The Fierceness to Be Free and True

By Adam J. Pearson

Tonight, I discovered a certain fierceness in me that I didn’t know was there. I’m going to get very raw and real here. What I have to say may offend some people. Frankly, I don’t give a damn. It’s time for me to speak what I’ve secretly been thinking for a long, long time.

Here’s the truth: I’m tired, I’ve had enough of buying into other people’s beliefs about who I as a man should be, about what is masculine and what is not. Their stories and narratives are falsifying me. They are lies and when I believe them, I become a performer on the stage. I’ve had enough. From now on, I will cast out all the lies about how “men should be” from my system like the worthless parasites and viruses they are. I will trust my inner truth. It knows. It knows how to be a man and how to most authentically relate to women. It doesn’t need some messed up oppressive script to tell it what to do. I utterly reject any message about who I “have to be” as a male that doesn’t ring true. It’s not welcome here. I’m done with buying into and living lies.

Here’s the truth: I’m a living, breathing, human man. No one can tell me that some of my feelings are not “okay” to feel, that men shouldn’t feel sad or have moments of weakness. I hereby reclaim all of my human emotions, the full spectrum, I invite them all in and give myself permission to feel them all. Emotions have their own wisdom; they don’t care about cultural limitations. Evolution ensured they were passed on because they were useful and natural and served the body. I welcome them all.

No one can tell me vulnerability is weakness anymore. I know beyond all doubt that it’s courage and strength and men who feel brave enough to let their vulnerability show have my utmost respect. They are champions and I will always cheer them on.

This part is going to make some of you call me a “white knight,” but frankly, I don’t give a shit. I’m not saying this stuff to get in anyone’s pants so shut up. No one can tell me that women are just “bitches” whose only value is to increase a man’s notches in his belt so he can feel like he’s manly enough. We need to drop that lie and cast it out of our system utterly. It’s not serving us at all, neither men, nor women.

Sex is a beautiful and potentially wild and powerful and exciting and transforming thing. But if we use another person to make us feel manly enough, we have insulted them and disgraced ourselves. I reject that utterly. Women have a right to be as sexually empowered as men and both of us can use some healing in the ways we have been taught to think about our sexuality. We’ve both bought into a lot of bullshit around the subject that we can actively cast out of our systems for the falsehood that it is. There’s a burning fire of truth within us that knows when we’re buying into lies. It will burn up all the stories that are falsifying us if we let it. From now on, I’m going to trust that fierceness. It knows better than a blind oppressive culture ever will.

No one can tell me that men have a right to tell women who to be, how to think, how to feel, to interrupt them when they try to speak, to shut them up when they try to express their perspectives, to try to control the way they honour their truths. No. We need to shut up and listen for once. We need to be willing to really hear what the feminine is trying to tell us because that’s what’s going to heal all the oppressive bullshit we have internalized, the war-driven mentalities we have been taught to adopt, the planet-destroying practices that have wreaked havoc on our environment.

No one can tell me that I need to neg, manipulate, play mind games, or control and trick women “to be successful” with them. I don’t need to and I won’t. Any “success” gained in this way is really just a true testament to our failure to be brave enough to be authentic. My way is vulnerability and authenticity and respect and inquiry and I will stick to that fiercely. That’s my truth and I will honour it. I will honour the truth in the women I’m interested in and I will speak my own truth to them too. Women aren’t stupid. We don’t need to treat them as such. We can share our boldest, deepest truths with them and welcome them to do the same. I don’t want to trick anyone into loving me or sleeping with me. I want to be with a woman who is so enthusiastic about being with me as I am about being with her and so excited to explore and grow and feel together.

No one can tell me that femininity is weak. Anyone who says that has no idea what they’re talking about. The feminine is incredibly strong. Its way is the wisdom of deep connection, of primal expressiveness, of the dazzling dance of form, of the profound ability to trust and surrender and open up that men have a lot to learn from. We’re taught to shut down and close up and control our emotions into total numbness. That’s utterly worthless and oppressive bullshit that we’ve had crammed down our throats. It hurts us and falsifies us and women can teach us how to get free from that. The feminine in us men isn’t weak. It’s strong. And we can honour and embrace it and find true wholeness and integration in ourselves for the first time in our lives. We, as men, can give women space to be their full selves, to feel and express and grow and find strength. We can cheer them on. Women’s empowerment is not a threat to men’s empowerment; it’s a key to it.

I reject the idea that we men have to relate to each always through an attitude of hierarchy, of who’s on top, of who’s winning, of eternal competition, with a constant insecure yearning to dominant each other out of the fear that will be dominated. That’s another bullshit lie we’ve had shoved down our thoughts and I reject it utterly as well. I’m going to see the men in my life as brothers and equals struggling to break free from society’s limitations on them just as I am. I’m done fighting and playing subtle power games. It’s not true that one of us has to step on the other to get ahead. We can grow together. We can build each other up. We can learn how to coordinate the giving of our gifts. We can create amazing things and innovative projects together. We can cheer each other on. That’s the way of seeing men that I’m going to embrace now. I cast the other way out of my system utterly as the worthless parasite of a mind virus that it is.

From now on, I resolve to trust this fierceness. No one can force me to buy into their stories about who we as men are and how we have to treat women. I reject anything that hits my core as feeling false, that clashes with my insides, that feels like it’s falsifying me. I know the lies because they make me tense up inside. I recognize them because they make me feel like I’m acting, performing, pretending, not expressing my authenticity. I’m done with all of that. I cast it out of my system utterly like I’m exorcising demons. Because that’s what all these bullshit stories are: demons possessing us, viruses infecting our minds and blocking our emotions, parasites leaching off of us.

We don’t have to take the lies in silence or submit ourselves to falsehoods. I’m done with that. I refuse to do it. From now on, I’m trusting the fierceness of my own inner compass, my own inner sense of what is real and masculine for me. And dear brothers, you can do the same. We can grow and transcend all the lies we have been fed. We can redefine masculinity for ourselves. We can change the way we live and grow and succeed together. We can cheer each other on like champions even while we root for the women in our lives to rise alongside us. We can all rise together. We can all be fierce and plough through the fear to freedom. No matter what anyone tries to tell us to the contrary, we can do this. And we will.

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Cover image by the great photographer Collin Bogle. Check him out!

Read More from Adam Pearson at http://philosophadam.wordpress.com/