Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Moments with GARY STUART
85 Plays10 months ago
Founder of Constellation Healing Institute, author of "VENUS ENVY: Busting the Misogyny Myth," and producer of "Zapped!" films, Gary has witnessed, experienced and lived the interpretations and (mis-)understandings of what it means to "be a man" in America. After the enduring pain trying to fit in and going down the path of what was expected, he had the courage to break free and be him Self! Hear how it all happened for him ...
Thank you for supporting my work with "Moments with MEN!"
Contact me with comments, insights or to continue the discussion with me on your own episode ...
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Masculinity Dialogue
00:00:03
Speaker
Hi, everyone. I am Lizzie K. Moon, and I am here for another Moments with Men episode. And my mission here is to provide an open space for conversations with men about their expected roles and acceptable expressions of masculinity in today's culture. So I am here today with Gary Stewart.
00:00:28
Speaker
And Gary Stewart is a bestselling author of about 13 books, I believe. And his latest creation is Venus Envy, busting the male misogyny myth. And I think that matches very well with our conversation today. He also has titles, Quantum Activation, Transforming Obstacles into Opportunities, and Raising Your Hormoneous Child, among other titles.
Gary Stewart's Background and Interests
00:00:54
Speaker
So you can check him out at GaryStewartHealing.com.
00:00:58
Speaker
He also is into many other interests. He is the co-founder of Zapped Films. I'll invite you to visit that as well, cleanupoceans.org to make a bigger impact with some of his heartfelt offerings here in the world. And he's the founder of Constellation Healing Institute.
00:01:22
Speaker
So,
Importance of Open Conversations on Masculinity
00:01:23
Speaker
and that's just, I think, a little bit of probably what Gary Stewart is into. So welcome, Gary. Thank you. Thank you. Slightly busy. Life is full, right? Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming and doing this with me today. I just, as I have mentioned before, you know, I have a heart for this topic because I have observed, been in relationship with, heard from men who, you know, are having a hard time.
00:01:52
Speaker
in this time of changing roles and redefining what it means to be a man or to express a masculine energy at this
Personal Loss and Familial Bonds
00:02:02
Speaker
point. And that's for all of us, women and men. And so I just wanted to open the conversation and let men know that some women have a heart for this because I think we're all very easy to say, all women think and feel this, all men think and feel that.
00:02:20
Speaker
It really dismisses the opportunity for these conversations.
00:02:24
Speaker
Absolutely. It's wonderful. Yeah. So I appreciate you doing this. So tell me, we're just going to do a little quick demographic. Gary, how old are you? Sure. I'm 72 years old. I'll be 73 in June, Cancer, Cancerian. Okay. I was born in New England, Lemonsford, Massachusetts. And I currently am in Prescott by way of Los Angeles for about 30 years before I couldn't take the insanity of California and relocated.
00:02:53
Speaker
Welcome with many others. Yes. You know many Californians who have done that and I'm glad you found your way. Okay so are you currently partnered or? I'm a widower. I'm a widower. My younger partner died of a massive heart attack on vacation. Kind of stereotypical you hear hear about it but then it happens to me you know and he was eight years younger than me. We were together 20 years
00:03:17
Speaker
It was our first vacation after his mother died, so we cared for her to death with Alzheimer and cancer. And then our first vacation, he drops dead just a few months after we buried his mother. So it shows you how strong family bonds are. Even though we had a good relationship, that family bond he had with his father was pre-deceased to him as well by about 20 years as well.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, it was about his father died. We met right after his father died a year after his father died. And then we're together for 20 years buried his mother then then I buried him so it's quite a quite a shock because we were just getting our life started together without being caretaker so it was a really big tragedy.
Misogyny and Societal Beliefs
00:04:01
Speaker
And that's really the only long lasting male romantic relationship I had this lifetime. So I was married to a woman back in the 70s. We met in primal therapy when I was trying to cure my internalized homophobia.
00:04:17
Speaker
which I didn't conceptualize it that way then. In my latest book, Venus Envy is about misogyny and it's not to male bash. The intention of the book is how misogyny, for those who don't know what that word means, it means hatred of the feminine. So if Western cultures have a subconscious hatred of the feminine, then any man who would show emotion or tenderness would develop internalized self-hatred for being human.
00:04:46
Speaker
Western culture teaches males to be good soldiers, toughen up, don't let it get to you. And basically all human beings are empathic sensitive, but sometimes a society like a war like misogynistic Western culture doesn't allow
Programming of Gender Identities
00:05:06
Speaker
that. So men are imprisoned by a belief system. And kind of the joke of the whole book is it's a myth.
00:05:13
Speaker
It's not based in reality, but everyone believes it's a reality. So, you know, one of the opening quotes I had is, if you look at misogyny or homophobia,
00:05:24
Speaker
or heterocentrism, sexually, whatever, what could be worse than a woman, a feminine man? So then you have all this internalized homophobia in the society that you hate yourself because you're not normal, which I did. And I sought out lots of therapies to cure myself of this insidious, haunting desire to be with other men. Oh my goodness. You've just put this whole really intention of this conversation in a nutshell.
00:05:54
Speaker
You know, because I believe, you know, whether gay or not, you know, men live under this and they don't, a man I was talking to said, well, we're, we're just wired that way. And I go, well, wired or programmed and programmed. And I don't think anybody can, I'm not saying anybody, a lot of people can't tell, can't tell anymore. Is it wired or am I programmed this way? So, and, and on that point,
00:06:20
Speaker
It means that women grow up with that as well. And so we project that onto the man saying, well, you know, if you have an, a certain emotional response, you're not being manly or a masculine figure in my life enough for me. So then we project it. So we're all trained under this. Absolutely. That's what my next book is about the power of propaganda. I'm already working on the outline now.
00:06:45
Speaker
how everyone is programmed and they think it's their feelings, but they have actually been programmed into having those feelings. I mean, misogyny is a good start. I really believe the first ism on earth is sexism. Not to diss Christians who worship the Bible, but they demonized Eve in the first chapter. So they set the tone that women are corruptors. Mankind was perfect until a woman came along.
00:07:14
Speaker
you know, and then people believe that to be true. Well, and, and it only takes, I kind of always say it only takes a generation or two or a few hundred years or whatever to completely erase what was really there. And that has been morphed, morphed into the myth that you're talking about. And we don't even go back and say, wait, wait, wait, when did this idea start? I mean, I do.
00:07:38
Speaker
The school I'm in teaches some ancient teachings about what it really was, what the spiritual leaders were really trying to tell us about masculinity and femininity and the forces on the earth and how they're both needed. To the point now, we're like, I just saw a video from some young girls and they were being asked, do you need men? No, no, no.
00:08:01
Speaker
Young girls already, 10, 11 years old, already saying, no, I don't need a man. And the end of that video said, well, 97% of firefighters are men, 93% of police officers are men. There's just a certain strength or something about the male that they do come with. So my question is too, right? We come with certain things that are, we would say, wired.
Media Influence on Gender Perceptions
00:08:24
Speaker
And most of it, or a lot of it may be at this point because it's become quite,
00:08:31
Speaker
huge and profitable to continue going in big ways. So I feel like it's very hard, very difficult to get out of it. I call it the trillion dollar machine. It's very difficult to get out of the programming that's happening to the point you don't even know it's programming. So what were some of the programs or things that you grew up with or heard?
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's like no one asked for this. It's like, you know, being a constellation facilitator I work with, you could call it family systems therapy. You see how the family beliefs are really shaping the consciousness of the child, and you be that. It's like in business, if a man's a bastard in business,
00:09:14
Speaker
He's respected if a woman is strong in business, oh, she's a bitch, don't do business with her. So you see the societal judgments that are so negative geared against the feminine from being powerful. One thing I do wanna add that most people don't know, I did not know until I wrote the book Venus Envy, 27,000 years before Christianity, all cultures on earth worship the female.
00:09:39
Speaker
God and the universe was feminine. And much to my surprise, there's a book of Mary Magdalene, Virgin Mary, the Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of Philip, Christian books that were disallowed in the Bible. Guess what? They touted that the universe was feminine, forgiving, nurturing, and they did not want those books in the Bible. Now, I think those would be key players in
Ancient Beliefs and Modern Exclusions
00:10:03
Speaker
the whole
00:10:05
Speaker
mythological aspect of the savior and Christ consciousness. So why would you intentionally delete those books? So that was a real shocker to me. So there is an agenda of that book to, well, it's actually guilt and shame, getting rich from guilt and shame, if you really boil it down to money. And that's the richest organization on earth.
00:10:30
Speaker
that's exactly what I was pointing to and so thank you for the details on that because that's why I say it is not bashing one or the other this has been done to all of us to the point you know that it's so unnatural that it's breaking people this is kind of where we are even one of my friends said you know men have given up they don't know I mean
00:10:54
Speaker
because maybe a male wants to be nurturing. Maybe they feel out, but it's not accepted. Maybe they really want to have a cry and just let it go out. Right. But it's not accepted. Whereas like you said before, just recently, I mean, this is just recently. So 27,000 years, that was perfectly normal.
Cultural Shifts and Programming
00:11:13
Speaker
We're taking away from those normal things and we're seeing, seeing people suffer.
00:11:19
Speaker
And the most interesting thing I found out is most of those early civilizations. So we're talking about from Neolithic to Paleolithic, right up until the monotheism of an angry vengeful God took root.
00:11:34
Speaker
is that all the societies were egalitarian. So for listeners who may not know what that is, that means everything is shared communally and the society is nurtured by men and women alike equally. So isn't it nice? And it was very few wars back then.
00:11:51
Speaker
And women would even go to fight. They were considered equal warriors if they needed to. But generally, everyone lived in peace, agriculture, everything, and everyone shared and nurtured their tribe and found safety without the war machine that we see so prevalent today. And one of the key insights that I came up by the end of the book, and I researched this, turned out I did the cover page 10 years ago, and it took 10 years to get it birthed, which is a long gestation.
00:12:21
Speaker
And it's amazing. So the key quote that I came with right at the end of the book is, men seek power and women have power. And if you really look at that, because there's no greater power than procreation,
00:12:39
Speaker
And it was interesting that in Neolithic times, they thought women manufacture the babies. They didn't connect that sexuality was connected to
Healing Generational Trauma
00:12:48
Speaker
childbirth, very primitive medically or whatever. They thought women can just create life out of their wombs with nothing. They didn't connect the two were interconnected, which is kind of funny, really. Yeah.
00:13:01
Speaker
And it was just so many details I learned that I thought I was well-read. After I studied about 10 books and lots of Wikipedia pages searching different terms, I got an education. I wanted to synthesize that and pass it on for our modern age.
00:13:17
Speaker
That's wonderful. And thank you for bringing that forward. I like talking to people who have done the research for us and can encapsulate it so that we can apply it, like start applying this in our life. And even the astrological paradigm that I'm learning seeks to redefine the hijack of the interpretations, the essences of some of these planets even. So it's interesting that your book is called Venecinity because one of the hijacks that has taken place, even in the astrological world,
00:13:47
Speaker
is over Saturn, which would be the counterpart of Venus. And Venus is seen as the love goddess, the feminine love of God. Well, you know, Venus was a warrior in many other cultures. And Saturn was the one that taught us through limits and boundaries, meaning, gosh, we can't just expand completely out of our life, whatever.
00:14:12
Speaker
So then Saturn was turned into a punishing father, God. Aha, right? So now it's across all the forms of learning. Now it's in astrology, now it's in religion, now it's in our society, the judges and the ones that will punish you. So that's what I mean, we're all under this distorted idea of masculinity, women and men. And so I really appreciate you bringing that up because how can we start redefining this?
00:14:42
Speaker
and start talking to each other about it instead of if a woman has an emotional response, she's crazy or a bitch, or if a man has an emotional response, he's weak or too feminine in some way. And maybe some of this brought you to really study in constellation healing too, because you could see how it's all connected.
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Well, I just spoke to that for you, but maybe what are some of the things that you see through your own work and through the through your own life and the constellation healing work as well from men? Like where are some of these sticking
00:15:26
Speaker
Well, a lot of them now it's going to sound kind of crazy. I'll go on both sides. So constellations is a modality where we use people that are integrated. It can be done on Zoom, but people in a group would be a rep for your mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. I do the work blindly. They know nothing about your family history. They're tuning into the raw energy of what your grandmother might have carried.
00:15:50
Speaker
or your grandfather or whatever. And what we do is we sort out those energies to send them back to who it belongs to so we don't have to carry the burden of our ancestors in our present life. So it's really creating healthy boundaries. So here's where it gets kind of interesting. And I've done it for 25 years. So I have a lot of philosophical experience with them is that the distortions that you spoke about so eloquently
00:16:17
Speaker
are carried down generationally. So to be a man, you have to be inhuman because my father was inhuman, my grandfather, and I happen to be a severely battered child by both parents, more by my father. So I hated the masculine because I was beat to a pulp. Now, before my uncle died, he shared what my grandfather did to them. I said, boy, I got off easy being beaten to a pulp. He was very cruel to you. And I always hated my grandfather.
00:16:45
Speaker
And what did my great grandfather do to my grandfather? So you could say this is going to sound kind of crazy, but it's true in my life. So I like to use myself as a four years. I've had direct experience with the both sides of the coin and men can only create connect in my family system through violence.
00:17:05
Speaker
That's like the insane equation that happened eons ago in my male lineage. Now my lineage does come from Scotland, kind of warlike people way back when, you know, and it's of the Stewart clan, S-T-E-W, it changed to S-T-U.
00:17:21
Speaker
God knows what happened way back then. I traced my family, my male line back to 1711 and a little bit before. So we're talking about 500 years of misery. Kind of interesting, you know what I mean? And same with the female line. So what if your mother or grandmother was a victim
00:17:41
Speaker
That means every girl born in the same, oh, women have to be victims to belong to the feminine lineage in our family system. So then you have two converging things, the cruel soldiers and the victimized women repeating the dramas generation after generation, because that's the pattern that gave you life. So you feel to honor that life, you have to repeat the patterns you were given.
00:18:06
Speaker
So interestingly, about 99% of customers who come to work with me, clients, customers, whatever you want to call it, they all are black sheep. I was a black sheep in the family and it's the black sheep actually have to be stronger to withstand those program norms that doesn't fit into them on a sole level. So it actually creates a deeper strength to walk away from your family or do it differently.
00:18:34
Speaker
because it doesn't resonate with you on a deeper level. And so I find most of the people who seek my work are people who either were rejected by the family or they reject the programming and know it's unhealthy or don't want to be a part of it.
Cycles of Violence and Societal Norms
00:18:49
Speaker
And so we get to a place of constellations kind of of empathy, realize that they're suffering the struggle, they can't get out of their own paper bag,
00:18:57
Speaker
We can see the paper bag and we want to get out of that paper bag. So it's the difference between subjective consciousness and objective consciousness. Most people are trapped in subjective consciousness. They can't see that they're trapping themselves.
00:19:12
Speaker
But if you can witness yourself swayed, I have a choice here. Do I want to be like that? So thank God for me, the Beatles came along because here I was 12 years old, 11, 12 years old, just, just like hating the masculine. When John Lennon was singing about love and all this stuff, I said, Oh my God, there's men out there who aren't just want to squash everything in sight. You know what I mean?
00:19:38
Speaker
And it gave me hope. So music was like my saving grace during that tumultuous, violent childhood that I was forced to withstand. And so I felt music and art was the way out. They said, oh my God, there's hope when I grow up, you know? And thank God that happened in my lifetime because I don't think I'd be here otherwise.
00:19:58
Speaker
Wow, and thank you. You've just given me a new appreciation for the Beatles. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, it was the 60s. It was the early 60s. Yeah, but see, I wasn't aware of what it was doing. I'm able to look in the past and go, what's the big deal? But for you to see that at that time because, and you spoke to it so, again, beautifully about this burden of ancestors. I actually typed that on the note here because, again,
00:20:29
Speaker
It takes away, and what I've learned through my own healing too, and ability to walk away from those patterns of family, literally, physically, in other ways, is that it takes away the guilt and the shame of, oh, I should just be there. What are the messages that I should be there for my family? You can't leave family, blah, blah, blah.
00:20:50
Speaker
And you're pointing to really the paradigm of astrology, I'm learning called turning of the ages, mystery school, because we are at a great turning. And I think so many people are like, how do I get out of this paperback? And if we can do it, look how quickly your modality, the modality of healing that you offer the modality feeling I offer and many others offering how quickly we can turn things things around. And we can start realizing that, oh, wait, this was programming, not how I'm wired.
00:21:19
Speaker
Um, so, so what, what things can, do you have like a specific example, maybe of, of a way, you know, when you have expressed differently, whatever way that is, um, that you've either been in and maybe taking it further from childhood, right. From adulthood. So I think.
00:21:41
Speaker
maturing and getting older, so I was so in the trauma side of it my whole life, and even, you know, changing my sexual prep work.
00:21:53
Speaker
let's say, embracing my sexual preference, about 35 years old, getting a divorce, still loved my ex-wife, even though I've kind of lost touch, I still send her stuff from time to time. So that was a real internal battle, but in my wisdom now of getting older, having a 50-year timeline between the abuse and what I see,
00:22:13
Speaker
how I see myself now in the world. It's like not so much having forgiveness, just accept that that was the price of life that I was forced to pay. So my father and his brother had to pay the price with my grandfather of being beat up to a pulp by them.
00:22:30
Speaker
God knows what my great grandfather did to my grandfather. So I can see that there's a lineage of pain and suffering in my male line. And that the cruel irony is no one asked for this, but they had, even with anybody in our family system, we didn't ask to be born, so to speak, but yet we have to pay a price or suffer through their insanity. So one new term I've developed, which is kind of fun, is every family system is dysfunctionally functional.
00:23:00
Speaker
We wouldn't be here if they didn't teach us the survival skills, ironically, to survive them.
00:23:07
Speaker
And now if we get out of that as adults with our sanity intact, we can go backwards in time to maybe not undo the wounds, but accept the wounds and leave it in the past so we don't have to carry that in the present and the future. Carry the wisdom of what you learn and see that they were trapped in time and space.
00:23:30
Speaker
that they had no choices, you know? I mean, ironically, so if my father wasn't the violent that he was, it was post-traumatic stress from World War II, for sure, and his childhood. But if he wasn't a A-list killer of Nazis, I wouldn't be here today.
00:23:45
Speaker
So him being a soldier perpetrator, so to speak, gave him the right to procreate. Now, if you look at 75 million baby boomers were born of the soldiers after World War II in just America, not saying the whole planet, just if we look at the America, and guess how many people died in World War II?
00:24:08
Speaker
75 million to 85 million people died. So what is the baby boom generation who are generally more peace-loving, alternative counterculture, embracing the ancients like shamanism and psychedelics and medicine, healing stuff of our generation? Number one, we were in peacetime because they fought the war, the biggest war, one of the biggest wars of humanity, World War II.
00:24:34
Speaker
And we had the luxury of not being in war in America, even though there were internal conflicts, especially in the 60s, and now, and now today globally as well. So we had an opportunity to seek therapy, to seek healing, whereas my parents were born in the middle of the Depression. So imagine what they went through through all that, then there was a war.
00:24:57
Speaker
You know, there was World War I, then there was American depression, then there was World War II, then the baby boomers came along in mass. I believe it was 45 to 65 in that 20th period. So one generation birth, you know, 75 to 80 million people. So you look at the bigger global reaction. So you could say one of the equations, I get it may sound crazy, is great death precedes great life.
00:25:26
Speaker
you know, there's a yin and yang to everything. And you know, and you could say the baby boomers were the antithesis of all the violence and ugliness of war, creating a new generation. And of course, a lot of them grew up and became yuppies and this and that and tied into the system. But a lot of people stayed alternative, kind of the Woodstock generation types. We stayed alternative investigating other ways of being that weren't the societal norm of being a good soldier.
00:25:56
Speaker
where his cousin was being primed to be in the CIA. And my father's brother was very upset that he did not want to go into the CIA. And we met at an anti-nuke rally. We had lost touch since we were kids. And we were both hippies. And we both took an alternative path. And ironically, he leads workshops on men healing men.
00:26:19
Speaker
And their histories and here I'm doing it with the whole family system. So we're both on like a family path to undo all the wrongs that we had experienced and bring that into the world. Wonderful. We just got in just interesting how we both chose that path without knowing it. Well, it makes it possible when these big movements happen, like you said.
00:26:42
Speaker
And again, the paradigm I'm learning, the founder, I don't think it came from him. He credits who said it, but he's, they used to wear t-shirts in the sixties says, give chaos a chance, you know, because the chaos is the death of the death and rebirth cycle. There's life, death, life. There's the death in there. Right. And, and to this point, how does that apply to us personally?
Cultural Reinforcement of Masculine Roles
00:27:05
Speaker
Well,
00:27:05
Speaker
When we're going to start changing our ideas of what masculinity femininity expression of authenticity is well some earth's going to shake and the mountains going to crumble, which means things are going to get kind of shaking around upset your mountains mountains are the thoughts.
00:27:21
Speaker
that are going to crumble so that you can birth a new way of seeing this. And whether every man hears what you're doing or I'm doing, it's in the consciousness. It's available. And so I appreciate what you're doing, what you've done for so long and your cousin. So if we could, what do you feel is like a great, to your point, you also said that how all of us have been morphed to
00:27:50
Speaker
to see men or the expression of masculinity, or even to connect with each other over violence. And whether a person's father, grandfather, or in their lineage was actually abusive, look at our sports. Boxing, fighting, UFC, football.
00:28:14
Speaker
you know i mean that's the way i see it anyway i know it's like a war without casualties so it's like this or i mean if you go back to roman times it was gladiators only it was to the death in the ancient times so what is about it about the collective anger or wanting to be on a winning team
00:28:33
Speaker
What's interesting, especially I guess after soccer tournaments in England or Europe, all the violence that happens in the street, either by the winning or the losing side. So you can see there's pent up stuff. I don't know if you ever saw the movie 1984, which is a movie off of George Orwell's book, but everyone was allowed to scream the word hate for like five minutes a day, just to get that anger out collectively.
00:29:00
Speaker
And so you look at the, I mean, I consider sports and that stuff, albeit of the masses personally, but they could say the music and art that I love is opiate of the masses as well for people that aren't artistically inclined, you know? Well, I couldn't see it more as a soft sell.
00:29:17
Speaker
Yeah, all them violence. Let's sell them pick a team. Let's sell them all of that, you know, aggression, raging in the streets, you know, afterwards. Let's, let's allow it for a little while. And it all will come in and act like we're the heroes. Yeah. Yeah. So I think again, I think we're just starting to uncover a lot of myths that were to the point now when men, you know,
00:29:42
Speaker
react in a way that they've been programmed and trained to, to be accepted, now we get to call them toxic. We get to call them toxic males. And I implore, you know, any women, men, you know, let's question these, stop it, stop it. It's been done to all of us, them as well, to where just like your story says, I was, you were trained in whatever way to respond
00:30:09
Speaker
Whether it's fear or reaction, whatever, you had that violent component in there and you're not alone. There's so many, even if it's just little boys being told as they're going to their little football game, you go get them, you kill them. You know.
00:30:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's really fascinating. And you know, the lack of tenderness, it's like, you wonder, like when I see little boys, I just was in a store the other day, Christmas shopping, a little four or five year old boy was kind of tugging in his mother's winter jacket. I said, how does this little boy so dependent in the world with his mother shopping end up to be a misogynist? You know, when you really look at them and they're formed of years,
00:30:50
Speaker
And it is our Western culture that the emotion side or tender side is the domain of the females, not the males. And the aggressive warlike thing is the safe zone or for the males only. So there's this sexual split or gender split
00:31:12
Speaker
Now, as far as the toxic common you made, which is true in a way it's unfair, but when you look that women have not had a voice to speak up, if you look at the Harvey Weinstein thing that happened in Hollywood, I mean, it's still going on, I'm sure, but it's like how many of those young actresses
00:31:31
Speaker
I recommend that anyone see the movie Bombshell. It was about the newscasters of Fox. And what was most interesting about that, a lot of them became the newscasters on Fox after they had sex with one of the founders, not Rupert Murdoch, but someone else. And what was interesting about that movie, and they have major stars, Nicole Kidman and everything, is that the women who spoke up were demonized by the other women.
00:32:00
Speaker
They said, if I had to just have sex with an executive to get on, to be an anchor on this channel, that's a small price to pay. And they demonized the other women who wouldn't do it or were tried to and spoke up against it. So then you see how some women will align with the perpetrator sexism energy because they got a break. And the other women will speak up saying, well, that's essentially toxic masculinity. They use your power
00:32:27
Speaker
to be abusive towards the other gender. I mean it can be male on male too, but generally it's an abusive power that's kind of global. I mean look at the Catholic Church and all the altar boy scandal and all that. I doubt very much that it stopped, but they're paying a big price for that and that was the worst
00:32:49
Speaker
probably kept secret for 10 centuries, that that was okay for a priest or a church leader to abuse the children. And it could be girls. I mean, I've had some clients. I had a client whose great-grandmother in Mexico, Catholic Mexico, was raped in the rectory after Sunday school.
Impact on Personal Relationships
00:33:12
Speaker
So here's the conundrum. The client would not be here in the 21st century if that event didn't happen.
00:33:19
Speaker
She wouldn't have a body, she wouldn't be alive. If that 15 year old became a great grandmother and the client was working with me actually in Calgary, Canada. So what I did is separated her from that negative experience in the rectory to accept the gift of life that came this way. And I had a gentleman representing the priest and I said, imagine there's a big cross on the wall and the priest is saying to the cross, forgive me father, I have sinned.
00:33:46
Speaker
So he kept the sin and the guilt and shame with the priest and the religion so that the great-granddaughter could be free of that drama and see that a gift came from it. She would not be alive if that didn't happen. So that's a catch-22 of all this. Yes, it's true. And that kind of abuse of power, let's reserve it, the toxic masculinity thing for that.
00:34:09
Speaker
and stop calling your husbands and your boyfriends and all that stuff just because they said something you don't like. Exactly. Because I'm a psycho babble, modern psycho babble, you know, with this canceled culture that you can't speak the truth. Everything, if you look and I have some blogs on my website, Gary Stewart Healing, and I did one about canceled culture, it's the best way to stop free speech. Wait, you can't say that. Oh, you've judged me. You put me in a box. I can't speak anymore. I'll automatically call toxic.
00:34:37
Speaker
when the male might be trying to express his anger or dissatisfaction in an open way, and then he's shut down. No, I won't hear it. And these days, both sides, male and female, it's like, and our society, I think that it was made to kill the First Amendment to tell you the truth.
00:34:57
Speaker
I'm sorry, let's look at the last four years. Now you're right, it's crossed male and female. We're all doing it to each other. Like, you know, if you don't do certain things, then you'll be ousted, harassed, you know, those kinds of things. So it's really, you know, crossed over.
00:35:13
Speaker
or even thinking, I know, even thinking freely. You can't say your opinion and your judge and categorize and I never want to see you again. And I mean, COVID really brought it out. Now, interestingly, where you're in the shaman camp, as in my constellations of really modern day shamanism, we go to the spirit world to get the missing piece, bring it back, have honor and respect for what came before. It really is some of the shamanic principles updated to the 21st century with a different term.
00:35:41
Speaker
And when we can do that, we're actually free because we're free to speak the truth. I find that most of the work that I do, I get to a healing sentence that embraces our connection to the ancestors, but separates us from their fate and destiny. And also we accept our fate and destiny of emanating from this. So something good came
00:36:03
Speaker
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We're here because of it, so let's take the good stuff we did get, leave the stuff that doesn't belong to us behind in the past with those it belongs to, so we can have a fulfilled life. Now the cosmic irony to that is everyone alive wanted to have a fulfilled life.
00:36:21
Speaker
Right. Even our ancestors. So we're their last hope, so to speak, to attain that in our lifetime. When we do it for us, we do it seven generations behind us and seven generations before, after us because they'll be more evolved because of the turning point that we had the privilege of co-creating.
00:36:41
Speaker
Yes. The turning of the ages. And here are paradigms together again. I love that you said that because we really do have a chance and some have said, this is why there's so many people on the earth right now is because we have this chance to do this, to heal generations seven back and seven forward right now. And look how quickly that you can achieve that and your healing modalities and others are doing that too. And I appreciate you saying we got, so what would you say? Like, what can we say?
00:37:10
Speaker
I, I, when I contacted my friends about this, I said, you know, women do have a heart. Some women do have a heart for this change and like redefining these things and helping us have conversations, not just saying, well, we women are going to go up here and have our circle and you go over there and have yours. And maybe that's just what we need to do for a while. You know, let's, but it's all have circles. Or is there something that women can do? I mean, we know how to make a circle and light a candle, but I don't think that's,
00:37:40
Speaker
what men, I don't know, how can we start bridging this gap and let men know that we're willing to listen? How can men do it as well? How can they start having courage enough to go, let me try it differently now.
00:37:54
Speaker
You know, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, men aren't exactly taught. So if you look at women, they're in a way better communicators, more emotionally tuned, which is kind of their birthright. Maybe it's estrogen. I don't know what engenders that. So you could say the men would process.
00:38:13
Speaker
So along with the programming we talked about earlier, men aren't allowed to even investigate the terrain of emotions.
Improving Communication Between Genders
00:38:21
Speaker
They have to be strong and tough and, you know, hardened, so to speak. So when a woman talks about this vulnerable stuff, it's like, you know, uh, the old Venus and Mars women are in the book. Uh, I forget that somebody, the book, you know, uh, men are from Mars, women are from Venus. And it's like, it's almost like a language barrier.
00:38:41
Speaker
But I think if people, especially in this cancel culture, listen and without judgment, so men can take it in. Because if you really look at it, the women can communicate emotions, they might be hysterical or angry because it's
00:38:57
Speaker
a collective inside them. And then the man is like hearing this for the first time and he doesn't even know how to deal with it. So if you really look at the couples that fight, I mean, it doesn't matter if you're gay, straight or whatever. In a way, couples are struggling for power in a relationship. Gender doesn't matter. It's just a battle of the sexes in a way.
00:39:18
Speaker
And that men need time to listen rather than react. So men tend to go with my experiences, try to fix things. Oh, there's something wrong. She's not happy. Let me try to fix her. When the woman said, no, I want you to listen to me and feel what I'm saying. Does it have an impact on you? And if you won't let that in as hard skin.
00:39:37
Speaker
then the woman will escalate. I got to break through this guy. He's a rock and the man saying, why is she making a big deal out of something so small? So then it just escalates until they both either will have a fight or they'll just call it truce and listen to each other. You know, I think you've just spoke. I think you've just described somebody, everybody's argument at some point in their life, their relationship and their home, whatever. That's what I've been trying to say to through the trauma work that I've done.
00:40:05
Speaker
is that we understand that an emotional, an emotional charge, whatever charge you've had that has caused you to emote, express, whatever, can only last in the nervous system for 90 seconds. 90 seconds, and then it will change. Maybe anger changes to rage, okay, but it will change. Maybe anger changes to just, you know, I'm just disappointed with you. In 90 seconds, so could we all just give a person their 90 seconds?
00:40:34
Speaker
Try to listen and understand that the world isn't falling apart because she now has had to escalate because I'm not listening or whatever it is, just give a person that time without fixing, trying to change it because I'm uncomfortable. It's okay, I could be uncomfortable for 90 seconds as well and let that go. How much would that just foster some understanding? And to speak to your point about the
00:41:02
Speaker
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus thing that really made things worse. And I think he even admits it now. He even says, well, maybe we should stop selling that book. But we had an example right here at my place. The founder of my school came in and did some little astrological readings and a couple was in there. And she actually expresses more
00:41:23
Speaker
in what we would consider a masculine way, meaning the logical way, meaning you just do a thing or I ask a question, you have an answer, boom. It's just in your brain, what's the big deal? He was actually the emotional component of the relationship.
00:41:39
Speaker
you know, the nurturer, the one that liked to cook and take care of things. I mean, he went out and worked too, manly jobs, whatever that is. But he was actually the one. And so when she would ask a question, and he didn't have an answer right there, she'd get more frustrated. So through this astrological reading, where this paradigm shows us that there are only three expressions of masculinity, protector, provider, father, but there are 12.
00:42:06
Speaker
plus many variations of that. So it could be infinite expressions of masculinity. And with him, so he allowed him to be the emotional component of the relationship. If she would just wait a minute for the answer, he needs to feel into it. He needs to process it in a different way. I bring that up as a great example of what we're saying, can we just stop
00:42:30
Speaker
putting these labels on each other, whatever we do, question our own labels, our own perceptions of what we're projecting onto people, men and women. How subtly do we even do it with women? Absolutely. Ourselves, like women to women, men to men. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So how would you wrap up our conversation today? What would you say? Well, Burton Hallinger, my teacher, he passed away actually, I think it was three years ago,
00:42:59
Speaker
yesterday or today. He had a phrase that was really simple and brilliant. He said, if the grandmother is silent, the granddaughter will scream. So it's like words that were unsaid from a previous generation. Don't forget women of yesteryear, if they didn't kowtow to the males, they might not have a home. They might not have money to raise their kids. Divorce was like worse than death.
Acknowledging Family History for Growth
00:43:23
Speaker
If you really look at how women add to
00:43:26
Speaker
zip it up and I think that's where the reaction of toxic masculinity comes from. That's for so many decades women did centuries actually women didn't have a voice and now the current generation may be fighting with the male but she's actually fighting her grandmother's battle who had to be silent so she could survive
00:43:48
Speaker
in a loveless marriage or with an angry husband. And I still work with clients who still have that with their parents today. They stay together in a loveless marriage because they want the kids to grow up.
00:43:58
Speaker
And I've met many people who divorced when their kids went to college. They want to get them through high school and out the door and then they divorce first thing when the child is down. So, and a lot of the kids who have become my clients too, older now, they said they would have welcomed the divorce when they were 10 years old because the tension was miserable to live under two people who didn't like each other.
00:44:20
Speaker
whatever reason. Another dynamic that comes up really quickly is more common than you would think is someone didn't marry who they really loved.
00:44:31
Speaker
Like there might've been a well-to-do family and the blue collar person was not white collar. We don't want you to marry a blue collar. All that stuff went along and we find a lot of the couples who fight, it's like a fight because they fight their whole marriage because they didn't marry who they really loved. It's the situation. They married what was easiest for the situation to keep even their own parents happy at great self-sacrifice. So a lot of fights between couples
00:45:00
Speaker
are because it wasn't the love of their life. It was secondhand rose, so to speak, or it was an illicit pregnancy that took the love away. And I've had countless. And in my work, we let those hidden people, a broken relationship belong to the family system. And when we do that, like they're an invisible ghost in the family system, when we're given their place as the first love of the father, the first love of the mother, then the family system can be at peace and not reactive.
00:45:30
Speaker
So I would advise people to look at all sides of the family history, the husband's family history, the wife's family history, and realize that they came together to start a new family system. One thing we tout with this, the constellation work is every man and woman to get together or women and women to raise a family, have kids, or even just be together and cohabitate.
00:45:55
Speaker
they're starting a new family system and to honor the new family system and maybe investigate what is the old baggage that both sides are bringing. So, you know, one thing, you know, I said this about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but when both sides admit they're guilty, then there can be peace. That goes for personal relationships as well as global stuff. If everyone admits, you know, you could say in religion, if everyone admits they were sinner, then no one's better than anyone else.
00:46:25
Speaker
But it's generally guilt. If someone can just own their own guilt and be an adult about it, and it's not going to crush them and say on both sides of any romantic relationship, then they'll probably be more peace and less fighting. That is beautiful, you know, and that's one of those emotions that also only last about 90 seconds. If you just yourself to feel it, just go. Oh, yeah. OK, we've all been part of this. And that's what I mean. We can start questioning where we even subtly
00:46:51
Speaker
discount the feminine or any expression that is a human expression. That's our, to me, way to God, but that'll be another. And I'm so glad you brought up grandmothers because we're entering Capricorn season. And again, it's been another hijack of astrology where we say Capricorn is the strict rule making father. It's actually the circle of grandmothers. So this is a time when we can start kind of tuning into that because it's not only those
00:47:20
Speaker
I believe those major generational wounds, like my grandmother was beaten or was thrown out of the country or any of those kinds of things. But it's also, you're right, the ones who were silent, the ones who didn't speak up or couldn't speak up or went along with, and we're just two generations away from the grandmother who went along with.
00:47:45
Speaker
And so here we are married to the ones that we just kind of went along with, you know, at the time. And I've heard the last couple of years have been the years of divorce. So in a way, I'm like, oh, there's hope. Because maybe some of us are breaking out of that paper bag and going for what we really want, opening our hearts. And so thank you, Gary, for all of the insight.
00:48:11
Speaker
honor and pleasure. I feel like we could go for hours so I hope you come back. Absolutely. And we can talk about some other layers of this and have some more moments with you but meanwhile I will post your links again visit GaryStewart.healing.com. Thank you.
00:48:32
Speaker
And would you like to list anything else that you'd like to mention at this point? Yeah, well, the biggest thing I'd like to leave with people is that the world is in chaos right now. Now, interesting being a child of the 60s with old peace movement, counterculture, we had the same violence and insanity then. And yet 50 years later, we survived it all. But now here it is again on a global scale. Yet again, it's not Vietnam, it's Palestine, it's wherever the wars are.
00:49:01
Speaker
So it's just what you said about chaos is really good because things have to disintegrate. The old system has to disintegrate before the new system can take its place. So I see the darker it gets and I see so much darkness, greed, you name it all over the world.
00:49:19
Speaker
that means there's a brighter light coming. So we just have to weather the storm, stand in our hearts, even though it looks nuts out there, and just hold the higher vibration of unconditional love for life as it is. And I really think the paradigm
00:49:37
Speaker
is going to shift in a great way faster than we can realize. I mean, if you look at Columbus, I use Columbus as a metaphor. The world is flat. The world is flat. You're going to go off the world. You're going to go off the world. Then he comes back on the boat.
00:49:50
Speaker
No, it's not. I met some interesting people. Here's some spices. Oh, the world is round. How stupid were we to think it was flat? In a nanosecond, all human consciousness change over someone coming back on a ship who didn't fall off the edge of the earth, which was assumed to be flat. So it's the same thing now. It's we're on the edge of a precipice or something, and it's going to shift. Consciousness is not physical. It defies time, space, and speed.
Hope for Societal Change and Healing
00:50:16
Speaker
One joke I have, what's faster than the speed of light? Consciousness.
00:50:19
Speaker
everyone will just snap into a new time mental time frame and the age of enlightenment is coming again you know what happened you know and uh you can tell by how dark it is we're on the cusp of just the shift this is going to be lightning fast i agree thank you yes it's another example of the great tenet that i that i i
00:50:44
Speaker
Not only, you can't help but live by it, that's what happens. As within, so without, as without, so within. So there's chaos out there, there's chaos in your homes and in your relationships and in your brain and in the ways that you're thinking, great, let it all, you know, surrender to it, surrender to the chaos, right? And then something new, fertile, we call it the composting period, where it's all thrown into the compost and then something beautiful comes up after it's getting all smelly and stuff. A new plant, a new plant, a flower.
00:51:14
Speaker
Yes, fertile soil. Again, thank you so much, Gary. I appreciate leaving us with a big hope for what's coming. Hopefully we can start doing that, you know, within, you know, in our homes. That's how we can change the world. Absolutely. And we'll see you next time. Thank you for coming on some moments with me.