JEFFREY MISHLOVE, Ph.D.: Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Our topic today is "Conscious Relationships." This is Part 2 of a two-part program, and we'll be focusing on male-female relationships. With me is Patricia Sun, a teacher, a healer, a speaker, and a gifted spokesman for the depths within each person. Welcome again, Patricia.
PATRICIA SUN: Thank you, Jeffrey.
MISHLOVE: You know, I deliberately called you a spokesman.
SUN[Laughing]: Good.
MISHLOVE: Since we're going to be talking about male-female relationships. How do you feel about that -- being referred to as a man?
SUN: I never think of it that way, actually, because long ago I realized when people talked about humanity and mankind, they meant men and women. If you even look at the word, there's men and then there's womb-men, and womb-men are men with wombs. So all that it really is is we're the same species; we are the same except where we're different, and where we're different we're very different. But we're much more alike than unalike. But the ways that we're different are so powerful in the sensitivity of our connection. As you know, I believe that we're all going through an evolutionary leap and a shift in consciousness, and I believe that one of the major contributing aspects of it will be a change in the way that men and women relate to one another -- that we're hungering for it, we're longing for it, that most of the dysfunction in our culture and in our families is very related to this shift -- that it's the old material of thousands of generations that we're not comfortable with yet. I have a very controversial, unusual theory that's sort of the reverse of what everyone else says. When I first started speaking I'd heard no one ever say this. I believe, as you know, about left brain and right brain, that as people we're learning how to mature both hemispheres, but our culture is dominantly linear minded, and I believe that we are learning to understand what the intuitive mind is really like, and while both men and women obviously both have both hemispheres, I think we have a dominant preference, and using the concepts of yin and yang, which are Chinese terms for these two qualities -- yang being sort of the linear, logical, verbal, cause-and-effect, how do you do it, how do you get it, how much, what time, and is there a book on it, let me check it out -- the linear mind is kind of -- whoosh!
MISHLOVE: Typically associated with masculine.
SUN: With masculine, and typically, certainly associated with Western culture. And the intuitive mind, the right brain, is very hard to describe, because, one, it's not verbal, except in a poetic sense; it's acausal thinking, which means thinking that doesn't have a cause -- you just know something, like clairvoyance or intuition, or just a good idea; it pops in your mind. It thinks in metaphor, stories, pictures; so it's dream life and it's vision and spiritual experience and intuition. And I believe that if you were born in a yang body, male body, whose maleness as a body is to be kinetic and to be stronger physically, to move, to like to play sports, and so on, and even the whole sexual organs, it's the putting out of the sperm -- that is a yang energy, that's a yang body. And a woman is a yin body, with a womb. It's the thing even Lao Tsu used to talk about the yin. He said it's the valuable nothing in a lump of clay that makes it a valuable vessel.
MISHLOVE: Lao Tsu being the ancient Chinest philosopher who was a founder of the Taoist religion.
SUN: Right. And the Tao is a very powerful thought that I think Jesus relates to very well, too. It's like the Holy Spirit. It's the flow of the universe. It's the God presence in things. And he talked about in Chinese philosophy the yin and the yang, and the yin is that softness, that non-force, the womb in which something can come into being. That's right-brain thinking. And of course women have yin bodies. But I believe, as part of the balancing effect, which is the controversial part, if you're in a yang body, your dominant mental style is yin, and if you're in a yin body your dominant mental style is yang. Now that doesn't mean, obviously, that men don't have both hemispheres, or that women don't, but what it does end up doing, I believe, is explain a lot of the problems men and women have together -- that women are dominantly linear, right-brain, logical, verbal, cause-and-effect thinkers. And probably thank God they are, because since their bodies are yin, if they didn't think ahead, nine months ahead, as human beings were beginning in our early stages of culture, if women didn't worry about cause and effect and what happens in the future, we very well might not have survived as a species.
MISHLOVE: Women have to think about their children. And isn't it true that women choose mates more on logical grounds: Will he be a good supporter of the child? Men are the ones who are looking for, "Is she sexy?"
SUN: That's right.
MISHLOVE: But let me step back -- a couple of things. First of all, just quickly I'd like to make what I think is a correction, because you said women are predominantly right-brain, linear, logical. I think you meant left-brain.
SUN: Oh, it's left brain. I did. I'm sorry; thank you.
MISHLOVE: But the thing is, most people, and me, when I first heard this idea, I said, wait a second. You've already said our culture is predominantly left-brain. Men dominate the culture. Therefore men are the ones who are dominating it with their left-brain, logical, rational mode of being. And now you're turning it on its head.
SUN: Well, this is one of the other few things that I really do agree with Freud on -- that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. I really do believe women have so much more influence than they know, and that a lot of the suffering between men and women is women do not realize how much power and influence they have. And because they're coming from feelings of powerlessness all the time, they are actually often cruel and judgmental because they don't realize that they have more power than they think. They have the power of softness; they have the power to be receptive. When their linear mind keeps track of the details -- and women can organize things so well -- that's why women like, generally speaking -- and believe me, I realize I'm speaking in generalities all the time here, and I don't want to get into arguments with people in their minds about, "Well, I'm not like that," or "I'm not always like that," because obviously we're not. But dominantly speaking, women are the ones who like to keep the house in order, want to know where everything is, like to keep things under a certain kind of control. And even what you were saying, when they look for husbands, I think originally it was very much geared towards their survival and looking for a provider: "How do I keep this man with me so the saber-toothed tigers don't get me when I'm giving birth?" I mean, there were very powerful, deep, ancient reasons why we have certain compulsions, almost, and needs that we don't necessarily think out. But I think it has somewhat digressed into women wanting men who have power or money, and that's why they say power is the greatest aphrodisiac for women, because they are seeing it as a form of control. I believe that part of the evolutionary leap is that we won't be so interested in control -- control in the sense of power over anyone. We will be finding the power within ourselves, and that that is the solution.
And as women are understanding -- let me give a little bit more about men. Men being dominantly right-brain and intuitive, they are very, very deeply emotional. They get into such overload in their emotions. And because their major function is not the linguistic, linear mind, it's difficult for them to speak. Women often will say -- in fact you'll see on every talk show -- the great complaint is, "He doesn't tell me what he thinks. He can't talk to me. He can't have a relationship if he won't tell me." What they don't realize is that there are at least three important things happening as to why men don't talk to women. One that almost no one realizes, it's harder for men to speak, put it into words. One of the examples I give is if you ask a woman, for instance, "What color is this room?" she'll look around, she'll see the dominant colors, she'll say the walls are white, or in this case they're black, and she'll say black. But what men do is, if you ask a question like that, they go, "Oh ... oh ... oh ... another color ... Oh! ... oh ... oh." Everywhere they look -- and they get into this kind of overload that paralyzes them, and then they think, "What color does she want me to say?" So men are thinking in a really different way than women, and I think most men that I've met have always seemed to know that women think differently. I don't mean just different ideas; they actually process information differently. But most women think, "Well, we think or we don't think, and you just think, and men must think like we think, only they're just being difficult." So they think more judgmentally; they think more black-and-white, because of the dominance of the linear mind.
Women also have the asset of being able to interface more easily with the other. So women are not really more emotional; they're more verbal, and able to explain and express their emotions. Men are so emotional they go into overload, I believe; they kind of go into this almost internal numbness, that they themselves do not even experience their emotion, because it goes into such deep overload that what comes up is like they draw a blank. And then they say something that women get very angry at; they feel it's very lame, or it's cold. They're not cold. They're very deeply feeling. And even just that one thing being corrected, I think, would help in many women's communication, if they would realize that, if women would allow themselves to be just a little more receptive.
I said there were three things. One of the things I noticed when I first discovered this -- and I have three sons, and I learned a lot about how men think by feeling them, by perceiving how they think. Women would come and say, "Well, he doesn't tell me how he thinks, and I can't have a relationship if he won't tell me." So I'd have the man and woman together, and I'd say, "Now ask him." And she'd say, "Tell me how you feel about this." And then I'd feel him kind of go into this huge overload, and I could kind of tell, and I would end up sort of translating. I'd explain to her what he meant, and to him what she meant, and they'd both turn -- "Is that what you meant?" -- and they'd leave connected. But what I also realized is that when the woman asked this, most of the time she really did not want to know how he felt. She wanted an answer, she wanted something to work with, in the way her mind works, which is "What's right? What's logical? What will make us get this?" But she really did not want to know how he felt, because to ask someone, authentically and earnestly, "How do you feel?" is to open your gut, is to open your heart, is to open your mind. What women tend to do is, "Don't tell me that or I'll get upset," or, "If you tell me that I'll have to leave." So they're actually not realizing they're sending mixed messages, that they're not earnestly asking, because it feels very vulnerable to be that open, to be that receptive. Men are more receptive. Just look at sport, for instance. Why men love sports is because they get to go back to that basic power in themselves, whether it was originally in hunting or not -- that power to hand off, to look, to work in unison, to feel the magic of that intuitive mind being allowed free rein, along with physical activity, to create something, to accomplish something. Men love to fix things if they can. They love to help. They don't want to help if they're scolded as little boys and demeaned and told, "You need to do this; you should do this; you're bad if you don't do this." Then they run from it like crazy. If women only knew how much mean really do love them and want to give them everything, everything they can. Women are suffering so much from their own internal critical parent. It really is very sad to me how much women hurt themselves and the people around them without realizing it, because of being so linear-minded it gets too much into the judgmental. They feel very powerless in being accepted. They don't realize, and don't trust it, and it's one of the things that I work with, with both men and women.
MISHLOVE: Well, in Jungian psychology -- the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, the great Swiss psychiatrist -- he had the notion that the full integration of the human being was the marriage, so to speak, of the male and female within each person, the alchemical marriage.
SUN: Exactly -- individuation. And you own your shadow, and you own the male and female parts to yourself.
MISHLOVE: I get the feeling that that's what you're getting at by highlighting the fact that what we often think of as feminine is perhaps really more masculine, and what we think of as masculine may be really more feminine.
SUN: Well, we have mixed it up a bit, but you can even see it in the culture that we're confused. Because women wanting their way, or wanting things -- you know, things aren't right until they're right in their view. And women help each other, as most sort of minority-feeling people do, even if it's totally irrational, they'll back it up sometimes, because they feel powerless. So I have always found that reducing that feeling of powerlessness is one of the crucial ingredients. But what people tend to do, because of this old-style thinking, I call it -- this either/or is so strong that when they don't feel powerless then they feel powerful, and then tend to go overboard and lord it over. So growing up and being mature has to do with internal restraint when you have power, and an empowering of others and yourself when you feel powerless. To me the greatest evil in the world is to promote fear in people, and to promote any feelings of powerlessness. We must always address our talents and our assets. Because every asset has a liability built into it. I use simplistic things like if you're very small, it's an asset; you can fit into a Volkswagen comfortably. But you can't reach the top shelf. If you're tall, vice versa. So one isn't better than the other, except in some circumstances. All talents are like that, and we all have different talents, and part of men and women understanding one another is to know that we actually do have some different talents, and women are suffering so much from almost a frenzy of judgmentalness these days. The sort of male bashing on television is atrocious, and I don't think that if men ever said half of the things, the way women say them now in common conversation on television, about women, there would be a fury. Most men are now very intimidated and just kind of go along with it. I'm not trying to be judgmental here and make another problem, but I really wish people would hear it, and notice that you must speak respectfully -- that women need to speak respectfully to men, they need to have more courage themselves to give up a relationship that's violating or not OK -- say, "Excuse me, I'd love to be with you, but you can't do that." And just say it like that instead of screaming and ranting and putting up with it and verbally abusing. I often say because of these differences men beat women up with their fists, but women beat men up with their tongues, with their words. Both are in fault, and both are wrong, and both are not OK, ever.
MISHLOVE: You spoke in the first part of this program, which was broadcast earlier, about the evolutionary leap forward that the human race is taking. I gather that why you're calling attention to these issues now is because you must feel that people are growing beyond this -- that women are at a point where they can give up feeling powerless.
SUN: Exactly. And they can take responsibility for themselves -- and I don't mean to live alone, or something like that. I mean take responsibility that they really are good people, have resources, and that they can calm down, they don't have to become shrill. They don't have to verbally abuse their children or their husband, or sit and take abuse. It seems that women do one extreme or the other, because they either think, "This is my man and I have to put up with it," or, "I don't care, and I'm going to tell you off and make you do what I want you do to." And that's the worst, that's the worst thing that happens. When women begin to realize and hear themselves doing that, and begin to support each other and themselves to speak more respectfully, to really reinvent how they communicate, so that they ask more earnestly, more willing to hear what's there -- maybe give up some fantasies, and let themselves discover the magic of a true, authentic relationship. Because men have a magic inherent in themselves that has to do with their spontaneity, and when they feel safe with a woman, and when they really love her, all this magic is released, and it's what women long for to receive, and it's what men long for to give. And we unfortunately just cannot get it by scolding and blaming and judging and withdrawing from one another.
MISHLOVE: Now typically, stereotypically, intuition is considered the woman's faculty -- women's intuition.
SUN: Right.
MISHLOVE: You're suggesting that women are really the more linear, rational ones.
SUN: Yes.
MISHLOVE: But I think what I hear you saying is a part of the evolutionary leap forward, part of moving towards a higher awareness, is for women to really become intuitive.
SUN: Exactly. And to really become intuitive means to soften the linear mind. Not stop it -- I don't mean be passive; I mean be receptive. There's a great power that is born when women are receptive.
MISHLOVE: Can you distinguish now, for us, between being passive and being receptive?
SUN: Well, being passive is stifling the self, and numbing yourself out, and sort of looking receptive. Receptive is being very powerful; it's being very big, being very open, being very able to take in what's going on -- not need to nail it down, not need to have a conclusion, not need to control it, but to really be present and feeling and receptive. And hear, so if a man does something that's not OK, that you don't want him to do, that you think is not handling something properly -- hear what's going on with him. Almost always you'll find something else is going on, and that your saying, "You're doing it wrong" is not helpful, whereas if you give him the room and the support for being very conscious and present, to feel what's going on, then he feels that as a connection and as a respect. Then if you offer a suggestion, it doesn't come out of scolding and superiorness; it comes out of partner, it comes out of synergy, because you have completed the other half of the equation by letting yourself be open and receptive to what's going on. Passive is putting up. That's why women are so angry, is because they tend to be either awfully assertive and demanding, or passive. Those are the two sides of the off coin, and that's the big change, is learning how to be receptive. And it takes a lot of inner strength; it takes a lot of forgiving of yourself. And it's that linear-minded, critical parent that makes it hard, so women tend to try to create the security by controlling what's out there. They tell everybody else how to do it.
MISHLOVE: If I were to follow up on this kind of reasoning, it almost seems to me as if you're saying, well, for men, who are already thought of as being so logical and rational, maybe they need to do more of that.
SUN: Definitely. They need to make the effort to say -- for instance, I remember when I said this in a workshop one time, when the men said, "Well, what should we do?" and I said, "Well, you have to give up the positioning of yourself as a little boy, that you can't say. So if a woman says, 'I don't like that you're doing this' -- often women will say, 'Tell me what you think, what you feel,' and when you tell them they get mad. You have to say, 'Well, you know, excuse me. I love you, and you asked me, and I believed you. So I actually told you how I felt. There may be another step to this. There may be more to it. It may develop. But in this moment, this is what I felt. Please don't talk to me that way. Hang out with me. Stay connected with me.'" Men need to assert themselves in what they are feeling in their gut -- not in their derangement, not in their fear, not in their projections, but in their gut of earnestness. What isn't OK? And to again learn to speak, and to say it perhaps softly. We need to all learn to speak respectfully.
MISHLOVE: In other words, if I'm hearing you right, it's not as if you're saying to men, "You need a theory; you've got to talk about family relationships, or dogma" -- not rational in that sense. I think what I understand from this discussion is that in the realm of emotions, men need to be more --
SUN: Letting it out.
MISHLOVE: More able to be verbal.
SUN: Exactly. The yang force is "Ha!" -- letting it out. The yin force is opening to receive it. So men have that yin force in their minds. Their bodies are yang. That creates a certain balance. But when men are soft, when men are gentle, and they are verbal, and they say where they're at, when they risk that -- and all men cringe whenever I say this in a workshop. They go, "Oh"; their eyes roll back; they go, "Oh, she'll yell at me, she'll be upset, she won't like hearing it." Because you'll usually be telling them that they're doing something that's hurting you. Because that's the emotion, that's the thing. And women find it unbearable to admit that they are the ones that are hurting. And that's another part of this evolutionary leap.
MISHLOVE: You mean they're the ones who are causing the hurt?
SUN: Often. Because they are being harsh, they are being judgmental. They are demanding from a perspective of their own and not including the perspective of the other living person they're with.
MISHLOVE: Ultimately, isn't what you're saying that men and women are both wounded?
SUN: Oh, definitely.
MISHLOVE: And men and women have these various strategies for --
SUN: Defending.
MISHLOVE: Defending against their woundedness.
SUN: Precisely. That's what we need to realize, and really give each other a break, and give ourselves a break, and just soften the whole situation, and realize that what we long for more than anything, and what is built into us to have, is incredible, authentic connection. That's what intimacy really is; and all the dysfunction of mixing violence with sexuality, and the blaming and the judging and the conniving and the manipulating is all so sad and silly and a waste. We don't need it anymore.
MISHLOVE: So the evolutionary leap -- many people talk about evolution into a new era of progress. It seems to me that you're speaking of evolution into a new era of healing.
SUN: And a new era of being fully human, being what we are potentially built to be -- really connecting to one another, having a healthy planet. We can't make laws to make people stop polluting. People have to love the earth and feel it from the inside out, and they'll do that when they feel loved when they're babies, when hospitals and schools and everyone is much more connected to children, men and women to one another, respectful. That's the energy frequency that's going to heal the problems that we have.
MISHLOVE: It almost seems as if the male-female dynamic on the planet is so fundamental, the human race is so absolutely divided into men and women, that when that one is healed it opens the doorway for the healing of all of the other problems people create.
SUN: For social animals and social beings, it is the source of learning intimacy, and intimacy can only be learned by giving it, genuinely.
MISHLOVE: Well, Patricia Sun, it's been such a delightful sharing with you this half hour. This has been an intimate occasion of sorts.
SUN: Yes. Thank you so much, Jeffrey.
MISHLOVE: I just enjoy the radiance that you offer.
SUN: Thank you so much. It was my pleasure.
MISHLOVE: It's a pleasure for me to be with you, Patricia. Thank you.
SUN: Thanks.
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