How to Balance Your Divine Masculine and Feminine Energies
As children, many of us are pushed into the box of male or female. Many cultures struggle with the ‘in-between’ and so pink-painted bedrooms lead to frilly lace dresses and a whole laundry list of stereotypical female expression while blue walls and toy motorcars lead to defining the stereotypical male expression. Meanwhile the ‘in-between’ – trans-gendered or non-binary – are often pushed to the fringes of expression.
Often this push to associate with the one or the other gender identity begins the difficulty in feeling whole and balanced. The qualities that belong to the divine feminine are not the sole possessions of women no more than the qualities of the divine masculine belong solely to men. So what helps integrate these two powerful energies?
Try This Exercise
Sit towards the edge of a chair with your back straight, your knees at 90 degrees and your hands resting on your knees. Close your eyes gently and breathe easily. Feel into the left side of your body. Notice any fullness or emptiness that might be present. Now, feel into the right side of your body. Notice any fullness or emptiness there.
Imagine a showerhead above you. In front of you, there are knobs for masculine and feminine ‘water.’ Reach out and turn on the divine water, allowing it to flow over and through you. Notice how the water easily reaches some places within you and that perhaps there are areas of resistance. Invite those resisting areas to open and allow the flow of divine energies.
Now imagine you are completely full of the divine masculine and feminine water. Allow the energies to mix from side to side and top to bottom. Notice the feeling of fullness. Embody the following mantra:
I am a being of light and energy. Masculine and feminine energies fill me and it is through these energies that action is possible.
Creating the Container for Kali: How the Goddess Shows Up in Your Life
When I found her, Kali was waiting in the window of the Ma Shrine (a temple for female deities) at my new ashram home. I was mesmerized. She didn’t look anything like the other goddesses in the temple which was filled with examples of the feminine divine. All the other goddesses were wooden or metal, seated on a lotus or astride a peaceful looking mount. Even Durga carrying all her weapons and emanating powerful assurances sat calmly atop her tamed tiger.
In contrast, Kali was a smaller wooden statue painted in the brightest colors of the room. With jet black skin and the reddest tongue extended through her open mouth, reaching for me as if to swallow me whole, she wore a necklace of severed heads and a skirt of severed limbs.
She stood atop a resigned Shiva Lord of the Universe as a conqueror claims their prize. There was nothing peaceful about her! She was ferocious, and everything about her image should have been terrifying in my context of non-understanding. But I wasn’t afraid. I was drawn to her.
Kali was the first goddess I would ever have a relatable experience with from energetic understandings that lay beyond the perception of her form. I sat there and looked to her for what seemed like hours. Every day I would go to the Ma Shrine after our morning meditations and visit all the mother goddesses, offering Kali a flower and trying to feel what she was awakening in me: my power.
Years later, I became a mother myself. The day I became a mom, was the most beautiful experience of celebrating life and specifically that of my son, who is my everything. He is a constant source of inspiration for me still, just six and a half years along my journey into becoming a mother goddess. Love like this has no description you can place from pen to paper.
