Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine
In this article we cover:
- Divine Feminine Traits
- Divine Masculine Traits
- Balancing the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine
- Healing Our Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine
Published February 2, 2022
“Order and chaos are the yang and yin of the famous Taoist symbol; two serpents, head to tail. Order is the white, masculine serpent; Chaos, its black, feminine counterpart. The back dot in the white–and the white in the black–indicate the possibility of transformation… For the Taoists, meaning is to be found on the border between the ever-entwined pair. To walk that border is to stay on the path of life, the divine Way. And that’s much better than happiness.”— Jordan B. Peterson
There is good reason why the Taoist yin-yang symbol is so renowned. It is intuitive to each of us. Like the quote above colors in so beautifully, feminine (yin) and masculine (yang) energy are not singular energies. They are not assigned to one person or gender and not the other. Instead, both energies exist within us on the micro-level. These energies also exist in nature on a grander scale, and in the universe on a macro-level.
Wielding Our Greatest Potential
Balancing our divine feminine and divine masculine is a story in wielding our greatest potential. A life of power, meaning, awareness, abundant love, and effortless gratitude. To begin balancing the divine feminine and divine masculine, we must learn to recognize them. To recognize them, we must learn their energetic traits or qualities. How each shows up in the world and how to reawaken them when we find them out of balance. Balancing both the divine feminine and divine masculine is a delicate yet transformative art.
The Divine Feminine
“She is so bright and glorious that you cannot look at her face or her garments for the splendor with which she shines. For she is terrible with the terror of the avenging lightning, and gentle with the goodness of the bright sun; and both her terror and her gentleness are incomprehensible to humans…. But she is with everyone and in everyone, and so beautiful is her secret that no person can know the sweetness with which she sustains people, and spares them in inscrutable mercy.”— Hildegard von Bingen
Divine Feminine Energy Traits
You are expressing your divine feminine when you:
- Go with the flow of your life. Just like a surfer who is in their “zone” and riding a wave in total peace and relaxation. Life is simply a wave and not a danger or something to survive.
- Bow to your creative energy via artistic creation, poetic expression, boundless dance, or activated playfulness.
- Are diligent in performing self-care rituals and tend to the body and mind like a Zen monk tends to a rock garden. With intention and all the time in the world to do it right.
- Let your innate nurturer or healer step into the light. This can be your parenting/partnering style or your ability to listen. It can be showing compassion and empathy, or wielding the innate healer that resides within you.
Divine Feminine Energy
When the divine feminine energy is awakened within you, it will:
- Allow you to operate from your intuition more easily and more often. Eventually, your intuition will be at the helm of your decision making.
- Bring out your more compassionate, tender, and sensitive side.
- Make you more receptive to ideas, impressions, and suggestions from others.
- Give you a sense of agency, making you truly unstoppable and a radiant force in the world.
How to Reawaken Your Divine Feminine Energy
To reawaken your divine feminine energy, you can:
- Integrate a routine of self-reflection into your day. The most common ways being a daily meditation practice or taking time to journal. Books that aid self-reflection are highly effective, too.
- Enhance your emotional intelligence. Being able to experience all emotions without letting them take you over.
- Becoming more receptive. Give, amplify, and receive with grace. Allow others to give to you be it compliments, gifts, advice, and so on.
- Letting the playful, spontaneous, positive, and joyful side of you be in its full expression. You allow your true self to exist without judgement, restraint, or self-doubt.
- Empowering those around you. When we lift those around us, we discover that we have lifted ourselves up, too. Be supportive, encouraging, complimentary, and loving to those around you.
- Prioritizing pleasure no matter what. This can occur in a myriad of ways. The best forms come from a deliberate yoga practice, getting massages, self-grooming, dancing or allowing free movement of the body, and low-impact training. Your body is your soul’s home (for now); treat it as such.
- Allow yourself to rest. Making time for rest and recharge is its own kind of hustle. But in this loud and busy world, the divine feminine gets knocked off course if we’re not making R&R a priority.
The Divine Masculine
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
Masculine Energy Traits
You are in full expression of your divine masculine when you:
- Operate from the left side of the brain, which is analytical, logical, and practical. This is in any realm of your life, not just work and finances or matters of the like.
- Are physically strong, powerful, confident, independent and know it. An individual wearing their confidence and power with a swagger-like bravado is a magnet that attracts others to act the same.
- Have stability in your body and mind and a beacon for the people around you when they need it the most. The divine masculine is a lighthouse during moments of grief, tragedy, or deep confusion.
- Think quick when decision making, are capable of problem solving, and take action when it is warranted. Divine masculine energy provokes the doer in us with zero hesitation.
- In love with the mysterious and the interconnectivity of all things. The unknown fascinates healthy divine masculine energy, and it appreciates all the nuances, details, and intricacies woven through the fabric of existence. In fact, divine masculinity rolls out the welcome mat to the strange and unfamiliar.
- Act as an exemplar of aliveness and passion. Balanced divine masculine energy is sensual to the core, experiencing its own and everyone else’s sensitivity as a superpower, and promotes it.
- Cultivate, generate, and make change. Divine masculine energy builds, creates, provides structure and scaffolding where it’s needed. Change is made because it is necessary, critical, or for good reason.
Divine Masculine Energy
When the divine masculine energy is awakened within you, it will:
- Reveal the Father archetype within you. The Father archetype has been peppered throughout history. Father archetypes demonstrate a character often akin to a king, leader, holy man, wise man, and (of course) a father figure. This archetype exists in women too. We’ve all met women in the world who are the leader of the pack. They wear a crown like they were born with it on, or they are stern and orderly when a situation requires it.
- Advocate for order, disciple, rational, understanding, and law. Divine masculine energy is just and sensible, “fair is fair.” They believe everyone should be held to the same standard of judgement or consideration.
- Activate the competitive side of you without focusing too much on appearances or becoming too fixated on “winning.” “If he fails, he fails daring greatly.” Divine masculine energy is greatly depicted in the Theodore Roosevelt quote above.
How to Reawaken Your Masculine Energy
A person who is balanced in their divine masculine is an utter force in the world. In order to reawaken your divine masculine energy, you can:
- Integrate affirmations into your self talk; mantras such as “I am a warrior,” “I know when to take action and will,” or “people can rely on me for strength and clarity” are great to repeat in meditation or in moments of stillness and deep concentration.
- Trust yourself when you take risks. Celebrate yourself when a risk is taken with confidence and vision. What’s meant for you will happen with the right intention behind it. Go for it, no holds barred and trust the process.
- Let the power and strength that lives in you perform. We can do this in several ways. The most common being a high-intensity workout such as kickboxing or weight lifting. It can also perform via running, playing a competitive team sport, or taking a power yoga class.
- Heal your relationship with masculine characters in your life. This can be anyone who has an unbalanced divine masculine energy and was overly controlling, manipulative, forceful, or aggressive with you. Forgiving them and loving them in their darkness can bring balance to the both of you, and again, is so needed in the world today.
- Set boundaries and protect yourself when necessary. This can be a really hard practice but, with time, people will recognize your boundaries and respect them. To do this, stick up for yourself when someone tests that boundary and don’t be afraid to fight for what you want and need.
How to Balance Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine Energy
You begin to balance the divine feminine and divine masculine the moment you accept that both exist within you. One does not exist without the other, so you must welcome and acknowledge both. One cannot operate healthily without the other either. You must cultivate both, exercise both, and love both unconditionally.
The Universe has always been a place of wonder and awe in its effortless ability to maintain balance. We have deep reverence for the Universe and its mysteries. Its gentleness yet its fierceness. Its forgiving yet unforgiving duality. The light of the Sun and the dark side of the Moon, etc. The Universe is a case in point of balanced divine feminine and divine masculine energy. We recognize it in the Universe, so we respect it in all its power.
That being said, you are but one piece of the Universe. What exists on the macro-scale exists in you on the micro-scale. To balance the divine feminine and divine masculine, start to see the endless examples in nature. Observe the feminine and masculine qualities in others, and relate back to your being. The more you come to recognize, the more it becomes obvious to you. The more obvious, the more balanced. To then heal your divine feminine and divine masculine, you must first learn how to observe.
Observing Shadow Masculine and Shadow Feminine
Perhaps your parents, culture/society, or your peers taught you their version of what “acceptable” masculine or feminine behavior is. Unfortunately, but to no fault of their own, much of which they have taught us about masculinity or femininity actually belongs in the shadow realm.
The wounded masculine in the politician who says “my power and my needs are above the rest and whatever it takes to maintain my power, I can and will do by all means necessary.” We see the wounded feminine in the celebrity who says “I’m the fairest of them all” and ruthlessly breaks down others by criticizing their talents, abilities, or appearances. And we see the wounds of both in attitudes towards the environment through overconsumption that declares, “I dominate Nature. I control Nature, I don’t have to listen to Nature, and nothing it does can stop me from what I desire most.”
When we see examples of these energetics playing out around us, we can start a self-investigation. We can connect dots. How our wounded masculine or feminine energy might show through our personalities, ideals, and belief systems. This identification is the pathway to healing or balancing our own energies.
Healing Divine Masculine
To heal the divine masculine, learn to listen out for the masculine in others. What does this mean? It means to allow others to express themselves. Show compassion as they navigate their emotions and work to let them go. Let them cry in your company if thats what they need. Allow them to be as vulnerable. A healthy divine masculine accepts and encourages the totality of emotions that make up the human experience without casting shame or guilt. Without dissociating or repressing.
You can also heal your divine masculine by asking yourself when the last time you cried was. Answer honestly. Ask yourself when was the last time you were vulnerable with someone else. When you admitted you didn’t feel “enough,” that you didn’t feel accomplished, or that you needed help.
It is the human condition to feel all emotions that arise. A healthy divine masculine does not look away from his emotions. He admits every emotion and does not feel like “less of a man” when he expresses them. Emotions expressed clear out the “gunk” that suppressed emotions build up. The more this is practiced, the clearer the vessel becomes, the more the divine masculine can step into its power.
Healing Divine Feminine
To heal the divine feminine in you, learn how to surrender to your intuition and let it claim the throne it’s entitled to. Intuition is not thought, it’s not emotion, and it’s not a sensation. Rather, it is a deep inner knowing that is one of the greatest gifts the feminine has ever been given. When your intuition has a strong no behind it, listen. The more your intuition is heard, the more it shows up, the more it can serve.
You can also heal your feminine or bring it into balance by celebrating the expression of the divine feminine in others. A healthy divine feminine uplifts, compliments, loves, and nurtures. She is the spark that lights the way.
Calming the Nervous System Heals the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine
Ultimately, you can balance both the divine feminine and divine masculine by calming your nervous system. To achieve this, incorporate yoga, meditation, breathwork, or a grounding practice into your daily routine. Rigorous physical discipline or immersion in nature for an extended period is effective, too. These methods are masters at putting us back in order and in the seat of our power. They make us feel safe, strong, confident, and transmit calm into our being.
There is a real awakening occurring right now that has so much potential for the masses to heal the divine feminine and divine masculine. My friend, there is work to be done. May you heal your divine feminine and divine masculine so that your place (as Theodore Roosevelt puts it) shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.