The features of my self are yang-dominant. Both inside and out.
On the surface, it's easy to pick out my blunt bone frame, my wide, angular shoulders. I'm broad, with certain defining features that lean masculine. For a long time, I thought that made me less of a woman. It was only with learning that I came to understand that some women simply are thus. More masculine in their bones, but not in their passions. That my wide jawbone and my taut abdomen hold their own mystery and appeal.
Child that I was, the deeper implications of this conclusion never bothered me. I never once stopped to consider that my masculine outer frame might have internal implications (or was that the other way around? Or are they unrelated?).
Apophenia. The tendency to detect meaningful patterns in random data. There is, in truth, no connection at all.
A far steeper uphill has been learning to hold my internal yang and step out from underneath his dominion. I am deeply driven by my inner man, my animus, my tyrant. I play the good little girl and maintain at all times great productivity. I work when others tell me I should rest. I talk when I'd be better served to listen.
I rationalize to the detriment of my emotions. My inner masculine is a problem-solver. He is assertive where I tend to wilt. He delivers me logical, silver-platter answers when I am still digging in the dirt, sorting through the reeds. He has no patience for my feeling, so I (like most women) make myself domitable and compliant.
I trust my yang because my yang has kept me safe for twenty-five years. And that's a lifelong track record I'm fearful of breaking. I trust him because I recognize in his reflection the harbinger of clear thought, when my emotions play up a storm and I risk getting chilled to the bone.
"Receptivity is a feminine attitude, presupposing openness and emptiness, wherefore Jung has termed it the great secret of femininity. Moreover, the feminine mentality is less averse to irrationality than the rationally oriented masculine consciousness, which tends to reject everything not conforming to reason and so frequently shuts itself off from the unconscious." (Emma Jung)
If I remained a child, I could let my animus guide me and remain in my safety. But then, I must remain a child and deal with tight boots and an ill-fitting coat.
I am in a process of individuation. That asks me to acknowledge and pay close attention to my inner masculine, so that I can integrate consciously his input, and not be blindly led by it. It means acknowledging that my fear of the unknown and potential peril has cut me off from my inner sense of knowing. My intuition and my irrationality (which follows its own Rhyme and Reason).
Writer though I am, I need to inhabit my matter, lest I allow spirit to carry me off towards the endless horizon. It is not an easy task. I have developed a great knack for hankering down when the moment calls for it, and making sense of the storm. I survive. I talk myself into surviving. I can talk myself into anything as long as it sounds rational. It's a great folly and a great treasure.
Not all things that sound (and are) rational are right. I need to foster my relationship with my matter, with the physical, with my soul in order for my spirit to thrive (and for me to thrive also).
That means... meditating when my mind becomes filled with decision. My masculine side knows, or thinks he knows, and in his view, his opinion is definitive. Law. Unchallenged. I am learning to sit quiet and make room for the possibility that my animus is wrong. That his "I know" is preceded by the ghostly "I think".
That means... learning to wait. I am someone who decides quickly so I can avoid unfamiliarity. But my feminine side asks that I sit in not knowing a while longer.
That means... putting my Self to the side without devaluing it, and recognizing the creative and emotional potential of vulnerability.
That makes... no sense. I expect. Or perhaps it does. I am these days exploring what my soul and my mind sound like when they sing in unison. What I am and what I choose not on impulse, but on consideration. Both for my feminine and my masculine. And this is me sharing some of that with you. :)
