Real Men Don't Cry... Or Do They?

"Emotions make good servants, but poor masters"

From an early age, young, black men are taught not to show--or to even have--emotions. They're taught that any sign of emotion is weak. Tears are weak, affection is weak, feeling pain is weak...

I've even heard this madness come out of some conscious brothers mouths. "God doesn't have emotions". This is not true. We're living, breathing, thinking, feeling beings. What a sad existence to feel nothing. What purpose could your life serve? You feel nothing, so you can't truly experience life.

I've heard many mothers tell their sons "Quit crying. Be a man", "Stop acting like a girl", "toughen up", etc, etc... The male children are, often, no older than 3 and being told this! This is both unfair and very damaging to the child's mental and emotional well-being. Now, he is teaching himself to bottle up all his feelings and never deal with or acknowledge this major part of himself.

What goes in, must come out, what goes up, must come down. Eventually, this will lead to an explosion or an implosion. With brothers being taught not to feel, can we really wonder about the mental state of our black men? Detached emotion, violence... Suicide among black males is on the rise... And its rising very quickly.

But can we blame them? Think about it. Being young and black in America, already makes you a target. Then you're never taught how to cope with emotions--never taught how to deal with them. Black men are like walking gun-range targets (and I mean that literally and figuratively). Profiling, incarceration, drugs, etc, etc... It seems this society is set up for their destruction. Its no wonder that drug abuse, suicide, sex, alcohol abuse, anger problems, and various other things are so prevalent among our young men. They are looking for releases and escapes... Releases for the pent up emotions and escapes from them.

Too many young men think that being strong is synonymous with being unfeeling, cold, etc... They think they should never be hurt, never be sad, never truly love. They become hardened. Then we wonder why they seem so unreachable. Due to this mentality they've developed, they can never rise to their potential. They never ascend to be the God, the NTR they were born to be.

Every time I build with a young brother about emotions, I tell him "Its ok to have emotions. It is not okay to be ruled by them." I am teaching my son this same thing. Emotions are energy (emotion=energy in motion). They are energy that can be channeled however we choose. They only become a problem when we allow them to override our logic.

"The task of man is to feel and be responsible for all his emotions, not to repress them, but to change and transmute them into higher feelings. Repression chains man to the very objects of repression, but purification will transmute them positive elements bringing him closer to his true essence. As long as we do not take up the Great Work, pain and misery will disturb our lives. We have to face the mythical monsters in the depths of our unconscious and shed light on them. As they are part of being human, we cannot discard them, but we can control them, master them, learn from them, and transform them into servants of the Divine. The monsters are not monsters by themselves. They are just characteristics of human nature that have become distorted. We can rectify them and make them shine in their original beauty" [excerpt]

This is the opposite of what we're teaching our young men. We're teaching our young men not to have emotion at all, to ignore that part of themselves... To repress any and all emotion, lest they be viewed as weak. Now, while we're teaching the men this, we're teaching young women to be OVER emotional, and to allow e-motions to rule their logic and better judgment.

Being responsible for your emotions and changing them, that means FEEL them. Allow them, then channel them. Harness their energy. In order to have true ascension, we must first face all the devils that exist within self. We must purge, cleanse, and purify ourselves.

Neither our men nor our women know how to deal with emotions, properly. This causes misunderstandings and division among us. Men and women are at each others throats. Men are done with women; Women are done with men. Black men are done with black women; Black women are done with black men. This is madness. We have angry, bitter, black men and angry, bitter, black women (I'll be delving deeper into this topic in another blog).

If men are ignoring the emotional part of themselves and women are only dealing with that part of themselves, none of us will ever elevate... Nor will we be able to come together harmoniously, because we will never understand one another.

Peace and love. More to come.