Chapter 1

Introduction to the Inner Male and Female

Love is a topic that catches everybody’s interest. Just look around—it’s in the films, in the music, in the magazines. Often before you realize it, you find your eyes fixed on a billboard advertising the latest love story. Or even if it’s not your habit, you sometimes glance at the stories of celebrities who have “found each other.” In short, everybody is caught by the power of love because it is one of the most exciting things that can happen to a person. The attraction between the two sexes is so magnetic, the absorption is so total, that you want to completely lose yourself in it. That’s why, if you have someone to love, who loves you too, you do everything you can to keep that person in your life. Or, if you don’t have a partner, the thing you want most in the world is to find one! But the more experiences you have in relationships, the more you notice that you always confront exactly the same sort of problems—and you don’t know what to do about it. When things don’t go well with your partner, you can feel almost suffocated. Or sometimes you feel that you have only duties, expectations to fulfill. Or you have to chase after the other one… Whatever type of dynamic repeats itself, the sensation that accompanies it is heaviness and lack of freedom. In moments like that, when everything seems so hopeless, you would like to escape—anything else than to have a relationship! Usually, you think that the cause of difficulty is that you have found the wrong partner, you have made a mistake in the choice. And you continue to think that sooner or later, you will find the “right” mate for yourself and then everything will work! Maybe. But actually, the hope for a perfect partner is superficial; the roots of relationship are much deeper, buried in the unconscious part of you. For sure success in relationship, it is best to look there.

Two polarities reside within you.

According to the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, every woman has inside her unconscious mind an “animus,” which is an imprint or “archetype” of a male figure. This male figure doesn’t remain forever the same, but he has characteristics that mature as the woman grows psychologically. Similarly, every man has an “anima” with changing—or changeable—female characteristics. These figures of the opposite sex are not necessarily evident in daily life, but they are clearly visible in dreams. Supported by his study of alchemical science, Jung also espoused the idea that everyone has “the sun and the moon” inside; that is, everyone has a male and a female aspect. Something similar, but not exactly the same, has been my experience too. I came to my conclusions by a very different route than Jung. For many years I gave a type of massage where I was clairvoyantly “seeing” images arising from the energy in the bodies I worked on. Over time, I realized that the impressions were of two types, qualitatively different. For now, it is sufficient to say that the images had feminine or masculine characteristics, depending on where I was working on the body. And these were images full of exact detail—including facial expressions, body build, type of dress, and past professional experience. At the time I discovered the “portraits” of these two contrasting figures, I didn’t know much about Jung’s ideas. However, I was familiar with the philosophies of the East, including Taoist and Tantric principles, so it was not surprising that an energy of the opposite sex would be hiding in the recesses of the body. What was amazing to me was that both the male and female characters were so specifically and graphically represented. I decided it was important to make my clients aware of them. In the beginning, I was limited to just telling the images that I had seen. For example, one image was of a strong woman in a housedress with a stern face and a big body, shaking her finger at someone—she looked like an unpleasant sort of mother. The opposite figure was a young man, maybe twenty, with a thin and very agile body, going to the market on an errand but enjoying distractions along the way. I could easily imagine the relationship between these two: the woman was dominant and the man, unluckily, had a habit of following her directives. But at that time, I hadn’t the tools for bringing these figures to life on a stage or for having them interact together. It was only later that I found methods by which the client could experience for himself his masculine and feminine parts, and this was already much better than just hearing about their existence from me.

How they determine your choice of an outer partner in life.

Along the way, I learned that the relationship which you see on the inside, between the two polarities, is the same as exists on the outside. For example, in myself I discovered that the male part inside me would have liked to stop school at an early age. In fact, because I was not at all listening to my male part at that time, I continued on a very intellectual path, following a course in philosophy at a select American university, for years pouring my energy into being a good student. But later, when I got married, I chose a man who had dropped out of school at the age of 16. And when I married for the second time it was the same, and also in the third relationship. All the men were very intelligent, but they had all quit their formal education at age 16! After I became acquainted with my inner man, I discovered that he is attracted to the materials from which you build houses—wood, stone, plaster, tile—and if he could choose his ideal work, it would be carpentry. Also, he likes to find practical solutions to mechanical problems. On the surface of myself, I have always believed that I cannot even change a light bulb. And yet, all of the men in my life have been carpenters or handymen, and some, at other moments in their life, have also been mechanics! It doesn’t happen only to me. So often I will hear a client say, “My inner woman is just like my wife,” or sometimes, “That’s exactly the way my girlfriend would express herself.” This is not an accident; there is an urge within us to unite our masculine and feminine energies, to make them one. And so, a man will search outside for the person most appropriate for him, which means similar to his inner woman. A woman will find a man with the characteristics of her inner male. In a whole crowd of people, you are able to eliminate hundreds until your choice finally narrows down to one and you know for sure that’s it! This is particularly true when you get married. When you decide to commit yourself to someone in a deeper or longer way, it is always because you see your “opposite side” in them. Perhaps you are not conscious of it; perhaps you are even critical of this person, but there is the feeling that you cannot go away from them even if you would like to. This correspondence doesn’t always apply with boyfriends or girlfriends. But actually, in many more cases than you might think, your partner even when you are not married is providing you with a mirror of your hidden side.

Contacting your male and female through a series of ten questions.

It is possible, if you like, to experience your own masculine and feminine sides now, using a simple method. You will be answering questions, and it works better if you have a friend with you to listen. The listener should be someone who is not emotionally involved with you—the reasons will be clear when the questions are presented. It might seem strange, but you will speak from each eye, one at a time. The eyes are like windows, giving access to the two energies, even if the roots of the two energies are deeper in the body. The right eye connects to the masculine energy, the left to the feminine. Now you can cover the right eye with one hand, or if you wear glasses, just put a handkerchief inside as a cover. We are going to start with the left eye which remains open; this is the feminine side. Ready?

The questions:

How do you feel now that someone is looking at you and listening to you?

How do you see the room in which you find yourself?

Do you like the colours, do you find it warm or cold?

Which kinds of activity make you happy?

Do you like the place where you live?

Speak about all the aspects—the type of house or apartment, the light inside, the garden (or lack of), the neighbours, the country, the continent…

Would you like to change location?

Do you work? (The question has to be asked this way, because sometimes only one side of the body is working.)

If you have a work, which aspects of it are you doing?

Do you like this work, or would you like to change job? What are the priorities in your life? —first, second, and third, and whatever comes after.

Do you have enough space in daily life to develop your interests and express your creativity?

If you have a relationship, how is it for you?

Did you choose your partner in the beginning?

Are you in love with your partner now?

Are there things you have to do which you don’t like?

And if you didn’t have to do them, what would you do with the spare time?

Is there anything else you would like to say, now that you have a listener?

Take a short break. Then cover the left eye so that you can speak from the right eye—the masculine side—and let your friend read the questions again. You will notice that your answers are completely different. It’s good to have two energies that choose different things! There are twenty-four hours in a day, and you can manage to let both have the space to express themselves. Once when I did this exercise with a friend of mine, he understood that his male side would like to do more sports. He started to include bicycle riding in his daily program, and he felt better after that. A problem arises, naturally, when one part doesn’t allow the other to express. Even this discovery can be positive, because change will surely follow. However, in this moment I am not presenting the ten questions so that you can modify something, but only to make you aware of how easy it is to be in contact with the man and the woman inside yourself.

Experiencing their contrasting qualities.

I didn’t tell you yet what you can expect to find, in terms of differences between the masculine and feminine energies. The masculine energy, in its natural state, moves toward the outside. A man is outgoing. He likes expansion, he likes to stretch into bigger and bigger territories. He likes to touch, to outstretch the hands and have the fingertips meet something in that extension. The feminine energy, on the contrary, by its very nature doesn’t want to reach anywhere: for a woman, going to the moon has no significance! She moves toward the inner, she likes silence, she likes rest, she likes too simply be. Let’s take, for example, question five: if you work, which aspects are you doing? Generally, the male will say, “organization, planning, solving practical problems.” The female normally says, “relating with people, listening, finding solutions in an intuitive or nonrational way.” This is when the male and female have the same work. It is not always so. Sometimes only half of you is doing the job, and the other half is not working. And sometimes when only one polarity is working, it doesn’t like the job but does it simply for survival.

How you become partial to one.

Returning to the difference between the masculine and the feminine, one loves the world, action, noise, the other loves intimacy, inaction, tranquillity. Which of these two we give more value depends to a large extent on our social conditioning. It can be determined by the culture or by the family. Some cultures give importance to the irrational, and others to the rational, practical aspects of life. In the past, the peoples of India, Japan and China were surely of the first type, interested in beauty, grace, things which uplift the spirit—of course, today the polarity has changed, and they are more interested in money and technology than before. Europe and America, at least in the past, always gave more value to material wealth, to conquering territories—witness the British colonies, for example. And exactly now there is a tendency toward change. Therefore, if one is born in a culture that appreciates art and music, literature and religion, he develops a point of view that is more feminine, and whatever is not symbolic, not connected to love or to the spirit, has less value for him. Another person, born in a culture which gives more value to money and technology, will tend to give little value to anything that is not utilitarian or concrete. Also, the family can determine the preference for one aspect over the other. If the father is the owner of a business, the son is influenced to follow this path. If the mother is a musician, the children are taught to appreciate things which create emotion and to consider them important. This is just to show how it can happen that the two parts are not represented equally in your life. Perhaps you already noticed this when you responded to the questions. In question seven, one part could have responded that it has enough space, the other that it hasn’t enough space. There is another thing to consider. If one part has been dominant for a very long time, the second part can lose all hope for equal representation. And when its trust and self-respect go away, that weaker part becomes closed. In such a case we will no longer be able to see any spontaneous expression of that part. But this situation can be repaired. The repair can happen naturally, without effort. Usually, when we have the sensation that something has gone wrong, we try to put it right. We try! And the more we make effort, the more we become disturbed. This book is going to show you a completely new way to allow your male and female energies to take their rightful place in life. And when they do, it produces a sense of love and contentment inside yourself. The tension of incompleteness disappears, because your two parts are finally receiving from each other exactly what they always wanted.

DeLong, Sagarpriya.

The two shores of Love: inner man & inner woman (pp. 17-26). Ecstatic Silence Publications.

The Heart Sutra

Chapter #3: Negation of Knowledge

13 October 1977 am in Buddha Hall

The dialectical process says: life moves through polarities, through opposites -- just as a river flows through two banks which oppose each other, but those opposing banks keep the river flowing between them.

Now biologists say, and psychologists agree, that man is not only man, he is woman too. And woman is not simply woman, she is man too. So when a man and a woman meet, there are not two persons meeting but four persons meeting. The man is meeting with the woman, but the man has a hidden woman in himself; so has the woman a hidden man in herself; they are also meeting. The meeting is on double planes. It is more intricate, more complex, more intertwined. A man is man and woman, both. Why? -- because he comes out of both. Something has been contributed to you by your father and something has been contributed to you by your mother, whosoever you are. A man flows in your blood and a woman too. You have to be both because you are the meeting of the polar opposites. You are a synthesis! It is impossible to deny one and just be the other. That's what has been done.

A man has been taught to be just a man: never to show any feminine traits, never to show any softness of the heart, never to show any receptivity, always be aggressive. Man has been taught never to cry, never weep -- because tears are feminine. Women have been taught never to be in any way like the male: never to show aggression, never show expression, to always remain passive, receptive. This is against reality, and this has crippled both. In a better world, with better understanding, a man will be both, a woman will be both -- because sometimes a man needs to be a woman. There are moments when he needs to be soft -- tender moments, love-moments. And there are moments when a woman needs to be expressive and aggressive -- in anger, in defense, in rebellion. If a woman is simply passive, then she will turn into a slave automatically. A passive woman is bound to become a slave -- that's what happened down the ages. And an aggressive man, emphatically aggressive and never tender, is bound to create wars, neurosis in the world, violence.

Man has been fighting, continuously fighting; it seems that man exists on the earth just to fight. In three thousand years there have been five thousand wars! War continues somewhere or other, the earth is never whole and healthy... never a moment without war.

One thing is certain: that man puts his whole energy into war effort. The reason? -- the reason is that man has been taught to be just man, his woman has been denied. So no man is whole. And so is the case with woman -- no woman is whole. She has been denied her male part. When she was a small child she could not fight with boys, she could not climb on the trees; she had to play with dolls, she had to play 'house'. This is a very, very distorted vision.

Man is both, so is woman -- and both are needed to create a real, harmonious human being. The existence is dialectical; and opposites are not only opposites, they are complementary too.

The name derives from the Star Sapphire gemstone. On the surface it looks ordinary, but when you hold it at the right angle the inner light and beauty reveals itself. In the same way the Star Sapphire method reveals and then supports the inner essence of a person. This essence is like a presence, a luminosity, an awareness of the present moment that has been lost.

Experiencing loving presence is the foundation for exploring the two opposite polarities that we all have within us —a female side in the left half of our bodies, and a male side in the right half of our bodies. Not everyone notices this because, most commonly, we display the half of ourselves which corresponds with our present gender, and the other half remains buried in the subconscious.

Alternatively, some people may be in a female body but display their male side’s characteristics; or vice versa, someone in a male body may have distinctively feminine tendencies. All this can result in a continuous inner conflict which never resolves.

No matter which of these types you are, the Star Sapphire therapist guides you in discovering the authentic nature of each side. The inner male and inner female can then function as two vehicles through which your creativity, your energy and your daily life find expression. It is the key to a serenity that is rooted in your own inner being, rather than in the hope of getting confirmation from the outside. We use tools like guided meditations, gestalt therapy techniques, past life regressions. It is a slow-paced work, sensitive, giving time and space to allow what is inside to find a voice, an expression, a movement. A new dialogue opens between the two sides and presence offers an alternative to striving and effort.

"The whole of life consists of polarities: the positive and the negative, birth and death, man and woman, day and night, summer and winter. But those polar opposites are not only polar opposites, they are also complementaries. They are helping each other, they are supporting each other.

The whole person is one who knows both and who is capable of moving from one to the other as easily as possible. It is just like breathing in and breathing out."

Osho, The Imprisoned Splendor, Talk #21