Masculinity, Femininity, Oppression and Balance

by Tom Hemphill

Dr. John told about the time when the human being was first being developed – the Biblical Adam and Eve. Although spiritual beings are complete, wholly male and wholly female, it was determined that human beings – the physical expression of a soul in the material world – would do better if they incarnated with two distinct sets of skills. This is the basis for what we know as “male and female.”

The traits and abilities that we call “male” are those that enable the human to survive and prosper in physical life. These traits include adaptability, physical strength, competitiveness, mental focus, rational thought, and bravery. The traits and abilities that we call “feminine” are those that keep us linked to our greater spiritual reality, to our Source. The feminine traits include integrity, love, compassion, wisdom, cooperation, intuition, and nurturing.

All of us incarnate spiritual beings include elements of both masculine and feminine, of course, regardless of whether our human body is male or female. However, this distinction of traits is really quite important. If there were only coping-with-physical-life (masculine) skills, the human would be simply another animal among the animals – not an incarnated portion of God’s own Beingness. If there were only connecting-with-our-spiritual-reality (feminine) abilities, the human race would surely never have survived the harsh rigors of life in the physical.

This division of humankind’s energy into coping-with-earth living skills and connecting-to-the-Divine skills is purposeful. Moreover, Dr. John tells us, it was seen that because of the great difficulty of life in the physical world, for the early part of humanity’s existence – for thousands of years – it would be necessary for the masculine aspects of humanity to be much stronger than the feminine.

Clearly, the masculine traits are not “better” or more to be valued than feminine. Rather, they needed to be emphasized during this early phase of getting humanity well established in earth-living. This division and priority has made the human race quite unbalanced for the past 10,000-plus years; but it was seen that this imbalance could be addressed later, when the physical demands of earth living were not so overwhelming.

It is important for those of us who would be spiritual teachers and leaders to understand this simple history. The division into masculine and feminine was necessary and purposeful. Making masculinity the more dominant set of traits - with the consequence that spirits incarnate in male bodies would be generally dominant over spiritual beings incarnate in female bodies - was also purposeful, as it enabled human-kind to survive and grow, and created the human potential for that which is to come.

However, it was never intended that this imbalance, with all of its challenges and problems, was to be permanent. Rather, it is an introductory phase of human life, the life of spirit-incarnate-in-matter.

We often speak of our time in human history, right now – the completion of the 20^th century and the beginning of the 21^st century – as the time when the historic imbalance between masculine and feminine energy will be addressed. Various ancient wisdom schools and traditions predicted this. Dr. John spoke directly and clearly that this is so. The time for rebalancing is upon us.

It is important to remember, of course, that the agenda now is one of balancing. Much that is written and taught in spiritual circles and New Age essays highlights the feminine to the exclusion of the masculine. To shift from an unhealthy and unsustainable imbalance favoring masculinity, and to go to an unhealthy and unsustainable imbalance favoring femininity is to truly miss the point. The point of the transition we are in is not to switch to a different imbalance, but to move from imbalance to balance – an important step toward spiritual wholeness.

Understandably, there is a feeling among many spiritual women that “our time has come.” There is a kind of truth in this, although it is easy to confuse the presence of feminine energy in the world with the presence of spiritual beings in female bodies. That is, feminine energy belongs to all of us (as does masculine energy). What is needed is not for feminine energy to replace masculine energy, but for each of us – women and men – to honor and express that which is feminine within us, and within all human societies.

One of the challenges I face personally is that of synthesizing my spiritual learning with my professional work among people living in poverty, especially overseas. It is helpful to remember that this process of honoring and balancing the feminine goes beyond “feel good” and chanting to the Goddess. It goes beyond women in leadership in America or Europe. It must go beyond a pleasantly “spiritual” orientation, and become practical in the lives of women and men, worldwide.

It is a lovely expression of spiritual energy that more and more people are now aware of the feminine side of God, and wonderful spiritual women are discovering and creating rituals, prayers and music to help us see, know and embrace God/Goddess in all Her radiant beauty.

It is an equally needed expression of spiritual energy that we seek to change the opinions, assumptions and traditions of human societies and cultures, particularly the “traditional societies” so that all women can be treated fairly, equally, compassionately and justly. Women are indeed different from men – as was purposed. But it is no longer acceptable that we – or they themselves – accept them as inferior to men.

We in the wealthy countries easily forget that the vast majority of humanity still lives in relatively primitive conditions. Billions of people lack the most basic amenities – secure homes, safe drinking water, adequate food, access to medicines and health care, education, jobs, political freedom, freedom from domestic violence and sexual abuse, and freedom from war and oppression.

Perhaps more importantly, those who suffer most because of this human blight are women and girls. Throughout the world, by every measure – income, access to jobs, education, personal safety, personal freedom, etc. – women suffer far more than men.

Only fairly recently have we begun even making “gender equity” an issue for foreign aid or UN development programs. For decades the bulk of our humanitarian aid, our spending for “economic development” and “systemic change” has in fact reinforced the millennia-old system of men getting most of the benefits (and credit) while women do most of the actual work.

One reason why the decades-long initiatives to “eradicate poverty” have made so little real progress is because the bulk of our “foreign aid” and charitable giving goes to men who, mostly unwittingly, reinforce their societal systems of injustice and oppression against women. Until our aid is focussed on the upliftment of women and girls, neither men nor women will benefit enough – and our money will be poorly spent.

Many women in developing countries will tell you that the greatest damage – and the greatest challenge – is not even in the daily inequities of poorer and fewer resources for girls and women, compared to boys and men. What is worse than this is the assumption in so many societies that this imbalance, this cruel injustice, is as it should be.

Throughout the world, in every continent and in virtually every religion and culture, there is an undercurrent of thought, assumption and emotion that accepts and defends this male-dominant, female-abusive human system. Throughout the world, those who challenge this injustice are told that “this is how it has always been,” or “this is what our sacred texts or our religious leaders require of us,” or “this is what is best for the nation,” or “this is the way of our culture, our people.”

Surely, the greatest tragedy of all is that women throughout the world also believe it. Women in every culture are taught that this is “their place,” as though a wise and loving Goddess willingly made half of the human race inferior to the other half. When women truly believe that they are inferior to men, they teach this to their sons and daughters, and the cycle continues.

Today, if a public speaker in America declared that African Americans are essentially inferior to Americans of European descent, he would be rejected and scorned by all thinking people of all races. Yet, we so often blindly propagate the same ridiculous and false assumption about the inferiority of women, and see no irony in it.

The most oppressed and unjustly abused class of people worldwide is not defined by race, religion or nationality, but by gender. Indeed, we mistreat our own mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, and this is accepted. And, worst of all, humanity’s collective rejection of women as being inferior is seen by so many of us - women as well as men - as being acceptable.

Is this changing? Of course it is. Women in every country, race, religion and culture are speaking out, attacking the old ways, demanding their rights, and protecting their daughters. Yet, every gain - every new law or shift in public thinking, every barrier broken or consciousness raised – points painfully to the millions more gains still waiting in pain to be addressed.

At the heart of the balancing of feminine with masculine in human societies is not simply electing women to high public offices, nor “allowing” them to climb to high levels in industry or the military or academia. These things are well and good. But the greater challenge is to bring the most simple, everyday, practical rights to women and girls throughout the so-called Third World or “developing countries.”

When our sisters in Africa, Asia and Latin America, in Eastern Europe and in the slums of large American cities are seen as our equals – and treated accordingly – then the real balancing of masculine and feminine energy will become a transformation of the human race.

It is tempting to be content to talk about “women’s issues” and pray to “the Goddess” instead of a masculine God and raise our own daughters to be strong and self-confident, and leave it at that. But is not enough.

For most women alive in 2003, their plight is little changed from decades and even centuries past. Consistently treated as second-class citizens, they accept their place of rejection, injustice and abuse.

The women of the rest of the world lack shelter, education, food, health care, jobs, political rights and equal treatment in their societies. Men in developing countries lack these things also, of course, but virtually everywhere, the suffering of women and the injustices done to women are far greater than those of men.

For example, there is more war in more places in the world today than at any other time in human history. What is “new” in the last half century is that today, the majority of those hurt or killed by warfare are not combatants but civilians - and the majority of those hurt and killed are women and children. This was not the case in the past. Wars were fought by the men, often in order to protect their womenfolk. It is in our “modern” time, in the last 50 years, that this has shifted.

I believe that at a fundamental, practical level, this is what the re-balancing of masculine and feminine energy is about. When we know that we are, each of us, a whole spiritual being, and that we all incarnate in both male and female bodies, and that each of us, regardless of our human sexual expression, is a wonderful, whole completeness of both masculine and feminine qualities, then perhaps we will begin to look at each other and not see “us” separate from “them,” but will finally see what has always been true. There is no “them.” There is only “us.”

The suffering of women and children throughout the world will stop when we know it to be our own suffering. Their abuse, shame and loss are our abuse, our shame, our loss.

As long as the vicious abuse of women and girls throughout the world, and especially in traditional societies, continues as it is, humankind will continue to remain in a self-imposed dark age of spiritual blindness. Until this “imbalance” of the human race is healed, none of us humans will be truly healed, nor whole, nor at one with our Goddess.

When the balancing of masculine and feminine energy in each of us and in all of us is truly accomplished, we will know it not by the accomplishments of our own daughters but by the equity and compassion with which all of God’s incarnate daughters are treated. Truly, their healing shall be our healing.

May it be so!