Several times in my life I’ve noticed that something is right there in front of me and always has been. I just never noticed it.
That was so with my first experience of bliss. I noticed that bliss had always been there but I had never known it for what it was. The minute I recognized it, it took full possession of me.
Similarly today, I saw that I had a preconception of what androgyny was and that my preconception of it was preventing me from seeing. It was obscuring more than it was revealing.
I noticed the other day that I enjoy intellectual and experiential explorations alike. And in a flash of recognition I saw that the balance between head and heart was one form androgyny can take.
I realized that had a pre-existing idea of what androgyny was like. If I were androgynous, I should – let’s say – have long flowing hair, be an excellent dancer, and be gentle in mind and words. My ideas of it were obviously immature and unconscious.
Balancing intellectual and emotional experience is a form of androgyny. I don’t think I can yet say “I’m androgynous.” No. I’m sure I’m not there yet. But I’m taking my first cut at being so, trying the label on for fit.
This form of androgyny looks forward to the balancing of the intellectual with the experiential, the right with the left hemisphere, the mind with the heart.
But there’s a much larger accomplishment beyond that, one into which androgyny fits.
Androgyny is just one form of polarity. There are many others.
We like some things and we don’t like others. We help some people and we don’t help others. We live among some people and we don’t live among others. Etc.
My gut tells me that the place to aim for is balancing all polarities.
We already know how to do that.
We know that cleansing ourselves of our vasanas (core issues) and conditioning removes the charge we have on certain issues. These issues are what create polarities in the first place.
All the hot buttons the normal person has keep us moving on tracks, smiling predictably and losing it predictably. We’re automatons after a while, bent out of shape by our own unfinished business and the behavior patterns that arise from them.
When we actually allow ourselves to re-experience these usually-early-childhood traumas and complete them, the charge on many things leaves us.
Now, we’re not triggered by this remark or upset by that one. When quietude happens, the polarities start to lose steam, collapse like deflated balloons, and lose all relevance and importance.
When all polarities have been calmed and put to rest, well, you know the rest. The mind is still. And in the still pool of the quiet mind, the Self can be seen.
In my case, I hope I’ve quieted the battle between the intellect and the heart. Both are delightful. And they complement each other.
Like so many illusory battles, it isn’t a question of “either/or.” There isn’t a question at all. But if there was, it’d be a question of “and.”
I am intellectual and experiential. I am head and heart. I am masculine and feminine. When the charge is taken off the polarities, balance is achieved and the reach of one’s heart keeps expanding.