Lasting harmony between the sexes cannot be achieved through social, psychological, or political reform alone...they are not sufficient in themselves because gender reconciliation entails an inherent spiritual dimension. Gender disharmony is vast and pervasive; its symptoms are manifest in myriad ways in virtually every culture across the globe. For authentic gender reconciliation, we aspire to a comprehensive approach that includes but also transcends traditional modes of social change, invoking a larger universal intelligence or grace.

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.

There are moments in the course of gender healing work when the veils obscuring its deeper mystery are suddenly parted and the underlying omniscient presence of the Beloved, or Spirit, or Love – the force and radiance at the core of the work – is subtly revealed. In such moments there is an inexplicable energetic shift that touches everyone present, and people are moved beyond their usual selfish attachments into a selfless, universal compassion.

The possibility for such collective healing holds tremendous transformative power that remains as yet untapped. It is difficult for people to imagine the freedom and energy that would be released if our society were to seriously embrace this task of collective gender healing in community.

Gender imbalance is, at its root, a collective spiritual crisis.

Bringing light of our personal and social consciousness to dark corridors of human pain that have long been neglected and suppress.

No matter how challenging the ensuing process may become at times, the inner light and love in the human heart always has the power to dispel darkness and ignorance.

In all societies, both women and men are powerfully conditioned to repress the daily realities of (sexual harassment and workplace glass ceilings) and to collude with the rest of society in keeping these dimensions of shared experiences hidden.

Today’s widespread social disharmony in relation to gender is not inevitable for human society, although it is the inevitable product of thousands of years of systemic gender injustice across the globe. Because we have never known anything else, it is difficult impossible for us to imagine what life would be like if we had grown up in a society that was truly integrated and healthy in relation to gender and sexuality. The entire fabric of human society would be vastly different from what we know today.

Sadly, our society still perpetuates the false ideal that a real man should be all masculine, and a real woman all feminine. Neither is possible, nor desirable.

Neither group working alone can create gender balance in society. The sexes must work together for this balance to be realized, collaborating in courageous new forms of experiential and transformative modalities.

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.

The invisible fuel for this healing process is our heartfelt compassion and loving presence and the sincerity of the collective intention that we bring to it.

The time has come for women and men to band together to jointly create gender harmony. We must gather in mixed group to plumb new depths of relational awareness, courageous truth-telling, compassionate listening, empathic sensitivity, and mutual healing.

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.

Moving beyond past wounds and hurts and building a culture of respect, dignity, and flowering love

Delving deeply in this [gender healing] work inevitably takes people on an inner journey, and, if they follow it far enough, they are ultimately let into an awakening of an expansive, all-encompassing love.

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.

If the sun never set, we would have no perception of the vast depths of space, which become visible only at night when we are able to see what is obscured by the bright daylight

As the community stays with the uncomfortable tension of contradiction, individuals begin to perceive the truth of “the other” as their own experience, and the polarities of conflicting positions often dissolve into an unexpected emergence of a deeper underlying unity: a profound recognition that, ultimately, there is no “other”. We are all one.

When we convene a group for gender healing and reconciliation, we are collectively taking similar action. We stretch ourselves to a larger consciousness and grace that is beyond our capacity, but within our reach.

In gender reconciliation groups, we collectively reach for an unknown power or grace that has a healing potential far beyond our own capabilities or understanding. We invite this power and presence, knowing from experience that something transcendent and universal can and does work through us and it dwarfs our own mechanisms for healing, thinking, fixing, and/or reconstructing what needs to be healed.

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.

Gender healing and reconciliation consciously invokes this universal love of the heart, which in the end has the capacity to overcome the very real and formidable challenges of gender oppression and injustice that have tormented human societies for literally thousands of years

We live in an environment in which sexuality is often trivialized and defiled, stripped of its emotional depth and divorced from its sacred root.

When we stand, we do so not only for ourselves, but also for countless others who have similar stories but may never have an opportunity to be witnessed.

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.

We stand not as victims, but rather to bear witness to the gender injustices present in our lives and in our world as a whole.

When women and men listen with the heart a liberating or cleansing process comes about in the collective, and something transformative moves through both parties and into the dialogue.

Reconciliation is a step beyond the domain of conflict resolution, which, as traditionally defined and practiced, is coming to be viewed as inadequate for creating true healing, harmony, and effective community in arenas where they has been long-standing conflict.

Gender is but a doorway to a vast inner universe of ultimate relationships between oneness and duality, manifest and divine, being and nonbeing, temporal and eternal.