an old-world European mentality shaped by monarchies, the fall of those monarchies, and the rise of communism, intertwined with the Western dominant culture, American in nuance, these ways of thinking are part of a larger structure that holds the globe.

A structure of domination only about 7,000 years old that’s been termed patriarchy, named so because it ideologically and practically confers power to men predicated on the belief of the inherent superiority of masculinity. This system has oppressed those perceived as weaker, women, children, and indigenous peoples, with a particular suppression of the feminine principle, the power and wisdom of women and matriarchal lines.

The philosopher and theologian Beatrice Bruteau speaks of it this way The Holy Thursday Revolution,

domination is an asymmetrical and nonreciprocal relation of determination of being: of the fact that a being is, or of what it is, or of how it can act, or of how it can be valued. Domination is a relation that does not work the same in both directions. One commands, the other obeys. One shows respect, the other accepts it but does not return it. One gains privileges from which the other is excluded. One acts as a support, aid, or infrastructure to the other, which acts as an end in itself.

You might see in the map i just loosely laid out this expresses itself in a myriad of ways. God was male, the political systems were run by men, the church was run by men, families were run by men. And the problem, isn’t that men as singular entities have had power, but that power has exclusively belonged for a long time to men by purview of very overtly embodying the masculine principle. Power has been in the expression of and alignment with the values held by masculine energies: structure, performance, external expression, action, logic, industry etc.

Not that there is anything inherently wrong with these aspects. Let me be clear, masculinity is essential. Patriarchy isn’t healthy, divine masculinity; it is a distorted expression birthed out of imbalance extrapolated over time and devoid of the power and wisdom of the feminine, and the harmonious creation of the two energies. Its outcomes are war, oppression, violence, racism, misogyny, and many other evils.

As i’ve mentioned in many other essays on here, the Feminine Principle is substance, rest, internal development, surrender, feeling and sensation, embodiment, emotion, eros etc. You see how exquisitely this pairs with the values of the masculine. How important they are for flourishing and wholeness.

These maps are broken because they are founded on the shaky ground of domination. Though individual elements of these maps are lovely in and of themselves and even signal inherent desires belonging to the human blueprint, they function inside the false structure of patriarchy. They miss the substance of aliveness which isn’t linear, (masculinity tends to privilege linearity over spiral, cyclical, or quantum growth) the inherent goodness of nature and the human person, the value of diversity, the myriad of ways self-expression and creativity can occur.

They miss the inviolability of freedom. The mystery. When we function according to a prescribed map, a collective script and our belonging depends on fulfilling this script, we immediately sever our connection to a deeper wilder wisdom of being. We are initially too vulnerable, to not choose belonging. Not only our existence, but our bodies, minds, emotions are patterned by these maps, before we ever have the wherewithal to shift into meta perspective, where we can begin to see not only the content, the ideology, the teaching, but the forms too. The structures that keep us stuck and confused.

Yosemite

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EXERCISE:

I’d like to invite you now to explore the maps that have been handed to you. How was life supposed to unfold? What did you learn about the evolution of relationships? How have you approach your vocation and work? How does play, leisure, and rest function in your life? How do you feel about money? What about spirituality?

As you begin to lay out these maps and start to pull out the hidden messages in each of these, notice what is and isn’t working for you. Notice where life didn’t go according to “plan.” Notice if you felt shame, or have beaten yourself up about this. Begin to gently consider that perhaps the problem isn’t with you, but with the map itself and the system that has informed it. A system intended to keep you in line. To benefit from your ignorance and obedience.

As you notice where you;ve deviated from these imposed scripts, make room for celebration.

You haven’t failed. You have begun to discover your true humanity. Your blueprint. The inherent, tender, beautiful, intelligence programmed into your DNA, your wise and creative heart, mind, body, and soul. You are not broken. You have just exceeded the external borders of institution and system. Each “failure” was a way you touched into the expansive and creative field of Love. Of Reality.

More on this coming soon.