Who are you, anyway?

Since this is a blog is about teaching women how to avoid stupid men, I know no better place to start our dialog than to begin with a few lines about myself. Like many men today, I grew up in a single parent household devoid of a male presence. There was me, my mother, my older sister, Janice, my sister Mica–who was a year younger than me–and my baby sister, Regina. Thus, from birth to adolescence, to young adulthood and beyond, I have been around females. I’ve heard thousands of conversations between my mother and my sisters, my mother and her friends, my sisters and their friends, my girlfriends and their friends, and my wives (yes, stupid men never get it right on the first try) and their friends. Yes, I’ve heard thousands of conversations between women, and I’m convinced that most of the advice they give each other is nothing more than the oft repeated thoughts of other people. That is to say, most of the advice men give men about women and women give women about men, and even the advice of the professional or expert, comes out of the mechanical process we call thought, which is little more than the person’s  accumulated knowledge and memories of past experiences from childhood to the present day. As a woman, you are no different from a man when it comes to your basic self-image or identity and the mechanics of how thought has shaped you and your opinion about men. What you must first understand is you and the men you have attracted into your life are one and the same.

I felt something shifting inside some of you when I said that. For many of you, there was a natural impulse to resist that statement because ‘thought’ brought up memories about some of the men you dated and said something like this to you: “I’m nothing like them. I didn’t cheat on them, they cheated on me. I was committed to the relationship; they couldn’t make up their mind about what they wanted. He was a user and a liar, and I’m nothing like that.”  Oh, really? Let’s find out if that’s true or not.

It sounds like you see yourself as someone completely opposite from that shady character who betrayed your trust. Perhaps you have always gone along with the wives’ tale that says opposites are attracted to each other and not, like attracts like. I don’t want to lose you right here by becoming too metaphysical or too deep (as some say) with confusing concepts, which are hard to understand. But if you get what I’m talking about in this introduction, it will be life changing for you. I must warn you, though; once you grasp what I’m talking about you will never be the same again. The information I’m about to share with you is frightening for most people which is why most men and women will never walk down the road you are on. There are women out there who are destined to remain in a perpetual cycle of moving in and out of bad relationships because they don’t want to take a serious look at themselves. You must take a look at yourself if you want to avoid a stupid man.

I made the statement earlier that you and the men you have dated over the course of your life are one and the same. That is, you are not opposites. One of the most fundamental spiritual laws of the universe is the law of sowing and reaping. Others might call it the law of Karma or the law of cause and effect. Today, the buzzword is ‘law of attraction.’ The law simply says: Whatever you say or affirm, either in conversation with another person or through contemplative self-talk, you will attract into your life. The law also says, whatever you think about–that is, whatever you focus your attention on–will eventually come into your life. And finally, the law says, whatever you do to or for another person will come back to you.

In addition, within this principle or law is another principle Evangelicals call, “The Law of Seed, Time and Harvest.” What this means is there is a window of time before you ever see the manifestation of the seed you’ve sown into your universe. The seed must be planted, given time to grow, and then it is harvested or manifested in one’s life. The only thing you should be concerned about right now is the window of time. The window, or space of time, presents you with the opportunity to change the course of your life. A lot can happen within that space and you can use it to your advantage. However, you must first face the real you. Like it or not, you are what you think about, you are what you talk about, and you are what you consistently do.  Now, I want to ask you a question, and I want you to take your time before you answer it. Don’t try to answer too quickly, but sit back in your chair and think about the question for a moment before you try to give me an answer.

Who are you?

Surely, a woman who wants to avoid a stupid man can answer this question without hesitation…right?  Surely, a woman who can recognize the stupidity in others knows herself well enough to know that she is not stupid. Surely, she can answer the question without stumbling around for an answer…right?  Wrong! If you are like most people, you are confused by the question, and, if not, you should be. Why? Because the question cannot be answered by any past answers we are accustomed to giving.  For instance, if you say to me, “I’m Mary Doe.” I’ll say, “That’s the tribal name your mother gave you, but that doesn’t tell me who you are.” Likewise, if you say, “I’m Mary Doe, and I’m a nurse,” I’ll say, “that’s your tribal name and your occupation, and that still doesn’t tell me who you are.” If you say, “I’m Mary Doe, and I’m a nurse and mother of three,” I’ll say, “your tribal name, your occupation, and your ability to produce offspring still doesn’t tell me who you are. Even animals produce after their kind.” Your gender and physical capacity to carry and give birth to a child has nothing to do with who you are. It only means that you have been given the marvelous physical capacity to participate in the wonderful process of physical co-creation. But even in this creative process, you are only a co-creator simply because you must have some contribution from a man to pull this creative process off. Without a man, motherhood is impossible.  The bottom line is this; biology; gender, names, occupations, and the like do not define us. It’s impossible for any of these things to tell us who we are. Get the picture?

Nevertheless, if you don’t know who you are right at this very moment, how will you be able to know when Mr. Right is really Mr. Right? How can a woman who has no clue about herself be of any worth to Mr. Right even if he was to drop into her lap? You must address these fundamental questions because they mean all the difference between living a fulfilling happy life and existing in a world where you can never expect any happiness to come your way.  If you cannot tell me who you are, then I will do it for you.

You are the sum total of all the accumulative knowledge and experiences inputted into you since you gained consciousness in this physical world.

You are the past. And every decision you will make today is based upon some past experience, knowledge or memory. Unless you are able to see that you are nothing more than the accumulated knowledge of your parents, your community and the society you live in, you are doomed to repeat unhealthy patterns of thinking and behavior for the rest of your life.

Think seriously about this. You are conditioned from birth. Ever since you were a child, you have been told what to think, what to wear, how to act, what’s good behavior, what’s bad behavior, and so on. But it doesn’t stop there. During adolescence, young adulthood, and even in middle and late adulthood, your society continues to introduce and indoctrinate you into the community mind. You are told what group has your best interest in mind, what political party to vote for, what political systems or rules of governments are good and which are not, what jobs to take, what colleges to go to and so on.

In addition, you are further bombarded with all kinds of advice about men and relationships. The problem with the information we receive is that it is someone else’s information. In other words, the information your parents gave you came out of the mind of someone else, which came from someone else, which came from someone else. Misinformation carries on forever, and it never stops unless you challenge the status quo. As an experiment, the next time you sit with your mom or dad ask them the same question I asked you. They will probably look at you with a puzzled look and say something like: “What do you mean, who am I? What kind of question is that?”

You are going to find out that most parents never address issues surrounding their identity and self-image. And if they’ve never addressed it, is it any wonder why you are just approaching the threshold yourself?

Now, I want to make something perfectly clear about what we are discussing: Just because thought is movement, a flowing stream or system of past reflexes, it doesn’t mean that all the information we’ve received from other people has no value. Some of the information does have merit, and some of it does not. When you begin to have an awareness of how thought operates you will at least know error when you see it, which in turn will save you from a lot of heartache in relationships.

I know it seems that I’ve gotten off the track a bit, but I need for you to hang in here with me. Since you now know that you are a product of not only your thoughts, but the thoughts of other people, and have acted in a mechanical way for most of your life, (that is, you’ve done what most people said you should do, listened to the advice of your mother, girlfriends, talk show hosts and an assortment of other gurus) and since you had very little to do with shaping your own self image, it’s time for you to define yourself. And for the purposes of our discussion, it’s time for me to become a little less metaphysical and more practical so that this will make sense to you.

I told you earlier I heard thousands of conversations between women in which one is attempting to give the other some supposed fact or secret about men. From where does the advice that women give other women about men come from? You should already know this by now. From the very beginning of time, personal experiences are transmitted down from the parent to the child. The only problem with this handing down of material is that it is held to be factual when nothing may be further from the truth. Their bad experience with a man was only true for them; it doesn’t have to be for you.

Nevertheless, when you listen to people talk about their experience, and you are drawn in to accept their experience as truth, it becomes your truth. This erroneous truth is then stored in your subconscious and added to the mechanical stream of your thoughts. When you personally experience a bad relationship (for instance, a man who was unfaithful to you), you draw upon the recorded information you received from others. For instance, you may recall the memories and stories you heard about your friend’s unfaithful boyfriend, or conversations you had with your mother about your father’s unfaithfulness.  Unknowingly, your brain is undergoing a transformation, and not for the better.

In addition, the supposed truth about a man’s inability to remain faithful is even more solidified by relationship experts, psychologists, therapists, and research statisticians. They further cement the thoughts of infidelity in your mind by talking about the percentage of men who cheat on their mates, and so this information goes into your conscious mind and sinks down into your subconscious mind, where it too becomes part of your stream of thoughts. From this polluted stream, you form your opinions and perceptions about men and your relationships to them. This faulty information (faulty because the bias to confirm the suspicion is always present in the observer) also shapes and forms your identity and your self-image. Therefore, all future relationships will be weighed by the faulty information stored in your stream of thought. The truth of the matter is this; you would not even recognize a good man or avoid a stupid man because your stream of consciousness is polluted with bad information. (I’m only using cheating as one example). Nevertheless, there is good news for you.

The good news is this: There are good men out there and there is someone who is specifically out there waiting for you. Like you, he has begun his inner journey. Nevertheless, just because you find common characteristics or habits in some of the men you dated, that doesn’t mean all men are the same. If anything, you now know that most men are in the same boat as you were before you started reading this book. That is to say, most men are unaware of how the system of thought works. They too are unaware that they are living out of a polluted stream of consciousness, the junk of their male predecessors.

Yes, men have been fed much of the same junk you have. They’ve been told how to think, what women like, what women don’t like, what’s good, what’s bad and so forth. Like you, they’ve been fed misinformation about who they are. When men face the fact that they have lived out most of their life in a mechanical, conditioned way, they are left empty, and the thought of this emptiness  terrifies them. This is why some of them continue to distract themselves by running from woman to woman. Running in and out of relationships occupies their time, so they don’t have to ask themselves the hard questions. They know that something is missing in their life, but they don’t know what it is. They’re inwardly searching to find identity and meaning, but they are too insecure to tell anybody about their inner longings, or, to ask for help. Why are they like this? You already know why. Like you, they are conditioned to think in acceptable patterns of thoughts. Their stream of consciousness has some of the same useless material yours has. They are stupid. They lack clarity of mind.

Furthermore, the stupid man has been fashioned by the men and women (yes, women) who came before him. The stupid man is a being of shared experiences. He believes he must be emotionally and mentally strong because someone told him this is the way he should be. He believes he must be a provider and a fixer because the group has identified that these are his roles. And, most importantly, he believes that he cannot show any signs of weakness because he’s been told a woman doesn’t want a weak man.

Stupid men operate under the assumption that you want provision first and love second. They’ll shower you with gifts (at least, some of them do) and fail to simply enjoy your presence. How many times in your past have you known a man who only wanted to spend time with you without any distractions? How many men in your life turned off the television when they saw you walking through the door after a hard day’s work, just so they can find out what happened during your day? I’m not talking about all that gooey stuff that goes on during the initial dating period when both your body chemistries are going haywire. I’m talking about enjoying you in this way consistently over time. When men and women live out of the paradigms of conditioned thought, you can see why men and women, who were destined for each other, seldom find each other. It’s an uphill climb for him as well as it is for you. And it all has to do with thought, identity, and the erroneous images we have about each other.

Stupid men and women don’t know who they are. But try telling them that. Who wants to find out they don’t know who they are? Coming to grips with the fact that most of us are prefabricated persons without identity is gut wrenching. It takes all the wind out of our sail. Nevertheless, like you, the stupid man must find out who he is because no one else can tell him. How can anyone tell you who you are when they don’t know who they are? The stupid woman must also come to the knowledge of the self and the role that images play in her relationships. Understanding the self and the self-image will help you get in alignment for your soul mate.  Men and women live from the illusion that they are the sum total of all their experiences and conditioning.  In all actuality they really are not the sum total of their experiences, they simply believe they are.  Nevertheless, all of these false beliefs must be dealt with if you want to be drawn to your soul mate.

Why I’m blogging this book for Women and Why Women Should Read It

The answer to this question is obvious: Women, who have a strong desire for a loving relationship with a man, want to find a good man. The problem with most women is they usually attract a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That is, the man they fall head over heals for is like that box of chocolates Forest talked about in the movie, Forest Gump. Forest said, “…life is like a box a chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” And for the most part he’s exactly right. When a woman finds a man who she thinks might be ‘the one ‘ he usually turns out not to be ‘the one,’ but a zero. Today, more women are finding out that trying to find that special someone is like rolling the dice on a Las Vegas casino craps table. In fact, your odds of finding a good man are less than the odds that you can roll a 7 or 11, but it doesn’t have to be this way. And by the time you’re finished reading this blog, your odds of attracting a good man will increase astronomically.  I realize this is a big claim to make, but I’m confident the exchange of dialog we are about to embark on will change the way you think about yourself, men, and your future relationship with the man who was uniquely created to share his life with you.

This is a special book. It is the culmination of excerpts of some of my various published and unpublished works on success, spirituality and relationships. The idea for this book came from conversations I had with several women during a signing of my book, How to Stop Hatin Yo Baby’s Momma: A Spiritual and Emotional Guide for Non-Custodial Fathers. I wrote this book to help non-custodial fathers and single mothers work through their issues of conflict with each other in order for each parent to contribute, as much as possible, to the overall development of the child without forcing the child to choose sides. Although written primarily for men, most of the purchasers of this book turned out to be women. In fact, just about everyone who stopped by my table to purchase a copy of the book and talk to me, was female. Most of them wanted to know when I was going to write a female version of the book. “You need to write a book called, How to Stop Hatin Yo Baby’s Daddy,” one woman said. Evidently, these women needed some tools to help to deal with their feelings about the father of the children.

I kept the idea of a sequel fresh in my mind and decided to write something a little better for women. I would dedicate myself to writing a book which included material from ‘How to Stop Hatin Yo Baby’s Momma’ as well as adding new material which would give them the knowledge of how to attract the one they had been after all along; their soul mate. What these women needed, I realized, was knowledge of how to attract the man who was uniquely designed to love them physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

There has already been a lot written about the laws of attraction over the past years. For instance, one day, a couple of years ago, while I was writing in my studio, my wife entered the room and said, “I just got off the phone with my sister and she told me to turn on Oprah. She says there’s this book, The Secret, and they’re talking about it. It’s about how we can attract the things we want into our life. I just listened to her and smiled,” my wife said. She smiled because I had released a self-help motivational audio book in 2006 (the same year The Secret was released) called The Black Man’s Little Book of Success Secrets: 7 Spiritual Secrets for Breaking the Curse of Poverty. The book contained much of the same information as Byrne’s book, and I’m sure, if we were to go back and review all the self-help books published that year, we would find a similar thread running through all of them.

Before the release of The Secret, there were a number of other books that taught similar things. For instance, there was Napoleon Hill’s classic book, Think and Grow Rich, James Allen, As You Think (originally titled, As a Man Thinketh), Esther and Jerry Hicks, teachings of Abraham, the writings of medical intuitive, Carolyn Myss, and numerous books by Gregg Braden, the author of the God Code, not to mention Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, and thousands of others.

Over the years I have read many books, both ancient and contemporary, concerning the law or laws of attraction. When a multitude of books of this nature are released, you need to question and read closely, cautiously. For we mustn’t lose sight of what the law of attraction is all about. People get focused on ‘how to get things’ and forget that the law has more to do with the state of a person’s being than it does with his doing, or his attracting. Thus, the term might need to change to: The Law of Being.

We attract what we are at heart. This is no secret. The Bible put it this way: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Thus, there must be a radical transformation at the core of one’s being. We call this core the center, otherwise known as the heart. Your heart must be right if you are ever going to avoid having a stupid man show up in your life. After all, a stupid man is too stupid to see all the wonderful things a good woman can offer him.  But if there’s somebody for everybody (and I believe there is), a woman’s soul mate has already been prepared for her. Your soul mate will see all those wonderful things about you the stupid men in your life have missed. We’ve got to prepare you so you’ll know how to recognize your soul mate when he shows up.

So, what makes me qualified to speak to women about relationships? Well, I have a Masters in Codependency and a PhD in Stupidity. No other degrees are necessary. Perhaps, the real answer can be found in another Forest Gump quote: “Stupid is, as stupid does.” In other words, it takes a man who once floated around in his own stupidity, and who made a mess of other women’s lives, to speak to women about how to avoid men who are no good for them.  Now, this will be a little different from the ‘men are from mars’ book or the new Steve Harvey book.  The approach is from a spiritual perspective but it veers off course from mainstream Christian theology.  If you want to stay with traditional Christian approaches to relationships, then neither this blog or the book is for you.  The book itself was published last summer for any of you interested.

Now, I’m going to say some things that will make many of you feel uncomfortable. In fact, some of you will get extremely angry by a few of my comments, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. How many times has a friend told you something you might not want to hear at the time, but then later on– after the dust settled– found out the information or insight they shared with you was right on the money. So, resistance is natural. Besides, no person in their right mind wants their ego shattered. We all like to think ‘we’re all that and a bag of chips.’ The truth is: You are not all that, and your chips are crumbled and stale. Your chips are not fit for human consumption. This is why the men you attract treat you like stale chips. They don’t commit to the relationship, they lie to you, and they do whatever they want to you and move on. However, all that’s about to change.

Let’s get this one fact on the table so you can decide if you want to read on: Only stupid women attract stupid men. Now that it’s out there on the table let’s deal with it. No stupid woman will ever attract anything good into her life, and this includes a good man. So if you’re wondering why you keep getting the kind of man you keep getting, the problem is not the man, the problem is you!

Furthermore, if you want to know how to avoid a stupid man  or stupid men so that you can attract the man of your dreams, you have to know how to get rid of the stupidity in you. But, before we even get into our discussion about how to attract a good man or the laws of attraction, we need a way of defining stupidity so that you’ll know what I mean when I use the word, stupid. The word stupid is not at all as derogatory as you might believe. Since Webster’s defines a stupid person as someone who lacks ordinary quickness and keenness of mind, I will define a stupid man (or for that matter, a stupid woman) as a person who lacks both, the mental and spiritual ability to see things as they really are. In other words, as far as women are concerned, it is a woman’s lack of clarity concerning her own divinity, her relationship with the Creator and her own internal source of power that causes her to become prey to a man who lacks these same attributes.

In the chapters ahead you’re going to find out why genuine love seems to escape you, and then you’re going to do something about your situation. Most of you will learn how to recognize a stupid man ‘on the spot.’ But some of you–since you are so hell bent on having it your way–will learn to recognize a stupid man after a few meetings. The women in this latter group are those who don’t believe they are responsible for attracting the stupid men who enter their life. It’s just going to take these women a while before they realize they are their own worst enemy. But my first goal is to keep you from ‘going there’ in the first place. By the time you are finished reading this blog or the book, you’ll be on your way to a more meaningful life, the kind of life you’ve always envisioned. So, just hang out with me for an hour or so and enjoy the dialog.