Yin & Yang
Everything is energy. The ‘her’ of Herstory is therefore about the feminine energy and the two primal forces of the universe, yin and yang, which translates into gender, among other things. The foundation of life is the polarity of yin and yang, black and white, feminine and masculine. Every person has to deal with the eternal inner dynamic between these two forces.
‘fixing’ by being, not doing
‘The Sacred Union’
on earth
Every moment is a sacred union between the feminine and masculine energy within youself. Between dark and light. Between unconscious and conscious. Sometimes we experience more darkness, sometimes more light depending on your thoughts and feelings. Our history has been a period of mostly dark, a feeling of imbalance, of not feeling whole, of separation as a result because our ego was in power and our sexuality became full of guilt and shame.
‘God dwells within you, as you.’ Life doesn’t exclude anything. It is the expercience of separation and the experience of unity. Both ways of being, separation and unity complement each other and even need each other, otherwise they end up in your shadow and you will experience unbalance (Shadow is whatever part of you you have disowned – by choosing instead to identify with its opposite.).
We are all part of the body of God(dess), while we are differentiated enough that we can have the experience of being separate from each other. We are one, alive and thriving as two. On the one hand we live as humans on earth where we think, feel our body, tell each other stories and experience love by becoming one with another. On the other had we are godlike, consciousness and love is our essence as in heaven, where we’re always one: both duality and nonduality are the dance of love.
Together the feminine and the masculine create heaven or hell. Heaven on earth (in your body) is when you identify with both.
This happens naturally. It is not something we have to do from our ego. It comes from living life. Life ‘fixes’ or better changes itself, a different flow, a new turn. ‘Too much’ male ego energy for a long time creates space for female energy. And vice versa. The famous psychiatrist Jung calls this enantiodromia as “the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time”. Things happen at the right time and in the right way. I don’t have to save life just as you because life saves itself. And from the perspective of life, nothing needs to be saved, because life is innocent.
Embodying the sacred union is a process of deepening the relationship with yourself. That’s where everything begins and ends. And your partner, she or he, will reflect this deeper relationship. That will follow naturally as a result of waking up, ‘being and becoming whole’.
Every human being is both infinitely different from and inextricably connected to everything and everyone
Just the Two of Us III, It’s an oil painting from the heart of Africa of a happy couple done in passionate reds and pink.
Duality – polarity of yin and yang
‘Masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are two opposing and complementary primordial forces that we find in many great philosophies and cultures. A well-known example is yin and yang from Taoism. According to the ancient Chinese representation, the movement of all-encompassing nature (heaven, earth and everything that is and lives on them) is controlled by the forces of yin and yang. This also applies to humans. The interaction between these two gives life to all and together they form the circle of life.
Yin is the feminine, passive, receptive, and self-centered principle. Yang is the masculine, active, outward and outward-looking principle. Yin is connected to the here and now, can accept and trust, knowing that her flame will burn forever. The feminine is focused on emotional contact and connection with the other. Yang stands for action, decisiveness, courage and getting results. The masculine wants to distinguish itself and experiences itself as an autonomous being.
The masculine and feminine principles consist of numerous seemingly opposite but complementary pairs with the same active basic pattern of masculine – expansion – outward directed and a feminine – contraction – inward directed part.
Yin & Yang
Female & Male
Black & White
Moon & Sun
Dark & Light
Feeling & Thinking
Being & Doing
Intuition & Ratio
From opposition to unity
We often tend to see the two poles purely as opposites. Just by the choice of words ‘opposition’ you notice that a position is chosen (a statement) from a conscious or unconscious choice that one is good and the other less good. At that point, two extremes emerge that are incompatible. Struggle is often the result of a dualistic view.
In the ancient Taoist worldview, yin and yang are not so much seen as duality. They are polar: they are two opposites that belong inseparably together. They are not opposed to each other but together form one whole, the Tao. They are, in fact, two sides of the same thing, of the same nondual unity, only in a different degree. Non-duality assumes that everything and everyone is inextricably linked, is one whole. Take heat and cold. They are temperatures, there is only a difference in gradation.
Yin and yang is therefore a false opposite, in reality it is a unity. We are a unit; we carry both poles within us. We are the light and the dark we try to avoid. The light is not ashamed of the dark and vice versa. Life doesn’t think one is more sacred than the other. Because of our yang past, we have developed a preference for growth, for progress, for light over dark, so that we identify strongly with the light and want to overcome the dark. If all this aspiration disappears, we can just be there.
This is also reflected in the yin yang symbol: the outer circle represents ‘everything’ while the black and white shapes within the circle represent the interaction between the two energies. They cannot exist without each other and balance each other out. Both halves are the same size and there is a piece of yin in yang and a piece of yang in yin. They are not completely black or white, just as things in life are not completely black or white.
Poles are thus two parts of a unit. – think of the North and South Poles of the Earth. Polarities are in relationship. You could say that dualities have separated themselves from each other and do not want to enter into the relationship based on the idea that their position is the only correct one. As long as you look at something from the perspective of duality, it is static and there is a ‘problem’. If you look from the point of view of unity – if you can see the poles – there is an understanding and consequently a dynamic. Without a positive and negative pole, there is no electric current or without pressure differences, there is no wind. Acceptance of and respect for both poles leads to a more neutral attitude and balance.
“Whatever appears in your life - don’t reject it. Whatever leaves your life - don’t hold on to it.”
Tulku Lobsang Rinpoche - Buddhist master and teacher
Attachment - Detachment
” For six years I’ve been longing for a man, so I know what relationship attachment is. It seemed impossible to give him up, to detach myself from him. I needed him to fill up on a part of myself, to replenish it. He mirrored a feeling of incompleteness in myself, a patriarchal separate consciousness, a collective wound or freeze in women and men about their sexuality which came along with a world where the mother goddess wasn’t visible.
The feeling of incompleteness that he touched, he also seemed to fill perfectly. He seemed to complement me on those sides that were still somewhat unconscious in me. This will make you feel dependent on the other person. Eckhart Tolle has a wonderful saying about this: “If you look at anything or anyone to fulfill yourself, you will find pain in it.” Everything relaxes within you when you no longer push or grab anything and focus on your ego desires. Focus instead on savoring the experience while it is still present. Because in every gain lies the seed of loss. In every love lies the seed of greef. In every birth lies the seed of death. “
Anna Beerepoot – founder Herstory
Unconditionally present
“Rest in what is unconditionally present, that which the experience knows and sees, even in painful experiences. When you connect with love itself, you see everything as a perfect expression of consiousness. I have more than 20 years experience with being unconditionally present, especially in difficult circumstances. That’s how I transformed my anxiety and dependency in love in free love by embracing and living my sexuality, my feelings and longings.”
The Path of Sacred Sexuality - to Free Love
” The path of sacred sexuality is to develop a sacred or whole relationship with the whole of life. We are always love, pure energy, but through the path we walk we also become aware of that love, we experience it. No more attachments, no more needing others to like you.
We experience that true love is pure freedom. If you really love someone, open the cage and release them. Not because you don’t love them, but because if love isn’t given freely, without conditions, it’s not really love. It is fear disguised as love.
True, authentic love is pure. It is freely given and received freely. There is no manipulation, no plans to get what you want, no secrets or hidden agendas, no attachment to outcomes or how your partner should please you.”
Equality of the feminine and masculine
Dynamische Balans
At “Herstory, we know that a good balance between the feminine and the masculine brings harmony and prosperity; A bad balance brings disaster. This balance can be applied to all levels of life: from cultures as a whole to the individual level. At the level of culture, this balance is necessary, because overvaluing one principle leads to a disturbance of the balance. For example, the feminine resides in our welfare state where, in the event of too much pampering and solidarity, the individual responsibilities are compromised. Too much emphasis on the masculine leads to a culture that is focused on deeds, where stagnation is regression and short-term success takes precedence over long-term continuity.
We also need balance ourselves in order to unwind and live a meaningful life. For example, too much of the feminine can lead to you not having any boundaries or that you do not dare to confront. Conversely, too much of the masculine can cause a person to become blunt, angular, or self-centered.
You could say that people’s personal development depends on the degree of integration of these two elements within ourselves.
Both men and women have a masculine, outward-looking part and a feminine, inward-looking part within them. The polarity is also reflected in all our relationships, in woman-man relationships and also in relationships between two women or between two men. Yin and yang is not about the cultural image we have of women and men, but about two archetypes, two primal dynamics of the soul.
The well-known yin-yang symbol from Taoism shows a dark and light field, where the dark part contains a point of light and the light part contains a dark point. In the symbol you can see that the complementary pairs work together in a constant rise and fall and thus create a dynamic equilibrium. From this dynamic and harmonic balance of yin and yang comes new life.
In a yang/male-dominated world like the one we have had for a long time, the yang masculine traits are seen as good and the yin feminine traits as bad. In our judgment, one is better than the other. Life itself does not know that judgment and does not separate, that is what our minds do. The yin yang symbol shows that both forces are needed, just like in nature for pollination and fertilization. That it is not the masculine that conquers the feminine, the light the dark, but that both poles are present in ourselves and necessary to exist at all. It is the interaction between the two, between yin and yang, that gives life to everything.
This love is innocent, effortless and joyful because the pain of separteness of your shadow (thinking – ego) is transformed into the joy of unity and separation of your light (being and feeling). You now express a connection with both the cosmos and ‘the other’ as well as with your own body-mind. Sacred love & sexuality. When we explore ourselves, it turns out that in what we have rejected lies an enormous potential of strength, possibilities and love. More and more you feel the unconditioned love that you originally are, including its intimacy. This love or freedom can never be misused, nor can I take your freedom with mine. Being and becoming one with the Beloved, this refers to both earthly love and a higher power.
In this way, the perceived imbalance between the feminine and the masculine principle and, by extension, between women and men can be restored. From resistance and fear to cooperation, equivalence and balance between the poles. Our relationships will reflect this deeper relationship with ourselves.
Life itself is always in balance
At the same time life is always in balance. It is good to realize that what can be healed and liberated is only the ego story of our ‘I’ living. Separateness and imbalance only exist in our thoughts, not in who we are. The mind creates duality and the mind causes suffering. Only in this story can we grow, develop and learn lessons to coincide with who we essentially are, while we always have been. Yet thinking is also an inseparable part of our humanity. Or do you want an animal consciousness? The journey is necessary to experience our full range of being human. We are our true selves not only at the final destination of our story, but we experience ourselves every moment in our lives. That’s what life is. That’s what you are. Experiencing yourself here and now, as sad, as full of life, as asexual, as sexy, as… Healing our thoughts and conditions starts from the wholeness that we have always been. One of life’s wonderful apparent contradictions.
The bridge
‘Sacred love & sexuality’ is therefore not about sex at its core, but about the attraction between the two poles within ourselves, yin and yang, about deepening the relationship with yourself and transcending the opposites. It’s about bringing into our consciousness the pure love energy that we always are. Both poles. For people with a yin consciousness, also yang. For people with a yang consciousness, also yin. Through our being and feeling, because that is the bridge between the formless love energy and a form/reality/world we desire. Our desire takes shape.
Sacred Union
Hieros Gamos
Deepening the relationship with yourself: a whole relationship with yourself and all life
We are love, and sexuality is our fuel. Life as a dance of love, as a heart-based marriage between our inner woman and man. Together they are always in balance as an expression of unconditional love, even though it often doesn’t feel that way at all. In the spirituality of the Great Mother the sacred union is the result of the union between the masculine and the feminine principle, between heaven and earth, between being love and feeling love in yourself.
Every spiritual path is a path from ‘love’ to ‘love’, to another experience of ‘love’. You could say, it is a path about the unlearning of fear, but fear is also an expression of ‘love’. The path I walk is from experiencing my shadow and neediness to experiencing my light and my own sexual desires. This is quite a journey, while still remaining in the love of my being. That’s why I would say it is a path about embodying the love that you are.
All is one, but we experience two
You let go of your shadow parts in a process of awareness, love and vulnerability. From the love of your being, which you always are, you grow into a feeling of becoming one because the neediness, resistance and guilt you experience with others is completely put into the light. You surrender to all the fears, insecurities and beliefs that influence you from your shadow and that determine your identity. You live through and feel your ego needs, wounds and traumas. It can then feel as if you are completely out of balance energetically.
All is one.
I see the beauty of myself reflected in the eyes of the ‘other’. He who loves me. How precious, how beautiful am I. A result of awakening is the understanding that there is no self and there are no others. The natural result is loving all that is, as it is. To embrace the totality of life. Both poles within ourselves, the male & female energy.
Experience a body
There is no self and at the same time, you do experience a self, a body, thinking, feeling with it’s own inner drive, preferences and sexual longings.
Fusion of divinity and humanity
Love is ‘a state of being’ – being love and an experience – feeling love: the two faces of God(dess). In the fusion and equivalence of ‘being love’ of our divinity and ‘feeling love’ of our humanity we experience the love that we are in our body. We embody the love that we are. Because we love all the life inside us and this is reflected in the world outside.
Jesus and Mary Magdalen, Kilmore church.
The Mother as a gateway to life (we-power)
The mother mirrors the feminine side of our human nature and culture. Your inner woman. The yin pool is carried more by women and projected onto women.
“I am the feminine, passive, receiving, inward-looking principle and non-physical self, the soul, love or life. In me lives yin energy, an energy of not having to, but moving with the flow. I am connected to the here and now, can accept and trust.
I listen, I am patient, knowing that the warmth of my eternal flame will always burn. I am focused on emotional contact and connection with the other. My essence is unity. That which is outside of me is also within me. I say, ‘I’m connected to you’. I also say: ‘I am equal to you’. I see everything as equal. My consciousness is oriented towards the group, towards being part of the greater whole. I trust my inner guidance. I’m connected to nature.”
The mother is about the feminine in you, or in other words, your inner woman. It’s about contraction, involution, creating matter out of energy. She teaches us to be non-judgmental, surrender, not-knowing, trust, acceptance.
The Father as a gateway to the world (I as individual- power)
The father mirrors the masculine side of our human nature and culture. Your inner man. The yang pole is carried more by men and projected onto men.
“I am the masculine, active, outgoing, outward-looking principle and physical self, the ‘I’, the self-image or personality. Yang energy lives in me, my fire wants to burn, create, penetrate. I am alert, stand for action, decisiveness, courage and getting results. I’d like to make a plan, approach things rationally.
Standing up for myself. Improving myself. Manifesting myself. My essence is duality. That which is outside of me is not me. I say, ‘I’m not you’. I also say: ‘I am better than you’ (superior), or ‘I am less than you’ (inferior). My consciousness is oriented towards the individual, towards the ‘I’. I trust my thinking, knowledge, and reason. I am connected to the spirit. “
The father is about the masculine in you, or in other words, your inner man. It’s about expansion, evolution, creating energy from matter. He teaches us to be autonomous, to set boundaries, to take responsibility, to take care of ourselves.
The (un)safety of darkness
Example: dark into light
The power of darkness
The power of darkness is that it protects. It protects life that needs the safety of the dark. In every cycle of life there is a dark moment, a moment of silence, of not being visible. Seeds have to go into the black soil in order to be able to bud in the spring. New life can only emerge after a period of being hidden, in egg or womb. Each phase during a cycle is necessary to form the whole and has its own qualities. The time in the darkness (just like in the womb) is a time to heal and allow yourself to be born again.
The womb
You start your life in the dark. Your mother’s belly is connected to your belly via the umbilical cord. You take the warmth and safety of her belly with you into your own belly. When you feel safe in your own belly, you feel safe everywhere. You are grounded. For many people, however, the abdomen is not the place of strength but of fear. A kind of permanent cramping, a constant feeling of insecurity.
What started in your mother’s womb where worries and tensions from generations are passed on to you. This is how trauma and fear of life arise. It makes life a struggle, against the grain. Do you feel welcome or do you feel fear and resistance there?
'the Feminine' in our Subconscious
In a world in which we are mainly familiar with ‘the masculine’, ‘the feminine’ disappeared into our subconscious
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