20-12-2020
Question: What is your idea around integrating the warrior-yang energy in the post-modern spiritual education of young people? Primordial energies related to power, will, life drives…they are so often placed in shadow.
Answer: Gender is different from sex. Sex is given biologically while gender is self-generated or “en-gendered.” In the process of integrating the primordial masculine/yang and feminine/yin energies in our spiritual self-development program, we transform, transmute, or transubstantiate sexual energies to engender our own self, being, and consciousness consistent with our sex.
Spiritually developed, well-integrated mature individuals, regardless of their physical sex, have integrated both of the masculine and feminine energetic aspects in the engendered constitution of their being and consciousness.
What is the essence of masculinity (‘yang’)? What is the essence of femininity (‘yin’)? What does it mean to integrate the masculine energy and the feminine energy for men and for women of the post-post-modern age?
We cannot in the real sense look at and think about masculinity or femininity separate from or independent of the other, even as we cannot conceive of matter and motion separately from one another. In fact, the inseparability of matter-motion can be viewed as the primordial binary yin-yang/feminine-masculine complementarity of the cosmos. (Matter/Material = Mother/Maternal; Motion/Pattern = Father/Paternal.)
That is to say, nothing is ever purely one hundred per cent masculine or feminine; every existent, individually and in combination, consists of a varying proportion of the masculine and feminine elements that are coextensive and coterminous. When applied to the humans, in this sense, we are all “androgynous (combined male and female/yin and yang energies)” to a varying degree.
The characteristic features that are ascribed to the masculine, such as the “primordial energies related to power, will, life drives,” indicate only the preponderance of the masculine element or energy within the binary totality (of the masculine and feminine) that constitutes a living human being.
In order for a masculine preponderance to create a balanced complementarity, there needs to be a feminine preponderance in another aspect of being within the totality of a human being. Further, the masculine preponderance in one aspect of being should not become extreme; that is, it should remain to be dominant (preponderant) but not dominating (oppressive of the other element).
Post-modern extremist feminist orientation emasculated men and defeminized women through the disintegration of masculinity in men and the misintegration of masculinity in women. As the result, men have become unnecessarily softened and thus weakened, while women have become unnaturally hardened and thus weakened.
What is the essence of masculinity as represented by the warrior-yang energy? It is the strength of character that is expressed as courage, valor, and fortitude. It is the spiritual essence, the true spirit, of the samurai warrior characterized by his indestructible inner peace and resolve arising from his real inner strength.
To integrate the masculine energy in men’s and women’s spiritual development and evolution means to transmute it to a mental-spiritual force that becomes the moral and spiritual character strength as experienced and expressed as courage, valor, and fortitude.
The same applies to the feminine energy: To integrate the feminine energy in men’s and women’s spiritual development means to transmute it to a mental-spiritual force that becomes the moral and spiritual character strength as experienced and expressed as tenderheartedness, kindness, and compassion.
The true samurai warrior has both courage and compassion, both valor and tenderheartedness, and both fortitude and kindness, for one cannot integrate the masculine without integrating the feminine if the integration is to be authentic, balanced, and transmutationally engendering.
The physical sexual difference plays a decisive role in the engendering of selfhood as a man or woman. Living in this physical world, a man lives with a male physical body and a woman with a female physical body, which significantly colors many aspects of their experiences in life. For instance, in sexual relationship, the man is the penetrator while the woman is the penetrated, and this difference has a deep impact on their psychological differences.
We are all simply reproduced through our parents. It is we each alone who can give birth to his or her own authentic self. This giving birth to oneself is what transformational self-engendering means, which in turn entails one’s gender-engendering in which one transmutatively integrates both the masculine and feminine energies. We are all only reproduced as male or female sexes; we engender and give birth to our own self as a man or a woman.
Post-modern spirituality (and culture) has devalued morality and ethics, in large part owing to its relativistic orientation to morality and ethics and to its predilection and propensity towards over-psychologizing, and as a result lost sight of the critical importance and essential role of the moral and ethical character development in the whole evolutionary process of integral human spiritual development.
Moral and ethical character development is an essential evolutionary stream within the whole integral developmental stream of spiritual self-development. What is the post-postmodern or “cosmodern” integral morality-ethics, or moral-ethical character development? What is the post-postmodern or cosmodern integral self-engendering through which to transmutationally integrate the masculine and feminine energies?
The spiritual essence of the transmuted masculine energy is the conscious detachment to that which is impermanent and transitory and the authentic loyalty to that which is permanent or eternal held categorically higher in value than his own self and life which is impermanent and transitory. This essence expresses itself as courage, valor, fortitude, loyalty, and integrity.
The difference between the medieval samurai and the post-post-modern samurai is the difference in what he considers himself to be, his self-identity, which is impermanent, and in what he deems to be categorically higher in value than his impermanent self and life.
The spiritual essence of the transmuted feminine energy is the conscious attendance and loyalty to that which is impermanent and transitory in the light of Love that is uncreated, unconditional, and eternal. This essence is expressed as tenderheartedness, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and warmth.
The feminine energy is felt to have come from the higher source, the eternal, while the masculine energy is felt to move towards the higher source, the eternal. In this regard, I find it interesting and instructive that Goethe ends FAUST with the following lines:
All past the humanly
Wrought here in love;
The Eternal-Womanly
Draws us above.