I already wrote that there is also one more thing that I can't disregard anymore since this can hamper your practice. Sometimes you find that it's very difficult to perceive things as they are - truth seems clouded - why is this so, and what can be done in this case? Strangely enough, this can be not only your fault: I won't reveal a secret if I recall that people tend to mislead each other. At a certain stage, your practice should become more versatile, and the question should be put this way: what aspects of the human personality hinder objective perception? In other words, what tends to deceive, and what to be deceived? The technique that I start describing will eventually allow you to understand people, yourself, and even how the very process of understanding works.
When I began practicing Zen (I was 30 then), I tried to achieve objective perception by seeing the world as if I'd been dead; for me, unfortunately, this wasn't enough: there still were people that could mislead me - I believed those masks they were wearing - but you can't become enlightened until everything becomes understandable, your particular case, so I learned to understand people. In a few
years, I invented a simple and effective method to deal with the masks. I found that not to be deceived, you need to understand what a female is: by this I mean what Otto Weininger calls the female aspect or the female substance, which is inherent in both men and women.
This doesn't mean that some aspect of human nature is worse or better than another - everything is good in the right place - the trick is to integrate the components properly. What in particular makes the female aspect special is the fact that it convinces you let it inside you and merge with it - as soon as this happens, you lose objective perception.
The Trap
I once caught myself thinking that the images of Christian saints on icons often cause cognitive dissonance (and I think this is the reason why these images impress some): on the one hand, these guys are often depicted full of love, compassion and altruism, and by default it's assumed that this is their constant state and source of strength; on the other, we know from our own experience, or simply feel, that such behavior is the path to self-destruction in the long run: you can't only spend energy as an altruist, you must also get it as an egoist.
The female aspect as archetypal behavior implies the use of friendliness to overstep our defense so that once get inside, to control and manipulate us - at this point she already acts as a predator - that's when she gets energy.* Thus, to understand the female aspect means in each specific case to see the potential presence of this loop (or at least to state its actual availability if the trap is already closed.) Whoever behaves this way, women or men, they themselves may not even be aware of this inconsistency: to them it may seem that such behavior is natural and therefore correct. [Jung, by the way, notes that a woman, to the extent that she is a woman, of course, is rational in her emotionality - in the Christian sense, she doesn't have a soul. The soul is what Jung calls anime: a feminine inner personality in the unconscious of a man, and this is an erotic-emotional idea, while woman's animus is a conjunction of multiple male personalities, and this is a rational idea of men in general.]
It's easy to recognize an intruder if he or she invades as an enemy, but it's difficult to recognize even the enemy if he or she is disguised as a friend or even as a part of your personality. Your task, therefore, is to learn to recognize the intruders behind any masks, to see their real faces and thus withstand their manipulation.
[I don't want you to get the impression that I'm a misogynist. Just the opposite: for reasons I'll explain later, I think feminism is a great trend. And by the way, I have such a character that I can't tolerate having a boss, but if there is no choice, then as a boss or a coach I can accept only a woman as if this were the natural order of things. This practice is not about hatred or love, but seeing things as they are.]
The Practice
If you have feelings of sympathy, guilt, pity, etc for someone, this means that you're not perceiving things objectively. In particular, if doing the walking zazen as I described, you can't leave a person, his or her image, behind you, if he or she sticks to you, this means that the person is a problem for your practice.
The goal of the practice is to see the person you're examining as he or she really is, to understand who is in front of you, but while doing this, don't try to humiliate him or her etc: ideally, the person shouldn't notice anything. This technique can be practised by both men and women, and you can also use it to examine both men and women.
First you need to understand women, then move to men (in the end you will find it useful sometimes to look yourself in the mirror for the same purpose.) Start with being fully aware of your body, try not only to see the person you're examining but to grasp the situation as a whole, as described here. Try to see her or his female aspect - an image of a woman - just an intuitive impression. Let me remind you that we understand through negation - it's akin to killing.
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*When it comes to real female flirting, the inevitable risk of such a strategy is that if the male takes the flirtation too literally, the situation can get out of her control.
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