Setting in right relationship with the masculine for women with Kapil Gupta
At some point on the journey with feminine embodiment, most women realize they ALSO need to get into a healthier relationship with the masculine - both within and outside themselves. Join us for this special interview with my dear friend and transformational leader Kapil Gupta on...
What it means to embody the masculine
Challenges faced by both women and men on the journey of healing the relationship with the masculine
How we can develop masculine capacity as women on the path of embodiment.
Listen below, or on any of your favorite platfroms including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and iHeart Radio . You can also subscribe to the RSS feed here.
Podcast Transcript:
Yes. Welcome Kapil to the podcast.
Would you maybe just introduce yourself for us so that people can understand why you're here and what you why you might have something to say about feminine embodiment or in adjacent to the world of feminine embodiment. Oh boy. Okay, so yeah, I'm Kapil Gupta. I, um, I have an organization or a coaching company called life.
And, uh, right now, what I do is I work with people on the masculine, feminine dynamics, relational aspects, and also work with, um, people on the transformational life coaching side of things. Um, My background really, I had a 15 year corporate career and I went through a divorce back in 2010, 2011, which led me to my own personal growth journey through the practice of orgasmic meditation.
Um, hopefully many of your viewers, listeners have heard about it. There's a lot of controversy around, uh, the practice and organization. And at the same time, that practice really did transform my life. In a way that I really got to understand the masculine feminine energies, connection, intimacy, and, uh, what does personal growth look like from that angle?
And, um, one of the big part of that was for me to really understand who am I as a man in connection with. Women and with other people, generally, and along with that, how our cultural conditioning, call it masculine or feminine conditioning, uh, plays out in our life and what are those dynamics and how to really get into the nuance of those dynamics and untangle some of these cross wires.
And, uh, it has become over the years that that was to. 12 years ago. Um, so that has become like one of my passions. I love talking about it. I love working with people on that topic. Um, and really just understand how relationship itself can be a really fertile ground. For our personal growth for our work towards consciousness, whatever you may want to call it.
Does that? Yes. Briefly amazing. Thank you for that. Um, I definitely want to talk about orgasmic meditation a little later, but before we get there. Um, one of the reasons I wanted to chat with you, other than, you know, your deep knowledge and depth of practice. In embodiment and masculine feminine dynamics, um, is.
I, I work in the realm of feminine embodiment. I work with a lot of women who are working on the skills of contacting their feminine and bringing that more alive in their bodies and their lives. And I think a really common thing that happens is Sometimes the pendulum, you know, many women have been for so long operating in this kind of rigid, what I would refer to as maybe a toxic masculine orientation where they're just constantly doing, constantly being productive, moving in a linear fashion.
Not being in contact with these flow aspects of themselves. And when they find out about feminine embodiment, what tends to happen is sometimes the pendulum will swing really far in the other direction. It feels so good to be in our pleasure and our creative aliveness and in these more flow aspects of ourselves that we almost, we, we don't want to be in the masculine anymore.
We just want to be in the feminine. And I think there's a reckoning or a maturation that happens at some point where it's like, well, actually. I need both. I need skill and mastery with both of these energies and orientations within myself. But I think a challenge is that we have so much. Habit and pattern and conditioning around the masculine and so much kind of negativity, both within ourselves and from external that it's, it can be really challenging to develop this, this kind of more inner masculine part of ourselves as women, like, um, we tend to relate with the masculine as kind of a.
You know, like a dominator kind of thing, which, which causes us to maybe want to rebel or, or have some maybe other, you know, not, not the most. Not the most productive relationship with the masculine. So I'm curious for you to share your perspective on what gifts does the masculine have for women, both internally and externally, and maybe we can get into also Like, what might that journey look like to healing our relationship with the masculine internally and externally?
So I know that's like a huge question. Wow. Um,
wow. Okay. I think we, yeah, we'll have to sort of go, uh, step by step, I suppose. But first thing I want to start with is there is no other way. To do this work, but to bend the paper all the way back, you know, like quite often, um, my teachers used to use this analogy that, you know, uh, we're living, we're living our life with like a bend sort of folded masculine, feminine or your life as a, as a way that your papers folded one way, you have to like, bend the paper all the way back, which is like, if you were, if we're living our life in a very conditioned, conditioned masculine way.
And I think it's true both for men and women quite often. Quite often in today's very masculine world, then we have to go deep into our feminine part and call it reclaim it or call it like experience that it, that part of us to bend paper all the way back to then slowly get to a point where we can, um, you know, come where somewhere in the middle, find the middle path and the way I relate to masculine feminine is These are really complex things to try and simplify it.
The way I look at it. It's like a scale and depending on where I am and what I want to do or how I want to be. There's like, uh, a mastery I want on both the masculine and feminine parts of myself. So that let's say if I am. Working if I am, uh, creating something or if I'm doing something, producing something that I can, I can be more in my masculine traits.
While if I'm relating. I can be more sort of present to my feminine traits. So I think that's how I look at it. It's like we all have to, for me, mastery is to cultivate all of my masculine and feminine traits and have mastery in all of them. Um, so I just want to like set that as the, as the foundation of.
Our conversation's not wrong, and I also feel that it's true. It's not wrong. So it's not wrong, essentially for women to swing way into the side of like, I just wanna be being and feeling and sensing and flowing and creative and to like really go all the way. As part of their journey, totally. And two things I would add to that is it's quite often journey for men as well, which, uh, which seems weird.
However, a lot of the time, men also have hyper masculine or. Masculine conditioning, where my journey has always been in the last 10, 12 years, where I completely lost touch with my vulnerability, my sensitivity, um, or looked at my sensitivity as wrong. And I had to get into more embodied place to get connected with my body, to get connected with my feelings and emotions and approve of them and, and, um, develop my empathy again.
To and that's all those are all kind of feminine characteristics. So for me, I had to go into that space fully to and this can be quite disorienting disorientating, right? Like when I first started this work, I started to see where, like, I couldn't do any masculine things. I couldn't like, you know, I would go, I would go and book a, uh, a train ticket at the train station.
I would get it wrong. And I was so much in my feeling space. A big part of my journey was. Um, when I, when I started to become more embodied, get more into my feeling and emotional state, some of my masculine functions, rational functions. Kind of like started to give up. I would, uh, you know, I would be doing normal tasks, you know, like go and book a ticket at the train station.
And I'm like, what am I doing? Which car I need to pay with all of these things started to happen. So it's part of it. It's part of going in on, you know, bending the paper all the way back, going all the way into the embodied state. And part of what happens is that our masculine functions kind of take a backseat.
And, um, so the second part of that is, uh, not thinking of anything as being wrong, right? That's the, that's, that's the start off. It all, whether we are back in all our feminine state or we're not like, Oh my God, my, my life is all completely messed up. What do I do now? And then start to either blame the masculine or start to feel like a victim or feeling sorry for ourselves that we don't have a developed masculine, like all of those things.
Are not needed. I think part of part of the thing is to say, Oh, that's not wrong. This is this is where I am on the map. You know, if it's a journey, then all it's telling me is that where do I need to get to? And where am I right now? So starting to look at it that way is probably the first thing that we have to do.
Mm hmm. Like, oh, wow, I've, I've, I've gone so far into my feminine that all my masculine functions are not working anymore. Yes. Um, and another thing, another thing I hear you saying is that this is kind of a soup that we're all swimming in. This is not maybe unique to just women, although it is, does, you know, women have a particular experience and relationship of it, but that it's, it's, we're all just our, our.
overculture has us swimming in this soup of, would you call it toxic masculine? Would you call it kind of a, a, a manifestation of maybe a more toxic masculine expression? I don't like to call it toxic. I don't like the word toxic. Uh, I would say it's, it's cultural conditioning. Um, and cultural conditioning being that, uh, we are all so focused on achievement, on improving our self worth.
To success, to achieving our goals, um, and that's how our culture has conditioned us to be, um, you know, and, and it's true for all genders, uh, mostly. So, so it's a, and, and we're obviously generalizing here quite a bit. Uh, I think everyone's journey is different. It's unique. And part of the process is to be able to.
Really just see, oh, where am I? Where, where is, where am I on this path? Where is my journey? What is, what is my next steps look like? Without, without going into this place like, oh, somehow I've, I've done something wrong. Yes, I can get on board with this idea of not making it wrong. And I can, like, I can get there in my head.
But I think one thing that happens for me, and I think a lot of women too, is like, there comes a point where, but I need to get shit done. Mm hmm. So it's not wrong and you know, this thing is happening, but, but also, you know, the world is demanding things of me or I need to make money or I need my business to be successful.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think all of those things are, are, um, uh, points on the map. That are really just telling us where we are on the journey, you know, um, so if we look at it from a, from a spiritual perspective, ultimately, we want to be in a place of like, uh, dealing with things or looking at things in our life.
You know, feeling all the feelings while keep moving forward, you know, so the, so the anxiety, the fear, the anger, sometimes even the blaming of the masculine, uh, all of those things are really just signposts. You say, Oh, here are all the triggers that I still have to, uh, to look at or work on. It's like the, the, you know, this, uh, famous saying, you know, the external world is really a mirror of what's happening internally.
So if we are getting this, uh, anxious state of like, Oh my God, I have to get my business up and running. Then externally, what is being projected to us. Is really just showing where we are, uh, you know, in terms of our internal relationship between the masculine and the feminine inside us. So the world's just like, giving us all the things.
Uh, that, that we need to still work on. So let's unpack this a little bit more. What? Yeah. What practically does that journey look like? Let's say that I begin to realize that I need to develop more of my masculine capacity. What practically does that journey look like? Like, what might be a first couple steps that need to happen on that, that journey?
I don't know. I think it feels like a really abstract place. And the thing that comes to mind is action. You know, like the part of, part of, uh, like, it's like the way I look at feminine masculine, uh, is feminine energy is expansive. It is free flowing and it doesn't have any bounds. And what masculine provides, uh, is, is a structure.
It provides boundary to the feminine. So, you know, for example, so one of the things could be just like any kind of structure in life would have it be that if you are. You know, let's say feminine is the desire and masculine is, so feminine is the what and the masculine is the how, so if, as long as we are rooted in our desire, we can let the feminine define the, the masculine define the how.
So let the masculine part of us create the structure for it. Now there come, might come a point where it's like, I don't trust the masculine to define the structure. Which will show up in real life as. I don't trust, let's say, a masculine man to hold me. What internally that's saying is like, oh, I don't trust my masculine to define the structure or hold me.
So then we use the external world as a way to, um, to do the work. So like, okay, what does that mean? Why do I, why do I not trust? Men, or why do I not trust my, my masculine and when you start to do the work on that part, and if we can heal that part of ourselves, then suddenly the way men show up in our life are the men we can trust and we can allow them to hold us.
And as soon as that happens, exactly the same thing happened inside where we start to trust our own masculine and allow it to hold the structure for us. Allow it to take the action that is needed in life for the desire to to happen to materialize. Yeah, I love this. So what I'm hearing is, is, uh, it's feeling into the body.
What am I holding towards, for example, structure, creating structure? And if there's whatever is there may, you know, you're using the example of lack of trust. Um, it's being with all of the pain of that not trusting. And feeling what are the layers underneath there? What, what, what is the ground that that distrust is growing from and meeting all of those layers of sensation in the body of betrayal or not being held or frustration or anger or sadness, there might be deep grief there of all the ways that you've been dropped by the masculine or you've experienced, you know, in your.
Either collectively or in your own lived experience, or maybe even intergenerationally, there could be a lot of pain there around that. So it's meeting all of those layers in order to do that alchemical process of allowing them to digest and move through so that we can come into more trust? Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, and it's not a linear, linear process, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's a feminine path. You know, sometimes it feels like to step forward. One step back. Sometimes it feels like one step forward, two steps back. And that's how that's how it works. What I'm saying is, yes, and you keep moving forward and use stealth inquiry as a way to continuously examine where we are on the map, you know, and, and, you know, famously, one of my teachers used to say, like, you need three things.
In, in this kind of work, one is you need, um, some kind of practices to, to do the work you need, uh, some guide so that someone can point to your blank, uh, blind spots and say, Oh, hey, have you thought about that? And thirdly, you need a community that you can almost use as a research lab where people can provide reflections, but where you can actually go and make mistakes.
Because one of the things quite often that happens on this path is that we are fearful that if we become a mess, the impact that we're going to have on the world is going to be very ugly, you know, like if I start to work on my boundaries, the first thing that happens is like I start to get irritated.
As I see that throughout my life, I've been saying yes to the places where I'm actually a no.
So the first thing that happens that I start getting angry at everyone around me because their face just represents all of the places where I've said yes, where I violated myself, my own boundary, you know? So, so we need a community of, of peers where we can actually say, Oh, you know what? I'm working on my boundaries.
And I'm gonna like Learn how to say no to you, and it might come across really sharp while I get used to this thing. Mm. So interesting. Um, I don't feel like we have a lot of those faces. We have to consciously seek them out and create them around ourselves. Yeah. And that's why I think having a community is so important and, uh, people often talk about like community, but I think this aspect of the community is one of the most important things where I can allow myself to be messy while I do the work to grow.
Um, You know, like, um, I think for everyone to see how many people you have in our life where you can actually trust them with these kind of things, where, you know, boundaries is such a great example. A lot of my work that I do, people come to me from all sorts of different places. One of the main things we start with is our boundaries with people and our boundaries with ourselves and 90 percent of the cases people don't have good boundaries.
They don't know what boundaries are. They don't know how to assert boundaries and. They don't know how to have good boundaries with themselves either. You have to have a great foundation. I'm using that as an example because people are scared. It's like, oh, how do I say no to this person? You know? And that boundary function.
Yeah, that boundary function is probably a really important aspect of our masculine skills as well. Because we need those boundaries. Like you were talking about structure before. In order to create a structure and stick to it and hold it, like, just for ourselves, uh, we need, we need boundaries with ourselves and other people.
So there is a, there is a, there is a real feminine aspect, I think, to boundaries of being in contact with those, that deepest truth and letting it kind of fill up our field. But then there's the practical enforcement and the communication of the boundaries that I think might be a bit more of a masculine skill set.
Yeah. And then the other side of it is, uh, knowing our range, you know, with, with this kind of work, what happens is we go back and forth in this place of, oh, I'm just being versus you go back into the masculine and sometimes overshoot. Like for me, one of the things, uh, is when I'm in the doing mode, I forget self care a lot of the times I forget self love.
I forget taking care of myself and I just. Get so involved in my work at my own expense, you know, I sometimes violate my own boundary there. The part of it is going to be literally looking at everything as, as research. Then go, okay, well, this time around, let me create a structure and see how I do with this structure.
And for two weeks or three weeks or a month, I'm going to work in that structure and then sit back and evaluate now. So that's how you start to use masculine. To really see where you are and how you are responding to your own boundaries, how you're responding to your own range. Do you know where your range is?
Where do you go in red? You know, for me, a lot of the time when I, when I go into doing mode, I go into red because all my health starts to suffer. I get so bogged down with the doing part that I forget the being part of the what. And every time I do that, instead of like going, I did it again, beat myself, beat myself up again, you know, instead of that, I've, I've, I've learned to now say, oh, okay, interesting.
Still got so much work to do with my range. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a journey, what I'm hearing, to creating a healthy relationship with both of those aspects of ourselves. It's not just a switch that we can flip, necessarily, and just be done, and be like, okay, you know, check the box. I did, I healed my, I healed my inner masculine.
Done. Let's move on. No, it's kind of an ever evolving dance. I think so. That's been my experience of it. It's like a cyclical process. And every time we go around the cycle, we drop some things, and we build more power, and then we go around the cycle again, and we look at, oh, okay, well, this aspect is not needed anymore.
I don't need to worry about these things, or here's the thing that I was resentful about. Okay, I think I'm done with that resentment. I can let go. It feels like that to me as a cyclical process. Yeah, I don't, I don't see it anymore as a, as a. As something that, okay, I've gone down all of the way into the being now I can just like do something and in six months time, it'll just be like balanced.
Everything will be cool. If that's the case, then there's nothing else to do. We might as well be dead.
On one level, that's so disappointing, though. See, that's the masculine mind that wants to achieve. That wants to be done and complete. That wants to be done. And part of it is, I think we gotta get in, uh, fall in love with the process. We have to fall in love with the, the, the messiness of it all, you know, it's like, oh, here I go, cry, cry, cry, you know, here I go again, and be able to laugh at ourselves, you know, I think that there's two superpowers on this path, if, if we're, if we allow ourselves to have them, one is curiosity, and one is urgent.
Humor. Those are the only two things to be able to sort of say, Oh, wow, interesting. How did I get here? Where am I going? And the second is to be able to just like, laugh at the silliness of it all by ourselves. I love that. Super important. Okay, so you mentioned a couple of things that I want to pull back into the conversation.
Um, the first one is when you were talking about trusting the masculine to hold you. I think this is a big This is a big thing for a lot of women is not, not fully trusting the masculine feeling, you know, the resentment and the hurt of not having been held by the masculine. So I'm just curious if you have any reflections for people, women who feel like, but what, but I keep seeing, I keep feeling like the masculine around me isn't showing up for me that way.
It's not being coming to hold me. I am, do feel like I've been dropped. And there's just a lot of, a lot of stuff tied up with that.
Yeah, totally. I would, I would love to maybe, if you have specific examples, that would be great to talk about those specific examples because otherwise it becomes quite abstract. Having said that, I feel The place to really start is to say that, like, Oh, what's happening in my life, the way men are showing up in my life, is really reflecting how I am I with myself.
If, you know, let's say men, men are showing up in my life where, uh, you know, they, they, they create, they drop me all the time. They can't, they're not showing up for whatever reason, it's, uh, I think the place to start is to really see, okay, well, where, where is it that I don't do that for myself,
you know, so that's the first part, and I think the second part then is, is to test different things, you know, like, Allowing people to be their messy self, but using that as a reflective way to develop a different relationship to our own masculine internally. And I know it's slightly abstract, um, but let's say one of the things is Uh, I am not heard by the masculine, right?
It's a, it's a very common thing between feminine masculine where feminine feels, uh, I, I have a desire. I state my desire that the masculine doesn't hear it or the man doesn't hear it. Or if the man hears it, uh, he doesn't do anything with it, right? You will ask one time, you will ask two times. And then what happens is women get irritated, right?
You will get angry, right? Men, fuck them. You know, they're of no use.
My needs are not met. Like, whatever the inner dialogue is, that happens. Tell me more about myself. Right, but that's the conditioned way, uh, conditioned feminine. It's a very familiar story. I know it very well inside and with women around me. Right. So then one of the ways to practice it is, let's say, use this, this principle.
You ask for what you want 100 percent of the time. And every time, like it's the first time and you stay there to negotiate,
right? So, uh, and I'll use a little bit of, um, uh, orgasmic meditation philosophy here in, in orgasm meditation. The practice is that, uh, it's between two people and it's a cultural stroking, stroking practice. And what happens is, uh, a man or a woman, uh, is stroking a woman's clitoris or someone who has a clitoris with the left index finger, literally very deliberately with the tip of their finger.
Right. And one of the ways we communicate in, uh, in orgasm meditation is you make an adjustment. Who's clit is being stroked can ask for an adjustment. So the idea there is you can only ask for adjustments in a way that, you know, it's like, oh, can you go to the left? So you can ask for direction. You can ask for speed.
You can ask for pressure. And the idea is that You ask for as many adjustments as you want. And the idea is do not get frustrated. You ask for adjustment every time, like it's the first time. So what happens is that when you start to do that practice, when it comes to life over a period of time, you start to change your relationship with making requests.
So then when you meet a man, for example, you can train yourself. In such a way that you are making a request. You can ask, you ask for something every time, like it's the first time. And the practice is not to get, um, frustrated because what you're doing is that man is a representation of your own masculine,
and when you can do that externally, it automatically changes your relationship with your masculine internally. So you're healing the relationship that way. And you're, we're using the, the external relationships. Literally as a way to heal ourselves as a feedback loop for ourselves. That's just one very powerful, but a really important thing.
And, and, and the thing is, you know, it's a practice, you know, you won't change it overnight. It might take a few years to change this really, but just imagine if you can get to a place where you are asking for it, asking for what you want, and not getting frustrated if you don't get what you want. Suddenly what will happen is that it's not that, um, it's not that you won't get frustrated or that suddenly men will change.
What will happen is that you will start to invite men in your life who are more willing. Because you've healed your own relationship with the masculine internally.
So the world that gets presented to us Gets transformed in that way. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. There's I've been talking a lot. There's so much there. Oh my gosh. There's so much there. Um, okay, one thing is I think it's really important to highlight what you're talking about is having a specific container for practice.
That we're, we're actually creating a condition to practice something, which a lot of women in my world will be familiar with because we talk about creating a safe container. That then changes how we, you know, show up in these situations in our actual life. The practice container is not actual life, but it's informing our actual life because we're creating those spaces.
And what you were talking about before of, you know, having a community or having a guide or, you know, actually putting some time and attention towards learning these skills in a container. That's actually really probably important part of this. So that's 1 thing
I think it's also, um, I just really want to really highlight the point of the internal and the external that it's something that's happening. It's not. Okay. Because it's a question that's coming up in my head is like. Is it internal work first and then external? But I think what I'm hearing you say is like, it's a dance that's happening where something's happening inside of us, but it's also a manifestation externally.
And those two things are just sort of intertwining back and forth with each other. Um, the internal is reflecting what's happening outside, but also the external is. It's reflecting the inside as well. That's it. Yeah. That's it. It's a feedback loop. Without the feedback loop, we don't know where we stand.
Yeah. And, and that is why I think relating of any kind is so important. And that's why, you know, as humans, we are connected to each other. We are, um, you know, um, We can't, you know, there's lots of research now, like, you know, if people are just left to their own devices and left alone, we just die. We need connection, we need that feedback loop and part of it is that I think that feedback loop can be used as a tool for growth and it is, uh, a, uh, it is a necessity in some ways.
Like that is only the, we can be in a cave meditating for 10 years, but we won't know where we stand until we come down to the marketplace and interact with the world. You know, like we could be, we could be, uh, meditating for 10 years isolated, but as soon as you come out, come back out and, uh, you know, at a traffic light, someone crosses us.
If we react to it and get angry, then that 10 years of meditation doesn't do anything. Yeah, they say that about going to a family holiday. Your spiritual practice will, you never really know how good your spiritual practice is until you go to Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then you can use that as a feedback to say, oh, okay, this is where I am.
Yeah. Let's go and do the work for another year and see next year where do we stand. Yeah, so one thing I'm really taking from this is that it is, it is relational. There's only so much that we can do kind of alone in our own space, practicing with ourselves, self coaching or doing certain practices. That can take us pretty far, but there's a limit to that.
At some point, it has to be relational. And especially when we're talking about the relationship with the masculine, we might only want to develop. necessarily our inner masculine, but actually that's something that needs to happen in relation with the world and with other people as well. It's not just an inside job.
Yeah. I think my, my belief is that that's the only way it can happen. And so there's this concept of slow practice and flow practice. The slow practice is You know, things, time spent on the mat, meditating, yoga, orgasmic meditation, anything, writing, journaling, whatever that is, these are all our slow practices that allow us to, um, let's say build new traits or, or, or change things in us.
But the flow practice is life itself. When we go out and meet the world, meet people, uh, interact with the world, that is what we say, that is where we test all of the things that are happening in our slow practice and see, oh, yeah, I thought I've done a good, good amount of, uh, job, uh, not reacting to some people.
Let's go in and actually put ourselves in, in the world and see if that is really the case. So then the flow practice, like, informs where we are, how is the slow practice going, and then whatever shows up in our life, then we take it back to our slow practice. I was like, okay, well yeah, I thought I had done this work, but no, hold on.
I got reactive again when he looked at me in this kind of way or when he didn't respond to me. All right, let's go back to the my mat and work on this again. Mm-Hmm . See what are the nuances that we still have to work. So that's how I think the, the slow practice and the flow practice are always.
Coexisting and and create that feedback loop. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Thank you for that. Um, another thing I wanted to pull forward that you had said earlier, um, was about the the gifts of the masculine. So, you know, you mentioned that the feminine loves to be contained. By the masculine. So I'm curious if you want to share with us, what do you feel like, like, why should we be interested in developing our masculine?
What gifts are there for us internally and externally as women?
Contained. Such an interesting and triggering word, I suppose, for people. I could imagine women getting triggered by that word contained. Nobody contains me! Okay, maybe you use the word held, so maybe that's a more accessible word. I would say, the way I look at it is, creation, any kind of creation can only happen when both the masculine and feminine exist.
We talk about these aspects separately, just so that we can, maybe in our limited mind, we can understand them better. But they just, like, in reality, there's no way. For them to sort of exist separately. We're always, there's always masculine and feminine coexisting. And so the way I look at it is like river and riverbank.
So the feminine is the river, riverbank is the masculine. So without the riverbanks, a river won't exist. And without the river, riverbank has no purpose, you know, so, uh, it's a containment or being held in that way, um, is that feminine energy is, is the most powerful without bound energy. It doesn't have like a value.
So it's not positive or negative. It's just boundless energy. You know, and it's the masculine when the masculine meets the feminine that is how we can it's a dynamic dance And that is what creates things in the world is is how I see it. So containment You can call it containment. You can call it. I love to call it as a as a dance And I think what happens quite often is that, um, certainly from a masculine perspective, when we are not able to meet the feminine, what happens is that we either let the feminine wash us and we acquiesce.
The masculine acquiesces and then the feminine is all over and then feminine doesn't have any, any way to be bound. And feminine gets, first of all, I think, fearful because can't feel any boundaries. And then. It results into all of the, you know, anger and frustration that, Hey, where is my, where's the masculine?
I don't feel it. Um, or the other thing that happens is that masculine doesn't know how to dance with the feminine energy and it squashes overpowers the feminine energy. In, in, and, and that is neither of those places are, are good for any kind of creativity, any kind of dance, any kind of relating. Um, so I think the, the ultimate, ultimate place is.
That we want to learn how the feminine force can be out more and more powerfully without any inhibition. And the masculine can meet that powerful force with equal, uh, power, and then we can co create externally as well as internally. Yeah. Um, So the dance is already happening. We, it's already happening.
It's just up to us how we want to be in relation with that. It's not like, We can choose not to be in relationship with the masculine internally or externally. It's, it's already happening. It's just, are we, are we having a good time or a not good time? Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think so. I think we can, we can, um, it is, yeah.
What kind of relationship do we have right now? Yeah. And I work with a lot of powerful women who I think get into that orientation of like, Well, you know, I'm so powerful, let's just go and I'll just do it myself. And, you know, the men around them are, I think in sort of a tough position now because they've all been told, well, you know, support your woman to be powerful.
Like they almost just. I don't want to get out of the way but the effect of that is, is I think exactly what you're saying of that feeling like there's nothing there to push against and I'm the one and I'm just going to do it and then there's like resentment and anger and frustration that builds up as well as just getting tired within ourselves as women and feeling getting dry, you know, because we are constantly stepping into that masculine orientation and feeling like well nobody else is going to do it nobody else is strong enough.
I'm the strong one, so it's up to me. Yeah, you know, I think that particular piece is really, uh, interesting and complex on its own, uh, because there's so many different cultural conditioning wires, cross wires, entangled inside of that piece, I feel, because, um, I think one of the, one of the things I have learned is, is, Um, Like the feminine trains the masculine in how to be with, uh, with her.
Um, And like, for example, the earlier example I used in asking for what you want 100 percent of the time, every time like it's the first time, like that is how the masculine gets trained. Uh, in how to be with a woman. And I think there's a, there's probably this idea of, I'll do it myself, self sufficiency is, I think it's, it's part of it is a trauma response.
It's like, I can't trust anyone. And then the other side that comes quite often I see is like, when I say the thing like, Oh, it's actually women have to train the men around them. Quite often, uh, I get the response is like, Here we go again. We have to do all the work, right? And, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a really tricky place where I'm not suggesting that men don't have to do their own work.
I think we both have to do our work. And then there's a place, I think, here's an example that I have seen often, is, let's say feminine is the what and masculine is the how, and for this intent and purposes, Women embody feminine and men embody masculine. So in that way, the what, the desire, the feminine is the desire, and the masculine and men, uh, are the how and how to make it, make things happen.
In that particular lens, the way when we look at that lens, um, men are really, really dependent on women to Let us know that we can feel the desire, that our intuition when it comes to desire is correct. However, feminine conditioning has it be that women are always trained that their desire is too much.
So women are trained to obscure or deflect men when men come and say, Oh, is that your desire? Because women feel that, Oh, my desire is too much. Then they deflect or obscure and the man then doesn't trust themselves. So men then have to go and get dependent on formulas and that is what the condition masculine is like in our, in our culture, the over hyper dependence on formulas on tips and tricks and give me five steps to this.
Is a direct result of that is a direct result that men do not trust their own sense of, I know, so what we do is we overcompensate. We're like, Yeah, I know. Of course I know everything. One of the big things I learned is like with me, my partner, I realized that I was always, you know, if she says something, I'm always like, Yeah, of course I know.
There's this like, you know, bravado, this extra thing that she can ask me, she can ask me anything about. rocket science and I have no idea but I'll, my first response is of course I will know because my identity as a man is defined by how I perform, how much I know, because if I don't know then straight away I'm not good enough, I am not enough, I am not worthy.
So, so that is kind of like the lock we are, the men and women, or the masculine and the feminine, the condition masculine and where feminine is continuously like my desire is too much. And I'll obscure and deflect and then the men go in and it's like, Oh, I need, I, I, I need to know everything that we're skewed in this way where men are continuously reaching and, and like grabbing.
And we have, we're learning all the tips and tricks to do that successfully. And women are like, Oh, no, no, no, no. I need to hold back my power. And a lot of it is sexuality, because I'm told that, that that is where my power is. So we're skewed in this weird sort of way where women are like seen as somehow, uh, fragile, uh, in our culture, uh, and somehow like they have to protect their power and men have to go and grasp and, and, and continuously reach out.
But then when a woman comes in her power, it's like men don't know how to deal with it. Because we've now been programmed to, like, we've been told that we are all powerful, you know, men know everything, and women are now like, no, no, hold on, hold on, you know, that's not really the case. Here I am, a powerful sexual being, who is not limited by anything, and men don't know how to deal with it.
So part of it is, I think, part of it is that relearning process, and for, and I think women to To, to teach men how to, how to be with their desire again, how to not obscure when all of the cultural conditioning is like, oh shit, I can't let him see. I feel my desire here. Uh, when I open up and say, yeah. It's that inner and outer dance again.
It's that inner job of claiming those things for ourselves and reckoning with them internally. And it's happening outside too. Um, we're, as we come to the close of this conversation. I talked a lot there. No, no, no, I want to keep going. I want to keep going. Um, we are at our time limit, but I do want to keep going.
So maybe we can do part two, but um. I just want to pull forward something you've been talking about at a few points, which is the feminine comes first. And we talk about this in my work, depth and then direction, in this orientation of like, you know, you said feminine comes first. But I think one thing that you're talking about here is with With all of this masculine stuff, that masculine arises in response to the feminine.
It arises in service. And if we're women, we're trying to reckon with our own inner masculine. Those things arise in response to our feminine depth and they arise in supportive and in honoring of, um, and that can, again, with this inner outer dance, that can be what's happening outside too. And something we need to work on externally as well as internally.
So I love all of this conversation. I want to talk about more about orgasmic vegetation, but we didn't really get to that juicy bit. But, um, I feel like so many important points here. How can people get in touch with you? So if people like, maybe they have a relationship that they want to do this type of work, and they want to explore, or they want to get more coaching on intermasculine, how can people get in touch with you?
Yeah, my website is nibana, N I B A N A dot life. Uh, that's probably the easiest way. People can get in touch or, um, maybe we can put my Instagram handle, um, on in the show notes, which is Caps, Gupta, K A P S G U P T A. Yes, we'll get all of your info in the show notes for people. Uh, and what would you like to leave us with?
Is there any piece of wisdom? I think quite, quite often. People get this weird idea of when we talk about masculinity as in the service of the feminine. Um, the way I look at it is the feminine is our intuitive mind and masculine is our rational mind. So if we look at masculine and feminine in that way is that feminine is the desire and the what, and masculine is the how and the rational part of our brain and making things happen.
So in that way, masculine is in service to the feminine energies. It's not servitude. It is in service, and in that way, if we lead with desire, if we lead with intuition, you can have this 51 49 relationship between feminine and masculine. It doesn't mean less than or better than. It is more like how do we have this dynamic dance, um, between the masculine and feminine because that's where we feel most alive.
Love it. Thank you so much for this conversation. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Such a gift. Yeah. So fun. All right. Bye. Bye.