This is for my friend, Linda. She’s been involved with a man for about 15-16 years, and even though she keeps thinking she should just walk completely away, they can’t leave each other. When she first saw him there were no sparks nothing except that she felt sorry for him a bit because he looked so beaten down. Sometimes this relationship has been so very good and helpful to one or both of them, and other times it has been very destructive and harmful. But always it seems to keep somehow moving her in a direction she was meant to go. Do you feel he will always be in this life with her? When she gets an image of her future with someone, it is always him. Does she actively do something about either ending or changing the relationship? For Linda.
Thank you for your note. The inconsistency you speak of regarding on again off again feelings about this man are evident immediately as I journey. An aspect of Linda, dressed impeccably in a dark dress suit, air of authority and class pervading her every gesture, is sitting in a dingy bar. She carries a drink and moves from bar, table to table, talking with various guys, being her incredibly charming and amazing self. She seems greatly out of place in these surroundings, and although her confident allure would seem to seduce any of the bar’s inhabitants, not one of the men is giving her the time of day. After a few minutes of observing her, I go sit with her at a table. As soon as I do, she lights up and grabs my hand. I am immediately aware of a feminine archetypal imbalance that is somehow affecting how she comes across to men, and in how she holds her own power. She, for all practical purposes, is so focused on holding her masculine power, that she eclipses her feminine power. As a result of that she’s not attracting men as she would like, but she doesn’t understand why.
I tell her that Linda in waking has asked me to learn more about her relationship with Tom, and she releases my hand rather curtly, and says, “O him.” She stands abruptly and goes back over to the bar. I ask her to talk to me about him, and she tells me there is nothing to talk about. I tell her that if she will tell me her concern about him, Linda in waking can resolve whatever the issues around him is, and she won’t have to get angry just from his name being brought up.
She’s a little annoyed with me at first, but then this aspect of Linda tells me that Linda in waking holds on to Tom, a guy who isn’t really sure of his place in the world, because that is the closest she has come to touching her own feminine power. There is a real love/hate thing happening with regard to feminine power in this aspect. Not only does this Linda see the feminine quality of power as weak, as she chooses not to embody that in herself, but she recognizes the need for it somewhere in her life, so she tries to incorporate it with frail men. This isn’t just about the quality of man she chooses, but it is about the dynamic of choosing frail men, as well. In other words, there is a self-fulfilled victim-like cycle happening here, and this Linda is thriving on that feminine soap opera drama these relationships bring her. In the short term they feed her feminine lack, but in the long term bring her masculine side that much more out of balance. And she knows she has Tom, whom she perceives as a sort of whipping boy, yet here she is at this bar full of men ‘beneath her status’, looking for a more suitable match. She knows it isn’t working. It’s in these bar moments that Linda in waking knows she needs and wants better. This cycle isn’t about Tom, or even that relationship. It’s about a woman who doesn’t fully hold her part of the Divine Feminine, and to compensate for that looks for her feminine power on an ego level in “broken” men.
When I ask this aspect of Linda what she really wants, she cries and tells me that she wants to feel ok being a little girl, that she never felt like she had an energetic opportunity to grow up as a female in this realm. For whatever reason, she at a very young age abandoned the part of her life force that is feminine, and developed her masculine energy instead. I don’t sense a trauma around this, just a very subtle decision to improve self however necessary for success and setting all of life, including relationships, up to meet this end. The choice was made with the highest intent, though short-sighted in how it would affect her Whole. This Linda indicates having gone through all the regular physical and emotional transitions that females do, but not truly connected to the power and spiritual initiations those experiences held. Puberty was empty. Menstruation onset was routine if not intrusive. Moving into dating and early relationships was a tribulation and even then not attracting the attention she really wanted. Seeing herself and her life as having been the experiences of a Goddess was missing, and still is.
What is exemplary is that this Linda has mastered holding masculine power, albeit not manifesting it in the most healthy way. Nonetheless, she has mastered it and in realizing that can hold that power better, and use the foundation from it to support bringing in the feminine balance. In essence, this Linda has never attracted a “strong” man, because she already was that for herself. But the men she has attracted have reflected her own lack of feminine power development. They have been reflecting back to her the qualities of herself that she has most wanted to change.
Part of this imbalance will shift just by Linda acknowledging her divinity as a significant feminine creature. Not just to validate the experiences of her life as one who has grown of her own accord, one who has met her goals, etc, but that she is a feminine force on this planet who possesses the ability to root here as a being who honors her masculine and feminine power. Some time spent in her own meditative approaches with the focus of bringing the Divine Feminine into her life force, waking her own femininity and letting that move through her form will raise her wellbeing, overall. As well, some chakra work, such as fire breathing and yoga, will really draw that kundalini energy upward and inward. Her clarity of thought will improve, as well as remove the need for bar episodes. Linda knows what she wants, and working with herself mind, body, soul, and emotion to bring that power in will manifest it. Doing this kind of work, when she looks in human mirrors, she will see the parts of herself and that person that are well, that have managed to find each other to share that wellbeing. Be well!
