The Inner Marriage

Auteur

Elliott Saxby spent six years in an ecovillage and was influenced by Buddhism before traveling to Asia, where he studied yoga, massage, and Taoist and Tantric practices. The founder of the School of Energetic Bodyworks, Elliott teaches and trains therapists around the world in non-dual therapy and Kundalini bodywork.

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Elliot Saxby offers simple yet profound methods for evolving your inner masculine and feminine, as well as healing the shadow.

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From “Moving between the Masculine and the Feminine”

We all have an inner masculine and inner feminine which is not dependent on gender. Both our masculine and feminine have mature and immature expressions.

If our feminine is in her mature, then our immature masculine will try to bring her down through suppression, control and domination, and if our masculine is in his mature, then our immature feminine will try to bring him down by playing the victim, being the center of attention, gossiping, manipulating, blaming, and other immature feminine traits.

They can only rise up into their mature expressions together. To bring the immature masculine to his mature, we need to know the mature feminine within ourselves. And to bring the immature feminine to the mature feminine, we need the mature masculine within ourselves. This is very similar to raising children, in that:

• for a child to step into their mature feminine power, the child needs mature masculine presence within themselves and for this the child needs a model, someone they can take their masculine imprint from, generally a father figure;

• but equally important for a child to develop mature masculine presence within themselves, they need love from their mature feminine which they also need a model for, generally a mother figure.

Similarly, in our partnerships the same dynamic is going on. If we see our partner acting from their immature in an unhealthy way, then we need to embody the opposing mature trait, not the same one that they are in and not the opposing immature. By doing this as adults, we are able to take healthy mature imprints of masculinity and femininity (which we are subconsciously doing all of the time) from the people closest to us, in the same way that we hope children do through access to good role models. Thus, no matter our age, we are all constantly learning from and influencing each other whether we like it or not. Learning to use polarity and duality in our life, is learning to evolve our emotional dynamics and traits, so that nearly all our expressions are healthy.

Once we understand how to work with polarity, we no longer need to be afraid of it. Polarity, especially emotional polarity, can be difficult for some people as they create a black and white existence, becoming trapped in judgements of good and bad, right and wrong, happy or sad. The framework gives insights into our pain and suffering so that we can use them as a gift and tool for growth. The key to not becoming stuck in polarity is learning to use duality, learning to embody the masculine, and feminine traits and the polarities within them.

Common Traits

What we believe and feel in relation to what is masculine and what is feminine is our truth and no one should take this away from us or tell us that we are wrong. But for the purpose of learning to use the polarity framework traits have been identified as either masculine or feminine, mature or immature and arranged in a way to support you to see how emotional polarity and behavioral polarity can work, positively or negatively in numerous ways. The labelling is not intended to be definitive but to teach you how to work with the polarity framework in your own way with any and all emotional and behavioral traits that emerge throughout your life.

Our mature masculine is wisdom, intellect, knowledge, and cooperation. It is our safety, our boundaries, our yes and our no. It is discernment and the right application of free will.

Our mature feminine is everything that we enjoy about life. It is beauty, music, dancing, food, and language. It is everything that we can see, taste, touch, smell and hear. It is everything in creation, as well as diversity, empathy, and our intuition. It is our yes for life, a yes with no judgement, no comparison, or thought of good or bad. It is the complete expression and acceptance of all life.

Our immature self creates conflict, but it is this conflict that spurs us on and instigates change, transformation, and our deeper insights. When we can recognize the gifts within our conflict, we will grow, learn, and develop, whether enjoying the process or not. Our immature self lets us know when something is out of balance and needs attention. By cycling between our mature and immature self with awareness, we develop a healthy ego. A healthy ego makes life beautiful, while allowing us to acknowledge that it is not who we really are. While our unhealthy ego can still create feelings of joy, it is always perpetuating our sense of “separate self” through fear and suffering.

Our separate self is best described as: our experience of the world from the mind. Reacting to the world from memories and mental programming, creating fear, and opposition from greed and survival needs, or attacking others from these same places. As we gain more access to empathy, emotional intelligence, intuition, and a sense of the collective consciousness, we come to know that the separate self is a partial truth, not the truth.

Fundamentals of the Framework

If we feel we are in our immature feminine, bringing our masculine down, we need to stop and move into our mature masculine’s values and traits: looking at how we are not supporting our feminine. We need to ask questions like:

• What have I said yes to, that I should have said no to?

• Where have I crossed my own boundaries, or allowed someone else to do so?

• Where does my feminine not feel safe?

• What mental concepts or knowledge have I learned that I am not applying to life?

• And where am I not using discernment to choose the best outcome?

And if we feel our immature masculine is bringing our feminine down then we need to stop and start focusing on our mature feminine’s values and attributes in order to bring our masculine up:

• looking to see where inspiration, creativity, and diversity are lacking in our life?

• where we are failing to listen to our intuition?

• where we are not accepting ourselves enough?

• and why we are not feeling self-assured?

Masculine and Feminine Polarity work, or working with polarity and duality in its simplest form is about:

1. embodying the opposing mature pole, to bring the immature up;

2. making our immature healthy;

3. learning from, and transforming our shadows.

When we are able to work with the masculine and feminine polarities within ourselves, developing our ego, navigating between our inner and outer expressions, our mature and immature, and using our shadow as a tool for growth, we come closer to mastering duality.

Practical Examples

Example 1: Attention-Seeking

We are going to use the immature feminine’s attention-seeking as an example, believing that everything is about us, thus taking everything personally in a self-obsessed, self-absorbed and selfish way.

The immature feminine’s attention-seeking opposes the immature masculine’s arrogance. Relating this to taking everything personally, the masculine will be locked into his state of separation, reaffirming that he and his arrogant beliefs are the correct way. Generally speaking, the more arrogant we are, the more attention seeking we will be, whether we admit …