By Krisztina
•
June 12, 2024
Over the past year I’ve had the good fortune of working as an acupuncturist at Villa Sumaya , a beautiful wellness retreat at magical Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. Many retreats come and go there, spending a week or more doing yoga, meditation and other types of wellness practices. More often, the retreats are attended by women. Occasionally there are a few men who participate, but I have to ask myself, is this type of retreat more of a woman’s process. Perhaps it is. I contrast this to my time on the Big Island of Hawaii where I lived for 14 years. The Big Island is known as the healing island. The volcanic activity on the island, which is a constant feature introduces a strong fire element to the environment, pushing people’s “stuff’ to the surface to be addressed and / or healed. The Big Island has an abundance of alternative practitioners, from massage to acupuncture, to lomi lomi massage, as well as an abundance of yoga and other fitness classes. Yet here too, many more women participate. I ask myself why. What do men do for healing? Is their process different? I lived on the northernmost peninsula of the Big Island. It was quite remote and beautiful. It was a quiet and very beautiful part of the island with many families who were lucky enough to live there. There were a few restaurants and gift shops, churches and a library, a couple of gas stations, several farms and a few remote retreat centers. Interestingly there was a business that had their headquarters there called “Cherry Poppers”. (I’ve changed the name slightly to protect the identity of the business). Cherry Poppers was an international dating site that matched older Western men from the first world with young, attractive girls from China, Southeast Asia. Their homepage featured a delicate Asian girl who had barely just blossomed into sexual maturity. Young, coy, delicate and innocent, she was the face of international dating. There was no shortage of older men in my community who would travel on “wellness retreats” which involved getting affordable medical care or dental work overseas and staying a month to enjoy the prostitutes of the same country. I realized then that wellness for many men is different from wellness for women. I really believe that many men feel healed when they have sex with young girls and they feel most satisfied when they can have sex with many different ones. Many places in Southeast Asia provide this type of healing retreat for them, and a reasonable cost. We’re talking the shadow masculine here. When I was younger, I saw my parents’ solid marriage as the norm. Growing old together was what I though most people desired. However, living in Hawaii, near the Cherry Poppers headquarters changed that notion for me. I learned that because this option is available to them, many feel a sense of indignity if they end up with someone who ages along with them. Girls are prettier in their early 20s and they have more essence to consume. Even my neighbor, a pedophile who was on the registered sex offenders list, but who had done his time in prison, but really didn’t change or see the error of his ways, enjoyed this lifestyle. The poverty in the Philippines let him travel to a place where he could enjoy that which he most desired with impunity. And what of the women? By our mid 30s we were done in the eyes of many such men. Of course, we had our choice of the men who didn’t travel overseas for sex. Mostly the ones with no money to do so, or felonies that prevented them from getting a passport. But of the men who had money, they loved their overseas trips. Sometimes when they didn’t want to fight the crowds, they’d bring the girls to the USA for a yearlong test run that “might lead to marriage” but often did not. Surprise, after a year of intimacy it was often discovered that they had little in common. They’d load the girl up with some jewelry and send her back, giving a new one a try. Human trafficking? Not exactly. It was on the cusp of it so as not to be too obvious. Years later, they dropped the word “Cherry” from the business name. It made the truth too obvious. Namely that the most enjoyable part of the feminine life cycle is the year or two that the girl loses her sexual innocence. That’s the most delectable and delicious stage it seems. Is this shameful or is it just reality and market forces at play? I shared this article before posting it, with a few men, who didn’t like “men” painted in this light. Some said that healing for men has to do more with overcoming challenges or spending time in the wilderness. True, in this article I talk primarily of the shadow masculine, and these days many are indeed in their shadow, having cast aside the light of Christ and the river of renewal that following Christ offers. The siphoning of youthful life force by older sexual partners, even in a commercial transaction, does rejuvenate the older person, but it is a form of rapid depletion for the younger person. Energetically speaking, is it fair and right for a young person to be “under siege” by older people strictly for the consumption of their sexual essence? That is how I sometimes felt in my youth. On a few cases in childhood, a few men tried to corner me for just this, one called me their girlfriend (I was five… my God). I laugh at human folly as there is a natural order to things, and mutual exploitation, a loveless transaction of money for essence, no matter how it is packaged, often does not lead to wholeness and happiness in the end. God intends us to be in partnerships where we are equally yoked. Him rich old, her poor, young and desperate does not qualify as equally yoked. I applaud men who take the high road, who purify themselves through fasting and correct diet and generate vitality through ethical means of exercise, and who follow God. This is a sharp contrast to those who sully their bodies with drugs and alcohol, then purchase sexual services with someone who is younger, and has more vitality, then dump their energetic garbage into that person’s body. May we all seek the high road in what we do. In the end, that’s what gives the true reward. Image by vined mind from Pixabay Image by Erik Tanghe from Pixabay