This
is an excerpt from an interview, which took place in January
this
year with a local radio station in Florida. Mary Noble and Tony
Kearney, both international lecturers, gave some interesting perspectives
about ways of looking at how the feminine and masculine gender
can play an important part in the future. Ruth Sterling conducted
the interview in the following way:
Ruth
Sterling: Our show is so important today, especially if you
are involved in a relationship,
if you are a woman, with a man
and if you are a man, with a woman. I am
talking here about any relationship, at work,
at home, with children, with anyone of the
opposite sex. Today’s show is not about
relationships, it is a show on gender and
the reason why there are men and women,
the reason why we are in relationships and
how important it is, that we learn to move
beyond the limited thoughts we have about men and women being opposites.
Also to
begin to see the interconnectedness, so that
we can learn effective communication and
ensure the survival of our species. I think
it even goes further than that, I have
2 fabulous guests here today in the studio,
Mary Noble from England and Tony Kearney, who was born in New Zealand.
Mary Noble was trained in archeology and
social anthropology and she has made a
deep study of the development of women’s
spirituality through the ages. Tony Kearney is an attorney who practices
in London.
He travels the world to talk about subjects
such as human development, the potential
of the current world trends and the global
implications of the changes, which are
taking place.
They will be facilitating a program that will
invite you to explore the fascinating and
thought provoking arena of men and women
in our gender identity and our ability, effectiveness
and communication. You
are here in town to educate people and to help us develop a new
perspective
that’s
very different than the one we have been
conditioned to.
Tony
Kearney:
That was a great introduction It is true that one of the great
impediments that we face as a human race
is the fact that we see men and women as
being opposites. Clearly they are not opposites,
because we would not have a human
race if we did not have both men and
women. One of the things we will be
looking at with people this week is how we
can change our thought patterns about
men and women, to change from the old
mindset, that created this ‘opposite way
of thinking.’ And so we need a whole
new mindset about how to think about
relationships.
Top Ruth
Sterling: Is it a new mindset, or is
it an ancient mindset, in that there used to
be a time in which men valued women and
women valued men, where women used to
have certain roles which were viable for
survival and men had certain roles viable for
survival, and everybody worked together?
Tony
Kearney:
You will see that there is no society, which can survive without
some
kind of working relationship between the
two. You don’t see societies with just men,
because they will die out.
Ruth
Sterling: What is this new developing
awareness and consciousness about?
Mary
Noble:
I think that people are becoming increasingly aware of a sense
of
urgency. And that sense of urgency is that
men and women both have their own
purpose and they both each individually
have their own destiny, but for thousands of
years, there has been such an accumulation
of prejudice, misunderstanding, and essentially
a huge suppression, certainly of the
feminine gender, that you end up now in
a situation where by majority, women in the world suffer, from
what I would call,‘
a spiritual inferiority complex.’ We are at
the point now where the liberation of the
feminine soul is absolutely crucial to the
future and survival of the planet.
Ruth
Sterling: We know that we have
been in a male dominated society for a long
time and it is time now for the re-emergence
of the feminine energy and it is not the same
energy as that of the male gender, it is different.
We are all humans in the human race,
but we are different in our expression, which
can be feminine or masculine. But today we
are looking beyond the opposites, is it our
goal then to value the feminine, the woman,
and to value the man?
Tony
Kearney:
What we are looking at is a third vector if you like, there is
an adjacency
between the two genders. We want to
understand ‘Who are we, what are we and
why are we here?’ I think that the context in
which we look at these issues, is very important.
If we are not careful we will go into
creating women equal to men, but equal in
the old paradigm, rather than that there is
a natural balance between the two.
Mary
Noble:
One of the things we are going to be talking about is what are
the
unique ingredients of the two genders. So
for example what women are concerned
with is, we still very much live in a men’s
world, we know that, and we fight to have
our rights, and to have our freedom and that
is all very important. A hundred years ago in
England, a woman when she was married
had no legal existence whatsoever, she could
not even own her own property. And there
are still many parts in the world where that
is still very much the case. But what we are
now looking at for many of us, having
achieved a certain level of independence,
is how to really understand and value what
it is that the feminine gender can contribute
to the planet and in relationship to the
masculine gender.
I think
that for women that is often something that is more intangible,
their result
is not necessarily so much in, ‘look what I
have earned or look at what I have created,’ but
they are supreme when it comes to creating an ecology, an environment,
allowing something to happen and the
whole essence that they manufacture
from themselves, that can be an incredibly
healing thing. Yet, this is often not seen,
valued or appreciated, and by that they
tend to think that they are much less than
they really are.
Ruth
Sterling: The experience I am having
whilst listening to you is that it is important as
a woman, to bring forth my creative ideas and
that as a woman I have an important role to
play in the survival of our species and especially
right now at this time.
Tony
Kearney: I would like to pick up on
that point as well, because I believe that if we
had had the feminine principle more at play
over the course of history, we would not have
things like nuclear weapons, which is part of
an out of control masculinity. Men sometimes
in the weakness of themselves can become
territorial. So, one of the things that we are
going to look at, is how we can better understand
each other. The way to go about this is
not talking at each other, with less and less
understanding happening and more and more
confusion. We are going to be looking at
what are the right questions to be asked,
rather than that the world is full of answers.
We do need important questions, and women
will have different kinds of questions than
men.
Top Ruth
Sterling:
Tony, if we come back to the resentment that we may be holding
in
ourselves about the state of affairs in the
world, in a male dominated society, in which
the male gender brings us to the brink of
nuclear war and maybe even extinction.
Let’s look at issues of global importance,
and the global crisis, which we are experiencing
right now. Tony, you already said it
before, this is a pivotal moment in history.
Mary, you are asking women to step into
their feminine, wonderful, intangible power.
You may not go out there to make money,
but you have a creative aspect, which is truly
being called upon right now to make our
world a better place. But it feels like a crisis.
I am not feeling comfortable with how things
are, what do we do?
Tony
Kearney:
Well, I think it’s a good
place to start, because if we think that everything
is rosy in the world, it clearly isn’t. We
have created a circumstance by the way we
have gone on in civilization, where we have
less resources, more pollution and more alienation,
and much greater risks, we are now
able to blow ourselves up, literally. Now that
is not progress as far as I can see, that is
backward. And so we need to look at our
priorities and where our focus needs to be.
We don’t need opinions to solve the problems
in the world, we need the true feminine and
masculine perception. We might not know
what that is, we might need to discover what
it is. How can we work together to create an
opportunity future, not a problem future. Ruth
Sterling: It seems easy for women to step forward in this moment
as you are
putting this call out to come forward,
because you are saying: Women, you have
something that we would like to tap into.
I am wondering how responsive you think
the men will be to this call, this invitation.
So many people are pointing the finger
and blaming them: "You are the one who
brought us into this situation".
Mary
Noble: I would like to respond to
that Ruth. Recently Tony and myself did an
evening in London, where we had a group
of people to whom we asked the question:
What do you really want to understand
about men and what do you really want to
understand about women? We asked everyone
to write down a question. One of the
questions was: What as a man would be the
first thing you would want a woman to
understand about what it really is like to be
a man? There were three men there and
each of them in their own words said exactly
the same thing and it was, ‘You know, it
is lonely,’ and I think that everybody in the
room understood. We know that as women
we have the strength of each other and we
know that there is a sense of community,
there is a natural connection to the planet
and very often in the world this may be
weakened, but really it is a very strong
thing. Men also say that one of their
greatest difficulties is that they are always
trained to be in competition with each
other. When they are with another man,
it is always, ‘Which one of us is the alpha
male in this situation?’ whether they like it
or not. There is that tension, and so they
have to get past this idea that every other
man is a threat. When women begin to
understand what these issues are that men
actually have to deal with, then they can
start to have more compassion and more
understanding. When a man feels safe
he then can start to let his guard down,
because as long as he feels he has got to
maintain that ‘ I am the guy, I am the
macho’ then they never let you in.
We also asked the men what it is they
are most afraid of where women are
concerned? And they said that you may
be afraid of us physically, but we are afraid
of you mentally. We have got to know
that you are not going to criticize us, cut
us down and make us feel small.
Ruth
Sterling: There was a time in which
we talked a lot about the generation gap,
but today you are talking about the gender
gap and you are asking us, not to look at the differences between
us, but rather to look at
what do we have in common; we live in one
world, are one human family, one people,
we have got to call that up in our perception
when we look at others around us.
Mary
Noble: One last thing I want to say.
This has to do with the question: What
would a woman most want a man to understand
about her? Well, it would be to not
be seen as a commodity. In the world we
live in, women are often treated as a commodities,
but when a man acknowledges a
woman has her own spiritual destiny, that
she has her individuality, that she has her
own life, this will cause her to feel received
and acknowledged in that part of her, and
then she will do anything for him.
Top Ruth
Sterling: So for women it is important
that their husband, employer, lover, son,
sees that they have a spiritual destiny and
that they are not a commodity. When she
gets this acknowledgement, this will inspire
her to even be more creative...
Mary
Noble: Yes, and from that she will
be able to generate the fine high energies
that the man needs for his own personal
development.
Ruth
Sterling: How do I look at a man
and value him, to appreciate his worth, his
purpose, and his involvement, can you help
me in that?
Tony
Kearney: The perception of a man is that he is a breadwinner
and so he is
driven into a role in himself. It is thrusting,
driving and that makes him hard. And a true
man is not hard. He is not soft in the sense
of weak, but he has a vulnerable side. But in
our culture it is a weakness to show any
vulnerability or not knowing, because that is
laughed at, mocked and derided. But that
is the higher part of a man, to not know. And when he does not
know, he would seek
counsel, support and advice from the woman.
That is where they can offer each other the
higher bit that each other needs, which lives
in the other.
Ruth
Sterling: Will a woman ask from a
man to hold in himself the vision of her spiritual
creativity? Then the man will be comfortable
enough to be vulnerable that he could
turn to the woman and the woman will be
able to guide him in tapping him into his own
inner wisdom, ideally.
Mary
Noble:
I will tell you a little story. In the Middle Ages, there were
two famous saints,
Francis of Assisi and Claire of Assisi. Whilst
Francis had more of a formal, theological
education, like most male clergy of the time,
Claire was a mystic, relying on her inner voice
and vision. They had a great friendship,
based on mutual respect and spiritual love.
Francis would always write to Claire and say‘
What should I do next?’ Then she would pray
for a few days and then would write back
to him and he would follow her guidance,
because he believed she had a certain kind
of divine intuition, which he needed. This was
quite a usual relationship amongst medieval
mystic monks and nuns and the way it works
is as true today as it ever was.
Ruth
Sterling: This is a beautiful vision,
I love it, and I invite men and women to get
to learn more about the mutuality and the
purpose of coming together, to create a
better opportunity for our future to work
together, to see how we can help one
another to emerge fully in our lives and
make our world a better place.
Thank you, Mary and Tony, for joining us
today. |
