I remember, now, for reasons I can not consciously comprehend or explain, a dream I had long, long ago, a dream in which I had somehow been imprisoned in a very large circular room with no way out, but in the center of which spun a strange large gem the facets of which radiated mysterious beams of light that, every time they cut though my body, increased within me a feeling of ineffable power and the results of which could only mean that a time rapidly approached when my inescapable prison would, none the less, surely and certainly be breached.
My wish then, whatever the metaphorical implications of my dream may be, is that you find your own escape from any prison you may be in, any prison at all, known to you or otherwise.
PS: The question of gender is an interesting one. I have read but cannot verify some theoretical musings that suggest the female brain is different from the male brain in that it exhibits greater hemispheric interconnectivity do to a thicker corpus callosum, the structure that joins the two together, and not only that it is different, but also superior for its capacity to reason by entwining the two specialized form of thought particular to each half, namely, the ability to think both linearly and logically and holistically and inspirationally together. Whether such theoretical postulations are of any significance in reality, I cannot say, as I suggested, with any scientific certainty, but I have none the less come to see around me in real life, folk who are quite intelligent in some particular area, and yet quite stupid, in others. I would classify, just for an example, the soccer Mom's instinctive anticipation of the Fukushima reactor meltdown(maternalopposition to nuclear energy) and the egg head engineer who has anticipated and built in every safety feature any logical mind would ever worry about in nuclear design. And I am aware too of the utter inability of these two types of minds to assure each other of the validity or foolishness of either point of view.
I think, as another example, of the difference between men like Einstein and Teller, what I would describe as mentalities dominated by perspicacity and empathy vs narrow minded focus and fear, one which produces a great humanitarian, regardless of scientific prowess, and the other, a monster, or should I say, an idealistic nut case, and a hero who saved us from nuclear annihilation by the Russians?
So you see, depending on how your own brain works, or maybe even half works, will flow your vision of the meaning of reality and your allegiance to different kinds of thinking.
And allegiance, what is it but a kind of ego, a validation via identification, with what is like the self and what is thereby superior in one's own imagination. You think the truth and folk who think like you are one and the same thing.
Naturally, in a patriarchal society, like Western society dominated by the three great monotheistic religions, male thinking is prized over female thinking, reason over emotionalism and hysteria, etc. So the Western man, with his half brained myopic thinking, is the societal norm and ideal and the authority in cultural rectitude. Western thinking, in short, is a collection of self congratulatory boobs, fortified and maintained by total fingers in the ears Na Na Na screaming.
But there is an escape from this retched egotism, and it is modesty, the ultimate statement of insecurity and weakness. Modesty is ego death, but is it for you?
Modesty that does not come from an introspective self-realization regarding the trap that ego is can sometimes be induced by humiliation, being made by life and circumstance, to eat one kind of shit or another, and it is the inevitable fate of all us fools given enough time. So may you find humiliation frequently and forcefully. Remember, that on the journey to truth, down is up.
Shame and humiliation can exist only where the ego has attached itself to something that later manifests as false. Humility, then, is non-attachment, the detachment from illusion. Pain is what we feel when the comfort of out belief in illusions is broken and it is the return to consciousness of the very pain society forced on us to conform to its beliefs, the 'beatings' (physical and, or psychological) we received to make us 'normal'. The Western 'Man' must become a little girl, and learn to feel as well as think.
Psychological growth, then, is a growth of sympathy, the slackening of rigid belief in an inculcated and inflexible morality and the certainty and ego confidence such rigidity brings. It is the letting go of the insanity of everything you have been taught. It is what the insane would call going insane, becoming normal again. There is nothing to know, nothing to learn, nothing to become. We have always been and will always be perfect, what we are when the ego is not. What grows is capacity.
Ah, now I see why I may have remembered my dream. May these Moonbeams pierce you and give you strength to bring down your own prison.