How to Avoid a Stupid Man: Women Must Know Who They Are: Part 2

[larryecoleman]

If you go back to the last paragraph in the previous article you will notice that I did not say: the stupid woman must come to the knowledge of herself. I said, "The stupid woman must come to the knowledge of the self."
I like the way late quantum physicist and philosopher, David Bohm describes the self in his book, Thought as a System.

“… what you mean by the ‘self’ is your very essence.
You say I and me and myself—‘self’ being the essence from which the I and the me have their ground.”

We're all familiar with the expression “me, myself, and, I”. We fragment the ‘self' in this way because we cannot fully grasp it. Whatever we are to make of it, it is living, moving, thinking and constantly revealing itself. You are that living, breathing, moving thing that is incomprehensible. You may have always defined yourself by your biology, your gender, the roles you play, such as mother, wife, worker, and so on, but they speak nothing of the divine you. You are more than what you think you are. I don't think the term goddess is a stretch here. However, none of this means you can't take joy in any of the roles you play. You can. You must love and celebrate every aspect of your womanhood, but you must also keep things in their proper prospective. You are first a spirit with a soul, (pure essence) but you live in a body. You must now learn to look at yourself in an entirely new way, a way that encompasses the whole of you, not the fragmented you.

Now, what do I mean by the fragmented you? You are at some level aware of the fragmented you because you speak about yourself in a fragmented way. For instance, look at the following expressions where a woman is talking about her bad experience with a man who cheated on her.

“I trusted him. How could he do that to me?
I will never let him do that to me again.
I am going to take care of myself from now on.”



You can see that this woman unconsciously already has a self-image that appears to make her three persons in one. The I appears to be the part of her that is her center (her essence). That is, of the me, myself and I, the I is the part of you who observes and sees everything and who feels everything. But even more importantly, the I is also the part of you that has power. The I is the part of you that wants, determines, chooses, acts, and draws things to itself like a magnet. In other words, the I, as part of the self, is the part of you who has been attracting the kinds of men that never seem to stick around.
The me, as you can see from the example above, is the part of you that is acted upon. In other words, the me appears to be powerless, an innocent bystander of all the choices the I makes. Thus a person will say: “Why does this always happen to me?”
Although we often separate the I and the me, we could say that there is really is no separation, but it only feels this way to us. The I and the me added together equal what you call, myself. This is how we view ourselves. We are one but we talk about ourselves in a language of duality or plurality.

For example, a woman might say,

“That man really hurt me.”

What she is really saying is the man deflated her self-image, the 'me.' I'm not saying that her image feels no pain. Remember, as far as she is concern, she is the image. And pain, whether real or perceived, is still pain. In this example, just like in your personal life, the man doesn’t really hurt you, he only shattered the image you have of yourself, the 'me.' I know this sounds a bit confusing, and I can hear many you saying: "I don't understand this." But just hang in there with me a little longer and reread this article over and over until you get it. I promise you, you'll be light years ahead of most women and one day they'll come to you to find out how you got such a good man.

As we discussed earlier, you, or at least the image you call yourself, is the product of thought, not only your thoughts, but the culmination of other people experiences as well. Your identity and self-image have been formed by the information you received from other people. For the most part, as I stated earlier, you are a product of other people's thoughts, and experiences. Up to this point, other people have defined you. And it was necessary for a period of time for others to teach you acceptable and non-acceptable behavior, how to conform to certain social norms, and so on. Society still must have structure, and you must be grafted into it in some respect. However, this grafting does not come without serious problems, namely, psychological dependence. You have relied and depended on others to tell you who you are, and to define your various roles of a woman. Some of these roles (like being a traditional stay-at-home wife), many have shaken off as being antiquated, stereotypical views of womanhood. However, when it comes to relationships, you still hold to the traditional images of what you were taught about men. And when men don't live up to the images you have about them, your world is torn apart.

For example, women are often crushed when they feel under-appreciated or not appreciated at all when they do something nice for their man. I italicized ‘their man' for this reason: I've heard many women use this phrase, and they are completely unaware of the underlying false belief behind it. Some women feel that a man (the I) can become a possession. You can no more possess the essence then you can the moon. But that doesn't stop men and women from trying to possess each other. This is a major problem for the stupid woman. Stupid women believe what they do for a man entitle them to ownership of them. “He's mine,” or “he belongs to me,” they might tell another woman who they think is trying to move in on their territory. As you know by now the I cannot be possessed. It cannot be bought by anything you have. There's always some woman out there who has more money than you, better looking than you, a better homemaker than you, a better conversationalist than you, and perhaps more of a joy to be around than you are. It's not a matter of what you think about yourself, it's a matter of what he thinks about you that determines whether he's going to stay with you.

If you can only offer a man the surface material of your life, you're going to be out of luck. He can get surface junk from a million other women like you. The problem with stupid men is they often run off after the surface junk (looks, money, sex, and God knows whatever else) right into the life of the next stupid woman. Know this: if a man ever leaves you for another woman, you can bet she's a stupid woman.

With that being said, if you want to know how to avoid a stupid man, you must get rid of the images you hold about yourself and other people. As you already know, the man who built up your self-image and esteem by saying all those wonderful things about you is the same man that left all those wonderful things behind and moved on to his next victim. There is a valuable lesson to be learned here: When people contribute to creating our self-image and identity, they can tear it down as well. And this is exactly what happened to you in your previous relationships. Your self-esteem was shattered because you believed that you were the image you projected.

You're emotional content is full of images. You are the image of your parents who shaped and modeled you after themselves. Because they wanted their baby girl to feel special, they told you that you were smart and pretty. But when your childhood sweetheart chose Mary Ann instead of you, the reality that you were not that smart and pretty (at least, in your sweetheart's mind), sent your world into a tailspin. You had no idea of how to be and live authentically. Furthermore, because you had no idea that your parents were giving you an image, you took the deflation of the image to be the deflation of your true self. You took that shocking experience and hid it away inside yourself and every once in a while, when you are rejected, you'll pull it out of your stream of thought and beat yourself up with it. You'll say something like this:

“I've never really had the person I wanted. I can remember my first crush. His name was Harold Smith. I was in love with him, but he was in love with my best friend. I was devastated when he asked for my best friend's number.”

The problem with a person like this is that she still believes she's the image. Likewise, if you don't know who you are, you are still an image. And to make matters worst, you are a woman who wants to find a man who will love the image you believe you are. Damaged people who believe they are the images they create, can only attract other damaged people.

Now, I've spent a lot time talking about images without giving you a definition of what an image is. For our current discussion, I will define an image as the mental projection or idea of something unreal or not present. The kind of image I'm talking about now is dangerous, destructive and deceptive. Most women want an illusion, hence, an image. They don't want a man. And most men want an image shaped in the form of a woman. They don't want a woman. Stupid men believe women are too needy, too demanding, and require way too much attention, but they are wrong. The woman, that is, the I or essential woman, is not too needy or demanding, but her image is. Men become frustrated with women because they feel they have to constantly coddle and feed the image to give it life. That is, the image expects the man to bolster its self-esteem, to give to it some sense of identity and make it feel worthwhile or appreciated.

However, since the image is not real but is only a projection of thought, it can never be satisfied. The man can never do or say enough to satisfy it because it is a projection, a thing that cannot be touched or satisfied. This is what men mean when you hear them say: Even if I did everything right, you would still find something to bitch about. And he's exactly right. As long as he's feeding your image by some outward act of kindness, either by word or deed, the image would feel loved. But if he stopped trying to feed the image, you would feel unloved. But allow me to let you in on a little secret: Most of us seldom experience true love. Hear me out. But you'll have to wait until the next article.

Since men and women are both the image and the image-makers, they create an image of love. As I stated earlier, an image is a projection, an idea of something unreal or not present. Do you really think you know what love is when you don't know who you are? Do you think that an image can produce something real? Of course, not! Therefore, the love most men and women have for each other is based upon what the other person does or doesn't do for them. Thus, from the image's perspective, love is always conditional. It has no other choice but to be because the image needs some type of affirmation that it is real in order to continue its existence. An image can never experience true love because it is not real. It would not recognize true love if its life depended on it. Nevertheless, it doesn't stop trying to force people into loving it.

In order to accomplish this love extraction, the image has to place demands on the other person to provide proof that it is loved. The image will attempt to extract this validation by any means necessary. It will use bribery, guilt-tripping, complaining, sexual withholding, domination, and various other forms of manipulative behaviors to get what it wants. Perhaps, you have used these various techniques to get the kind of attention you want from a man.

I will ask this question several times throughout this dialog: “How's it working for you?” “How is your love extraction going? I can hear you say: “It's not. Nothing's working for me right now.” Good.

As I said, attempting to extract love through conditions never works over the long haul because most people wear out trying to appease the image. It is good that you are single right now. You are not prepared for a life long commitment with a man because you don't know how to love. If you want to know how to avoid a stupid man, you must first learn how to love.

[Marrryyyyy]

thank you for this.