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Ramsses II
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(1/1/06 11:55 am)
Reply 		On Worshipping Goddesses
Balder: Seeing the goddess in women is not the same as idealizing women. This is something I learned the hard way. From early on, I idealized women, which I think is one thing that contributed to my sometimes painful shyness in youth. When I was around girls I liked, I elevated them to such an extent that I think I became invisible to them, in that I put myself in a position of what I thought at the time was "chivalrous service." I noticed, however, that many of the girls around me were attracted to the guys who behaved like jerks -- guys who would put them down, or who would rather objectify and use them than "relate" to them in the elevated way that I wanted to realize.

Towards the end of this period, I became friends with a charismatic older man, the brother of Billy Bob Thornton. He had a powerful, passionate character, and was a talented musician, but also had a strong self-destructive streak. I was surprised at how women continually followed him, pursued him, called him at all hours, and sometimes stalked him, even (or perhaps especially) when he slighted or ignored them. He told me that most women he had met liked or expected to be treated like trash, and it seemed he was right. He would sleep with a woman, then ignore her completely, and he would come home after band practice to find her waiting in the parking lot of his apartment in a bathrobe, or on his doorstep. He told me that he was looking for only a few things in life: a woman who would love him for who he was, not for who she imagined him to be; a way out of his cycle of drug and alcohol abuse; and to be finally untormented and at peace. (He eventually found these things, all in the love of a strong, tender, spiritual woman who helped him to find his center, his peace, and to lose his addictions. He died of a heart attack shortly after telling me he had finally arrived and found true happiness.)

I related his story for two reasons. First, the apparent "truth" of his crass statement -- that women respond to "bad boys" who treat them like trash -- shocked me and shook my idealized image of women. I couldn't understand why women would throw themselves at self-destructive and apparently insensitive men, ignoring those who were more gentle. (That's how it appeared to me then. Older women friends would tell me to be patient; that eventually, when I was around older women, I would meet one who would appreciate gentleness rather than danger and flashiness.) But I also told this story because it finally dawned on me that my idealization of women as goddesses who should be served and fawned upon was as objectifying as the cycle I observed around Jimmy -- both in the women who idealized him, and also in Jimmy (who had disdain for any woman who so idealized him, even while he cultivated a "rock and roll bad boy" image).

By the time I was in college, I began to lose this tendency to idealize and began to relate more directly and realistically to women -- especially after a few painfully disappointing relationships. It wasn't until I met my wife, though, that I finally found out what it means to see the goddess in a woman, not through overlaying an idealized image on top of her, but through being simple, bare, honest, direct, and present enough that it just comes shining out of the eyes in all its obviousness: how precious and beautiful the soul is! It strikes me as funny that I found this simple, present beauty in eyes that first seemed more foreign to me than any I had met, even after years of traveling in Asia. Now, when I look at her, though, that foreignness has given way to a transparency and a recognition that fills me with delight and thankfulness for the simple mystery of a soul that is present to me, as I am to her, without fear or reservation.

Forgive me if I've waxed a little romantic. It's our anniversary today.

Love,
B.

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