Recently an opportunity presented for me to take a deeper look at whether I was living gender equality in my day-to-day life as a woman.
As women, not only is it important for us to invite men to step up and look at these gender equality issues in a non-imposing, non-judgmental way, it is equally important for us to invite ourselves to step up to living this gender equality also.
Therefore I asked myself:
“Do I always live this gender equality that has been known in my heart as an irrefutable truth?”
The answer is “No”. So no matter what I see in the world today, and not depending on how the world responds back to me, can I commit to consistently live this truth, starting with myself?
I started to consider how I could truly live gender equality within myself:
- Even though I am equally committed and devoted to the work that I do as any male counterpart, I had been setting my prices well below what my male colleagues were charging. I have now revised my prices by feeling what I am truly worth. Honouring my true worth as a woman has completely changed how I feel about myself, and how I hold myself as a woman in the workplace and in life.
- I had believed that if I did not put in the same long hours as men do or approach a job competitively, then I could not reap the same results or be respected equally in my career. I now truly value what I bring, having a young son to look after and having a full-time career at the same time. Through being asked to be equally present and focussed with my work or at home in the kitchen with a very hungry child, I know that I am ready to engage with presence and focus in any new spontaneous situation.
- I realised that I was still holding myself back in how I was expressing with males at certain times – there was a reservation on my side. Holding back as a woman with men is holding myself back as a human being. Ultimately it is a holding back of all women and all men. For example, I now commit to looking men in their eyes equally to how I naturally hold my glance with a woman I meet on the street or in the elevator. I don’t dress differently when it is men I am meeting, no matter who they are, expressing what my heart feels exactly, in all vulnerability and power, in all silly-fullness and seriousness. The freedom experienced in not holding back is simply amazing.
- When I have been with men in friendly and professional settings I have had the expectation of being treated with more care and attention, like gentlemen treat women. But if I’m honest, I had not been consistently treating myself with deep care and love, so that lack of worth towards myself is what men have been reflecting back to me. When I stop expecting men to act in a certain way and then feel hurt when they don’t, I start living the preciousness of the woman and the human being I am. Responding to the preciousness I feel within me stops the need to be rewarded by something outside of myself. How a man chooses to act does not determine how precious I am.
- As a woman I had accepted that in male/female relationships I had to give more, understand more, allow more and accept more compared to my male partner. When I stop hanging on to the belief that men cannot be as understanding, allowing, accepting, or giving because of their past hurts, what I allow is a much greater love to be expressed; and men meet me back with constant beautiful surprises confirming that they are everything I know them to be.
Having said all that, I’m coming back to a deep knowing that men are made of the absolute same essence and sensitivity as women are, and that there is no difference in our ability to feel. As women and as men our love can only be true when we begin to accept and live this knowing.
Indeed, if as women and as men we now take responsibility without delay and live and express the love that we are, then we are truly here for each other. Gender equality is what we know to be truly true between men and women: it is the true relationship between men and women that can be lived.
Living the truth of who I am is an ongoing inspiration received from Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine — and its teachings and all the reflections from its students.
By Adele Leung, Image director, Hong Kong
Further Reading:
Gender Equality: How far have we come?
Equalness and Being a Man
The Truth of Love – Equally for All
694 Comments
The word ‘equality’ does not mean that we all have look or do the same but to feel the equalness of the love and connection to God that we all innately are.
I love what you have shared here Adele. We could take this teaching into anything we do ‘it is equally important for us to invite ourselves to step up to living’ that is as I have heard, before looking in and at and working with our back yard first rather than wanting changes everywhere around us. The beauty in this is that in your sharing the equality and love is clearly felt when you are reflecting on and exploring this, again a reminder of what is the quality we do things in, even when making changes.
Our differences change from lifetime to lifetime whereas the things that we share remain a constant from lifetime to lifetime. In fact we are the constantness of Life itself, it’s just that we have become temporarily bamboozled by the imagery of the spirit.
Self-worth and charging what we are worth comes up a lot and as we understand that we are able to set a price on what a person can afford as long as we are consistent with everyone this is a great reflection of treating everyone as equals.
We are all of the same quality in essence, and all ultimately want the same things: underneath everything and all the layers, we are all human beings. Inspiring to read how you’ve taken the microscope to look at your own relationship with gender equality and your responsibility to live this.
‘How a man chooses to act does not determine how precious I am.’ One could equally say how a woman acts does not determine how precious I am. Allowing ourselves to feel our own preciousness and accepting that we are always that….whatever else is going on ….and really appreciating this quality in us makes our relationship with ourselves so much more honouring and our self love blossoms.
We are all precious and delicate beings in our essence, ‘that men are made of the absolute same essence and sensitivity as women are’.
Meeting someone for who they are and not their gender or what they do we realise that in essence we are all the same.
Love and truth are the foundation on which true relationships are built, ‘if as women and as men we now take responsibility without delay and live and express the love that we are, then we are truly here for each other.’
Thank you for exposing how as women we so often wait for others to value us before committing to presenting our true worth. I can still feel pockets of resistance for me in truly going there which are good to explore and recognise where I am still waiting to be confirmed by others before committing myself.
I love your honesty here Helen and can totally relate to this, in how many times I have waited for someone to confirm who I am without me first doing this myself! Crazy really. However the more people that do this within the world – claim who they truly are without needing recognition or confirmation from another, then the bigger the ripple affect and reflection will be for others to do the same easily so.
I love what you have written here Adele, in that it brings a real sense of empowerment into our lives when we know that we can not expect back to us anything less than the level of love, care, understanding, and appreciation that we provide for ourselves and others. It also shows how supported we are by God to have the constant reflection from other people, events, ‘accidents’, and relationships to help us see what areas we need to pay closer attention to in order to learn and evolve in life.
There are many ways we can hold back from the simple expression we on that instance felt.. But why? What does it give us when we hold back who we are? When we relate it to energy first, what energy do we choose on the moment we hold back our truth? And so, how does that feel inside our body afterwards? If know what is described, you know that our only way to truly heal any problem we have with expression is knowing and seeing (becoming aware again of energy and what it does).