The principles of male and female qualities in life, their intriguing attraction and repulsion, their nurturing dance with each other and the profound completion when that dance is allowed and lived in its fullness, this has captivated me for many years. Our civilised world is experiencing a time span in which the male principle is predominantly ruling. It’s qualities are goal-oriented, doing, achieving, manifesting, it is active, logical, linear and focused, it represents the sky, the day and the light. Those qualities have brought us for example industrialisation, a lot of comfort and the high standard of our health care systems. And due to its rapid upgrowth and overpopulation in the last century it also brought us environmental issues like smog, garbage problems and polluted oceans. The stressful, demanding and success oriented life that many of us live nowadays is an expression of the dominant male polarity. At this point I probably have to specify that the male principle is not equal to man and the female to women. Each man and woman has both polarities living in them, sometimes one more pronounced than the other. But we as a collective, as a society are driven by male forces and are spinning in a wheel of constantly creating and achieving more, doing better and being faster. The dance between the two principles has become imbalanced, and in this race against ourselves we have forgotten about the female principle which is intuitive, receptive, creative, resting, nurturing, sensory based, mystic, connected to earth and her wisdom, to the night and to darkness. In my young age I was considering to become an activist of some sort to help healing this imbalance. But growing older and wiser I have learned that if we want to change the world we have to change ourselves first. Having been deeply conditioned by the “doing” quality of the male principle myself I have become a passionate explorer and lover of the expression of the female in me as a woman, in my life and in what surrounds me. I have met these qualities in diverse ways ranging from tales and representations of female archetypes, to creating art, to several healing modalities and the tantric way that I have studied and that I practice. But ultimately it is not so much about what we do but how we do it. It’s the attitude that counts. It’s an inner space of resting, of embodied presence and still awareness that brings in the female. A climate of relaxation and earthy trust, so we can be more receptive and open to the sensual flow of life and be informed by something else than our linear minds. Rather than being a victim of life, managing it or battling against it, it can be lived and experienced totally in it’s fullness and through our senses. The female qualities invite us to turn in and tune into an inner well of strength, abundance, beauty, radiance and wisdom, a silent intimacy with the moment, a profound and intuitive knowing that is mysteriously interwoven with life and the whole. This allows us to let life force, this vast intelligence flow through us and express itself in endless flavours. Being in communion with this intelligence we get informed and moved and often led to the right place at the right time. I’m not proclaiming the world would be a better place if the female principle would be dominant. The world will probably always be a place of conflict, ever changing evolution and an unpredictable experiment of duality. I’m merely interested and enriched by the female strength and wisdom and believe that nurturing and giving more space to the feminine qualities and finding more balance between the female and male would bring an interesting change and more stability, health and balance to the world of today.
