William Keepin Quotes

No one escapes gender conditioning. Most of us unwittingly carry the cultural gender shadow into our important relationships, and we end up in struggles with our partners, family members, friends, and colleagues that aren’t really about us as individual. When women and men do gender reconciliation work in community, they begin to see the power of this cultural baggage in a new light. They realise the prevalence of overarching social patterns and conditioning in much of their experience – and comprehend that, in this larger context, they are not alone in what happened to them.

A forum where real stories can be told, in uncensored detail, and be truly heard. A forum that is not limited to dialogue alone but welcomes the consequences of asking the deep questions – where tears, outrage, embarrassment, anguish, shame, absurdity, forgiveness, compassion, healing, and spiritual grace can all come forth in their innate and flowing wisdom. A place where the heart can melt or soar as needed and the human spirit can triumph through the trials and tribulation of thousands of years of gender oppression and injustice.

The power of the work comes through this alchemical process in which the darkness is transmuted into light, and the energy that was trapped in maintaining rigid social structures and unhealthy cultural conditioning becomes freed up and released.

We became acutely aware of the profound healing that is needed in our species. We knew with conviction that what we were doing, as women and men together, was confronting the cultural dynamics that are killing us all- killing women and men, killing our children, killing the planet.

But the essence of the process at its best is basically the same: women and men join together as equals, they get deeply honest with each other about their experiences, and through this process they heal past wounds, awaken to new realisations together, reach a place of reconciliation and forgiveness, and are thereby mutually transformed.

One thing we have learned is this: bringing compassionate, unflinching awareness to gender dynamics in groups and communities is a remarkably powerful place to begin. As in all spiritual practice, deepening awareness is itself transformative.