Good Girls Don’t Improvise: Seeing and Sticking

In the women’s improv class I’ve been teaching now for almost a year, we have made some incredible progress.  New women can now join in the class and get swept up in the unity and positivity that is the foundation of what we are building.  And the transparency of all that comes up in us and between us as women.  Postmodern gals who are a confusing mass of vying for alpha-female and being “the one”; obsessed with being liked and being nice; desperately seeking affirmation and doing it right;  and not caring one iota what anyone thinks because who really cares anyway?  And all sitting next to this beautiful impulse to be more, create more, work together as ONE, support the best in each other, and always get back up when you fall and give it your best because you care about each other and what we’re building.

Recently, we have been playing around with gender.  At the start we stayed clear of it because it’s far too easy to rip apart what “other women” do while never really seeing it in yourself. Our goal is to see the universality of WOMAN and that whatever we see out there is to some degree in here. And from THAT place, expose, explore and create. But after watching the Harvard Sailing Club’s fantastic trio of you tube videos where the men are actually like women, the women are actually  like men, we got inspired to add our spin to the whole thing.  So the women all picked real men they knew and took them on as characters throughout the class.  They played guys “internally” – pretending to really be these men they knew, not really caring if on the outside we could tell of they were men or women in the scenes.  They didn’t do a cartoony/Mad-TV send up of over-the-top, crotch-grabbing, foul mouthed guys that we as women so often do when we are told to “play a guy”…they were real people who were men.

What happened was very, very interesting.  And best of all the women in the class saw and felt it immediately…I didn’t have to work hard to point it out.  Their scenes were more simple, more unified, they listened better, and it was as if there was one line through everything instead of a bunch of tangents, curves, and swirls to the story.  And there was a lot of ease.  Space.  And like I said, not only was I amazed, but so were they.  They saw and felt the difference.

The difference being that a lot of our conditioning is a distraction to that straight, simple, focused way of being and creating. And that confusing mass I described is usually much louder when we’re nervous and under pressure (which happens in improv as you can imagine). So making choices that by-passed all of that had very noticeable results…without needing to make any of the internal stuff a problem…we just eliminated the option to get caught up in it.

Now, yes, they all saw it. But interestingly enough, the next week they came in and the first warm-up we did, it was like watching the Donna Reed show…lilting voices, giggles, big smiles, everyone so nice and passive and doubting their choices….UUUG!!  So I asked them to do it again like the men characters they had been doing and it went back to straight, smooth, to the point, focused.

The point? Just seeing these things is huge in itself…we have to be interested and willing to look at parts of ourselves that we’d rather not own up to – and these ladies have been willing and able for a year to keep going and keep digging.  And yet, the real work seems to come in on having it stick.  Having it stick means change happened.  It means that you actually go against your impulses and instincts to back down, get small, be nice, bail…and do something NEW, something else…something driven by the kind of woman you WANT to be.  And that’s a whole other level.  It’s both humbling and exciting to think about…but the first step I feel is recognizing the difference between seeing and sticking.

Good Girls Don’t Improvise: You should smile.

This last Saturday I gave my GOOD GIRLS AREN’T FUNNY talk to a great group of women at The Barrow Group School in Midtown Manhattan. It was a lively discussion and we went about an hour over the published time, but no one seemed to mind.  (Least of all me!) I appreciated how open the women were to recognizing the GOOD WOMAN in ourselves and how it isn’t our authentic voice, and it isn’t going to get us where we want to go.

One question or comment that always seems to pop up at some point is that is being GOOD isn’t helping us, is being BAD the answer? And it most definitely isn’t the point of my talk or the answer, I feel.  But a fair enough question. I think when we start to learn where this GOOD WOMAN came from in culture (read more here from my first post), and how it’s a construct with very specific goals in mind, we can often begin to get upset about her and want to chuck her out the window. And a “screw that!” attitude can come up…one that wants to fly in the face of anyone that tells a woman that she has to be nice, pretty, good, and selfless.

I remembered during this last talk of when I was a teenager, walking through town in St Louis, Missouri where I’m from, and an older man passed me and said, “You should smile.”  He said it with such a confusing mix of politeness, flirtation, superiority, condemnation, and…something else…almost threatening?  Hard to remember…but I just remember feeling both ‘bad’ like I SHOULD smile because girls smile and men like that…AND complete rage and wanting to kick his teeth in, with a powerful comeback line like, “…and you should mind your own business and not tell women what to do old man!!!”  However, I did neither…but it obviously has stayed with me all these years.  What WAS the right thing???

And I think about what a lot of younger women are expressing these days…and what I expressed in my early 20′s, tasting the freedoms that I had…and it definitely had a twinge of “no one tells ME what to do!”…I felt completely justified in pursuing whatever I wanted and doing whatever I cared to and hey, watch out if you tried to tell me I couldn’t or look at me funny if you didn’t approve.  And I look at the “role models” for young women today…Britney, Paris, Lindsay, and the other train wrecks out there. And they all seem to have a mantra in there that  says “I won’t be a good girl – in fact, I’m going to be BAD!” Is it explicit?…for some yes.  Look at magazine covers, listen to lyrics or watch music videos. It’s everywhere. For other women, not as explicit…but it seems to be there.

What I have been discovering in the work of EnlightenNext’s Evolving Women Project, is that postmodernity was a total rejection of the modern and traditional woman.  It said, “we will no longer accept the confining roles you place on us and we want to create our lives the way WE want them, not by your definitions, thank you very much.”  And so, as with any reactive movement, it seemed that women were defined by NOT being what came before.  But is that where the story ends? Is that how we’re going to define the new woman? But NOT being like the old version?  So is rejecting the GOOD GIRL end up meaning that we can be as bad as we want?  I surely hope not.  I want to co-create with my sisters a new woman who has moved on from that…because THAT motive is still not free…not any more free than being IN the structure that confines you. Whether you’re in it or proving that you’re not in it, you’re still relating to it to define you.

So what would happen if we take our attention off of it all together and start thinking, more importantly, who do we WANT WOMAN TO BECOME?  I start thinking of words and phrases like: dignified, respected, women as leaders, supportive, non-dramatic/overly emotional, not merely sexual beings, valued for more than our ability to attract, new…the list starts to look less and less good girl vs. bad girl to me, and more and more what I want to create and be an exemplar of for the younger women that I see every day, looking desperately for the right direction to go. If we aren’t the ones showing them, who will? Britney? Paris? If so, that will be such a loss and such a crime, especially since so many women fought so, so, so hard for so long to win us the freedoms we all take for granted.  Did they really fight that hard so we could be just be bad girls and have a lot of fun? I don’t think so. And I want to make good on the promise they brought to the table…we can be FREE WOMEN for the first time in the history of women.  So let’s do THAT.

Good Girl’s Don’t Improvise: History is Our Friend

I remember taking history classes in school…I certainly got a lot from some of them but in general and don’t think I ever felt connected to history as how it connects to my life, my choices, or my future.  It was the study of THE PAST and it was old and it was over, it was something interesting to look back and see, but it was always ‘less than’ where we are now.

I have now been giving my GOOD GIRLS AREN’T FUNNY talks in New York City for a few months and what I have seen, over and over, is that it is the HISTORICAL perspective on being a woman in 2010 that is the MOST liberating, the most helpful, and the most alive.  It’s fascinating!  The minute I put up the slide from my power point presentation that has a timeline starting in 3000 BC and goes until the present moment, something shifts.  Suddenly we are all talking about WOMAN, not just the 40 individuals in the room. We’re talking about all of our SHARED past lasting thousands of years, though countless cultural shifts and leaps — instead of our individual, unique paths that make us seem more different than similar.  It’s like the camera dramatically pulls back and back and back until we see our lives as the tip of an arrow that’s been moving for a long, long time. We’re looking at who we are and what our lives look like now as a result of a PROCESS, as a result of things continually happening throughout history that we keep adjusting to or pushing against.

And it goes beyond “oh, that’s an interesting fact”…it actually starts to free us up because we can see WHY we do and think the way we do. We can see what ideas, roles, assumptions, fears, and values we have inherited…and WHY they are what they are.

For example, in the recent talk I gave at the Tribeca Film Center for a group of wonderful women, (and 1 man) members of the New York Women in Film and Television, 1 young woman was challenging the statement I made that Disney heroines (Snow White and the lot) are exemplars of the modern/Good Woman structure. Kind, selfless (interesting word), pure, innocent, non-threatening, passive. She was a little upset because she said those were the ‘old’ characters but the new ones were different…Mulan, Ariel and the lot. She said they were tough, smart and not like Snow White. However, I pointed out that in the end, they are still  beautiful women who are good girls at their core and win a man over because of how beautiful and good they are.  And the whole point of those films is that reward=man.

Understanding how even the ‘updated’ version of a Disney film is still playing out the Good Woman/Romance-based storyline is something one can see with much more clarity when we see where the Good Woman emerged in history, why it emerged, and how recently it was the main point of a woman’s existence. (see first posts for more about this) On a historical timeline, the 1950′s housewife was who we were this morning and the real women of Jane Austen’s world were here just a few days ago. History is our friend…it helps explain who we are, how we got here…all so that NOW we can start to decide what of our collective past we want to take with us and what we want to leave in the dustbin.

Good Girls Don’t Improvise: Having Each Other’s Backs

Good Girls Don’t Improvise Post #4

Last night may seem to have been just any Thursday night, but in New York City it was the debut of our all-woman’s improv troupe. We are calling the troupe “13 degrees” because of the talk I have been giving about the GOOD GIRL structure in women’s consciousness and a series of photos I found: the stereotypical “GOOD WOMAN” all with a slightly passive and selfless tilt to her head, and all at about a 13 degree angle.  There is a scene in IRON MAN 2 (great movie if you haven’t seen it yet) and in one part Gwenyth Paltrow is talking to Robert Downey Jr and she goes from being very angry (straight ahead-head) to suddenly being the very understanding “good” girl and WHAM!  her head tilts 13 degrees. It’s fascinating and I have started to see all the times I do it as well…all very interesting.

Anyway, I digress…the show last night was a huge success and the 8 women performing worked together really beautifully. And the fact they were women was not the point or the focus of the troupe. It was not the point of their scenes. They were all improvisers FIRST and women second.  What I thought was perhaps most significant was a comment I kept hearing from them after the show: “I was aware that all the other women had my back.  I never felt that before.” They said it made them relax and not worry, not feel competitive and that they had to out-do one another; that their scene partners were not going to betray them or use them in any way to put themselves on top; that whatever inkling of an idea they might put forward, the others would take and run with and support.  For anyone who has performed a lot, you will know this is a very rare thing. And then it’s ALL WOMEN, even more rare. And all it takes is ONE woman to decide to put herself first and break the trust that has been built over these last 3 months for the whole thing to fall apart.  It still would have been an entertaining show I have no doubt, but the quality of joy and ease and togetherness that was palpable would not have been there, and I’m sure the ability to take risks and “be out there” would have disappeared.

The GOOD WOMAN structure cannot inherently trust other women because it is designed to set you apart from all the others.  “How will the man pick you from the rest if you’re all together?” It may not be totally conscious but that is its motive.  Women are seen as competition first, and we know that we are all capable of stabbing each other in the back at the drop of a hat.  Think of all the times, whether it’s been you or the female friend you’re with, when you are together and then an attractive alpha-male comes up…that movement to get his affirmation and attention at all costs…that is this GOOD WOMAN’s M.O. and unless we make that conscious and see that we all have that drive BUT we all do not have to act from it, we most likely WILL be acting from it.  And then imagine the tempation to “be the one” when you’re on stage and everyone is looking at YOU. What it would mean to still trust all the other women and know that no one is going to pick up ‘the dagger’ but instead, pledge to have your back no matter what happens.  It is a real victory!!! and judging from last night’s audience, a victory that everyone can reap the benefits, and implications, of.

Good Girls Don’t Improvise: Universal versus Personal

GOOD GIRLS DON’T IMPROVISE: POST #3

We are in our third cycle of classes in our women’s improv class at my school in NYC, Improvolution! There are now 12 and counting.  I also gave a talk (the first of many to come!)  at HB Studio in the Village on Sunday.  There were 15 women present and both what hit me then, and has been so liberating in the class, is what happens when we see this Good Girl structure almost as an entity, person or voice outside of ourselves.  To see and recognize that she is not who we are, but one of the many cultural constructs that make up who we are.  It is no secret (as I wrote about in my last blog) that we are not merely made up of our psychological habits and conditionings – what we experienced as an individual growing up makes up a lot of who we are but does not explain everything.  We are made up by the culture we come from and also values and patterns of thinking that have come before.

A story that I tell that now makes more sense to me is when I was in college (1986-1990), I had gone from St Louis, Missouri to Los Angeles, California.  In St Louis, my values were pretty much the norm – I was proud to be from St Louis (Go Carninals!!!) and then as I got older, I was a true blue American (USA, Number ONE!) I cried every 4th of July.  But after being in LA for only a few months, I remember walking on campus and this thought just popped in my head as clear as day, “I am a citizen of EARTH!  Earth FIRST! One planet!!” I had absorbed the values of postmodernity that LA is rampant with and it felt like home!!! “I am independent, no one tells me what to do, this is my life and I can do what I want!”  Perfect! And in a city full of the same, I fit right in.  But then I went back to St Louis for Thanksgiving and at dinner, I had such a bizarre experience…I was getting dressed and had wanted to wear the most conservative, Little House on the Praire outfit I could find…???  And after dinner I was more than eager to clear the plates, do the dishes, and clean up after the men who, as usual, didn’t do much to help but make encouraging comments, as did the women,…”Oh Holly, you’re such a help.  What a good girl.” And I ATE IT UP.  And at the same time, I also had the voice screaming “Why aren’t thee men lifting a finger to help!!??? F*^(*#*()(@ men!!!”  Yes, I felt crazy.  But it also felt deeply RIGHT to clear the table and make coffee. Was I nuts? Well, maybe.  But knowing there are different values and shoulds going on all the time, between postmodern, modern, and traditional also makes sense of this example.

Ok, so that all sounds fine but what does that have to do with improv? Well, when the pressure is on, when we’re in the unknown and not sure how best to navigate, there are suddenly a lot of different motives going on and the GOOD WOMAN often speaks the loudest.  We can look at this deep panicky need to be perfect, to be seen as good, to be affirmed and told we’re doing it right, to feel competition with another woman who 10 seconds ago was a friend until a charismatic guy walks up…and when we can recognize it not as “just me”, something “I do” but that it IS the values, shoulds, and motives of a very specific structure WE AS WOMEN have, it gets a lot more interesting, less threatening, and also, not something anyone needs to spend a dime in therapy talking about.  We don’t need to beat ourselves up for having these thoughts and feelings that at times feels both primitive and irrational. This GOOD GIRL structure isn’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it just is.  But it’s only a problem when we’re unconscious to it or are trying to pretend it isn’t there.  When something is made conscious, it is then not YOU anymore. It is seen and therefore, YOU are what is seeing it.  That’s very good news.  So when we see ourselves suddenly overcome with that ‘should’ voice, when we suddenly leave our bodies in a moment of insecurity or panic and begin to look outside of ourself to find out what to do next, we can now SEE that as a movement of the GOOD WOMAN. That is much more a UNIVERSAL response of ‘woman’ than it is a PERSONAL one that only ‘you’ do. And when we see THAT, we can begin to choose something else…more free, more authentic, and not concerned with what the GOOD WOMAN is concerned with…being perfect, right, and safe!

Good Girls Don’t Improvise: There IS no right

GOOD GIRLS DON’T IMPROVISE: POST #2

One of the effects of the GOOD GIRL that I have noticed playing itself out in my improv classes is what I have called the “leaving your body” moment in a game or scene. You see it happen right in front of your eyes. The woman performing seems grounded and in the moment, having her ‘character’ engaged in a conversation with another ‘character’ (ie. co-workers at Pizza Hut talking about who complicated pizza toppings have become) when all of a sudden one of the women doesn’t know what to do /say next…you can imagine this would come up a lot being that it’s improv. :) …and what I have seen and have battled against all my teaching career, is that in this moment of panic, the response most often to this panic is that the woman leaves her own experience, her ‘self’, and you see her start to try to figure out what she SHOULD say, what the RIGHT thing to say is. And we have talked about this phenomenon in our all-woman’s class enough to see how universal this response is.
I am making the connection to THE GOOD GIRL because this is a structure that says to women, “when you don’t know what to do, just make sure you do the RIGHT thing, be a GOOD GIRL and everything will be ok. Being GOOD is BEST.” This voice was put into place culturally for women for a very specific and important reason, as I have been learning, studying, and observing.  THE GOOD WOMAN was born to deal with the uncertainty of life in the 17th – 19th Centuries in Europe and America. (I learned much about this by the way from Dalma Heyn’s fantastic book, Marriage Shock…just read it!, you’ll love it) In human development, it is widely recognized that humans have developed through stages (one way to think of these developmental ‘stages’ is Traditional, Modern, and Post-Modern.) They are marked as separate stages because they represent a shift in values, among many other things. (Integral philosopher Ken Wilber goes into depth about these stages if you’re interested – read more here)

So this is the emergence of the Modern Era. Times were changing fast – Industrialization allowed men upward mobility and a life no longer denied to them by their birth. As they became wealthier and a middle class was born, one thing was missing: wives. There weren’t enough eligible women of stature for these guys to wed. So culture brilliantly created a value system that would allow seemingly unmarriable, poor, common women to, overnight, become worthy of a noble husband (ie. Darcy and Elizabeth from PRIDE AND PREJUDICE…Jane Austen was the queen of this plot line)…and that value was being GOOD. PERFECT. Self-less, virtuous, pure, humble, and content to do nothing much more than run a home and make an oasis for your husband from the new battlefield of the modern dog-eat-dog world. So the message to women was: Be GOOD, be PERFECT and all will be ok. Don’t and BUH-BYE.

What does this have to do with improv? Well, I think a lot. We have been programmed when we don’t really know what to do or say next, to default to the RIGHT thing, the PERFECT thing…that’s not risky, that’s not real or authentic. And in improv, it’s all about AUTHENTIC. You want to be grounded in your experience and to be IN the situation and respond from YOURSELF…going outside one’s self is dangerous territory in improv because you suddenly disconnect from your own experience, your own point of view, and most of all the other performer. It’s like pushing the eject button on your seat – you’re outta there! This ‘looking at ourselves from the outside’ is what the GOOD GIRL is designed to do…she knows right from wrong, good from bad, and this ‘ideal/imagined’ version of ourselves is where we go to for the ‘right’ answer. But how interesting she lives OUTSIDE of us. Big clue.
Over the last months, our class has been working on just seeing when the GOOD GIRL comes up in is, to see when that eject button wants to be hit and then choose NOT to hit it. To stay in the moment, stay focused and TRUST that your own experience/response is what’s needed. There is no RIGHT in improv. And when you know that, and know your scene partner will “YES, AND” and accept whatever it is you say or do, you begin to see women trust their own responses more than seek the RIGHT one. And that’s a very exciting thing because it gives us something the GOOD GIRL has been designed to suppress: CONFIDENCE, AUTONOMY, and STRENGTH.

Good Girls Don’t Improvise

GOOD GIRLS DON’T IMPROVISE: POST #1

A few months ago a female improv student of mine approached me about starting a day class. I told her if she can get together a group I’d teach it, which luckily didn’t take her long to do. However it wasn’t how fast she pulled it together that was most noteworthy, it was that, by sheer accident, the class ended up being only women…spanning different ages and backgrounds. I walked into the room that first day and thought, “Wow, you’ve got to be kidding me…!” I was overjoyed!

So I decided to bring in everything I have been learning, seeing, and experiencing in my many years as not only an improv teacher, director and performer, but also with a recent exploration I’ve been involved in which is looking into the structures that make up “WOMAN”…not just our psychology but our biology, our cultural identities, our consciousness, beliefs and definitions of “self”, “other”, “right”, “wrong”, “man”, “woman”, etc.

I started by asking the 10 women if they could relate to my experience as a teacher – that the women are usually very, very strong in class…noticeably so; they usually take to doing characters and getting really emotionally connected to each other very quickly…but then when the pressure is on during a performance, my experience time and time again is, “where did the women go???” They usually shrink, support the men but rarely lead a scene off, are tentative and play more passive characters.

This kicked off an incredible discussion…the women, one by one, chiming in about their own confusion and frustration in improv classes and shows. Knowing they were capable of more but not fully understanding why they preferred to play it safe, and how that just felt right….that is, until after the show when they felt pretty bad about the job they’d done. We also discussed our need to do everything right and perfect…and what is most ironic about that is in improvisation, it is much more obvious that there is no such thing as doing it ‘perfect’ because the scene is created on the spot, spontaneously, and is a product of the collective creating it. So this notion of getting it right is even more crazy — there is no ‘right’ to be striving for!…what is ‘right’ is what you are already doing. And yet, because needing to be perfect in every scene and exercise is so deeply important to us, it puts you in a schizophrenic state…being in the scene, pretending to be the saleswoman at Macy’s or whatever the scenario is…but also watching it from the outside and watching others’ responses as an indicator of how they’re doing. And you can see it happening in an all-female class much more than a mixed class…you can see when a woman leaves her own ‘self’ and starts grasping at what she ‘thinks’ she’s supposed to say.

And then it hit me…”Good Girls Don’t Improvise.” They can’t. It’s antithetical. At a certain point the only way to really improvise, to be free and spontaneous and in the moment is to not care, to not be attached to any outcome, and not be concerned one iota about one’s self-image. It is like kryptonite for Superman…it will not fly. I thought about this room of women, all caught between wanting to do it right, get the A+, figure it all out beforehand and be the best AND the part of them that made them want to take improv in the first place. No one who really wants to be perfect at everything would be attracted to improv. Improv demands you take risks, look like a fool, care about everything BUT yourself, and disappear in the moment without the controlling ‘do-gooder’ holding the puppet strings. So here we all were…attracted to that dynamic freedom and autonomous creativity AND plagued by the voices of “the Good Woman” in us that refused to look stupid and get it wrong, that preferred to support the strongest person, convinced that was the safest place to be. But based on the recent research that I and a group of women I know through EnlightenNext have been uncovering, this structure of the “Good Woman” is traceable and understandable. She comes from a very specific set of circumstances in our cultural heritage and therefore we can learn about her, uncover her motives and start to discern her voice from our own. Even if it’s a flicker, it’s our own. And that’s the same voice that compelled each and every one of us to this class, drew us to improv. Because it is in the freedom of improv that our true voice can begin to guide us, begin to have space and confidence to start shouting.

We can start blowing this open together, seeing the impersonality of it all, and see that it is not “those men” that are keeping us from our power…it is ourselves. Or more so, a structure within us that is more interested in being safe, right, perfect, and secure than taking risks, being free and uninhibited, being leaders and being full team players taking all the hits just like the guys do. And we can. So we will.

Without writing more now, I’d like to ongoingly report on how the class is going and what insights come up. I’m also hoping that the 10 women from the class comment here to give their experiences and insights as well.
Onward and upward!!

What Does It Mean to be Post-Modern: Introduction

POST #1

I know when I first started hearing “postmodern” all I really had as a reference was “that art movement” but couldn’t say much more about it.

I see now that to understand and engage with my own values of postmoderism is of the utmost importance and the only way to not only see where we are stuck in culturally, but also what the next, called Integral, level of development holds for us all.

But before I get too ahead of myself, I thought it would be great to go slow, all get on the same page about the simple question: “what does it mean to be Postmodern?” For us to have a focused inquiry and exploration together is so completely thrilling and the benefits for our collective understanding and development seem countless.

So, for now, let’s just explore that question…

And I’d like to kick it off with a basic understanding of what Postmodernism is from Steve McIntosh’s amazing book: Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution. (if you haven’t read it, you ought to) Postmoderism is defined at a stage of human development, distinguished from previous and post stages by its values. What is helpful is to understand the way Human Development develops…each “stage” (ie. Tribal to Warrior to Traditional to Modern to Postmodern) is a RESPONSE to the previous stage…it’s not an isolated or random set of values, they are formed as a response to what came before. So when we understand what the MODERN values are, we can see more clearly what our POSTMODERN values are. Without getting lost in needing to discuss the whole spiral (at least at this point ! :) it’s just helpful to see where the postmodern values came from…it makes them less personal. We start to see our emphatic mistrust of hierarchy, for example, coming more from a response to the MODERNIST culture’s eventual abuses of hierarchy, and not ‘my own experiences of corrupt hierarchy in my life’…

So for our maiden voyage of this forum, I’d like to list what McIntosh identifies as the “Values” of Postmodernism and also the “Pathologies” (where postmodernism starting to break down, not addressing the needs of our time because culture has continued to evolve, things have changed and the problems that postmoderism addressed do not have the strong-hold they once had at the leading edge of thinking, requiring NEW values to now address what DOES have a strong-hold) – and then open this up for discussion…where do we all recognize these values and pathologies? What does it mean to be postmodern? How does life and the world look to us as postmoderns?

VALUES:
- inclusion of those previously marginalized or exploited
- consensus decision making and egalitarianism
- environmentalism and preference for “natural”
- multiculturalism and spiritual diversity
- personal growth of the “whole person”
- sensitivity

PATHOLOGIES:
- value relativism
- narcissism
- denial of hierarchy
- contempt for modernism and traditionalism

SHE-FORCE: The Affirmation Reformation

POST #2

It may look like an innocent work meeting: men and women smiling, listening and nodding, some scribbling notes. But it’s there, running through the veins of most of the women present. Perhaps the most powerful drug around – highly addictive, seemingly impossible to kick, and worst of all, hardly anyone can diagnose it.

What is it?

If you guessed “affirmation,” you picked the right door. (Sorry, I don’t have any door prizes, but hopefully the fact that you won is, well, affirmation enough.) Affirmation is something we as women haven’t really taken on in ourselves. If we’re really honest, we know it’s what motivates much of what we do and how we think. The need to be liked, the need to fit in, the need to be told we’re okay, we’re beautiful, we’re smart, we’re good, we’re right – man, oh, man, it’s intense. And our pursuit of it can be both relentless and ruthless.

There are good reasons why “woman” is this way. Evolutionary biologists explain that our need to fit in, be accepted, be part of the group is completely survival-based – which is why it can seem so forceful. Thousands of years ago – and up until very recently – we haven’t had the means, opportunities or freedoms to stand on our own and take care of ourselves. Barely 100 years ago we had absolutely no rights and were our husband’s property, and a woman on her own was seen as dangerous and immoral. (About 35 years ago, my friend’s mother was the first woman in her town to get divorced and was shunned because she was “dangerous” to have around the husbands. She says that label was more damaging than the actual divorce!)

So, for women, being accepted rather than shunned is learned at a very young age as not only vital but part of what it means to be a girl. Sociologists and psychologists alike have done endless research on how boys and girls interact differently while growing up, and repeatedly find that girls value togetherness, getting along and being liked above all else. Sure, we’re not young girls on the playground, but that doesn’t mean this drive for affirmation isn’t steering the ship a good deal of the time.

Here’s the deal: If we’re going to create a new dynamic as free women, we have to liberate ourselves of our addiction to affirmation. Because once it’s no longer important to be told we’re good or to get a smile out of someone after we tell them our idea – well, something new can happen. We’ll stop looking to others to indicate how we are – and who we are – and we’ll start to get affirmation from the depths of our own being. When affirmation is no longer the most important thing, other things step up to the plate, like dignity, honesty and fairness (all things that, at least for me, go out the window when I’m desperate to get some good ol’ affirmation). And if we’re going to create a She-Force, we’ve got to be drug-free. No addictions, no Achilles heel. Only then will our motives be purer and our relationships straighter, more solid and deeper. No more using each other to see ourselves in a certain way.

So next time you feel the need for affirmation, remember what Nancy used to tell us – and Just Say No.

SHE-FORCE: Mad Men and Pussycat Dolls

POST #3

If you haven’t seen the series MAD MEN on AMC you should. It’s pretty fantastic and on top of everything else, it’s really showing what it was like for women in1960 (set in New York). It brilliantly exposes the very narrow and constricting options that we had just 50 years ago (in many of our own lifetimes). I feel the suffocation just watching this show and the culture that existed at that time when women had started entering the workforce. Our options were pretty limited – the perfect, happy, pristine housewife or the working girl with tight skirts and loose morals, all too willing to play the game of cat and mouse with the men. Just think of those Doris Day movies and what she was trying to uphold in the face of this new work culture. It makes me think, what would I have chosen? Just the thought makes me hyper-ventilate…neither thank you very much!!! But that just seems to be where we all were – men AND women – and it makes me even MORE appreciative of where we have come in these last 50 years, and of what women had to wade through and push against to get us all here.

It has got me thinking also about what women will say in 50 years about us…where are we compromised and where do we need to push that will seem constricting to them?

As a new SHE-FORCE, we would want to be interested in that. We’d be a force of women working together in a new way; we would take on all the old artifacts that we still have in us that we decide we just don’t want around anymore: competition, manipulation, need for affirmation, having our emotions play too large a part in how we see what’s REAL, etc.

What is most exciting is that there isn’t really a structure “out there” that is preventing us for creating the kind of relationships we want to have with each other. Are things perfect? No. But there aren’t the kind of rigid and very anti-female protocols, ways of thinking, and even laws out there that there once were – in 1960 for sure. The next frontier is wide open…we just have to decide, consciously, what we want to create and then grab the tool belts and start building. Our foresisters fought very, very hard to pave the way for us to have social, economic, and legal freedoms that women had NEVER had before, anywhere. So what are WE going to do with those freedoms? Certainly they’re not just so we can become Pussycat Dolls. Sexual freedom is just one dimension but it certainly is not the gold medal. I think what they fought so hard for and sacrificed so much for was so that we…all of us reading this right now…could come together, think, and then make the world we want to live in and what we want it to mean to be women.
If we did that together, on all fronts, THAT would indeed be a SHE-FORCE.

SHE-FORCE: Introduction

POST #1

SHE-FORCE
How can women work together in a new way that’s based on genuine trust, support, and integrity?

I am 39 years old and have grown up, like probably most of you, assuming that I am a free woman. Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, ‘That Girl’, ‘Bewitched’…everything I saw on TV reinforced what I felt all around me – women are equal and free! And in many ways that is completely true. But what I am most interested in exploring in this series is where we still may NOT be free. Now put down your tazers, I’m not going after the guys here, nor the media. This runs much deeper. What am I talking about then? Maybe this will ring some bells…
You’re at work and you start up a conversation with the new girl/woman, or maybe someone you see a lot but haven’t talked to before. She seems really nice, friendly, smart and before long you’re getting along great – laughing, hitting it off. You think “wow, she’s cool. A new work friend, perfect!” Then that guy, (insert name here of any guy you work with that you have a mild flirting relationship with, or is in any position of power) walks by and, ignoring you, says something flattering to your new “friend” or chats it up with her. Then that familiar feeling starts to kick in…your thoughts go from “she’s so nice” to “I hate her! I want to kill her! She’s such a bitch, thinking she’s cute, man is her nose big or what?!, ohmygod I’m ugly, I hate myself, I’m so fat…I need to eat.”
If that sounds at all familiar, then you know what “enemy” I’m talking about. It’s the very real and very deep structures or motivations that are still within us women that are preventing us from really working together, no matter what jobs we have. Not our fault, nothing to be ashamed of – it’s just that we haven’t really ever gone in there with the lights on bright to look. Lots of reasons why, more on that later – but for instance, our biology is still a huge motivating force in us that’s it’s almost hard to see. For very, very good reasons women have meant ‘threat’ to each other. We’ve had to rely on men for just about everything until very recently and so “man stop liking me and like her” meant death or close enough to it. I know for me, I used to think it was ‘personal’ – that I just suddenly didn’t like my friend or the girl in class that I thought was so cool and nice. I would believe my thoughts about her as my emotions began to constrict and rage. But now I have learned that this is universal to women. We have social, legal, and economic freedoms like no other time in history. But the next frontier I think is for us to take on these deeper structures in us that keep us from really working TOGETHER. When the pressure is on, when it counts most, do we have each other’s back for real? Do we know we can count on each other as a true sisterhood of working women? What would our workplace look like if we did? What would our experience at work be like? What would that unleash and allow for that isn’t accessible at this point? It’s something I’m exploring and I hope you’ll do it with me. All I know is THAT would be a real SHE-FORCE!

Looking at women in the workplace and uncovering how women REALLY relate to each other. We may have equal rights but there are still very primitive responses in all women that have yet to be exposed, owned, and transcended. Don’t believe me? Ok, remember that time that you were talking to someone new-ish at work or someone visiting – she is very sweet and you are getting along very well, standing in the hall laughing and having a good time. Then that guy you have a mild flirting relationship with, or any man with more power than you, walks by ignoring you and really chatting it up with your new “friend” – that rush of “I’m going to kill her, I hate her, she’s such a bitch, oh my god I’m so ugly…and fat…I need to eat.” Right? Ok, that’s what I’m talking about. And every woman knows it, which means it’s universal to what being a woman still is…unless we take that on and change it. How can women work TOGETHER in a new way that’s based on REAL trust, support, and integrity? THAT would be a SHE-FORCE!

Introduction: A new option

POST #1: A new option

It was about a year ago that I realized it was time to just make a commitment.

If I had a checklist for where I was in my life, it would have looked pretty good: late 30s, living in Manhattan, freelance writer, founder of an improv school, volunteering for an organization dedicated to creating a better future, plenty of good friends – all dimensions accounted for.

Well almost. It was everything but “a man.”

I was one of those ‘date a few times and then be inseparable for two years’ people. When I moved to NYC in 2001, Sex and the City was at its peak. That show and its promise of the perfect city life for a young single woman was a factor in me moving from LA. I know, it’s sad. But it just shows how deep and powerful the desire to find — and how much fun it is to look for — that one guy really is.

And within a short amount of time, I had created a version of that life for myself … a group of girlfriends, summer nights going to the trendiest bars, wearing the trendiest couture our budgets (and credit limits) would allow … all in the name of being happy at being single, knowing we’d be happier when we found our Mr. Right, or Mr. Big, whomever showed up first. And like most of us (we know who we are), we had a lot less action with guys than our role models on the show did. Our show could have been called “Drinks in the City” or “High Heels in the City”– frankly that was more accurate. But that was fine. Because there was almost an unspoken confidence that HE was out there. Somewhere. Maybe it wouldn’t be today, it might be next week. But that was OK because he WAS out there and I WOULD meet him.

So here I am. Seven years later and on the verge of taking the plunge. I will make a sacred vow. Lay my stake in the ground and declare to the world, “Yes! I am Celibate!”

(insert record scratch)

Yes, celibate. It’s a noun as well as an adjective. And is defined in a variety of ways, from “abstaining from sex” to “unmarried”. Our friends at Wikipedia tell us a vow of celibacy “is a promise not to enter into marriage or engage in sexual intercourse.”

And while that is all true, I have become celibate for a very specific reason. And that’s why I’ve decided to write about my experiences as a celibate woman living, not in a nunnery or a cave or an ashram in India, but in Manhattan – city of infinite temptation, from material needs to models walking on the streets next to you to nearly pornographic billboards the size of Rhode Island at every turn.

The reason I’m attracted to being a Celibate is that it’s a conscious choice to create something NEW.

I am always amazed when I think that I am one of the first women in the HISTORY OF WOMEN … thousands of years, billions of women … to even have the option to not get married and bear children. Up until very recently, if I had wanted to follow this path, my only choice would have been to basically withdraw from the world. If I wasn’t going to become a wife and mother, my only other option would be to take myself out of the game and live an asexual life, basically denying my gender. And there are still many, many places in the world right now where this is still the case.

So any of us who CHOOSE to not get married, not have children, are really bucking up against a centuries-old structure. I feel it in myself. When I think what my life will be like if I go all the way with this and not ever get married, not ever have a sexual relationship with another man, not ever have children … I am aware I’m entering into uncharted territory.

But to say, “No, I want to help create a NEW OPTION for what it means to be a woman. An option that is not tied to our sexual role whatsoever — not a mother, not a wife, not a lover or mistress or asexual, uptight nun.” Well there aren’t a lot of role models out there. Not examples of strong, bright, successful, attractive, vibrant women who choose this over relationships and children. Usually when I see a woman who is manless and childless in her 50s, somewhere in me I feel bad for her and imagine she feels bad too. But what if that wasn’t the case? Imagine women who, because of our unprecedented freedoms, education, wealth, opportunity and social support, were able to forgo the path that all our foremothers and sisters took and create a NEW WOMAN. And she’d co-exist with both women and men in a brand new way, where sex and responding to all the sexual forces and motives in us wasn’t driving us, wasn’t the currency between us.

Right now, it only exists as a potential – one that I am so excited about helping explore and create. Celibacy: One small step for woman, one giant step for humankind. Preferably in a comfortable sling back wedge.

Biology and Brendan Fraser

POST #2: BIOLOGY AND BRENDAN FRASER

I walk into the room looking fabulous. Everyone sees me, struck at my appearance. I’m at a work party – normally I’m looking smart in my DKNY suits, but tonight, I’ve transformed into vision of glamour and sexiness that surprises everyone. Especially the most attractive, powerful, slightly-bad-boy-but-he’s-just-misunderstood guy in the office. Oh, and he’s rich. Well, at least that’s how this version goes. The details and time period can change but it’s pretty much the same story. And I’m guessing I may not be the only woman who has these daydreams, fantasies, and deep-seeded desires. That’s why all these commercials, TV shows, and movies work on us! And I’ve learned how this is one of the many structures in women’s consciousness that is fueled by the sexual impulse. But let me step back a sec…

This month serves as my one-year marker in my celibacy practice. I’ve taken a three-year commitment, or vow, for a very specific reason. It wasn’t a “Hey, I can’t find a decent guy, so SCREW IT! I’m celibate!” It’s a conscious investigation that, at the end of those 3 years, I may or may not choose to extend. During this time I’ve, and will continue to, learn about the deeper forces in myself that are usually unconsciously steering the ship, so to speak.

One discovery has been that although the sexual force in its obvious form of “I must have sex!” can been seen pretty clearly, the more subtle and stronger force I see in myself is how it manifests as the whole romantic universe – the perfect man, the amazing adventurous, exciting, satisfying, sex-filled life we lead together….and on and on. It’s actually quite scary to see how deep this runs. The emotions are intense, the storylines and images can be convincing and compelling.

For example…recently I was on a plane watching a very silly “rom-com” with Brendan Fraser. It didn’t take much more than a few bars of the “I’m so in love with her” montage music to start up and scenes of the overly-confident guy smitten with the perky, independent girl before I was “in”. The pit-of-my stomach ache, the deep lack-of-true-love ennui. Something is missing…and it’s a big problem that it’s missing! All I know is “I WANT THAT!” The world gets very small – no sense of economic turmoil or global warfare – just the need to find Mr. Perfect and fall in love…NOW! And stay in love. Forever. It feels so important to me and that nothing else will ever come close to filling the vacuum and ease my romantic pangs. I’m staring out the window for about 3 minutes, lost in that universe, before I catch myself. I was amazed at how quickly the wave hit and even though the temptation is to stay in that fantasy a bit longer, I ‘renounce’ the whole thing…I let go. Just let it be. Don’t push it away but also don’t focus on it and feed the story line. Within a minute or two it passes. My focus is freed up, the ‘real’ world floods back. And most astonishing is the pain of wanting, lack, and need are gone. I saw how constricted I’d become, how wound up and caught up in the yearning for love I’d been. And the scary thing…it isn’t even REAL!!! Meaning, as this wave of deep wanting passes, I saw that everything I thought was important and true just isn’t.

What I’m learning, firsthand and over and over, is this romantic drive is programmed to get me to, in the end, procreate. Make babies. Carry on the species. And that’s REALLY all. Not everyone likes to hear that. But think about it…where does following this whole fantasy lead? Not to just holding hands. Find a guy and get to it. Candles, wine, French Riviera…whatever, just get to it. As far as I understand it from my celibate men friends, their version bypasses the wine and candles and has a raunchier, x-rated storyline compared to ours (in general). But again, the end result is the same. Get to it. It’s a fascinating thing to watch happen in oneself. And our current culture plays right into it because we really hold this whole sexual/romantic ideal as sacred and giving our lives meaning. Is love a sham? No way. But is this extreme focus on the ideal, romantic love the end-all, be-all we hold it to be? I’ve seen, again and again, that it isn’t. Love, relationships, commitment – I’m all for them and not insinuating that they’re fake. But celibacy practice is showing the whole romantic, ‘what is missing from my life is my soul-mate’ world is a product of the very strong and very persuasive sexual force that has ONE motive.

So when someone asks me, “What happens when you watch a romantic movie?” I say, “The same thing that happens to you.” But it’s the relationship I have and am cultivating to it that is different. Not lust, not fear, not disgust — it’s to have NO relationship to it. And in that, there is freedom. Freedom FROM the illusion that any of that is real…and freedom TO make the kind of choices I want to make CONSCIOUSLY, not from my biology. And one day, that choice may include no longer being celibate. But once the illusion of “my dream life with Mr. Perfect” is seen through, I know for me, I don’t ever want to go back and act as if it’s real. That’s always been the goal of any spiritual path and practice…waking up to what is MORE true and living according to that. How can ‘woman’ change, grow, and evolve if she’s still acting out mainly her biological function? When we get caught up in that storyline and are convinced it is real, are we really acting freely or are we just carrying out a biological imperative? It’s a HUGE question…one that I want to get to the bottom of. Who is really ‘driving the car’? My freedom of choice or my conditioning as a woman that is tens of thousands of years old?

And what is on the other side, much to my surprise, are relationships with both men and women that are deeper, with more ease and intimacy…free from pretense, manipulation, and neediness. Not a world where the love and attention from one person means everything…when that isn’t even really possible or a rational demand (hence the increase in divorce rates, percentages of people who cheat in a relationship, and shortened length of relationships). To me, it’s time for a new storyline to start being told and stop perpetuating an old one that is no longer relevant, useful, or true.

Being Post-Modern: PoMo vs. Integral

POST #3

At the EnlightenNext New York Center tonight, we had our 7th women’s study group discussion on Steve MacIntosh’s book on Integral Consciousness.

What keeps striking me after each chapter that we read, is that each stage of development is so radically different than what came before – the relationships are evident, they are just huge LEAPS forward, addressing the shortcomings and pathologies of the previous culture and beliefs.

And what made me want to come home and write a post is to just begin to grapple with the inevitable truth that INTEGRAL is going to be – for arguments’ sake – polar opposite to our current postmodern culture and beliefs. OPPOSITE. A leap forward, a rejection of! Not a gentle cascading forward but a consciousness-shattering, surge ahead. I see a group of humans in the very near future, arms crossed, looking back on us postmoderns thinking “Man, did they have any idea how crazy it was getting before Integral came along?”

That’s where we are. We see the faint hints of a new way of being and seeing the world but it’s FROM postmodern.

So what IS IT about being postmodern that Integral is going to address, to take on, to “fix” so to speak?

Andrew Cohen has been talking about it for years, EnlightenNext magazine talks about it, the webcasts address it, but how much do each of US own it and grapple with it? How much do we objectify our postmodernism in the name of transcending it – Facing it in the context of development? It’s a BIG DEAL. We KNOW how evolution works for the very first time…and we can use that knowledge to begin to push our OWN EVOLUTION…it’s miraculous!

First and foremost, the easiest way for me to spot postmodernism is our pluralistic values…everything’s relative, everything’s the same, there’s no hierarchy. And Andrew’s recent blog post addresses this perfectly…SPIRIT IS HIGHER.
For anyone who wants to read that and then blog here, let’s do it!!!! :)

Being Post-Modern: “I Think, Therefore I’m Right”

POST #4

At first I didn’t even notice it.

A few days ago at work a group of us gathered around the TV to eat lunch and watch the news regarding Obama’s trip to Buchenwald. We were captivated by the scenes, Obama’s outward display of seriousness and the significance of the event itself. And then Elie Wiesel – the 80 year old Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner – spoke so beautifully, “Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you because you, with your moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this world into a better place… It’s enough — enough to go to cemeteries, enough to weep for oceans. It’s enough. There must come a moment — a moment of bringing people together.”
So it was a powerful moment to say the least.
And there was a 20-something assistant editor in the room, really nice guy, who sort of scoffed. I asked him why. “I don’t know…I don’t know why everyone is making a big about this visit, I really don’t.”

No one really said anything…I could tell we were going to move on and speak about something else. Then it hit me. Of course he was entitled to his opinion. But what seemed crystal clear to me was that this guy was equating his own reaction as being more informed and more significant than Elie Wiesel’s! I mean, he wasn’t even taking into account who this man was. There was absolutely no distinctions being made, no appreciation or respect for who Elie Wiesel is, what he has seen, and been able to make of his life in its wake.
In fact, the guy was weighing his own responses as MORE important, not valuing the decades of experience that his comfortable life will never come close to seeing. He obviously didn’t reflect for a moment – “Hey, I’m 24, I still live at home in New Jersey. The hardest choice I had to make this week was whether or not to buy the new Green Day CD or wait for my girlfriend to get for me for my birthday next week. I’ve never been west of Ohio and consider ‘breaking news’ to be when someone gets knocked off American Idol.”

All kidding aside, I did try to push the point a bit with him, but I could see it landed in that lovely green swamp and immediately became a pointless discussion.

It was a brief exchange and then the conversation moved right along without a hiccup. But in it, I saw the arrogance, ugliness, and delusion of the postmodern ego in a way I hadn’t so clearly before. And of course, recognized it immediately in myself. How many times have I weighed my own ideas, my own responses and opinions as being the same if not MORE the truth than who I was with, without ever taking into consideration who they are, what they know, and that – God forbid – they might actually know more than I do? That they might actually be a more significant or relevant person to speak about the topic? Too many to count for sure. It’s pretty much my main point of reference. “I think, therefore I’m right.”

What would it have been like if this young man had expressed his lack of understanding BUT seen that Elie Wiesel was obviously impacted, and by that very fact, been interested in what was going on? There is hierarchy everywhere and when us postmoderns REALLY start to see and appreciate that, we are left with something we hardly ever experience but DESPERATELY need: humility.

Being Post-Modern: Our Ideas of ‘Heaven’

POST #2

Postmodernism: what does that really looks like, feels like, and “is” in as, as us, in the world.

I just completed teaching my first Evolutionary Enlightenment Course in Philadelphia and was been struck by the angle Jeff has to keep making over and over to get us to see how our postmodern conditioning of designing most of our lives around our psychological and emotional comfort IS our version of ‘heaven’.

Most of us don’t believe in a ‘heaven’ up in the sky, a cloudy Club Med filled with our loved ones, angels playing harps, ancestors in while togas, and a huge old man – God- dropping by for a visit. BUT this notion that there is something better than what we have now, the idea that we are working towards something ‘out there’ that will make us happy, content, and fulfilled is VERY much alive and kicking in us. It’s a powerful point that Andrew has made in several retreats and is part of the course’s material.

So this idea that we spend our lives – our money, our time, where we put our ‘stock’ and our energy is in the future…things will be better when___. And we will go to great lengths to ensure our emotional and psychological ease and comfort. If we make a pie graph of what we spend our money on, we can see how much we value comfort, ease, peace, looking good, feeling good.

This is an expression of a value of postmodernism – the worldview of postmodernism. We’re not REALLY the process…the process is a “thing” outside of me, my sense of ME is my reality, and so everything else is NOT me. I can help the process, I can be interested in the process but it makes no sense that I AM THE PROCESS. To the individuated self-sense, we can never truly embrace the Kosmocentric perspective.
This is where the inner-journey has taken us. We have traveled the very important and very significant road of inner-awareness, inner-education, inner-development. And now, the narcissistic separate self has gotten lost on that road…so infatuated and obsessed with our inner life and psychological ups and downs, that our definitions of right and wrong become muddied by what is right and wrong FOR ME. And the emotional connections to a higher Self, for motives to act and be BEYOND the individual have not been developed.

In the course, we use the example of HEAVEN to show that while we don’t believe in a place called heaven anymore – most of us postmoderns that is – we still think the action is somewhere else. Now isn’t it. If your concern is just eating then heaven is a place where there is an abundance of food. If your psychological and emotional well-being is your concern, then heaven looks like peace and happiness. However, if we are the ones (and we are) who are going to carve out grooves for the next stage in human development, where insecurity and the unknown are the terrain…how much do our postmodern values of peace and “getting somewhere that’s better than here” help us?