Robert Augustus Masters Interview Part Twenty-Three

April 16, 2006

A. Arthur/adastra asks:


1. Is Diane going to record a CD of all the beautiful songs she sings at the end of workshops she does with you? I know that a CD of some of her songs will be included with your next book - the poetry compilation. Much as I've come to like your poetry, it's the CD I'm really looking forward to. Will the CD included with that book have all of those workshop songs? Or only the ones that are based on your poetry?

2. You've spoken somewhere of how most intimate relationships are (or become) a cult of two. Could you elaborate a bit on what this means? How can this be avoided, and what are some warning signs?

Robert answers:

1. Diane will be recording (this Fall, we hope!) a CD of 7 or 8 poems of mine that she has set to music. At the end of our groups, she usually sings several of these, plus a couple of her own songs. Once she has finished with the CD of our collaboration (my words, her music), she’s planning to record a CD or two of her own music, which includes not only her original songs, but also healing affirmations and chants. We are currently looking for funding for the initial CD project, and are trusting that it’ll manifest soon.

2. “A cult of two” is a pretty strong term, loaded with an abundance of not-so-nice connotations, but in a low-grade, far-from-dramatic sense I think it does apply to most couples who are practicing -- or, better, mired in -- what I have previously termed immature monogamy.

Here’s what I mean by “cult”: A tightly bounded enclosure or system that’s rigidly overattached to its core beliefs and practices, and that’s no more than microscopically receptive to critical “outside” feedback (such feedback from within usually getting even less of a welcome). Cults are not just the media-hyped enclaves of entranced followers; ego is a cult of one, most marriage a cult of two, and religion (along with most political parties) a cult of many.

Cultism overseparates. It is a self-obsessed us, with the rest of existence an overly distant them. Whatever caring exists within cultism — and it, however misguided, can be a deep caring — is eventually impoverished by its isolation from the rest of Life. Initially, cults protect what is inside their walls, but sooner or later they become guards rather than guardians. As such, they cut off the very life which they’re claiming to be enhancing.

In a relationship, this manifests either as romantic delusion or as a deadening process. Growth may have occurred in the early stages of the relationship, but before long it all but ceases. In the cult of two, mutual (and often tacit) agreements are made not to rock the boat, to appear to the outside world as happier and more together than is the case, to stay together even when the damage being done to one or both is apparent, to either not go to therapy or go to it without really exposing and working with the rotten foundations of the relationship. and so on.

Superficiality is given exaggerated importance in the cult of two. So is security. If others see them as an ideal couple or a happy couple, this is considered a good thing, even if the truth is quite different. Any in-depth uncovering of what’s really happening is avoided, as is whatever might threaten the actual cult or relational bubble. Others are denied any meaningful access to the inner workings of the relationship. And even though both members of the cult may be miserable with each other, they will nonetheless usually defend their relationship to those who dare to question it at all.

In a mature or significantly awakened relationship, the two may be profoundly bonded and even spend the majority of their time together, but their togetherness is not cultic. Yes, we don’t directly participate in their intimacy, but we are touched, opened, and furthered by their unusual closeness, the inner workings of which are openly radiated and communicated. This kind of relationship is not isolated, whatever its privacy, from the rest of Life; it is connected, and willingly connected, to the community-at-large, while maintaining its integrity.

When we’re in the presence of such a relationship, such a sanctuary of deep intimacy, we tend to feel more open, looser, happier, safer to do deeper work. The agreements made by the partners in a mature relationship are sufficiently life-giving so as to positively impact those with whom they come in contact, however indirectly.

How to avoid becoming part of a cult of two? Work on yourself; blow the whistle on what’s not working in the relationship; don’t pretend that it’s better than it is; get professional help when things start slipping; rock the relation-ship, and keep rocking it; get comfortable with your discomfort; expand the container of the relationship by relieving it of any deadening or otherwise life-negating practices that have crept into the relationship; don’t stop working on yourself, and don’t let your partner avoid doing his or her work; be committed to leaving if things get bad and stay bad no matter what you do.

Make truth more important than security, and connection more important than being right, allowing whatever arises in your relationship to serve your awakening.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


B. Julie/UnrulyJulie asks:


Brain chemistry and awakening...do anti-depressants ultimately help or impede the awakening process?

Recent studies seem to suggest that SSRIs like Prozac function as neurogenic agents rather than via just causing increased serotonin levels per se.

I've been on anti-depressants for years. Many years ago, I began taking Prozac after a significant period of competent therapy that had a great effect on cognition, but little on actual mood. I was in a very stressful living situation at the time; and the drug kicking in after a few weeks was like someone finally opening the curtains in a darkened room. So THIS is what other people's lives are like!??!!! It really did seem unfair...depression is a failure of the imagination--the inability to imagine that life can be any different than the way it is. I could not have imagined the transformation.

Going off seemed to trigger mood relapses, however.

I had no meditation or other spiritual program to work with these emotions until the last year. What I have found now, however, is that to a certain extent, the drug prevents my exploration of shadow in an experiential sense. I've found myself walking around my closed room of a mind looking for voids that I'm afraid to dive into...and they just aren't there. I've recently cut my dosage in half, and that does seem to make my heart a bit more open to both pain and joy. I'm holding it there for the time being. The particular drug I'm taking will trigger anxiety unless I taper slowly.

And yes, I have found that there is a rabbit-hole around the potential that my mind will wander into an anxiety-ridden hell that no drug can rescue 'me' from. Done some work with that one.

Any insight you may have on the role (or lack thereof) of anti-depressants while working the profound spiritual path would be most welcome. Thank you for your time.


Robert answers:

First, a few words about depression....My take is that depression is not so much a feeling as a suppression or pressing down of feeling, a deadening weightiness infused with a nastily pervasive sense of helplessness. Depression is primarily characterized by a resigned, self-dulling disempowerment; this can be a relatively short-lived mood, and it can also be a long-term condition. Also, depression is not just a personal condition; much of contemporary culture is depressed (collective psychoemotional numbing being but one symptom) and getting more and more depressed, while being simultaneously addicted to a great variety of uppers -- anything to take a break from depression’s bleak, energy-sucking domain.

Depression could be said to be the sensation of partially-successful repression, minus any satisfying compensatory lift. As such, it is a pain that walls away a deeper pain, serving as the drugged yet still wretchedly insomniac gatekeeper of incarcerated trauma or deep suffering.

Where anxiety wires us, depression flattens us, leaving us amorphously and greyly embodied, stuck in a flaccid rigor mortis. In depression, cognition is employed as an immune system of sorts, barring full entry to the bare reality of certain feelings — with all of their attending imperatives and intuitions — and whatever else is organismically recognized as a threat. That is, depression keep us “safe” from having to openly and fully feel what we’ve spent much of our life avoiding feeling. As such, it is a kind of solution -- a botched solution, but still a solution -- to unresolved pain. The longer it has been left intact, the more it will feel like a part of us, unpleasant for sure, but at least familiar. Not surprisingly, we tend to prefer the burdened beasts of depression to the monsters of the deep.


You ask: “Do antidepressants ultimately help or impede the awakening process?” I’d say both. What follows will hopefully clarify this.

Antidepressants have their place, but tend to be overused and overrelied on. They can be a Godsend, lifting the curtains of depression (as you describe), providing a necessary crutch for difficult times; and they can also be a crippler, keeping us resigned about our depression, stuck in a pervasive sense of lifelong chemical dependency.

Antidepressants are helpful in getting us into a place where we can function, feel some lightness and ease, and start doing some real work on ourselves. They can give us some stability, without which we might be too messed-up to be able to make necessary changes in our life. They give us a break from depression’s sunken territories, so that we can truly imagine and consider other possibilities. So antidepressants, used in moderation, can help us get started in working on ourselves, if only by freeing up enough energy so we can get going.

Antidepressants impede the awakening process by removing us from the deeper, more primal elements of our depressiveness, keeping our encounters with those elements relatively shallow. There may a sense of safety or security in remaining removed from the black pits of depression -- and for a while, it may be necessary to keep our distance from such zones -- but there’s also a huge loss, the loss of being cut off from so much of ourselves. Antidepressants lift the lid of depression enough so we feel better, but not enough to really expose what’s below.

So what to do? First of all, if you’re not already thus involved, do some high-quality psychotherapy that includes emotional work (exploring and releasing anger, and so on), and do it on a regular basis for a while. Combine this with some spiritual practice and meditation -- whatever form or forms you feel drawn to -- and do it daily, no matter how bad you feel. Also do some sort of exercise every day -- aerobic work (really work up a sweat), conscious stretching, weights, long walks -- and do it with total, fully embodied attention. And eat well. All of this can, of course, be done while you are on antidepressants.

Stay on your half dosage of antidepressants until you feel a bit stronger and more stable, then -- with your physician’s okay -- cut back to a lower dosage, not a lot lower, but low enough to feel a difference. You may feel shakier, less stable, a bit more fearful; it comes with the weaning process on which you’re embarking. Stay with the psychotherapy, meditation, and exercise. After a week or so, you should start feeling more stable and less fearful. Stay with your lower dosage a while longer, until you feel ready to drop it some more. Again -- and with your physician’s approval -- lower the dosage a touch more. During this process, take your time; it’s better to spend a year weaning yourself and have it work, than to rush it and have to go back to a heavier dosage. At the same time, if things get really rough, don’t hesitate to go back on a slightly higher dosage. Hopefully, at a certain point you won’t need antidepressants any more, and even if you do, the dosage will probably be small enough so as to not significantly interfere with your awakening work.

One last thing: Don’t overlook or only superficially approach your anger. In your psychotherapy sessions (and elsewhere, under fitting conditions), give yourself permission to be unruly; sometimes anger needs a relatively messy start to really get going. If you’ve turned anger in on yourself, reverse the process. You may find that when your anger is truly flowing and alive, it catalyzes a releasing of tears far deeper than the tears of depression.

It is no secret that most of those who come to psychotherapy with symptoms of depression are female. Why is this? Part of the answer lies in the fact that female anger is generally more negatively viewed in our culture than is male anger. An angry woman easily gets stuck with labels like “bitch” or “nag,” but an angry man generally receives less unfavorable labels. Those who have been historically most disempowered culturally are likely to be the most suppressed in their anger — and what is more depressing or crushing than feeling, over and over and over, helpless because of a powerful sense of disempowerment? Getting openly and uninhibitedly angry is not necessarily the cure for depression, but doing so may lift “the weight” enough for more movement to occur, for deeper, more healing tears to emerge, for aliveness to flow more freely.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


C. Bryan/integralschism asks:


I wonder if Robert would speak to the distinction between "seduction" and "creating attraction." I think it will be easier if I first say more about what I myself mean about those terms.

"Seduction" I see as a generally negative term. It implies that I'm causing someone to do something that they would not consciously choose to do if I were not manipulating them.

"Creating attraction" is different, in my mind. It is about changing myself so that qualities arise in me that are inherently attractive to women (e.g., confidence).

Now, remembering back to things RAM has said in previous answers, I think one thing he would say is, "first back up and examine why you would want someone to be attracted to you in the first place; what are the underlying motives to wanting to have sex with such and such a woman, or with any woman for that matter? Are you acting out erotic fantasies based on blocks within your own psyche?"

To the last question I would answer with a resounding "possibly" (and in truth I'm sure the answer is yes).

However, my GUESS is that if I worked on those blocks and psychological issues with great intensity over many years, that even though my inner state would change, as would my perspective towards women-in-a-sexual-manner, I still believe that I would feel naturally arising sexual desire when in the presence of a woman whom I feel attracted towards. And I also PREDICT that, after all that work, I would still be interested in SOMEHOW FINDING mutual attraction with her that may or may not lead to sex.

So, back to the creating attraction thing. IF we agree that WANTING mutual attraction is OK, and IF we agree that "changing our inner state for the better with the conscious understanding that this makes us more attractive to potential lovers" is OK.... .

Lost my train of thought, but I do think it's important to get agreement on the above two things first.

So, confidence. Creating more confidence in myself. I think this is across the board a good thing.

But here's where some grey area comes in. Some of the "dating guru" literature I have run into recommends gaining confidence (or at least acting confident). But it also recommends things like playful teasing. Also things like "not giving too much too soon." For example, this theory postulates that women are (metaphorically or literally) being offered sex by men all the time. And that most men kind of give themselves away by metaphorically saying, "I'd do anything for sex with you. I'll buy you what you want, I'll give you compliments, I'll be a little puppy at your feet. Whatever it takes." The theory goes on to say that this is inherently UNATTRACTIVE to women. So it recommends being a little teasing, a "leaning back" posture (physically and emotionally), etc. And as a caveat, it is quite clear about not being an asshole. These things are done with a little smile on the face.

So, can I re-wrap this question? If it's okay for me to want women to be attracted to me, and it's okay for me to build confidence in myself (partially) for that purpose, then is it also okay for me to CHANGE myself into a MORE TEASING, RASCALLY guy?

Because sometimes it feels forced. But other times it feels like the most delicious thing I could be doing, especially when it gets the kind of response from a woman that "acting like a puppy" never did.

Thanks in advance Robert. I hope you have fun with this one.


Robert answers:

Instead of “being interested in finding [my italics] mutual attraction with her,” how about allowing it? How about dropping the calculatedness, reentering your depths (masculine and otherwise), and aligning yourself with whatever instincts that then arise? Scary, yes, but also exciting, because you’re then no longer on the sidelines trying to send in a play to your quarterback. The ball is in your hands; you have two seconds maximum to make a play, no matter how sweaty your touch is -- no time to think, but time enough to act. No rehearsal. But what passion! What deep coil and thrust, what decisiveness, what out-in-the-open power, what confidence!

If you want real confidence, don’t bother putting juice into its surrogates. Instead, get in touch with your psychoemotional core, relocate yourself in your guts, reclaim your balls. Keep your sensitivity, but not at the expense of your masculine rawness. Access that rawness, get intimate with it, give it a voice, exult in it, making sure that you also keep what’s between it and your heart wide open. When you stand in your true masculinity, letting it exude from you, and you do so with integrity, women will naturally be more open to you, including sexually. The confidence you need is not just an intellectual confidence, but an organismic confidence sure enough of itself to not have to put on a show.

At one point in your question/concern, you say that you lost your train of thought. That may be a good thing: Too much thinking about what you want to do with women just keeps you stranded in your head, “safely” removed from the thing you apparently want. I suggest that you let your longing for juicy female company derail your train of thought -- not all the time, but more often than not -- so that you are left immersed in your feeling (and not just your sexual feeling); go into that longing, that deep ache, and go in with the lights on, and you will be guided into what’s needed next, even if it’s to spend more quality time dating your loneliness or self-consciousness.

You talk about wondering if it’s okay to change yourself into a “more teasing, rascally guy.” Whose permission do you need? And what if such a change is not natural to you? You could do really deep work on yourself and still not be that kind of guy, except maybe every now and then. Maybe you hope that becoming a “more teasing, rascally guy” would bring you more “success” with women, in which case you are just seducing yourself with hope. Present yourself as you are, in a way that fits with whomever you are with, and at least then if a spark arises between you and a woman, it will be grounded in something more natural than dating strategies.

To make yourself more attractive with the least karmic hassle, settle into a Being-centered perspective as much as possible, attune to your need for fitting female company, and align yourself with the resulting intuitions as to how to best arrange your exterior. This is not manipulation, but simply dressing for the occasion.

There’s no need to closet or gag your egoity and insecurity, so long as you keep them functionally peripheral to your depths. This may sound a bit cumbersome, but it’s really just an invitation to maintain some intimacy with the deep end of the pool as you play in the shallows. It’s crucial not to get caught up in trying to do it right. Bottom line is: It simply feels better to do what you do from that place in you where you cannot help but care for the other, no matter how much she arouses you.

If flirting is natural for you -- and it may not be -- keep your heart in it. Flirting is teasing spiked, however subtly, with sexual innuendo, serving as a kind of self-advertising -- your job is to use it well. Don’t, for example, come on to a woman in a way that’s disrespectful of her, and then excuse yourself by saying that you were just joking. Pay attention to boundaries. Some women may go along with your flirting, and act as if they’re fine with it, when in fact they feel trapped or even paralyzed by it, but don’t (because of past associations) feel at all safe making an issue out of what’s going on, let alone actually confront you.

Notice what it is about women that turns you on the most, and find out what part of that, if any, is generated by your unresolved issues; approaching a woman because she fits your conditioning (i.e., “I want her to want me and I’ll be a good boy -- or docile supersensitive guy -- to get that”) is quite different than approaching a woman because she resonates with your essentialness and does so with a dynamite mixture of camaraderie and chemistry.

The more deeply you work on yourself, the more prepared you’ll be for a truly great relationship, and the more adeptly you’ll handle and learn from more casual relationships.

Don’t rehearse. Be appropriately transparent. Don’t try to be deep; make room for being superficial, without, however, being shallow. You might even find yourself being deeply superficial.

And how much to reveal? Don’t undress too quickly, but do let some layers show, so that she has more to engage with than just self-conscious testosterone or horny hopes. Make connection more important than your fear of rejection, and I mean connection not just with her, but also with yourself; the more whole you are when you are with her, the more whole you will be giving her space to be.

If you’re not already doing so, I recommend bodywork-including psychotherapy (to help cut through your investment in being nice and to really get you into your guts) and men’s groupwork (to augment the preceding). The Deep Masculine awaits you. Trust it. Once you start to embody it, the Deep Feminine will start showing up in your life.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~