Day 34/366 days Towards Self-Mastery. Mood: driven
The inner goddess needs to call on her masculine aspects to assert her feminine qualities. There really is no logical argument that supports the development of feminine qualities over masculine, or the reverse.
The problem with personifying these energetic concepts is that it sends us down the wrong path altogether of which calls to embrace our inner goddess is symptomatic.
It's common to identify yin energies with the feminine principle. The qualities are akin to meandering, flowing, yielding, deep water, stillness, going within, the internal, the interior, intuitive.
Yang energies are personified as masculine. Direct, solid, hard, active, energetic, fast, lively, external, forward, assertive, physicality, logic are aspects that would be considered yang.
Sarah suggests today to go within and find your inner goddess
Discover your authentic self.
Embrace your inner goddess. Watch, wait, catch glimpses of her. And while we wait, think and pray. And laugh more often.
What Sarah is alluding to here is to go behind the masks that you wear to feel comfortable in the world, and find the inner you who's not yet ready to emerge in real time. The secret you that has longings and desires that aren't yet met because it doesn't feel safe to show up with those qualities.
For women, the qualities that are stereotypically absent are those most associated with yang energies, for all sorts of reasons that boil down to family and social conditioning.
As women assert themselves more in their yang qualities, they logically begin to demand more recognition of their abilities. These might include their ability to process deeply considered reflections in complex situations to find creative solutions, intuitive responses from a deep inner knowing, insisting on support for the meandering career path that they have to navigate once they have children. This requires them to have the strength (yang) to express their nurturing and creative (yin) aspects more openly.
This I think, is where the inner goddess concept originated. The encouragement for women to express those secret desires necessitates achieving this through the development of their yang aspects, their ability to assert themselves.
That's looking a whole lot like we have to access our inner masculine to get that Inner Goddess out there.
And for those women who have had to predominately draw on yang energies as I did, the yin energies are undernourished.
Many men experience undernourished yin energies as well.
This incidentally has nothing to do with sex or gender. In my case my yang energies were well developed, I am ambitious, have a ton of drive, quick thinking and fast on my feet. I am sex female, and identify as gender female.
Men who have undeveloped yin energies will find it difficult to express their inner most feelings, or even to have access to them. They'll struggle with accessing their deep inner knowing, their intuitive responses, and look to logic and science to solve every problem. They'll use force and a hard line whenever they're challenged, and may struggle to navigate a collaborative solution.
We all need a good balance of both yin and yang energies developed in our psyche. If I am leading a team and we are working on a project together I need to be able to reflect on what my team is achieving, take a considered approach to the team capabilities, be alert to inner signals of pending problems, and compassionately accommodate delays that are unavoidable if one of my team misses a curved ball. All yin qualities. I also need to have drive, be action oriented, have a solid commitment, be assertive, and act with speed to meet deadlines. All yang qualities.
Nowadays we speak of soft skills. Again, I think this is an attempt to define those yin qualities of which there has been a dearth in the business world. If there's one thing that yin energies are not, it is soft.
To develop either aspect of your psyche will take some deep inner reflection, a yin quality. It takes courage, a yang quality. It takes drive, yang, persistence, yin, and a commitment to stillness, yin and yang.
So with all that in mind, and putting your inner goddess aside, who's there lurking behind your outer presentation that's waiting, longing to be seen?
366 days Towards Self-Mastery
When I considered my New Year's intentions for 2020 I had just one: To allow my heart to love what it loved...and let it lead me. (If not now, then when?)
I've spent months working on integrating my life. To live life more fully with my home life, my interests, my work, my responsibilities, all coming together, all connected. I want to give each the attention that they desire and need, and still have time and energy for the others. That means living and working from the heart.
As I was clearing out my bookshelf over the Christmas break I discovered Simple Abundance. I set it aside to explore it on New Year's Day as I lazed through another delicious day of nothingness. Sarah, the author, says this book is about living in grace. Living in grace I realised, is about Self-Mastery.
My thirst for understanding the human condition has driven me all my life, and hand-in-hand with self-mastery it has been a life-long goal. And seeing as I love to write, that living in grace is about self-mastery, and I love a bit of a challenge, then if I am truly going to let my heart lead, I really don't have any other choice. So scary as it feels, I'm starting out on a daily mission of leaning into the suggestions of this daybook and making a daily post to keep me accountable. If not now, then when?
I'm Josie. You can find out a little more about me here.
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy: by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
This book is written for the Australian and NZ market because it refers to seasonal changes. It's available on Amazon here if you'd like to follow along.