I've been thinking more about sexual polarity.
I've known a partner who always felt she was receiving tremendous amounts of love from me, especially in physical intimacy, but that she wasn't giving me much in return. It never felt like a problem to me, maybe because I was thinking in terms of sexual and energetic polarities.
In David Deida's view, the masculine is active, agentic, giving, and loving:
This newly evolving man is not a scared bully, posturing like some King Kong in charge of the universe. Nor is he a new age wimp, all spineless, smiley, and starry-eyed. He has embraced both his inner masculine and feminine, and he no longer holds onto either of them. He doesn't need to be right all the time, nor does he need to be always safe, cooperative, and sharing, like an androgynous Mr. Nice Guy. He simply lives from his deepest core, fearlessly giving his gifts, feeling through the fleeting moment into the openness of existence, totally committed to magnifying love.
The polarity between male and female is often one of giving and receiving:
The feminine wants to be filled with love, and if the bliss of real love is not forthcoming, chocolate and ice cream -- or a good romantic drama--will do. The masculine wants to feel the bliss of a life lived at the edge, and if he doesn't have the balls to do it himself, he'll watch it on tv, in sporting events and cop shows.
Since the feminine craves the love connection, the surrender into bliss, such energy encourages the masculine to "fearlessly give his gifts, to feel through the fleeting moment into the openness of existence, to totally committed to magnifying love."
For a masculine man who has developed a feminine self, he can find the courage required to live with an open and tender heart to be "a life lived at the edge." He gives his love openly -- and ravishingly -- to the woman he loves. And she receives his gift with openness and tenderness and is ravished by that love.
One of the definitions of ravish is "to overcome with emotion (as joy or delight)." That fits my experience. I like the word ravishment to describe that process.
Back to my original point -- I explained to my girlfriend that allowing me to love her as I did, to accept my love fully and completely, was a huge gift to me. The gift of receiving. Without her willingness to receive and her openness to my open heart, she would never have felt that love.
And obviously, as Deida points out, this is not gender specific -- we all have both a masculine and a feminine energy within us.
It doesn't matter if both partners are men or both are women. It doesn't matter if, in a heterosexual relationship, the man plays the feminine pole and the woman plays the masculine pole. It doesn't matter if you change every day who plays the masculine pole and who plays the feminine pole. For sexual polarity, you need an energetic polarity, an attractive difference between masculine and feminine. You don't need this difference for love, but you do need it for ongoing sexual passion.Too often we think of love as simply the giving -- which is great, the world could always use more love being offered -- but receiving is also an amazing and necessary gift. There can be no giving without the receiving.
Tags:
No comments:
Post a Comment