Masculine Attractions

Sexual chemistry is defined by the masculine Attractions because it is about being forward and direct in creating experiences that work for us externally. When we do not affirm our masculine side, we have difficulty in expressing our Aliveness in a way a partner could respond to it. What suffers is our ability to take risks in the pursuit of options we want. When we have Aliveness, there is no question we will push forward to claim what we want to the best of our ability. Even if we are not able to articulate what it is, we still have a need to explore it in a way that we can find out. Until Aliveness becomes a major Attraction in our lives, we end up reinforcing gender-based ideas of how we should be with partners. This automatically attracts the people who will be the most difficult for us. Cellular Affinity is about ultimately trusting our body knowing concerning what is going on and what we would like to have happen. When we acknowledge Cellular Affinity, Aliveness is fully embodied.

The Attractions of Smart, Strength and Personality Self Rejection all contribute to our Aliveness. First, through our Attraction of being Smart and being with others who are Smart we are stimulated by their interest in us and how they encourage us to move forward in our lives. Smart is an Attraction that makes us inquisitive about others and how they might relate to us. If we do not pay attention, then we find ourselves drifting in a relationship with minimal interaction. Strength is an Attraction that pushes us to define our own, natural way of operating. Even if we do not consider our selves Strong, others do, which encourages them to speak up about their experience of us so we will respond. The key to Strength is to recognize that it is pushing us forward in its own way. Third, Personal Self Rejection is where we rebel against our conditioning and do the unexpected to prove we are our own, unique person. This, of course, empowers Aliveness because it is a way of verifying our Authentic Nature. Sexual Chemistry is just one part of Aliveness, but each one of these Attractions pushes us to explore our nature with others.

Cellular Affinity is commonly thought of as the attraction that unifies our Sensations and Feelings. It also has another role, that of using our Aliveness to integrate the masculine personality attractions of Smarts, Strength, and Personality Self Rejection. With Cellular Affinity we are able to breathe presence into our own Sensations and, using the anchor of our body knowing, be able to integrate our Intellectual Knowing through Smarts and Strength. It is also part of the masculine development process to question the usefulness of some task or items to be able to lighten the load so things can get done. In this case, the Personality Self Rejection attraction performs this function quite well. The theme that pervades the development of our masculine side is being able to do the most with the least effort and energy. This is why we do not want to focus our attractions in ways that do not serve us. Instead, we want to actually be selective and use only those attractions that support us in our growth.

Since attractions are energies, the more we focus and condition them to respond to our actual lessons, the more they will, in fact, support us. Since they are finite and ultimately, possess limitations, we need to know how to prioritize them in order to implement our masculine side. By now, we have fully disclosed the lessons behind each attraction, so we can become congruent in using the attractions that are actually going to help us make some lessons easier to address. It is our sense of immediacy or urgency about making a difference in our lives that helps us to initiate this process. When we examine the attractions board and we are integrating the Instinctive with the masculine side, it isolates the attraction Smarts. Cellular Affinity is therefore, the best way to break through and perceive the value of having aligned attractions. As we have said before, it is really a matter of focusing our Intent. The downside of not doing this is that our lessons will take ten times the current length of time to complete, and our growth will be anemic. The more we address each of the masculine attractions and unify them, the more quickly we will resolve issues in our life and obtain clarity to take action. As we have discussed in the Instinctive healing process, Cellular Affinity is a foundation, which allows us to transmute random energies into a coherent pattern or plan of growth. This type of inner development makes it possible to assimilate what is working and what is not working and to make quick adjustments.

As Ken Wilbur discusses, a holon is a sequence of skills that are built one on top of the other. This permits us to increasingly be able to deal with complex problems with each additional step up the ladder. The base is acting with intentionality around what we know (Smarts). The second stage is creating a distinction about what empowers us to be a hero (Strength). On the third level, the question is what do we need to actually fulfill our purpose (where we can see the value of Personality Self Rejection). This third step is where we make sure that we are not carrying anything forward that we do not need. In effect, we are creating a distinction where we trade off a thing’s value vs. how much it would help us. The more we are able to invest in these three steps the more naturally our personality attractions actually support our Aliveness. It is this Aliveness, which allows us to move forward to both clarify and process our experiences so they become exactly what we want to be fulfilled.

On a group level, Cellular Affinity is about using the best and brightest people to create a team that is the most powerful in mutually accomplishing what we want. Cellular Affinity is based on the alignment of people to a larger purpose. It also has to do with the degree they feel they fit into the group. Most importantly, with Cellular Affinity, people do not need to make an effort to make things work. The structure of the group automatically empowers things to work. Of course, the challenge is that some of the people may not be aligned with others, which will throw the process into disarray. This is the type of decision that, when we develop our masculine side, we can make easily because the trade-off is between waiting to find a better teammate vs. trying to coach the existing unaligned teammate to be effective in the circumstances. This is also why the hiring function is so important to determine in advance how aligned the new candidate is before we fully integrate him or her into the process. This is why some companies have a probationary period to determine how effective a teammate could be.

Three Principles Of Attractions

Attractions reflect opportunities for self-acceptance and growth. When we feel attracted to someone, it represents either a creative opportunity to manifest something or a reflection of an aspect of ourselves we have internally denied. Conscious attractions opportunities occur when we are identified with our Creative Self and can engage others where they are. A conscious or internally generated attraction can be clearly articulated and acted upon in a congruent manner. When we express conscious attractions, we are aligned with the Universe and it provides us opportunities to learn lessons by bringing others with similar lessons to us. This enhanced by our ability to engage paradox and playfully discover those choices that do not negatively affect others. Conscious attractions are inside out ways of being that honor mutual creativity, while outside in attractions fulfill personality needs (which only increase perceived safety and security). Conscious attractions produce connections that occur without effort, pressure, or attachment, whereas unconscious attractions increase effort and pressure and create co-dependent relationships with little or no growth possibilities.

In an unconscious attraction, we feel resistance within ourselves, which we project on our partner. This is due to the dualistic nature of unconscious attractions, where we automatically fear what we are attracted to while simultaneously desiring what the attraction represents to us. What we are seeking is affirmation that we can get what we want without compromising ourselves. If we could be present (aligned internally and externally) to our attractions, we would be able to manifest whatever is in alignment with Universal Intent. It is our personality fears and desires that separate us from our creative being, leaving us to externalize our attractions in ways that do not fulfill us. The dirty little secret about unconscious attractions is that when we fulfill our personality desires, it commonly leads to the realization that our partner is not who we expected them to be. Unconscious attractions (desires) represent denied aspects of our personality self. Because we are experiencing a disconnection from our creative source, we automatically generate a personality fear and desire. We then seek out individuals who reassure or help us reestablish this connection with the lost or confused parts of ourselves.

Projections of attraction are often anchored by physical attributes (which represent safety), particular qualities (that represent security), or specific lessons (that represent how we wish to grow or avoid growth). The more we externalize our attractions, the more we are at the effect of them, creating a vicious cycle where we never seem to keep up. When we can consciously integrate our attractions so that we manifest them from the inside out, we are no longer operating from personality fear and desire. Instead we are creating what is needed to be a contributor in the world. This is the primary difference between unconscious attractions (personality based) and conscious attractions (sourced by our Creative Self). We operate from our wholeness and abundance as a Creative Being or a personality healing itself by recognizing the nature and meaning of our unconscious attractions. See Diagram 1: Creative Self vs. Personality self for more clarity about the differences in attractions when we operate in our Creative Self vs. from our Personality self.  Note: Higher Alignment uses a capital “S” when discussing the Creative Self and lower case “s” when referring to the Personality self.

When we are identified with our Personality, we tend to feel uncomfortable or have negative associations with objectification, seductive manipulation, or comparisons between individuals. This occurs because we do not feel safe or secure enough to completely express our Truth. Our fears and frustrated desires keep us protecting our choices rather than expressing our self. We believe that if our attractions and motivations were revealed, we would not have the leverage we need to get what we want. At the personality level, Safety and Security depends on our partner.

We have four different ways of relating to unconscious attractions. We can be confused and repulsed by an attraction, whenever we have been repressed or denied an attraction growing up. For example, if we grew up in a religious home, they may have believed that dancing around as a child promoted a child as a sexual object. This child would therefore get the message that sexuality is not something to expressed, and therefore would be repressed. We can also see how parental and/or family beliefs caused us to take positions about sexiness. If we were a young woman, our mothers may have taken us aside to make sure that our makeup and/or clothes were up to their standards for attracting the “right” man. In this situation, they wanted their child to have the benefit of their experience and mastery. While this approach is more honoring the masculine side, than the feminine, we also could have had a mother that wanted to preserve our innocence and therefore did not promote clothes to make us look nice, but rather clothes that hid us from the prying eyes of inappropriate attention. This orientation made not have fulfilled their ultimate intentions, because it could have promoted a mystery that further enhanced their fears that their daughters would attract the wrong attention.

The more integrated way of dealing with sexuality would be for us to accept our inherent sexual nature without needing to hide it, or believe in one way of seeing it over another. Only through a lack of fear and personality desire can we be present and available to others in our attractions without fixating on these attractions, thus making them more difficult to work with. If we are being sexy it is not about what we look like, but how we are internally radiating both the internal qualities of beauty with the external ones. This ability to be present in our attractions is the opposite of being repressed into a fearful or repulsive way of engaging them. We call this the vertical dimension where our consciousness allows us to be an attraction or be lost by the attraction. The vertical dimension explains the differences in perception between our masculine and feminine points of view. The more we take exaggerated positions on one side of the equation, the more we are attracted to others at the other end of the spectrum. In both of these frameworks, we are dealing with positive versus negative polarities that have to do with the way we hold our experience and what lessons we are seeking.

The three conscious attractions, Aliveness, Wisdom and Awareness, are non-dualistic and help us to neutralize our unconscious attractions where fears and desires compete with each other. The more we make an unconscious attraction, conscious, the more choices we have in using attractions to focus our lessons so we can grow more effectively. What we are accomplishing by doing this is unifying our creative nature so we are able to choose without sabotaging ourselves. The major benefit for making unconscious attractions conscious is that others do not have anything to react against. This means they feel more able to be attracted to you in a way that works for them. Your not holding on to attractions in a fixed way allows them to have more flexibility in meeting you where you are. It also provides you with a more heartful and unified ability to show up and support them in their lessons, without being an effort for you. This is because the more we honor our lessons and discover we can emphasize or shift them on demand using our attractions, the more naturally supportive we are to others in our life.

Fixed, externalized, weak, unconscious attractions define us by past circumstances where we don’t take changing circumstances at present into account. This means we increasingly get out of touch with growth opportunities that are emerging right here and right now. Until we understand that we can choose attractions to facilitate certain life lessons, we will never be operating as a creative source for our life. This is the opportunity we seek to make real.

Investigating our Attractions can assist you in evaluating what attractions have manifested in past relationships and which have become more important as we have evolved. Exploring Our Attractions With Others is a worksheet where, upon choosing a partner to profile, we can determine for our own perspective the attractions in motion. Fill out this document, beginning with the first column where our experience of our partner is considered, and then the second column to indicate our perception of their attractions. We can then evaluate the degree of complementary attractions, or differences if our partner completes this worksheet.