We live in incredibly powerful times as we sit in the mythical 2012 gateway. More and more people today are looking around and observing the world in increasing degrees of chaos, perhaps believing we very well may be approaching the infamous 'End Times.' Many ancient cultures, specifically the Mayans, refer to these times as the long awaited Turning Of The Ages. Whatever your perspective or personal point of view, the world outlook at present is uncertain to say the very least.

Throughout history, this current decade has been prophesied as the pivotal period where humanity will either evolve into a higher state of being or even destroy itself or  ... what, who can possibly know? However you see our planet's potential for continued sustainability upon the foreseeable future time-lines, the necessary physical resources needed for our survival are dangerously close to collapse and for us humans, possible extinction. Clearly, something has to change.

All of humanity shares in this global predicament regardless of our gender, nationality, cultural backgrounds, economic status or religious affiliations. We all call Earth our home and like it or not, we are in this together. As planetary citizens alive at this time on Earth, we all have a choice in how we contribute to our collective fate. How we choose to show up in our lives, for ourselves, our relationships and in our communities will certainly tell the tale. Will we actively and consciously create not only workable solutions but rather become the very solution itself? In fact, are we even up to this enormous task? As Gandhi once said, simply put: "be the change you want to see in the world." From this perspective, our destiny does indeed rest in our own hands.

Stating the obvious, the world's governments themselves are certainly unable to create or sustain peace for any length of time, or for that matter, act in the long term good of their subjects. Historically speaking, this is not new or especially unusual. It appears that after all, the force of change and the collective fate of this planet will indeed depend on the individual, the common person, you and I. Without a doubt, these crucial times call for us all to take a much closer look at our personal and collective priorities. They require us to find highly creative solutions and to implement the necessary and effective changes that will make a real difference now.

They call for us all to explore a very different way of being human and out of necessity for us men, a very different way of being masculine. I believe the men in mankind are being called to radically evolve by renewing our higher purpose in life. We will do his by restoring honor, respect and integrity amongst ourselves. From this intention, Awakening The Sacred Masculine was born.  As we honestly observe the historical and traditional dynamics of power long held on this planet (and the attitudes and behaviors which created our present global situation), there is more than enough evidence reinforcing the belief that the old paradigm way those in power ruled, mostly men, has to evolve in order for us to continue living here on Earth.

This is not meant as a negative value judgment against men in general, rather an obvious conclusion. Just look at history. The masculine principle has been way out of balance for way too long now and it is clear we men today need a great deal of help, support and encouragement to effectively grow and evolve into our higher potential. Observing the world at large, I sincerely believe the need for Awakening The Sacred Masculine has never been greater than now, at The Turning Of The Ages.  Throughout recorded time, the misaligned masculine in power has been rooted in control, domination, judgment and persecution - of those who didn't conform, behave or submit to those in political, economic or military power - historically, primarily in the hands of men. Up until now, this has been the way of the world - might always makes right.

The resulting global crisis impacting our Earth today and all upon her, is accelerating dramatically on the most basic of humanistic, societal, economic and ecological levels. This progression is a direct result of the selfish, self-serving misuse and abuse of power over less advantaged human beings along with the Earth's essential resources. One way or another, sooner than later, it eventually comes down to money. Profits, dividends, credit accrued and always pay the boss first. As an aberration of The Golden Rule - those who have the gold, rule.   From this vantage point, it may very well be a long shot that we can actually change how we have run our affairs for so long. And yet, it clearly appears we are all quickly running out of time to make the necessary changes to save ourselves. Although the planet will surly survive, we may in fact have just used up it's ability to support us further.

Through my life's experiences and many years invested in personal healing and professional trainings, I strongly believe men must now develop our committed sense of responsibility to our higher life purpose. This new attitude and outlook supports and embraces all of life. We can no longer think just of ourselves and our individual interests first - we have to serve the wellness of those we are in relationship with. For us to all survive, men and those in power have to step up and show up for the higher and greater good of all concerned, especially the less materially advantaged and economically fortunate.  In order to effectively pull out of this collective nose dive, we will have to engineer throughout all the world, in nearly all levels of society, the huge overhauls required to restructure and then install the new operating systems that actually work on more personal, long term user friendly ways. Along with enormity of all this, on more inter-personal levels, in order to even begin making the shifts called for, we are all faced with healing the repressed and largely denied unconscious parts of ourselves, our Shadow.

This hidden and 'dark' aspect of our personal and collective psyches has perpetually acted out most disagreeably in our lives and throughout history. The ongoing effect of this largely denied part of our selves has helped create the extreme circumstances now impacting our planet. One of the primary intentions of Awakening The Sacred Masculine is to restore honor, respect and integrity amongst men and women alike. We do this in part, by consciously calling in the Sacred into ourselves and embodying the Divine in our lives. The Awakened Sacred Masculine is the embodiment of our Divine Lifeforce, consciously expressing through men and the masculine principle in women - it is the Christ Consciousness  reborn.

Interestingly enough, these are the same qualities associated with the Knight Code of the Round Table from the mythological Arthurian legends. Whether historically accurate, this version of the 'Hero" archetype still holds true for us now. The awakening of this evolved consciousness in men is the modern day version of the Holy Grail quest except now, the attainment of the Grail is the full embodiment and fulfillment our Sacred Masculine purpose. In this, there is a fundamental intention of being impeccable in our word, thoughts and actions. Simply put: we do what we say and say what we do.

The Awakened Sacred Masculine chooses to become totally accountable, first with himself and then in all the engagements and relationships in his life. In relationship, this is how trust is created and integrity maintained and what is sorely missing in many of us today. Just ask the women in our lives. The primary motivation of Awakening The Sacred Masculine is to fulfill a deeply held Spiritual Soul code or contract to evolve into the full, living embodiment of our essentially Divine natures, as humans and as men. As men, it is time to honor our sacred purpose by embodying the Awakened Sacred Masculine. This is the new direction in men's work and final frontier for us all. This however, is not gender specific, it is not limited to us anatomically designed men. Both men and women carry masculine and feminine qualities. We are all an unique combination of each. Although the masculine attributes are obviously more expressive in a man, the masculine principle has to evolve in women as well. In many respects, this point of view depersonalizes the 'us verses them' mentality, not just towards men but about men as well. The dark stigma long held and well earned slides off but not away and is in fact, shared within us all, men and women alike.

Over my life, I have observed men always fear most what we believe will destroy us. Not from outside of ourselves, but from within. A man bases his entire ego and personality projections around the unconscious belief that maybe he really is not good enough, strong enough, or powerful enough after all. All of our arrogance and braggadocio is a total cover up of our often huge emotional insecurity, personal doubt and deep self-loathing. Our egos are triggered by fear, so we often try to cover if not conquer our fears through domination and control. From this old paradigm way of thinking, might does make right and from our Shadow's point of view, is all that really matters.

Our Shadow self is made up from all the inner wounds that never healed within us as children and their residual energy only festers, growing more and more combustive, angry and resentful. All the crazy shit men do comes from this deep well of pain, often lined in anger. To awaken our Sacred Masculine awareness, we will have to travel through our personal  Shadowlands, a journey into and through all the places we unconsciously fear we can never make it through on our own. This is where all our most painful memories and all our inner child woundings live. Most of all, this is where our most caustic and critical self-judgments dwell.  As perhaps you can imagine, it takes great courage to finally face the very things that consistently frighten us and requires a Soul strong commitment to face and embrace the parts of ourselves we have desperately tried ignore and forever deny. After all, this is the definition of a true Hero - one who chooses to rise to the difficult occasion by pushing through his or her fear and considerable opposition to fight the good fight, save the day and hopefully, survive intact. In modern day terminology, this is the metaphoric and mythological Hero´s Quest of ancient Greek mythology.

For too long now, many men have gotten stuck and trapped in their lower natures, largely acting in self serving and egocentric abuse of power behaviors in overly controlling, assertive, and dominating ways. These attitudes and expressions all reflect our Shadow self. The unconscious Shadow drive of the masculine is the by product of age-long repressed and unprocessed anger, shame, blame, guilt and fear. As a result, the accumulated build-up and denial of our feelings and blocked emotional energy has created the overly abusive, self destructive behaviors we associate with the unawakened or unevolved masculine consciousness.

As men, these are the personal demons we always run from and as a result, relentlessly chase us. The truth is, our Shadow really does own us - until we own it. This evolutionary and alchemical transformation as explored and expressed in the Awakened Sacred Masculine only happens when we courageously challenge our deeply ingrained masculine belief systems by doing our personal growth homework. And for many of us, lots of it at that. However, there is a solution and a profoundly powerful secret in transforming our Shadow.  To do so, a man has to first come into his open Heartspace to access, embrace and completely empower his feminine nature. In fact (and how ironic is this) it is his feminine nature that will save him. Who knew?!? Only by creating a totally symbioltic interdependency with his complimentary aspects will he begin experiencing his completeness and emerge as a fully balanced and harmonious man.

From a historical perspective, the often adversarial and polarized relationship dynamics between men and women were caused by this lack of conscious integration in men. For there to be true and lasting harmony between men and women now, this split has to be healed in men. The fundamental responsibility for men and the final frontier for everyone today is to consciously attend to and transform our own Shadows that not only contain all of our woundedness but ironically enough, the vast wellsprings of our personal power as well.  Energetically speaking, the enormous amounts of unconscious effort it requires to suppress the huge stockpiles of repressed emotional energy long held in check, could be better utilized by us to be consciously productive, fulfilled and happy. If this were the case, we would all live in a wonderfully different world.

As men, we have to embrace and create an empowered interdependency between our apparent opposite or rather, complimentary natures to become truly healthy and whole. For us to come into balance and begin embodying our Awakened Sacred Masculine awareness, we have to create a bridge to not only access our feminine nature but  embrace and nurture this essential part of our whole self. This is one of the primary intentions of Awakening The Sacred Masculine because only by becoming whole, will we ever be at peace. As fully balanced men, we are impeccable with our word and Heart conscious in our actions.  This radical and essential shift in awareness requires men to get in touch with and utilize our more feminine qualities, those of compassion, forgiveness, receptivity and nurturing self-love. This will allow us to face, accept and embrace all of our self perceived weaknesses. All of the judgments against us, specifically by those we loved and trusted, our primary care givers, have left an indelible mark, a slight, a pain, an unhealed wound. This is all ripe material that needs to be loved back into our humanity, once and for all.

This is the real nitty gritty, deep trench work necessary to finally heal and transform all of our accumulated pain, self doubt, shame and regret. The irony is, this is where our personal power is hidden away. In the simplest of terms, we all have to heal our own pain. No one can do this for us. Paradoxically, we have to do it for ourselves, yet we can't do it alone.

We all need supportive communities in which to thrive and more to the point for us men, we really need our brothers to help do this work. As far as women are concerned, they sincerely need conscious men to begin showing up in their lives to exemplify and out-picture the Awakened Sacred Masculine to help heal their feminine wounds as well as help redefine their own awakened masculine natures.

As men, most important and above all else in our personal process of healing, we have to really forgive ourselves.The eternal elixir, salve and balm for our deepest sadness, pain and self doubts is always self-love. This begins to unwind the habitual projections and abusive attitudes and behaviors that are a dark outer expression of our Shadow. In time, this profoundly powerful and necessary act allows a man to forgive those in his life he's erroneously blamed for his own pain.

To effectively resolve and heal our Shadow and transform our reservoirs of accumulated anger, fear, pain and shame we have to learn to embrace it all in forgiveness, gratitude and self-love. Only when we learn to live in and through our open Heartspace will the ghosts of our past disappointments finally disappear. We do this by consciously opening our Heartspace through the healing power of forgiveness and in time, gratitude and learning to unconditionally love all parts of ourselves, no matter how dark, repulsive or nasty.

In short, we have to learn to live in and through our open Heartspace, once and for all. For us men, this is so huge! This Heart centered consciousness releases the hold our deep set emotional blockages and fear based belief systems and conditioning have had on us. In doing so, we will learn a whole new language, a dramatically different way of being men - with few usable role models, blueprints or roadway maps to guide us. We are in fact, making it up as we go, fumbling to grow along the sharp learning curves already set by women, all without the natural inclusive qualities of the sisterhood. As if fairly obvious, men have a long way to go to catch up to women, as far as the evolutionary learning curve is concerned.

To actually proactively evolve now and begin embodying the Awakened Sacred Masculine in our lives, we have to create and cultivate our own internal balance point and operate from this in our daily lives. In times of stress, uncertainty or insecurity, the Awakened Sacred Masculine has leaned to rely on his own connection to his Soul and has developed his internal guidance system to self-regulate and bring himself back into personal harmony.  

Our growth requires a fundamental shift in our consciousness to begin accessing our Soul's awareness of our higher, more refined spiritual natures. Unless we get our information primarily from our Higher Self, we are getting it from the outside world and this is clearly not so healthy. Unless we consciously connect with our Soul and all that this opens up to, we are greatly disconnected. Just looking around the world today, it would appear not so many people actually spend much time here.  By taking complete responsibility of our thoughts, emotions and actions knowing no one else has control over us to 'make' us act in any way we don't choose. In this way, we become the masters of our internal reality, where we  consciously respond to life from our center with a quiet confidence and calm self-assurance.

As we turn away from the external gratification drive which has habitually hounded us with our endless seeking of external approval, validation and love, we come to rest more easily in our Awakened Sacred Masculine consciousness. In time, all actions become direct expressions of our Spiritual alignment with our ego personality serving the higher will of our Soul's  purpose.

How do we do this? In part, by consciously attending to our most basic physical, emotional, mental and spiritual self-care needs and nurturing the parts of ourselves we have always needed, demanded and expected the world to take care of for us. Only then will the deep disappointment and resentment many men live with begin to transform. I believe the prevalent feelings of unfulfillment many of us feel is because somewhere deep inside we know we are not attending responsibility to our own basic needs as men.  We always end up feeling the world owes us the very things we are not giving ourselves.

When a man takes responsibility to identify, respect and honor his sacred purpose, he begins to live in his personal integrity and honor this quality in others. The endless cravings to satisfy his unfulfilled ego-self will finally cease and desist. This man becomes peaceful within and no longer struggles with himself or anything else in his world. Only then will he feel truly safe to the women in his life to express her more vulnerable, tender and Sacred qualities. A man who has embodied his Awakened Sacred Masculine invites a woman to finally rest and relax in his presence.
Can you imagine a world where most men are able to do this?

For more about Keith and to check out his other articles go to:
http://awakenthesacred.blogspot.com/

  This is a review by Alan Steinfeld of the movie SHAME: Up for academy awards for best picture and best actor.

The importance of the arts is that it isolates and frames certain aspects of our lives. Film is our most profound art form to date, because of the way it excavates feelings and images from the depths of our psyche. This make us more conscious of who and what we are.  Therefore when we emerge from a darken theater we have been changed in a shamanic way.  In the journey from our cushy seats we have been taken on ride to see the darkest part of ourselves as projections on the walls of our psyche. In a film like Shame we see the magnification of our tremendously unconscious behaviors in light of an unconscious addictive society that has propelled us away from our humanity.

    Gwyneth Paltrow has just been quoted as saying: "I still ‘respect and admire’ those who have cheated on their husbands and wives." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2034511/Gwyneth-Paltow-admires-love-cheat-friends.html

More Human Strangeness
We make rules that are virtually impossible to abide by, then feel guilty/get punished when we allow ourselves to do what is natural. Masochistic? A religious thing?

Many studies have shown that people getting married – brides especially – know at the time it is not the right thing for them. Security?
Clever thing we men have tried to set up – make it difficult for women to be equally
self-reliant - so we can be in control. Or so we thought!

I have mentioned this before. What is this thing about marriage, and sex?
Have you really, really thought about it? What it is about?

One argument is that it is for the children. Read the news lately? Oh boy – that argument does not have much support does it – more youth violence than ever.

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It has been mentioned that I do not answer ‘personal’ things so much. True.
One thing is – I couldn’t possibly answer everything even if I wanted to.
(I do often incorporate references in some of the more general things I write.)

Second thing – I have almost certainly answered it before.
(There is the possibility of someone getting what I have written collated into subjects.
A book may evolve as well.)

Third thing. The way I am seeing things, it is no longer appropriate to focus on the personal. Something very big is taking place on the planet, and it needs our energy.

All a matter of perspective? I recently watched a documentary of interviews with people who survived being in the destruction of the Twin Towers. Amazing stories of what went on in their minds when they thought they were going to die. One man who worked in an office there, debris falling around him all the time, he went back into the building many times - and brought out one hundred injured people.
Bigger perspective than the personal?

It happens so often – we are focussed on some little incident – that seems huge in our minds – until something bigger happens to shake us up and put things more into perspective. Spend even just a little time in one of the ravaged countries and you will very soon realise this.