#7 | Thriving Life & A Prayer for All Men - Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining)
“Men are not the patriarchy.”
Today I’m happy to share my interview with Pat McCabe, an indigenous grandmother, activist, artist, and ceremonial leader. She is an international voice for global peace, and someone I seem to continually cross paths with at new paradigm gatherings around the world. I suppose we’re following the same song lines.
Recently on Facebook, I asked others to speak about the value of men’s work, and Pat wrote an intriguing response where she named her own explorations into a “thriving life” paradigm – and a new narrative for the sacred masculine that is longing to be born.
In this episode, I learn more about her personal journey with spirit, how she integrated her rage as a woman on this planet, and the deep prayer she holds for men to connect once again as functional members of the Hoop of Life.
By the end of our conversation, both of us are in tears. I wish the same for you.
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Pat McCabe: [00:02:35] [Alternating Indigenous language and English] Holy people all around, it's me. Coming for you on this holy day. Thank you for this sacred gift of life. Thank you for this day. Thank you for all you've given to me and to my family and to all my relations. Thank you for making this creation so beautiful and thank you for making me so beautiful. Thank you for making Ian so beautiful and all of this life so beautiful. Such a blessing, and I'm grateful for this life.
I just ask that you might sit right in the middle of this conversation and that you come through us and give us insight and understanding as we seek to find right relations with ourselves, with each other, with this Mother Earth, with the Spiritual world, which is really all one world, seems like.
So let this conversation serve the very highest possibility for life and light and love.
And today we're coming together, two are gathered here to inquire and to think about and to express what we understand or what we're trying to understand about the masculine medicine and the thriving-life design of the sacred masculine as it is expressed in the five-fingered ones.
And maybe even just as a medicine in general, that is really within, well, throughout creation. So I just ask for your help and your guidance and give us good memory and good heart, mind, body, spirit, and show us the truth and show us what real love is here. [Indigenous language] …and for all my relations.
IM: Thank you, Pat McCabe, for starting us off in a beautiful way in this interview, this conversation in here on The Mythic Masculine. Because as I look through your work and the interviews you've given and the writings that you've shared, that you embody such a strong connection to Spirit, and you speak of Spirit, how it's guided you and in how you're showing up in the journeys, in the ways that you've taken.
And to begin, I'd love to actually hear a little more about how that has happened for you. How did Spirit come to be such a powerful guide or beacon or companion in your life? Was there a moment that you woke to it and said, “Whoa, here we go?” What was it? Or was it a gradual coming to you?
Pat McCabe: Kind of. So the history of my family, which you may have seen in some of my work, is that my grandparents were taken into the Dutch Christian Reform missionary residential boarding schools when they were children. Young, young people. And then, they ended up sending their children. So that's where my mom and dad met.
And so that was really running through our family, was the Dutch Christian Reform Church way of seeing Spirit. And I was raised, really deeply in that. And you know what I realize? I mean, later as I hit teenage years I sort of had some pretty big problems and resentments with that history and the imposition and the lack of respect, etc. The stealing of culture.
But to be really truthful, I feel like I opened up to Spirit in that church immediately. Like me and Jesus, we were tight! When I was five years old, oftentimes in the churches there'll be a moment where sometimes they'll say, “If you're feeling the spirit of Jesus, come on down to the front.” There's something that you're going to do, you're going to command or whatever.
And man, I'd be up and off my seat every single time. And it was really confusing to me because my dad, because I was just this little kid, my dad would always put his hand across me and sit me back down. So it was kind of confusing. It was like, wow. But he just said, he's just calling me, and I'm feeling it, you know?
And so that created some confusion for me, but when I really look back at it, I was like, wow, I was ready to respond immediately.
When I reached my teenage years, I left the Church. And when I left the Church, and I find this a lot when I talk to people, because Christianity is such a foundational part of colonialism, honestly, that a lot of people who came to this country, that's sort of in their field, even if they're not practitioners or believers. It's around. And so when I left the Church, then it was like, well, if not the Church, then there's nothing.
And so I kind of wandered the earth for, I don’t know, about 15 years, feeling like I was just on my own here with whatever I could come up with. And then I hit a really difficult time of my life. And I really was destroying myself, but I had children already. And I just thought, Wow, I don't want to, I don't want to do this in front of them. I'd had elders and relatives destroy themselves in front of me as a child. And it's really confusing and it's really devastating.
And so I thought, I just can't do this to my kids. So I sent out this call and I didn't know to what. Because it was kind of a really half-baked call. It was like, “Well, if anything's out there and I know there's not, and if you love and care about me, which I know you don't, I'm calling out because I need help for my children's sake. I’ll humble myself to come before whatever might answer for my children's sake.”
And so I sent this cry out and it was very sincere. And what came back was people inviting me to my very first Lakota inipi, my first Lakota sweat lodge purification ceremony. And really it was through there that I began to have this connection with Spirit and the Lakota culture is a visioning culture.
It's in a way, I mean, I don't want to say it's assumed, but it's definitely not a surprising thing to receive spiritual input and vision to guide words, actions, thoughts, our lives, so that's where I've been pretty much parked for the last, I don’t know, 25 years or so. Yeah. It's just ever expanding. There's no way to know everything there is to know, of course, about the Great Mystery, but also through the practices that are expanding all the time. So I guess that's sort of a synopsis of it.
IM: [00:09:56] Beautiful. I'm struck by how we've crossed paths at a number of places from Bioneers in California to, we didn't cross paths at the time, but to Tamera eco-village in Portugal, and I just feel like you're following these lines, weaving this web, around the world at these different nexus points.
It feels like transformation or listening to these sprouts of what's emerging. And I'm curious to learn how do you know where to go? Or where the call is, or why? Why has this been such a part of what feels like your mission to go to these different places or watering holes or movements, and to offer what you can?
Pat McCabe: Hmm. Well, I feel like none of us are here right now by accident. I mean, I don't think we ever come to this place, this Mother Earth, by accident anyway, but definitely not now. Like if you're here, there is a purpose. You've got a really big gift and piece of the puzzle to offer.
And so I have that sense about myself. The question is, How do I get out of my way enough to allow the new to come through? And that's really backwards from how I was raised. I was raised in high academics. My father went to Stanford, my brother went to Stanford, my daughter went to Stanford, my niece and nephew went to Stanford. I was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy, East Coast prep school.
And in that way, you are generating your own material for the world, I guess you could say. It's expected that you're going to generate it. And so I feel like this other way is opening up to what is possible. So that's why I say that in my prayer. I want to participate fully in the very highest possibility for life and light and love. And I'm going to say that I don't know what that is. So I can't generate it, but I can co-create it and I can be a part of generating something. There's something about my organism and my soul and my light, but especially my willingness.
So at a certain point, like when I said I hit that place of desperation and just called out, there's really, this is a funny thing to say (a strange thing, more than funny, I guess), but I hit a place in my teenage years when I felt suicidal. I know there's a lot of people and I meet a lot of young people too who are in that place or close to that place.
I guess what I learned from that place, having not followed that through, is once you get to that place, then if you can walk through, if you can pass through that eye of the needle, then there's complete freedom. Because part of what I think made me feel get to that place was all the restrictions on me that I felt. All the institutions. All the expectations. What was presented to me about what it means to be human.
And it just, it was so painful. So when I came out the other side from that place I felt like I had permission. It's like, well, you get to have me. I'm not going to leave this world, therefore I'm going to call the shots now, and I'm not going to do everything you say. And people around me were supportive and said, “Great, we're just happy you're here.” And, what a thing, huh? To have to go through all of that to come to this place where people can just accept you as you are and say we're just happy you're here. You don't have to perform or do anything, just be here with us.
And so I think opening up that box of expectation and then stepping into a spiritual relationship, really for the first time in an in-depth way, and really practicing, going to the ceremonies, learning what people do, learning how to support in the ceremonies, learning how to work together, where the goal is not for you to stand out and above everybody, but to synchronize and harmonize with everybody, such that the collective energy can move and do something beautiful.
All of that really helped me to be able to surrender my own will. My own will and my own great ideas and my own, I don’t know. It's such an interesting combination. So I guess what I'm getting at is, ultimately, because it's kind of too simple of an answer, I think sometimes for me to say, Well, people propose things to me and I ask Spirit, is this a yes or a no?
And if it's a yes, then it's full speed ahead. And sometimes when I say yes, it means I actually have to pay to work. So that's completely backwards from every structure that we know right now. You don't pay to work, come on! They want you, they got to come up with this. It's like, no. Spirit says you go, and they don't have any money. Then I got to figure out, that's where I get to put my brain to use is figuring out, alright, well, how am I going to get the funds to get there, because I'm supposed to go.
So it's really working from a very different place. And so yeah, you're right. I am on this trail of places that seemed to be significant and all different ways across the planet. But it's not my design. I'm just following the Spirit and the Spirit's telling me that I'm weaving something, and that's all I need to know. I'm like, okay. My main concern is, don't let me deceive myself. Don't let me be deceived. Don't let me move in delusion and illusion. Show me the truth and show me what real love is. That seems to be plenty to be on this journey.
IM: Beautiful. I believe I read, it might've been your website or elsewhere, where it was said that one of your main focuses is around the reconciliation between the genders, or between the masculine and feminine. I would love to know how that came into your life as a clear point of healing that was needed, and your willingness to surrender into what was needed there.
Pat McCabe: Well, like I said, my father went to Stanford, and I got to spend some really formative years on the Stanford campus. Pretty progressive, pretty open and liberal, certainly compared to my schools in New Mexico before. And so what was really proposed to me there was a lot about the women's liberation movement, even as a very young girl.
I was always told you could be anything you want. You can be an astronaut and you can be, you know, there's no limit. There's no difference. The genders are equal. So you should not feel any limitation that way. That's kind of how things started for me, I guess, in a way. My thought was that I needed to show men (and at this point it's my peers, we're like 11, 12, 13, 14 years old) that anything you can do, I can do better. I really travelled through life a lot like that for a long time. I really thought that that was a way to heal the history of injustice, from a very young perspective.
But I will say that that was the other thing that happened when I got called into the sweat lodge, was watching how gender was treated in that ceremonial context. And I have to say, it's a really hard transition to make, coming out of American girl mindset and going into a traditional ancient culture practice in which gender is held as a specific medicine, as a specific energy that can help give healing and beauty to the whole community.
But to really be able to receive that, I had to get past a lot of my outrage of the inequality of women that I had been taught through American culture. Because immediately, as soon as they divide the group up into, “Okay, all the women are going to go in first and all the men will come in second and anybody gets to choose how they want to identify and where they're going to come in.”
But that's the general lay of the land, right? So right away I'm like, okay, what's this? I'm suspicious, because in American culture today you can't really even say all the women over here and all the men over there without having a lot of outrage. But back in the day, anytime you would do that, then it was time to be on high alert. What's going to happen? What kind of inequality or injustice could be brewing here? And so it's been a big transition.
So that was part of the first healing for me, was to realize that it's okay for me to identify as female. And that I have capacity, a spiritual capacity being embodied in this way, biologically. But it's not just biological, it's a spiritual medicine. And so to start to move into that place and to understand, and honestly I feel like I have so much more to go in that road, but it was a pretty big departure. So that's kind of I think where things started for me.
[00:20:10] And then more recently, what has brought this into a place of urgency? Well, let's say, I'm going to back up a little bit. In the sweat lodge was the first place that I started asking myself, “Is there such a thing as a feminine divine being?” Could God be feminine? Because up until then, no. I mean, I didn't even know that that was my baseline, but it really was. And so I remember going through this phase in the sweat lodge is where I was really praying, “Show me the feminine face of the divine,” because I didn't know anything about it.
I had huge mistrust of women growing up. I felt like, growing up with a lot of trauma going on around me and a lot of acting out from that trauma, a lot of painkilling going on all around me. What I thought I saw was that the men had all the agency. They had freedom, they had power with their freedom, and all the women seem to sit back and just rage and rant and wring their hands and be completely focused on how they were going to try to get these guys to not do what they were doing.
So I looked at these two scenarios and I said, Well, which one do I want to be? And I said, Definitely I want to be with the men. I want to have that freedom and agency. I do not want to be sitting home, wringing my hands and trying to control these guys. I want to be the thing that has to be controlled. I want to have that much freedom.
I think about those things, but more recently, and I've spoken a lot about this, but I had these visions come upon me about what took place during the witch hunts, so-called “witch hunts,” in Europe. And I was told that that point in our human history, that was a big fork in the road for human beings and that we made a choice there and it set off a whole lot of domino effect that has led us to where we are today.
So it was proposed to me that if I could go back and re-examine that story, like what happened there? What were the dynamics of that? And I don't know, I guess maybe recognize the truth of it from a different lens. Anyway, I was told to “retell the story,” which I'm still learning about. How do we retell those old stories? What does it really mean to re-tell it? Part of the retelling of that story, because before, as soon as you say witch hunts, it's all about those horrible, horrible, dastardly men.
As I went through that visioning process, and as my spirit guides helped me to see things, I began to realize that the sacred masculine had been just as deeply violated as the sacred feminine at that time. All of the process of subduing, what I'll say was Indigenous culture in Europe, all the methodologies of that then got on those boats and travelled all over the world and found us.
But first it happened to the European people, and those methodologies were honed on European people. That's why they knew exactly what to do when they found us. So that created a lot of opening, not just between masculine and feminine, but also between Indigenous and “non-Indigenous” or European-descent people.
But in terms of with the men, what I realized was that they were subjected to terrible things at that time. I mean, many of them were put to death, but also there's something really primally devastating to men when they can't protect. I feel like in our culture (I always hesitate to say these things because it's such a loaded thing in the world today
to talk about gender), but culturally we say that men's sort of archetypal, spiritual capacity might be to be a protector and a provider.
So that system that arose during the witch hunts really stripped men of both of those capacities. They were not protectors. They could not be protectors. And we know what that's like because the same thing happened in our communities and with our people that that invasion, that European invasion, was so huge that our men just could not protect what they felt was essential to be protected. Their loved ones, their daughters, their mothers, their wives, their sisters. The same thing was happening that happened in Europe at that time.
I realized that a lot of those men who came over on the boats to see us, they were traumatized men. They had been forced to watch the tortures of their mothers, of their sisters, I mean, as little boys. If they weren't the ones who actually watched, they were the sons of those men, or the grandsons of those men. That kind of trauma definitely is going to travel down the line for several, many generations. I realized those were the men that came on those boats.
Anyway, it just all started making a lot more sense to me. So what happened for me in that process was realizing how violated the masculine was and feeling for myself so much compassion, like huge compassion. For the first time I think, really a deep, deep compassion for Men’s Nation's story in this history, this human history.
And what I was told during that time also was that right now, your species is being asked to birth itself anew, and how are you going to do that with this wound at the core of your procreative ability? And so that's why, again, taking the lead from the spirits, there's many, many things we could look to that need healing, but what they pointed out to me was, Hey, this is a big one, especially for what has to happen right now.
So they've got my full attention. I'm on it. I'm thinking about it. I'm watching it all the time.
IM: Thank you for that. As you were speaking to the, I mean, really the anguish of the grief of not being able to protect, the men in Europe and in these lands here that, I mean, I feel the grief welling up in me, actually, about that must have been like, and lives within the DNA, I think, of certainly traumatized European culture. And then of course here in the First Nations and Canada where I'm from as well and the nations of America.
I posted on my Facebook a few weeks back a question about the importance of doing men's work. You wrote a very generous response, I felt, which brought up this sense that, much of the conversation and the reactivity around the dynamics between men and women or the masculine and the feminine is from what you called a power-over paradigm. Which I know, I think, Riane Eisler, I think as well you know, The Chalice and the Blade and that conversation that has been going on as well about the difference between understanding what's gone on as a problem with men, like a flaw in men as a whole, which I think sometimes, like a wounded feminism, can perpetuate, versus a culture of domination.
Therefore, if we're not able to see it from a cultural perspective, or at least my understanding seems to be and that you're saying, that we don't understand actually that there's a whole different way that gender is held, as you've been alluding to as well within an Indigenous understanding that they have a particular medicine, and you use this phrase as well, we don't even know what the genders would be like, or in particular masculinity, in a thriving-life paradigm.
I think you said, and I would love to hear more about this, this understanding that you carry around, how we understand what's going on now, but within a dominator paradigm and what could be possible within your travels that you found and what you've received from Spirit, about what it could look like within a thriving earth paradigm.
Pat McCabe: [00:28:44] Well, part of where all that came from was being in ceremony and railing. I was becoming an elder woman. A lot of people around me were telling me how much I was going to hate that and that I would become invisible, etc., and irrelevant in the modern world. So I was kind of feeling angry about that. I went into ceremony, many ceremonies actually, but one in particular I was asking about what do we mean when we say feminine? What do we mean when we say masculine?
I don't even know what that means, because those those terms are so loaded in the modern world and in economics and health and academics. And so anyway, the Spirit came back to me right away and said, “Now, that's a great question. Now you're onto something, asking that question.” And that's when they said, “You think you know what masculine is, but you don't. You think you know what feminine is, but you don't. All you know is how they behave in a power-over paradigm. But if you were to take those same energetics and plug them into an entirely different paradigm, they would behave in an entirely different way.”
And so, wow! That's such a powerful reframe, right? And today I'm actually kind of just saying, in general, we think we know what it means to be human, but we don't. All we know is how a human being behaves in this power-over paradigm. But what could a human be in another paradigm?
And so I propose, well, why not a thriving-life paradigm? Who is the human being then?
From there I just started thinking about, okay, so this is a power-over paradigm. I always see it in the form of a pyramid. All the fruits of the labour from the lower parts of the pyramid are continuously flowing up to the top. That's our dynamic that we've been looking at about the 1%, etc.
At first, it was just really screwing over people who couldn't even get in the paradigm: brown people, women, people who didn't speak English. Then it's gradually been creeping up the paradigm to affect more and more and more people until even the white, Euro-descent male is finding themselves in a very difficult position.
And so suddenly we have everybody's attention. And I guess what I saw in it was that, in a power-over paradigm, might makes right. That means that naturally the men would dominate. They're physically more powerful. I mean, it was really a brute force situation. It has been, and continues to be. I mean, we think that we're so genteel now in our suits and ties and polished shoes, etc. But really that implied violence is just barely, barely below the surface. I mean, the competition is cutthroat. Anybody that misses a step, somebody else will step right in there and take that, it's an opportunity to make the kill.
I mean, it's a very violent and vicious paradigm, but for everybody. But the men will dominate in there and they have. So of course we look at the men, and I'm not saying that, I mean, I think the men do need to reflect on what am I doing in here? And what kind of accountability do I have?
Yes. This is the paradigm. Yes. This is what tells me how I could possibly feed and clothe a family and give shelter to a family. But I think now we're being asked to say, Alright, so that's the only paradigm you see. But aren't you violating your ethic, your core ethic over and over and over again by participating in there?
So men are really in a difficult place that way. And I really can appreciate that, but in general, I'm thinking to myself: So if that's all a man… a young boy, first of all, who's watching their father/watching their grandfather… if that's all they're presented with, I give a lot of compassion for, really, an ignorance. It's like, well, this is it. This is the playing field. There is no other construct. This is it.
Lately, I’ve been realizing and saying to myself: Pat, you have to take into account that you get to step out of that world and that paradigm and into another one. Another paradigm that has been running in the same place, with human beings, but is completely different. I'm talking about the Indigenous paradigm, right? So I have that experience. I get to have that experience, and I get to have that clarity of, no, there can be two, very different ways of being here, but I have to remember, and I'm starting to really try to bring this home to myself so that I can really be of service when I talk to “non-Indigenous” people, to really have a way of expressing this because they don't have that opportunity to just step out of that paradigm and into something else.
And so what [would] that be like? I don't know if I even know what that would be like, to just feel bound in that paradigm. So, all this just to say what I've been saying out loud. And it's vulnerable, it's vulnerable too, to give compassion to men. But that's a little bit, maybe another subject. I'll finish talking about this first, but I felt like the men aren't the paradigm. This is how they feel that they are forced to be, by thinking that this is the only possible paradigm. But it's not them. It's the paradigm. And so I'm pretty dedicated to saying men aren't the patriarchy. And I, myself, have certainly met a number of women who are much bigger patriarchs than any men I've ever encountered. So it just goes to show it's not really about that. It's about what you have to do to have any success in that paradigm.
And so that's the invitation, I feel like, to me and to all of us, is alright then, well, who are men? Who are men if they are not there? And to me, that's a really exciting adventure for us all, that's still to come. It's still in progress. It's in progress, but it's coming.
IM: Mmm. I'm reminded of bell hooks’s book, The Will to Change, which she speaks similarly in the sense of a compassion for men that they themselves as well are victimized deeply by the patriarchal systems. And I feel in what you're sharing too, like this deep well of compassion.
And I'm struck by also something you shared in the post on my Facebook where you said coming to this understanding of men as wellbeing, subject to the consequence of this paradigm, that you were able to therefore no longer withhold love from men. I think it was something like that where you said that that was such a deep pain actually that many women hold, that they feel they must withhold love because of these things that had been perpetuated.
And that's in a way a justified stance. I'd love for you to speak about that. You mentioned it briefly just before as well, but I'd love to come to that now. How that has been for you, to stand in that compassion and what you've come up against actually, maybe in the cultural conversation at large with the willingness to extend compassion to men.
Pat McCabe: [00:36:41] When I was going through a lot of visioning, it was really intense. I mean, I really didn't know if I was going to survive it, so I don't want to make it sound like it was just an intellectual exercise. It was not. It was a full-on spiritual/visceral/everything experience to go through all this visioning about what took place during the witch hunts and my spirit helpers were right there with me. But even so, I really felt like I might not make it through.
Part of that was, one, having to fully, full-on step into the rage I had as a woman, for being born female. I said I didn't even know. I felt like I had had this rage since I was born, since I first appeared on the earth as female. And it was so pervasive that I feel, like I said, it was like a fish trying to feel like they're in water. And so I didn't even really know that that's what I carried until I started stepping into these visions.
I mean, it was frightening because I got to, I didn't have any choice really, but to just go full-on into the rage, the full range of being female on the planet. I didn't really know where I was going to go. It's the second time the spirits have brought me through a place of I would say hatred. Because I'm pretty adverse to even beginning to entertain hatred and it's frightening to me. But I had to go through that and face that place and my rage and my hate skyrocketed.
And then I could hear this chorus going in the background as these visions were playing out about what took place. Finally, I started tuning into them. I said it was like a Greek chorus, and it was saying to me, “It'll never serve life, light and love for you to view these events as men versus women,” which then just was like throwing gasoline on the fire.
I was like, “The hell you say.” Look. Who are the judges? Who are the murderers? Who are the torturers? Who are the, you know, all this? And I was like, they're all men. It's men, it's the men. But then, after I went raging around for a little longer, I came back and I said, you know that voice never lies to you, the one that’s saying that. They're trying to show you something, so you can be stubborn or you can try to understand what they're showing you.
That's when I realized, it wasn't a black and white situation. It never is. It's not between Indigenous people and what we now call the United States and everybody else here either. It's just never full-on black and white. There's nuance. And so what I began to see was, yeah, no, these men, some of these men were desperate, desperate to protect the women that they loved. Of course they were. And there were women in that circumstance who were setting up terrible things for each other to take advantage of the situation. So it wasn't black and white, you know? And so that was kind of where that opening came.
But I want to say that as I began to really see, well, and also I was told… In my cosmology I have a Trickster and Trickster can be quite serious. I know in modern culture, as they look at Indigenous culture and our view of Trickster, they want to make it into this playful little entity that just kind of points out your foibles. But my elders say, “Oh no, it can be way, way, way more serious than that.”
So, what I was told during that time was that Trickster has been trying to create separation in humanity since he first arrived. Trickster uses anything to create this illusion of separation. Because we are an interbeing, as Thich Nhat Hanh says we are. We are so interrelated that we're one and we're interdependent. We're dependent completely on each other's wellbeing.
If you're going to bring down a construct like that, you have to create the illusion of separation. So they said, Trickster uses race. Trickster uses economic disparity. Even our view of the divine. But nothing has ever been more effective and longer running than the illusion of separation between men and women, between the masculine and feminine, between male and female. That one has been the best one of all. And so I had to look at that and say… They were telling me, “You guys have been had and you just keep going for the bait, over and over and over again.”
So I was in a place of being able to pray for expansiveness and ability to hold something different. What kind of came out was I realized, as all this compassion for men was arising, I began to get really afraid and I had to face the fact that I had used shaming and belittling and undermining to try to keep a toehold on enough power in this paradigm to be able to live with any kind of grace. And of course, how can you live in any kind of grace when that's your currency, your power currency, is really devastating the heart and soul of another human being, and in this case, men, as a woman?
So, I found it just extraordinarily vulnerable to open up that place and say, I need to realize that the men are in trouble too in this paradigm. I need to step up. I mean, I'm not saying everybody does, but I felt I need to step up to see what I can do to heal this.
When I was at Machu Picchu and I was at the gates of Huayna Picchu in Peru, I made a prayer there and I said, I came all this way and it looks like I'm not going to be able to hike all the way up to you, but I'm at the gate. Is there anything you want to say to me? And she said, “Make part of your work helping the men. They made a prison of this life for themselves and they want to get out, but they don't know how, but you can help them.”
And so I had to open up this place of vulnerability to put down my rage. I mean, my rage was part of how I sustained myself in such a system of oppression. And because I wasn't given, I don't have justice behind me, I mean, all we have to do is look at the Kavanaugh hearings and, well, so many things going on in the United States government right now to know that there is no law enforcement behind women.
Economically, there's no, we're still held back in, in just every way, you know? And so what was left to me and at my disposal was shaming and belittling and undermining men and knowing how to do that. And I really feel like women—here we go; this is a big statement—women have to take responsibility for that level of anger. And trying, and it’s understandable, trying to have power in a power-over paradigm, and they can lash out at partners and even fathers or brothers.
But see, if we insist on holding onto that, it's also going to have to come down to our sons. And that means that we are setting up all new generations to follow that same dynamic. So that's been a really big impetus for me to go ahead and open up that place, even though, I mean, it does feel like life and death. I literally felt like I was going to die if I really opened up to have the level of compassion that I could see was needed towards the men and to uphold them and to actually have pride in them.
I feel, and many of my partners have said that's what so many men crave the most from a woman, is they just want them to be proud of them. Like literally, really, truly, genuinely proud. So this shaming and this undermining business is so toxic. It's not just toxic for the men, it's toxic for the women, but it's toxic for the sons. And therefore, it's going to be toxic for the daughters. I mean, it just keeps going, right?
I'm having a lot of joy now that I've kind of passed through that moment of terror, and it was terror to give up that leverage. But what a price that leverage has, the toxicity of it is hard to really estimate, all the damage it does. So now I have a kind of peace, walking into Men’s Nation. And what's really amazing to me is that everywhere I go, men respond to me in a completely different way than I've ever experienced in my whole life, without me even saying anything about how I feel on this subject, because my whole demeanor, my whole energetic, everything has changed. And men can feel that, I'm convinced at this point. Our world is so hungry for it.
IM: Wow, so much in there. I'm so grateful. You quoted Eve Ensler who said that “We can't see that which we don't have a narrative for.” And you alluded that we don't really have a narrative for the sacred masculine at this time. We don't have a story for men to live into. I'm curious now in your travels and in the time that you spent speaking about this, reflecting on it and receiving from your guides, what has come to you about, or maybe just hints of, what this emerging mythology of the sacred masculine could be?
Pat McCabe: [00:46:43] Well, the deeper I got into understanding what it means to be the female of our kind, of our species, an open inquiry and putting it out there to the Great Mystery: show me, teach me, tell me. And then knowing what is possible through our ceremonies in which a woman is given a very specific role that nobody else can have. For me, that happened to me during my menstruation times.
I began to understand a lot more about who I am and my whole vision of what being the empowered female changed. I started losing interest in what the men were doing in the sense of, I don't need to be over there doing what they do in order to be relevant in this life, or to have power or to have say. The part that I need to cover is something that only I can cover. So that was a really different place for me.
And so I began to talk to myself. Now I call myself Holy Earth Surface Walker, Life-Bringer, Life-Bearer. I stand with the authority of the heart of Mother Earth. And I am fully authorized in every circumstance to speak on behalf of life and to ask if we are placing life at the centre, with any action that is proposed.
I have that authority to speak that, in any situation. So that's sort of a nutshell of, gosh, 20 years of work. [inaudible] … really feel that and live that and embody that place. And so then I thought, well, then who are the men, in that same way?
One thing that I feel is that we are counterparts. Does that mean that we can only be in binary relationships or partnerships or romances or sexual encounters? No, but we are counterparts. If we look around the way this world works, this natural world, these are counterparts, the masculine and feminine. That's how life is moved forward.
I think it's really dangerous for us to try to get around having just saying that. That's a hard thing to say in the world right now. You get jumped immediately, but I think we are really, really headed for trouble if we get to a place where we can't say that. And I really do think that a lot of the gender question right now is in response to the power-over paradigm because of what gender has meant in that system. In a way, it's a natural response to try to speak truth to power, I guess you could say.
As I look at the men, I see myself now as a dreamer. I'm a dreamer for the people. And I can bring vision and I can bring instruction from the Mother Earth, really practical information. Practical in the physical world, but also practical in the emotional and spiritual aspect of humanity. I'm made for it. That's my biology. Once I bring these visions out to community, then it's for community to come together and also feel into it and to decide how can we enact this? How can we respond?
So I say, I see the men as being the architects of these dreams and visions. That's a big part of their way is putting things together. Mechanics, in a way. There's something about the way that their mind and being is that seems really made for that. It's not to say that women don't have it also. It's so interesting to me how every time we point out one thing that a gender has, we immediately have to say, “Oh, but I'm not just saying it's just them.” You know what I mean? We're really having to walk on eggshells right now to talk about something that is so crucial to our future, to our ability to have a future.
So for the men, I've been saying that they're the sacred architects. I've also been saying that one of the most prominent features of the masculine is their eros, which is a big question in the world right now. I'm going to open to the possibility that this must be a huge part of their thriving-life design. This is a crucial part of their thriving-life design and therefore it is not to be villainized. There has to be a way for the entire community, elders, children, everybody to uphold and have appreciation for that aspect of masculinity. So how do we move into that?
One of the ways that I talk about it, I say that the men carry a sacred fire that ensures that life is going to move forward. They are sacred fire tenders as well. So now we have sacred architects and sacred fire tenders. And then I heard, and I wish I could cite the source (I don't know who it was), but they said that they felt like the men were the banks of the river and I'm the river. There's a holding, not a damming, not as suppressing, but a holding. There's that aspect too.
And protecting and providing. I just have to say that I feel like that that's a really archetypical part of their spiritual nature. I always have to acknowledge when I say that that is a really tough thing to lay on men at this time in the world, with the economic situation being what it is, as we creep ever closer to like martial law. How do they protect? But I still want to invoke that. I want to invoke it and I want to say that I understand that that's a tough ask and I'm here to support the men in that as well.
Those are some of the things that are arising for me right now in terms of trying to have some kind of narrative for the sacred masculine.
IM: I love those images of the architects of the dream and the sacred fire tenders. It’s such a beautiful, evocative, employment is what I hear, that I think so much of the challenge has been in this maybe rightful critiquing of this lack of right relationship with these gifts or with these energies that the masculine carries, but there's been so little, at least in the dominant culture, so little articulation of how these gifts could actually be employed in a more beautiful way. I really appreciate that in the images that you've given, the emerging archetypes that you've given.
As we wind to a close, and the hour’s moved far too quickly, I'd love for you to speak directly to men. What would you say to them as an invitation into this new story?
Pat McCabe: Well, to Men’s Nation I say I love you. I love you. You're sacred. You’re sacred beings. You are made with such care, your mind, your heart, your body, your spirit. Nothing is a mistake there. This earth receives you with all of her heart, with all of her goodness, with all of her abundance, with all of her clarity, the same way that she receives me, the female of our kind. You have a perfect design for thriving-life, to make life thrive, to cause all of the feminine seeds to flourish.
That's another name I have for you: the Waker of the Dreaming Egg. You have a way to do that, and I am really grateful for that. I want to say to you, those of you who are becoming fathers or who are fathers: you are our sacred warriors.
You're our sacred protector. If I'm going to go deep into the dream moon and bring out the visions that can help us understand how to be here now, I need you. I need your protection. I literally need your protection while I'm in that place. I have no way to protect myself when I go into those journeys, and I literally need you to watch out for me, to watch over me, and to help me that way.
When I come out of that place, I ask that you open to receive what I'm bringing and maybe I'm going to speak it in a language that is hard for you to understand. It's not going to come out in bullet points and PowerPoints and linear. That’s not the language of that world. So I need you to help me interpret it.
I also need you not to force me into any other language that I need to have to be able to bring those visions out. And to have the patience and the love and the care for me and for the visions and for the Mother Earth who's trying to speak to us. To let those visions come into linear thoughts and words that we can act on, in their own time. So I need you to change your pace a little bit to be able to receive what we need to hear right now. I know that you also can hold visions and bring visions for us and I will do the same for you.
I want to say that those of you who are going to become fathers or who are fathers, as protector and provider, I want to ask you to protect your sons’ hearts. Protect your sons’ hearts. Protect all of their feelings from this power-over paradigm, from the ridicule that men have received for their hearts. Your sons need you to be a warrior for them and to shield them long enough to where they can understand and trust their own hearts and their own feelings. That's what we need you to do in this world, to make a different world.
I pray for you. I pray for you to be just as powerful as you can possibly be in your mind, your heart, your body, and your spirit. At one time, I was afraid to pray for you to be powerful because I felt like I was slitting my own throat to pray for you to be powerful because we were competitors. I'm not competing with you anymore. I'm not in the power-over paradigm anymore. And so I don't need to hold you that way.
I pray for you to be powerful, and I ask that you use all that power, all of that strength that you hold, and place it and direct it in support of thriving-life here on this Mother Earth. And if you will do that, then I know that I’ll have nothing to fear. Our world will change.
I just want to tell you that I love you again. I'm so grateful to have had this opportunity to be with you and to speak with you and to share my heart with you and I’m listening for you share your heart. There's nothing more beautiful or more powerful to me than to hear a man share his heart. Thank you.
IM: I have tears on my face.
Pat McCabe: Yeah, so do I.
IM: I feel so grateful to be in the presence of such a blessing and an invitation on behalf of you to men and the masculine. I'd love to know how to best support you and how the listeners can best support you to continue doing the incredible work that you do.
Pat McCabe: [00:59:10] I am open to participating in men's gatherings. One of the things that they told me at Machu Picchu/Huayna Picchu was that I should hold talking circles for they said young men, and my sense was that was 16 to 30 years old or so. And that in each of the cardinal directions of the talking circle, there should be an elder woman present. And so I want to begin to do those.
Then I was also told that I should meet with the men. I have been carrying something called the feminine design and sustainability. It's a really deep look into what I see as how our biology gives us a spiritual capacity. It can be anywhere from two hours to four days long. But I was told that I should present that to men and when I do that, I should be the only woman present. We have done one of those in Devon, England, in the UK, and we had about 40 men show up and we met for two days and it was extraordinary. So that's something else that I'm moving with and offering.
And I guess finally I'll mention that right now I'm working on another archetypal wounding of humanity, which has to do with our relationship with science. I'm convening talking circles of scientists, not scientists who argue there's nothing wrong with science, everything's fine, but more scientists who have big questions about the field and where it's headed and even its history. Or maybe ones who have left because they couldn't stay in it. So ones who have some idea that there is something a little off there.
I'm going to need funding to pull some of these circles together. I also need the names of who would be good. In these circles, we'd like to have at least at least 50% women represented and I think we said a third, at least, people of colour. We could also use some names that way. I have a website. It's patmccabe.net.
IM: Is that a good way to contribute if people actually want to contribute funds? Is the website the best place?
Pat McCabe: Yes. I’ll have my good friend put a donation button on there for tax-deductible donations. That would be through the community learning network.
IM: Wow. Well, I feel deeply grateful for our time. Pat, I wonder is there anything to close that we didn't ask, or that Spirit feels called to speak through you in the final moments?
Pat McCabe: I just really want to say that we humans, but also every single life form around us, is a sovereign being. We need to have relationship with everything and everyone, such that we can have consensual agreements about everything. If we can keep that in mind, then we begin to step out of the power-over paradigm, because then the power-over paradigm, consent is nothing. And it's even taught us to disregard our consent.
But I'm going to say that we live in a free will construct that is based on principles far outside of anything human-made. We're not going to change those laws. We're not going to bend those laws to match us. We have to match them. In a free will construct, where everybody gets to do whatever the heck they want to do—I mean, look at us, here we go, we're doing it—but the caveat is, do we get to do anything we want to do and still have life on this planet? That's a big question for us.
I'm going to say that in a freewill construct, consent is everything. Your consent is so powerful, in terms of our genders and because of the way the power dynamics have been, we have to be really paying close attention to creating relationships strong enough to create truly consensual agreements, in our relationships and our economics and our health, in our sexuality, in every arena.
I don’t know. One of my studies is to say, really what has to happen, in many ways, is the men who feel like they are holding the power in this world, if indeed they do, how do they willingly just let it go and climb back and climb down out of that pyramid? What is that process? But part of that process can be: I can only do that which I have received consent for. Consent from women. Consent from earth. Consent from water. If we begin to include that in our consciousness, I believe that we will easily walk down out of this power-over paradigm and into something that is truly thriving-life.
IM: Thank you so much, Pat.
Pat McCabe: Yeah. Thank you, Ian.
