Forget about yourself for a moment and tune into someone else, even someone you don’t know who is having a bad day, a bad week, a bad year. There’s always someone worse off than you. Notice how fortunate you are in comparison, how much you have and how much you don’t need. Turn your frown into a smile and see how that feels. Sometimes a bad mood is just that, a mood not related to anything real except your false self-perception that something is wrong when obviously it isn’t. The more you smile the better you’ll feel.
Just like the roots of our computer programs, that boil down to zeroes and ones, human beings are all, at their core, a combination of male and female, (+) and (-) energy. Psychologically, this means that our wholeness includes the existence of an inner contrasexual partner.
Jung called the inner feminine character in a male personality the anima and the inner male character in a woman the animus. These characters are living entities that interact with our ego, and various other characters within our psyche, where they impact our attitudes, beliefs and moods. Often these characters project themselves onto actual people in the world, which greatly impacts how we judge and feel toward the recipient of their projection.
We are, psychologically, hermaphroditic beings, conjoined together for life. Our individuation challenge, regardless of our sexual orientation, is to achieve union with our inner contrasexual partner. This requires getting to know our opposite side, respecting and accepting its existence, and achieving inner harmony with what is often experienced as a highly conflicted self.
Failure to achieve union with one’s inner other-half often results in suppression of one’s inner partner’s perspectives and feelings, a total denial of its existence, and countless conflicts with one’s outer intimate partner, who may be confused with one’s inner unknown partner.
How often do we feel judged and offended by what we assume another person thinks and feels? Little do we know that our ‘intimate knowledge’ of our outer partner is actually a reflection of our own unknown, or rejected, inner self.
Qualities of masculine energy include the mental function of thinking, most dominantly within the constraints of logic. Masculine energy tends to be active and solitary.
The dominant feature of feminine energy is relatedness, which seeks emotional connection. Feminine energy tends to be receptive, seeking to receive and compliment the energy of another. All of human experience involves some combination of masculine and feminine qualities and energies.
Writing this blog has required my feminine energy to become pregnant with masculine ideas needing containment and maturation to bear fruit. My patience with this congealing process is reflected in the words and thoughts pouring forth as I write.
Sometimes my anima insists upon a colorful word because she likes an idea dressed in her style. Sometimes my masculine ego is too abstract, refusing to give a down-to-Earth example that would facilitate ease of understanding.
In dialogue with my anima, I concede my abstract bias and agree to use this example of my personal process to help readers connect to my idea. My anima agrees to let go of her attachment to attractive but unnecessary words.
Often one’s contrasexual partner defends the ego by using its ability to reason to argue a point, regardless of the absurdity of its argument. Sometimes the defense comes in the form of powerful moods, where one’s inner other tells it how undeserving it is of the treatment it has received.
Through genuine interaction with our inner other, we achieve a collaborative relationship that facilitates progress in our individuation and also clears the way outwardly for positive relationships with others.
If we find ourselves in conflict outwardly, we do well to first check in with our inner contrasexual partner, who we might be avoiding and meeting instead in projected form in our current impasse. Most relational problems originate in one’s lack of relatedness within. As is often said: as within, so without.
Go within; work it out. Become that boy and a little girl, actually changing that whole wide world.
Let your heart be calm as a new day comes into being. Let your heart be as still as the windless sky, as present as the bright sunlight and yet fully alive in its natural beat, beat, beat. With equilibrium achieved everything is in its natural state and there is time for contemplation of the Self. What truth arises in such a calm heart-centered state? What does your own natural state tell you about yourself today? Can you accept it and love yourself compassionately, unconditionally? Breathe and accept all that is.
Nature’s extremes, her storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, cold, heat, droughts and fires represent a need for drastic change, for release of pressure, for a corrective shift. The same is often needed inside the individual human being and just like in nature extreme conditions may arise. During such extremes look within the self to find the reason for such drastic measures. Everything you need to know lies within the self.
Contentment begins and ends within. It is only from within the self that any peace will come, that any sense of belonging or satisfaction will arise, for the self is the only one who can bring about what is desired. From within comes all that you seek in the world. Only the self has the answers to all the questions you ask, the resolutions to all that you confront, the answer to which direction to proceed in next. Sit calmly, go within, and wait. The answer will surely come.
