The Male and the Female
I see two shoes.
One is a brown half-high boot and looks rather plump, like a kind of working boot that has been worn for ages.
Next to it is a woman’s shoe, a pastel pink-coloured plimsoll.
These two shoes are arranged next to each other, but they are in total contrast.
The big working boot has laces with knots in them, also in places where there shouldn’t be any knots, and I can see that half of the tongue of this shoe is hanging out.
It is an old working boot, threadbare and worn, whilst the other shoe is shiny.
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You know that when we speak about shoes we speak about standpoints.
Here in this image you can see a man’s shoe and a woman’s shoe, which refer to the male and the female side of the human.
The male side is represented by the working boot, which stands for someone who takes a strong male stance in life: always busy working, busy with other activities, and busy with will power, typical of this man’s working boot.
You also saw that there were a number of knots in the laces, also in places where they should not be.
You can clearly see here that when someone takes very much a male stance he has put up quite a few blockades, avoids numerous situations in his life and has very strong views on them.
The standpoints this represents can be found in you too.
Beside the man’s boot you also saw a woman’s shoe, pink and shiny.
This means that when you listen to your female side you enter a softness and mildness and are no longer affected by such strong opinions.
You then let yourself go much more with the flow of things you experience through your emotions or feelings.
When a human stands in life from his humanness and is in contact with his humanness only, we speak of the male and female side. Every human being has these same possibilities.
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When we say: ‘We now turn to the essence’, you will find the male and the female component present, and it is the other way around, for the power the men’s working boot emanates in humanness is not found back in the essence. It does have a place and may play along, but the female component always takes the initiative.
The female component gives signals of what should be done and then the male component may put it into action, but the latter can never start doing things of its own accord.
You already know the male and female side in your own humanness, but you don’t as yet have any insight into the male and female component of your essence.
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We see that during his spiritual development a human being is still searching in the psychic world and allows himself to be guided mostly by his human female side.
The human being works by intuition, starts looking for all kinds of emotions in himself and thinks he is making contact with his own essence.
But as we see it, it is clearly a fact that this is all a part of humanness and we see the female side taking a form that is not at all pleasant.
Regularly we hear someone who is talking big about intuition – and everyone does that from time to time – say: ‘Intuitively I know it all.’ But if you just give a moment’s thought to the use of intuition, you will find that it always has to do with things happening outside of yourself; a human being will never discover anything about himself in that intuition.
There only the instinct in humanness is important.
Intuition belongs to the female side of humanness and the human is busy looking for causes outside himself, but his real self is side-lined.
The human who is searching to advance towards the path that leads to full consciousness, will first have to pass through this struggle.
Initially, he thinks intuition important and likes experiencing it, to the extent that he is not at all willing to let go, and he says: ‘Yes, but if my intuition works I will get a wider view of everything there is and thus I may find the gate to heaven.’ However, we say: ‘Intuition only deals with things outside yourself and if a human wants to set ajar the gate to heaven, all he has to do is to deal with himself.’
He will have to know who he is, he will have to understand his behaviour, what his ideas and his standpoints are. This is a big difference, for the counterpart of intuition on the human side is instinct. Instinct deals with you in a direct manner and is pure, and when influenced by it you might feel, This is an unsafe situation for me, so I should take a different standpoint or I am going to have to behave differently.
When a human learns to distinguish between intuition and instinct, it also requires a choice, If instinct exists, I should forget about intuition, because it is not useful. If a human thinks that he can go a long way with intuition and concerns himself with psychic affairs, then clairsentience, clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc. are still important, but if a human really starts looking for deeper consciousness, he no longer occupies himself with others – there is only the question: ‘Who am I? I want to get to know myself, because that is what I am: I must look at what my essence has to tell me, because it is after all my essence that knows what lessons I have.’
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You will find, when you learn to make the distinction between intuition and instinct and between the male and female components of your essence, that your possibilities, as well as your moments of growth, will get much more of a chance, they will be far greater, and much more part of you than what you now experience in your life.
This is because intuition – but instinct too – can only be seen in humanness, for you are not in contact with your own essence there.
After all, the essence has come to this planet from the World of Wisdom, where all experiences, all preceding existences are stored.
It is, of course, important that if a human wants to get a broader view of ‘everything that is’, he should first get a broader view of his own essence.
At the same time, that broader view of his own essence means that he will discover that the male and the female components are present.
That is where a human can learn to distinguish: What is it that makes me follow what my essence wants of me, and how am I going to apply that to the material?
These two things will always happen in succession, for first you will get an impulse, and that impulse compares with the pink plimsoll in not coming to the fore so much, and after that the male component may activate what has been passed on by the female component.
This is the right way to deal with yourself but also to get to know yourself well.
When you know yourself completely, both inside and out – both at the levels of the essence and of your own humanness – only then does one speak of full consciousness.
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It is not about seeing how many gifts you have gained from us in the meantime, because you do not get these from us. When the human starts to understand these things, he remains alone in all his nakedness, in all his peculiarities, in all his annoying ways, in all that makes him human, and then he gets on with it.
He wonders, Is this my real self? Are these acquired attitudes? Are these acquired standpoints? How does that work for me? And is there also intuition and instinct?
It seems a bit of a hotchpotch and we can see you thinking, Where on earth am I going to start?
All that is asked of you is that you learn to see the difference between the male side and the male component, the female side and the female component. Then you will have mapped what it is that you have to focus on.
The urge in you that says: ‘I want to progress on my path, I want to become fully conscious’, and you follow the way of instinct and the impulses of the essence, for after all it is the essence that knows what you need.
Nobody can tell you how to behave and what the truth is. No, every human is unique – so what is true for one need not be at all true for the other. We are not going to proclaim truths because then we are positioning ourselves above you. No, we assume that everybody is on his way and that everybody is unique, so what is important to one person need not be important to the other.
You can only make the choice for yourself if you want to progress.
If a neighbour, friend, partner or whoever is going to follow the same path, the choice is completely up to them and has nothing to do with you.
Only then will surface what is really pure and in constant flow with your own essence.
Then you will no longer feel the need to be responsible for the other, because that is usually the case if you look if your fellow human also wants to follow this path.
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Many women have learned to be tender and caring, to play nurses. All of us know the role that a woman easily takes upon herself.
The man too has a role, I have to be strong and I must see to the welfare of my family. The man is much more extrovert; he has to enter into battle with the rules of society every day, which is just as heavy a job as the care-giving women, mind you, only she does it in her own surroundings.
This is also a demonstration of how the male and the female side of you still require too much attention.
Without letting anybody down, both roles can be united in one person, for every human is familiar with both the female and the male side, and the roles assigned to the female and the male side. All you have to do then is to see through those roles and you will discover who you really are.
Then suddenly, in your own essence too, a different personality can emerge.
We know it may sound strange, for you always thought you knew who you were. ‘In my character I’m like this and my genetic material is like that, I know what I dream and I know what my life is like, what my profession is and where my talents lie.’
Yet we can see that the essence does not get involved in this. If you give the essence the chance to fully flow with the current, it might well happen that quite another human emerges.
Not so much will change outwardly: you will remain that little grey mouse or the rather chubby or slim person, but in your style and in your personality big changes are likely to occur.
Your own essence has a distinct way of working, and all you can say is: ‘It was very nice to get to see myself as a human, but in fact I am only a very small part of what is really present in me.’
When you come to the end of your life and the body is discarded, only the essence remains and you will discover that the essence is thousands and thousands of years old and there is immense depth in it – and you thought your humanness was so important.
Oh no! The moment you kick the bucket, the body starts to decompose and has no value for you anymore, your thoughts are no longer present either – for your thinking hat is part of your body.
You will also have let go of all standpoints and all that remains is the essence with all its possibilities, and all its experience.
Now you might say: ‘Well then, I will wait till I’ve reached the point when I die, then I’ll find out.’ But why on earth should you wait so long if you have the possibility in this life, in your humanness, to experience this now? For in this way you will get a very different perspective on life: you will get quite a different look at the society you live in, your own humanness, and also the other humans.
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