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Lune~

Sweetie, I'll put that other link in again at the bottom, it was an article written by a man about men's Medicine.

I want to say first off that women connect internally, men connect externally. Women project that connection into the world, men take from the world and bring it within themselves. We work from polar opposites...in a generalized way. Men need to explore and experience to understand things, women have the understanding they take into experiences to explore. We come from two different approaches to arrive at the same conclusions.

When I studied Men's Medicine Ways I was going nuts. It seemed to me to be the longest way around to get to the point. I would follow the journeys they took, watch them go through all this discovery only to end up with an answer I'd seen long before that. So it seemed to me they really did go through a lot to get there and it really left me feeling extremely frustrated until I came to understand why...it's their way of investing themselves to the point of valuing what they learn. A woman values what she feels and invests herself to release it into the world. We, as women, have the womb, we are connected to creation through that already. And because of that it is said no more is asked of women because they suffer to give birth. Men on the otherhand are asked to protect that which the woman brings forth continuously. Now I'm relating this to family, but it applies to everything.

Men invent and make the mechanics of life, but women bring forth their creation of a living form. There's a difference. Men can only create with their hands, women create with their bodies.

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Hey, what I am wondering is.... My understanding of woman's magic, eg, the woman's layer of the medicine wheel of Maiden, Mother Crone, Warrioress, Goddess, plus all the other things, as a framework for understanding that power in me was brilliant. Now, is men's medicine directly mirroring. ie, do I send said student on a boy/father/grandfather journey, and it will help him understand those aspects?

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Nods, that's one approach certainly and it is in keeping with Men's Medicine Ways, yes. I would do that as an exercise and expect a good year of exploration with it along with the other teachings.

He needs to explore and comprehend each rite of passage to understand himself and his abilities. In a sense it's going to be a regression and an exploration externally at the same time. As he goes seeking he will connect his own past experiences and see where they tie in. My bet would be he understands a lot of that already, just not in the spiritual context. To love the Land and hear it's voice one must connect. A woman can connect sitting on it. A man has to explore it to know it. Women naturally journey spiritually, it's in their nature, a man must learn to do that and he begins in the physical sense.

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or is the male framework simply a completely different framework? Considering there isn't one universal woman's magic framework, I am not presuming there is a universal male one! LOL.

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I'd say it's the polar opposite of a woman's and that in generalization (as I'm doing here) that there is a universal precept to it. While there are variations throughout all traditions it's the basics that are universal and the variances come into play with the rituals and ceremonies that are produced to come to those basic understandings. What I may do to reach my enlightenment is going to vary from what you do, but it's basically the same type of steps taken. You see?

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But I guess the essence of the question is can I take my woman's magic framework of understanding and mirror it and it do the job? Or is there something I am missing if I do that? or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely? Any ideas?

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Yes, but you need to mirror the opposites to him...instead of taking the receptive information that is internal you have to send him out into the world to find it. He has to take on an active search....has to hunt. So if he has no family heritage to seek out then he needs to find someone who holds it...someone from his Aboriginal tribal tradition that will share with him.

You've said these individuals are few and far between, and that is often the case. However....find one and he will know another. A man learning from a woman will come at things backwards for his way of thinking and vs/vs. but it is a journey both of you are taking together and it will bring you both lessons along the way.

Sometimes as a teacher our task is to help someone find the teacher that's right for them, not just send them away because we don't have the answers. Sometimes it's meant for us to find them alongside the student...which is seemingly what this is about for you...you're searching too. This is typical of the role of teacher...the student gives us as much back in this as we learn too and the student becomes our teacher because of that. Actually, the searching you're doing here reflects Men's Medicine....the hunting for the answer is a physical task that must accompany the questor's efforts. The difference being that for women that's a more passive process where for men it becomes physical exertion.

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Suffering: you seem to be saying that we need to suffer in some way to connect with spirit. Women do it every month, men need some other way. But why the presumption that we need to suffer to connect?

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It's a voluntary suffering a willing sacrifice to dedicate oneself to Spirit and the enlightenment. Don't tell me you haven't suffered to learn what you've learned over the years. I know better. I've suffered plenty to earn my knowledge too. Through experience we value and the more difficult that experience is the more we value what we learned.

Suffering is part of life, Lune, we all go through our challenges and pain to grow. Spiritually speaking vision questing is a suffrage, you deprive yourself of companionship, of food and creature comforts, of everything but the bare essentials to get back to the center of Self with Spirit. You isolate, you make sacrifice, you make an offering of yourself. It is a total surrender...willing surrender, willing to suffer to do so.

To give birth a woman suffers through her body as it distorts to make room for the developing child. She suffers the carriage of that child and awkwardness of pregnancy, the emotional swings, the hormonal changes, she undergoes physical transformation and then come the pangs of labor that turn her inside out to give that baby life. Her changes are internal.

To protect a man suffers through his body the wounding of the warrior, it's physical exertion on an external level. There's your generality...women come from internal perspectives, from the heart; men come from external perspectives and logic...the common ground between them is the end result. A man will be turning himself inside out to be that warrior, and both have to find courage and strength to endure.

That suffering is a fact of life. We have to be willing to undergo whatever it takes for us to come to that enlightenment, to that manifesting of form, to the rigors of dedication it takes to see things through. Yes, we suffer, if we look we will see that everyone, man or woman, suffers in some way. It's part of life.

We can become enlightened without suffering too, we can take the gentle path to discovery through working with guidance and journeys. There's a bit of both in our journeys, but when the physical aspects come into play, and when we have to take the spiritual through us to bring it into the mundane there's going to be physical activity, emotional aspects, and some suffering involved. We have to give of ourselves to get something in exchange. Naturally Spirit always gives back more than we expect and we find we've grown and not lost anything that we needed in the first place but there are times it wounds us to discover that.

A man will have battle scars, physical traces of the protection he's offered in some way. A woman will have hers too. The spiritual warrior/warrioress in us will suffer wounds, heal, and grow stronger with conviction...and with that comes the skill and wisdom we seek. There are differences, no matter how badly we seek to understand the other gender, or to align genders within ourselves, there are differences and it takes the understanding of both to achieve the balance that brings these things into balance.

Hope that helps you a little my friend. As to specific masculine lessons one needs to understand Men's Medicine, it will depend on the cultural tradition. In your case it's going to call for you to find an Aboriginal teacher...few and far between but you do know a few and they know others...you need to begin your search approaching them to find out what your friend needs to learn. With that you'll learn about it too and the next time someone comes to you with needs along these lines you'll know the pattern to walk them through.